Author: Spocko

Citizens, Use that Mobile TV Studio In Your Pocket For Fun and Profit!  by Spocko

 

Things have really changed now that we have gotten beyond using stone knives and bearskins to make mnemonic memory circuits.

But some things haven’t.

Even though it’s totally legal to record the police there are still things to remember, like this 1963 quote from Houston vice squad captain, J.F. Willis “You may beat the rap, but you won’t beat the ride.”

What Willis knew then was that the power dynamic is always in play over time. We need to be prepared for this before during and after clashes. It helps to understand the media, your opponent, the law and your technology tools in order to come out on top, even if you are in the back of a cop car.

 Eventually the Ferguron story will drop off the twitter. Just like the Bundy Ranch story. But there will be another event.

We can get stuck in the same cycle or learn from past events. After the smoke bombs have been swept up and sonic cannons are parked let’s do some thinking and acting.

 Lately I’ve been talking to people about making their own news worthy actions, flipping someone else’s media event, inserting a different narrative in a breaking media event or revising a previous event for a new angle.

 One of the things I’ve found is that on the left many groups don’t have the right “personality” to do this kind of work. Sure my friends at New York Communities for Change do, but there is so much more aggressive work challenging powerful groups that people could be doing.

I’ve developed ideas groups love, but they get nervous during the implementation. So sometimes people have to pick up the ball themselves, and when they do I want them to know the rules, tips and tricks. I want to teach them how to anticipate responses and next steps.  Luckily on the video rules side I’ve got guidelines for you.

• My friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation put together an updated guide for people in the US who want to use their phones to record police and other actions at a protest.
• The ACLU has a guide,  Know Your Rights: Photographers. I’ll direct you to the “special considerations when videotaping” section. Different states have different laws about consent when it comes to the audio portion of video.
• The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press have a state by state guideline about audio taping  if your state is a single or multiple party consent state, criminal penalties rules about hidden cameras and penalties for publishing or disclosing information.

Finally, my friends at Boing Boing have a podcast on what gadgets to use to gather your photos, video and audio.

This is all good in helping people going to current protests, but I also want people to look at previous protests to see both what we can learn and how we can use them for change at a deeper level. Plus prepare for future actions.

Let’s look at history and then predict the future.

How can video be used to make changes in police actions and policies? 

Did you see this? Occupy protester wounded by Oakland police gets $4.5 million

I noted what this story didn’t say. The officer who shot the bean bag was never identified. Why not? Does the city know, but just not say? Was there no video or just no one to look at all the video and say, “There’s the guy who shot the beanbag point blank at Olsen!” Was the officer following procedure? If not, what actions should be taken?  Maybe the procedure should be changed. Has it been?

Interestingly the officer who lobbed the tear-gas canister into the crowd trying to help the wounded protester was identified as Oakland police Officer Robert Roche.

Although Henry Lee of the Chronicle reported the footage was caught by a “TV news camera.” I’m pretty sure that my friend Matt Kresling’s reviewing the video and then highlighting the event was critical.

I watched the KTVU footage when it first ran, they didn’t point out the blatant disconnect between what the police told them and what they had on the footage.

The media today don’t want to get “in the middle” of a conflict even when they are. It is our review, analysis and action based on the information that leads to change.

What is important to remember is that even though the city suffered “international embarrassment” it is follow up actions like the lawsuits that can lead to leadership and legislation change. And that change can be the gift for citizens that keeps on giving. 


You want to de-escalate the violence? De-militarize the police? Great! How are you going to do that?

Take away our tanks and big guns? You and what army?

 Let’s think about the tools we have to help change things. Video. Photos. Blog posts and social media. Let’s not forget good ol’ telephone, email and search engine optimization!

And spreadsheets! Numbers people, help us out here! What is the ROI on those tanks? Sure it is “free” but what is the cost of upkeep? Wouldn’t you rather have some hazmat suits for when the oil pipeline spills or the ebola pandemic?

I’ll bet the city’s insurance carrier would be happier with fewer “attractive nuances” and lawsuits just waiting to happen. What is the insurance cost for keeping these military weapons?

What’s the PR cost for bad news?

Once people have power, and powerful tools, it takes other kinds of power and powerful tools to remove them.

Look to the tools we have for change.  One tool is a different perspective.

What the city and the police think are assets are really liabilities. Help them see it.

The whole world isn’t watching this part of the process, but it needs to be done. And you are just the people to do it.

LLAP
Spocko

 Of course some predicting is easy.  When ProPublica did a story on Move America Forward I said this:

Bookmark my words, they will circle the wagons because of the “hit piece” by the liberal media and then they will use it to raise money. All accusations will be denied, and they look forward to their, “day in court” where they will be proved right. 

Sure enough Red State runs Move America Forward Responds to ProPublica Allegations filled with denials as well as some serious name calling and accusations of defamation.  I contacted ProPublica to see if Red State called them to respond to MAFs comment.  Red State didn’t but ProPublica responded to MAFs comments and accusations anyway.

In my piece I pointed out how incredibly smart MAF’s people were to not respond to ProPublica’s request for comments.   This enabled them to later go to their own media and explain everything and classify it all as a liberal ‘hit piece.’

Their one mistake was not responding quickly enough to their own media who wondered if the allegations might be true.

However when someone on their side asked for facts, their true loyalties were questioned. In between the, “All charities are rackets” and “I do my research before giving.” Ed Morrissey at Hot Air is accused of working for George Soros. (The ultimate insult!) Even after he runs the full MAF reply later that day. But he gets the message and backs off.

When people talk about “getting money out of politics” it becomes this abstract discussion about how it will be done. There aren’t lot of “on the ground” stories about how the people who are GETTING this money will react to any attempts to slow down or stop the money.

My work alerting the advertisers of right wing radio shows showed me how people and organizations react when you get between them and their revenue stream.  In that case the advertisers were being hurt. Their brands were tainted by the close association with the vicious, horrific comments of the hosts.

In this case I wondered, “Who is being hurt by the actions of Move America Forward?”  The troops were getting care packages, maybe not a many or as big as they could be because of all the overhead, but so what?

The people being hurt are all the charities of any strip who DO follow the rules.  If people see that only suckers follow the rules, why follow them at all?

To be honorable? Honor is important in the military and for many people on the right and left.

I also said these groups are extremely savvy legally, financially, politically and in the media and that opinion or reports from anyone except their own investigators would be discounted.

What I didn’t understand is that even thoughtful people on the right who understand the benefit of investigations from their own side to “see the facts resolved” offer little hope of anything happening.

As “Ace of Spades” says

The right-leaning media has a weakness, which is that it is tiny, and furthermore, that the actual reportorial arm of that media is disproportionately small, even within the small universe of the right-wing media. We’re very heavy with commentators, and very light with reporters. 

So reportorial resources are very limited, and any right-leaning paper has to choose, for example, whether to put one of its few reporters on this story for a couple of weeks, or keep that reporter on a story more likely to produce well-received stories on Obama’s scandals. 

The net result is often that exposés like this are never proven, nor disproven, to the satisfaction of anyone on the right.

Now while I’d debate how small the “right-leaning media” is I agree with the point that reportorial resources from a right-leaning paper will go to producing Obama scandal stories rather than in a case like this.

What is to be done?

The Government is hamstrung by successful mau-mauing from the right (btw did you know that there is a moratorium on all IRS investigations?) and no media is to be trusted, what are the people who were harmed to do? What about the people who were mislead?

Organizations like Charity Navigator, that do look into compliance in various areas, build on information from the IRS as well as some of their own suggested guidelines.  (BTW, Move America Forward got zero stars.) But Charity Navigator has  no compelling authority for any change, people are free to ignore them.

A few solutions.

1) Suggest to the organizations harmed they request compensation from the group that didn’t follow the rules.  There is no legal compulsion for the offending organization to comply, but it is the honorable thing to do.

2) Look into legal remedies, copyright law comes to mind when it comes to the use of photos without permission.

3) The donors who feel they were misled, and don’t fell the explanations given are enough could ask for their money back and give it to a group they have more confidence in.

4) People who don’t like to confront, prosecute or require anyone to follow any rules can find better groups and give them money with the hope that the good groups will drive out the bad.

So specifically on this topic I suggest that the people at Operation Gratitude, Adopt a Platoon, and Operation Oreo, a project of Alpharetta Methodist Church in Georgia look to Move America Forward for compensation. I doubt they will tell you how much they took in, but they will tell you how strapped they are and why they had to use your photos for free.)

I would like them to keep in mind when MAF talks about how broke they are their Administrative and Fundraising expenses are 46.6%. Compare to Operation Gratitude’s Administrative and fundraising expenses of only 1.34% of their budget:  98.16% of all donations are devoted to Program Services.

Everyone should check things out for themselves, especially if you don’t trust anyone, but when all means of oversight are destroyed or devalued we are all harmed.

8-16-2014 UPDATED HEADLINE, named Hot Air writer as Ed Morrissey

What’s the Media Strategy of #Ferguson Protesters? The Police Have One. 
by Spocko

Does it seem strange I want to know the “media strategy” of the protesters in Ferguson?  I mean, they’re just a bunch of random people, catalyzed by an event, right? What are the protesters on the ground thinking? Do they know how they look to the world via the media? Who’s in charge? Is it the father?

 “I just want justice for my son, I really do … I need everybody to come together so we can do this right, so we can get something done about this. No violence.”

– Michael Brown Senior 

Aren’t they listening?

Although they don’t know it, the Ferguson protest and protesters do have a media strategy and a narrative. It was provided to them free of charge by the police and the media. It might change if you help.

You see, if a group or organization doesn’t have a media strategy or narrative someone will give it to them.  Often the very group they have an issue with, like the police. Other times by the “impartial” media. Definitely and vigorously by the RW media. Occasionally and timorously by the LW media.

So what if you are part of a group getting an assigned narrative you feel is biased? What if you are part of a “leaderless group” who isn’t in the loop but are on the ground? Can you do anything?

Yes! Methods can range from the easy to the complex. For some easy ones Kara Brown at Jezebelle has a nice piece about how people on Twitter can help journalists and amplify certain stories and viewpoints. For example I liked this tweet because it showed it was a story about black and white people standing together. I retweeted it.

white lady in the middle. this pic is LOUD! pic.twitter.com/JNE5ljvzGx
— Say Less. (@MVPGO) August 14, 2014

In 2011 I wrote some posts suggesting what people at home could do to change the assigned narrative using all the footage available from Occupy Oakland live streams and media coverage.

What to Do When the Media Says a Protester Attacked a Cop

I anticipated an action, how the media would cover it, and also what could flip the official narrative.

I listened to Jay Nixon’s press conference today and read some stories about the reason the police needed to launch tear gas. I read stories that stated protesters threw Molotov cocktails. I looked at the photos. I found a photo that looked like someone throwing a famous cocktail.  My mind shifted, “hmm that’s not good.” But then on twitter someone talks about this same photo.

It’s important for people to understand that the man is this photo was throwing it BACK at police who shot it at him. pic.twitter.com/DtZuxfIYbm
— Antonio French (@AntonioFrench) August 13, 2014

It turns out it was a smoke bomb thrown BACK at the police. But by then the narrative is set, the damage is done. Or is it?

In 2011 KTVU Fox Channel 2, ran an Occupy Oakland story about how the protesters were “throwing bottles at the police.” The TV coverage took the word of the police officials as truth.  This is SOP because they work with them all the time and there were no Occupy leaders to dispute the narrative. Plus deadlines!

The media need people who can define actions and reactions, often the police provide it, with no counter.  But in this case Matt Kresling, a citizen, just like you or me, found that KTVU actually ran video footage that proved that the POLICE were the ones throwing a flash bang at an unarmed crowd.

That footage got 1.5 million views and turned the narrative around, using the MSMs very own footage. No doubt it lead to consequences for the the officers who acted and their future tactics (Hopefully beyond, “Bad boy, don’t get caught!’) It also leads to monetary settlements which is real leverage for change these days.

The thing is there often are no “narrative professionals” challenging a story. It is important for people to understand how stories get created, focused and directed and how to challenge them.  You hear people always talk about how the RW controls “the narrative” and framing and it can make you feel helpless. But you aren’t. It’s 2014 now and most of you have a mobile TV studio in your pocket.

We have computing horsepower to create the worlds best cat videos and a place to show it. The media know this, as do the police. That is why they hate to be recorded.

But raw footage doesn’t tell a story.

The police have a media strategy and a default narrative to use. “He was resisting. He drew an object that looked to be a weapon. I felt in danger for my life. He was coming right at me.”

The media LOVE the Ferguson story even without an accurate narrative. It’s flying peacocks, costumed super heroes and exploding bombs in a Michael Bay movie.  “Just look at the photos Bob! Award winning, all of ’em!’

We can do four things. 

1. Create our own media 
2. Work with the main stream media to bolster the view point they are ignoring or skating over
3. Bitch at the MSM for not getting the whole story 
4. Share stories, images, videos that are better

The RW has spent decades browbeating the mainstream media until they got their own media. They haven’t stopped attacking the MSM, it’s just internalized now. The MSM is still cowering in a world of “he said, she said, both sides do it, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, we’ll leave it there.”

But the media don’t always have to default to presenting a standard authority figure, especially when alternatives are available.

In this case the media is not “embedded” in the authority figure’s world, so they are more open to seeing things with their own two eyes, let’s encourage them when they do, and help them see it when they don’t.

The eventual pay off can be action in areas we see problems in now. Like figuring out how to deescalate a dangerous showdown. Getting the whole story out and justice being served.

.
LLAP
Spocko