A bad week for US News Industry

It's been a tough news week for U.S. news outlets and journalists.  Of course, by now most of us have heard the main headline-grabbers - Brian Williams being called out for "elaborating" his account of being under fire in Iraq and his subsequent suspension from his position as Managing Editor and anchor of the NBC Nightly News, and Jon Stewart announcing that he will be leaving Comedy Central's The Daily Show.
As NBC now formally investigates a growing number of allegations that Williams had sensationalized and/or exaggerated his personal involvement in other news stories (Katrina, etc.), most journalists and pundits feel that he has so damaged his credibility that he's unlikely to return in a senior news position.  And while one anchor is being punished for sensationalizing and manipulating "the truth" in his news coverage, Jon Stewart, who made his career from sensationalizing and manipulating his coverage of news stories, said he'd had enough.
Stewart was increasingly being challenged over whether he slanted stories and left important elements out in his efforts to sensationalize stories and to challenge guests on his program.  Stewart has long held that his show was satire and thus should not be held to the same standard as traditional news, although he also wanted the imprimatur of news for his program.
One consequence of the two announcements has been a level of self-examination within the news business over just how important credibility and straight factual coverage is, or should be, for both reporters and news outlets.  (And the somewhat facetious suggestion making the rounds that Brian Williams should just take over for Jon Stewart - where he wouldn't be expected to be objective and honest)
A less controversial, and more disheartening, story was last night's announcement that CBSNews' Bob Simon had been killed in a car crash in New York City.  Simon was a passenger in a limo whose driver apparently lost control, and was hit by another car.
On a slightly lighter note, a local TV news crew from San Francisco were assaulted and robbed of their equipment as they were wrapping up after a live remote.  And that robbery and attack was only the latest in a growing number of attacks on TV news crews in the San Francisco area.  The situation was so bad that for a while some news stations hired security for their remote crews.

Added: This week has also seen the release of the latest World Press Freedom Report, which states that 2014 saw a "drastic decline" in press freedoms - and that respect for journalists and press freedom saw declines in two-thirds of the countries in the world.

And while the debate of how honest and credible news should be continued, the reputation of major news outlets was taking flack from other recent events. First, a continuing litany of complaints from the Washington press corps of a lack of access and transparency from the Executive Branch (and most notably from the White House), to allegations of blatant efforts to manipulate pool coverage reporting and spy on reporters.  Add to that the President's recent habit of ignoring major news outlets in favor of politicized web outlets and talk shows in the granting of interviews, and you have major news outlets questioning their role and importance.
Then came a story in the New York Observer about an activist who outlined how he intentionally manipulated media coverage.

The unspoken conspiracy... that exists between journalists and those seeking publicity is very real. If you have a story that provokes—real or not—they have the time. Give them the promise of traffic and a little plausible denial and you’re in.

In the story, the activist provides a blueprint for how to plant and hype a story, essentially through astroturfing controversy and building "growing concern" through social media.

Such a revelation would normally be dismissed, especially by self-proclaimed "elite" news outlets, which would claim that while such activities might catch their attention, the stories would still be subjected to rigourous fact-checking and reviews to ensure that the resulting stories complied with their normal standards of objective reporting.  The much-vaunted "layers and layers" of review position, however, took a big hit with the recent UVA rape story - which very quickly and publicly unraveled, but only after the initial (now thoroughly discredited) story had been unquestioningly reprinted by a large number of news outlets.  Meanwhile, the argument that journalistic norms are applied consistently is now taking a hit as stories about potential GOP presidential candidates' history in high school and college are actively being investigated and challenged by major newspapers - newspapers who uniformly argued that it was improper to look at the backgrounds of Democratic Presidential candidates in recent election cycles.
And NBC's current concern with credibility and objectivity seems somewhat hypocritical, given the behavior of its cable news channel (MSNBC) - identified as the most blatantly partisan news source by Pew Research.

All of this is feeding the American news-consuming public's increasingly critical opinion of traditional news outlets, and may be part of their increasing reliance on online sources for news.

Sources - Bob Simon of '60 Minutes' Bob Simon killed in car crash, New York Post
KTVU news crew attacked, robbed in Hayward, SFGate
EXCLUSIVE: How This Left-Wing Activist Manipulates the Media to Spread His Message, New York Observer


Freedom Of Press Witnesses 'Drastic Decline' Globally Amid Emerging Threats To Journalists, International Business Times

Edit track: Added brief paragraph on World Press Freedom report, along with source link.

Globally, Press Freedom down in 2014 reports

The latest Freedom of the Press report was released this morning by Freedom House. The report suggests several factors contributing to the lowest overall level of press freedom in a decade.

“We see declines in media freedom on a global level, driven by governments’ efforts to control the message and punish the messenger,” said Karin Karlekar, project director of the report. “In every region of the world last year, we found both governments and private actors attacking reporters, blocking their physical access to newsworthy events, censoring content, and ordering politically motivated firings of journalists.”

Overall, the report concurs with the Reporters Without Borders recently released World Press Freedom Index 2014 report.  Levels of press freedom are declining in many cases, due to spreading conflict and "a tendency to interpret national security needs in an overly broad and abusive manner to the detriment of the right to inform and be informed."

The U.S. comes in tied for 30th in the Freedom of the Press report, a significant drop from the 17-18 positions in previous reports, and a similar drop of 13 positions in the World Press Index 2014 report to 46th place.  Recent revelations of spying on reporters and attempts to criminalize those reporting leaked information were a major contribution of the decline for the U.S., which President Obama continues to assert is "the most transparent, ever."

It's been a tough few years for the press.

Sources -  "Freedom House report cites lowest global press freedom in a decade,"  Poynter.org
Freedom of the Press 2014 report,  Freedom House
World Press Freedom Index 2014 report, Reporters Without Borders

edited to add Freedom House 2014 map, and reposition other graphic (2 May, 11:30 a.m. EDT)

CBS Twitter feeds Hacked

CBS has acknowledged that the Twitter feeds for 60 Minutes, 48 Hours, CBS Denver, and its main account were hacked over the weekend.  As a result, the accounts were suspended on Saturday night.

Earlier in the day tweets coming from the 60 Minutes account seemed farfetched, including one that claimed the US government was "hiding the real culprit of the Boston bombing."

Other Tweets contained links to virus-laden sites, and rants about government conspiracies and treatment of Syria.  The Syrian Electronic Army claimed credit; previously they have claimed credit for the hacking of Twitter accounts at the BBC, NPR, Reuters, several radio & TV stations, and the NGO Human Rights Watch.

Sources -  CBS Twitter Feeds Are Compromised,  TVNewsCheck
Syrian Electronic Army claims credit for CBS Twitter accounts hack,  SlashGear.com

The Fading Red Line Twixt News & Ads

There used to be two big red lines in journalism between news and advertising, and news and opinion/entertainment.  They weren't always there - a glance at newspapers in the 18th and 19th century will show a commingling of content - but as journalism and news organizations pursued the mantle of objectivity, the lines were drawn to clearly distinguish news from opinion, fact from fiction (or embellishment), and to isolate objective news from the influence of large advertisers.

  The line between news and entertainment started fading with morning news/chat shows, prime time news programs as concerned with creating hooks and embellishments to attract audiences, the rise of "new journalism" with its heavy use of literary techniques, and lost any pretense of distinction with the meteoric rise of Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert.  The line between news and opinion has been fading rapidly in the last decade or two, with the rise of news programs pushing conflict and debate among hosts and guests, to the point where opinion commentary gets inserted into almost every form of news (and quite often the opinions are totally unrelated, like taking a shot at a political figure in a story on fashion, sports reporting, or fashion reviews).
  The last of these - the wall between news and advertising, is crumbling.  It's been deteriorating around the edges for a while - reporters assigned to stories on advertisers for a special section, the use of materials provided by advertisers or PR reps (as they save the costs of independently creating equivalent materials), among other things.  What's new and significant, though, is that some major news organizations have started to develop new products and story types that openly integrate advertising content in news products.

News organization and publishers taking this step argue that a combination of changes in news markets, business pressures, and consumer preferences, are driving "an inexorable -- indeed an inevitable -- shift merging the "storytelling" of their organic journalism with those of their advertisers." The new media and news environment, they argue, require news organizations to find new ways to include and accommodate advertisers and other funding sources. For Forbes and NBC News, this means

introducing a spate of new "native" advertising formats that blur the line between advertising and editorial content in new ways, including brand-produced videos served directly in the news organizations’ video news players.

NBC has just announce a major transformation in its approach to news and news audiences, abandoning the what it termed the "archaic" focus on demographics in defining and targeting news audiences. Instead, the will focus on "news personas" - and as part of that effort are introducing a variety of "native formats" allowing advertisers to integrate their own content and messages directly into NBC News players and other digital news formats.

"Native advertising is really just more relevant advertising," explains Kyoo Kim, vice president-sales of NBC News Digital, adding: “If we can figure out how to earn a place on that infinite loop (use patterns of the "Always On" news consumer), whether it is a mobile device, a tablet, or a smart TV, then we are creating an environment and product that is more relevant to that experience... Essentially, (Native advertisers) become content publishers in our stream..."

After all, Kim continued, those "Always On" news consumers expect advertising content to be integrated with their news. In addition, Kim added, ad content sometimes generates more "engagement" with audiences than NBC News' own editorial content.

Forbes is taking a similar direction with its "Make Your Move" campaign of interviews with successful entrepreneurs and BrandVoice online advertising campaign. For BrandVoice, a staff of news producers and editors work with major advertising brands to assemble a mix of digital content sources built around promoting brand identity.

Forbes' Levien says the new BrandVoice spots are part of a progression that began a couple of years ago when Forbes.com became one of the first news publishers to begin integrating its advertisers' stories directly in its text-based news story feeds. That program was dubbed AdVoice, which has also been renamed BrandVoice with the launch of the new native video ad formats.
  She said the native formats have been a significant contributor to Forbes.com’s ad revenue growth, which is up 27% through the first three quarters of 2012.

Emmanuel Perrin, President and CEO of Cartier North America, explained that he felt that the "native ad" formats were more appropriate and authentic for today's younger news audiences.

"Especially with the new generation, if it’s in advertising, it’s suspicious," he (added).

  While markets and consumers are evolving in ways that may support a greater level of integration between advertising and media content, I'm sad to see this latest extension into news - particularly hard news. And the consequences of blurring and disappearing "red lines" of separation are real and damaging journalism and the news' own brand. As Gallup and Pew survey results show, there's been a near continuous decline in the public's faith in, and trust of news media and coverage. Increasing the influence of advertisers and other outside parties in the selection and production of news coverage isn't going to help.

Source -   The Natives Are Restless: News Publishers Move Line Distinguishing Edit, Ad Content,  OnlineMediaDaily

Planned Obsolescene at Apple?

There's a serious marketing decision when implementing innovations - do you try to maintain backwards compatibility with earlier versions, or do focus on maximizing the new, at the cost of limiting compatibility.  There are advantages in just moving forward - it can open up new opportunities, and allow for maximizing the impact of the innovation, and usually helps to keep the direct costs of innovation low.  On the other hand, abandoning backwards compatibility means that all of the ancillary devices or products designed for the earlier systems are no longer usable with the new.  This can impose additional costs for innovation, as shifting to the new version also means that you need to replace some or all of the related products that are no longer compatible with the new version.  And that can also backfire somewhat on the innovator, as making adoption more costly will slow adoption. 
  More problematic is when the innovator purposely makes the new version of the technology incompatible with existing standards, or with their prior standards.  Then you have something called planned obsolesence.
  Apple has a long history of choosing to push their own standards rather than adopting more general industry standards.  As an equipment manufacturer, they've designed hardware that requires Apple operating systems to operate, and major upgrades in their operating systems are often incompatible with earlier versions of software (and in some cases hardware).  Sometimes, when Apple is an early and dominant innovator in the field, they can establish their standard as an industry standard - for example, the iPod/iPhone/iPad docking connector.  That's become a default component of associated hardware and accessories like speaker systems.  One of the aspects of Apple's success in that market is that myriad Apple mobile devices (and latter upgrades) all used the same connector, making the purchase of related equipment or upgraded devices relatively simple - consumers knew that they would also work with prior accessories.
  However, several recent announcements by Apple suggest that the company is planning for some major obsolesence.
  First came the announcement that Apple was closing its MobileMe webhosting service, in favor of its new iCloud service.  One of the main values of MobileMe was its ability to backup and synchronize contact and calendar files across multiple user devices.  Those same features will work in iCloud - but only if you have the newer Apple OS, and the new OS won't work on many older devices, so you might also have to buy new hardware if you want to continue keeping your contacts list and calendar in the iCloud.
  Then came the news that the newest iPhone5 (to be introduced later this year) will abandon the old 30-pin connector and replace it with a new 19-pin version.  For Apple, the stated concern is that as they seek to make smaller and sleeker devices, the old connector just takes up too much space.  Anyway, the consequence is that the iPhone5 won't be able to directly dock with any current accessory or power source that uses the 30-pin dock, and it's quite likely that the same change in docking connectors will likely occur with subsequent major upgrades in other mobile devices.  And that means that newer accessories are likely to start including the new docking connector as well, and most will replace the older with the new rather than try to engineer multiple docking options - meaning that newer accessories won't work with older devices.  Making things worse, or at least more expensive, are the reports that the new docking connector will include a proprietary chip that will prevent its use with unlicensed accessories.
  Some analysts wonder if this is the time to make such a move - raising the costs of switching to the newer devices just as Android OS based smartphones are becoming increasingly competitive (some arguably better and cheaper than the current iPhone).  If you're going to have to replace all accessories anyway, consumers might chose to shift to an Android-based device rather than stick with Apple.  As one analyst concluded:

You feel that, Apple? Those are the winds of change. It may be temporarily profitable for you to force your customers into spending on upgrades, but a little thing that we call customer lifetime value means that it's stupid to annoy your customers in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Sources -  iPhone5: Every iPhone Accessory You Own Just Became Obsolete,  Forbes
Apple's Planned Obsolescence: Customer Revolt Brews,  InformationWeek
 

Test Driving the Red Epic & Ultra-HD

Post contributed by Stuart Hohl -

Ultra High Definition Video is an emerging format of video that takes pixels to a much larger level than traditional digital HD. Formats such as 4K, 5K and 8K (still in development) may have up to 16 times the number of pixels as traditional 1080p. It is a format that is slowly starting to catch on with only a few companies stepping up the creation of cameras that can shoot at those resolutions.
  One of these companies is Red Cinema Digital Camera Company (colloquially known as Red). Red has had several Cameras out that can shoot in these formats but with different levels of performance. The Red Scarlet-X can only get 12 frames per second at 5k, but the older Red-Epic and Red-One can reach higher fps at 5K resolution. These cameras were recently used for the upcoming blockbuster “The Hobbit,” but the University of Tennessee used a Red Epic to shoot their Vols' Baseball and Softball TV spots.
  One issue with these cameras is the sheer amount of data that these cameras can produce, particularly at the Ultra HD levels. For the 30 second Baseball spot Athletics Broadcasting shot over 500 GB of Footage. A shoot can get very expensive very quickly when shooting in Ultra High Definition because of the money you have to put into storage systems. One of the things the industry will have to do is to bring data storage up to speed with data creation.
   UT Athletics Broadcasting was shooting with 64 GB cards and could get only about 30 minutes of footage onto each one. That means that you need multiple expensive cards and a storage system to get the footage off of them so you can reuse them. One quick fix for some productions has been to write it directly to hard drives, but that can be extremely cumbersome for some shoots and very expensive. That’s just a stopgap until new storage methods are developed to make shooting at such a high resolution and/or frame rate convenient.
   Why shoot UHD, if it requires so much storage space? It is for the quality of the image. You can look at a camera like the Canon 7d, which has been a favorite of many young and freelance filmmakers. The Canon 7d shoots with a highly compressed 4:2:0 h264 codec, 1080p, with approximately 8 stops of dynamic range. A camera like a Red can shoot with various degrees of compression (or in some cases uncompressed), 5k resolution, with 13+ stops of dynamic range. You get more to work with and you have the raw, uncompressed footage to work with. However, there is a massive difference in price. For most filmmakers (especially amateurs) the Canon 7d is more than enough to get the picture they need (for around $3,000 for the camera and appropriate lenses). However for production companies and the like a Red camera can cost $25,000 and lenses can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Obviously, it’s not for everyone.
  Film has been the traditional  quality standard of Hollywood for some time now. As we move into a digital age, film is finally being challenged by new digital systems that can match the quality and versatility of film that photographers and filmmakers have enjoyed for 100 years. It will be interesting to see if storage systems can advance an keep up to make it cost effective for even smaller productions. Director Peter Jackson talks about his experience with Red UHD cameras and 3-D in this clip. At 4:30 in the video there is a quick and simple explanation of 1080p versus 4k and 5k. Definitely check that out and even watch the entire video because it’s very interesting.

Sources - www.reduser.net
www.red.com
www.canon.com

BJB - edited for style. 

Setting the Next-Gen Standards for TV

Thirteen broadcast engineering and standards bodies from around the world gathered at the National Association of Broadcasters convention last week to sign an agreement that would set up an initiative to develop a new global standard for broadcast television.

  Since the birth of television, countries have establ9shed a variety of technical systems, or standards, for their local terrestrial, wired, and satellite TV broadcasting.  And most of these are not compatible with one another.  Variances in power systems (50 Hz vs 60 Hz), the desire to set a more technically advanced system accounted for some of the variation, and political considerations fought against setting a single standard.  Moreover, the analog standards were significantly incompatible with one another, making translation of signals difficult and expensive.  With the transition to digital, there was once again consideration of developing a single standard, but in the digital universe, translating signals across standards is fairly easy, so the initial push for a single standard once again was waylaid by the myriad needs of different groups.  (The U.S. ATSC "standard" actually embraces a wide range of screen format/resolution/frame rate mixes).
Today, its easier (and cheaper) to build a digital receiver chip that can receive any of the world's broadcast standards, decode the digital signal, and translate the signal to any receiver output, than it is to develop separate production lines for the different standards.
  That's the difficulty facing the "Future of Broadcast Television Initiative," as it seeks to guide the world's various standards-setting organizations as they consider what will be the next generation of digital television.

“Broadcasting has to go from linear to nonlinear solutions for tomorrow,” said Lieven Vermaele, director of European Broadcasting Union’s Technology and Development Department, at the panel session. Mark Richer, the president of ATSC, said: “The first step is for broadcasters to make sure we all believe in the same goal and have the same shared vision moving forward. If we do not have that, we can’t expect other industries to make that happen. … If you want everyone to sing from the same hymn sheet, you have to write the notes first and the lyrics.”

 There are areas where standards would clearly help, but establishing a global standard is increasingly unnecessary, as well as increasingly problematic as more and more devices with different power needs, screen sizes and orientations, and resolutions, are used to watch broadcast television.  Good luck, FoBTV folks - it's going to be a rocky and difficult path to a future where the next big shift may not come from traditional broadcasters, organizations, or equipment manufacturers.

Source - Global Next-Gen TV Group Gets to Work,  TV Newscheck

NRSC Updates Digital Radio Standards

The standards group approved by the FCC to set standards for the In-Band On-Channel (IBOC) digital radio system has formally adopted an updated version of the digital radio standards used by HD-radio.  The updated version, NRSC-5-C, includes 70+ modifications and improvements they hope will improve the HD-Radio experience and improve signal coverage.  The FCC, which pretty much farmed out the initial digital radio standards process to the NRSC, is expected to rubber stamp the new standard within a couple of weeks.

Source:  NRSC Updates Digital IBOC Radio Standards,  All-Access

Future standards for broadcast TV?

The industry group responsible for digital TV broadcast standards, ATSC (Advanced Television Standards Committee) is acting on a recent report suggesting continuing standards development in two areas - 3D TV, and a potential improved digital standard ATCS 3.0.
The ATSC 3D TV group will be charged with developing specifications for terrestrial digital television stations to carry 3D TV broadcasts.  The stated goal is to come up with a system that is backwards-compatible 3D capability in existing ATSC fixed and mobile services, in both realtime and asynchronous services. A South Korean firm demonstrated a compatible high-definition 3D signal over a single ATSC channel, using both the main fixed channel and mobile services as the second channel).  The group is anticipating that they will have a standard for testing within the year.
The ATSC 3.0 group will be charged with considering a wide range of new and emerging technologies that might be used to develop a potential successor to today's ATSC digital TV system.  The recent report concluded that there was sufficiently advanced technology currently available, or under development, to consider developing a new set of standards to replace the existing ATSC set of multiple standards.  Among the considered advances were improvements in coding and metadata improvements, a new variant on interactive TV called hybrid-TV (combining over-the-air and online), and asynchronous content delivery.  Any ATSC 3.0 set of standards is expected to not be backwards-compatible - meaning that there will likely be challenges to its adoption by the FCC.

Source:  ATSC Opens Two New Standards Initiatives,  TV Tech Check