A lot of water has passed under the bridge since Kenya imposed a ban on genetically modified foods. Many theories have been advanced as to the effects of GMO foods some valid while others not. What was the main reason for Kenya to impose the ban? A research done by Seralini was indeed the impetus that provided the necessary reason behind the ban. Kenya as we speak is the only country to have a ban in the entire world. Russia also put out a ban after the paper that was published in the Food and Chemical Toxicology journal that GM crops routinely grown by farmers and eaten by consumers cause tumours in rats. It took Russia three weeks to lift the ban. Kenya insists on proper procedures around GMOs and bio safety regulations. This on the contrary has added wood to the fire with a superstitious populace adding sugar and spice into the debate. What are some of the myths being advocated? Historically, new products that were disruptive were stigmatized. Are we seeing the same with GMO foods? The debate in the early 19th century around coffee, the introduction of tractors on farms and more recently the debate around margarine and butter.
I looked into an e-book called “100 Ways to Please a Romanian Woman”.
The resulting work is here. (Or click on the image below).
Notes: What I was most interested was the second part of our assignment: the presentation of the information once verified/checked/contextualized, and if this can make a difference in retention or changing one’s mind. I was also interested in whether one can turn a seemingly trivial topic (that is also heavily stereotyped in this case) into an opportunity to transmit information or deliver context.
I decided to use Zeega because it plays seamlessly with animated GIFs, which are a staple of our current meme culture, and tried to structure the resulting piece as a listicle, a popular form of content delivery.
As a journalist, I couldn’t help thinking that if I was doing this for publication in a different format (a more “serious” one for lack of a better word), I would have done further checking and contextualizing of the sources (adding caveat to caveat), arguably to a point where it might have bogged down the experience. One potential solution is to provide jumping off points from each of these topics – alcohol consumption, natality figure, religious practices etc – into well-produced and complex platforms where the public can learn more from, while also interacting with the data. (I’m thinking of the work the New York Times has done on upward mobility.)
I chose an article from WebMD. It was published more than 10 years ago. It might not be fair but the ghosts of “Negative ions” are still wondering around.
Rob Ford was elected in 2010 as the Mayor of Toronto. Over the past year, he has been the center of controversy related to drug use and possible criminal activity. In the media frenzy of the past few months, Rob Ford’s staunchest defender has been his brother, Doug, who is currently a member of Toronto City Council.
Mayor Ford and Councillor Ford recently launched “Ford Nation”, a YouTube channel. Prior to the YouTube channel, the Fords previously hosted “The City with Mayor Rob Ford,” a popular radio call-in show on AM radio, and the short-lived “Ford Nation” television show on the Sun News Network.
I decided to fact-check one of the Fords’ YouTube videos focused on the views of Mayor Ford’s likely election opponents (“the yahoos”) in municipal elections later this year.
At first, I wanted to make a transcript of the video and score every sentence in the video for accuracy. Only then, in my view, can one overcome Matt Hemingway’s accusation of selection bias in media fact-checking. After some consideration, though, I wasn’t convinced that such an analysis would be interesting — it seems that fact-checking is most useful for controversial or attention-grabbing statements. With this in mind, I used my best judgment to select several assertions made by the Fords. (As a future exercise, it could be fun to measure attention or controversy automatically through signals like Twitter activity.)
The subject of the video is public transit in Toronto. The Fords support building new subway lines, while many of their opponents favor light-rail transit (LRTs). Along with differences in cost, construction time, and coverage, the subway-versus-light-rail debate often stirs emotions in Toronto — Mayor Ford’s base in the suburbs supports new subways, while progressives in the downtown core generally support more affordable options. A reasonable (albeit somewhat LRT-favoring) primer on Toronto subways versus LRTs can be found here.
As an additional exercise, I decided to apply a binary true/false criteria for this assignment: A statement is true if and only if all of its clauses are true, and false otherwise. The selection and judgment of degrees of truth, in my view, is also a human and potentially error-prone process.
—
Doug Ford (DF) (0:35): “Anywhere in the world, you go to any major city… and what you get is rapid underground transit from point A to point B.”
Assessment: True
At 2.8 million residents, Toronto is Canada’s largest city and the fourth-largest in North America. Wikipedia lists two other, smaller Canadian cities (Vancouver and Montreal) and thirteen other North American cities (Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, San Juan, and Washington, D.C.) that have subways [Wikipedia]. While all of these cities have a mixture of subway and non-subway transit lines, it appears that Doug Ford’s statement, strictly speaking, is true.
—
Rob Ford (RF) (1:22): The Mayor makes a few statements about the transit views of other likely mayoral candidates.
“First… we have a former budget chief… who doesn’t want subways.”
Assessment: True
RF is referring to David Soknacki, a former city councillor. According to Soknacki’s campaign website, “Although he’s a lifelong Scarborough resident, David is the ONLY major mayoral candidate with the political courage to promise to cancel the Bloor-Danforth subway extension in Scarborough, and replace it with modern, cost-effective LRT plan that was already partly designed – and fully funded.” [David Soknacki Campaign Site]
“We have the head of the TTC who says, ‘I want LRTs,’ and then she flip-flopped to subways.”
Assessment: True
City Councillor Karen Stintz, who chairs the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) has declared her candidacy for mayor. The Toronto Star notes, “In 2012, Stintz outmanoeuvred Ford and won new fans on the left when she persuaded council to return to Miller’s plan for above-ground light rail lines on Finch Ave., Sheppard Ave., Eglinton Ave. and in the Scarborough RT corridor. In 2013, she joined with Ford, and lost many of those new fans, in making a successful push for a subway in the Scarborough RT corridor, and a tax hike to pay for it, rather than cheaper light rail.” [Toronto Star]
“There’s other candidates, [e.g.] people leading the civic action group, we want to have user fees… revenue tools… LRTs.”
Assessment: False
RF is referring in this statement to John Tory, a past mayoral candidate and provincial politician who heads the Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance.
It is true that John Tory supports new taxes to build transit: The Toronto Star notes, “Tory, 59, is a vocal advocate of the need for new taxes to pay for transit expansion. Ford imposed a new property tax to pay for the planned subway extension to the Scarborough RT, but he criticized Tory last week for holding “tax, tax, tax” views.” [Toronto Star]
Tory, however, is not opposed to all forms of subways: he supports a downtown subway relief line, as noted in his introductory campaign video. [John Tory Campaign Site]. Therefore, Rob Ford’s statement is false.
—
DF (2:22) discusses public-private partnerships as a source of transit funding:
“You go out there, you get private sector funding, folks… you go out for the public-private partnerships, they refuse to do that. When you build a subway station, you make sure there is density on top of the subway station.”
Assessment: False
I did not find explicit evidence of the three aforementioned mayoral candidates being opposed to public-private partnerships (P3) to fund public transit. Soknacki is on record in support of P3s this year, [Globe and Mail]; Tory has support them in the past [Globe and Mail]. It appears that Stintz is most strongly in favor of pursuing funding from the provincial and federal levels of government for transit funding [National Post], but stating that all three candidates oppose P3s is false.
“So what that does, you get the pension funds, that we have two, here, the Teacher’s Pension Fund, and OMERS, and guess what, folks? They’re developing and putting their money in London and New York! Because the councilors in Toronto, a lot of them don’t believe in getting the private sector to build subways.”
Assessment: Unknown
I did not find specific evidence of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS) or the Ontario Teachers Pension Fund, two of the largest pension funds in the province, investing in the London and New York transit systems.
—
Rob Ford: “‘Revenue tools…’ means gas tax. Our friend at Civic Action wants to tax people. The first thing that he did when he got in at Queen’s Park was give a 35% pay increase to all MPPs.”
Assessment: False
As leader of the Official Opposition in the Ontario Legislature, John Tory did indeed vote in favor of a pay increase for Members of Provincial Parliament. However, the increase was 25%, not 35% [National Post] The vote also occurred in December 2006; Tory won a by-election and entered the Ontario Legislature in March 2005 [Ottawa Citizen].
Interview with Ravi Nessman and on Making Stories to Connect
By Mine Gencel Bek
Special thanks to Ravi for devoting one hour for me to conduct a semi-structured interview and also for supporting me in this really difficult task with such an accomplished and experienced journalist.
Unfortunately, there was no time to transcribe the whole interview because of time limits (interview could be conducted on Wednesday morning). Therefore, I had to summarize it by relying mostly the notes I took during the interview. Since I am not a native speaker, the notes are limited as well. I felt like concentrating on listening and interacting him rather than taking notes.
When I typed his name on the web, 12.600 results appeared. Tough task! I liked preparing and asking questions more than searching the web. I should think more about the meaning of this. Is it because I do not like browsing internet too long, or I like interviewing and face to face communication more?
photo
Ravi Nessman is graduated from Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. He started to work at AP as soon as he graduated in 1994. He is from New Jersey. He worked as the South Asia bureau chief for the Associated Press between 2009 and 2013. Currently, he is 2014 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University
He won an award from the South Asian Journalists Association for his coverage of the Sri Lankan civil war. He also was part of an AP team that won a Sigma Delta Chi Award for its coverage of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. He has recently been assigned to be the the deputy of AP’s South region encompasses news in 13 states in the US. He will start his new job in Atlanta as soon as he finishes the sabbatical at Nieman. His job involves all including editing, management, writing, taking photos.
He worked in Chicago, Newark, Philadelphia, New York, Jerusalem, Sri Lanka, New Delhi, South Africa, He lived in 10 cities in 20 years. His wife and children also accompany him around the world eagerly. His wife is a human rights lawyer. As a reply to my question ‘What did he learn about living and seeing so many cities in the world as a journalist?’, he said that he learned life time worth of lessons and added: ‘We all share a common humanity. It does not matter if you live in a tiny village or a city, we can relate to each other’.
I asked to what extent he uses twitter as news source. He said that he uses a lot but added that who tweets is important. Therefore, he talked about the importance of credibility and verification by giving the examples from Israel (The military commander tweeted in 2011 that the military attack was over). The question of how you know is important, for him. For example, there were unreliable tweets in Mumbai about a terrorist bombing (I can add more from records).
I asked about the difficulties of news agencies in this age and the new forms of journalism in digital age. He stated that since 1999 and 2000, AP does not limit itself with inverted pyramid fact journalism, 5 What and 1 Who. Instead, they create more feature stories, investigative reporting and deep and engaging stories. He gives an example of Indian suicide reports (I can add more from records).
How does he cope with all these situations, being a close witness of the horrible events, war, conflict, poverty in the world? What are his mechanisms to survive psychologically? He said that he had choosen to see and show them. He tries to move after that. I got an impression that his family is also a big source of support for him reports (I can add more from records).
I asked how he will study “the responsibility of governments and communities to help the most vulnerable members of society the responsibility of governments and communities to help the most vulnerable members of society.” as mentions on the Nieman’s web. What is the solution. according to you? He stated that to show people what they are not seeing, not necessarily in different countries but even in the same place they live in. This should be in new forms, though. He gave the example of hunger in Africa by underlining the importance of not showing extreme but instead make a story that everyone can connect (I can add more from records).
So, for me Ravi is a journalist who commits himself to create stories which people can relate. That is an admiring task.
Questions
Your job
To what extent and when (if any) there is an optimism and hope in yourwork/profession? How do you cope with all these situations, being a close witness of the horrible events, war, conflict, poverty in the world? What are the mechanisms to survive psychologically?
Are you happy to work at AP? Where else would he like to work?
Comparison of American journalism and South East Asian (is there such a homogeneus thing) journalism?
We used to give the evidence of leading news agencies controlling the news flow in the world and creating a knowledge monopoly. What do you think of that? Is it still the case?
Difficulties of news agencies in this age? How do they reply?
What is the future of journalism?
What are the new forms of journalism in digital age?
Can journalists in the world create any kind of solidarity network?
