4 ms·

C-SPAN with their unedited broadcasts of Congressional proceedings are as neutral and proper journalism as it gets.

toast0 4y ago
Congress generally controls the cameras though. Although, not until after they elected a majority leader and do some house keeping. That said, unedited broadcasts of meetings isn't really journalism. Journalism is highlighting the portions of the proceedings that need highlighting. It's an editorial process by nature. That's not to say what C-SPAN does isn't important; it absolutely is valuable and important to have a record of the proceedings, and with video and audio rather than just a transcript or minutes is quite useful.
beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago
Journalists and the public (often looking up to journalists post-Watergate) have made journalism sound wildly more "truthy" and "neutral" than it really is, or ever was. Unedited broadcasts of congressional proceedings isn't "journalism" --- that's a broadcast. By the same token, most 24hr news on TV, which is just commentary on some live event, is barely or often not journalism at all. Journalists write and tell stories. Journalism offers an account of real (or supposed) events. It always involves storytelling in some degree, in the sense that an account of events (in order, or in an order which clarifies the chain of events) is constructed and presented. There's an ideal of neutrality, which is generally understood as a certain set of journalistic "practices", but journalism is ultimately storytelling with the general idea of offering an accurate account of a real event. The idea that journalists have special access to the "truth" is largely just a thing journalists say to make their job sound more specialized than it really is because it has become a "prestige" job. The same goes for 'neutrality' as a relatively recent ideal for journalists to strive for. The history of journalism is actually rife with journalists saying they weren't neutral and never tried to be. Journalism is important, and vital to democracies, but it's important to understand and clarify why they are because journalists can hang themselves on their own petard. They're storytellers with the idea of "holding people, institutions, and the public to account" by offering the public accounts of events that happened, which the public could not immediately witness. For instance, an unedited broadcast of congressional proceedings doesn't require nor is it journalism at all because the public can just watch it. The most a journalist could do is offer context...by situating the proceedings in a chain of historical events.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  Seeing as we're a tech audience, I ask you (and everyone else) this: Would anyone be happy if ext4 or NTFS "told stories" of what goes on in their file systems instead of journaling everything fact-for-fact as-is? I am happy to bet noone would be. Journalism is (and should be) nothing more than a record of what happens or happened. A proper journalist, after all, is writing a journal. If someone is writing a story, they are a storyteller and should not be relied upon as a useful source of objective and accurate information. In this sense, C-SPAN is as journalism as it can get: Unedited recordings and presentations of the goings-on inside Congress insofar as Congress will allow.
  - mplanchard 4y ago
    Ah, yes, this is also why my dictionary should solely tell me how to say words, and never tell me their definitions, since the word diction is predominantly associated with speech and comes from the Latin dictare, which is a conjugation of dicere, which means to speak. Dictionaries have no business in providing definitions! Their business is diction!
  - jahsome 4y ago
    What you've described is literal propaganda. Your description leaves our several of the core tenets of journalism, among them: independent verification and contextualization.
- massysett 4y ago
  I agree that unedited congressional proceedings is not journalism; however C-Span does have journalists who do not tell stories. C-SPAN journalists host “Washington Journal” on the TV and “Washington Today” on C-SPAN Radio. They interview newsmakers, authors, and other journalists. On “Washington Today” they do summarize the day’s happenings. But they’re not attempting to synthesize a narrative. There is no storytelling. On “Washington Journal” they let guests and callers speak for themselves with no attempts to corner them or edit them. C-SPAN shows every day a way of doing journalism that’s about the subject and not about what the journalist thinks.
liveoneggs 4y ago
I loved watching C-SPAN and then comparing to the "news" who picked one or two sentences from a 45 minute speech to yammer about for the next three days.
1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
C-SPAN has a podcast of their program "Q&A". RSS feed: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/cspanqa https://feeds.megaphone.fm/cspanqa
rufus_foreman 4y ago
Deciding that you are going to cover one specific thing, and only one specific thing, and ignore absolutely everything else, is neutral?
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  C-SPAN's mission is to cover, and merely cover, Congressional proceedings and some other governmental affairs, and I would say they are very successful in that endeavour. I won't say the same of any other "news" or "journalism" outfit in their mission to journal goings-ons. Everyone from CNN to BBC to NHK to Al Jazeera to Wall Street Journal to New York Times can all go screw themselves for being propagandists disguised as journalists.
  - rufus_foreman 4y ago
    But by covering Congressional proceedings in that way, they ignore the way laws are actually made. If you watch only C-SPAN you might think that laws are enacted by Congress after some debate or deliberation on camera about the content of those laws. But that's not how it works. The way it works is that members of Congress spend a huge amount of time, sometimes the majority of their time, soliciting donations. And then a lobbyist for a company that has donated money to a member of Congress will give them the exact text of a law that they want enacted. The member of Congress will get that into a bill that makes it through committee, possibly by trading votes. Then the bill will come up to a vote, no one will have read the whole bill they are voting on, in some cases that would be impossible, the bill will be hundreds of pages long and it is only given to the members of Congress a few hours before the vote. Then they vote on the bill that lobbyists wrote without any idea what is in it. Is that what they show on C-SPAN? If not, why not? Because someone made a very non-neutral decision that that is what they will show on C-SPAN.

Congress generally controls the cameras though. Although, not until after they elected a majority leader and do some house keeping. That said, unedited broadcasts of meetings isn't really journalism. Journalism is highlighting the portions of the proceedings that need highlighting. It's an editorial process by nature. That's not to say what C-SPAN does isn't important; it absolutely is valuable and important to have a record of the proceedings, and with video and audio rather than just a transcript or minutes is quite useful.

beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago

Journalists and the public (often looking up to journalists post-Watergate) have made journalism sound wildly more "truthy" and "neutral" than it really is, or ever was. Unedited broadcasts of congressional proceedings isn't "journalism" --- that's a broadcast. By the same token, most 24hr news on TV, which is just commentary on some live event, is barely or often not journalism at all. Journalists write and tell stories. Journalism offers an account of real (or supposed) events. It always involves storytelling in some degree, in the sense that an account of events (in order, or in an order which clarifies the chain of events) is constructed and presented. There's an ideal of neutrality, which is generally understood as a certain set of journalistic "practices", but journalism is ultimately storytelling with the general idea of offering an accurate account of a real event. The idea that journalists have special access to the "truth" is largely just a thing journalists say to make their job sound more specialized than it really is because it has become a "prestige" job. The same goes for 'neutrality' as a relatively recent ideal for journalists to strive for. The history of journalism is actually rife with journalists saying they weren't neutral and never tried to be. Journalism is important, and vital to democracies, but it's important to understand and clarify why they are because journalists can hang themselves on their own petard. They're storytellers with the idea of "holding people, institutions, and the public to account" by offering the public accounts of events that happened, which the public could not immediately witness. For instance, an unedited broadcast of congressional proceedings doesn't require nor is it journalism at all because the public can just watch it. The most a journalist could do is offer context...by situating the proceedings in a chain of historical events.

Dalewyn 4y ago
Seeing as we're a tech audience, I ask you (and everyone else) this: Would anyone be happy if ext4 or NTFS "told stories" of what goes on in their file systems instead of journaling everything fact-for-fact as-is? I am happy to bet noone would be. Journalism is (and should be) nothing more than a record of what happens or happened. A proper journalist, after all, is writing a journal. If someone is writing a story, they are a storyteller and should not be relied upon as a useful source of objective and accurate information. In this sense, C-SPAN is as journalism as it can get: Unedited recordings and presentations of the goings-on inside Congress insofar as Congress will allow.
- mplanchard 4y ago
  Ah, yes, this is also why my dictionary should solely tell me how to say words, and never tell me their definitions, since the word diction is predominantly associated with speech and comes from the Latin dictare, which is a conjugation of dicere, which means to speak. Dictionaries have no business in providing definitions! Their business is diction!
- jahsome 4y ago
  What you've described is literal propaganda. Your description leaves our several of the core tenets of journalism, among them: independent verification and contextualization.
massysett 4y ago
I agree that unedited congressional proceedings is not journalism; however C-Span does have journalists who do not tell stories. C-SPAN journalists host “Washington Journal” on the TV and “Washington Today” on C-SPAN Radio. They interview newsmakers, authors, and other journalists. On “Washington Today” they do summarize the day’s happenings. But they’re not attempting to synthesize a narrative. There is no storytelling. On “Washington Journal” they let guests and callers speak for themselves with no attempts to corner them or edit them. C-SPAN shows every day a way of doing journalism that’s about the subject and not about what the journalist thinks.

liveoneggs 4y ago

I loved watching C-SPAN and then comparing to the "news" who picked one or two sentences from a 45 minute speech to yammer about for the next three days.

1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago

C-SPAN has a podcast of their program "Q&A". RSS feed: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/cspanqa https://feeds.megaphone.fm/cspanqa

rufus_foreman 4y ago

Deciding that you are going to cover one specific thing, and only one specific thing, and ignore absolutely everything else, is neutral?

Dalewyn 4y ago
C-SPAN's mission is to cover, and merely cover, Congressional proceedings and some other governmental affairs, and I would say they are very successful in that endeavour. I won't say the same of any other "news" or "journalism" outfit in their mission to journal goings-ons. Everyone from CNN to BBC to NHK to Al Jazeera to Wall Street Journal to New York Times can all go screw themselves for being propagandists disguised as journalists.
- rufus_foreman 4y ago
  But by covering Congressional proceedings in that way, they ignore the way laws are actually made. If you watch only C-SPAN you might think that laws are enacted by Congress after some debate or deliberation on camera about the content of those laws. But that's not how it works. The way it works is that members of Congress spend a huge amount of time, sometimes the majority of their time, soliciting donations. And then a lobbyist for a company that has donated money to a member of Congress will give them the exact text of a law that they want enacted. The member of Congress will get that into a bill that makes it through committee, possibly by trading votes. Then the bill will come up to a vote, no one will have read the whole bill they are voting on, in some cases that would be impossible, the bill will be hundreds of pages long and it is only given to the members of Congress a few hours before the vote. Then they vote on the bill that lobbyists wrote without any idea what is in it. Is that what they show on C-SPAN? If not, why not? Because someone made a very non-neutral decision that that is what they will show on C-SPAN.