The Newsroom 2.2: The Power of Video

The power of video was in evidence in The Newsroom 2.2 tonight - including what can happen in its absence.

At an Occupy Wall Street protest, the NYPD - who in reality and on this show demonstrate a blissful and vexing disregard of the First Amendment - Neil is arrested for doing his job, i.e., reporting on the event.   Fortunately, he live streamed his unconstitutional arrest, so even though the marauding NY cops took and likely broke his phone, the video of his outrageous arrest survived.   Will is able to use it to get Neil released.   Journalists arrested by constitutionally illiterate cops weren't quite so lucky in our reality.  But Tim Pool's video did get the case against OWS reporter Alexander Arbuckle thrown out of court last year. (I was pleased to have Tim Pool guest lecture in my class at Fordham University a few months earlier.)

Video, of course, can also incriminate, and it lands Maggie in increasing hot water - that is, a video of her, recorded by a bystander and put on YouTube, when she was in effect proclaiming her love for Jim. Determined to get the video off of YouTube, Maggie (with Sloan insisting on accompanying her) track down the video poster via Foursquare.   The poster is not prone to remove the video - it's getting lots of hits and is connected to her blog, after all - but Sloan tries to buy the poster's compliance by offering to tweet a pointer to the poster's blog to Sloan's nearly half a million followers on Twitter.  The poster agrees, takes the tweet - only to write a blog post about the whole event, anyway, which of course garners even more to attention to the video, which she hasn't removed, and her blog.  A savvy and amusing lesson about the labyrinthine power of social - or what I can "new new" - media, and the wheelers-and-dealers who try to use these media for their often conflicting purposes.

But the final lesson about video in this episode, about the impact of no video, is not amusing at all. Troy Davis is executed for killing  a police officer in Georgia.   He proclaimed his innocence until the end.   If only a video existed of what really happened to the cop.   Just as justice would have been better served if a video existed of what George Zimmerman did to Trayvon Martin.   We don't yet live in such a world, but we're slowly getting there.

See also The Newsroom Season 2 Debuts on Occupy Wall Street and More ... and (about Trayvon Martin) If Only There Was a Video Recording

And see also The Newsroom and McLuhan ... The Newsroom and The Hour ...The Newsroom Season 1 Finale: The Lost Voice Mail



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If Only There Was a Video Recording ...

As I lament the killing of Trayvon Martin, and the acquittal of his killer in Florida a few days ago, I can't help thinking: if only there was a video recording of the crucial events of that evening.

One thing which everyone agrees upon is no one other than George Zimmerman now can know with 100% certainty what happened that night.   In the absence of eyewitnesses, and, even worse, a video of the events, we are forced to rely on our ever fallible logic and emotions.

Eyewitnesses of course can be mistaken or can lie.  A video can on its own do neither, but can certainly be spliced or pointed in directions which distort the truth.  Still and all, it provides a record of events in general more reliable than eye-witness testimony.

Video recordings have already righted serious wrongs in our society.  A video recording in 1991 brought Rodney King's beaters - Los Angeles police officers - to trial.  And although they were acquitted of assault in state court, two of the officers were found guilty in Federal court of violating King's civil rights, and were imprisoned.  Video recordings brought the cop who killed Oscar Grant in 2009 in San Francisco to at least some justice.  In New York City last year, Alexander Arbuckle was acquitted of bogus charges brought against him by the NYPD during an Occupy Wall Street event.   Fortunately for Arbuckle and the truth, Tim Pool had recorded the event and what preceded it on his smartphone.

Opportunities for video recording are increasing.  Not only does every smart phone come with video recording capability, but developments like Google Glass will make them even easier and less intrusive to use.   We can not go back in time and see what happened to Trayvon Martin.   We can and should fight racism on every level, but we can never rid the world entirely of bad people.   In the difficult course of attempting to bring them to justice, we need all the technological help we can get.

MSNBC Cuts Away from Zimmermam Attorney Resignation

Unbelievably, MSNBC cut away from George Zimmerman's attorneys, as they were explaining to a press conference why they were resigning from the case.  Back to Dylan Ratigan and his planned concluding segment.  Fortunately, CNN provided continuing coverage (I didn't check about Fox).

MSNBC is thus continuing its amateuristic approach to news programming.   When news of the Mumbai massacre broke on the Thanksgiving weekend several years ago, MSNBC offered canned documentaries about prison life.  They still switch to prison coverage at 10pm every Friday - as if no real news happens after that time.

Two bright spots are the four new hours of sharp, intelligent commentary by Chris Hayes and Melissa Harris Perry every Saturday and Sunday.  But as today's poor performance in covering a live press conference about one of the most important stories of the year shows, MSNBC still has a ways a to go.

Piers Morgan vs Touré about Trayvon Martin

Lots of drama with serious issues at stake in the heated exchanges between Piers Morgan and Touré about Trayvon Martin Friday night, on Morgan's CNN show.  Here's a Mediate article about the conversation, with video of the complete interview.

The source of the exchange was Touré's unhappiness with Piers Morgan's interview of Robert Zimmerman - George's brother - the night before, and Touré's subsequent assessment that Morgan, as a Brit, could not understand the depth of pain that Trayvon's killing has brought to America.

I saw the Robert Zimmerman interview, and thought, contra Touré's point and as per Morgan's defense of his interview, that Morgan indeed asked lots of tough questions.  My takeaway from the interview was that Robert's defense of his brother was about as credible as Joe Oliver's (George's friend) - which is to say, not very credible at all, with little or no bearing on what actually happened the night that George Zimmerman killed Trayvon.   I furthermore disagree with Touré's argument that putting George Zimmerman's lame defenders on the air somehow weakens the case against George - to the contrary, the more information we have, the better our capacity to assess what actually happened, and in the case of Robert Zimmerman's account, its discrepancy with what we can see with our own eyes on the video of George at the police station only weakens the arguments of George's defenders.

As for Touré's disparagement of Morgan's ability to understand America, that's just an ad hominem attack with no bearing on the matter at hand.  What counts about Morgan - all that counts - is how he conducted the interview, not his nationality.  Once we start going down the road of analyzing arguments based on the nationality of who is making them, we move into dangerous, irrational territory.

Which is not to say that Touré, as a black man in America, does not have every right to a special fury about what happened to Trayvon, and be more furious than Morgan or any white person, of any nationality.  But there's a difference between justified fury, and channeling it into an attack on a news anchor, like Piers Morgan, who is just trying to his job, and in fact did it well in this case.

Audio, Video, and Justice for Trayvon Martin

With all the conflicting accounts of what happened on the night that George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin, two things remain clear:

1. George Zimmerman had no business being anywhere near Trayvon Martin when the shooting occurred.  He was told to stop following Travyon by the police.

2. George Zimmerman was in pretty good shape, certainly not recently having been beaten to an inch of his life, when he got out of the car at the police station within an hour after the killing.

We know the first because of the police recording of Zimmerman's call.  We know the second because of the video taping of Zimmerman's arrival at the police station.

Neither the audio nor the video are crystal clear.   There are parts of the audio that are in dispute (the racial epithet that many hear Zimmerman utter).   But the police injunction to Zimmerman to not follow Trayvon, and Zimmerman's not being seriously injured when he arrived at the police station, are beyond dispute.

This is not the first time that video has changed the game, tipped the scales in favor of justice, for victims of violence.   LAPD officers would never have been brought to justice had their beating of Rodney King in 1991 not been videotaped by an alert citizen.   Police officers would not have been reprimanded had their pepper spraying of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators exercising their First Amendment rights not been captured on video.

Nothing can bring Trayvon back.  But the eyes and ears of the cosmos, in the form of recordings which bear witness to the circumstances of his killing, will be the foundation of the justice that he deserves.