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Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Is the Word "Teabagging" Offensive?
Opponents often refer to members of the Tea Party movement as "Teabaggers," who respond that it is an offensive term. Is it? According to this list, yes. (h/t to Newsweek's Gaggle blog here)
Ayn Rand's Ellsworth Toohey, Media, and Politics
I am finally reading Ayn Rand's Fountainhead, over a decade since a friend strongly recommended Rand to me. She has been getting some attention post-bank bailout and as government seems to keep growing, so I wanted to see what people are talking about. I'm about 3/4 through the book's 694 pages. I'm finding a lot to strongly agree with, and some to strongly disagree with.
The book is about Howard Roark, a genius architect who says "Every building is like a person. Single and unrepeatable", and the forces that try to drag him down. A chief adversary is Ellsworth Toohey, a widely-followed and respected newspaper columnist. There is a saying that "The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." As a "humanitarian", in his sense of the word, Toohey's mission in life is to use his prominence to promote untalented architects and writers, while tearing down the truly talented ones, so they don't achieve total dominence of their professions.
In Toohey's eyes, the power of a critic is best expressed when they take a play that is total crap on the merits and make it a commercial success; the impact of social norms and the desire for acceptance is a big theme in the book. This reminded me of my recent comments about the State of the Union address, and how political pundits (and, sadly journalists) beg their readers to judge the President not strictly on the merits, but on merits, plus a lens of their political parties' priorities and biases.
Years ago when I was studying journalism, I learned that in some cases, journalism students were being explicitly taught methods for positioning the facts to achieve an effect. It doesn't require outright lying. Make more effort to get a quote from one side, while leaving a voice mail for someone on the opposing side ("Calls to the office of Person X were not returned"). Write 10 paragraphs in support up top, with 1 or 2 paragraphs in opposition at the end (Editors know most people don't read the whole article). Put some stories on page 1, and others on page 26.
I learned to consider newspapers and TV news as secondary sources of information, not primary. Thus, I make an effort to watch the State of the Union live, before the press gets a hold of it and applies their lens (I have enough biases of my own). It's a meager attempt to prevent the press from making me see total crap as genius, or vice versa.
The average journalist today is more like Ellsworth Toohey than the average journalist of 5 or 10 years ago, and entire news networks are perceived as having been Tooheyed toward an agenda. Voters assume Fox has a conservative bias, and that MSNBC has a liberal bias, regardless of the actual content on the channel at the moment. They comfort their party and afflict the opposite party. People seek out shows that confirm their own biases and avoid ones that challenge them - which moves them further from the center. This is a large part of why Washington is so dysfunctional.
Many are hoping a new political party will rise and start to take seats in Congress (an example here). I think it would only be a matter of time before the new party becomes like the old. Instead, I hope the growing population of independents remain independent, ignore the Tooheys of the world, and impose discipline on both parties based on their merits. The message of the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts is "there are a lot of independents in this country, and if you spend too much of their money on things you are not good at doing, we will vote against you." If a large part of the electorate is voting on ideas and not party loyalty, it will force the Federal government to focus only on what they are good at, which isn't very much. Then, please reduce my Federal tax burden and let the States compete for my labor and tax dollars!
The book is about Howard Roark, a genius architect who says "Every building is like a person. Single and unrepeatable", and the forces that try to drag him down. A chief adversary is Ellsworth Toohey, a widely-followed and respected newspaper columnist. There is a saying that "The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." As a "humanitarian", in his sense of the word, Toohey's mission in life is to use his prominence to promote untalented architects and writers, while tearing down the truly talented ones, so they don't achieve total dominence of their professions.
In Toohey's eyes, the power of a critic is best expressed when they take a play that is total crap on the merits and make it a commercial success; the impact of social norms and the desire for acceptance is a big theme in the book. This reminded me of my recent comments about the State of the Union address, and how political pundits (and, sadly journalists) beg their readers to judge the President not strictly on the merits, but on merits, plus a lens of their political parties' priorities and biases.
Years ago when I was studying journalism, I learned that in some cases, journalism students were being explicitly taught methods for positioning the facts to achieve an effect. It doesn't require outright lying. Make more effort to get a quote from one side, while leaving a voice mail for someone on the opposing side ("Calls to the office of Person X were not returned"). Write 10 paragraphs in support up top, with 1 or 2 paragraphs in opposition at the end (Editors know most people don't read the whole article). Put some stories on page 1, and others on page 26.
I learned to consider newspapers and TV news as secondary sources of information, not primary. Thus, I make an effort to watch the State of the Union live, before the press gets a hold of it and applies their lens (I have enough biases of my own). It's a meager attempt to prevent the press from making me see total crap as genius, or vice versa.
The average journalist today is more like Ellsworth Toohey than the average journalist of 5 or 10 years ago, and entire news networks are perceived as having been Tooheyed toward an agenda. Voters assume Fox has a conservative bias, and that MSNBC has a liberal bias, regardless of the actual content on the channel at the moment. They comfort their party and afflict the opposite party. People seek out shows that confirm their own biases and avoid ones that challenge them - which moves them further from the center. This is a large part of why Washington is so dysfunctional.
Many are hoping a new political party will rise and start to take seats in Congress (an example here). I think it would only be a matter of time before the new party becomes like the old. Instead, I hope the growing population of independents remain independent, ignore the Tooheys of the world, and impose discipline on both parties based on their merits. The message of the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts is "there are a lot of independents in this country, and if you spend too much of their money on things you are not good at doing, we will vote against you." If a large part of the electorate is voting on ideas and not party loyalty, it will force the Federal government to focus only on what they are good at, which isn't very much. Then, please reduce my Federal tax burden and let the States compete for my labor and tax dollars!
More on the State of the Union
In the end, the State of the Union address was a long speech about how government is the way to address all of the many problems facing our country. I would have preferred Obama to say that "We are strong, we are resilient, we are American," and that the "spirit of determination and optimism" of Americans means they need less, not more, government "help". Basically, more of this, this, and this would have been better, and far less of the obvious, two-faced contradictions ("I will not give up on trying to change the tone of our politics", followed later by "let's put aside the schoolyard taunts" -- comparing your opposition to children is not going to improve the tone in Washington).
This is what I like least about the SOTU - it begs you to judge the speaker, not on policy and ideas, but on things that are immaterial to the well-being of the country, like reading words other people wrote from a teleprompter, and that are open to vastly different interpretations:
Example 1: To Richard Cohen in the Washington Post, Obama was "moderate", had "poise", "self-confidence", and "seemed the only adult in the room." "He conjured up a Washington where things once worked."
Example 2: To Jonah Goldberg in the NY Post, Obama had "supreme arrogance", a "distinctly unpresidential whine " while arguing "anyone who feels differently hasn't heard or understood the president's explanations." "Aside from a few throwaway lines of self-deprecation, whenever he grew passionate, it was to blame others."
This is what I like least about the SOTU - it begs you to judge the speaker, not on policy and ideas, but on things that are immaterial to the well-being of the country, like reading words other people wrote from a teleprompter, and that are open to vastly different interpretations:
Example 1: To Richard Cohen in the Washington Post, Obama was "moderate", had "poise", "self-confidence", and "seemed the only adult in the room." "He conjured up a Washington where things once worked."
Example 2: To Jonah Goldberg in the NY Post, Obama had "supreme arrogance", a "distinctly unpresidential whine " while arguing "anyone who feels differently hasn't heard or understood the president's explanations." "Aside from a few throwaway lines of self-deprecation, whenever he grew passionate, it was to blame others."
State of the Union - Judging a Book By Its Cover
From Gene Healy in the Washington Examiner (here):
So, if voters weren't judging their Presidents on their ability to deliver words from a teleprompter, what were they judging them on?for most of the Republic's first century, the [State of the Union] was a modest, informational affair. Presidents sent the written address to Congress, to be read aloud by a clerk. That was thanks to President Jefferson, who thought delivering the speech before Congress assembled smacked too much of a king's "Speech from the Throne."
"Middle of the road" Partisanship?
This AP story reports that "a key Senate committee Tuesday approved a middle-of-the-road health care plan that moves President Barack Obama's goal of wider and affordable coverage a giant step closer to becoming law". Only one Republican, Olympia Snowe from Maine, voted in favor. The other 9 Republicans in the committee voted against. The headline of the article is "Senate panel OKs middle-of-the-road health plan". Really? Does one person crossing party lines make this a bipartisan plan? Unbelievable.
This bill is so "middle of the road" that a separate AP story says "About 30 unions will run a full-page ad in newspapers Wednesday announcing their opposition to the Senate Finance Committee's health overhaul bill".
I guess the AP decided a bill that is not even supported by a key Democratic constituency and only supported by one Republican is supposed to be praised as an accomplishment.
This bill is so "middle of the road" that a separate AP story says "About 30 unions will run a full-page ad in newspapers Wednesday announcing their opposition to the Senate Finance Committee's health overhaul bill".
I guess the AP decided a bill that is not even supported by a key Democratic constituency and only supported by one Republican is supposed to be praised as an accomplishment.
Biased Media Coverage of Town Halls: Which Party Does It help?
In today's Washington Post, E.J. Dionne makes the case that "the electronic media went out of their way to cover the noise and ignored the calmer (and from television's point of view "boring") encounters between elected representatives and their constituents". His column, "The Real Town Hall Story", concludes that this is evidence the media are not liberal: "the only citizens who commanded widespread media coverage last month were the right-wingers. And I bet you thought the media were 'liberal.'"
Although I agree the coverage was not balanced, I think Dionne ignores several points, and that the unbalanced coverage could also be evidence to the contrary of Dionne's conclusion.
First, most of the media coverage I saw about the protesters marginalized them, calling them ingorant, extremists, or worse, and many of the TV talking heads expanded this to include anyone else who thought like the protesters, or even entire regions or political parties. CNN regularly had panel discussions among pundits about it. The panel was often the show's host, 2 or 3 people criticizing the protesters, and one person meekly defending them. On CNN, I often saw the host interrupt and/or rebut the defender, while letting the criticizer take their time and finish their point. Instead of what Dionne is concluding, it's just as easy to conclude that the excess coverage of the protesters was an attempt to color all dissent as idiotic, while the President and others are calm and above the fray.
Second, the media are entertainment. If they're boring, nobody will watch. Dionne should know this, since the newspaper industry he works for is suffering as a result. So, nobody should be surprised at the absence of coverage of boring meetings. But, what really surprised me was how little people were aware of all the hatred that went on during the Bush years. The ignorance about how tame the town hall protests were in comparison supports the story that the town hall protesters were extremists. By covering one party's extremists, while ignoring the others, do the media make the party they cover look better or worse than the one they ignore? This website has excellent coverage of how extreme Bush-hating became during his presidency, and how little of it was covered by the media. I also commented on the assymetric coverage of "crazies" here, in response to a Washington Post article claiming only the Republican party has crazies.
Third, Dionne continues the storyline that all dissent is extremist by ignoring all the more mainstream forms of protest against the current version of health care reform. If the media were trying to cover only "right-wingers" in order to stop health care reform, why would they spend so much time on the protesters that are easiest to dismiss, and not on everyone else?
Opposition is far more widespread than a few outspoken people at town hall meetings - if the media's agenda was what Dionne suggests, they would focus on opposition from more serious groups. The AARP is very hesitant to back reform (my note here), many medical associations are against it (my note on one group of anesthesiologists here), and many feel tort reform should an important part of the bill, but Obama has ruled it out (here, here).
At http://www.freeourhealthcarenow.com/, there is a petition with more than 1.2 million signatures against Obamacare. By the time the petition is finished, it may be the largest such petition ever. John Goodman, one of the petition's organizers, wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last week, and describes the signers:
While you might disagree with many of these reasons, the diversity of the opposition proves that dissent is not limited to a few, like-minded people.
I also think the media is de-emphasizing the fact that the Democrats could pass heath care reform without any support from Republicans, if they could just agree among themselves. They have the White House and both houses of Congress. An August 1 Washington Post article (my note on the article) about the legislative process behind HR 3200 said: "Democrats have large majorities in both chambers, but they have discovered the perils of being a party that yokes together Northern California liberals and Deep South good ol' boys." If the right-wing dissenters are not the deciding factor in the debate, why cover them far more than the fighting within the Democratic Party?
Finally, Dionne does everyone a disservice by encouraging political debate based on ad hominem arguments, where citizens judge the message based on the messenger, not on the content. The more time people spend trying to figure out who is biased and how, the less time they spend analysing the message and seeking out diverse opinions. Partisan or personal attacks make for better entertainment than coverage of a quiet town hall meeting, but they probably don't give voters the information they need to make wise decisions at the ballot box, which is the purpose of a free media. I prefer to assume everyone is biased (because everyone is), find someone with the opposite bias, and listen to both. Let everyone speak honestly and openly, so everyone can make an informed decision.
President Obama wanted more transparency in the health care debate, and promised to televise much of it to keep people informed and involved. He broke that promise, and you have to wonder if the current situation would be improved if he had kept it.
Although I agree the coverage was not balanced, I think Dionne ignores several points, and that the unbalanced coverage could also be evidence to the contrary of Dionne's conclusion.
First, most of the media coverage I saw about the protesters marginalized them, calling them ingorant, extremists, or worse, and many of the TV talking heads expanded this to include anyone else who thought like the protesters, or even entire regions or political parties. CNN regularly had panel discussions among pundits about it. The panel was often the show's host, 2 or 3 people criticizing the protesters, and one person meekly defending them. On CNN, I often saw the host interrupt and/or rebut the defender, while letting the criticizer take their time and finish their point. Instead of what Dionne is concluding, it's just as easy to conclude that the excess coverage of the protesters was an attempt to color all dissent as idiotic, while the President and others are calm and above the fray.
Second, the media are entertainment. If they're boring, nobody will watch. Dionne should know this, since the newspaper industry he works for is suffering as a result. So, nobody should be surprised at the absence of coverage of boring meetings. But, what really surprised me was how little people were aware of all the hatred that went on during the Bush years. The ignorance about how tame the town hall protests were in comparison supports the story that the town hall protesters were extremists. By covering one party's extremists, while ignoring the others, do the media make the party they cover look better or worse than the one they ignore? This website has excellent coverage of how extreme Bush-hating became during his presidency, and how little of it was covered by the media. I also commented on the assymetric coverage of "crazies" here, in response to a Washington Post article claiming only the Republican party has crazies.
Third, Dionne continues the storyline that all dissent is extremist by ignoring all the more mainstream forms of protest against the current version of health care reform. If the media were trying to cover only "right-wingers" in order to stop health care reform, why would they spend so much time on the protesters that are easiest to dismiss, and not on everyone else?
Opposition is far more widespread than a few outspoken people at town hall meetings - if the media's agenda was what Dionne suggests, they would focus on opposition from more serious groups. The AARP is very hesitant to back reform (my note here), many medical associations are against it (my note on one group of anesthesiologists here), and many feel tort reform should an important part of the bill, but Obama has ruled it out (here, here).
At http://www.freeourhealthcarenow.com/, there is a petition with more than 1.2 million signatures against Obamacare. By the time the petition is finished, it may be the largest such petition ever. John Goodman, one of the petition's organizers, wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last week, and describes the signers:
These are a very diverse group of people. Some of them are part of a 40,000-person network of former Obama supporters who are experiencing buyer's remorse. Others are part of various disease networks, including patients concerned about the future of cancer care. There are networks of senior citizens worried about cuts in Medicare and the possible closing of their private Medicare insurance plans. There are Christian conservatives worried about taxpayer-funded abortions and subsidies for euthanasia. And there are an enormous number of people who are simply concerned about their health care.
While you might disagree with many of these reasons, the diversity of the opposition proves that dissent is not limited to a few, like-minded people.
I also think the media is de-emphasizing the fact that the Democrats could pass heath care reform without any support from Republicans, if they could just agree among themselves. They have the White House and both houses of Congress. An August 1 Washington Post article (my note on the article) about the legislative process behind HR 3200 said: "Democrats have large majorities in both chambers, but they have discovered the perils of being a party that yokes together Northern California liberals and Deep South good ol' boys." If the right-wing dissenters are not the deciding factor in the debate, why cover them far more than the fighting within the Democratic Party?
Finally, Dionne does everyone a disservice by encouraging political debate based on ad hominem arguments, where citizens judge the message based on the messenger, not on the content. The more time people spend trying to figure out who is biased and how, the less time they spend analysing the message and seeking out diverse opinions. Partisan or personal attacks make for better entertainment than coverage of a quiet town hall meeting, but they probably don't give voters the information they need to make wise decisions at the ballot box, which is the purpose of a free media. I prefer to assume everyone is biased (because everyone is), find someone with the opposite bias, and listen to both. Let everyone speak honestly and openly, so everyone can make an informed decision.
President Obama wanted more transparency in the health care debate, and promised to televise much of it to keep people informed and involved. He broke that promise, and you have to wonder if the current situation would be improved if he had kept it.
A Monopoly on Crazy?
In today's Washington Post, columnist and author Rick Perlstein has an opinion article that tries to make two points: 1) the "crazy tree blossoms" "when liberals are in power" (and this does not happen when conservatives are in power), and 2) the media is complicit in drawing too much attention to the crazies.
Perlstein thinks the political right has a monopoly on crazies and, apparently, people on the left are all calm, rational, law-abiding citizens. However, either he has a very short memory, simply isn't paying attention, or intentionally wrote a one-sided partisan article to rally the troops.
While I agree that many of the town hall protests have been out of line, especially the person who was carrying a gun (perfectly legal, but totally unnecessary and unwise), and, yes there are crazies in the right wing, it's absolutely ridiculous to claim one party or the other has monopoly on crazies.
First, his claim that the recent protests are all coming from the right is unproven. Has anyone checked the party affiliation of everyone speaking up at these town hall meetings?
In addition, there has been some craziness from the left at the meetings. Does he remember the SEIU members who physically assaulted a black conservative? It's one thing to speak your mind, and another to assault someone (One is legal and the other is not. Guess which.)
Perlstein is making an intentionally partisan ad hominem attack. Instead of dealing with specific arguments in the health-care debate, he pre-emptively categorizes claims about health care from the right as false, and paranoid, while categorically validating claims from the left. Note his selective use of quotes below, when saying that Walter Cronkite would have treated this situation differently:
In spite of Perlstein's "thoughts", "crazy" is not a partisan problem, but a people problem. From any perspective, you could find people "on the other side" to call crazy.
The "crazy tree" blossomed just fine when Bush was in power: How about those who claim President Bush caused 9/11? Have you ever Googled "kill Bush"? Try that, then try "Bush Nazi". Perhaps you've seen the "Kill Bush" computer game?
Remember the violent protesters during the Republican National Convention? Watch this, this, and this, but not in work or with children in the room. There was physical violence, explosions, attacks on police officers and journalists, protesters resisting arrest, and protesters recording the events to post online.
This last point seems similar to one of Perlstein's objections to the town hall events:
The crazy tree also blossomed among the left while President Bill Clinton was in power. In 2000, Alec Baldwin screamed on Late Night with Conan O'Brien about Henry Hyde, whose supposed crime was advocating the impeachment of Clinton:
To this day, some defend Alec Baldwin's ranting on TV, saying it was just an act and he was using a public forum to show how upset people were about the ongoing investigation into President Clinton's infidelity and repeated lies while under oath.
By that same logic, if the town-hall protesters are "acting" on behalf of some organization to show how passionate people are, does that not make them legitimate as well?
In the end, the craziness from all sides helps explain why U.S. government was designed with so many checks and balances, and why polls often show that Americans prefer divided government, where one party controls the White House and a different one controls Congress. Very few want our government to stray too far one way or the other.
Perhaps the crazies on one side serve an important purpose in calling out the crazies on the other? Perhaps the fact that one party currently controls two branches of government and the other has only a slight hold on the third explains the behavior Perlstein is complaining about? Maybe they feel like they have no other representation.
Perlstein thinks the political right has a monopoly on crazies and, apparently, people on the left are all calm, rational, law-abiding citizens. However, either he has a very short memory, simply isn't paying attention, or intentionally wrote a one-sided partisan article to rally the troops.
While I agree that many of the town hall protests have been out of line, especially the person who was carrying a gun (perfectly legal, but totally unnecessary and unwise), and, yes there are crazies in the right wing, it's absolutely ridiculous to claim one party or the other has monopoly on crazies.
First, his claim that the recent protests are all coming from the right is unproven. Has anyone checked the party affiliation of everyone speaking up at these town hall meetings?
In addition, there has been some craziness from the left at the meetings. Does he remember the SEIU members who physically assaulted a black conservative? It's one thing to speak your mind, and another to assault someone (One is legal and the other is not. Guess which.)
Perlstein is making an intentionally partisan ad hominem attack. Instead of dealing with specific arguments in the health-care debate, he pre-emptively categorizes claims about health care from the right as false, and paranoid, while categorically validating claims from the left. Note his selective use of quotes below, when saying that Walter Cronkite would have treated this situation differently:
The media didn't adjudicate the ever-present underbrush of American paranoia as a set of "conservative claims" to weigh, horse-race-style, against liberal claims.My guess is that both sides have some valid ideas, and both sides have some bad ones.
In spite of Perlstein's "thoughts", "crazy" is not a partisan problem, but a people problem. From any perspective, you could find people "on the other side" to call crazy.
The "crazy tree" blossomed just fine when Bush was in power: How about those who claim President Bush caused 9/11? Have you ever Googled "kill Bush"? Try that, then try "Bush Nazi". Perhaps you've seen the "Kill Bush" computer game?
Remember the violent protesters during the Republican National Convention? Watch this, this, and this, but not in work or with children in the room. There was physical violence, explosions, attacks on police officers and journalists, protesters resisting arrest, and protesters recording the events to post online.
This last point seems similar to one of Perlstein's objections to the town hall events:
The BBC...quoted liberal Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin's explanation: "They want to get a little clip on YouTube of an effort to disrupt a town meeting and to send the congressman running for his car.Is Perlstein arguing that YouTube makes a protest illegitimate?
The crazy tree also blossomed among the left while President Bill Clinton was in power. In 2000, Alec Baldwin screamed on Late Night with Conan O'Brien about Henry Hyde, whose supposed crime was advocating the impeachment of Clinton:
“I’m thinking to myself if we were in other countries, we would all, right now, all of us together, . . . would go down to Washington and we would stone [Republican U.S. Representative] Henry Hyde to death! We would stone him to death! Wait! . . . Shut up! No, shut up! I’m not finished. We would stone Henry Hyde to death, and we would go to their homes and we’d kill their wives and their children. We would kill their families.”Instead of disapproving, the crowd cheered as this man (who has since considered running for public office) seemed to be advocating the murder of innocent children.
To this day, some defend Alec Baldwin's ranting on TV, saying it was just an act and he was using a public forum to show how upset people were about the ongoing investigation into President Clinton's infidelity and repeated lies while under oath.
By that same logic, if the town-hall protesters are "acting" on behalf of some organization to show how passionate people are, does that not make them legitimate as well?
In the end, the craziness from all sides helps explain why U.S. government was designed with so many checks and balances, and why polls often show that Americans prefer divided government, where one party controls the White House and a different one controls Congress. Very few want our government to stray too far one way or the other.
Perhaps the crazies on one side serve an important purpose in calling out the crazies on the other? Perhaps the fact that one party currently controls two branches of government and the other has only a slight hold on the third explains the behavior Perlstein is complaining about? Maybe they feel like they have no other representation.
