While local TV news was the main source for staples such as weather, traffic and breaking news, the internet was the preferred resource for finding more specific information, according to the survey conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and Internet & American Life Project.

Local news and information is filtered best via community, perhaps even more so in the digital age. People continue to show faith in community, whether learning news via word-of-mouth at the supermarket or via local sources and neighbors on Facebook and Twitter. Fifty-five percent said they get their local news via word of mouth at least once a week compared to 74 percent for television, 51 percent for radio, 50 percent for the local newspaper, 47 percent for the Internet, and 9 percent for a printed community newsletter.

Read the rest of my post and check out the full survey at KCET’s The Public Note blog.

Her new book, Kill the Messenger examines the recent history of the media’s role and influence on cultural and political conflicts from the Holocaust, to the Rwandan genocide to WikiLeaks and the Arab Spring. It’s a five-part book illustrating the influence of media on society and the human condition under varying cultural and political climates. Media can make a big difference, the book resolves, from fomenting mass rage and genocide upon a wave of propaganda in Rwanda to creating and enabling a bridge to conflict resolution with the help of international NGOs in neighboring Burundi.

AS: Is there a primary theme in Kill the Messenger that alludes to a particular pattern that drives media toward influencing the public for better or worse?

MA: The overarching theme is that media can be used for good and bad… in the cases where you have this awful combination of extremists controlling the media and ethical journalism being silenced or diminished, you can have some really dire consequences.

In the worst case scenarios, when ethical responsible journalism is largely silenced and you end up with this hegemonic message that is of an ideological, specifically extremist nature, you can end up with genocide — Rwanda, the Holocaust, and what we saw in Bosnia. Of course it’s not just the media you have to have all these other circumstances into play… but if you look across history what you find is a lot of these conflicts start when extremists take the microphone.

On the other side, we saw some transformations in the Middle East that happened really fast this year. It looked like they happened fast but they’d been brewing for years. I argue that mass media and journalism have been bringing about political transformation for decades. We saw South Africa go from being an Apartheid state to a multiracial democracy. That wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t have diligent, relentless journalism and journalists looking deeply at these issues and uncovering the abuses and showing the inequities that were occurring in South Africa.

Taiwan and Mexico happened at the same time — two single-party authoritarian rules fell [Mexico’s PRI and Taiwan’s KMT in 2000]. And it took decades. And a lot of trouble by a handful of small journalists — it wasn’t the mainstream establishment — that showed people how the system was inadequate and not just or fair.

The ways people silence journalism range from killing them and torturing them to limiting access to not employing journalists with something important to say. There are also financial constraints, with the internet and the way some information is freely dissemminated — in some cases inaccurately.

Read my complete Q&A with Maria Armoudian at KCET’s The Public Note.

A massive hurricane is swirling toward the eastern seaboard of the U.S. leaving 29 million people under a Hurricane warning on Friday night. Currently a category 2 storm, Hurricane Irene is forecast to straddle the coast before making landfall near New York City. Here in Southern California we don’t have many hurricane threats but then again it had been a while since the East Coast experienced a strong earthquake before this week. But in 1939 the only tropical storm to make landfall in California killed dozens at sea before coming ashore in Long Beach. 45 deaths were reported as a result of the flooding. And in 1858 a hurricane is said to have nearly made landfall off the San Diego coast, causing the 2011 equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars before turning back out to sea.

But in the 19th and even the 20th centuries we did not have the advanced warning and communications systems that we have today. Without even grazing land, Hurricane Irene is making history — New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that today was the first time in the city’s history that mandatory evacuations had been ordered. About a quarter-million residents, primarily on the low-lying edges of Manhattan were urged to abandon their homes. New York’s subway system will be shut down Saturday at noon due to the threat of flooding.

It’s uncertain what kind of damage might result from up 20 hours of sustained tropical storm force winds (40-60 mph forecast), a storm surge up to six feet and a deluge of rain (anywhere from 6 to 15 inches) to top off a wet summer.

But one thing is for sure: Hurricane Irene is headed directly toward NYC. Unless it veers to the west. Or takes a more easterly track. In the post-Katrina era both the government and the public hope to avoid any catastrophic surprises.

NYC Evacuation Map

Google is hosting a central interface where anyone can view and mashup meteorological and government mapping data at crisislanding.appspot.com. FEMA announced a new text messaging service and an Android app today and is regularly publishing updates on local government emergency information sources available on Twitter and is recommending its Ready.gov preparedness guide. Mayor Bloomberg’s office is continuously tweeting updates as well. Maps of the evacuation zones and shelters have proliferated across the web even as the NYC.gov site buckled under heavy demand earlier today.

Power outages will be widespread and cellular voice services may be shaky as they were following Tuesday’s almost entirely unexpected East Coast earthquake. SMS and mobile data services, however, are more likely to tough out the storm and it will be Twitter messages and photos and YouTube videos that will keep people updated in near-real time on their internet-enabled smartphones even after the power goes out (until, inevitably the battery dies on the phone).

Originally posted on KCET’s The Public Note blog.

I am now writing a weekly blog post on media in the digital age for KCET’s The Public Note and will also be contributing posts on local policy at 1st and Spring in addition to occasional posts for LAist.

The ongoing “phone hacking” scandal in the UK may seem like a distant and isolated issue considering how limited the reporting has been in the U.S. press but it’s possible that the media is shying away because it hits too close to home.

What’s come to light in the past month in Britain may be indicative of unethical — if not unlawful — behavior that’s become pervasive across all Western media in the digital age.

At the center of attention is News Corporation, owned by Rupert Murdoch. News Corp. executives will meet with board members in Los Angeles this week for the first time since the scandal, which had been brewing for years, finally broke.

Please click here to continue reading the full article at KCET.org. The following is a brief excerpt.

The fact that News Corp. (and its subsidiaries News Limited in Australia and News International in the UK) has extensive holdings across multiple media platforms suggests that its next moves represent an accountability moment.

In today’s information age it’s not so easy to fabricate stories without getting caught. But the media business is still dominated by the need to have a growing audience to sustain interest from advertisers. The picture emerging from the scandal in the UK is that media outlets will go to great lengths to break stories and attain new information — even illegally — and pay whatever price necessary to keep authorities, whistleblowers, and employees quiet.

Leveraging influence with authorities through payment or blackmail is verboten but it’s an issue that crosses seamlessly over to News Corp’s U.S. holdings, which include Fox News. Through his stable of newspapers, magazines, and broadcast holdings, Murdoch has “strenuously endorsed political candidates and causes and, at times, secured government favors that serve their business interests,” writes Frank Rich in New York which recently published a list of politicians on News Corp.’s payroll.

It’s possible that de-consolidation of the News Corp. empire could be good for both Murdoch and the future of private media and the public interest, as Nicholas Lemann recently suggested on the Council on Foreign Relations website.

But it may be best for independent journalists to carry on watching, reporting and holding all public figures and corporate media accountable for such transgressions.