Please check the mod logs. I submitted a story to the US News group linking to an official statement by the Ohio House of Representatives on their decision to not respect a recent election result enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution. I linked to their actual statement at the Ohio government web site. That is a canonical source. And it was removed for not being actual news because it didn’t link to a news publisher.
This is an insane result. One no actual news organization would ever choose to do. They link to canonical sources.
I am objecting to this in the support group because I don’t know where else to go. The issue here is not about my submission, it is about journalistic standards. This is not acceptable.
EDIT Because there remains a dispute witj admins on what constitutes proper sourcing of documents published by a state government legislative body…
Please contact the main administrative offices of Poynter, The Columbia School of Journalism, or The Neiman School at Harvard and say that you run an online news forum, explain the particulars of this issue, and ask if a professor of journalism or other professional in referral is willing to give an informed opinion on proper practices of sourcing in this situation. Please get an external reality check by a professional in the field. Not for this submission, as that’s water past the bridge, but to craft a reasonable policy going forward for future submissions.
I believe if you’re concise and respectful and do not debate the individual, you’ll have no trouble getting an informed opinion.
By all means.
Thank you. Please read in reverse chronological order. It might help to load in a separate tab for reading.
I will now exit this discussion with you. My objection remains on the record.
I agree, it’s propaganda. Has no reason to be on a pure news community. The reason you aren’t able to find reputable news outlets reporting about this is that they came to the same conclusion.
It was posted on the Ohio State House of Representatives official website by elected officials under color of statutory authority.
That makes it NEWS. Not opinion.
I’m not arguing the content of the statement. I’m arguing what news organizations consider to be accepted news sourcing.
A write up has also been posted by the AP now.
The fact that they released the statement is news; the statement itself is not. There is a VERY important distinction there.
The statement is NOT factual. It’s not legislation. It’s not an official order. It’s literally just a claim they are making that they will do X, and (mis)using their platform to do it.
If you write,
you have conveyed the news. The actual source from the idiot GOPers adds nothing to that except propaganda.
You will note that the news reporting by the AP is not just a reprint of the GOP press release, because that’s not how news works.
This is a content neutrality issue. So a Senator could go on the Senate floor and recite, ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb’ and it would still be news. Especially if that Senator was engaging in filibuster. And it wouldn’t matter the Senator was speaking a nursery rhyme. See C-SPAN, which IS NEWS. And is regularly cited as such.
That is NOT a mere ‘press release’ by political party PR staff. Had it been published by the GOP state party office, you could make that argument. That it was published by elected officials at the House website under House of Representatives banner and official seal, makes it an official act by duly elected officials. That is ALWAYS NEWS.
That the import of it represents one branch intervening in another, which is clear by their statement, makes this a constitutional matter under separation of powers. And that too MAKES IT NEWS.
Please contact a third party professional in the field and ask. This is undergrad intro to journalism stuff.
So once again, the fact that they recited Mary Had A Little Lamb would be news. The words of the nursery rhyme themselves (or in our case, the statement on the website) would not be. This is what you’re not getting.
All news channels also air things which are not news. The purpose of CSPAN is to give people a direct view into the running of the government. It does not make everything that happens there news. By your logic, everything that happens anywhere, that is not merely someone stating an opinion, is news.
If you mean that the literal posting of it to the website was an act undertaken in their capacity as elected officials, sure, why not. It does not actually have any legal weight, though. Nothing about the statement had any legal weight. It was not legislation. It was not a state-congressional order. It was merely them stating their intent.
In a pending legislative bill, the words of the bill themselves matter, because they define how the law is to be affected. I would agree that that is news. In this case, the words themselves carry no legal weight, so the words themselves (beyond citation of the key points made) are not news.
To go back to your nursery rhyme analogy, if a senator said, “I intend to pull funding for all child healthcare programs in the US.” and then proceeded to recite the nursery rhyme for 8 hours, the 8 hours worth of nursery rhyme lyrics are NOT NEWS.
An actual reporter would say, “Senator X stated their intent to defund child healthcare programs, and then sang Y for 8 hours.”
THAT is news. An 8 hour transcript of ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ is not. Likewise, all of the partisan cruft included in the GOP statement is extraneous non-news.
Do I personally object to it being linked to? I don’t personally care either way, to be honest, but I think the mod is perfectly justified in their objecting to linking to right-wing political speech content and casting it as ‘news’.
Say it with me: It is news that they said it, but the words themselves are not news.
You literally just had the mod, who is a journalism professional, telling you that you are wrong. Stop throwing your Dunning-Kreuger effect in everyone’s faces.
I wrote for a paper back in the 1990s. With a desk first at an alt weekly in Cincinnati called Everybody’s News and then later as an assistant and stringer for the law desk at The Cincinnati Enquirer. I attended District Court on a regular basis and took notes for that desk. I was also lent out to the politics desk to conduct interviews of elected officials in Columbus when no one else was available. Like for sick days and such.
So I’ve actually been in that legislative hall in Columbus and interviewed elected officials for byline reporters at that regional newspaper in Ohio. I also took graduate J classes at Harvard and earned my BA there.
Whatever his credentials, I think this was a deeply flawed decision on his part and badly serves the News community at BeeHaw. He clearly mistakes opinion of a political party for official statements by legislators under color of law. No pro I’ve ever met confused such things.
I will gladly leave if admins ask. It’s their site. I made my point.
Look, if what you learned at Harvard was “we just count as news everything anyone says,” then we have an issue with Harvard’s J-school.
Did Harvard also tell you to randomly insert capitals in proper nouns? Because you’re consistently doing that.
I have no college degree. I saw no need of one because the J-school had been gutted and rolled into communications, and the writers we had on staff who were on the CMU journalism track were the worst writers we had. Assignments were 12" in three weeks; we needed things turned around in a few hours, and if you can’t write 12" in 20 minutes, this is not the correct field for you.
“Whatever his credentials, …” So you’re admitting you lack respect for actual experience. You previously argued you wanted someone with credentials. The level of cognitive dissonance you are displaying suggests Harvard is a shit school for journalism. Throw the name around all you like; you’re making yourself look like an ass when you can’t follow your own expectations.
At this point, I’d be fine with you leaving and telling everyone you know that Beehaw sucks because they chose a mod with news judgment to run a news community.
You’ll note no one has yet moved to remove you. This is not because the mods and admins agree with you by any stretch, but rather because our goal is an inclusive environment where education is a preferable step to banning. That said, randomly messaging admins to protest an act in line with what is expected of me as a mod went over extremely poorly. All you are doing at this point is unspooling rope.
If you would like outrage peddled as news, I would suggest Beehaw’s U.S. News community is not a good fit. If you are unable to accept constructive feedback without Beeing Nice, I would suggest Beehaw is not a good fit.
You are free to define news however you like. But you can’t expect an established community to say “oh, shit, we were wrong this whole time.”