Category: Mediji

Aftermath of the Hot Seat

Monday’s edition of Vroči stol (Hot Seat) apparently created quite a stir this side of the Alps. Vladimir Vodušek is generally thought to have achieved a new low in Slovene journalism and people are openly asking if the whole thing can go any lower. The answer of course is “yes“. The ultimate low will be reached when sleazebags like Vodušek will start feeling the tide turning and will turn rabid on their yesterday’s masters.


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An artist’s interpretation of Vlado Vodušek :mrgreen:


I might be overreaching here, but I don’t think there is a journalist worthy of his/her vocation in Slovenia today who doesn’t think that Vodušek went above and beyond the call of duty to portray Prime Minister Janez Janša in the best possible light. The programme also showed in technicolor just how out of touch this government is with the 21st century. While appearnig on television and saying that things are such-and-such might have worked in late 70s, it sure does not work today. People are distrusting both politicians and media (bad political journalism includinng but not limited to Vodušek has played a part in creating this sentinment for the past decade and a half) and if the PM wants to get his story straight he better do it somewhere else than in a live TV studio, no matter how submissive the interviewer may be.

Vodušek didn’t make any friends with Monday’s show either. Even worse, as he is being ridiculed by rank-and-file journalists, Delo daily (whose editor-in-chief Vodušek grilled on the show a couple of weeks earlier) was more than happy to publish entire transcript of the show on its website, exposing Vodušek’s servitude in writing as well.

And just to top everything there was the ludicrous call-in poll which showed 83% support for Janez Janša over Borut Pahor – the usual comment out there was that it reminded the people of the times in Serbia when Slobodan Milosevic won the elections with 106% of the vote.

As I said – a new low was reached, but something tells me we didn’t hit rock bottom just yet.

Eating With the Presidents

The Prez, Prince of Darkness and C3PO held a reception for journalists and editors yesterday. They more or less do it every year and the turnout is huge – you know, free eats and drinks… But there was an eerie moment when apparently all three of them knew who I was and where do I come from… 😕

There was the usual plethora of high profile cocksuckers as well as us, mortal journalists. Speeches are a must – this year, they were quite telling. And people still wonder why most journalists stopped giving breaks to this government long ago…



Video quality is problematic at best – it was shot from a distance with a mobile phone


The food was good, though 🙂

Free Media!

OK, so the title is intentionally dubious and the reason for it is the recent politically induced turmoil that has engulfed the most influential Slovene media. On the whole it can be said that this is indicative of the looming showdown which is widely expected to leave many dead and wounded (figuratively speaking) and to be down right dirty (literally speaking).


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As noted in yesterday’s post, the battle of the headlines has already begun. This includes pressure on Slovene media which has never been totally free and independent. One rather curious statement was uttered by Jože Školč MP, a political veteran of the Liberal Democrats (among other posts he held the office of chairman of the Socialist Youth while the organisation was a driving force behind democratic changes, president of the parliament and minister of culture). Mr. Školč, while debating the state of Slovene media in the parliamentary committee said that “if the left [while in power] did things wrong, this is no excuse for the right to do the same“.

Which is of course correct. What is interesting, though, is that the former ruling option (broadly speaking, the political left) is at least on the surface apparently coming to terms with its deeds while in power. I say finally, because deeds of this government made the pressures exerted by previous governments look like a picnic. And this is the main problem. Instead of media becoming increasinlgy independent (I won’t utter the word untouchable, but feel free to think it), they are becoming more and more criticised for not reporting on this-or-that.

One of the more symptomatic phrases in yesterdays session of the parliamentary committee for culture (which covers media as well) was uttered by one of the coalition MPs who said that the “opposition has no proof of media control by the coalition“. Furthermore, the minister of culture, Vasko Simoniti, Ph. D. (otherwise a respected intelectual) challenged the opposition to name at least ten cases of government controlling the media (“You said ‘cases’! Plural! That’s not one or two! Plural! I want at least ten!”), etc, etc.


Obviously, if the government (and the opposition as well) would take their heads out of their asses and have a look around they would find that:

a) The Prime Minister demands a vote of confidence but picks apart a particular newspaper and journalists as a whole instead

b) A parliamentary body debates the state of media in the country

c) Politicos who look, walk and talk like they flunked the third grade of elementary school take it upon themselves to count charatcers or seconds devoted to a certain subject and not another, which favours the government (say inflation vs. GDP growth).

d) Pro-government journalists have a one-on-one with the PM (no counter-arguments allowed) or they invite journalists who criticise the government to their talk shows and they try do discredit them (contarty to the unwritten code that a journalist will never attack another journalist as long as they both do their job professionally)


After three years the media and journalists finally took a stand against continous rape by the government (with a not-so-little help of opportunist capitalists who smell a change in power), which is of course suddenly suffering from a bad case of amnesia and basically claims that time started with Danilo Slivnik and Peter Jančič being removed from Delo daily. Nothing is being said about Jančič and Slivnik (the former being a stooge for the latter, both doubling as governmental hench-men) running out half of journalists of Sobotna Priloga (Delo’s most read Saturday supplement), of recalling journalists on foreing posts home just because they didn’t report in line with government’s foreign policy (I didn’t even know we have one!), of the foreign minister boasting that if there is something not printed in the papers, he’ll have it printed (or else…), of articles being rewritten by Jančič to the extent of being unrecognisable to their original authors, etc, etc…


As I said, all of the above makes the pressures exerted by the political left (while it was in power) look like a picnic. Although their achievements are not to be diminished, either. I will refrain from ranting about how FM frequency were distributed and then re-accumulated by friends-of-friends, with the watchdog being as toothless and impotent as a 90-year-old siphylitic patient with Alhzeimer’s – I am, afterall, highly biased on that matter (which don’t mean I’m wrong, but still ;)). Instead, we can remember all the brouhaha about the government of Janez Drnovšek buying a jet plane and the not being entirely truthful (i.e.: they lied) about the price.

But what I’m afraid of is that the soul-searching the left is doing at the moment is only temporary, kind of like “I-said-I’m-sorry” attitude and that nothinh will change, even in the unlikely event of change in the political balance.


So I popose a very simple excercise, which will show whether the left is serious about their newly found love for media freedom. In case they win the election they should:


a) Change the law on RTV Slovenia, radically lowering the number of politically appointed members of both boards (to a max of, say, 25%).

b) State funds must immediately sell any and all remaining shares in all media companies they may still own. And they should sell it exclusively to journalists employed by those media companies.

c) The Law on media should be ammended, re-introducing the clause forbidding media contentration.

d) Forbid operators of future digital radio and television networks from becoming content providers as well.


A rather simple test. Failing to tackle any of these points will allow the present state of politics directly or indirectly pressuring the media to perpetuate indefinitely.

Put A Price On Your Blog

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In God we trust… All others, pay cash


What was meant to be a slight rant against so-called “blogger sellout” has gained momentum as of yesterday – in both cases had has provided the fodder 😀


Perhaps one should not be surprised that issues of bloggers’ copyrights and marketing have begun to surface. Until now bloggers have been mostly on the other side of the stick – accused of infringing copyright rather than having to defend original content. I guess part of it has to do with the fact that most bloggers swear by Creative Commons – a somewhat elusive and (at least in Slovenia) legally non-existent content.

The other part of course has to do with the fact that blogs bring little or no money.


MARKETING:

Let’s deal with the latter issue first – it first surfaced with several bloggers being invited do test-drive the new Renault Twingo and then exploded with full force when Kolosej (a cinema operator) offered free tickets to see Transofrmers – The Movie (insert transforming sound fx here) to bloggers who would have linked to Kolosej’s Transformers page.

The “problem” as I see it is of course the trade-off or lack thereof. Namely: What can a blogger and blog offer? Two things, basically. Content and links. The two are heavily interconnected, as content without links is non-existant and (in terms of this post) worthless, the links, however, cannot be effective without good content.

Now, let’s look at it from the other side: What does Kolosej have to offer. Again, basically two things: Movies and tickets to see them. The trick of course is, that tickets to blockbusters are usually not freely availble because why give them away, when you can sell them at € 4.95 each? So, which tickets do they usually give away en masse? Why, those which they wouldn’t be able to sell in the first place, of course!

So Kolosej was giving away worthless tickets and in return it got the most valuable thing a blogger can provide. I’d call that a ripoff, not a tradeoff.

But let us for a moment presume that bloggers who participated actually wanted to see the movie. Had they not taken up Kolosej’s offer, they’d have to pay for the tickets, naturally. But since they exchanged a link for two tickets, they put a price tag on a link. Since last week the price of a link is 9.9 euros. At least with bloggers who have participated. The problem is that now a precedence has been set. Next time an offer will be made to the blogging community, the price will already have been known.

Thirdly (for those keeping count), there is in my view also a question of ethics. A twofold question, actually.

One: linking as such. If memory serves, that’s called Googlebombing and is not allowed under Google guidelines. BMW even got banned from Google for a while for doing it. Some of us did it to help Michael M.’s solve his problems with a hosting provider, but that was done for a different reason.

Two: Linking without content. That’s even worse than just Googlebombing. Why? Because that’s sort of hidden advertisment. It’s like blogging about vodka and using Absolut font (or something in that manner). If a blogger got freebies on account of his blogging then I think it would be fair and square to publish his judgment of the freebie (a movie in this case). Furthermore, he should make every effort to it as objectively as possible (naturally, a movie review is almost entirely subjective, but still) – meaning that he should not be biased in favour of the movie or the company just because he got the freebie.

I’m not saying that individual bloggers who took the offer are or were in any way biased in favour of the movie or Kolosej, I’m just saying that every effort should be made to show that they are or were not. Otherwise, there can indeed be an impression of a sellout.

And lastly: I’ve no problem with making money out of blogging. I myself sport some google ads on this blog. But whether you like it or not, blogs are media. They are public, even though they more often than not feature personal accounts of events, people, etc.. And in media full disclosure must be made whenever there is even a hint of a conflict of interest. This way the integrity of the author and the media is preserved.


COPYRIGHT

Marketing is of course heavily connected to content. And had raises an extremely valid point when he says that blog-aggregators which display ads or otherwise market their webspace basically make money (if they make money, that is) by re-using contents of numerous individual blogs. To put is in Technicolor: aggregators who will display interesting and/or controvesial blogs and their entries (even just clips) will get more visitors and – by extention – more advertising money. Which is all fine and dandy – except for the fact that aggregators use other people’s work to make money. Which basically does violate bloggers’ copyright.

Of course, if you look at it from the other side, one could very well argue that blogs get more visitors by being featured in blog aggregators. Which is true to a certain point. However, as we all know, aggregators’ admins usually ask bloggers to publish links to
aggregators, which bloggers for the most part do. Call it a barter-deal. A link-exchange. No money involved. Besides. Aggregators need blogs to work – whereas blogs can technically exist without aggregators.

It is all very much like the current debate between Slovene media and this country’s clipping companies. The latter namely process almost all content produced by Slovene media on a daily basis, redistribute this content to their users – and charge them. At least one company (the largest among them) has started to recognise that this does contitute a possible infringement of copyright – precisely because media content is processed and distributed under a different brandname. So rather than wait for an expensive law suit, this company is (half-heartedly) trying to come to an agreement with most of Slovene media (the fact that this company is a part of the largest Slovene PR and marketing group does improve its negotiating positions a bit ;))

So the questions at hand are: what to do when (if) blog aggregators which also use blog’s content (and not just URLs) start making serious euros? Should blog owners be compensated? And if, what approach should be used? Would this concept hurt blog aggregators too much? What (for example) happens to Technorati if they have to compensate each and every blogger? What if aggregators start charging “membership”?

To put it in a nutshell: when money starts flowing around, do we all make a run for it, carving up the pie until there are only crumbs left or do we leave things as they are, each minding our own business?


So, that’s my two eurocents…. Personally, I think that eventually some sort of mechanism will have to be developed – perhaps a combination of the “clipping agreement” and Google’s AdSense. However, this mechanism should unite, rather then divide bloggers and aggregators – meaning that it should promote both good content and unbiased editoral process by agreggators’ admins. I’m not saying that they are biased now, just that noone really cares if they are or not – because there is no money involved. As for the marketing part… The moment readers will feel that a certain blog is favouring marketing against content, its ratings will drop and with it advertising revenue.