TW: Barry Ritholz seems like a fairly level-headed and a financial commentator who keeps his politics largely separate from his investment insight. His description of what happens with CNBC seems to me symbolic of what happens with most TV outlets. Things are getting less informative not more.
From the Big Picture:
"I had lunch the other day with several other analysts, strategists, money managers and economists, all of whom shall remain nameless. All make frequent media appearances. The conversation drifted over to CNBC. The consensus is everyone at the table wants to do less of it.
The reasons given:
-Producers try to tailor the discussion (“Be more Bullish/Bearish”);
-Too time consuming;
-Law of diminishing returns — the benefits are less and less each appearance;
-Nuance has become a dirty word (“Pick a Letter to describe the economy”);
-Last minute cancellations when “better” names become available;
-Dumbing down of the discourse (One person called it “Foxification”)
I then mention that while I still do a ton of media, I have become Persona Non Grata at CNBC.
There was an issue with some really obnoxious blog comments (they were deleted); I started asking not to be booked with really dumb guests (I also requested no Octobox). I did do Fox a few times (But really, who cares about that? I do all media outlets on behalf of my firm).
With Dylan gone, I dont hear from Fast Money, and with Kudlow, I was told I was “too nuanced“– a phrase that is hardly ever used to describe me..."
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/02/persona-non-grata-at-cnbc/
Showing posts with label The Media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Media. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Anger Is Not Governance
TW: Reich hits some key points. The movement of folks into their respective echo chambers is creating a political environment fed by anger, resentment and bias. Reasoning and exploration of alternatives suffers. Most folks I know are either so hardened in their opinions or so weary of discussing things that dialogue barely exists and when it does it is hardly enlightening. Anger has always been a big political driver, unfortunately tumult usually results.
The Dems are getting their collective asses kicked by those who are far more willing to ride the anger wave. That Bayh has folded like a wimp frames the challenge well. If he was strong in his beliefs he would not have gone running off like a whiny brat.
That so many Americans think Hooverian economics and/or failed supply side economics and a foreign policy brought by the same fools who created the torture soaked war on terror that led to the Iraq mess is just depressing.
From Robert Reich:
"Not long ago I was debating someone on television. I thought the discussion was going well until the commercial break when a producer said into my earpiece “be angrier.”
“Why should I be angrier?” I asked him, irritated that he hadn’t appreciated the thoughtfulness of debate.
“That’s how we get channel surfers to stop and watch the program,” the producer explained. “Eyeballs are attracted to anger.”
At this point I lost my temper.
The incident came back to me when I heard about Evan Bayh’s decision to leave Congress because he felt it was becoming too partisan. The real problem isn’t partisanship. Bold views and strong positions are fine. Democratic debate and deliberation can be enhanced by them.
The problem is the intransigence and belligerence that has taken over Congress and much of the rest of the public — a profound distrust of people “on the other side,” an unwillingness to compromise, a bitterness and anger disproportionate to issues being discussed.
Anger makes good television, but it’s fake and it teaches Americans the wrong lessons. Anger also can win elections (Senate Republicans haven’t given Obama any votes because they’ve been eyeing the 2010 midterms since he took office, hoping for a rerun of 1994), but partisan anger is just as fake, and it undermines the capacity of our democracy to do the public’s business.
By the way, I was on CNBC this morning, and the subject of discussion was Bayh’s decision. No producer prodded me to be angrier but Larry Kudlow introduced the segment by saying that I’d be “duking it out” with Steve Moore, who writes editorials for the Wall Street Journal. And when it came for us to discuss the gridlock in Congress, Larry continuously interrupted, saying the reason for the gridlock was Obama’s lefti-leaning agenda.
When this is almost all the public sees and hears about public issues, it’s no wonder Americans begin to think everything is an angry shouting match. Americans stop listening to each other. We retreat into small ideological bubbles and talk only with people who agree with us. We forget how much we have in common, and how important it is to get on with the task of making the nation better."
http://robertreich.org/post/393078060/a-thought-on-evan-bayh-and-partisan-america
The Dems are getting their collective asses kicked by those who are far more willing to ride the anger wave. That Bayh has folded like a wimp frames the challenge well. If he was strong in his beliefs he would not have gone running off like a whiny brat.
That so many Americans think Hooverian economics and/or failed supply side economics and a foreign policy brought by the same fools who created the torture soaked war on terror that led to the Iraq mess is just depressing.
From Robert Reich:
"Not long ago I was debating someone on television. I thought the discussion was going well until the commercial break when a producer said into my earpiece “be angrier.”
“Why should I be angrier?” I asked him, irritated that he hadn’t appreciated the thoughtfulness of debate.
“That’s how we get channel surfers to stop and watch the program,” the producer explained. “Eyeballs are attracted to anger.”
At this point I lost my temper.
The incident came back to me when I heard about Evan Bayh’s decision to leave Congress because he felt it was becoming too partisan. The real problem isn’t partisanship. Bold views and strong positions are fine. Democratic debate and deliberation can be enhanced by them.
The problem is the intransigence and belligerence that has taken over Congress and much of the rest of the public — a profound distrust of people “on the other side,” an unwillingness to compromise, a bitterness and anger disproportionate to issues being discussed.
Anger makes good television, but it’s fake and it teaches Americans the wrong lessons. Anger also can win elections (Senate Republicans haven’t given Obama any votes because they’ve been eyeing the 2010 midterms since he took office, hoping for a rerun of 1994), but partisan anger is just as fake, and it undermines the capacity of our democracy to do the public’s business.
By the way, I was on CNBC this morning, and the subject of discussion was Bayh’s decision. No producer prodded me to be angrier but Larry Kudlow introduced the segment by saying that I’d be “duking it out” with Steve Moore, who writes editorials for the Wall Street Journal. And when it came for us to discuss the gridlock in Congress, Larry continuously interrupted, saying the reason for the gridlock was Obama’s lefti-leaning agenda.
When this is almost all the public sees and hears about public issues, it’s no wonder Americans begin to think everything is an angry shouting match. Americans stop listening to each other. We retreat into small ideological bubbles and talk only with people who agree with us. We forget how much we have in common, and how important it is to get on with the task of making the nation better."
http://robertreich.org/post/393078060/a-thought-on-evan-bayh-and-partisan-america
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Stewart Nails Another One
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| ||||
TW: Stewart nails the Palin thing like no other...his riff starts about 3:00 minutes into the clip although the Lieberman tangent is good too (and shame on Ratigan! that sloppiness feeds Palidiocy).
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
The Financial Crisis Devolution Into PR
TW: This piece follows on the Smith piece I cited a couple of days ago about the media's inability to deal with the financial crisis in a substantive way and in fact it has become a PR flack for Wall Street and the government. I agree. I struggle to post much on the financial crisis here because it is very detailed and quickly exceeds my own technical comfort and interest level. It is also boring unless you are very into financial arcana. It is, however, crucial.
Into this void flows PR and marketing and lobbyists. Both Wall Street and the government have become increasingly sophisticated in PR and branding. And when I say PR I mean someone taking reality and bending it towards their own benefit (i.e. the Bush push to invade Iraq as a prime example). PR folks are not necessarily bad people but they are most definitely not looking out for the greater good only the good of their own or their clients.
Folks sense we have (to date) avoided another Great Depression just barely and things like executive compensation are out of whack yet the impetus for financial reform appears to dim by the day.
From Jim Kwak at Baseline Scenario:
"...Pew Research Center to show that media coverage of the financial crisis and recession has focused primarily on political battles – stimulus, bailouts, etc. – rather than on problems in the real economy. What’s more, economic coverage in general has fallen off since the stock market rebound earlier this year and the Obama administration’s “all clear” signal. She also discusses psychological research that shows that people can be easily influenced to believe things that are not true, simply because people around them seem to believe those things.
Smith traces this phenomenon to two main sources: the steady evolution of journalism into a traditional profit-oriented business than can no longer afford to invest heavily in investigative journalism; and the increased ability of political leaders, following the lead of private corporations, to control the message that is transmitted via the media...
I had my first experience with modern PR during the Internet boom, when I was in marketing at Ariba. (Remember us? Market value of $40 billion at a time when our revenues were less than $100 million per quarter.) We would be planning an acquisition, and I would meet with these nice people from our PR firm who understood nothing about our technology, or our products, or our markets, or the company we were buying. And they would decide that our top-level messages needed to be X, Y, and Z, which were so devoid of content that they couldn’t even be accused of being false. And that’s what we would use in our press release and our analyst call, and a few hours later we would see it echoed in the news stories and the analyst comments.
Now, if you’re a company of only middling interest (even when we were the hottest thing in Silicon Valley, we were not one of America’s major companies), this is easy. You don’t have the New York Times or Wall Street Journal trying to bust you, and, it’s true, most of the people covering you tend to be nice — in part because they don’t want to lose their access, but probably more because, at the time, they wanted to be a part of our success. Calling a spade a spade would not only have been impolite, but it would have exposed the lie that all these Internet-era financial journalists and research analysts were living just as much as we were.
However, it should be a little harder for the government. But the fear of alienating sources no doubt plays a big role. And then there is the fact that the financial crisis and the recession are just complicated...it enables the government to avoid tackling the flaws in our financial and political systems that caused the crisis in the first place, and so, in a real sense, nothing has changed; it also minimizes an extremely severe recession and implies that there is little more to be done at this point to help the millions of people who are hurting from it. But that’s the message the government is putting out, and there’s not a lot that a few people who are crazy enough to spend their free time writing blogs can do about it.
...Out on Main Street, people may be out of work, unhappy, and confused, but there’s no political momentum for change, at least not on the real issues that affect their economic well-being.
http://baselinescenario.com/2009/10/16/move-along/
Into this void flows PR and marketing and lobbyists. Both Wall Street and the government have become increasingly sophisticated in PR and branding. And when I say PR I mean someone taking reality and bending it towards their own benefit (i.e. the Bush push to invade Iraq as a prime example). PR folks are not necessarily bad people but they are most definitely not looking out for the greater good only the good of their own or their clients.
Folks sense we have (to date) avoided another Great Depression just barely and things like executive compensation are out of whack yet the impetus for financial reform appears to dim by the day.
From Jim Kwak at Baseline Scenario:
"...Pew Research Center to show that media coverage of the financial crisis and recession has focused primarily on political battles – stimulus, bailouts, etc. – rather than on problems in the real economy. What’s more, economic coverage in general has fallen off since the stock market rebound earlier this year and the Obama administration’s “all clear” signal. She also discusses psychological research that shows that people can be easily influenced to believe things that are not true, simply because people around them seem to believe those things.
Smith traces this phenomenon to two main sources: the steady evolution of journalism into a traditional profit-oriented business than can no longer afford to invest heavily in investigative journalism; and the increased ability of political leaders, following the lead of private corporations, to control the message that is transmitted via the media...
I had my first experience with modern PR during the Internet boom, when I was in marketing at Ariba. (Remember us? Market value of $40 billion at a time when our revenues were less than $100 million per quarter.) We would be planning an acquisition, and I would meet with these nice people from our PR firm who understood nothing about our technology, or our products, or our markets, or the company we were buying. And they would decide that our top-level messages needed to be X, Y, and Z, which were so devoid of content that they couldn’t even be accused of being false. And that’s what we would use in our press release and our analyst call, and a few hours later we would see it echoed in the news stories and the analyst comments.
Now, if you’re a company of only middling interest (even when we were the hottest thing in Silicon Valley, we were not one of America’s major companies), this is easy. You don’t have the New York Times or Wall Street Journal trying to bust you, and, it’s true, most of the people covering you tend to be nice — in part because they don’t want to lose their access, but probably more because, at the time, they wanted to be a part of our success. Calling a spade a spade would not only have been impolite, but it would have exposed the lie that all these Internet-era financial journalists and research analysts were living just as much as we were.
However, it should be a little harder for the government. But the fear of alienating sources no doubt plays a big role. And then there is the fact that the financial crisis and the recession are just complicated...it enables the government to avoid tackling the flaws in our financial and political systems that caused the crisis in the first place, and so, in a real sense, nothing has changed; it also minimizes an extremely severe recession and implies that there is little more to be done at this point to help the millions of people who are hurting from it. But that’s the message the government is putting out, and there’s not a lot that a few people who are crazy enough to spend their free time writing blogs can do about it.
...Out on Main Street, people may be out of work, unhappy, and confused, but there’s no political momentum for change, at least not on the real issues that affect their economic well-being.
http://baselinescenario.com/2009/10/16/move-along/
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Media As PR Flacks For Power
TW: This piece on media comes from the angle of a financial blogger but the themes are familiar to this blog: echo chambers, media submissiveness and manipulation. Except this time instead of focusing on partisan politics Smith examines the battle over Wall Street compensation and ultimately how elites continue (this did not just start recently) to centralize their own power and economic well-being.
From Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism:
"I’m of two minds about taking up this theme, since stating what ought to be obvious but is nevertheless unpleasant and inconvenient is apt to get one branded as lunatic fringe.
Access journalism has created what is in many respects a controlled press. And that matters because people are far more suggestible than most of us wants to admit to ourselves.
...The press has been on a downslope for at least a decade, as a result of strained budgets and vastly more effective government and business spin control...I met a reporter who had been overseas for six years, opening an important foreign office for the Wall Street Journal. He was stunned when he came back in 1999 to see how much reporting had changed in his absence. He said it was impossible to get to the bottom of most stories in a normal news cycle because companies had become very sophisticated in controlling their message and access.
I couldn’t tell immediately, but one of my friends remarked in 2000 that the reporting was increasingly reminiscent of what she had grown up with in communist Poland. The state of the US media became evident to me when I lived in Australia during the run-up and the first two years of the Gulf War. I would regularly e-mail people in the States about stories I thought were important and I suspected might not be getting much play in the US. My correspondents were media junkies. 85% of the time, a story that had gotten widespread coverage in Australia appeared not to have been released in the US. And the other 15%, it didn’t get much attention (for instance, buried in the middle of the first section of the New York Times). And remember, Australia was an ally and sent troops to the Iraq.
...Back to the main theme: the media dares not say anything too negative about financial services firms or their government operatives lest they lose access. The private sector has learned the lesson of the Bush Administration, that the threat of freezing a reporter out is a powerful weapon. I have had some well connected readers tell of story ideas that they served up in some detail that the media would not touch out of fear of alienating their sources. This is the sort of thing that one associates with banana republics, but we have been operating on that level for quite some time.
...So what do we have? A media that predominantly bases its stories on what it is fed because it has to. Ever-leaner staffing, compressed news cycles, and access journalism all conspire to drive reporters to focus on the “must cover” news, which is to a large degree influenced by the parties that initiate the story. And that means they are increasingly in an echo chamber, spending so much time with the influential sources they feel they must cover that they start to be swayed by them. It is less intense, but not dissimilar to the effect achieved when reporters are embedded in military units. The journalists often wind up adopting the views of the people they associate with frequently...
...the Wall Street Journal said of bonus outrage: “That’s so last March.”
Maybe taxpayers have simply given up on Washington’s efforts to corral Wall Street.
Now why is this sort of thing (and the media was full of more subtle versions, of happy talk re Dow 10,000 and Goldman earnings) more pernicious than it might appear?
The message, quite overly, is: if you are pissed, you are in a minority. The country has moved on. Things are getting better, get with the program. Now I saw the polar opposite today. There is a group of varying sizes, depending on the topic, that e-mails among itself, mainly professional investors, analysts, economists (I’m usually on the periphery but sometimes chime in). I never saw such an angry, active, and large thread about the Goldman BS fest today. Now if people who have not suffered much, and are presumably benefitting from the market recovery are furious, it isn’t hard to imagine that what looks like complacency in the heartlands may simply be contained rage looking for an outlet.
...Now America does not have a tradition of taking to the streets; demonstrations and rallies historically are working class affairs. But the middle class is on a path of downward mobility while the elites continue to take the cream. The widening gap might waken some impulses that have been dormant in the American psyche."
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/10/msm-reporting-as-propaganda-no-one-minds-our-new-financial-lords-and-masters-edition.html
From Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism:
"I’m of two minds about taking up this theme, since stating what ought to be obvious but is nevertheless unpleasant and inconvenient is apt to get one branded as lunatic fringe.
Access journalism has created what is in many respects a controlled press. And that matters because people are far more suggestible than most of us wants to admit to ourselves.
...The press has been on a downslope for at least a decade, as a result of strained budgets and vastly more effective government and business spin control...I met a reporter who had been overseas for six years, opening an important foreign office for the Wall Street Journal. He was stunned when he came back in 1999 to see how much reporting had changed in his absence. He said it was impossible to get to the bottom of most stories in a normal news cycle because companies had become very sophisticated in controlling their message and access.
I couldn’t tell immediately, but one of my friends remarked in 2000 that the reporting was increasingly reminiscent of what she had grown up with in communist Poland. The state of the US media became evident to me when I lived in Australia during the run-up and the first two years of the Gulf War. I would regularly e-mail people in the States about stories I thought were important and I suspected might not be getting much play in the US. My correspondents were media junkies. 85% of the time, a story that had gotten widespread coverage in Australia appeared not to have been released in the US. And the other 15%, it didn’t get much attention (for instance, buried in the middle of the first section of the New York Times). And remember, Australia was an ally and sent troops to the Iraq.
...Back to the main theme: the media dares not say anything too negative about financial services firms or their government operatives lest they lose access. The private sector has learned the lesson of the Bush Administration, that the threat of freezing a reporter out is a powerful weapon. I have had some well connected readers tell of story ideas that they served up in some detail that the media would not touch out of fear of alienating their sources. This is the sort of thing that one associates with banana republics, but we have been operating on that level for quite some time.
...So what do we have? A media that predominantly bases its stories on what it is fed because it has to. Ever-leaner staffing, compressed news cycles, and access journalism all conspire to drive reporters to focus on the “must cover” news, which is to a large degree influenced by the parties that initiate the story. And that means they are increasingly in an echo chamber, spending so much time with the influential sources they feel they must cover that they start to be swayed by them. It is less intense, but not dissimilar to the effect achieved when reporters are embedded in military units. The journalists often wind up adopting the views of the people they associate with frequently...
...the Wall Street Journal said of bonus outrage: “That’s so last March.”
Maybe taxpayers have simply given up on Washington’s efforts to corral Wall Street.
Now why is this sort of thing (and the media was full of more subtle versions, of happy talk re Dow 10,000 and Goldman earnings) more pernicious than it might appear?
The message, quite overly, is: if you are pissed, you are in a minority. The country has moved on. Things are getting better, get with the program. Now I saw the polar opposite today. There is a group of varying sizes, depending on the topic, that e-mails among itself, mainly professional investors, analysts, economists (I’m usually on the periphery but sometimes chime in). I never saw such an angry, active, and large thread about the Goldman BS fest today. Now if people who have not suffered much, and are presumably benefitting from the market recovery are furious, it isn’t hard to imagine that what looks like complacency in the heartlands may simply be contained rage looking for an outlet.
...Now America does not have a tradition of taking to the streets; demonstrations and rallies historically are working class affairs. But the middle class is on a path of downward mobility while the elites continue to take the cream. The widening gap might waken some impulses that have been dormant in the American psyche."
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/10/msm-reporting-as-propaganda-no-one-minds-our-new-financial-lords-and-masters-edition.html
Friday, October 16, 2009
Reason #432 Why TV "News" Sucks
TW: Obviously Bartlett has joined my go to list of pundits/experts. But he frame succinctly why most TV news has degenerated into a boiling morass where conflict is everything. Substance and nuance be damned. And yes....we get what we pay for...if substance and nuance were truly desired by the audience Charlie Rose et al. would be ubiquitous rather than Hannity/Olbermann et al.
From Bruce Bartlett at Capital Gains and Games:
"Anyone who regularly does TV interviews knows that one is always required to do a pre-interview in which a producer feels you out as to what you will say in response to certain hypothetical questions. It would be simpler if they just came out and said, "We are looking for someone to go on air and say Obama is the anti-Christ (or whatever). Are you willing to do that?"
Such a method, however, is crass and offends the dignity of potential guests, so instead the producer will talk around the issue. She (they are almost always female) will say something like this: "We are thinking about doing a segment on whether Obama is the anti-Christ and looking for guests who will debate this topic. If we had you on what would your take be?"
If you say that the idea is ridiculous you will be thanked and the producer will move on to the next name on her list. Eventually she will find a crazy person like Alan Keyes to say what she wants him to say or someone so desperate to be on TV that he will play Devil's Advocate and pretend to believe that Obama is the anti-Christ for the sake of 5 minutes of air time..."
http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/1171/perils-talking-head
From Bruce Bartlett at Capital Gains and Games:
"Anyone who regularly does TV interviews knows that one is always required to do a pre-interview in which a producer feels you out as to what you will say in response to certain hypothetical questions. It would be simpler if they just came out and said, "We are looking for someone to go on air and say Obama is the anti-Christ (or whatever). Are you willing to do that?"
Such a method, however, is crass and offends the dignity of potential guests, so instead the producer will talk around the issue. She (they are almost always female) will say something like this: "We are thinking about doing a segment on whether Obama is the anti-Christ and looking for guests who will debate this topic. If we had you on what would your take be?"
If you say that the idea is ridiculous you will be thanked and the producer will move on to the next name on her list. Eventually she will find a crazy person like Alan Keyes to say what she wants him to say or someone so desperate to be on TV that he will play Devil's Advocate and pretend to believe that Obama is the anti-Christ for the sake of 5 minutes of air time..."
http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/1171/perils-talking-head
Hathos Alert: The Decline And Fall Of the American Empire
TW: Not sure which one is worse but they both represent the depth to which American media has fallen.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Bartlett v. Kudlow
TW: This conversation ultimately goes nowhere, it is CNBC after all. But it accomplishes much. We see a moderate Republican, Bartlett, seek to have a real conversation on fiscal policy; whilst being interviewed by an ideologue, Kudlow, who regardless of Bartlett's answers spouts cliches, tired slogans and punchlines. Overlying this is the 2nd interviewer, Trish Regan, who mostly appears clueless but occasionally interjects the standard slanted BS (i.e. "obamanomics caused the housing bubble", Reagan was a god) of those of her generation who drank supply side kool-aid through the 80's and 90's rather than studied.
Bartlett's point is that neither Reaganesque/Laffernomics, Keynes or anyone else has a monopoly on good policy, one must adjust one's policies to the realities of the situation. Unlike Kudlow whose answer to all challenges is "tax cut (preferably for the wealthy and corporations)", all the while while alleging that he Kudlow is stating "universal truths".
I also link a Krugman response to the Barro tangent Kudlow threw out. Kudlow also mentioned the quack Amity Schlaes. Bartlett's reponse- "she is wrong" sums up her value.
From Paul Krugman at NYT:
"...Barro makes a great deal of the fact that private spending fell during World War II, rather than rising the way it should in a classical Keynesian (oxymoron?) story.
What I and others immediately pointed out was that this tells us very little about what would happen under current conditions: during World War II there, um, was a war on: consumption goods were rationed, construction required special permits, and so on. The government was, in other words, deliberately suppressing private spending, through direct controls. So WWII is not a useful data point for determining what the multiplier is under other conditions.
Barro’s response to this, as far as I can tell, was … nothing. I don’t think he even acknowledged the nature of the complaint..."
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
The Media Conundrum
TW: Not sure what the answer is. The free market has figured out folk like to bounce around inside their own echo chambers (see the cable ratings which are dominated by the most biased cable "news" shows). Public funding or at least civic-minded philanthropists may be the last hope.
From Tom Barnett:
"...no one seems to be going into journalism anymore (especially the horrific TV version) with any pretense of being anything other than biased infotainer. It's getting really sad.
I mean, I still find newspapers pretty good, and certain mags are solid, but TV is more of a vast wasteland than it's ever been, with Jon Stewart preening as our "most trusted TV newsman," according to polls. Yuck, say I. Parody as a full-time news screen is just plain unhealthy, because it's still being fed to you in a highly packaged, biased manner. You simply don't develop your own screens or analytical capacity. I'm certain it also reduces your sense of humor for similar reasons, increasing only your cynicism.
Fox, in my opinion, not only ruined a lot of conservative thinking, it ruined CNN through and through--including my beloved Headline News (which is now MTV-like in spending most of its time providing everything but its primary product). Try listening to any of these channels without looking at the screen and you'll simply be amazed at the low-bit rate transfer--as in, there's almost no useful information and just a lot of speculation over the most minute tactical details. My favorites are the experts tapped to comment as news breaks. Seriously, just close your eyes when you listen to them and 99% of what they say is pure drivel--the equivalent of junk food...
What's weird is that TV sports coverage in America arguably outperforms the news coverage by a ways, as does weather. There the bit rate flow is amazing. I watched the SNF tape of the Packers and Bears five times last week and Collinsworth was great. Just tons of useful backstory, quick descriptions and analysis, and wonderful displays of stats. Watch games from the 1960s and the difference is vast. But watch news from back then and you realize how bad it has become: people talk very fast today and say about 1/10th as much that's actually useful.
http://thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2009/10/why_im_coming_close_to_not_wat.html
From Tom Barnett:
"...no one seems to be going into journalism anymore (especially the horrific TV version) with any pretense of being anything other than biased infotainer. It's getting really sad.
I mean, I still find newspapers pretty good, and certain mags are solid, but TV is more of a vast wasteland than it's ever been, with Jon Stewart preening as our "most trusted TV newsman," according to polls. Yuck, say I. Parody as a full-time news screen is just plain unhealthy, because it's still being fed to you in a highly packaged, biased manner. You simply don't develop your own screens or analytical capacity. I'm certain it also reduces your sense of humor for similar reasons, increasing only your cynicism.
Fox, in my opinion, not only ruined a lot of conservative thinking, it ruined CNN through and through--including my beloved Headline News (which is now MTV-like in spending most of its time providing everything but its primary product). Try listening to any of these channels without looking at the screen and you'll simply be amazed at the low-bit rate transfer--as in, there's almost no useful information and just a lot of speculation over the most minute tactical details. My favorites are the experts tapped to comment as news breaks. Seriously, just close your eyes when you listen to them and 99% of what they say is pure drivel--the equivalent of junk food...
What's weird is that TV sports coverage in America arguably outperforms the news coverage by a ways, as does weather. There the bit rate flow is amazing. I watched the SNF tape of the Packers and Bears five times last week and Collinsworth was great. Just tons of useful backstory, quick descriptions and analysis, and wonderful displays of stats. Watch games from the 1960s and the difference is vast. But watch news from back then and you realize how bad it has become: people talk very fast today and say about 1/10th as much that's actually useful.
http://thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2009/10/why_im_coming_close_to_not_wat.html
Thursday, October 1, 2009
The ESPN Center Effect On Politics
TW: I think Drum and Post are on to something. Cable news and the web have created a vicious feedback circle by which "craziness", "wackiness", exaggerated conflict and outright extremism are perpetuated. As I have mentioned before the one thing that keeps me anchored is reading about history where it is apparent that folks 30, 50, 100 years ago were also narrow-minded, selfish, ignorant and generally poorly governed (and poorly governable) as well.
I have made serious effort to avoid jumping too frequently onto the umbrage and snark train on this blog. It is a challenging and certainly not uniformly successful effort.
One key point remains though. I reject equivalency arguments. Too many folks see a jackass like Rep. Grayson of Florida make an over the top accusation about the Republicans and health care and then tune out and decide both sides are whacked and irresponsible. There are degrees to everything and substantive arguments behind all of the issues. Burning through the drivel is the individual citizen's responsibility.
From Kevin Drum at Mother Jones:
"Do baseball players make a greater number of spectacular plays than they did 30 years ago? Of course not. It just seems like it because ESPN packages them all up for us every evening on SportsCenter. These days, we get to see every spectacular play, not just the ones in the games we happen to watch.
David Post calls this the ESPN Effect and wonders if it applies to politics:
'All I hear from my left-leaning friends these days is how crazy people on the right are becoming, and all all I hear from my right-leaning friends is how crazy people on the left are becoming, and everyone, on both sides, seems very eager to provide evidence of the utter lunacy of those on the other side. “Look how crazy they’re becoming over there, on the other side!” is becoming something of a dominant trope, on left and right...
My very, very strong suspicion is that there has never been a time when there weren’t truly crazy people on all sides of the political spectrum doing their truly crazy things. Maybe 1% or so, or even 0.1% — which is a very large number, when you’re talking about a population of, say, 100 million. They didn’t get through the filters much in the Old Days, but they do now. All this talk about how extreme “the debate” is becoming — how, exactly, does anyone get a bead on what “the debate” really is? In reality?'
Is he right? Are Fox News and Twitter and the blogosphere and talk radio the collective SportsCenter of politics? Or are people really crazier than they used to be?
Or is it even worse than that? SportsCenter mostly just records what happens. (It might also play an active role in producing more spectacular plays because players are eager to make the night's highlight reel, but that's a small effect.) But in politics it's worse. Not only might people act crazier in order to get on the news, but seeing all those crazy people might drive the rest of us crazier too. So maybe at first this was just the ESPN Effect, but over time it became a vicious circle and now there really are more crazy people around. I sure feel crazier these days. How about you?"
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/09/how-crazy-are-we
I have made serious effort to avoid jumping too frequently onto the umbrage and snark train on this blog. It is a challenging and certainly not uniformly successful effort.
One key point remains though. I reject equivalency arguments. Too many folks see a jackass like Rep. Grayson of Florida make an over the top accusation about the Republicans and health care and then tune out and decide both sides are whacked and irresponsible. There are degrees to everything and substantive arguments behind all of the issues. Burning through the drivel is the individual citizen's responsibility.
From Kevin Drum at Mother Jones:
"Do baseball players make a greater number of spectacular plays than they did 30 years ago? Of course not. It just seems like it because ESPN packages them all up for us every evening on SportsCenter. These days, we get to see every spectacular play, not just the ones in the games we happen to watch.
David Post calls this the ESPN Effect and wonders if it applies to politics:
'All I hear from my left-leaning friends these days is how crazy people on the right are becoming, and all all I hear from my right-leaning friends is how crazy people on the left are becoming, and everyone, on both sides, seems very eager to provide evidence of the utter lunacy of those on the other side. “Look how crazy they’re becoming over there, on the other side!” is becoming something of a dominant trope, on left and right...
My very, very strong suspicion is that there has never been a time when there weren’t truly crazy people on all sides of the political spectrum doing their truly crazy things. Maybe 1% or so, or even 0.1% — which is a very large number, when you’re talking about a population of, say, 100 million. They didn’t get through the filters much in the Old Days, but they do now. All this talk about how extreme “the debate” is becoming — how, exactly, does anyone get a bead on what “the debate” really is? In reality?'
Is he right? Are Fox News and Twitter and the blogosphere and talk radio the collective SportsCenter of politics? Or are people really crazier than they used to be?
Or is it even worse than that? SportsCenter mostly just records what happens. (It might also play an active role in producing more spectacular plays because players are eager to make the night's highlight reel, but that's a small effect.) But in politics it's worse. Not only might people act crazier in order to get on the news, but seeing all those crazy people might drive the rest of us crazier too. So maybe at first this was just the ESPN Effect, but over time it became a vicious circle and now there really are more crazy people around. I sure feel crazier these days. How about you?"
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/09/how-crazy-are-we
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Top Heavy Network News
TW: Many folks myself included included lament the deterioration of network news. As media has disaggregated its quality has fallen whilst its biases towards conflict and sensationalism have increased. One thing has not changed since the media glory days of the 80's- very high anchor salaries. What this says though is the market is more interested in style than substance. If there was a market for more insightful, more deeply reported news presumably air brushed folks like Brian Williams would not pull down such big bucks and folks like Glenn Beck would be on local direct access channel with the other loonies rather than national cable.
From Columbia Journalism Review:
"...Katie Couric’s annual salary is more than the entire annual budgets of NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered combined. Couric’s salary comes to an estimated $15 million a year; NPR spends $6 million a year on its morning show and $5 million on its afternoon one. NPR has seventeen foreign bureaus (which costs it another $9.4 million a year); CBS has twelve. Few figures, I think, better capture the absurd financial structure of the network news.
This is not a new development, of course. It’s been unfolding since 1986, when billionaire Laurence Tisch bought CBS and eviscerated its news division in order to boost profits...But the issue seems worth revisiting in light of the recent naming of Diane Sawyer to replace Charlie Gibson as the anchor of ABC’s World News. We don’t yet know how much Sawyer is going to be paid, but it will no doubt surpass Gibson’s current estimated salary of $8 million. Sawyer will thus be perpetuating the corrosive, top-heavy system of the network news..."
http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/katie_and_diane_the_wrong_ques.php?page=all
From Columbia Journalism Review:
"...Katie Couric’s annual salary is more than the entire annual budgets of NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered combined. Couric’s salary comes to an estimated $15 million a year; NPR spends $6 million a year on its morning show and $5 million on its afternoon one. NPR has seventeen foreign bureaus (which costs it another $9.4 million a year); CBS has twelve. Few figures, I think, better capture the absurd financial structure of the network news.
This is not a new development, of course. It’s been unfolding since 1986, when billionaire Laurence Tisch bought CBS and eviscerated its news division in order to boost profits...But the issue seems worth revisiting in light of the recent naming of Diane Sawyer to replace Charlie Gibson as the anchor of ABC’s World News. We don’t yet know how much Sawyer is going to be paid, but it will no doubt surpass Gibson’s current estimated salary of $8 million. Sawyer will thus be perpetuating the corrosive, top-heavy system of the network news..."
http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/katie_and_diane_the_wrong_ques.php?page=all
Friday, September 25, 2009
Evolution Of Media and Communications
TW: h/t Ezra Klein, this is a very cool Economist production surveying how our media and communication landscapes are evolving at amazing rates.
The Decline Of the Wall Street Journal
TW: Tom Ricks nailed the WSJ philosophy a couple of weeks ago:From Tom Ricks at Foreign Policy:"...Having toiled at the low pay but high morale WSJ for 17 years in my well-spent youth, I can say that the view we held on the news-gathering side of the organization was that the newspaper's business formula was brilliant -- the news side told American business what it needed to hear, while the edit page told American business what it wanted to hear."
TW: But now that Rupert Murdoch (aka owner of Fox and numerous rags in the UK and Australia) has purchased the WSJ he is employing a tried and true strategy- sensationalist headlines. Sex, conflict and bias sell regardless of the venue.
From Felix Salmon at Reuters:
"...Along the top was the headline “Bankers Face Sweeping Curbs on Pay” — something which occasioned Justin Fox to note that “in the pre-Murdoch era that would have been a 600-word story on page A24, headlined ‘Fed Mulls Pay Guidelines’.”
Underneath that headline was the biggest front-page story: “U.S. Missile U-Turn Roils Allies”. Except there was nothing in the story to indicate that any allies were roiled at all. The online story now has the headline “Allies React to U.S. Missile U-Turn”, along with a formal correction of the old headline.
...The WSJ is now being edited by a man who cut his teeth in the fiercely competitive Australian and UK markets, where front-page stories drive newsstand sales and newsstand sales drive profits. Sweeping curbs on pay and roiled allies make for great headlines, and mean that readers are that much more likely to shell out $2 for the paper
...The WSJ doesn’t need to do this, but Murdoch does: it’s in his blood. A Murdoch paper without punchy headlines which grab you by the throat is pretty much a contradiction in terms. Readers of the WSJ will have to get used to trusting the stories more than the headlines..."
Friday, September 18, 2009
Cowering In Our Echo Chambers
click on images to enlarge from Pew ResearchTW: We frequently post on the echo chamber impact of Americans increasingly ignoring media other than that which validates their own biases and ideologies. The above validate our hypothesis. Americans appear to be migrating increasingly towards the more ideologically biased networks whilst assuming in general is increasingly biased. A vicious and somewhat self-fulfilling circle.
The middle ground becomes increasingly barren even though almost all claim to yearn for the middle ground. But when folks are actually resting atop their own islands surrounded by moats of disbelief and mistrust the middle ground becomes an increasingly unattainable chimera.
http://people-press.org/report/543/
Monday, September 14, 2009
Umbragosity
TW: I agree with Kinsley. Americans have fallen into an endless cycle of umbrage. The Dems are stupid for continuing to pump oxygen into Joe Wilson who at the end of the day is a buffoon. Lefty blogs only make it worse by headlining Wilson. Let Wilson constituents decide if he is sufficiently buffoonish to vote him out (doubtful in their minds).
As Kinsley points out umbrage drama is easy journalism and breeds like a virus in venues such as blogs and talk radio. Unlike serious debate on real issues which requires hard work and sustained attention from listeners/voters. Do not just blame the media, you get what you want from media. The day the ratings for NPR or the Lehrer report overtake O'Reilly etc. will be the day I eat my keyboard.
From Mike Kinsely at WaPo:
"...Why[continue with censure motions]? Is it the suspicion that Wilson's apologies so far have not been sincere? Of course they're not sincere. Nor would be any future apologies he may issue, in any posture or location. After years of obscurity, this man is having the time of his life, relishing his newfound celebrity and raking in the campaign contributions, too. The more times he is required to write "I will not call the President a liar" on a special blackboard set up in the well of the House, the bigger hero he will become to a large chunk of the population. And, of course, forcing him to grovel will not help to convince him or his supporters that the president is not a liar.
Apparently, though, it is against House rules for a representative to call the president a liar during an official session of the House, even if you sincerely think he is one. Or, for that matter, even if he really is one -- as all of them are, on occasion. The purpose of this rule is to attempt to enforce a level of civility in the political debate. The result, though, is just the opposite: It is simply another opportunity for a fusillade in the Umbrage Wars. No matter how important or otherwise the underlying issue may be, it seems that about three-quarters of American politics can now be distilled down to "How dare you say that!" Taking offense at someone else's possibly over-vigorous exercise of free speech, demanding an apology and so on has replaced much serious discussion about, oh, health care, the financial crisis, Iraq, Afghanistan, stuff like that. Umbrage is so much easier: You can do it in your sleep, or on talk radio.
Umbrage is itself, generally, a lie. The ostensible victim of the offensive remark (call him or her the "umbragee") is actually delighted at the opportunity, while the ostensible offense giver (call him or her the "umbragor") is sorry to have wandered into this thicket, or is made to feel sorry as the umbrage game plays itself out. The rules of the game are perverse but simple: I scream with pain until you cry "uncle."
Wilson is obviously a bozo. (I can say this because I'm not on the House floor.) But all the attention is making him more popular within his own constituency, not less so. Why can't the Democrats be the class act here and just drop it? Sticks and stones, and all that. "
As Kinsley points out umbrage drama is easy journalism and breeds like a virus in venues such as blogs and talk radio. Unlike serious debate on real issues which requires hard work and sustained attention from listeners/voters. Do not just blame the media, you get what you want from media. The day the ratings for NPR or the Lehrer report overtake O'Reilly etc. will be the day I eat my keyboard.
From Mike Kinsely at WaPo:
"...Why[continue with censure motions]? Is it the suspicion that Wilson's apologies so far have not been sincere? Of course they're not sincere. Nor would be any future apologies he may issue, in any posture or location. After years of obscurity, this man is having the time of his life, relishing his newfound celebrity and raking in the campaign contributions, too. The more times he is required to write "I will not call the President a liar" on a special blackboard set up in the well of the House, the bigger hero he will become to a large chunk of the population. And, of course, forcing him to grovel will not help to convince him or his supporters that the president is not a liar.
Apparently, though, it is against House rules for a representative to call the president a liar during an official session of the House, even if you sincerely think he is one. Or, for that matter, even if he really is one -- as all of them are, on occasion. The purpose of this rule is to attempt to enforce a level of civility in the political debate. The result, though, is just the opposite: It is simply another opportunity for a fusillade in the Umbrage Wars. No matter how important or otherwise the underlying issue may be, it seems that about three-quarters of American politics can now be distilled down to "How dare you say that!" Taking offense at someone else's possibly over-vigorous exercise of free speech, demanding an apology and so on has replaced much serious discussion about, oh, health care, the financial crisis, Iraq, Afghanistan, stuff like that. Umbrage is so much easier: You can do it in your sleep, or on talk radio.
Umbrage is itself, generally, a lie. The ostensible victim of the offensive remark (call him or her the "umbragee") is actually delighted at the opportunity, while the ostensible offense giver (call him or her the "umbragor") is sorry to have wandered into this thicket, or is made to feel sorry as the umbrage game plays itself out. The rules of the game are perverse but simple: I scream with pain until you cry "uncle."
Wilson is obviously a bozo. (I can say this because I'm not on the House floor.) But all the attention is making him more popular within his own constituency, not less so. Why can't the Democrats be the class act here and just drop it? Sticks and stones, and all that. "
Challenging One's View Through Al Jazeera
TW: I have read many of Kaplan's books. He has traveled extensively throughout the Balkans, Central Asia and parts of the Middle East examining the complex and varied cultures inhabiting those still somewhat isolated geographies. He is not readily characterized as lefty/righty but if he leans either way it is right. This piece meanders a bit but frames some important issues related to media. Al-Jazeera is controversial in the U.S. because it does not hew to our nationalistic viewpoints. In particular it takes a much more pro-Arab viewpoint than most Americans can stomach. But such viewpoints are real and prevalent outside the U.S. Kaplan points out understanding them is important. Al Jazeera also hustles and provides coverage of many international events Western media either ignores completely or barely covers.
Many Americans are so insecure about themselves and their nation that any media that does not validate their own biases is heretical. That Al Jazeera cannot receive distribution in the U.S. is a shame. If one's beliefs and knowledge is so tenuous that it cannot withstand challenge then one has a problem.
Note: Al Jazeera is available through web cast if one goes to their site.
From Robert Kaplan at Atlantic:
"Has anyone watched the English-language version of Al Jazeera lately? The Qatar-based Arab TV channel’s eclectic internationalism—a feast of vivid, pathbreaking coverage from all continents—is a rebuke to the dire predictions about the end of foreign news as we know it. Indeed, if Al Jazeera were more widely available in the United States—on nationwide cable, for example, instead of only on the Web and several satellite stations and local cable channels—it would eat steadily into the viewership of The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer. Al Jazeera—not Lehrer—is what the internationally minded elite class really yearns for: a visually stunning, deeply reported description of developments in dozens upon dozens of countries simultaneously.
...The fact that Doha, Qatar’s capital, is not the headquarters of a great power liberates Al Jazeera to focus equally on the four corners of the Earth rather than on just the flash points of any imperial or post-imperial interest. Outlets such as CNN and the BBC don’t cover foreign news so much as they cover the foreign extensions of Washington’s or London’s collective obsessions. And Al Jazeera, rather than spotlighting people who are loaded with credentials but often have little to say, has the knack of getting people on air who have interesting things to say, like the brilliant, no-name Russian analyst I heard explaining why both Russia and China need the current North Korean regime because it provides a buffer state against free and democratic South Korea.
Al Jazeera is also endearing because it exudes hustle. It constantly gets scoops. It has had gritty, hands-on coverage across the greater Middle East, from Gaza to Beirut to Iraq, that other channels haven’t matched.
And Al Jazeera also excels at opening your mind. I have spent the past two years reporting from the Indian Ocean region, dealing predominantly with Muslims and indigenous nongovernmental organizations; watching Al Jazeera is the vicarious equivalent of engaging in the kinds of conversations I have been having. One of the multitude of problems I have with Fox News is that even its most analytically brilliant commentators, such as Charles Krauthammer, seem to be scoring points and talking to their own ideological kind rather than engaging in dialogue with others. Watching Fox, you have to wonder whether many of its commentators have ever had a conversation with a real live Muslim abroad.
Of course, Al Jazeera has some overt prejudices. In covering the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, for example, it is clearly on the Palestinian side. Tear-jerking features about the sufferings of the Palestinians are not matched with equal coverage of the Israeli human terrain. What you get from Al Jazeera is the developing-world point of view, or, more specifically, that of the emerging developing-world bourgeoisie; and that outlook is inherently pro-Palestinian, as well as deeply hostile to American military power. You can actually measure President Barack Obama’s partial success in already changing America’s image abroad by the positive coverage he has been getting lately from Al Jazeera.
Overlying Al Jazeera’s pro-Palestinian and anti-Bush sentiment is a breezy, pacifist-trending internationalism. In too many of its reports, the subliminal message appears to be that compromise should be the order of the day. According to Al Jazeera, the politically weak, merely by being so, are automatically in the right. A certain kind of moral equivalency is Al Jazeera’s lifeblood. The history of human suffering seemingly begins and ends with that of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation and that of the Iraqis under erstwhile American occupation.
Yet Al Jazeera is forgivable for its biases in a way that the BBC or CNN is not. In the case of Al Jazeera, news isn’t so much biased as honestly representative of a middle-of-the-road developing-world viewpoint. Where you stand depends upon where you sit. And if you sit in Doha or Mumbai or Nairobi, the world is going to look starkly different than if you sat in Washington or London, or St. Louis for that matter. By contrast, in the case of the BBC and CNN, you are explicitly aware that rather than presenting the world as they find it, those channels are taking a distinct side—the left-liberal internationalist side—in an honest and fundamental debate over foreign policy.
....Then there is Fox, with its jingoistic, meatloaf provincialism straight out of an earlier, black-and-white era. Could Fox cover the world as Al Jazeera does, but from a different, American-nationalist perspective? No, because what makes Fox so provincial is its utter lack of interest in the outside world in the first place, except where that world directly and obviously affects American power. What use does Fox have for Niger River rebels or dispossessed Indian farmers? Thus, we are left with the insidious despotism of Al Jazeera: and it is despotism, because we have really no other serious news channel to turn to.
George Orwell intimated in 1984 that purity can be a form of coercion, and in that respect, I find Al Jazeera’s moral rectitude disturbing. Because its cause is that of the weak and the oppressed, it sees itself as always in the right, regardless of the complexity of the issues, and therein lies its power of oppression. But I will continue watching Al Jazeera wherever I can, because I find it so riveting compared with other news channels. And if my politics crawl to the left as a result, that will be yet more evidence of just how insidious Al Jazeera’s influence is."
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200910/al-jazeera
Many Americans are so insecure about themselves and their nation that any media that does not validate their own biases is heretical. That Al Jazeera cannot receive distribution in the U.S. is a shame. If one's beliefs and knowledge is so tenuous that it cannot withstand challenge then one has a problem.
Note: Al Jazeera is available through web cast if one goes to their site.
From Robert Kaplan at Atlantic:
"Has anyone watched the English-language version of Al Jazeera lately? The Qatar-based Arab TV channel’s eclectic internationalism—a feast of vivid, pathbreaking coverage from all continents—is a rebuke to the dire predictions about the end of foreign news as we know it. Indeed, if Al Jazeera were more widely available in the United States—on nationwide cable, for example, instead of only on the Web and several satellite stations and local cable channels—it would eat steadily into the viewership of The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer. Al Jazeera—not Lehrer—is what the internationally minded elite class really yearns for: a visually stunning, deeply reported description of developments in dozens upon dozens of countries simultaneously.
...The fact that Doha, Qatar’s capital, is not the headquarters of a great power liberates Al Jazeera to focus equally on the four corners of the Earth rather than on just the flash points of any imperial or post-imperial interest. Outlets such as CNN and the BBC don’t cover foreign news so much as they cover the foreign extensions of Washington’s or London’s collective obsessions. And Al Jazeera, rather than spotlighting people who are loaded with credentials but often have little to say, has the knack of getting people on air who have interesting things to say, like the brilliant, no-name Russian analyst I heard explaining why both Russia and China need the current North Korean regime because it provides a buffer state against free and democratic South Korea.
Al Jazeera is also endearing because it exudes hustle. It constantly gets scoops. It has had gritty, hands-on coverage across the greater Middle East, from Gaza to Beirut to Iraq, that other channels haven’t matched.
And Al Jazeera also excels at opening your mind. I have spent the past two years reporting from the Indian Ocean region, dealing predominantly with Muslims and indigenous nongovernmental organizations; watching Al Jazeera is the vicarious equivalent of engaging in the kinds of conversations I have been having. One of the multitude of problems I have with Fox News is that even its most analytically brilliant commentators, such as Charles Krauthammer, seem to be scoring points and talking to their own ideological kind rather than engaging in dialogue with others. Watching Fox, you have to wonder whether many of its commentators have ever had a conversation with a real live Muslim abroad.
Of course, Al Jazeera has some overt prejudices. In covering the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, for example, it is clearly on the Palestinian side. Tear-jerking features about the sufferings of the Palestinians are not matched with equal coverage of the Israeli human terrain. What you get from Al Jazeera is the developing-world point of view, or, more specifically, that of the emerging developing-world bourgeoisie; and that outlook is inherently pro-Palestinian, as well as deeply hostile to American military power. You can actually measure President Barack Obama’s partial success in already changing America’s image abroad by the positive coverage he has been getting lately from Al Jazeera.
Overlying Al Jazeera’s pro-Palestinian and anti-Bush sentiment is a breezy, pacifist-trending internationalism. In too many of its reports, the subliminal message appears to be that compromise should be the order of the day. According to Al Jazeera, the politically weak, merely by being so, are automatically in the right. A certain kind of moral equivalency is Al Jazeera’s lifeblood. The history of human suffering seemingly begins and ends with that of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation and that of the Iraqis under erstwhile American occupation.
Yet Al Jazeera is forgivable for its biases in a way that the BBC or CNN is not. In the case of Al Jazeera, news isn’t so much biased as honestly representative of a middle-of-the-road developing-world viewpoint. Where you stand depends upon where you sit. And if you sit in Doha or Mumbai or Nairobi, the world is going to look starkly different than if you sat in Washington or London, or St. Louis for that matter. By contrast, in the case of the BBC and CNN, you are explicitly aware that rather than presenting the world as they find it, those channels are taking a distinct side—the left-liberal internationalist side—in an honest and fundamental debate over foreign policy.
....Then there is Fox, with its jingoistic, meatloaf provincialism straight out of an earlier, black-and-white era. Could Fox cover the world as Al Jazeera does, but from a different, American-nationalist perspective? No, because what makes Fox so provincial is its utter lack of interest in the outside world in the first place, except where that world directly and obviously affects American power. What use does Fox have for Niger River rebels or dispossessed Indian farmers? Thus, we are left with the insidious despotism of Al Jazeera: and it is despotism, because we have really no other serious news channel to turn to.
George Orwell intimated in 1984 that purity can be a form of coercion, and in that respect, I find Al Jazeera’s moral rectitude disturbing. Because its cause is that of the weak and the oppressed, it sees itself as always in the right, regardless of the complexity of the issues, and therein lies its power of oppression. But I will continue watching Al Jazeera wherever I can, because I find it so riveting compared with other news channels. And if my politics crawl to the left as a result, that will be yet more evidence of just how insidious Al Jazeera’s influence is."
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200910/al-jazeera
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
The Circular Morass That Is Our Media
TW: Have posted often on the bias in media, not so much towards the left or right but towards profits. Profits come from viewership, what drives viewership? Sensation, conflict, titillation.
Back when MSM was new, relatively small, and dominated by monopolies (CBS, NBC, UPI, AP one or two local newspapers, etc.), there was a code of relative neutrality and quality that permeated. Understand MSM radio/TV are new since the 1930's and 1950's respectively and really had brief periods of domination of about 30 years each (10 of those overlapping in the '50s).
Since the advent of cable and the internet, the media beast has become a circular beast sated primarily by its own self-generated sensation, conflict and titillation. These things are always evolving just because the current environment appears dire does not mean it will never get better (then again it could get even worse).
From Ezra Klein at WaPo:
"...it's in the competitive pressures to drift toward sensationalism and hot stories. A smear like "death panels" emerges and catches fire because it's fundamentally interesting. You could write a great thriller, or film a poignant drama, about death panels. Not so about health insurance exchanges. That said, the New York Times would probably never mention the lie if given the opportunity. But after it hits talk radio and explodes onto cable news and rips through the blogosphere, it stops being a lie and begins being a story. And though you can refuse to cover a lie, you can't refuse to cover a story. Nor is it even obvious you should. After all, if you don't correct the record, who will?
The problem is that "The Media" is a big beast with a lot of component parts. Some of those parts are respectable and sober. Others aren't. But if the legs run somewhere, the head follows whether it wants to or not. That would be fine if the head commanded the legs. But it's generally the other way around.
The central conflict of interest in the media is that the same institution that's supposed to follow the conversation is also responsible for creating the conversation. That contradiction can be elided so long as everyone in the game is playing by the same rules. And for a brief period, when the "objective" institutions were the only major outlets, that worked out fine.
But with the rise of partisan and sensationalizing mediums like talk radio and cable news and the blogosphere, half of the outlets are now consciously creating the conversation that the other half are following. But the objective institutions haven't responded to this in any obvious way. They just get caught following a manipulated conversation, and so being part of the manipulation, part of the machine that focuses on cynical lies like the death panels rather than policy specifics like the exchanges. That's not the fault of an individual reporter, though. It's structural, and it requires a structural response."
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/08/more_on_reporting_the_lies.html
Back when MSM was new, relatively small, and dominated by monopolies (CBS, NBC, UPI, AP one or two local newspapers, etc.), there was a code of relative neutrality and quality that permeated. Understand MSM radio/TV are new since the 1930's and 1950's respectively and really had brief periods of domination of about 30 years each (10 of those overlapping in the '50s).
Since the advent of cable and the internet, the media beast has become a circular beast sated primarily by its own self-generated sensation, conflict and titillation. These things are always evolving just because the current environment appears dire does not mean it will never get better (then again it could get even worse).
From Ezra Klein at WaPo:
"...it's in the competitive pressures to drift toward sensationalism and hot stories. A smear like "death panels" emerges and catches fire because it's fundamentally interesting. You could write a great thriller, or film a poignant drama, about death panels. Not so about health insurance exchanges. That said, the New York Times would probably never mention the lie if given the opportunity. But after it hits talk radio and explodes onto cable news and rips through the blogosphere, it stops being a lie and begins being a story. And though you can refuse to cover a lie, you can't refuse to cover a story. Nor is it even obvious you should. After all, if you don't correct the record, who will?
The problem is that "The Media" is a big beast with a lot of component parts. Some of those parts are respectable and sober. Others aren't. But if the legs run somewhere, the head follows whether it wants to or not. That would be fine if the head commanded the legs. But it's generally the other way around.
The central conflict of interest in the media is that the same institution that's supposed to follow the conversation is also responsible for creating the conversation. That contradiction can be elided so long as everyone in the game is playing by the same rules. And for a brief period, when the "objective" institutions were the only major outlets, that worked out fine.
But with the rise of partisan and sensationalizing mediums like talk radio and cable news and the blogosphere, half of the outlets are now consciously creating the conversation that the other half are following. But the objective institutions haven't responded to this in any obvious way. They just get caught following a manipulated conversation, and so being part of the manipulation, part of the machine that focuses on cynical lies like the death panels rather than policy specifics like the exchanges. That's not the fault of an individual reporter, though. It's structural, and it requires a structural response."
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/08/more_on_reporting_the_lies.html
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Those "Congressional" Jets
TW: I saw the headlines about Congress "buying 8 new jets" and thought "what are they thinking". Like I am sure the vast majority of folks I did not pay much attention to the story beyond the headline and moved on wishing the Dems in Congress were not so porkalicious. But I did have in the back of my mind that the headlines seemed a bit too stupid even for Congress. This story frames how media loves to stir up a ruckus (and these things work both ways).
From Columbia Journalism Review:
"Let’s throw a little water on The Wall Street Journal’s page-one scoop that Congress is buying eight private jets for $550 million.
...It’s reminiscent of the paper’s weak A1 pieces trying to create a congressional-expenses scandal like one that rocked the UK earlier this year—something I said had “more than a whiff of Rupert on” them.
First of all, the headline splashed across four columns at the top of page one: “Congress Gets an Upgrade: $500 Million Slated for Purchase of Eight More Planes as Lawmakers’ Travel Soars.”
But wait a second. These planes are for an Air Force fleet that’s barely used by Congress—at least compared to the others who also use it. Over the last five years, 86 percent of the use of the private-plane fleet has been by the White House and the military. Just 14.5 percent has been congressional use.
...The House Appropriations Committee says the new purchases are designed to replace seven aging and more expensive business jets. The net impact is one additional plane owned by the federal government and a substantial increase in its passenger capacity.
So it’s adding one plane, not eight, as the WSJ subhed implies. Changes the tenor of the story, no? Now it’s not quite such a juicy, Drudge-worthy, top of A1 piece.
...What does “expensive” mean? Is Congress actually going to save money long-term by switching to planes that are cheaper to fly? Or does it mean that the purchase prices of the planes are lower than the ones they’re replacing. The Journal doesn’t say. That’s critical information here.
...And what happens to the old planes? Presumably they’ll sell for something, offsetting part of that $550 million tab (although the market for planes isn’t exactly robust these days). That goes unexplored here.
...This is all too bad because there’s a legitimate story here about whether Congress should be spending half a billion dollars on private planes right now (does it make any economic sense given that they’re replacing “more expensive” planes?)—or whether it is abusing this privilege.
But you can’t trust this story because it distorts the facts to sex up the issue. It’s a very British-style presentation, unsurprising since the newspaper is now run by folks who hail from Fleet Street"
http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/journal_misleads_congress_jets.php
From Columbia Journalism Review:
"Let’s throw a little water on The Wall Street Journal’s page-one scoop that Congress is buying eight private jets for $550 million.
...It’s reminiscent of the paper’s weak A1 pieces trying to create a congressional-expenses scandal like one that rocked the UK earlier this year—something I said had “more than a whiff of Rupert on” them.
First of all, the headline splashed across four columns at the top of page one: “Congress Gets an Upgrade: $500 Million Slated for Purchase of Eight More Planes as Lawmakers’ Travel Soars.”
But wait a second. These planes are for an Air Force fleet that’s barely used by Congress—at least compared to the others who also use it. Over the last five years, 86 percent of the use of the private-plane fleet has been by the White House and the military. Just 14.5 percent has been congressional use.
...The House Appropriations Committee says the new purchases are designed to replace seven aging and more expensive business jets. The net impact is one additional plane owned by the federal government and a substantial increase in its passenger capacity.
So it’s adding one plane, not eight, as the WSJ subhed implies. Changes the tenor of the story, no? Now it’s not quite such a juicy, Drudge-worthy, top of A1 piece.
...What does “expensive” mean? Is Congress actually going to save money long-term by switching to planes that are cheaper to fly? Or does it mean that the purchase prices of the planes are lower than the ones they’re replacing. The Journal doesn’t say. That’s critical information here.
...And what happens to the old planes? Presumably they’ll sell for something, offsetting part of that $550 million tab (although the market for planes isn’t exactly robust these days). That goes unexplored here.
...This is all too bad because there’s a legitimate story here about whether Congress should be spending half a billion dollars on private planes right now (does it make any economic sense given that they’re replacing “more expensive” planes?)—or whether it is abusing this privilege.
But you can’t trust this story because it distorts the facts to sex up the issue. It’s a very British-style presentation, unsurprising since the newspaper is now run by folks who hail from Fleet Street"
http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/journal_misleads_congress_jets.php
Friday, August 14, 2009
The Newsweek Chronicles
TW: I endorsed the Newsweek re-design a few weeks ago here. Alas at least to date the more serious tone has not garnered more serious sales. Nothing is surprising here. I suppose Oprah and Michael Jackson covers have always trumped actual news (someone pinched our issue the week of the Jackson cover, that had never happened before). But it is still somewhat depressing to see good journalism struggle in the face of mass reality.
From New York Observer:
"Newsweek underwent a big splashy redesign in late May in the hope that it could turn around the magazine's sagging fortunes, but so far there hasn't been a considerable bump in newsstand sales.
Newsweek sold an average of 66,702 copies off the newsstand in its first six weeks since the redesign versus the 66,533 issues that it averaged for the previous 18 issues in 2009, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations' Rapid Report.
More troubling, in the last four weeks that numbers are available, the magazine's sales slid each week from 85,000 copies sold to 75,000 to 67,100 to 50,000. The ABC numbers are available through its June 29 issue.
The best-selling issue for the revamped magazine—and the second-best seller of the year—was the Oprah cover with the headline CRAZY TALK, which sold 85,000 copies. A cover on the Iranian elections, which didn't look demonstrably different than the old Newsweek, was the worst seller out of the bunch, with 50,000 copies sold.
A Newsweek spokesman, Frank DeMaria, said he disagreed that magazine sales have been flat when compared to how sales are down across the industry.
"We feel internally that we've had [a bump]," he said. "If we're down in June 5 percent year on year, and others are down substantially more than that, we feel the relaunch is doing well."
He pointed to The Economist, which he said is down more than 20 percent year-over-year in the month of June.
He also said that the Michael Jackson cover, which appeared three weeks ago, is expected to do far better than average.
At the same time, over the last two weeks, Newsweek's covers with Ted Kennedy and Eric Holder, like the Iran cover, did not have that same fresh feel as the Oprah cover did.
We'll continue to watch closely."
From New York Observer:
"Newsweek underwent a big splashy redesign in late May in the hope that it could turn around the magazine's sagging fortunes, but so far there hasn't been a considerable bump in newsstand sales.
Newsweek sold an average of 66,702 copies off the newsstand in its first six weeks since the redesign versus the 66,533 issues that it averaged for the previous 18 issues in 2009, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations' Rapid Report.
More troubling, in the last four weeks that numbers are available, the magazine's sales slid each week from 85,000 copies sold to 75,000 to 67,100 to 50,000. The ABC numbers are available through its June 29 issue.
The best-selling issue for the revamped magazine—and the second-best seller of the year—was the Oprah cover with the headline CRAZY TALK, which sold 85,000 copies. A cover on the Iranian elections, which didn't look demonstrably different than the old Newsweek, was the worst seller out of the bunch, with 50,000 copies sold.
A Newsweek spokesman, Frank DeMaria, said he disagreed that magazine sales have been flat when compared to how sales are down across the industry.
"We feel internally that we've had [a bump]," he said. "If we're down in June 5 percent year on year, and others are down substantially more than that, we feel the relaunch is doing well."
He pointed to The Economist, which he said is down more than 20 percent year-over-year in the month of June.
He also said that the Michael Jackson cover, which appeared three weeks ago, is expected to do far better than average.
At the same time, over the last two weeks, Newsweek's covers with Ted Kennedy and Eric Holder, like the Iran cover, did not have that same fresh feel as the Oprah cover did.
We'll continue to watch closely."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)