Deprogramming

Not a lot of posts lately, but I've been contributing to another blog that finally got up and going. Just four days since its inception and over 100 posts. Check it out at de-program.blogspot.com.

Noam Chomsky on the US Election

A really interesting read:

1. Chomsky: US public irrelevant; US can learn something from Bolivia's democracy

John Oliver's rant about Fox News

5/3 update:

A proposal for a decent news network

Some pointers, really:

• 24 hours of news every day means very little if viewers have to wade through hours of banter to get a taste of the day's news.


• The responsibility of news networks is to educate viewers. Viewers want to know what is happening in the world and society, and they want to see what is changing and what is staying the same. But they don't have the resources to document these. This is where news networks come in.


• Car crashes, rape convictions, kidnappings, small-scale natural disasters, and so forth do not matter outside of local news. There are more important things at work—in society, in politics, in culture, in economics, in world affairs, in science, etc. etc.


• Viewers don't want their information chewed for them. It is acceptable to feature a guest that is an expert in a particular field and to ask them for analysis related to that field, but Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and other news "personalities" do not serve to educate viewers. They truncate and simplify the wider conversation far more than they inform their audiences.

So here's my proposal. News networks should splinter into smaller networks with distinct functions. These include:

• Biased news: "Here's what I think. If you disagree with anything, you are wrong. -- 'We won Peabody awards!'" Pre-chewed food with no claims of impartiality. Maddox for a wider audience.


• The E! Channel: Celebrity gossip, fashion, and brainlessness.


• ShOcK nEwS!: "Disaster pornography." Bank robberies, murder and rape cases, car chases, that sort of thing. Tragedy for shock value. Jerry Springer but more real.


• Decent news: that informs the populace about issues pertinent to their communities, society, and the world at large. It provides the reader with facts, not opinions, that are sampled as fairly as possible. This is the fourth estate. It serves democracy.


• Specialized news (also decent): The weather channel, sports news, local news coverage, etc.

5/3 update:

One thing that I've noticed that The Daily Show does especially well, but "real" news networks seldom do at all, is pointing out blatantly contradictory statements on the parts of politicians and other figures. A "Decent news" network would have a deep memory and call out, say, our President and Vice President when they outright lie or change positions. Then, perhaps, the 24-hour news networks would air these before and after statements incessantly and really hound them on important issues rather than, for instance, droning on about Barack Obama's bowling ineptitude.






1. It's Funny How Funny Just the Facts Can Be

Youtube "Debates"

I've been meaning to post this for a while. There was an excellent editorial in the LA Times about the CNN-Youtube Republican debates—namely about how far off the mark they are from genuine questioning by "us" when a handful of clips are carefully selected from thousands and relatively insignificant issues are given undue emphasis.

Here it is in full:

By Tim Rutten

The United States is at war in the Middle East and Central Asia, the economy is writhing like a snake with a broken back, oil prices are relentlessly climbing toward $100 a barrel and an increasing number of Americans just can't afford to be sick with anything that won't be treated with aspirin and bed rest.

So, when CNN brought the Republican presidential candidates together this week for what is loosely termed a "debate," what did the country get but a discussion of immigration, Biblical inerrancy and the propriety of flying the Confederate flag?

In fact, this most recent debacle masquerading as a presidential debate raises serious questions about whether CNN is ethically or professionally suitable to play the political role the Democratic and Republican parties recently have conceded it.

Selecting a president is, more than ever, a life and death business, and a news organization that consciously injects itself into the process, as CNN did by hosting Wednesday's debate, incurs a special responsibility to conduct itself in a dispassionate and, most of all, disinterested fashion. When one considers CNN's performance, however, the adjectives that leap to mind are corrupt and incompetent.

Corruption is a strong word. But consider these facts: The gimmick behind Wednesday's debate was that the questions would be selected from those that ordinary Americans submitted to the video sharing Internet website YouTube, which is owned by Google. According to CNN, its staff culled through 5,000 submissions to select the handful that were put to the candidates. That process essentially puts the lie to the vox populi aura the association with YouTube was meant to create. When producers exercise that level of selectivity, the questions -- whoever initially formulated and recorded them -- actually are theirs.

That's where things begin to get troubling, because CNN chose to devote the first 35 minutes of this critical debate to a single issue -- immigration. Now, if that leaves you scratching your head, it's probably because you're included in the 96% of Americans who do not think immigration is the most important issue confronting this country. We've got a pretty good fix concerning what's on the American mind right now, because the nonpartisan and highly reliable Pew Center has been regularly polling people since January on the issues that matter most to them. In fact, the center's most recent survey was conducted in the days leading up to Wednesday's debate.

HERE'S what Pew found: By an overwhelming margin, Americans think the war in Iraq is the most important issue facing the United States, followed by the economy, healthcare and energy prices. In fact, if you lump the war into a category with terrorism and other foreign policy issues, 40% of Americans say foreign affairs are their biggest concern in this election cycle. If you do something similar with all issues related to the economy, 31% list those questions as their most worrisome issue. As anybody who has looked at their 401(k) or visited a gas pump would expect, that aggregate figure has increased dramatically since Pew started polling in January. Back then, for example, concerns over the war outpaced economic anxieties by fully 8 to 1. By contrast, just 6% of the survey's national sample said that immigration was the most important electoral issue. Moreover, that number hasn't changed in a statistically meaningful way since the first of the year. In other words, more than nine out of 10 Americans think something matters more than immigration in this presidential election.

So, why did CNN make immigration the keystone of this debate? What standard dictated the decision to give that much time to an issue so remote from the majority of voters' concerns? The answer is that CNN's most popular news-oriented personality, Lou Dobbs, has made opposition to illegal immigration and free trade the centerpiece of his neonativist/neopopulist platform. In fact, Dobbs led into Wednesday's debate with a good solid dose of immigrant bashing. His network is in a desperate ratings battle with Fox News and, in a critical prime-time slot, with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. So, what's good for Dobbs is good for CNN.

In other words, CNN intentionally directed the Republicans' debate to advance its own interests. Make immigration a bigger issue and you've made a bigger audience for Dobbs.

That's corruption, and it's why the Republican candidates had to spend more than half an hour "debating" an issue on which their differences are essentially marginal -- and, more important, why GOP voters had to sit and wait, mostly in vain, for the issues that really concern them to be discussed. That's particularly true because that same Pew poll reported findings of particular relevance to Republican voters, the vast majority of whom continue to support the war in Iraq.

According to this most recent poll, a substantial number of Americans believe the surge is working. As Pew summarized their findings, "While Iraq remains a deeply polarizing issue across party lines, there has been improvement in how both Democrats and Republicans view the war. At the lowest point in February, barely half of Republicans (51%) said things were going well. Today, 74% of Republicans say the same. And while Democrats remain far more skeptical than Republicans, the proportion of Democrats expressing a positive view of the Iraq effort has doubled since February (from 16% to 33%).

"Independents' assessments of how the military effort is going remain far closer to the views of Democrats than of Republicans. Currently, 41% of independents offer a positive assessment, while half say things are not going well. In February, 26% of independents expressed a positive view of the situation in Iraq."

Those are significant swings of opinion, yet the poll also found that more than half of Americans still favor withdrawing American troops. That disconnect is a real issue for the GOP candidates, all but one of whom support the war. Unless we're going to believe that the self-selecting YouTube questioners were utterly different from the rest of American voters, it seems pretty clear that CNN ignored these complex -- and highly relevant concerns -- for an issue that served its ratings interests -- immigration -- or ones that made for moments of conventional television conflict, like gun control, which doesn't even show up in surveys of voters' concerns.

THIS is intellectual venality, but it pales beside the wickedness of using some crackpot's query about the candidates' stand on Biblical inerrancy to do something that's anathema in our system -- to probe people's individual religious consciences. American journalists quite legitimately ask candidates about policy issues -- say, abortion -- that might be influenced by their religious or philosophical convictions. We do not and should not ask them about those convictions themselves. It's nobody's business whether a candidate believes in the virgin birth, whether God gave an oral Torah to Moses at Sinai, whether the Buddha escaped the round of birth and rebirth or whether an angel appeared to Joseph Smith.

The latter point is relevant because CNN's noxious laundering of this question through the goofy YouTube mechanism quite clearly was designed to embarrass Mitt Romney -- who happens to be a Mormon -- and, secondarily, to help Mike Huckabee -- who, as a Baptist minister, had a ready answer, and who happens to be television's campaign flavor of the month.

Beside considerations like these, CNN's incompetent failure to weed out Democratically connected questioners pales.

In any event, CNN has failed in its responsibilities to the political process and it's time for the leaders of both the Republican and Democratic parties to take the network out of our electoral affairs.

CNN: Corrupt News Network

Three cheers for Mika Brzezinski!

1. Newscaster's on-air Paris protest

US newsreader Mika Brzezinski has attempted to burn her script live on television in protest at being made to lead her bulletin on Paris Hilton.

What do you think of Mika Brzezinski's protest? Do you agree that Iraq should have been the lead story over Paris Hilton? You sent us your views.

I absolutely agree that Paris Hilton/Britney Spears/Lindsey Lohan/Madonna shobiz gossip should not be on the news at all. I admire Miss Brzezinski for having the guts to make a stand about this. I hope she isn't fired.
Glenn Lennox, Fort Worth, Texas, USA

Paris Hilton's story should be not the lead story but the forgotten story of the day.
Mark Chadbourne, Litchfield, Maine

Good for you, Mika! I work in news too, and I am sick and tired of seeing someone who essentially does nothing grabbing headlines when there's a plethora of important events occurring constantly around the world that would be extremely edifying to viewers were they actually to see them instead of pulpy twaddle about an heiress who got sent to jail. boo-freakin'- hoo. I say burn it!
Kristoffer Newsom, Sacramento, CA, USA

Good on her! I'm fed up with celebrity non-stories in the papers, when all I want to do is read the news. News editors - take note!
Mac Scotland, Glasgow, Scotland

A woman with integrity and sense! I've never heard of her but I love her!
Ben Wilson, Nottingham

I totally agree with Mika Brzezinski, there is no reason for the public to be hearing of stories of Paris Hilton coming out of jail when there are people in Iraq serving for their country. Good on you Mrs Brzezinski!
Lola, London

It is about time someone in the TV news media showed some sense. You could watch the news all day in the states and never know there was a war on at all.
Ms. Smith, Cambridge, MA USA

It's about time someone in a profile position stand up to the studio uppers. She is what America is really about. Taking a stance. Believing in something and taking the moral high ground.
Rohan, Sunrise Florida

I think she set a grand example for all 'real' journalists everywhere. Enough of Paris Hilton.
Holstein, New Haven, CT

Three cheers for Mika! It's long overdue for media personnel to stand up and make a stand over what the real important issues are today and not be distracted by fluff. Paris Hilton is a creation of the media-hype; it's time for the media to cut her loose and focus on the real issues.
Kathi Dickie, Fort Nelson, Canada

Am so proud of Mika's actions! We are sick to death of all the garbage and non-news on major stations in the US. There's nothing about Iraq, Darfur, global warming, questioning the illegalities of this Republican administration. We watch Daily Show, MSNBC Countdown or Bill Maher for that news!
Natalie Schlabaugh, Colorado Springs, CO USA

You go girl! It is absolutely sickening how US news producers try to push non-news instead of actual news. This way Americans stay ignorant of the real world and are more easily manipulated by the Bush crime family.
AJ, San Francisco, CA

If only we had more newsreaders and journalists like Mika Brzezinski. Shame on MSNBC for wanting to lead with Hilton and shame on her colleagues for ribbing her over it.
Ollie

Finally! Somebody is taking a stand, stop this madness. We do not care, best thing we can do is ignore Paris and her antics. There are more important issues we should be focusing on. Good for you Mika!!
simi, Dublin,CA