Now I'm fixing the radio

Yesterday afternoon I was listening to CBC Ottawa's All in a Day when I heard the host reading a listener letter chiding the host for warning cyclists about a location where police were actively handing out tickets.  After reading the note the host agreed that he wouldn't issue such warnings in the future.

I was immediately reminded of a story tweeted about by On the Media.  In the story it was reported that a man in Florida had been charged after he had been flashing his car lights to warn drivers about an upcoming speed trap.  The judge considered headlight flashing a form of protected free speech and the ticket was overturned.  Despite the fact that the case related to free speech protections that are specific to the US, I thought one the concepts that the judge mentioned was particularly relevant to the issue of warning cyclists.

At an earlier hearing Circuit Judge Alan Dickey said, "If the goal of the traffic law is promote safety and not to raise revenue, then why wouldn't we want everyone who sees a law enforcement officer with a radar gun in his hand, blinking his lights to slow down all those other cars?" reported The Crime Report.

My thinking is that the judge has it right.  Whether one is flashing lights or issuing a warning over the radio the end result is, hopefully, less of the prohibited/dangerous activity.  And isn't reducing the number of incidences of the action in question usually the justification for such check-points?  And, as far as society is concerned, isn't reducing these incidences what we really want as an outcome not the issuance of more tickets?  Are we necessarily served by the police issuing more tickets (which implicitly means that instead of being prevented the behaviour was ongoing until after it had been observed)?

Anyway, I quickly dashed off an email to All in a Day expressing my disagreement with the listener's letter, citing the aforementioned case.  Just a few minutes ago I received an email from someone from the show looking for more information about he case because they are interested in doing a follow-up piece on the topic today.  So if all goes well the radio will be one step closer to fixed by the end of the day.

Finally, some coverage of an issue close to my heart

For some time I have been concerned about the contemporary mainstream media practice of including content that journalists know to be untrue in their stories.  The situation frequently arises when a public figure says untrue and is then quoted, without a qualifying statement, by the media outlet.  To feign ignorance or simply fail to deal with such untruths, at least to me, seems to undermine the utility of the whole venture of journalism.

For quite a while I have had the sense that this is an issue that has been completely sidestepped by the mainstream medeia.  They just aren't interested in dealing with the issue and challenges that would be sure to crop up if such an approach were to be adopted.

My opinions on the issue aside, it seems that today an editor at the New York Times finally wondered if their readers were interested in having reporters actually try to alert readers of known falsehoods or claims of questionable validity.

Perhaps not surprisingly, at least based on an assessment of the article's highest rated comments, readers do seem to be interested in having their news sources call out politicians when they tell lies.  Most people seem to think that a news source isn't much of a news source if it doesn't accomplish this basic task.

Anyway, though the story was only posted this morning more than 250 comments have been logged and commenting further commenting has now been halted.

I suspect that they have attracted more of a response to this piece than they expected.

Anyway, I am curious to see how the paper responds to this uproar (as the editor's piece leaves the impression that they knowingly include false statements that they make no effort to correct in their paper on a regular basis).  Given the immediate web uproar surely at least a follow-up comment will be made?

On the Media lead me to this response to the original NYT piece.

From This American Life to This is That

For a while I have been interested in creating a graphic representation of development of my podcast listening habits.  In particular, I was interested in looking at the podcasts that I have started listening to either directly because of This American Life or because of podcasts that I started listening to because of other podcasts I had started listening to because of This American Life.

Anyway, last night I got around to sketching out a rough diagram (which I then converted into the image below today). 

I'm sure this image will be as helpful to you as it will be to me.

Note: The Sound of Young America has received credit for referring some podcasts that I actually started listening to because of the Maximumfun.org Podthoughts column.  Also, I know that The Sound of Young America is now called Bullseye, but it was the original incarnation of the show that lead me to these other podcasts, not the one episode of Bullseye that currently exists.

A Few Quick Notes 548

-The past two days have been overcast and intermittently rainy. I guess this isn't too surprising an occurrence after a period of particularly dry weather. The other big change is that these days have also been much cooler than the days preceding them. I think it isn't even 20 degrees outside right now, which is a fair bit cooler than I would normally expect for this time of day.

-Our cherry tomato plants might finally be starting to set fruit, though it is a little hard to tell as the prospective fruit are still quite small. Hopefully it is the case that we have a few pre-cherry tomatoes.

Yesterday Jeannette and I finally got around to pruning them. It seems that we likely should have pruned the plants differently and now allowed them to grow as tall as they were allowed to grow. They really are out of control.

-My Google Reader account seems to be non-functional at the moment. And because I can't access it there is nothing I want to do more than check my Google Reader feeds. And because it isn't working I am checking for status changes every 30 seconds. This service would be causing me to waste much less time if it was functional right now.

-Yesterday I listened to an old episode of On The Media and heard an interview about the site 0 Views, a site dedicated to finding and then re-posting YouTube videos with 0 views. During the interview the site's manager noted that much of the content was really quite bad. Now that I have had a chance to check the site's content out I am in a position to agree with this individual, though is a little disappointing as I do find the idea of the site kind of entertaining.

-I guess I should stop wasting my time and get back to work (at least my time here hasn't been spent checking my non-functional Google Reader feeds).

Framing and Media Coverage

How appropriate that just hours after I post about the nature of media and political framing of this election that I happen to hear a great interview about research into the potential impact of such frames and metaphors (what is a frame if not a metaphor?).



[Embedded audio]

I love that while the CBC is allowing their resources to be used as a tool of the parties with little effort to take control of the coverage they are conducting hard hitting investigations into the safety of bean sprouts - the dangers of which have been known for years (and can be found with a simple Google search)

Before I go, I should mention that I have just recently started listening to On the Media (the source of interview mentioned above) and am quickly starting to think of myself as a fan. If you are interested in American media and have a chance you might consider checking it out as a radio show or a podcast or through their website.