PD's Choice of NCB Economist to be on Panel seems Strange

Is it just us, or does seem strange to other people? The Cleveland Plain Dealer has a panel of economists from the area who it uses to forecast how things are going to go economically in the region. The PD ran an article on Sunday using this panel. One of the panel members is the chief economist from National City Bank, you know, the bank that just got sold to a Pittsburgh bank because it lost millions of dollars on bad loans. The bank that couldn't get Federal TARP funds. The bank whose demise may cost literally thousands of Ohioans their jobs. 

Now this guy may be a very good economist, and may make good predictions, but using someone from a bank that just had to be sold because of bad decisions strikes us as strange. Of course, this is nothing new for the media. 

You can look at any Sunday talking-heads show and see people who were wrong about the Iraq War, wrong about the effects of Bush's reckless tax cuts regarding federal deficits, and wrong about the economy chatting it up like nothing ever happen. Meanwhile, people who were right about these issues aren't represented on such shows nearly as often. 

The media has developed cozy relationships with so-called "experts" and uses them regardless of whether they are right or wrong. While such a practice is great for the "experts", and probably produces great friendships between the media representatives and the "experts", it doesn't do a thing for the media's credibility. 

Obama's Decision on Public Financing Attacks Media's Influence

Most media outlets that have commented on Obama's decision to foresake public financing have expressed disapproval. The editorial that the Washington Post ran, entitled The Politics of Spare Change, is typical. Also typical was the comments made by Charles Gibson of ABC News on the nightly news program for June 20, 2008, when he wondered if Obama's decision was "unfair" and whether Americans would disapprove because American voters want a "level playing field." (Interestingly we have never heard of such sentiments from Gibson when Bush was raising millions of dollars to run in 2000 against his primary opponents, or when right-wing 527s were impugning Kerry's military service in 2004. Apparently he is only concerned when Democrats raise a lot of money to take on John McCain.)

So why does Obama's decision cause such media concern? The media would have you believe that it is because it is concerned about the influence of big money in the political system, and that may very well be, but there are other reasons. One of them is the fact that the more money that a presidential candidate can raise to get his or her message out, the less influence the media has in the election.

When presidential candidates are limited in the amount of money they can raise and spend, it makes "free" media more important. There is an incentive for candidates to court media representatives to try and get free publicity.

This is because a political campaign is really an advertising process. Candidates have a message they want voters to hear and, hopefully, approve. If they are limited in what they can raise and spend on "paid" media, then free media becomes more important. If, however, they aren't limited, then paid media takes on more importance and free media loses importance.

From a candidate's perspective, free media is always more problematic than paid media because the candidate has much less control over free media. Thus, while there is an incentive to get free media, it always comes with a risk.

Look at it this way: The media is in business to make money. Media representatives work for profit-making organizations. It helps their employers if there is less competition from political advertisers because it makes their product, political reporting, more valuable. It also plays into their sense of self-importance.

Obama's decision affects the media's power and influence. Of course they aren't going to like it, and of course, they are going to tell you that their concern has nothing to do with their loss of power. They can say that, but we don't have to believe it.

How McCain Works the Press

There is a fascinating article up on Huffington Post about how John McCain works the media. (The link to the article is found at the end of the this report.) The article is an interview with Paul Waldman who has co-authored a book with David Brock titled Free Ride: John McCain and the Media. Brock is the founder of Media Matters, an organization dedicated to countering right-wing bias in the news media.

In the interview, Waldman makes the case that John McCain gets a "free ride" from the media because he takes the time to stroke reporters and develop a personal relationship with them. This is a quote from the interview:

"But what McCain understands better than anyone in his profession is that nothing is more important than establishing a personal relationship with reporters. As he's found time and time again, when you build up those ties of friendship, they become a resource you can draw on later. So when something pops up that would be enormously problematic or even fatal for another politician, reporters give McCain the benefit of the doubt."

Waldman also explains how McCain's relationship with the media benefits him:

"What you find when you examine McCain's treatment by the press is this: The rules are different for John McCain. Other candidates get defined by their biggest weaknesses and the worst thing they ever did; McCain gets defined by his best qualities and the most noble thing he ever did. Other candidates find a press corps that mocks their spin and assumes they're phonies and liars; McCain's spin frames his coverage. (When was the last time you saw a story about McCain that didn't refer to him as a "maverick" or his utterances as "straight talk"?) Other candidates view the press as an adversary, and the coverage they get reflects that relationship; McCain views the press as a partner and friend, and that's how they treat him.

The result is that a whole series of ideas about McCain -- that he's a maverick, that he's a reformer, that he's an ideological moderate -- have become so embedded in the coverage of McCain that journalists no longer even ask whether they're true. And in many cases, these ideas are either completely false or have been wildly exaggerated."

Basically, if you are interested in establishing a relationship with someone, you do it by being nice to them, by flattering them, by making their jobs easier, and by not criticizing them, especially publicly. McCain is apparently applying those rules to the media because he wants a relationship with them. It obviously works, although, tellingly, not as well with his home-state news media.

In the article Waldman points out that reporters from his home-state of Arizona have seen the whole gambit of McCain's emotions. They have seen his temper, his rudeness to those who disagree with him, and his pettiness to his opponents. It is not as easy to stroke someone who has seen you blow up at them or others.

Still, since most of the media doesn't come from Arizona, McCain's treatment of the press gets him the results he wants. Since Obama hasn't been around that long, and since Clinton and the media seem to have some sort of love-hate relationship going, Democrats are going to have the face the fact that McCain will be getting much better media treatment than the eventual Democratic nominee.

Here is the link for the Huffington Post article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/25/free-ride-inside-the-med_n_93285.html

Media Ignores McCain Not Releasing Tax Returns While Going After Clinton

Media Matters columnist Jamison Foser has a column up about how the media goes after Hillary Clinton for not releasing her tax returns while ignoring that McCain hasn't released his tax returns. Now, this could be just one more example of the double standard that is applied to the Clintons by the national media, or it could reflect the fact that McCain's opponents didn't go after him on this issue during the primaries like Obama went after Clinton.

One thing that has to be kept in mind is that a lot of these media types, people like Tim Russert and Chris Matthews, make a lot of money, yet they don't release their tax returns. They would say that there is a difference since they are not elected officials, yet the fact is that knowing how much money these whores would save if John McCain's idea of making Bubble-Boy's tax cuts permanent would be helpful in evaluating their reporting and commentary.

Indeed, they take the position that while we are entitled to know every little detail about the private lives of elected officials, we are not entitled to know anything about their private lives. Like, for instance, the fact that for years Andrea Mitchell was living with Alan Greenspan while she was reporting on the actions of the Federal Government.

The double standard applied by the media is more than just hypocrisy in action. The media's refusal to critically examine George W. Bush in 2000 and then its failure to critically examine Bush's claims about Iraq have led to one disaster after another for Americans, especially working class Americans. Of course, Bush's tax cuts benefit people like Russert and Matthews and they don't have children serving in Iraq, so maybe they weren't so dumb after all.

Different Media Treatment of Hagee/McCain Compared to Obama/Farrakhan

If you go to Google.com's news section and put in the search words "McCain Hagee" you will get 483 hits as of 4:00 am on 3.4.2008. If you put in the words "Obama Farrakhan" you will get 1869 hits as of the same time. Now, of course, the McCain-Hagee story has not been around as long, but the fact that the story is not getting the play that the other story is getting is interesting.

There are a lot of reasons, but one reason may be that the media is scared to point out the extremism of some "Christian" ministers because of backlash from the right-wing noise machine. After all, such ministers support the neo-con's idea of a war with Iran; they have often come out in favor of extending Bush's tax cuts; and they are help stoke up the base on issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion. Consequently, attacks on nut-jobs like Hagee for his anti-Catholic remarks and bigotry carry more risk of backlash from readers and viewers as the noise machine revs up in support of such characters.

Attacking Farrakhan, however, doesn't carry the same risk. There is no one on the left that is going to defend Louis Farrakhan and his attacks on the Jewish faith, or at least, not very many. Thus, no one is going to be out there telling readers and viewers that media stories on Farrakhan are somehow unfair.

The book The Way to Win talks about the "Freak Show." The Freak Show is the way the media covers politics and how it favors the right. The Freak Show helped elect George Bush and almost brought down the Clinton Presidency. The Freak Show focuses on personality, not policy, and magnifies every supposed "character" flaw of Democrats while ignoring such "character" flaws of Republicans.

The difference in coverage so far of the Hagee endorsement of McCain, which McCain sought out, compared to the endorsement of Obama by Farrakhan, which he Obama didn't seek out and didn't want, is an example of the Freak Show in action.

Does Blogging Drive Down Readership of Opinion Pieces?

Here is something that I have noticed about myself: Ever since I started posting blog entries, I have been reading other people's opinions less. I also note that I have become more selective about whose opinions I read. This is a big change from my reading habits of a decade or so ago.

It used to be that I religiously read every opinion column that appeared in the Cleveland Plain Dealer or the various magazines that came to our home. Didn't matter if they were liberal, conservative, or in between, I read them. This habit meant that I read columns by George Will, who I very seldom agreed with, and columns by Tom Oliphant, who I almost always agreed with. It also meant that I watched shows on PBS like Washington Week in Review or the News Hour, (although to be more accurate, that was more like 15 years ago.)

Now, however, I read opinion columns less and less and I have also stopped watching shows where viewers are subjected to hours of talking heads giving me their opinions. This trend started in the Clinton Administration. There was really no point in reading or listening to conservative commentators because after you had read a couple of them, you knew what the rest were going to say. It was some theme of "Clinton is horrible. He must be stopped, and the only thing that will stop him are those paragons of virtue, the Republicans." Unless you are Dick Cheney's wife, there is a limit to how much of this you can take.

The other thing, though, is that since I am now posting entries on blogs, I have much less time to read opinion pieces. I would rather read a news article, write my reactions to the article, and then post it as a blog entry than take the time to read a column by some right-wing whack job, like say Charles Krauthammer. After all, my time is limited and why waste it reading someone's opinion that will most likely just upset me?

Another reason why I read less and less opinion pieces is that I don't really think that most of the pundits and commentators are any smarter than I am, or for that matter, than some bloggers I read. The whole idea behind opinion columnists is that they have a degree of expertise that I don't possess. Once you determine that they don't have that expertise, then why read them at all?

An example is Maureen Dowd. Dowd very seldom gives you insight into a political problem that you couldn't get from your friends, although it is usually better expressed. Her whole style depends on making "clever" observations about political leaders' personalities and no observations about their policies. Since there is nothing in her background to indicate that she has more knowledge of human psychology than I do, why read her?

Given the fact that there are literally millions of bloggers around the world, this tendency, if indeed there is such a tendency, could have profound implications for the future of punditry. Newspapers may have to go back to being just about the facts, and not the opinion. Gee, wouldn't that just be terrible?

Anyway, if other bloggers have opinions on this topic, please share them with me in the comments section.

Media Elites Don't Share Concerns of Ordinary Americans

Why does Maureen Dowd write crap like this, focusing on the personalities of politicians as opposed to their policies? Well, the first reason is that it is a lot easier. If you write stuff like hers, you don't need to do any research, other than occasional Google searches. Another reason is that it pays well. Maureen Dowd makes a lot of money as a columnist for the Times, and then makes more money selling books and has the opportunity to make even more money appearing as a guest lecturer. The most important reason, though, is that Ms. Dowd, like most members of the media elite don't have the same concerns as other Americans.

She makes a good deal of money, she has health insurance, she probably has a good pension, and, since she doesn't have any children, doesn't have to worry about what happens to America after she is gone. What in the world does she have in common with people who are working at relatively low paying jobs, worried about paying for health insurance, and worried about how they are going to support their children? The answer, of course, is not a damn thing.

This is why Ms. Dowd, and other media elites, can sneer at Democratic candidates and spend a great deal of time analyzing their personalities, or their marriages, or how much they did or didn't spend on an haircut. This is why they can write articles that pretend to reveal deep psychological motives of people they have seldom, if ever, met or talked with.

The best thing that could happen to progressive candidates would be for about 75% of the media to lose their jobs so they could see what it is like for the rest of America. Maybe then they would care more about policies and much less about personalities.

Should Plain Dealer Provide More Opportunity for Feedback?

One of the nice things about the Washington Post is that its website allows readers to comment on most, if not all, of the stories that it runs. This means that if you read something you like, or don't like, you can post an online comment. These comments are apparently read by the Post's writers, who don't always like them.

In the past, journalists were protected from reader feedback unless a reader wrote a letter to the editor, which might or might not get published, or called the writer on the telephone. In either case, the feedback was not immediate and was much more edited.

In the case of letters to the editor it was edited by the paper itself and in the case of calls from readers, the editing process was a self-editing process. People aren't usually going to be as honest in a phone call as they are posting online.

Allowing readers to comment on stories they read online engages them with the story they are reading. That's the upside. The downside is, of course, that sometimes a lack of self-editing is a bad thing. It can lead to opinions or reactions that are not well thought out and are driven more by emotion than by intellect.

All of this brings us to the Plain Dealer's website. The Plain Dealer does not provide an opportunity for readers to post reactions to most of its stories. The question is: should it? Would readers on its website feel more engaged if they could post stories? Would it attract readers to the website? Would such a practice force journalists to confront criticism, and would that lead to better reporting?

Most newspaper websites that we have visited seem to be like the PD's and not like the Post's when it comes to allowing reader feedback. It will be interesting to see if more media websites allow greater opportunities for reader feedback in the future.

Pew Center Survey Shows Why Media is Losing Audience

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released a study in June that shows why the traditional media is losing its audience. The study is of the public's views toward coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign. Here are some interesting statistics: by a 76% to 19% margin the public wants more coverage of the positions of the candidates' position on the issues; by a margin of 54% to 39% the public wants more coverage of the candidates who are not the frontrunners; and by a margin of 57% to 36% the public wants less coverage of which candidate is leading in fundraising.

Note that wants the public wants is consistent with the fact that voters have to make a choice in the 2008 presidential election. They want the facts that are important to them in making that choice. Yet, the media, in its wisdom, keeps giving them what they don't seem to want: more coverage of frontrunners and how much money those frontrunners have raised.

Thomas Patterson, a professor who studies the media and how it covers politics, wrote a book in the early nineties called Out of Order. In that book he presented evidence on how the media gets caught up in the "game" theory of politics and presents most of its coverage in terms of who is ahead, who is behind, who is coming up, and who is going down. Excessive coverage of polls and fundraising efforts is a result of such a world view. He claimed that the media looked at politics from a "campaign schema."

Patterson wrote that the public, on the other hand, looks at campaigns from a "governing schema." The public wants to know who will make the best decisions in public office. The public wants information that they can use in making that decision.

If a business keeps failing to give its customers or potential customers what they want, they eventually go elsewhere. For a long time, customers of the media didn't have anywhere else they could turn, then along came the Internet.

Media types such as David Broder decry the Internet and claim that bloggers are ruining American politics by polarizing politics but almost never examine whether they are giving the public what it wants in terms of political coverage. Such refusal to engage in self-examination is a sign of arrogance in any profession or industry and the media is no exception. Until media personnel start to critically question whether they are providing readers and viewers what they want in terms of covering political campaigns, they will continue to lose their audience to the Internet.

The Arrogance of the Media's Emphasis on "Character Issues"

If you run a search on Google and use the words "Al Gore" and sighing, you will find that there are approximately 21,500 entries returned by Google's search engine. If, however, you run the terms "George W. Bush" and "lack of intellectual curiosity" you will get a return of 719 entries. This example illustrates the problem with the emphasis on so-called "character issues" by the media.

The range of the media's concern with "character issues" is very limited. Did the candidate ever cheat on his or her spouse, did he lie to someone about something important, is he or she hypocritical, did the candidate ever do a favor for a contributor, are about all the questions asked by the media regarding "character." Almost none of them, however, relate to the policies that such a candidate will adopt if elected, and there is no indication that the public really cares about the answers to those questions.

The illustration given above shows the problem with the media's approach. Did it matter at all whether Al Gore was condescending to George W. Bush during their debates? Does it really matter at all if Al Gore is condescending to his political opponents and thinks that a lot of them are idiots? Would such character traits impact on the policies he would have pursued if elected? The answer is "No, they wouldn't."

Contrast that with George W. Bush's lack of intellectual curiosity. Almost every mistake made by this administration can be traced to the fact that George W. Bush never questions the adoption of policies that seem consistent with the beliefs he held before becoming President. As he once famously said, "I know what I believe and I believe that what I believe is right." Nowhere in that statement is any appreciation for the concept that actual facts may challenge a person's beliefs. Yet, almost no member of the media reported about Bush's lack of intellectual curiosity prior to him becoming President in 2000.

One reason is that it is a hard concept to illustrate by example. People close to Bush aren't going to talk about his lack of intellectual curiosity and such a character trait isn't apparent from a distance. Intellectual curiosity shows up in the books a person reads, or in conversations, or in who a person has discussions with and the topics discussed. It is shown over time and is not easily verifiable.

Contrast that with sighing during a debate. There you have proof since the sighing was done during a televised debate. It is a singular event in time. It is easily understood by the public. In short it is ready made for media analysis. The same is true about cheating on a spouse, once one of the people involved is willing to talk about it, or about doing a favor for a contributor, once the favor is discovered.

During the 2008 Presidential campaign millions of words will be written and/or spoken by the media about so-called "character issues", and almost none of them will have any relation to policies that the winning candidate will adopt once elected.

AlterNet Article on How Iraqis React to Iraq-Korea Comparison

If you click on the link in this entry's title, you can read a fascinating article on how the American press didn't bother to call up Iraqis and ask them how they felt about Tony Snow's Iraq-Korea comparison. You may remember that Tony Snow revealed that President Bubble-Boy analogizes American military involvement in Iraq to American military involvement in Korea. This apparently means that he sees American troops in Iraq for at least the next 50 years.

AlterNet decided to do what the American media wouldn't do and that was contact Iraqis to see what they thought about this idea. Their reaction was unequivocal: this idea sucks. Here is a quote from the article about the reaction of a pro-American member of the Iraqi government:

Sanger might have called Dr. Alaa Makki, a senior official in the reliably pro-occupation Iraqi Islamic Party, for his reaction. We reached him in Baghdad, and he was taken aback to hear of the talk coming out of the White House and the Pentagon. "I haven't heard about this," he said, "and I'm very surprised they'd make such statements without consulting with the Iraqi side." After asking us to send him copies of the statements made by the White House and the Pentagon, he told us that his party is "against leaving any permanent bases in Iraq; in fact, we are for setting a timetable for a complete withdrawal of the MNF from Iraq." That was, again, a representative of the pro-occupation Iraqi Islamic Party.

What this article points out is that the American news media sees the question of how long American troops should be in Iraq only from the perspective of Washington, never from the perspective of Iraqis. The article's authors have a theory about why this is so. Here is a quote from the article:

But they didn't make those calls, and that's an important part of how consent for throwing thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars into an occupation of a distant land is manufactured here at home: It starts with the assumption that the story of the U.S. "intervention" in Iraq can be told by talking to military analysts and "senior administration officials" in D.C., but without ever hearing from the people living on the fringes of the American Empire. It not always intentional; it's a facet of our media culture: You talk to "serious" analysts in Washington if you want to be seen as serious yourself.

The media culture in America is partly responsible for the tough questions not being asked of Bush before he started this war. Now that same media culture is partly responsible for the tough questions not being asked of the Bush Administration as it continues that war. At least one American reporter should have asked Tony Snow this question: "What makes you think that the Iraqis want us to stay in Iraq for the next 50 years?"

"Man in the Arena" Speech by T. Roosevelt Applies to Most Political & Sports Pundits

This is a quote from a speech given by Theodore Roosevelt in Paris in April of 1910:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

The reason why are posting this quote is that political and sports pundits are the proverbial "cold and timid souls who neither know victory or defeat". Time and time again you see political and sports pundits sneer at politicians and athletes such as Al Gore, John Edwards, or, as a very recent example, LeBron James. These pundits won't put themselves on line and run for political office or have the ability to play professional sports. No, their role is to just observe and complain about those who don't report, but actually do.

Over the next few days there will be a lot of complaining about LeBron James and the Cavaliers. Most of it coming from people who have no idea what they are talking about. Over the next several months there will be a lot of complaining about whoever the Democrats nominate for President. Again, most of it will come from people who have no idea what they are talking about. If all this blather starts to get you down, just remember the TR quote, it will put the critics in perspective.

Jerid of Buckeye State Blog Goes After Tommy Thompson

If you click here, you can watch a video that is a clip of former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson leaving a meeting with New Hampshire "pro-life" leaders. What is so great about this video is that it shows the power of the internet to allow citizen journalists. Jerid of Buckeye State Blog is the creator of this video clip. It is part of Buckeye State Blog's New Hampshire Project.

Here he is in New Hampshire, probably on a shoe string budget, and yet he has managed to get a short interview with a presidential candidate. Then he took the clip, edited it, added some titles and text overlays, and posted in on You Tube. He probably did this using a relatively inexpensive hand-held camcorder, a laptop computer, and the hosting services of You Tube.

This is the kind of thing that more Democrats should be doing. Get a video camcorder, learn to edit your own video clips, and go down and cover the hell out of local government. Post the clips on You Tube. Put the word out that you are posting them. Let citizens and the media know what you are up to. Don't just criticize the media, become the media. Way to go, Jerid.

Why Is the Media Still Calling It A Surge?

Opening paragraphs of article in Washington Post:

The Pentagon announced yesterday that 35,000 soldiers in 10 Army combat brigades will begin deploying to Iraq in August as replacements, making it possible to sustain the increase of U.S. troops there until at least the end of this year.

U.S. commanders in Iraq are increasingly convinced that heightened troop levels, announced by President Bush in January, will need to last into the spring of 2008. The military has said it would assess in September how well its counterinsurgency strategy, intended to pacify Baghdad and other parts of Iraq, is working.

Definition of surge from online version of Merriam-Webster dictionary:

Pronunciation:
\ˈsərj\
Function:
verb
Inflected Form(s):
surged; surg·ing
1 : to rise and fall actively : toss 2 : to rise and move in waves or billows : swell 3 : to slip around a windlass, capstan, or bitts — used especially of a rope 4 : to rise suddenly to an excessive or abnormal value 5 : to move with a surge or in surges transitive verb : to let go or slacken gradually (as a rope)

Something that takes months to accomplish and is going to last for months is not a "surge" in the most accepted definition of the word. What is really happening is that the Bush Administration is escalating the number of troops in Iraq in hopes of holding things together until the next president is sworn in. Then, Bush can go down to Crawford, play at being a cowboy, and write his memoirs.

We know why the Bushies want to call it a surge. To call it an escalation, when the American public is increasingly soured on Bubble-Boy's foreign adventure, would be political suicide, but why is the media using the same term? Just because the Bush Administration wants to call this troop increase something that it's not doesn't mean that the media has to play along with it.

You can read the whole Post article by clicking on the link in this entry's title.

Justice Department Official Reportedly Told Fired U.S. Attorney not to Talk to Media

The shoes just keep dropping on the fired U.S. Attorneys story. Now it is being reported that a Justice Department official told one of the fired U.S. Attorneys that if they talked to the media more information about them would be released publicly. Although that U.S. Attorney didn't regard the tone as threatening, another one of the fired U.S. Attorneys, when told of the conversation, regarded it as a threat. That Attorney believed that the implication was that if the fired U.S. Attorneys talked to the media, damaging information on them or their families would be released.

One thing that should be kept in mind when considering this aspect of the story is that all U.S. Attorneys go through background checks by the F.B.I. when being considered for appointment. These background checks are known to be very thorough. The fired U.S. Attorneys would know that somewhere in the Justice Department was a file with their name on it. They would also know that it might contain information that they wouldn't want publicly released. An Administration that "outed" a covert CIA agent who was working on weapons of mass destruction to get back at her husband while this nation is at war wouldn't hesitate to destroy the personal and professional reputations of six or seven fired U.S. Attorneys.

How Media Supervisors Influence What Information You Receive

If you click on this entry's title you can read a blog post by former Washington Times reporter George Archibald. Archibald claims to be the first reporter hired by the Washington Times outside of the original founding group. The Washington Times is a paper owned by the Moonies and is a wingnut media outlet. Now, this former reporter is a true believer, no doubt about it, and the reason why we are recommending his article is not that we agree with him. It is because his article contains fascinating examples of how editors and other media supervisors determine and define what is news.

Often media personnel like to deny how they shape the news by the story lines they chose to present. They act as if news stories just magically appear. Well, that is simply not true. There are literally millions of stories that the media could present, but only a relatively small number get presented. Every story that is presented appears because of the conscious decision of someone to present the story. In corporate media there are a number of such persons. There is the author of the piece, his or her supervisor, that person's supervisor, and depending on the importance of the story, maybe another person, perhaps the publisher, owner, or station manager.

These decisions are why labor issues aren't covered by most major news outlets while we hear about Anna Nicole Smith and her demise ad nauseum. These decisions are why the negative aspects of trade agreements aren't usually presented to the public and why, until recently, Bush was presented as just "a regular guy", even though he was raised, and remains, part of the economic elite of America.

It is also why blogs are much more individualistic in outlook. Usually they are run by one person, or a small group of people, and they have a particular bent or outlook. The writers are not supervised by people who may have a different agenda than the writer of the story. It is also why blogs can, if they chose, get ahead of a story, because the writer doesn't have to work through a bureaucracy, so to speak.

Why Not Try Lowering the Cost of Campaigns?

The amazing thing about political journalism is the "pack mentality" that seems to affect its practitioners. Almost all political journalists and commentators think "inside the box." There seems to be very little original thinking. This means that both issues discussed by political journalists and solutions proposed are fairly narrow. Take, for example, campaign financing.

Since the Watergate era the focus on the issue of campaign financing has been to regulate the contribution side of the equation. This means passing legislation that restricts the amount of money that can be given to a particular candidate by a particular person or entity. Yet, the cost of campaigns keeps rising, and the amount of money going to candidates keeps going up and up, especially for campaigns for Federal office. Meanwhile, the cost of campaigns going up means that more and more people are discouraged from running for local offices because those races are becoming more and more expensive.

Here's a suggestion: focus on the bringing the cost of campaigns down. How? Here's one idea that could have a significant impact: allow candidates for all offices to mail at the same rate as non-profit organizations. Non-profit organizations can mail for a very reduced rate. Extend that rate to all political candidates. There would obviously be some cost to the USPS, but the benefit to society of driving down the cost of campaigns would be worth it.

Actually, it is our understanding that the law does allow the state organizations of the Republican and Democratic parties to mail at the same rate as non-profit organizations, or at a very similar rate. The above proposal would extend that rate to all candidates running for public office.

There may very well be problems with this proposal that we haven't thought of, and maybe its not such a great idea, but the important thing is to change the focus from controlling contributions to lowering the cost of campaigns. If the cost of campaigns could be significantly brought down, then more people could run for office without risking bankruptcy.

The Bush Economy: Great for those at the top

If you click on the link in this entry's title, you can read an article about how Bush and Democrats look at the economy. To Republicans like Bush the economy is doing great. To Democrats like John Edwards, Jim Webb and Sherrod Brown, the economy is not doing well at all.

Why the difference? Because Bush looks at the economy from the perspective of a person born into the upper class in America. The stock market is doing well, unemployment seems to be going down, and new jobs are being created. Of course, millions have lost their jobs, house foreclosures are way up, millions don't have health insurance, the new jobs don't pay near what the lost jobs pay, but Bush doesn't see that because that is not his personal experience.

Edwards and Webb do see it. People like Sherrod Brown see it. This is because their personal experiences are different. They weren't born into the upper class. They have seen people struggle and know what it means to struggle financially. They can empathize with the working family that has seen its standard of living decline because of the loss of a good job, or a catastrophic illness not covered by insurance.

The problem with Republicans on economic issues is that they can't understand what they haven't experienced. Since a lot of them have never experienced economic difficulties, they just don't understand them. Democrats need to point this simple fact out to voters. When they do a lot of the media, whose executives also come from the upper class, won't like it. They will say that Democrats are practicing "class warfare." That's okay. Democrats should just keep on saying it. It doesn't matter what the media says, it matters what the voters say.

Long Wait for Bush's New Way Forward a Mistake

Interesting article from the Washington Post about how the long delay in announcing Bush's plan from the release of the Iraq Study Group Report has hurt Bush's political support. The article also contains a short but significant sentence about how Democrats have offered several alternatives to Bush's plan. The fact that the writer decided to mention the fact that Democrats have offered alternatives is significant because it shows that the media is no longer accepting Bush's spin on events. Bush is going to have a difficult final two years in Washington getting anything done if Republicans keep bailing on him and the media doesn't cover for him. Of course, his problem is a nation's hope. (The WP article is linked to this entry's title.)

The Iraq-Iran War?

According to the article linked to in this entry's title, NBC News anchors were very puzzled by comments Bush made to them during an off the record briefing on his speech. This article quotes Tim Russert as saying that apparently Bush expects Iran to surface as a problem very soon.

This would also explain why, during his speech on Wednesday, he announced that the U.S. is sending Patriot missiles to Iraq. Since these are missiles used against military airplanes and missiles, and since the insurgents in Iraq don't have such military assets, why are these units being sent to Iraq? Could it be because the Bush administration expects a military confrontation with Iran?

A friend of ours once told us that Bush will get out of Iraq by trying to go through Iran. We thought he was joking. He said that he wasn't joking and was being serious. It sounds like the same sort of thinking that got us embroiled in this war in the first place.