[Tim Wilson]

[Bill Davis] “What should have been obvious to me is that I posted a link to a story on local television imagining that local television was still a reliable source for news.”

Rookie mistake. LOL

Y’know, I’ve been giving Apple grief about being kind of dull, but, along with my cheerleading an Apple car — which I still hope they pull off, and still hope is awesome — it’s very easy to leave this story out of the conversation.

(Of course, we’re mere hobbyists, so we can hold ourselves to a lower standard. LOL)

Among the folks who’ve done a great job covering it for the mainstream Apple press is 9to5mac. They’ve come at it from a number of angles over the years, including a couple of stories earlier this year that I’m surprised didn’t create more noise. Worth digging through their archives, but the one that jumped out at me is Apple’s application to sell energy directly to consumers.

That is, virtually all the talk so far has been about people who generate excess solar power selling it back to the local utility. Not just big companies like Apple. In some places, like where I live in the California desert, individuals are increasingly able to do it too. But it’s complicated. You can’t just go monkeying with the grid, right?

In creating Apple Energy LLC (chartered in Delaware to dodge taxes, natch, but run out of Cupertino), some recent filings with the Federal Electrical Regulatory Commission suggests that Apple would like to move in the direction of bypassing the utility altogether.

At the very least, it could work for recharging stations for Apple cars. Here’s a nifty article on that tiny slice of the big picture.

But Apple saying, you know what, we can provide power for the homes in this valley less expensively than the local utility can, so can we have permission to pursue that, is very intriguing to me. I can think of 79 bajillion ways that it could wrong, and only about 6 that it could go right….but VERY much worth reading a little more about.

Apple has just become an energy company, looks to sell excess electricity into the grid and maybe more

Apple wins regulatory approval to begin selling excess energy from its solar farms

And then this from 9to5mac sister site electrek, Apple Energy deeper dive: Is this Apple running its own microgrids or more?

So much wonderful stuff in this one, including the revelation that Apple has a long, long way to go to catch up with Walmart, whose solar output is well more than double Apple’s. Hey, it’s okay to be in it just for the money, right Sam?

And of course, as Tim Cook noted when stockholders pushed back on Apple’s investment in solar, it’s okay to not be doing it exactly for the money, either. “If you want me to be doing this for ROI reasons,” sez Timmy, “you need to get out of this stock.”

(Classic example of why I said in this forum many years ago, while Steve was still in charge, that he should have handed the reins over to TC years earlier. Not that he meets all of what I consider the minimum standards to be, but I still say that TC’s a better CEO in every way imaginable.)

So, me being an a-hole again about news and Apple’s weak product announcements notwithstanding, this is very, very cool. I really do encourage you to take a quick look at least a couple of these articles.

[Tim Wilson]

On one hand, it’s ridiculous to suggest that a reporter should use Google to find basic information before opening their yap. I mean, if reporters were interested in facts, there’d be no news business anyway. Facts are boring.

On the other hand, NOTHING about this was secret. Certainly the governor did what he could, touting a $2 billion investment and up to 650 jobs. The press release is still up on the Arizona governor’s web page. The blather about “this is a great day for Arizona” notwithstanding, it WAS a great day for Arizona.

“This is a great day for Arizona, and we have moved rapidly to make this happen and take advantage of Apple’s interest in our state,” said Governor Ducey. “Apple is by far one of the most innovative and successful companies in the world. Its decision to bring this new facility to Mesa is a huge win for Arizona and a high testament to our business-friendly climate and talented workforce. This expansion will bring a significant economic investment, and propel Arizona’s position as one of the best states in the nation in which to do business. I’m proud to continue our partnership with Apple with this new project.”

It was also a great day for fans of renewable energy and high tech in general, and the story was reported widely, around the world.

When GigaOM posted the news in February 2015 (“Apple to build $2B solar-powered “command center” data center at Arizona factory site”), they linked back to an AMAZING story from 2014 about Apple’s solar farms in North Carolina.

Among the revelations there is that Apple was using sheep to graze the grass under the panels. Previous attempts to use goats had failed when the goats kept chewing the wires.

So Arizona reporters yapping about “Apple unveiled” and “previously under wraps” are easily demonstrable lies or laziness, depending on the source, and depending on whether you believe reporters should be responsible for using Google before they open their gobs.

The North Carolina story really WAS under wraps, though. Apple had already committed to greener energy, but nobody had really seen what that would mean. Apple was flying under NC radar because what they wanted to do — sell the excess energy — was in fact not legal at the time.

Arizona, not so much. LOL They were more than ready. They actually worked on it. As noted, they had in fact been working with Apple on this from the get-go, and were rightly proud at what they’d been able to put together. A nice example of how public-private partnerships are supposed to work.

Oh, if only if only if only there was a way for people who report on these topics for living to look back in time 18 whole months to find if there had been a major wave of announcements….if only….if only…..

(Disclosure: I hate “news”. I love green tech. I’m right fond of sheep, but we’re only friends.)

[Tim Wilson]

Easy: spam.

Very nearly 100% of the words in our hand-filtering system is there because the company or its agents have spammed us repeatedly enough that we have no choice but to examine every mention of their names, one at a time, to be certain that it’s not part of their proven history of fraud and disruption.

This particular company was one of the worst, sometimes making hundreds of posts in a matter of minutes. We will continue blocking any posts that we determine are originating with them.

We of course welcome our members talking about a tool they find useful, so that’s what we do when we see them mentioned. We make sure that it’s not spam, and that it’s coming from a real person.

We apologize for any delays, but these guys will stay in the spam filter until the sun goes nova.

🙂

However, you make a very interesting suggestion, offering people a chance to edit their post before making it public. We’ll think about it. My initial reaction is that it will cause more trouble than it’s worth. YOUR mention of the company is 100% legitimate, so there was no reason for you not to make the mention. We’re absolutely fine with our members talking about these folks, so there was no need for you to avoid saying their name.

That is, our intent is NOT to have nobody mention that name. Our intent is only to make sure our actual members are doing the talking, and not another fraud account that they started solely to make spam posts.

That’s why I’m thinking that it’s easier to just let people make the post, let us acknowledge that it’s not spam, and move on as quickly as possible.

Best,

Tim Wilson
Creative COW

[Tim Wilson]

[Ron Yeadon] “If you want I can expand greatly on this for you”

Please do!

[Tim Wilson]

[Mark Suszko] “Update: the backlash in viewership was so severe, the mattress company has closed and gone out of business.”

Nope. They plan to reopen in the coming week with new employees. The owner claims the ad was run without him seeing it, and he’s fired those involved. The website is still online with no mention of any of this.

As I suspected originally, this is a store known for outrageous ads. I’d encourage you to check their Facebook page for examples, except that there’s enough pretty foul stuff to not really make it worth your while. There are HOWLS of protest from Facebook commenters going back a very long way, for offenses of a pretty remarkable variety, including some suggestions that the NBA should be suing them. I don’t even want to know why.

And as I also suspected, there are a lot of comments telling those offended to get over it, it was a joke, blah blah blah.

Without meaning to sound all “What is this world coming to?”, this is lamentable in every direction, but ultimately far LESS offensive than almost anything I’ve seen on the news in the past few weeks, and almost redeemed by its self-knowledge of its own ridiculousness.

In fact, their whole approach is ineptitude that’s supposed to be endearing, and in some ways almost is (as commenters note on other less offensive ads), but there’s really not much to be done with local, family-owned businesses bent on commoditizing bad ads other than not doing them.

[Tim Wilson]

[David Cherniack] “Hmmm. You seem to have missed my point, as well as my humour. “

Not the first time. LOL I’m also, to use another musical metaphor, tightly strung on this, and do indeed tend to over-respond.

And despite the lengthiness of this reply, I think you’re right that we agree on most of this.

[David Cherniack] “Nevertheless the point I was making is that some documentaries are more objective than others. By not including that caveat I thought your statement lax. However if you’re insisting that they’re all equally lacking in objectivity that’s a rather extreme position because it equates the filmic ravings of a madman with a Fred Wiseman. “

Hmmm, I’m still not sure about that. I think there are documentaries that are outside polemics (Jump! is a fantastic piece on competitive jump roping, highly recommended), but I think the best documentaries have an advocative intent. A nice contrast with Jump! is Hoop Dreams, which follows the diverging paths of two basketball phenoms. Dives deeply into their lives in a way that’s as perspective-laden as can be.

Not that I’m a huge fan of sports documentaries (these are the only two on my list), but they underscore that yes, there are degrees of heat, but that’s really it, imo.

[David Cherniack] “butt I’m not sure what it has to do with anything.”

I see what you did there!

Yet another way of saying that yes, every perspective is equally unique, equally subjective, and equally distant from objective.

A philosophical distinction as much as anything else, but philosophy is what we’re mostly talking about.

Ostensibly, though, we’re not talking about documentaries at all in this thread. At least at the outset. 🙂 We’re talking about NEWS. And news is even less objective than documentaries. There’s really REALLY no such thing as objective news.

There are however degrees of heat.

I’ll give you an example though. Good old Uncle Walter, the paragon of supposed objectivity. No yelling, but NO objectivity. His on-air objection to the Vietnam war turned the tide in anti-war sentiment.

My favorite example though is CBS news’ coverage of Woodstock. You can find it on YouTube. The correspondent is standing in front of a garbage pile far higher than his head, stretching out farther than the camera can see. Very calmly, very professional, in the manner of a seasoned veteran who has seen every kind of mayhem first hand and this ain’t nothin‘ compared to that, nevertheless for all practical purposes rants about the death toll, and the endless lawsuits, the strong objections from the (original) locals that forced the last-minute move to a farm that left people sleeping in sewage…on and on and on.

Every word objectively true. Not one single sentence constructed objectively.

(As a fun exercise, check the NBC and ABC coverage, too. Very different styles, virtually no agreement on facts, completely different conclusions.)

I disagree with most newscasters, heck, most people, about something. LOL Maybe even most things. LOL But I do tend to gravitate to the ones that yell less, and everyone tends to gravitate toward news that agrees with them. Because news is never objective.

To my ongoing point about THIS use of news, in the lawsuit that sparked the thread, I keep coming back to the point that the broadcast did not in any way distort what was being said.

The plaintiffs are very clear on this. There was no distortion of their position. Their actual opinions were precisely and fairly laid out in a reasonable manner.

The problem was the cut-in.

If you recall the movie Broadcast News, the entire thing hinged on a cut-in. A single tear rolling down William Hurt’s face. The fact is that the interviewer’s reverse has become so ingrained in our visual language that we forget what it means. The cut-in is ALWAYS a comment. Even if the comment is only, “I care about what you’re saying. Do go on.”

Because the news isn’t objective. It’s subjective. It’s the reporter’s eye view.

The cut-in that led to the collapse of everything was, unlike the example in the suit here, entirely sympathetic/empathetic. Reporter responds in a human way to a human tragedy. We can all think of a thousand deeply moving examples of this, when reporters choke up, or even break down.

This one was phony, though. The tear was manufactured: “Hold on, I’ve got an idea that will really sell this story — ima make a single tear roll down my face. I can do this. Watch.” The cut-in told a different story than the one that actually happened.

If it was true, there would have been no controversy.

And that’s what at issue here. NOT distortion of meaning. Keep coming back to that. The WORDS were accurate. The POSITION was clearly presented in a way that the plaintiffs recognize as valid.

It’s a distortion of CONTEXT. The producers added slack-jawed silence that didn’t happen there, and only happened at all when the subjects had been led to believe that picture wasn’t rolling.

And since context is the only truth I recognize, this becomes undeniably wrong, and ulimately unforgivable. Everyone involved should be fired — not for not being objective. No such thing. But for trying to tell a story that didn’t happen.

NEWS does that. NOT documentaries, not generally.

Madmen rave (although I adore Herzog’s non-raving documentaries, especially Encounters at the End of the World and Cave of Forgotten Dreams — noting his contextual, and I think proper, perspective is that the best science and the best art is created by people who are at best unhinged), but I can’t think of a single documentary where someone has successfully made the case that the filmmaker just made shit up in a way that completely reversed what someone SAID.

THAT I think is the straw man, and certainly not reflective of this news lawsuit.

Plaintiffs regularly claim lack of permission, they disagree with the outcome (he used my injury to argue against a war that I support), but neither Michael Moore nor Werner Herzog (assuming that those are among your betes noires, David) manufactured a reality as egregiously as what journalists do every day.

For the same reason my mother and you sought out David’s butt. Your perspective is your perspective for whatever reason you choose — curiosity, fondness of butts, whatever.

No more or less objective than any other position, but stated in a way mercifully free of madness.

[Tim Wilson]

Since among the 2 million bits of nonsense I’ve raised so far include ear-device interfaces and Apple’s formerly awesome advertising, I thought I’d throw in this bit from our friend Rob Ashe at Conan:

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[Tim Wilson]

[David Cherniack] ” to dismiss all documentary as lacking objectivity is too general a statement.”

We’ll have to disagree on this one. Rather than lax, I’m wound tight as a drum on this.

I can put it a different way, to say that there’s no such thing as objectivity, anywhere, on any topic.

[David Cherniack] “there is a objective world that exists beyond our subjective experience. “

That’s true, and it isn’t. Once you pick up a camera, it’s not true.

Have you ever seen a picture of Michaelangelo’s David’s butt? Highly unlikely, but I assure you, he does in fact have a butt. I know this because, subjectively speaking, my mother finds David’s penis wholly unimpressive, so on her most recent visit to Florence, she worked her way around to the back to get a picture of his butt, thinking surely it would be more interesting. Having seen the photos she took, I have to agree with her. David’s butt is where it’s at.

But David himself is wall-to-wall non-objectivity! Michaelangelo was at least honest about that — not that he needed to be. Audiences knew that, and frequently objected to the overtly political statements it represented. The statue was physically attacked, and it’s our good fortune that none of the vandalisms were permanent.

You might say, nope, irrelevant. The statue is the statue. And I’d say, the choices you make about what to show and not to show are relevant, as is your decision to say that the meaning of the sculpture to either its creator or the people who he wanted to see it. That tells me about you, and what you think is and isn’t important.

My evaluation of someone who says, “The intent of the artist is irrelevant” is to say, “Ah yes, I understand. The only thing that matters to you about the art is how YOU feel about it. NOW we have a place to start talking in a way that might potentially yield true communication.”

Just as sculptors carve away parts of a stone to leave other parts remaining, people holding cameras make choices about what NOT to show. Whatever objectivity there might have been has been carved away to become a work of the imagination.

Editing is even less objective, because it carves away what has already been carved away. There’s a reason why many directors describe editorial as the last stage in writing, which goes for documentaries too. Stories are SHAPED.

There’s only one reason to make a documentary. One. Because you feel something about something, and you want me to feel something, learn something, do something, or for whatever reason, watch your thing rather than some other thing. There’s an entreaty.

None of this is inherently political, but it’s no less true. Most of my stuff was science and nature. I’ve done some stuff with dance. A lot with music. Local history — and boy howdy, there’s NOTHING less objective than history.

But certainly the closer we get to politics, the less useful it is to talk about objectivity, and the more important it is to talk about what motivates filmmaking choices.

The one and ONLY thing I’ll concede is that there’s a spectrum that documentaries might live along, somewhere between “I want to persuade you” to “I’ll let you draw your own conclusion,” but the latter, to me, is precisely either delusional or fraudulent. No you’re NOT letting my draw my own conclusion from “THE” evidence. You’re giving me YOUR carved-away version of the evidence, and subtracting from THAT even having the courage to be honest about YOUR conclusion.

So, perhaps I was being lax. It’s not either-or, and there are more than two options. So I’ll restate as:

The claims of documentary objectivity can be dismissed as some combination of self-delusion, intentional fraud, cowardice rather than honesty about the conclusions filmmakers have drawn, laziness because they failed to draw one, or general incompetence.

There are probably a few options I’m leaving out, but there may not be anything about filmmaking I believe more strongly. Anyone who hoists the “O” word is to be avoided under every single conceivable circumstance. They’re either bad at filmmaking or bad people in general. No exceptions. Ever.

Feel free to disagree. But I ain’t lax about it.

[Tim Wilson]

The first thing to note is that this lawsuit isn’t about a documentary. It’s about a newsmagazine TV interview.

Not to defame TV newsmagzines. That’s what I did for the heart of my career in video production, and I loved it with my whole heart.

And while it was documentary-esque in style and intent (science and nature; my model was NOVA in 7-minute segments), I thought of “real” documentarians as novelists, where, at my best, I was an essayist.

This is closer to whatever feeds at the bottom of TV news magazines. Insert your least favorite example here.

The principles of documentaries and news apply of course, but I don’t want to overly elevate the majesty of the enterprise in question.

[Andrew Kimery] “[Claude Lyneis] “A documentary without a point of view, hardly seems worth watching… Often the best shots come between shots when the subject relax their guard.”

This isn’t subjects relaxing their guard though…..Ex. if you are making a Flat Earth documentary but all of your interviewees say the Earth is round you don’t ‘fix it in post'”

re: objectivity, exactly. My feeling that any documentarian who claims that objectivity even exists, much less that it applies to his or her work needs to be branded with a scarlet “C” for “Charlatan” or “I” for “Idiot” as appropriate, which will then also be supered across the center of every frame of their work.

But, specifically, the subjects had not relaxed at all. They were IMMEDIATELY ready with a reply. It’s the whole reason they were there. Footage was ADDED to create the false impression that they were caught off guard.

[Andrew Kimery] “[Claude Lyneis] “If they can sue over this, what could they do to a Michael Moore documentary?”

…And Moore has been sued many times.”

Sort of, but not for this kind manipulation.

A typical example is Iraq war veteran Sgt. Peter Damon, who described the combats events that led to the loss of his arms in a TV news account, 16 seconds of which was included in Fahrenheit 9/11.

He sued Moore for $85 million (yes, $85 million for 16 seconds in a 2-hour+ movie) because he felt that the clip’s inclusion implied that he (Damon) had cooperated with Moore on an anti-war piece, when Damon had not met Moore, and strongly supported the war.

His $85 million suit was dismissed, because, said the judge, the 16-second excerpt Moore used was unedited and verbatim, and accurately characterized the man, his words, and the events. More details here.

So THAT’s the kind of thing Michael tends to get sued for. Not “he misrepresented me” but “he didn’t have my permission” and “I don’t agree with him and my presence in his picture implies that I do”.

I assume that Michael would consider what Katie’s editors did to be offensive. There’s certainly no precedent for it in either his work as a documentarian OR as a TV newsmagazine guy. His MO is to let the people talk. Very 60 Minutes that way.

(Speaking of which, anybody here but me remember Moore’s TV Nation? I loved that thing. Nine episodes and eight episodes in the summers of 1994 and 1995 respectively, offering some genuinely hilarious takes on serious issues way, way ahead of its time. That is, unlike The Daily Show or some such, it was in fact intended primarily as news, with humor simply its style. Both seasons were Emmy-nominated for “Best Informational Series”, with the first season winning the Emmy in a tie with Ken Burns’ Baseball. Yeah, it had THAT sincerity of intent as information, and that excellence of execution.)

[Oliver Peters] “I think it’s OK to “shape” the answers through the editing process, as long as you stay true to the intent of what was said. “

[Andrew Kimery] “Agreed. Cut for time and/or clarity but you have to keep the substance/meaning of the moment/response intact.”

Again, there is no allegation of misrepresentation. The allegation is mockery.

Try this as a thought exercise. Imagine a soundbite that’s otherwise flawless — accurate, compelling, tastefully edited, raises no objection from the subject.

Then add a six second clip of people laughing right after it.

Or circus music playing underneath it.

Or cutting in disturbing or offensive footage on either side of the clip.

The words are 100% accurate in every way. Something else got added for a reason that was not to clarify, support, or even contradict what was SAID.

Plaintiffs allege that the editing was to create the false IMPRESSION of their lack of competence, commitment, and focus as spokespeople.

At what point does out-of-context silence turn into mockery? At what point does mockery turn into slander?

Which is to say, at what point does out-of-context silence become slander?

[Tim Wilson]

[David Roth Weiss] “This is exactly why E&O insurance is required. It is incumbent on the plaintiffs to prove they’ve lost business, which is doubtful in this case, so the insurance company will just settle ASAP. “

A million times yes to E&O. When I’m feeling harsh, I’d say something like “If you say you can’t afford E&O insurance, then you can’t afford to be in this business.” When I’m feeling less harsh, I’d still say, “Don’t be an idiot. Get the insurance.”

But the suit isn’t about an error or an omission. It claims defamatory intent. Loss of income isn’t at stake. It’s loss of face. They say the producers used “deceptive editing methods” to make them — and I love this language — “appear stumped.”

Is it illegal to make someone appear stumped when they in fact had an answer at the ready? In this case, there’s absolutely no funding at stake, no limitation on the activists’ ability to pursue their activism, so it’s nothing more than “they hurt our feelings.”

[Noah Kadner] “But we all know only the lawyers actually benefit in these things.”

Not necessarily. My assumption is that the plaintiffs are using the suit and the attending quivering outrage over “the media” to whip their fundraising to a stiff-peaked meringue. They may be able to make MORE money if it DOES get dismissed.

“They made us look stumped” is ultimately a pretty pathetic “injury”, so it could in fact easily get thrown out. But it’s hard to overstate how much people hate “the media”, so who knows. The chance to make “the media” accountable for ANYTHING might be enough to motivate graduating the rolling of eyes to the rolling of heads.

The specific “injury” is trivial enough to be almost beneath the threshold of measurability, but it’s certainly prudent for anyone working in a field remotely along these lines to remember that outrage is always cocked and ready to fire. The guiding principle for editors may be summarized as, “Don’t try to make the other guy look as venal as you THINK he is.”

btw, the footage that got cut in to make these guys look stumped was recorded while the camera was rolling on room tone. I almost want to see this go to court just to establish a legal precedent with “room tone” in the official record. Maybe have a module in film school on the ethics of room tone.

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btw, my tongue-in-cheek riposte notwithstanding, I do think that the ethics of news magazine-style editing news (which I think this is, more than documentary) is very much worth discussing.

But then slipping into my guise as occassional forum referee (when I’m not being one of the pugilists), a reminder please to avoid couching the ethics of editing in terms of the ethics of one political position or the other. So far so good. 🙂