Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1999 18:45:57 +1200 From: "Craig Harding" <crh@outpost.co.nz> To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Newsflash: The Media Are Stupid Message-ID: <199902160547.SAA22820@fep2-orange.clear.net.nz>
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So Brett Glass sends a major alert to the list, pointing out that the
mainstream news media so far have only focused on Linux users as
participants in Windows Refund Day. "It's all a big Linux users
conspiracy" he cries. "Something Must Be Done."[1]
Apart from not knowing what this Something might be to make Linux
people spontaneously be nice to FreeBSD people [2], Brett's apparent
enthusiasm for conspiracy theories and Linux bashing have caused him
to miss the real problem:
Mainstream journalists are stupid. Really stupid. The media's
specialty "Science & Technology" reporters often know
surprisingly little about technical matters, so expecting normal
journo's to grasp the subtleties of the "huge" differences between
FreeBSD and Linux[3] (for example) is wildly optimistic at best.
I run a video production company, which among other things provides
freelance camera crews for the daily news bulletin of one of the two
national television networks in New Zealand. I frequently work
alongside well-known TV reporters. They're great people, but the
nature of the game is that stories are usually 75% written before the
journo begins the first interview. Even if they do understand the
intricacies involved (such as the journo I worked with covering an
airline crash investigation who holds a private pilot's license),
their explicit goal is to present the story in a way that will appeal
to the average person in the street - complicated parts of the story
are deliberately simplified.
Admittedly my experience is primarily in TV news, which sticks to the
shallow end of the journalism pool. But let's be honest - with a
few notable exceptions, the mainstream media isn't interested in
reporting in depth any more.
Note that while I strongly disagree with Brett about his
Linux-bashing, I deplore attempts to silence him. In case you haven't
been paying attention, one of the instrumental factors in Linux's
success was clearly the uncontrolled, over-the-top, blind, ignorant,
evangelical advocacy of lots of Linux enthusiasts. They didn't check
their activities with any PR co-ordinator or core team, they just
went around telling people Linux is the greatest thing in the world,
irregardless of how wrong that was.
I'm not, BTW, trying to say that Brett is ignorant or blind (which I
realise could be the inference from my previous paragraph). I'm just
saying one of the things FreeBSD needs is people willing to simply
advocate the bloody OS! Even blindly, even if they're doing it in a
manner that would cause the core team to reach for the nuke switch.
Sure a paid PR or marketing position associated with WC is a good
thing (actually a great thing), but we need the other stuff as well.
BTW Brett - while you were lamenting the evils of Linux, the
FreeBSDers who actually attended Windows Refund Day and handed out
FreeBSD stuff probably achieved far more for FreeBSD advocacy.
This is getting Lambert-esque - I better stop.
-- C.
[1] Yes this is wildly paraphrasing. I'll now wildly paraphrase my
own message to save the flamers the trouble: "Whine whine namedrop
proof-by-association whine".
[2] A few of the ideas that sprang to mind:
Kidnap the penguin
Kidnap Linus
Buy out Microsoft, rename Win 2000 to Inferior-To-FreeBSD 1.0
Buy out NBC, rename MSNBC to BSD News
Appoint Jordan as the next Pope.
Encourage Terry to stop holding back and tell us what he really
thinks.
[3] Some of those enormous differences, as seen by a journalist:
Linux is an OS alternative to Windows, it's roughly based on
Unix[tm], it's freely available for download on the Internet, it
runs web servers better than Windows.
FreeBSD is an OS alternative to Windows, it's roughly based on
Unix[tm], it's freely available for download on the Internet, it
runs web servers better than Windows.
Yeah, I see it much clearer now. Chalk and cheese.
--
Craig Harding Head of Postproduction, Outpost Digital Media Ltd
"I don't know about God, I just think we're handmade" - Polly
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