Tag: media

Journalistic Detachment

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Breaking the News opens by sharing an incident from a television panel discussion from 1987. The moderator asked a wounded vet if he would have been willing to torture a prisoner in order to rescue soldiers under his command who had been captured. His answer was that although he would have to live with the consequences of his decision he would be willing to torture his captive to save his men. (Notice that this was him personally inflicting the torture, not simply ordering or signing off on the use of torture.) Other ex-military members of the panel wrestled with related questions and came to various conclusions but in every case their answers addressed the future consequences to themselves and others regarding their choices.

The moderator then asked one of two prominent journalists what he would do if he had been invited by an enemy military unit to visit the site of an atrocity committed by the military forces of his country’s allies and on their way to the site they discovered a unit of allied forces and set an ambush to kill them. His thoughtful answer was that he would probably do what he could to save the allied troops. As he gave his answer the other prominent journalist on the panel criticized him for getting involved in the story rather than just covering the news as it unfolded. Almost more sad than the fact that the two journalists saw things differently was the fact that the first journalist revised his answer to say that his human instinct to aid his allies in a moment of danger was wrong and showed personal weakness. He said, “I chickened out. . . I wish I had made another decision, I would like to have made his decision.” When the second journalist was pressed to address the impact of the position he had taken he responded by saying, “Don’t ask me! I don’t know.”

I value the role that journalists have to postpone judgement as they examine the issues they are reporting on until they are able to process all the available facts, but it is disturbing that this journalistic detachment should extend so far as to demand that the journalist stand as an idle witness to upcoming events when there is an obvious moral choice before them. Later in the book we are told of a journalist who refuses to vote in elections because it would make him biased.

This idea of a journalist acting outside the bounds of humanity in the name of “objectivity” seems to distort what journalism is. I think that attitude helps to perpetuate the myth among reporters that they can be truly without bias. Because of that belief it is all the more difficult for them to recognize their own biases. It seems to me that the logical extension of believing that you have no bias is to believe that anyone who sees an issue differently is wrong and less enlightened than you are. That seems to be a dangerous position for someone who is trying to uncover the truth of a situation or issue.

Tags media, morality, responsibility, war

culture

Breaking the News

I have been learning a lot from Breaking the News and noticing my perspectives on media, politics, politicians, and public debate changing. If I could spend about two uninterrupted days I would love to write a full reaction to the book. As it is I am planning to write a series of posts focusing on different aspects of the subject that the books covers. If anyone wants to get a headstart on me so they can debunk my thoughts (or enhance my understanding) they could prepare themselves by reading chapters 1, 4, and 5 of the book (possibly later chapters will be added to the list).

Also, I realized a flaw this morning in my assumtions to the question I asked yesterday. The assumption were that newspapers disappeared but radio and television remained. If that were the case little if anything would change because NPR (radio) already does as good a job at thoughtful commentary and reporting as most or all of our current newspapers.

Tags book review, media, NPR

culture technology

Devoid of Newspapers

I’m sure that everyone has read a few articles about the shrinking revenue and circulation of newspapers around the country (and the world I suspect). As an example, Real Clear Politics recently asked Is the Demise of Newspapers Preordained? The trends don’t look good, and up until now I have viewed the situation through the lens of "what do newspapers need to do to remain viable?" I don’t meant o suggest that the situation has grown more dire – in fact I don’t think it has changed in any significant way – but today I began to ask myself "what would happen if newspapers disappeared entirely?"

Perhaps part of the thought was a result of Scott’s post that lists control of information as one of the three ingredients to despotism. Of course the demise of newspapers does not mean that there would be no information, nor does it necessarily mean that there would be a central control over the information that is publicly available.

First let me lay out my two assumptions in approaching this question – newspaper companies go bankrupt, in other words this is not simply a case of only publishing online rather than in a phsical paper; other forms of mass communication (radio, tv, internet) do not disappear.

Most directly what I would expect under these assumptions is that journalism would disappear as a paid profession except in whatever form it might be able to survive in unwritten formats (radio and tv). Currently we live in an age where newspapers are not an exclusive source of original written journalism. We have seen cases where the newspapers (and other professional media) get scooped by amatures with blogs and areas of interest. I believe this gives us a glimpse into what a vaccume of printed news would be filled with.

Anyone (such as myself) can publish information in a way that is publicly accessible. Of course very few people know where to find what I write while millions of people know exactly where to find the things that are written by a columnist at the New York Times. Although amatures already publish many times more information (by word count) than journalism professionals there would bea great shift if the vast majority of people received the majority of their information from the handfull of small-circulation sources to which they had been exposed. Also, there is a huge gap between the information that I am able to find, process, and write about while holding down a steady job and the information that can be found and published by someone who gets to spend their time in pursuit of new and important information.. If newspapers were consistently doing that job I would be distraught over the possibility of losing that service in society. As it is, I fear that we have already lost most of the value that newspapers could offer.

So my question is, what effects do other people see if the newspaper industry were to collapse? How would we cope? How obvious would the loss be in the public arena?

Tags media

culture

News Fluff/Flash

Apparently the nation is very interested that Obama Predicts a Florida Victory in tonight’s BCS National Championship game – just like we were dying to know whether Obama likes the BCS system. I don’t mean to pick on these stories, but they serve as good examples of some of the thoughts I am having as I read Breaking the News. What our President-elect thinks of collegiate sports is suddenly very important despite the fact that we have no proof the Obama is any more an expert on the subject than I am. Obama is not claiming to be an expert, he’s simply offering an opinion when the question is asked because that’s what any fan would do. This really is not a problem as far as what Obama is doing, but it is indicative of a problem that is widespread through the media – all too often what gets published is fluff even when there are important issues that we should be informed about. In fact, even when the important issues are covered the result is often fluff.

Because everyone knows who Obama is it may intrigue many to know his opinions on college sports just as a matter of curiosity – nothing wrong with that. The problem is when virtually everything gets the same level of treatment, whether it’s his guess on the outcome of tonight’s game or his plan for stimulating the economy and cutting the waste out of the federal government. To a large degree, our press today had tried to reduce important offices, such as the presidency, to something that is much easier to understand and report on – celebrity.

That seems to be indicative of the major problem that is spreading through media (old and new) – there is a tendancy to publish what is easy to cover in order to make sure that something is published. I have am not immune to that urge myself. It is very difficult to maintain any influence in the conversation, or keep the attention of any regular readers, if you cannot have some level of consistency in publishing. (Note that consistency and frequency are not the same thing, although they can influence each other.) Those who write primarily for themselves may take the time to really cover an important subject with some depth. (Those tend to be my favorite kind of articles.) Those who write in any noticable degree for an audience will feel the pull to get anything out, and thus will feel the urge to look for something manageable or dependable – often fluff.

Tags media, New York Times, Obama, thoughts

National State

Orrin Depends on Sloppy Journalism

Post author By David
Post date January 7, 2009
14 Comments on Orrin Depends on Sloppy Journalism

The news media is supposed to help us make sense of the world around us, but to a large degree most news organizations have relegated themselves to being nothing more than data streams. A perfect example today comes with the news regarding the D.C. Voting rights bill that Orrin Hatch introduced (again) yesterday. In the Washington Watch section of today’s Utah Policy we get news of the event with no analysis and a mention of, but no link to, the press release. They manage to quote Hatch as he contradicts himself (I’ll get to that in a minute) but offer no analysis or context. The Washington Post covers the story in a biased fashion, but at least in their case we could expect that as Washington has everything to gain and nothing to lose by this bill. Simply put, the residents of D.C. have a legitimate complaint and they would rather compromise on the issue than take the time to make the change in the right way. The compromise is that they offer to help Utah to a temporary solution to Utah’s legitimate concern of being denied a seat in conjunction with a permanent solution to their predicament. Looking at the Deseret News coverage we find the story played as a tussle between Hatch and Jason Chaffetz but still little analysis of the merits of the bill.

Let’s see what analysis of the merits of the bill would tell us.

The residents of D.C. have a legitimate grievance about their lack of voting representation in the House. The proper solution would be an amendment that would grant voting representation in the House to the citizens of any territory that pays federal taxes, or returning the residential portions of D.C. to Maryland as suggested by Rep. Chaffetz – this bill does neither of those things. Likewise Utah has a legitimate complaint about being denied another seat after the 2000 census. The proper solution is our pursuit of a redress through the judicial system and a bill to examine and improve the methodology of counting for the census as well as growing our way outside the margin of error in the census system. We have the growth, we pursued the judicial relief, and this bill does not address the census methodologies in any way.

Let’s see what sloppy journalism ignores in Hatch’s statement.

While the 2010 census and reapportionment might provide Utah an additional seat, the failure of the 2000 process showed that this is not a sure thing. This bill maximizes the chances of securing an additional seat for Utah, which has had one of the country’s fastest growth rates since the last census.

I have no doubt that when Hatch spoke he emphasized the word "might" regarding Utah gaining another seat after the 2010 census. Somehow he can get away with saying that, and admitting that Utah has one of the fastest growing populations since the 2000 census, without anyone questioning in their stories how having one of the fastest growth rates in the country would allow us to still be below the margin for error in the next census.

For those who are wondering, the bill makes no mention of Utah. It provides two new seats in the House and assigns one to D.C. The supporters of the bill are trying to work fast before Utah gains their seat in the 2010 census because they aren’t willing to wait until Congress will give them what they deserve, which is representation in the house without resorting to a gimmick such as offering a balancing seat to poor, picked-on Utah. They also fear that after 2010 there will not be a Republican state with a legitimate grievance about their apportionment of representatives. I understand that legislation is dependent on the art of compromise, and rightly so in most cases, but gimmicks are not the same thing as compromise.

Orrin is not representing the interests of his constituents – he’s simply representing the interests of some of his friends in Washington. If that were not the case he would not have to lie to us and say that we might not get our deserved representation from the 2010 census.

Tags amendments, Deseret News, fourth seat, media, Orrin Hatch, Utah Policy, voting

culture National

News and Government

I have been reading Breaking The News and consequently thinking about the role of the media in disseminating information and the effects of that process in the political arena. I don’t know that my thoughts are fully formed here, but I had to get something down.

The media has been called the Fourth Branch of Government because of how important an informed electorate is in a system of popular government. There is certainlya lot of truth to that idea. I looked for some other perspectives on this issue and found a 2006 article that was very much opposed to the differences between members of the media and elected members of the official branches of government. I also found a 2007 article suggesting that cash is the fourth branch of government and a 2008 article that claims that the military is the fourth branch. These claims got me thinking about what it meant to have a fourth branch, and why we are so fascinated with identifying it.

Personally I would argue that cash has no will of its own and thus cannot act as a governing force. (It is simply a resource to be used in influencing people.) On the other hand, the idea of the military as a fourth branch of government is plausible. The more I have thought about it, the more I believe that there is always a hidden branch of government (meaning a tool that influences the government and the culture of a nation without being an official governing force). That tool is either religion (cultural morality), media (information), or military (force). In fact, it may be that religion may be a replacement for government (tied to the hidden branches of media or military) when it is a governing force, but not a hidden branch.

There are definitely countries where the military is that fourth branch and I am convinced that military and media both play a role in virtually every society – the fourth branch in any country being whichever of the two holds the most dominant controling position. Thankfully the media is the more dominant cultural tool in our nation (presently). So while I believe that our fourth branch has been compromised, just as each of the other three branches have also been compromised, we are still free from the tyrany that coincides with the military as the fourth branch.

I believe that the problems in our media have the same roots as the problems in our government – we the people have distanced ourselves from the source of our information and become less critical and demanding.

I’d love to hear other thoughts on this issue, but for the time being I’ll go back to ruminating.

Tags government, media, thoughts

National State

Federalist No. 44

Although it is not the central point of Federalist No. 44, I found it very interesting to read the fervent distrust of paper money that the defenders of the Constitution had based on their experience – especially considering our present circumstances of economic uncertainty that are largely due to the instability of paper currency (which we manipulate, and experience steady inflation and erratic deflation).

I also found another example of an assumption of our founders which has since been rendered false – this one relates to the checks and balances to be found between state and federal authority.

as every such act of the {federal government} (to violate their Constitutional authority) will be an invasion of the rights of the {state governments}, these will be ever ready to mark the innovation, to sound the alarm to the people, and to exert their local influence in effecting a change of federal representatives. There being no such intermediate body between the State legislatures and the people interested in watching the conduct of the former, violations of the State constitutions are more likely to remain unnoticed and unredressed.

If our states today were truly guarding their constitutional autrity with the jealousy that the founders envisioned I doubt that we the federal behemoth that we are carrying around today which, due to its sheer size, has convinced a large portion of our society that it is capable of solving all our perceived woes. The unfortunate truth is that our states today hardly even whimper at any violation of Constitutional authority by the federal government. There are rare exceptions – such as the backlash against the Real ID Act – but those cases are often nothing more than a plea for full funding when they are asked to implement a federal program that exceeds the Constitutional authority of the government. The states no longer guard their authority – they simply guard their balance sheets.

At the same time, the statement that there are no intermediaries watching the state governments and calling the people to action reamins as true as it was presented in 1788. One might expect that job to be handled by an independent and free press, but the press has done no better at that task than the state governments have done on their level.

Tags documents, federalist, history, media, money, unconstitutional

National

Oath of Ignorance

I thought the following idea was laughable in light of something I heard recently:

[Charles Tiefer, whom Congress appointed earlier this year to the new Commission on Wartime Contracting, which oversees Pentagon contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan] says, federal employees take an oath to [support and defend] the Constitution, while private contractors are just motivated by their own economic interest. It’s a lovely vision, and apparently some people actually believe it.

Of course David Boaz is rightfully skeptical of that fairytale view of federal employees. I have a friend who used to work for a federal government agency. He told me last week that he recently read the Constitution for the first time – long after he quit working for the government. He did take the oath mentioned above, but did so without ever reading the Constitution despite high school and college educations here in the United States. I am not blaming my friend – he’s hardly unusual in what he did except that now he has read the Constitution.

The idea that federal employees deserve some special trust for taking an oath of office is laughable. Most of those employees (like so many elected officials above them) have never read the Constitution they have sworn to protect in that oath. How can we expect them to fulfill their oath and defend the Constitution when they are ignorant of what it says?

Personally, I view federal employees (as a group) just like private employees – they’re just earning a living and doing a job. I don’t think that they have a clearer vision of what they are doing or why they are doing it than anyone else.

Tags Cato, connections, government, media, Oath of Office

National

Support But Don’t Trust

I am a strong supporter of our government. I obey the laws (even little ones like speed limits and seat belt laws) and pay my taxes without complaint and without seeking any tricks to minimize those taxes. Supporting the government, however, does not mean that I trust the government when they ask for expanded powers. I oppose the efforts of courts, congress, or the President to increase their powers in any area of society. In the financial sector that lack of trust has proven to be a sound policy recently. As September turned to October I wrote six different times opposing the bailout. All over the news and in many blogs people were saying that we should hold our noses and accept that plan because it was necessary. Now I am finding it ironic that some those same people who support the government managing more of our lives are unhappy as they see the mismanagement of the "necessary" bailout funds.

It seems that Congress is the special group in the world that can convince us to let them have more of our money based on how poorly they use it. Perot Charts reports that Theresa Ghilarducci, professor of economic-policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York testified testified in support of a plan that would "modify" 401K’s. Components of the plan include the following:

- All workers would receive a $600 annual inflation-adjusted subsidy from the U.S, government but would be required to invest 5 percent of their pay into a guaranteed retirement account which would be invested in government bonds that would accrue 3 percent per year.
- The current system of providing tax breaks on 401(k) contributions and earnings would be eliminated.

This is extremely frightening considering that the 5% that you would be required to "invest" (at only 3% return) on a $25,000 salary is $1250 For that you would receive a $600 subsidy. This might appear helpful to those who make very little money, but the benefits of their savings are insignificant compared to their needs at retirement and come at a very high price for everyone who just lost their tax savings that encourage them to save in a 401K, not to mention the disincentive that this would be to business who have provided tax free matching for 401K accounts which do much better than 3% returns 90% of the time. Overall savings in the country would decline under this plan.

Is it any wonder that my support of our government does not include my trust. We should all support our government no matter who is in power, but support means that we watch them instead of trusting them. It means that we hold our leaders accountable for what they do. For me, it means that every chance I get I will encourage them to give power back to the people and the states. I like that 10th amendment – too bad it gets worse treatment than the other 26.

Tags amendments, connections, Constitution, economics, government, media, money, New York Times

National State

Smallitics

Let me just start out by saying that I have no problem with Randy Horiuchi running for re-election, nor with his campaign slogan that "He’s got game." That being said, the image of him in hockey gear with the caption "He’s got game (for hockey moms)" has left me with an itch that I just have to scratch.

This struck me as politics at its most senseless (like most of the presidential campaign so far). I see only three possible reasons why he would need to specify hockey moms in his ad:

He’s secretly running for the vice presidency.
The nation’s most famous Hockey Mom is secretly running for Salt Lake County Council.
Hockey moms are an influential constituency in Salt Lake County politics.

Could someone please help me know which of these is the case (or if there is another reason that I have missed)?

Tags media, Sarah Palin, Utah