I am going to try very hard to write as little as possible about US politics. Let this be a rare outburst!
Like many others, I too have followed the presidential debates and found Kerry's responses (largely) more substantive and more consistent . More importantly, Kerry's assertions in the debate, even when they were wrong, were largely in the exeggerations category. Bush's or Cheney's assertions, when they were wrong, were often in the 'lies' category and they were more frequent.
Media's narrative often failed to make this qualitative difference in the responses by the candidates or by the respective campaigns. This is not because the media is evil, but simply because mainstream media is not equipped to deal with outright distortions or disengeneuousnesses in a way that common men with their incredibly crowded lives can process quickly or easily (ie except for the political news junky population).
Television spcially, has killed nuances from public discourse. Initially, when TV popped up as a significant player in the media landscape, it tripped politicians (e.g. Nixon's disastrous TV appearances). But spinmeisters learnt fast and in the intervening decades have mostly succeeded in coopting the broadcast media.
The other sociological change has probably happened in the psychographics of mediamen. From what I read, the earlier generation of pressmen were not very well-paid (except for Time-Life and a few notable exceptions) and people could still bootstrap themselves into the newsroom through a route that often included the mail room and night schools. Today, increasing media consolidation and attractive pay in national media (specially in TV) has ensured that you need a good college education and certain degree of sophistication upfront. It has become an atractive career option (and as it should be). This has ensured that there is now a certain degree of similarity in the psychographics of the spinner and the spinned. A socially adversarial relationship doesnt exist anymore (And let me be clear that I am not mourning that at all. But it just happens to be another check that doesn't exist anymore.)
Thirdly, the straight media simply has not figured out how to deal with outlets like Fox. Mike Doogan, A letter writer in Romanesko's had it right:
"The problem is that Fox News and the Washington Times are not a balance for the New York Times and ABC News. The latter two are journalistic organizations; the former are propaganda outlets. It's confusing to a lot of people, because Fox looks like a news channel and the Washington Times looks like a newspaper.
But the truth is that journalism is a process, not a product. A journalist attempts to collect, as even handedly as possible, as many facts as possible, and to fashion them into a narrative that readers and viewers can understand. A propagandist uses facts selectively, in an attempt to convince readers and viewers of the truth of a pre-determined position."
The emergence of outlets like the Fox seems to have stupefied the press and have forced the advertisement dependent cable outlets like CNN and MSNBC to gradually move rightward over the last few years in a desperate attempt to hold on to their audience.
Lastly, a general media and campaign fascination with gotcha moments (and this really is the true gift of television - a penchant for theater) ensured that both candidates were afraid of even trying to give honest, complex answers. Most of the time, the candidates were more intent on getting their talking points across than actually debating each other. This message discipline' brought down the significance and the interestingness of the debate. I dont blame the candidates for this. Anyone who tries for an honest debate will get destroyed in the current environment.
It was left to John Stewart, the comic genius of America, to bring to the fore media's complicity in perpetuating spin in the US national discourse. In a widely downloaded and commented upon TV interview in Crossfire, Stewart savaged the crosstalk duo for their participation in a make-believe that "hurts America". It needs to be said that Stewart himself is no longer a subversive comedian on the margins of mainstream consciousness. His every utterence is now widely reported and dissected. As Slate noted he won't be able to get away with his 'I am only a comedian' act for very long.
But it is still highly amusing that it took the 'court jester' to announce on primetime television that the emperor has no clothes. I wonder wheather CNN will ever call Stewart back again.
I fully agree with Timothy Noah. Barbara Ehrenreich ought to be drafted for a more permanent position in the NYT op-ed pages! (even though I dont think that is gonna happen) She has a certain eloquence and a flair that is often missing from the op-ed pages of NYT.
Sometimes you do get some wonderful writing (e.g. Nick Hornby on Marah), but mostly the columnists on NYT are just bland; shadow boxing with each others through the world's most exclusive journalistic real estate.
This week, well known NYT reporter Judith Miller wrote about Syria's attempts to develop nuclear weapons.
Assad is a 24 carrat scoundrel. He is capable of any kind of nastiness. But I no longer trust Miller's word for it. Jack Shafer has been keeping a vigil on Judith Miller's reporting on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Also read Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz (who has his own conflict of interest) on the subject of Judith Miller. Her credibility on the subject of WMD is shot to pieces. I am awed that NYT would let her report on this subject so soon after the last fiasco.
Talking of credibility, check out Walter Pincus and Dana Millbank's story on Dick Cheney's defence of the US administration's Iraq policy on the talk show circuit last sunday:
Similarly, Cheney argued that the administration did not understate the cost of the war in Iraq, saying it did not put a precise figure on it. Asked about previous assertions by then-White House Budget Director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. that the war would cost $50 billion to $60 billion and that a figure in the range of $100 billion to $200 billion was too high, Cheney replied: "Well, that might have been, but I don't know what his basis was for making that judgment."
.....He then revived the possibility that Mohamed Atta, who led the Sept. 11 attacks, allegedly met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Baghdad five months before the attack.. ....An FBI investigation concluded that Atta was apparently in Florida at the time of the alleged meeting, and the CIA has always doubted it took place. Czech authorities, who first mentioned the alleged meeting in October 2001 to U.S. officials, have since said they no longer are certain the individual in the video of the supposed meeting was Atta. Meanwhile, in July, the U.S. military captured the Iraqi intelligence officer who was supposed to have met Atta and has not obtained confirmation from him.
Cheney also seemed to broaden the intelligence on other alleged al Qaeda connections with Hussein, saying, "The Iraqi government or the Iraqi intelligence service had a relationship with al Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the '90s." Up to now, administration officials and CIA documents have said there had been eight meetings, primarily in the early 1990s, when bin Laden was in Sudan.
Cheney was less forthcoming when asked about Saudi Arabia's ties to al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 hijackers. "I don't want to speculate," he said, adding that Sept. 11 is "over with now, it's done, it's history and we can put it behind us."
....Of the weapons search, Cheney said, "We've got a very good man now in charge of the operation, David Kay, who used to run UNSCOM." Kay, who is heading the 1,200-person search group, did not in fact run UNSCOM, the U.N. Special Commission that directed inspections in Iraq from 1991 through 1998; he was for one year the chief inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency, which handled the nuclear portion of those investigations for UNSCOM.
As evidence that Hussein had "reconstituted" his nuclear weapons program, as Cheney had said before the war, the vice president cited Hussein's prewar possession of "500 tons of uranium." But the material was low-grade uranium, the waste product of a nuclear reactor unusable for weapons production without sophisticated processing that Iraq could not do.
Cheney also spoke of a "a gentleman" who had come forward "with full designs for a process centrifuge system to enrich uranium and the key parts that you need to build such a system." The man, Iraqi scientist Mahdi Obeidi, had denied that the nuclear program had been reconstituted after 1991.
But Cheney knows what he was doing. A lot more people would watch the sound bites on TV than would read Washington Post.
A few weeks back, a Washingtonian story had puzzled over why the Post doesnt love Walter Pincus:
On March 16, the eve of war, Pincus wrote in the Post that ?U.S. intelligence agencies have been unable to give Congress or the Pentagon specific information? about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
At the time, the Bush White House was telling the world that America had to invade Iraq to root out weapons of mass destruction. Pincus quoted sources saying that there was ?a lack of hard evidence.? And they also said the White House had ?exaggerated intelligence? to back up its drive toward war.
Pincus was uniquely positioned to delve into the intricacies of the weapons question. At 70, he had been reporting on national security for 25 years at the Post. Along the way he had cultivated sources in Congress, the CIA, the Pentagon, and the scientific community. For decades, he has been close to chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix.
Yet the Post buried Pincus?s March 16 story on page A17. It took help from Bob Woodward to get the story published at all....According to reporters, editors continually underplayed Pincus?s scoops and discounted their stories that ran counter to Bush?s call to arms. None of which deterred him, especially after he dissected Secretary of State Colin Powell?s February 5 speech to the United Nations. ?I suddenly realized everything he said was inferential,? says Pincus. As he did with stories about the neutron bomb in the 1970s and the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s, Pincus burrowed deep and wrote often.
...In June Pincus sunk his teeth deeper into the emerging story of the nuclear material that Iraq was supposed to have sought from Niger to make nuclear bombs. US officials repeated the claim as fact and talked ominously of mushroom clouds. President Bush mentioned ?significant quantities of uranium? in his State of the Union speech. .... Pincus pursued it day after day. He says he had to fight to get it on the front page. ?The best way to get a memo to the President is the front page of the Post,? he says. Finally, at the end of May, Pincus broke onto the front page with a story about the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. He stayed there as his stories?some with other reporters?put pressure on the White House to admit that the President?s 16-word sentence about uranium going to Iraq was not credible.
Pincus eventually prevailed within his own newspaper, but why did a veteran reporter have to bow and scrape to get his stories noticed and then printed?
....What Pincus did was help put the Post in front of the biggest story of the day. Managing editor Steve Coll says of Pincus: ?We were proud of his coverage before the war, and we?re proud of it now, and we?ve tried to give it prominent display throughout.?
(Some links via TPM)
Everett True in a particularly moving passage about Rock:
I want to dress in black, cool, studied, shades a matted mess on my shaking faces, life a riot of colour, (pink and gold and red). I want to conga with Billy Liar, dance on the grave of dead and given up friends and shout in their comatose skulls, leaven this existence, with an enthusiasm that is all the more wonderful because it is so primal. I want to fuck the world and give birth to nobility, a new strain of life.
Everett True in 'Careless Talk Costs Lives' (CTCL) #11, Feb 2002 issue as quoted in Pink Planet May-June 2003 issue. CTCL is an independent British music magazine started a few months back by Everett True. True is a slightly eccentric British journalist, ?credited with discovering grunge, introducing Kurt (Cobain) to Courtney and later busting the door wide open with a now infamous story in Bretain?s Melody Maker?. Later on, he hit the road.. hit the bottle.. wrote books..dropped out of circulation and has now resurfaced with a new magazine. His stated goal is ?Destroying the music industry with 12 issues ? or else we have failed?
Everett is one of dozens of personalities from the zine world interviewed and excerpted in the May-June issue of ?Pink Planet?. This issue is a celebration of print rather than music and introduced me to a host of zines and people I have never had the time or inclination to research. If you are in North America and have access to the magazine, this is definitely one for the keeps. (Incidentally, CTCL is a British magazine and for some weird reason True doesn?t seem to terribly interested in finding distribution)
It doesn?t even sound like Chris Bell; He had never sung that well before, which makes it even harder to take, since it was the last, or one of the last things he did. So confident, and at the same time, somehow so vulnerable. The song itself, the experience of singing it, seems to have done something to him, worn him our. Three and a half minutes have gone by, but he sounds ten years older. The chorus is simple:
I fall every time
Though I know she lies
I can?t stay away
But it?s how he holds the words in his mouth, sings ?stay aawaaay? from the back of his throat, like he?s physically trying to hold himself down in the bed, knowing he shouldn?t go over there, shouldn?t call. There is only one line of harmony in the song. It comes out of nowhere, on the bridge, a quiet falsetto, maybe Bell?s own. You can miss if so easily ? you have to squeeze the headphones to sides of your head. The line is ?keeping me in the dark?.
John Jeremiah Sullivan writing about Chris Bell who sang the track 20 ?You and Your Sister? in Oxford American?s 2003 music issue. Chris Bell died when he crashed into a telephone pole a few days after Christmas in 1978. John Jeremiah Sullivan has a book coming out about horses and fathers in 2004 (Farrer, Strauss and Girox?). The song is available in the album ?I am the cosmos? released by Rykodisc in 1992 and ?The big star story? released by Rykodisc in 2003.
Oxford American is a literary magazine of the South. It showcases music from the South in an issue every year. This year, the accompanying CD has 20 tracks of blues, jazz, soul, folk and pop music from the South. The magazine itself is devoted to describing each track, its singer and the history behind the music. It is worth checking out.
The current issue of PDN magazine out on the shelves is their photoannual. Check it out. I ought to start subscribing to the magazine instead of buying it off the shelf every other month!
This is for all those people who have been landing here via google looking for stuff on Jayson Blair.
My previous post on Blair is here. 'Washington City Paper' article that I linked to in that post has a scathing critique on the subject.
The most exhaustive coverage is now available on NYT itself:
-Article on Corrections
-The list of corrections
-The editor's note which goes on to say:
For all of the falsifications and plagiarism, The Times apologizes to its readers in the first instance, and to those who have figured in improper coverage. It apologizes, too, to those whose work was purloined and to all conscientious journalists whose professional trust has been betrayed by this episode.
Romenesko's as usual provides terrific ongoing coverage and is your best bet for keeping up on the subject. You may want to take some time to browse through Romenesko's letters forum. It has a vibrant media community.
So far as I know, Jason Blair did not have a home page.
I don't take any pleasure in seeing the Times having to swallow such humiliations. I don't think I'll have anything more to say about the Blair issue specifically.
However, this passage about Howell Raines, the edior of NYT, that Cosmo macero has in his weblog, had to be quoted:
"I am haunted by something I know in my bones," Raines wrote in 1998. "Mr. Barnicle, like this writer, is a product of a male-dominated, mostly white tribal culture that takes care of its own." The "historical bottom line of this event will be that a white guy with the right connections got pardoned for offenses that would have taken down a minority or female journalist."
Jeffrey Goldberg's 'In the party of God' (part I and part II) published in The New Yorker, (Oct 2002) got the national magazine award for best reporting given out this week. In that article, Goldberg laid out the case that the Hezbollah (not the one based in Kashmir, the one in Southern Lebanon) is the deadliest terrorist organization in the world and has a more successful trackrecord of achieving its political objectives than Al Quida. It is a spine chilling peace of journalism and very well researched.
His Iraq article was also fascinating, exhaustive and controversial. It was used as ammunition by the Bush administration, in the Beltway PR war for intervention in Iraq. Goldberg's access to, and alignment with Pentagon's foreign policy thinkers is total. (Matt Welch had some interesting comments at the time about the article and its naysayers).
It should also be noted here that Goldberg has apparently served in the Israeli army and may have probably cause for enhancing the importance of Hezbollah.
Whatever his political loyalties might be, he certainly knows his way around the murky world of middle eastern politics and that illuminates his Hezbollah articles. Go check them out.
On a letter posted in the Romanesko forum on 4/30/03, Bill Cook summed up the last few months' damage:
Today, in a devastating analysis of the Jayson Blair affair published in Washington City Paper, Erik Wemple and Josh Levin provided a more nuanced analysis:
At a less perspicacious publication, Blair might not have acquired such a grotesque corrections archive.
Yet Blair's sniper coverage appears to hit the paper's mea culpa weak spot: 'fessing up to mistakes in coverage trends. Whether it's correspondent Walter Duranty's brushing off the famines that killed millions in the Soviet Union in the '30s or the late-'90s stories that overstated the U.S. espionage case against scientist Wen Ho Lee, the Times resists acknowledging that its coverage ever goes off track......
No probe, however, will excuse the full-system breakdown that permitted Blair to tarnish American journalism. Where were the line editors with the questions about the alleged interrogation videotape? Didn't anyone ask how this kid parachuted into Maryland and suddenly corralled a breathtaking scoop? "There's no system that I know of that can protect you from a reporter or editor who sets out to make up untrue things and get them into the paper," says Raines.
More pertinently, isn't it time that NYT appoints an ombudsman?
(More later)
The News that CNN Kept to itself (via Sassafrass)
Paul Krugman explains much better than I could, why many people feel so uneasy about what may happen in Iraq.
I like Agonist.org. It is one of my primary sources of information on the Iraq war (aside from BBC and Reuters) . That is why this made me feel very sad. (via Dan Gillmor).
BBC reporter Stuart Hughes is weblogging from Iraq. Let's hope BBC shows more tolerance than CNN did. (via Linkmachinego). Also, check out the Washington Post guide to blogs on the Iraq war.
NYT's spiking of sports columns on Augusta golf club's admission policy has become quite the scandal. New York based papers are of course having a field day with it.
Seth Mnookin's commentary provides a background to understand what is going on.
I must say I am a little shocked by this episode. I agree with the following passage.
"...It's worth pausing for a second to appreciate the New York Times for what it is: a stunning cultural achievement. Almost anything of note from anywhere appears in the Times--it's the paper-of-record for Western civilization. From Circuits to Science Times to the Sunday Magazine, the New York Times is shockingly comprehensive and incredibly well-written. It's no exaggeration to say that the New York Times we pick up every morning is an accomplishment on par with the Great Library of Alexandria." (via Oxblog)
But I feel slightly cheated.
If you are interested in following the controversy, Romenesko's medianews is the best place to keep up with it.
I'll probably expand this post later in the evening.
On Freedom of expression:
Ted Rall's rather tasteless cartoon on '9/11 widows' created a controvery. New York Times pulled it off its site. People have been quite upset pretty much all round. John Scalzi seems to be the only well known writer who defended Rall's position in his column. (Scalzi has some great writing in that site, worth exploring).
Incidentally, Rall antagonized a lot of people some time back too by taking on Art Spiegelman, The doyen of the cartoon world in New York. It precipitated a very nasty and very public legal brawal with Danny Hellman, another cartoonist (Hellman's take here and Rall's here). Rall doesnt appear to be a very pleasant guy. I went through some of his cartoons. Most of the time, he isn't very funny. He seems to use cartoons as a tool for social commentary. But I do feel that he has every right to publish bad cartoons so long as someone is ready to publish them. Similarly, NYT has the editorial right to take these off their site if they offends their sensibilities. No big deal there.
In another totally unrelated event, Arundhati Roy, the Pulitzer prize winning author was jailed for a day and fined Rs. 2000 on contempt of court charges in India. Yesterday, in Mefi, I kind of got blinded on the related issue of the Sardar Sarovar Dam controversy and my own views on Arundhati Roy's politics. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that this has less to do with Arundhati Roy and more to do with her right to express her opinion however strident, theatrical or attention grabbing those opinions may be.
This is one cliche that is worth repeating again and again and again: Freedom of speech is one of the most sacred and inalienable rights in any democracy and we should all go out of our way to preserve it.
(Most of the links are derived from mefi. I dont feel very good about that. But I spent whatever spare time I got yesterday in mefi. So, no surprises there).
PS: My today's presentation got cancelled. All that hard work ......
This (John Derbyshire on NRO) is truely sick stuff. Its a rather dated item. I went there via Mefi. I am embarassed that I even read NRO sometimes.
In the Loop is one of my favourite columns for political gossip in DC. Al Kamen has a dry wit and there is very little that happens on the capitol that he doesn't get to hear about.