[OT] I just got a media request

I just got a "media request" from a reporter
at MSNBC. Did anyone else get one and what
should I do?

-- Forwarded Message --
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2002 09:49:44 -0700
From: "Dube, Jonathan (MSNBCi)" <Jonathan.Dube@MSNBC.COM>
To:
Subject: Media request


Hi. I'm working on a story for MSNBC.com about survivalists, post-Sept. 11.
I'm in Seattle so I'm looking for people in the Northwest to talk to and I
found your e-mail on the Internet, and was wondering if I might be able to
ask you a few questions.

Thanks,

Jonathan Dube
MSNBC.com
Jonathan.Dube@msnbc.com

Ignore it!

Anne

Just my opinion, if it was me, I would answer that I was not interested. Thanks... If they don't take no for an answer and come back at you again... watch out for sure...

This is main stream profiling potential here... could really change the meanings of what you say around, etc...

but remember... I don't like the media liars

Talk to Ed Yourdon about his experiences.

Journalists have their own agenda.

Don't get ensnared in their twist.

Dear Jonathan,

You should know by now we are all far too paranoid to talk to the media. It would be the same as hanging a sign outside of our houses saying "Loot Me"

No thanks.

Thats what I would tell him. I prefer to stay as below the radar as I can.

Hey, look what I just found:

Jonathan Dube is the technology editor for MSNBC.com, overseeing technology coverage for the #1 Internet news site. He manages the technology editorial staff, content partnerships and the site's technology section. He works with staff reporters, columnists and freelancers to generate daily stories and in-depth reports on the world of technology.

Dube is also the founder and publisher of CyberJournalist.net, a Web site offering "tips and talk for the wired world."

He writes a weekly Web Tips column for Poynter.org, the Web site of The Poynter Institute, on using the Web as a journalism tool. And he has been a visiting instructor at The Poynter Institute for its first two Writing Online News seminars, in 2000 and 2001.

Dube won the first national Online Journalism Award for Breaking News for his coverage of the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle. He has also won four online journalism awards and two investigative reporting awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, as well as a new media award from Columbia University.

Prior to joining MSNBC.com, Dube was a national producer for ABCNEWS.com. While there, he worked on nearly every major story, including the Columbine High School shooting, the WTO protests in Seattle, the Alaska Airlines crash, the presidential campaign and international terrorism. He wrote and edited, shot digital photos and video, created interactive graphics, answered reader questions in live chats and filed reports for ABC Radio. He managed the site's coverage of the Microsoft antitrust trial as acting technology editor and at times managed the site on weekends and evenings.

Prior to joining ABCNEWS.com, Dube spent most of his career in newspapers. He's covered New York City for The New York Times and New York Newsday, covered the Connecticut state capitol for The Danbury News-Times, and covered crime in the South for The Charlotte Observer.

Dube has also written or worked for the Columbia Journalism Review, The Washington Monthly, CBS Evening News, The New York Observer, APBNEWS.com, The Hartford Courant, The Middletown Press, The Chronicle of Higher Education and The South London Press.

He is a contributor to "Reporting and Writing: Basics for the 21st Century," by Christopher Scanlan (1999).

He has also been an entry screener for the Online News Association awards.

A native New Yorker, Dube has a bachelor's degree from Wesleyan University in Middleton, Conn., and a master's degree in journalism from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where he studied new media.

You can reach Jonathan Dube at jon@jondube.com

IIRC, BB got a such request a while back and I believe, (against our general recomendations) went ahead with the interview.

You might check with him regarding his experience but my suggestion would be to let them pick on someone else for their story.

Kris

tell him to submit the questions in writing in advance for your consideration. If he is legitimate, driven, or stupid, he will and you can judge the agenda yourself. If he is sane, and practical, he targets someone else.

Also ask yourself what you can gain from this. and what you can lose.

It is tough times to get a label.

Guy has rolled his bones BIG TIME.

This means that his agenda will either be MUCH harder to spot, or will be non-existant.

Your choice.


C

Why the paranoia?

The guy must be reading this thread..

Having him submit his questions is a reasonable request though...

Survivalists?

What a silly name! Everyone knows we are doomer/preppers! Survival is a given!

So......how come I didn't get an email?

IIRC Ed Yourdon and BB both discovered that you cannot discern how the interview will be portrayed because there is no way to tell what they will leave in and what ends up on the cutting room floor.

Be careful...

Be VERY careful...

Kris

Mr. Larry...

It's not paranoia....

It's experience...

You can search the web to this day and find all sorts of things "I" said in interviews leading up to Y2K...most of which did NOT include the disclaimers and explanations and caveats that I had also included in the interview.

KrisG

Prior to Y2k, we were among various people in Santa Rosa contacted to see if we wanted to be filmed by a reporter for a San Francisco tv station. We declined, but a friend who agreed was shown on the evening news as a total wierdo and nut. The reporter unapologetically explained that his producers wanted the story to be "interesting" and "provacative".

News organizations are in business to make money and get readership, and they are happy to do it at your expense. If you consent to be interviewed, you make yourself a target for everyone who has not prepped. So, no, don't do it.

"Survivalism? I'm not really into that kind of stuff. I was kinda interested before y2k, but nothing happened, so I'm just getting on with my life. Hey, wanna do a story about my local bowling team?"

Please decline unless your ego needs a feeding and you could care less where the attention comes from or care less about the quality of the attention. For some people, any attention in the media is better than no attention. Believe me, if they wanted to do a story on prepping and survival they would be doing stories on prepping and survival. Doing a story on people who prep is not as important as the actual instruction of what to do and how to do it.

I used to post quite a bit over in Misc. Survivalism but that was years ago, before
it got bogged down in politics and practically
anything OTHER than Survivalism.

My employers are, shall we say, major DGI's
who would not appreciate a TV spot where
one of their own was highlighted as a whacko.
(and...how many GUNS do you have? Did you
know Timothy McVeigh? What was he like? C'mon,
how many GUUUNNNNSSSS do you own?)
My position is a very public one and as a local
commercial puts it: I'm too afraid of being
laid off to look for another job.

Besides, being moderately articulate in print
is one thing, talking in front of (presumably) millions of viewers is quite another.

I think you're right. Keep a L-O-W profile
and delete the e-mail. Thanks everybody.

Walk away. There is no up-side.

Ask Dennis what happened after he gave an interview before y2k.

hehe

I dare you to write back and say "once I get this darned nuclear bomb put together I'd love too!"

No. Real simple.

Hey!

We have his email addy!

We can ALL send him a message! :sb:

Run far, run fast!

Just a thought.

It might be an interesting interview if it were doomers/preppers interviewing the sheeple.

Somebody should write an article on that and send it in anonymously.

Hey, not me I just came up with the idea!

Hey!

We have his email addy!

We can ALL send him a message


I agree - we have his address, lets send him notice that we are not one alone but a group. We know whats going on elsewhere and with others. We prep. I'm game! (but dont shoot me )

No need, I've been watching the discussion.

I'm glad you all take media requests so seriously. Not to worry, though -- I've got no agenda, nor am I trying to perpetuate any stereotypes. And certainly no one who is at all uncomfortable talking to the media needs to talk to me, or others in the media for that matter.

Nothing personal against you but many of us have had the experience of dealing with the media. In more than twenty years I've never yet seen a favorable piece in the mainstream media about survivalists. Once burned, twice shy.

........Alan.

Welcome MSNBC_Dube-

Perhaps you can stay a while and enjoy this eclectic group of individuals.

If you are from Seattle, we are neighbors!

jmh

Personally, if an interview is for a legitimate cause, and will not be "spun", I see no problem with it.

When that Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article on me came out just after Y2K, I must have been called by 100 radio stations. (I still remember the Bryant Gumbel interview - shudder).

But if the media person is attempting to report legitimate issues and not just provide "infotainment" to people, we in the "personal preparedness" community should be willing to help inform and educate.

My single biggest reason for granting interviews was to show that regular "every day people" can and do take personal responsibility for caring for themselves and their loved ones. And THAT should be the message that we want "out there" in the world.

More Americans NEED to "get it".

JMHO - YMMV

EDIT: No mention of GUNS ever came up - not in a single interview to the best of my recollection. Some interviewers did indeed try to make me out to be a nut, but were sadly disappointed when I didn't play by their script.

Thanks for uncloaking, Dude.

As you've gathered, there are people on this board who have been burned before. They also know that you folks in the media have power to shape impressions and reputations that mere individuals cannot hope to counter.
You folks write or develop stories for an already-demographically-known audience. That fact imposes restrictions on the stories that you can expect to get accepted. That fact, plus editorial preferences, also impose implications for how the facts of a story may be shaped to fit the time slot available.

As you may have also gathered, this isn't exactly a really hard-core prepper or survivalist board, either in y2k or in today's terms. It is a community, among the tens or hundreds of thousands of others on the vastness of the net.

That all said, you may find the quality of the people and of the analysis here to be interesting, if not occasionally impressive.

R

And some Doomersª wonder if TB2K is being monitored, heeheeheheheheh

OK Dube dude, welcome to TimeBomb2000, a Forum that was started by Ed Yourdon in December 1997 to discuss Y2K concerns and has evolved over the years to a general prep and "Where Are We Headed" think tank.

As events have proven, it is not so weird after all to examine trends and areas of concern and become physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually prepared to better deal with a changing world.

Yes, Welcome MSNBC_Dude,

Glad to see you were checking out the thread. The media has never burned me myself but I would be rather worried about having my location or exact amount of "preps" disclosed on national TV myself. I saw many a story about "Y2K Preppers" after the New Year and many made them out to be "kooks" or psychos. I think that is what everyone is trying to avoid.

We as preppers (I have always hated the term Survivalist) are mainly normal people, We do not run around like Rambo in our BDU's and heck, we are all just trying to make sure our home and families are safe. Many on this forum feel as if the media has given us a bum rap. I can only hope that by some media exposure others will get the clue to prep and keep their families safe from whatever threats we face. If by chance you do happen to do a story on anyone who preps or would be labeled a "Survivalist" I would hope you would include that in your story.

It’s about personal responsibility, taking care of ones own. Seems lots of people in the world tend to forget that

Edited to add: I think what Dennis said sums us up the best. Personal preparedness. I Wish more would hop on that bandwagon.

Uh CC, meet Horse.

Mr Horse Meet CC.


We would MOSTLY like to believe you are the North end of a North bound horse. Our collective EXPERIENCE would suggest that this would make you a fairly rare bird indeed.

What we have here becomes a trust issue pretty quickly.

The reason we, collectively, are behaving like a recently forcibly deflowered virgin is, simply put, we have seen the results of other situations where the subject of the interview (print or video) had many statements pulled out of context, and thus twisted every-which-way-but-loose, creating something salable but hardly true or accurate. (And, no, I don't selll commas, I use 'em all myself.)


This is one of those situations where the folk involved can do HOURS of negotiations, and enter into PAGES of "understandings" and get very "comfortable" with each other and at the end of the day, when the article is submitted to an editor's tender mercies, or the interview is in the can, the interviewee is still left trusting the interviewer (and the nameless and faceless editor) not to put the tip in.

Our collective experience is that this is very like having trust in the faithless.



Sorry, sir but I would have to recommend that CC NOT do the requested interview, for the above reasons.


Chuck a Night Driver, who has been physically present at a number of newsworthy (nationally) events and not recognized the event upon reading and hearing the media version.

MSNBC:

I'm sure you'll see a tendency toward paranoia when the media is involved - it is for VERY good reason.

The mainstream media has earned itself a very nasty reputation for being the mouthpiece of whoever pulls their strings, instead of disseminating truthful/accurate information. This may not be how you do your job (and it's refreshing to hear that plenty of reporters still have some noble moral foundation), but it's how your profession as a collective is now viewed.

We've all caught the media spinning the news to suit a specific purpose or agenda too many times to count. The folks here tend to be excellent at picking apart a news article and revealing the underlying truth that was obscured by the spin. We do so as standard practice now as so much is so edited that almost nothing coming from news outlets can be taken at face value any more.

As webmaster and senior editor of a hobbyist tech website and as an "interviewee" (for things unrelated to TB), I've seen how this happens on multiple occasions. And others here can attest (and some already have) to how what they said in an interview ended up represting something completely different when the final article was posted/printed/broadcast. If you are outside the line of thinking - or lack thereof - that the masses share, the tendency for news media is to portray you as strange. So what if the message is beneficial or even life-saving, such as is the case for what the doomer/prepper crowd has to offer.

If you're not one of the herd, the piece almost ALWAYS make it sound like you are looked at with a raised eyebrow during the entire interview. Example: The prepping folks here have information that could save millions of lives in the event of a disaster, but if interviewed they would be portrayed as hoarding kooks and all their info on how to protect you and yours against the unforeseen would be quietly discarded. Info that could save millions dropped so that a few minutes' worth of sensationalist trash can drive up ratings a tenth of a point at the expense of the interviewed folks that were genuinely trying to help.

The politics and drive for ratings are in charge of news, instead of that romantic notion of disseminating accurate information for the benefit of the public. While individual reporters might hold that their profession is a noble one, what makes it to the screen or the printed page is overspun crap.

That is why you'll note so much negativity toward the idea of participating in such a piece.

Perhaps an article on why news is spun so severely, so as to be useless for its intended purpose, might be an eye-opener.

oO

(Edited to fix my lousy typing.)

Ok MSNBC dude...I'll bite

Freelance journalist here with 13 yrs experience and paid by the word...still. I had a byline too and threw it all away pre-rollover.

I don't care what your motivations and goals are. ALL media submissions are subject to editorial control and spinmeistering.

You could create the most fair and balanced piece possibile and your legal dept or your shareholder mouthpiece could just decide
"no go". What is written NEVER resembles what is broadcast. Any journalist who denies this is just a liar. You know it's all true.

If this were truly a fair and equitable query, then it would be The Nation or CSM or Cockburn over at Counterpunch doorstepping us for more details.

MSNBC...home of the Banfield Titanium frames...yeah... ok...the new "face" of la femme journaliste'. And recycled 70's Donahue.
David Gregory never got his question answered! Are we a little miffed over at the Peacock Shed these days? Welcome to le club!

So at least you are countering the massive attacks of the flesh merchant Rupert Murdoch. (Most yanks don't have a CLUE to the the level of sleaze factor he perpetrates in his EU/Aussie trash)

BUT you've got a mgmt problem, ma cher. Check out Rense's little item today on GE and their myriad troubles...do you really care about the fate of this entire planet or is this just a freakfest
to encourage the sheeple to laugh at us? And to go back to sleep.

Think about that REALLY hard & how many lives you could save.

Dude,

It is ironic that some reporters talk about intrusions on personal privacy...then ask personal questions!!!

Instead of interviewing preppers who are minding their own business, why don't you investigate government corruption?

Media Report Card just came in, teacher says:

Courtesy of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, available at
http://www.fair.org, go to site to read individual articles.

General Electric/NBC

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Welcome to the board, Mr. Dube!

Ya know, we could share with you the mindset of the prepper, the critical thinking skills, the ability to discern the truth from the spin, etc....

But then we'd have to kill you.

Dan V.

Hi MSNBC Dude,

I must say that my experience with an interview a few months back was very good, but it was not an interview for prepping. It turned out to be a two page write up about a cookbook I had just recently had published. She had indicated in the article that I canned and had a large supply of home grown items put up, but it wasn't about prepping. An interview about prepping would not be one that would appear in print without complete bias from this reporter I dealt with, just from some comments she made it was very clear her opinion on storing food in quantities beyond her realm of normal, was not normal.

As the others have indicated an article that actually gave people the information of why it's best to be prepared with details on how would be a wonderful thing, but there is no way it would be written without the editor complaining about it and refusing to print it as such. No hype, no print... Such a shame really because we are a wealth of knowledge on TimeBomb for this type of information...

Kath

Some of you seem to have missed the fact that Jon Dube writes for MSNBC.com. So his story would be posted on the web site, not aired on TV (unless it's SO interesting that the TV guys decide to pick it up--what happens next when that occurs, Jon?). Sorry, it's not the "big time ego fest" of a TV news story if you do get interviewed. I just don't see the point in criticizing MSNBC TV in this case, it just doesnt have much to do with him. MSNBC.com is its own little world.

And the reporter doesn't have to interview CC, CC made it pretty clear he's not going to risk public exposure, although the reporter could probably obtain some background info from CC without using his name. I'm sure he would be interested in anyone with solid "prepping/survival" skills volunteering to cooperate with his story. This thread might be a good place for some give and take on the parameters for how to develop such a balanced article, particularly since it can take in the input of the whole community here, although I suspect the reporter would prefer to work one-on-one via email and telephone.

I just sent this e-mail to Jonathan

Jonathan,

Just a short welcome to the neighborhood, so to speak.

Granted it is 'only' a cyberspace one, but it has become, over the past years, a family. It may have started out as folks preparing for a disruption in our lives, but has evolved into a news gathering, sharing of both good and bad, type site.

Should you truly have an interest in how folks feel, the archives of this place should give you a good start. I'm glad to hear you don't have a particular agenda, but distrust of the media and government intentions tend to run high when you are informed of what has transpired, and continues to do so today.

More than anything, you will find people who actually CARE what is happening around them. So stick around and contribute, your credentials are certainly impressive enough to indicate you would be a valuable addition. As always, JMHO.

Michael