Ellen Hume

Hundreds of us gathered last Sunday night in Prague, to conjure the spirit of Vaclav Havel at the first Forum 2000 conference in 16 years that he wouldn't attend himself. Olda Czerny, who faithfully served in Havel's cabinet and ran these conferences, also died last year. We were feeling sad about all this when Jan Urban, the journalist who taught us how hard it is to "teach old cats to bark," introduced a video of Havel onstage, carrying a guitar.

If everyone is now a journalist, thanks to mobile media tools, how can consumers create a nutritious news diet for themselves? How can they sort out what reality is captured and what is constructed and therefore presumably less authentic?

Central European University http://www.ceu.hu is a unique place, a gem. It is fragile. What happens here is extremely difficult to do.  CEU takes people from damaged countries and helps them work for a better world. It encourages critical thinking, and seeks an honest engagement with history. It has no dominant nationality; students and faculty are drawn from over 100 countries.  They embrace change, but work to channel it in positive directions...

OK, I understand how Hilary Rosen feels about women and work, and also why Ann Romney is stirring the sympathy vote: "Democrat Says Ann Romney “Has Never Worked A Day In Her Life” http://politi.co/HBPadI  If truth be told, I got into the same fix myself years ago, when I went back to my high school to give a talk, and said that I couldn't be "just a housewife, raising kids, baking cupcakes and tending my garden" when the world was in flames with the civil rights, anti-war and other movements. There was an audible gasp.

March 26, 2012

Budapest

Maybe I have been looking too closely at the 2012 Republican campaign for president. This is what I woke up thinking about today:

So how far should real journalists go in saying that someone is “misstating” the facts, i.e. lying? This was raised recently by the NYTimes ombudsman. http://t.co/rn2GLZrx ...Everyone came down on the poor fellow to say DUH, of course, that’s what real journalists are supposed to do!  But it’s not so simple. Most politics is entirely faith-based. Why else would someone listen to those blow-hards on radio and tv, who lie day after day to paint a scary world full of conspiracies?

Report from Budapest

It was a bit dizzying to have both Larry Lessig, who loves the Internet and social networks, and Evgeny Mrozov, who doesn’t, in town the same week. Larry held forth Monday on how money drives the legislative process in Congress, and Evgeny gave us some dark thoughts on Friday from his Net Delusion book about how slacktivism can divert us from genuine civic activity, even as dictators effectively nail folks down with heat-seeking propaganda tools and tracking technologies.

The quote of the day comes from, of all people, a GOP President of long ago:  "Now it is true that I believe this country is following a dangerous trend when it permits too great a degree of centralization of governmental functions. I oppose this--in some instances the fight is a rather desperate one. But to attain any success it is quite clear that the Federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it.

My premise is that the facts matter, and that journalists are in an ideal position to hold the powerful accountable. This is what I tried to do for 19 years as a reporter. The news media also must be held accountable themselves-because they, too, are among the powerful forces that shape our policy, politics and preoccupations. That is why I quit journalism in 1988 to be part of a group that is trying to hold the news media themselves accountable, and to improve their quality and role, from within the business.

Boston, Summer, 2004--Political conventions are the perfect time for mischief. In the 21st century they don’t have a real job to do because the primaries have selected the presidential nominee. Yet they get the world’s media spotlight for four days, as if they were up to something important. Think about it: a phenomenal 15,000 journalists will be scouring Boston in July, looking for a story. It is the dirty prankster’s dream.