"Dark Rise to Power"

Do you remember the 1999 Russian apartment bombings, bombings that helped to bring Vladimir Puting to power and for which theories of Russian government involvement have abounded for a decade now? Journalist Scott Anderson has a piece in this month's GQ that casts even further suspicion on the Russian government's claim of Islamic terrorist's involvement, but GQ's owner Conde Nast is determined to bury the story, presumably for fear of offending the Russian government and risking retaliation against their publishing operations in Russia. The story isn't even available online, but for their part, Gawker is attempting to translate the story into Russian, and has posted scans of the magazine article. I haven't had a chance to read it yet but I most certainly will make the time.

Straight to the Top

Why corporate control of the media is a bad thing:

That it is GE which controls the editorial decisions of NBC and MSNBC is an open secret in Washington. Just today, The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz wrote about Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's actions after learning that the news networks were reluctant to broadcast Obama's most recent press conference on health care. Did Emanuel attempt to pressure NBC executives to capitulate to White House demands to broadcast that event? No; he obviously knew who really makes editorial decisions for those networks:

In the days before President Obama's last news conference, as the networks weighed whether to give up a chunk of their precious prime time, Rahm Emanuel went straight to the top.

Rather than calling ABC, the White House chief of staff phoned Bob Iger, chief executive of parent company Disney. Instead of contacting NBC, Emanuel went to Jeffrey Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric. He also spoke with Les Moonves, the chief executive of CBS, the company spun off from Viacom.

Apparently, Rahm Emanuel isn't confused about who the real bosses are at America's major news networks.

This is further down in Glenn Greenwald's story about GE's executives ordering Keith Olbermann to tone down his attacks on Bill O'Reilly because of the negative impact such attacks were having on their corporate activities. So be aware, not only can corporate executives at places like GE decide what is and isn't news, they can be pressured by the White House as to what is and isn't news as well. I'm not one of those people who gets all of his news from blogs, but I'm getting there.

Walter Cronkite Dies

Glenn Greenwald explains why the death of Cronkite signifies the passing of an era, though perhaps not for the reasons you think.

Encouraging

Believe it or not, there's actually a growing market for intelligent and informed news in our country. My advice? Turn off the TV, and turn on the radio.

Dumb

I'm not entirely sure what the point of this article is:

President Obama’s directive on Monday to “guarantee scientific integrity” in federal policy making could have a far-reaching impact, affecting issues as varied as climate change, national security, protection of endangered species and children’s health.

But it will not divorce science from politics, or strip ideology from presidential decisions.

Mr. Obama delighted many scientists and patients by formally announcing that he was overturning the Bush administration’s limits on embryonic stem cell research. But the president also went one step further, issuing a memorandum that sets forth broad parameters for how his administration would choose expert advisers and use scientific data.

The document orders Mr. Obama’s top science adviser to help draft guidelines that will apply to every federal agency. Agencies will be expected to pick science advisers based on expertise, not political ideology, the memorandum said, and will offer whistle-blower protections to employees who expose the misuse or suppression of scientific information.

The idea, the president said in remarks before an audience of lawmakers, scientists, patients advocates and patients in the East Room, is to ensure that “we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology”: a line that drew more applause than any other. Irv Weissman, who directs an institute at Stanford University devoted to studying stem cells, called the declaration “of even greater importance” than the stem cell announcement itself.

It was also another in a long string of rebukes by Mr. Obama toward his predecessor, President George W. Bush. Mr. Bush was often accused of trying to shade or even suppress the findings of government scientists on climate change, sex education, contraceptives and other issues, as well as stem cells. But Mr. Obama’s announcement does not elevate science to some new and exalted place in his administration.

“Scientists should have no illusions about whether they make policy — they don’t,” said Harold Varmus, president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and co-chairman of a panel that advises Mr. Obama on science matters.

The directive, Dr. Varmus said, was simply intended “to provide the best available scientific information” to those who make policy decisions.

So if you follow that, the fact that the Obama administration has altered standards to ensure that scientific principles are rigorously followed in the hiring of science advisors and in crafting policy is Obama, according to the headline of this article, putting "his own spin on mix of science with politics" and this does not "elevate science to some new and exalted place in his administration." Worse yet, the reporter gives Bush administration officials venue to spout nonsense like this:

But Mr. Bush’s defenders see Mr. Obama as just imposing an ideology of his own. They say Mr. Bush did not ignore scientific facts; rather, he took the counsel of scientists and used it to make a policy determination that reflected his values, just as Mr. Obama is doing in lifting Mr. Bush’s restrictions on stem cell research.

“Those who suggest that the Bush administration did not rigorously apply science are themselves ignoring the facts,” said Karl Rove, the former president’s political strategist.

Mr. Rove called Mr. Obama’s declaration on restoring scientific integrity “simply hyperbole and hyperventilation,” and he disputed Mr. Waxman’s accusation on climate change, saying the Bush White House “put more money into global climate research than any administration in history, by a significant factor.”

Why were any former administration officials even asked their opinion on this change, other than out of some sort of misguided sense of journalistic fairness and "balance" that requires any news that might be somewhat favorable to the present administration to be balanced by critiques, however disingenuous and uninformed, from Republican partisans? It's not as if reporters for the NY Times didn't repeatedly chronicle throughout the Bush administration's tenure one bastard hybridization of science and policy after another. And where does the throwaway line about the "exalted" place of science come from? Are NY Times readers now so stupid that they don't realize that this decision doesn't mean a cabal of scientists will now rule the nation?
What a dumb and useless article.

More on the Printed Blog

A few weeks ago I mentioned the Printed Blog, a new service that takes blog postings and solidifies them in the form of a weekly paper/magazine. The first edition is out here and I have to say, it looks pretty decent (though the approach of some of the columns(?) is very Onion-like.) Well Simon Owens interviewed the man behind this novel/anitquated idea for the PBS website MediaShift; he was kind enough to send us a link to his interview, so here it is for your reading enjoyment. I have to say, I'm intrigued. I hope it works.

Gore on Global Warming

Al Gore appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday, updating his calls for measures to deal with global warming (especially urgent in light of news like this.) And while most of the world of media has come around to the idea and is finally conveying the urgency of the crisis, the pundit elite at major newspapers-Dana Milbank, we're looking at you-still just somehow don't get it.

The New Media

Welcome to the 21st Century...where the printed blog will replace the newspaper (via Megan McArdle.) Yes, they're completely serious.

More Please

Really, I'd be okay with more campaign coverage that's like this. 

Hype

You've probably heard the story about the massive panic inspired by Orson Welles' legendary 1938 broadcast of War of the Worlds. Professor Michael J. Socolow says it just didn't happen the way everybody thinks it did (via Nick Gillespie at Hit & Run):

The "War of the Worlds" broadcast remains enshrined in collective memory as a vivid illustration of the madness of crowds and the deeply invasive nature of broadcasting. The program seemingly proved that radio could, in the memorable words of Marshall McLuhan, turn "psyche and society into a single echo chamber." The audience's reaction clearly illustrated the perils of modernity. At the time, it cemented a growing suspicion that skillful artists — or incendiary demagogues — could use communications technology to capture the consciousness of the nation. It remains the prime example used by media critics, journalists, and professors to prove the power of the media.

Yet the media are not as powerful as most think, and the real story behind "The War of the Worlds" is a bit more complex. The panic was neither as widespread nor as serious as many have believed at the time or since.

Nobody died of fright or was killed in the panic, nor could any suicides be traced to the broadcast. Hospital emergency-room visits did not spike, nor, surprisingly, did calls to the police outside of a select few jurisdictions. The streets were never flooded with a terrified citizenry. Ben Gross, the radio columnist of the New York Daily News, later remembered a "lack of turmoil in front of CBS" that contrasted notably with the crowded, chaotic scene inside the building. Telephone lines in New York City and a few other cities were jammed, as the primitive infrastructure of the era couldn't handle the load, but it appears that almost all the panic that evening was as ephemeral as the nationwide broadcast itself, and not nearly as widespread. That iconic image of the farmer with a gun, ready to shoot the aliens? It was staged for Life magazine.

Socolow blames a media that fell in love with the story, Welles' own tendencies towards self-aggrandizement, and a really bad telephone survey. Revise your collective memory accordingly.

War with the Press

I'm pretty sure that in the aftermath of the election, someone is going to look back and decide that the McCain camp's decision to go to war with the press was a serious miscalculation. It's clear that McCain thinks he can't win on the issues alone (and he can't, with numbers like these and the economy absolutely dominating the headlines) but do they really think this sort of thing is going to win them the election? 

Bad Call

That Charlotte Allen article that everybody was a little miffed/confused about? Yeah, it's not going away. I don't see how the editors at the Post didn't understand that writing an article about how women are stupid is about as funny and enlightening as writing an article about how all Blacks are on welfare or all Jews are shifty or all Hispanics are lazy.

UPDATE: In the piece I linked to, Jay Rosen writes of the Post's decision to host a chat in which Allen would "explain" her piece:

This Allen chat is a deeply confused act. What are the chances that Allen is not going to start defending her arguments as real arguments, her evidence as real evidence? Very slim. And that will undermine the editor’s explanation: this was tongue in cheek, we were just having a little fun with you guys, sorry if we offended…. Besides, where has all the criticism focused? On the Post’s decision to publish the piece. The writer cannot be faulted for that.

Allen's response to the first question:

Washington: When I read this, I immediately thought it was written ironically. Were you surprised that so many people took it literally?

Charlotte Allen: I wouldn't quite use the word "ironic," but yes, I meant to be funny but with a serious point--that women want to be taken seriously but quite often don't act serious. Also, that women and men really are different.

And it's downhill from there.

Stumped Indeed

In D.C. and on the campaign trail, this is what counts for political analysis. I'm going to go ahead and reprint this entire section, so you can see for yourself this dissection of the political implications of the situation in Iraq, in response to an idiotic question about "naysayers" in the media:

As you note, the media has reported the improving security situation in Iraq. I happened to have supported President Bush's proposed surge, but felt that both the White House and its critics made too much of sending an additional 30,000 troops. It was an incremental move, though in Washington it was played as a radical new policy.

As you suggest, Democrats, especially those running for president, are having a hard time acknowledging that the situation is improving, and that it made sense a year ago to increase troop levels. It is a sad reflection of our poisoned political discourse that all facts and reality must be spun. Just as the president's opponents can't admit when things get better, the president can't admit when things get worse. In both instances, their stubbornness insults the intelligence of the American people -- and the sacrifice of our troops in Iraq, who don't have the luxury of choosing to ignore reality.

Speaking of spin, I would caution against overselling the surge's accomplishments, lest we engage in what the president in a different context has called the "soft bigotry of low expectations." The situation in Iraq is better than a year ago, but it is still abysmal when measured against the expectations created by the administration in 2003. Remember all that talk of a beautiful democracy shining like a beacon in the Middle East?

Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled in Baghdad in April 2003. Almost five years later, Iraq remains so perilous that the White House considers it a great victory to reduce the numbers of horrific suicide bombings. Maybe some people in Baghdad ventured out at midnight to celebrate the New Year, as John McCain proudly noted recently, but it's pathetic that this is noteworthy.

Iraq's political leadership, meanwhile, hasn't taken advantage of the greater security afforded by the surge to resolve fundamental sectarian differences and strengthen national unity, one of the Bush administration's reasons for sending more troops in the first place.

So yes, PM, Democrats need to stop being churlish and acknowledge things might be improving. But Republicans shouldn't pretend this fiasco has somehow turned into another occupation of Japan.

This is the "fair and balanced" mode of journalism, wherein it is determined that because there are two sides to an issue and that each side is represented by a partisan political party, the only "correct" stance on the issue is some muddled position in the middle. See, the real problem is that silly Democrats refuse to acknowledge that the surge has actually improved the security situation, and that Republicans make too much out of the improved security. We should all meet in the middle and acknowledge the success, but nod our heads grimly and seriously at the thought of what work there is left to do in Iraq! What a freaking crock. In the real world, critics of the surge are demanding to know whether the additional forces-which, by the way, are unsustainable-have had such an impact or whether it was the desire of the Sunni to turn against Al Qaeda and play for greater positioning against the Shiite dominated national government. They are also wondering what's going to happen when we begin to draw down those forces without solving fundamental problems in Iraq politics and society. Supporters of the surge, who are mostly the same conservative, neo-con and Republican stalwarts who have always supported the war and always will no matter what is happening, are still busy trying to convince everyone that stability is right around the corner while smearing anybody who has reasonable questions about Iraq as defeatists, or traitors or whatnot, while at the same time offering absolutely no ideas for what out troops are supposed to be producing in Iraq, no conditions for when they can leave, and no timetables for how long we should expect them to be there.

But in the "serious" world of respectable political journalism, it makes complete sense to ignore the reasonable questions about the situation in Iraq, ignore the bad faith of the war supporters, and come up with a simple-minded and "reasonable" conclusion. This is considered cutting through the "spin", and it's why we went to war in Iraq, why we remain in Iraq, and why we won't be getting out of Iraq anytime soon. Don't get me wrong. There are tons of respectable and intelligent national security journalists out there, but the ones who follow the people who are actually running for office-and telling us what we should be thinking about those candidates-remain unburdened with any actual knowledge of national security or world events, and they are more than willing to afflict us with their ignorance.

She's Losing It!

She's cracking!

And the top political story of the day is....Hillary Clinton displaying a brief moment of emotion. At a campaign stop today, after she was asked how she puts up with the rigors of campaigning, her eyes "appeared to well up" (Washington Post) and her voice "softened and lowered to a near-hush" (New York Times), providing a "dramatic coda to a campaign in which she has largely offered voters policy prescription" (Los Angeles Times).

Indeed. This sparked ABC News' headline writer to ask breathlessly, "Can Clinton's Emotions Get the Best of Her?" — a question that will undoubtedly be the lead story on all three networks tonight, right alongside John Edwards gallantly refusing to comment on the story just moments before deciding that he ought to comment after all. "I think what we need in a commander-in-chief is strength and resolve," he said, doing his gender proud.

See, how hard can it be to be a reporter, especially one on the campaign trail? You simply make up a good story, then squeeze the facts into them until they squeal.

Good God

Yeah, it was probably a bad idea for the NY Times to hire Bill Kristol as one of their columnists. It's assumed-rightly-that he'd be a partisan hack. But he also doesn't know what he's talking about. Example one? Today's column wherein he writes this:

After the last two elections, featuring the well-born George Bush and Al Gore and John Kerry, Americans — even Republicans! — are ready for a likable regular guy. Huckabee seems to be that.

Whereas Bush is not. That sounds a little odd. Why is that? Oh, maybe because of columns like this one:

..cops and firefighters are, if the women in the ranks will forgive the expression, Regular Guys. They drink beer, not wine, and certainly not French wine. They played football and baseball in high school, not lacrosse. Regular Guys think Al Sharpton is a fraud and Michael Moore (who pretends to be a Regular Guy) is a fool, and they think Ted Kennedy is a criminal. Regular Guys do not blame Secret Service agents (who are Regular Guys) for knocking them down on the ski slopes, especially when those agents are there to take bullets for them. And Regular Guys relate to and prefer the company of other Regular Guys; they do not invite people like Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Affleck to their conventions.

Even with the piles of dough they're sitting on, both George Bush and Dick Cheney still come across as Regular Guys, the kind of men you might find hanging around the fire station or the detective squad room.

Bush is also the guy that most people would have at one time wanted to have a beer with (I'm sure a few people have revoked that opinion since then.) But he's not a "regular guy." He's "well-born."

So in his very first column, Kristol engages in hackneyed stereotypes, historical revisionism, partisan hackery and shallow "analysis." Surprised? Yeah, me neither.

Speaking Of Media Shenanigans

This cartoon and Scott Horton aptly sum up the horrible "reporting" the Washington Post did regarding internet rumors about Barack Obama secretly being a Muslim. Yeah, seriously...they wrote about that.

Surprise

A writer for the National Review Online admits to making crap up and, predictably, the right-wing blogosphere has nothing to say. Fancy that.

More Hackery

Via Andrew Sullivan, we see that employment at the NRO (as opposed to employing yourself at your own right-wing blog) is not an antidote for partisan hackery and power worship. Sullivan's pretty mad about it, but his ire is aimed at the President:

Previous war-presidents have gathered opponents into their cabinets, reached out to estranged former allies, engaged in aggressive diplomacy to maximize effectiveness and rallied the whole country for the fight. What does this one do? Gets a bunch of right-wing "journalists" into the White House to spread some partisan talking points. What a fucking disgrace this man and his journalistic lackeys are.

Excuse my language. But I can't take this any longer. We're at war; and he's still playing Rove's game.

I reserve most of my scorn for the enablers in the media and at the right-wing blogs. Still, it's a step up from high-fives and "brutha." But only one step.

NY Times Columnists Freed, World Doesn't Rejoice

...the NY Times has gotten rid of their stupid "Times Select" so now everyone can read their columnists each day. Which I do think is a good thing, as it allows me to read the likes of Frank Rich and Bob Herbert again. I have no complaints about Herbert, but Rich sure does get my goat every now and then, like in this Sunday column. For example:

General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker could grab an hour of prime television time only by slinking into the safe foxhole of Fox News, where Brit Hume chaperoned them on a gloomy, bunkerlike set before an audience of merely 1.5 million true believers. Their "Briefing for America," as Fox titled it, was all too fittingly interrupted early on for a commercial promising pharmaceutical relief from erectile dysfunction.

Even if military "victory" were achievable in Iraq, America could not win a war abandoned by its own citizens. The evaporation of that support was ratified by voters last November. For that, they were rewarded with the "surge." Now their mood has turned darker. Americans have not merely abandoned the war; they don't want to hear anything that might remind them of it, or of war in general. Katie Couric's much-promoted weeklong visit to the front produced ratings matching the CBS newscast's all-time low. Angelina Jolie's movie about Daniel Pearl sank without a trace. Even Clint Eastwood's wildly acclaimed movies about World War II went begging. Over its latest season, "24" lost a third of its viewers, just as Mr. Bush did between January's prime-time address and last week's.

First of all, why does a Viagra commercial "fittingly" interrupt the broadcast? What does that even mean? And second, what the heck does 24's loss of viewers have to do with Bush or the GWOT. Or a movie about a guy killed in Pakistan before 9/11? And movies about WWII? Is it really because people are tired of war, or is it because these movies/shows weren't that great? Does Rich care? Not really; that would get in the way of writing an interesting column.

And this is what bothers me about columnists like Rich. It's not good enough to simply write about Iraq; rhetorical flourishes and clever turns of phrases are mandatory, to the extent that they distract and undermine the actual point being made (Maureen Dowd has turned this into high art, as you can see from reading any of her nearly incoherent columns.) And yes I'm touchy about this, because Rich turned his rhetorical arts on Gore in the run-up to the 2000 election, abandoning objectivity and his duty as a journalist for mockery, derision and disdain that informed no one but certainly got Rich a lot of readers.

Here's my advise to Rich. You're on our side, and we're on yours. But you've made enemies out of people who ought to be your allies, and you've done it because it was more important to be clever than it was to be right. So keep writing, but leave out the tricks. We'll keep reading you anyway, and be much appreciative for it.

UPDATE: In comments Adam admonishes me to remember Paul Krugman. In arrears for my egregious error in not mentioning him, here's a link to his brand new blog at the NY Times, "The Conscience of a Liberal" (a name I absolutely love, by the way.)

Iowa (and everyone else) has not decided yet

Currently, the mainstream media has identified two front runners for their respective party's nomination in the upcoming 2008 race for the presidency. This is based on polling, which has Sen. Hillary Clinton sitting atop a big national lead among Democrats. Rudy Giuliani is also consistently ahead, but to a lesser extent. But does this really tell us who will win the nominations?

As I've said many times before, no. It doesn't. As in previous years, the winner of the early state caucuses and primaries will determine who gets each nomination. Iowa goes first, and they haven't decided. In fact, they won't for awhile, if history is any indication:

Consider this: More than two-thirds of the Democrats who voted in the 2004 Iowa caucuses didn't decide who to vote for until a month before the caucuses. Four in 10 decided in the last week. In 2004, 54% of New Hampshire Democrats decided within a week of the primary. It's no surprise, then, that in the 2004 election, John Kerry was lagging in third place until only a few weeks before the Iowa caucuses. Kerry then more than doubled his vote in Iowa and nearly quadrupled it in New Hampshire — all in less than 20 days.

Iowa's Republican caucus-goers are no different. In 1996, nearly a quarter chose their candidate on caucus night or in the preceding two days; fully 42% decided in the last 10 days. And in New Hampshire, only 12% of Republicans decided in 2000 who they would support in the primary before Jan. 1 of election year.

And as this L.A. Times article points out, nationals polls used as measurement can ultimately render their own findings inaccurate because of the effect they have on the race:

...the measurements themselves, printed in bold type on Page 1, create their own distorted results, inaccurately advantaging some while disadvantaging others. By creating a potentially illusory sense of momentum or of failure, these pseudo-measures affect the extent of media coverage, fundraising, endorsements and the willingness of volunteers to engage.

The result is a cycle. Early national polling is used to declare winners and losers. Those declarations affect the flow of money and coverage, which is then reported as winners and losers, part two, thereby driving the next polls.

In 2003, this cycle nearly buried Kerry.

Let's face it: While money in the bank, a strong organization, a capable staff and a compelling message will be vital next year when early-primary-state voters start deciding, trying to measure the variables now, for a campaign that for most hasn't even started yet, can lead to a net loss of knowledge.

I actually recently wrote a paper on this. The media's obsession with the horse-race aspect of campaigns (which has grown increasingly worse each election cycle) actually affects the campaign and becomes self-perpetuating. This might be good for front runners and help candidates like Clinton or Giuliani solidify their leads, or it might raise expectations so high for one candidate that a single loss can completely destroy a campaign (Howard Dean in '04).

Either way, the media and the pundits should shut their big mouths until January. They should focus on where the candidates stand on the issues and inform voters about the choice they will have to make instead of reporting on who may or may not be leading. Maybe then they'd actually have a positive impact on the race.

UPDATE: Btw, 72% of voters would favor a proposal to shorten the presidential campaign season so that no one could begin campaigning more than a year before election day. On a related note, Al Gore can still get in!