Graphic by Annie Aguiar of the Poynter Institute. Click on image to go to the source at Poynter.org.
Back in 2012, American consumers were grossed out by stories that found ground beef sold in plastic chubs was often supplemented with the meat byproduct euphemistically known as “finely chopped beef.” This collection of “trimmings” is sprayed with ammonia gas to kill off the bacteria in meat and fat. Accompanied by unappealing photos, this “finely chopped beef” was dubbed “pink slime” by critics, a label the meat industry fought largely unsuccessfully against.
Journalist Ryan Zickgraf first applied the term“pink slime” to journalism back in 2012, when he was reporting on how content farms were using low-paid writers located in the Philippines to rewrite (i.e., plagiarize) stories published on other sites. Annie Aguiar, writing for Poynter, a journalism think tank, says that “pink slime” has more recently been used to describe automated websites that publish poor-quality news stories and political propaganda while pretending to be high-quality local news sites. They often thrive in areas that are news deserts with few other legitimate news outlets. Former Washington Post media analyst Margaret Sullivan talks about how this variant of fake news has become popular:
Increasingly, “articles” that look like news may be something entirely different—false or misleading information grounded not in evidence but in partisan politics, produced not by reporters for a local newspaper but by inexperienced writers who are paid, in essence, to spread propaganda.
As an example, Sullivan pointed to a story published on the West Cook News website, serving the suburban Chicago area, that claimed without evidence that a local school district would “require teachers next school year to adjust their classroom grading scales to account for the skin color or ethnicity of its students.” This story, which had no basis in fact, then got picked up by bloggers and social media influencers and spread across the country with predictable levels of outrage. The school district completely denied the story. While some of the people who shared the false story issued corrections or took down their posts, the story still spread.
Brian Timpone, one of the publishers for Metric Media, operated an online portal in 2023 that allowed political operatives to request stories and submit opinion pieces to be published on his sites designed to look like legitimate news pages in “communities where there is ‘little or no local news.’”
Until recently, pink slime sites have been powered by stories created by low-paid writers working in so-called content farms. But now generative artificial intelligence (AI) programs such as ChatGPT are being used to completely automate the process, creating hundreds of stories a day for these sites.
9/11/24 Editor’s note: Yesterday morning I showed the “Welcome to the Rock” clip from the 9/11 themed musical Come From Away as my pre-class video in JMC 100 – Global Media Literacy. I then tried to tell my class the following story about my experiences on Sept. 11, 2001, but I got about one sentence in before I choked up too much to go on. Even 23 years later, the feelings from that awful day are still really raw.
The following stories and videos are drawn from a series of annual posts I have made over the years to commemorate 9/11.
What are your 9/11 memories? Feel free to add them to the comments below.
It was 23 years ago this morning that I was teaching my freshman media literacy course at West Virginia University. I had a class with close to 350 students in it. C-SPAN’s Washington Journal morning show was playing on the big screen as students gathered. At 8:30 a.m. I shut off C-SPAN and started teaching. When I got back to my office an hour-and-a-half later, news that our world was changing was in the process of breaking.
No one knew what was happening. An airliner had hit one of the World Trade Center towers, and the skyscraper was burning. Then a second plane hit, and everyone then knew that this couldn’t have been an accident.
9/11 has always been highly personal to me.
One of my (and my Dear Wife’s) student’s father was supposed to be working in the section of the Pentagon that was hit by one of the planes. But since that area was under renovation, his dad ended up safe.
Another one of my students had a mother who was a flight attendant who flew out of the same airport the Twin Tower planes had departed from. She was desperate for news. Fortunately, her mother was not on one of the attack planes.
One of my friends was the public radio correspondent for the area, and he ended up providing much of NPR’s coverage of the United 93 crash in Shanksville, PA.
And one of my colleagues, who taught advertising, lost an old friend in the Twin Towers collapse.
As someone who lived in West Virginia at the time, less than 100 miles from the United 93 crash site, the Sept. 11th attacks will always be personal. This was not a remote event; it was a local story directly affecting people I knew. And I will never forget the worries for my students, my neighbors, and my colleagues.
One of the last plays I saw before live theater shut down for the pandemic in March of 2020 was the brilliant and heartbreaking musical Come From Away that tells the story of the town of Gander, Newfoundland, where many of the planes crossing the Atlantic were diverted when United States airspace was shut down on 9/11. I still have to be careful when I listen to the soundtrack from the show. I don’t think I’ve ever made it through the show without crying. Here are two of my favorite songs from the show in a radio concert performance.
“Welcome to the Rock,” that tells how everything changed for Gander in just a moment.
“Me and the Sky” is for me the heart of the show where pilot Beverly tells her story of becoming American Airlines first female captain and her horror of airliners being used as weapons.
A performance by many of the original members of the Broadway cast is now airing on Apple TV+. Watching Come From Away is one of the best ways to honor the memory of 9/11.
My next memory is a look at cameos the Twin Towers made in numerous Hollywood films. Those two giant buildings defined the New York skyline from the 1970s until 9/11:
Finally, Paul Simon singing his achingly beautiful American Tune is a good way to remember our beautiful country.
This last memory has nothing to do with the media. It’s a brief story about a ride I took on my motorcycle to the United 93 Memorial on a rainy June day back in 2004. It was written shortly after I had recovered from a fairly serious illness, and I was happy just to be back on the road. I’ve taken to posting every year on 9/11.
Took a short ride last Saturday. The distance wasn’t much, under 200 miles, but I went through two centuries of time, ideas, and food. Which felt really good after having been ill for the last month-and-a-half.
Headed out of Morgantown about 7:30 a.m. on I68. Stopped at Penn Alps for breakfast. Nice thing about being on insulin is that I can include a few more carbs in my diet these days. Pancakes, yum! (Penn Alps, if you don’t know, runs a great Pennsylvania Dutch breakfast buffet on weekends that is well worth riding to. Just outside of Grantsville, MD.)
Then off on the real purpose of the trip. Up US 219 toward the Flight 93 Sept. 11 memorial. The ride up north on 219 is beautiful; I’ve ridden it before. I always like when you come around the bend and see the turbines for the wind farm. Some people see them as an eye sore; for me they’re a potential energy solution and a dramatic sight. Chalk one up for industrial can be beautiful.
Continue on up to Berlin, PA, where I take off on PA 160 into Pennsylvania Dutch country. I start seeing hex signs painted on bright red barns, or even hung as a wooden sign. Not quite cool enough to put on my electric vest, but certainly not warm. Then it’s heading back west on a county/state road of indeterminate designation.
Now I’m into even more “old country” country. There’s a horse-and-buggy caution sign. Off to the left there’s a big farmstead with long dark-colored dresses hanging from the line, drying in the air. They may not stay dry, based on what the clouds look like.
The irony of this ride hits pretty hard. I’m on my way to a memorial of the violence and hatred of the first shot of the 21st century world war, and I’m traveling through country that is taking me further and further back into the pacifist world of the 19th century Amish and Mennonites.
A turn or two more, following the map from the National Parks web site, and I’m on a badly scared, narrow road that is no wider and not in as good of shape as the local rail trail. (Reminds me why I like my KLR!)
It’s only here that I see the first sign for the memorial. No one can accuse the locals of playing up the nearby memorial. Perhaps more flags and patriotic lawn ornaments than usual, but no strident statements. And then the memorial is off a half-mile ahead.
The crash site is to the south, surrounded by chain-link fencing. No one but families of the victims are allowed in that area. Off a small parking area is the temporary memorial, in place until the National Park Service can build the permanent site. There’s a 40-foot long chain-link wall where people have posted remembrences, plaques on the ground ranging from hand-painted signs on sandstone, to an elaborately etched sign on granite from a motorcycle group. The granite memorial is surrounded by motorcycle images.
The messages are mostly lonely or affirming. Statements of loss, statements of praise for the heroism of the passengers and crew. But not statements of hatred. It reminds me in many ways of the Storm King Mountain firefighter memorial. Not the formal one in Glenwood Springs, but the individual ones out on the mountain where more than a dozen wildland firefighters died several years ago.
It’s time to head home. When I go to join up with US 30, it’s starting to spit rain, so I pull out the rain gloves, button down the jacket, and prepare for heading home. It rains almost the whole way back on PA 281, but I stay mostly dry in my Darien. The only problem is the collar of my too-big jacket won’t close far enough, and water dribbles down inside. It reminds me that riding in the rain, if it isn’t coming down too hard, can be almost pleasant, isolated away inside a nylon and fiberglass cocoon.
I’m home before 1 p.m.. I’ve ridden less than 200 miles. But I’ve ridden through a couple of centuries of people’s thoughts, actions, and food. And I’m finally back on the bike.
President Lyndon Johnson was famous for his coarse language, with one of his most famous examples being “I do know the difference between chicken sh– and chicken salad.” He also knew that in the 1960s his profanity was never going to find its way into print.
President Joe Biden has been known throughout his political career for letting his enthusiasm get the best of him. At the signing ceremony for the Affordable Care Act, then Vice President Biden was heard telling President Barack Obama, “This is a big f—ing deal.” President Obama got some static for calling his opponent Mitt Romney a “bullsh—er” in Rolling Stone magazine. Neither made much of a splash.
It was really President Richard Nixon who forced the press into dealing with how to report profanity. Nixon recorded every conversation in his office, and when the Watergate hearings made those tapes public, many people were shocked to hear the torrent of bad language pouring out of his mouth. When transcripts of the tapes were published, they did not contain the troubling words; instead, they were always replaced with the now iconic phrase “expletive deleted.”
President George W. Bush was caught on tape at a dinner in Russia talking to British Prime Minister Tony Blair saying, “See, the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this s—, and it’s over.” There was little fuss over this quote in 2006 as it was not said in a particularly public setting, and it was seen as a fairly honest statement of the situation he was discussing in Lebanon. In this case, the Washington Post did not deem it necessary to quote the actual word.
During his term in office, President Donald Trump was known for frequently using profanity in public and private, but he generated the most news for it after making some highly offensive and obscene remarks about the country of Haiti, the continent of Africa, and presumably several countries in Central America, referring to them as “shithole countries.”
But as my Seven Media Secrets state:
Secret 4: Everything from the margin moves to the center.
So this morning the WaPo ran an article asking the question:
In the article, Maura Judkis reports on a wide range of examples:
From Vice President Kamala Harris:
Trying to get governors to rally for President Joe Biden early this summer before he dropped out, she told them: “This is about saving our f—ing democracy.”
“We have to know that sometimes people will open the door for you and leave it open. Sometimes they won’t. And then you need to kick that f—ing door down.”
From former President Donald Trump:
“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” Trump said.
Why are candidates developing such potty mouths these days? Judkis gives a host of reasons:
It can make candidates seem more relatable.
It can be cathartic.
It can be to break taboos.
She goes on to note that profanity can be used in multiple ways. Harris, for example, tends to use profanity as a tool for emphasis, while Trump tends to use it as an insult.
But it could also be because it coarse speech is becoming more acceptable following Trump’s first term. Toward the end, Judkis writes:
Criticism of Harris’s swearing has not been nearly as pointed as it was for [Hillary] Clinton — a sign that language and manners are evolving. (Whether that’s in a positive or negative direction is up for interpretation.) Or maybe we’re actually ready to focus on the issues, and not the utterances.
In other words, Everything from the margin moves to the center.
First day of school for Fall ’24 at UNK today! Here are some media questions worth asking… Maybe.
Where can I watch big events, like the Republican and Democratic political conventions, without interruption by commercials and commentators?
The national treasure that is C-SPAN of course. The public service network covers congress, government events, and events of public interest uninterrupted, all without government funds – paid for the cable and satellite TV industry. Really wish Hulu would be a sponsor and carry it.
When you do something awful online, how do you properly apologize?
Former MMA fighter Ronda Rousey shows us how it’s done. (Note, her apology did not contain the words, “If I offended anyone, I’m sorry for hurting their feelings…”)
What is the greatest song from the musical Hamilton, and why is it One Last Time, aka Washington’s farewell address?
Here are Christopher Jackson and Lin Manuel Miranda performing this brilliant song from the 2018 Kennedy Center Honors.
The job of being a journalist around the world can be a dangerous one; reporters literally risk their lives to report the news. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reports that in 2023, 99 journalists and media workers were killed worldwide, more than three-fourths of whom were killed covering the Israel–Gaza war. Outside of the war in Gaza, the deaths of journalists were down compared to the 69 deaths in 2022. CPJ also documented 320 journalists who had been imprisoned globally in 2023, with China, Myanmar, Belarus, Russia, and Vietnam leading the list for incarcerations.
The best known of these imprisoned journalists has Evan Gershkovich of the Wall Street Journal, who was detained and jailed on March 29, 2023, in Russia. Gershkovich was an accredited journalist working in Russia when he was arrested based on allegations of being a spy, something both he and the Wall Street Journal vehemently deny. As of July 19, 2024, Gershkovich had been sentenced to 16 years in a Russian penal colony. The Wall Street Journal reported this came after he was “wrongfully convicted in a hurried, secret trial that the U.S. Government has condemned as a sham.”
But on Aug. 1, 2024, he was released as part of an extensive multi-nation prisoner exchange that involved the Russians releasing more than a dozen prisoners in return for multiple Russians being held in the U.S. and Europe, including a convicted assassin. The Journal ran a lengthy article giving the full story on how Gershkovich’s release was secured in what has been described as the most elaborate prisoner swap since the end of the Cold War.
A counter on top of a WSJ site tracked the days, hours and minutes that Evan Gershkovich had spent in Russian custody.
It reached 491 days, one hour and 20 minutes — until it was replaced Thursday morning a headline: WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich is free. https://t.co/18KmkowKxq
Remembering the genius that was Robert Towne Legendary screenwriter/script doctor Robert Towne died Tuesday, July 2, at the age of 89. He was most famous for writing the original screenplay for the neo-noir Chinatown (1974) as a movie for Jack Nicholson to star in.. That movie also brought Towne his only Oscar. And to be fair, if he never had done anything else, writing Chinatown would have been enough. But he also wrote The Last Detail (1973), Shampoo (1975), The Firm (1993) and the first two Mission: Impossible films (1996 and 2000).
Those were the films he got screenplay credit for, but his uncredited script doctoring record was even more impressive, with contributions to The Godfather (1972) and Bonnie and Clyde (1967); as well as The Parallax View (1974), The Missouri Breaks (1976), Marathon Man (1976), Heaven Can Wait (1978), Reds (1981), Fatal Attraction (1987), Crimson Tide (1995), and Armageddon (1998).
But honestly, if you want to understand the brilliance of Towne, pull out a copy of Chinatown, pour a big slug of bourbon, turn down the lights, and lose yourself in the world of 1930s Los Angeles. With direction (and acting!) from Roman Polanski; peerless performances from Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, and John Huston; and one of Jerry Goldsmith’s best scores ever.You’ve got your homework. Go watch.
So the buzz over the last year has been that sequels, big budget movies, Disney and Pixar are all done for. Finished. Kaput! Just look at how everyone was crowing about the failure of Pixar’s Elemental. (Oh, you say it actually made $494 million globally after an admittedly slow start? Well, that’s inconvenient…)
But while there have been bombs this summer (Fall Guy, Furiosa), The Atlantic’s David Sims has some good analysis about what the emotional hit Inside Out 2 (see what I did there?) and other blockbusters mean for Hollywood’s future.
A Quiet Place: Day One shows how to find success in the current marketA Quiet Place: Day Oneopened to $98.5 million globally, exceeding all expectations. Given that it was made for a reported $67 million, the post-apocalyptic thriller seems headed to financial success. Hollywood – Pay attention. Get an interesting cast, have an original take on your revisiting of IP (intellectual property), don’t spend too much money, and keep the length of the movie under control. Absolutely loved this new take on the Quiet Place alien invasion franchise. Go see it in the theater. Now.
As I have been closing out work on the ninth edition of Mass Communication: Living in a Media World, it’s amazing to think back on how different things were back in the spring and summer 2020 when I was finishing up the eighth edition. We were still in the midst of the global pandemic lockdown and all the lasting effects the lockdown had on the media industry. Sports teams stopped playing, movies and television shows stopped being produced, theaters were closed, music was being recorded at home or through complex online links, and everyone was just staying home to consume their media.
Now, four years later, we are dealing with the aftermath of how the media industry and media consumers have emerged from that time.
Young, and not-so-young, folks are busy engaging with all-thingsTaylor Swift. It seems impossible to listen to music, watch television, go on social media, watch football… without encountering the megastar.
The movie industry is trying to figure out how to bring people back into theaters in great enough numbers to keep cinemas open. Coming in on top of all the holdups from the pandemic and people getting used to viewing at home, movies (and television) are dealing with the aftermath of lengthy writers’ and actors’ strikes over the last year.
American culture is also dealing with a lot of new or revived fears about the media. There have been unprecedented efforts to ban books about race and sexuality from libraries and public schools, and parents are worrying about how social media are affecting teens, especially young women.
There are intense concerns as to whether the local news industry can survive steep decline in community newspapers.
And yet, through all of this there are new voices being heard through streaming services and other long-tail media. Independent bookstores are finding fresh relevance as people turn to people, rather than algorithms, for advice on what to read, and millions of people are discovering the joy of the minimally produced NPR Tiny Desk concerts on YouTube.
The COVID-19 pandemic may not be over, but both the media industry and media consumers are trying to find their way to a new normal, and that’s what this ninth edition of Mass Communication: Living in a Media World is going to explore. Thirteen of the chapters have new opening vignettes, highlighting many of the changes that have happened in the media world. All of the chapters have been substantially updated with both new statistics and examples.
As is usually the case when I’m finishing up revisions, the blog has been neglected, but I’m planning on trying to talk here about a lot of the new material coming up in the ninth edition.
NOTE: Sorry for the recent lack of posts. I’ve been writing away on the ninth edition of Mass Communication, Living in a Media World that comes out in 2025. Expect to see posts based on some of that material as the summer progresses. In the mean time, here’s a brief look at the recent dust-up at the Washington Post.
The same cannot be said, apparently, for Washington Post CEO and publisher Will Lewis. According to multiple reports, he forced out Post executive editor Sally Buzbee for her work with the paper’s reporting on a phone hacking scandal at British newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Lewis was being mentioned in a British court case over the scandal as an executive who might have been involved with efforts to hide the evidence of the hacking at the newspapers.
NPR’s media reporter David Folkenflik also reported this week on how Lewis tried to seta up a quid pro quo to give Folkenflik an exclusive about reorganization at the Post’s newsroom in return for Folkenflik dropping work on a story about “widespread criminal practices at media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloids.”
People often tell me I see connections between movies that no one else does. For example I think that Rober Zemeckis’ Contact and Ridley Scott’s Prometheus tell thematically similar stories. And I have argued at length that Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones is essentially an extended tribute to the early films of Ridley Scott. For the record, I know I’m right on Episode 2, and I think I have a strong argument on Prometheus. This year after seeing the brilliant and disturbing Poor Things, I saw connections between it and last year’s Best Picture nominee Triangle of Sadness. Both deal with the conflicts between economic and social classes, and how women can acquire both social and sexual power. Both also have highly disturbing scenes in which the power dynamic changes suddenly. After watching last night’s Oscar telecast, I also realized that Poor Things Bella Baxter (played by Oscar winner Emma Stone) has a lot in common with Margo Robbie’s Barbie. Both characters become gradually aware of deep issues about their existence as they move from being little more than a toy into fully realized human beings. They also both have to come to terms with themselves as sexual beingsWhat do you think?
Margot Robbie from Barbie, Emma Stone from Poor Things, and Dolly de Leon from Triangle of Sadness.
Like my Dear Wife and college friend Rich Ness, I wonder why the Academy had an elaborate interpretive dance number going on during the In Memoriam segment. It was almost as if the producers didn’t trust the audience to care enough about cinematic history to stay tuned in. The presentation on TV actually made it hard to see who was being remembered. To me, this is one of the best segments of the show. Fill the screen with names and images.
https://youtu.be/sM_JK8h42BA?si=m28RwWCqLQwT1C5l
I’m a big fan of short films. And while I do not doubt for a minute that Wes Anderson made a brilliant series of short films for Netflix, I really didn’t like him taking home the Oscar. Not because his short lacked merit. I just think that shorts are place for filmmakers just entering into the industry to have a chance to make their mark. Of course an iconic director with access to a top notch crew and a strong budget can make a winning film.But that’s not really the question. I felt the same way when Kobe Bryant’s Dear Basketball, an animated short I adore, won. I mean how is an indie animator supposed to compete with a film directed and animated by Disney legend Glen Keane and scored by John Williams.
It’s ok to give an Oscar for Best Song to a tune that is fun and makes you want to sing along. This is no slight to Billy Ellish and her brother Foinneas O’Connell who have won two Best Song trophies for relatively downbeat songs in 2021 and 2023. But if you think about which song defined the summer hit Barbie, it was Ryan Gosling’s I’m Just Ken that had everyone talking, not Elish’s What Was I Made For. I thought Disney botched it back in 2021 when they nominated Dos Oruguitas from Encanto rather than We Don’t Talk About Bruno that both charted and was on every child’s lips.
