Category: media and media people

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ideological culture media and media people

The AP’s Memory Hole

In our age of the Internet, cheap digital video recorders, etc., it’s harder than it once was to enforce an “official” version of an event . . . . the un-airbrushed knowledge of which might embarrass some potentate.

Memory-tweakers keep trying, though. Including Winston-Smith wannabes at the Associated Press.

An example is President Obama’s appearance at a wind turbine plant, where he made a pitch for “energy independence,” a concept presidents have been pitching at us at least since the long gas lines of the 1970s. One concern of attendees was the latest bout of high gas prices, caused by inflationary pressures and uncertainty about the Middle East.

According to an early version of the AP’s report, “Obama needled one questioner who asked about gas prices, now averaging close to $3.70 a gallon nationwide, and suggested that the gentleman consider getting rid of his gas-guzzling vehicle. ‘If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting 8 miles a gallon, you know,’ Obama said laughingly, ‘you might want to think about a trade-in.’” The passage downplays how jovially patronizing the president was even after it became clear that the questioner had ten kids to support.

Obama’s unscripted condescension toward a struggling plant worker is not so outrageous as the AP’s strange memory-hole behavior. The incident was later scrubbed from their report. But InstaPundit’s Glenn Reynolds saved a screenshot of the original passage. And there’s video.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people

How the Worm Turns

Some folks wait till the last moment to decide how to vote. And when indifference was the mental state right before the decision, we can’t help but wonder what moved the person from indecision to selection. A coin toss?

Or something more insidious?

This kind of worry lies behind a mini-controversy over a CNN News feature. For the 2008 presidential campaign CNN gathered 32 undecided voters and gave them knobs to turn as they listened to candidates’ speeches. Turn the knob one way for approval, the opposite for disapproval. A computer averaged out the responses, and graphed them in real time underneath the TV image of the candidate speaking.

Such graphic elements of newscasts have been called “worms.”

Psychologists have studied this sort of thing, and suspect that the mere presentation of this average approval rating amounts to “spin.”

And, as such, constitutes undue influence of a small group, perhaps easily manipulable, over a large group of voters.

British psychologists studying CNN-like worms say they accumulated data of measurable signs of influence. “The responses of a small group of individuals could, via the worm, influence millions of voters,” the scientists write. They also declare this effect “not conducive to a healthy democracy.”

Yes, yes, but “peer pressure” has been a known element of democracy for some time.

Only the worms are new.

And, in their context, they provide more information. As with speech we may not like, more and different worm varieties (on different networks, perhaps) is undoubtedly the best response.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people

Kochs: The Real Thing

Lying about who you are to trick an ideological adversary into embarrassing himself on tape?

A dubious means of advancing your cause.

But James Taranto notes a key difference between an effective conservative sting operation against an NPR officer, Ron Schiller, and an earlier, ineffective liberal sting operation against Governor Walker of Wisconsin. Namely, “that the guy who prank-called Walker claimed to be an actual person, so that there was a second victim of his prank.”

The other victim in the Walker sting, which rocked Wisconsin politics with all the power of a wet firecracker, was industrialist David Koch, one of two brothers who have philanthropically supported free-market causes over the years. They’ve been a major backer of the Cato Institute, for example. The guy pretending to be David Koch in the prank phone call to Walker sought to represent the Kochs’ influence on Wisconsin politics as somehow corrupt and immoral. The opposite is true.

Richard Fink, executive vice president of Koch Industries, told National Review Online that the brothers won’t be deterred by smear attacks from the left.

“We will not step back at all,” Fink says. “We firmly believe that economic freedom has benefited the overwhelming majority of society, including workers, who earn higher wages when you have open and free markets. When government grows as it has with the Bush and Obama administrations, that is what destroys prosperity.”

Good for them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people too much government

Wisconsin Whitewash

NBC anchorman Brian Williams says government workers in Wisconsin are “rising up and saying no to some of the most extreme cuts in the nation.”

It’s a glorious revolution. . . .

Thousands have been descending on the statehouse to protest the new governor’s willingness to curtail the collective bargaining rights of public employee unions.

One demonstrator tells NBC that teachers are fighting for the “same thing” Egyptian demonstrators are fighting for — budget cuts equaling dictatorship, presumably. Others say that the proposed cuts “unfairly penalize union employees.”

Of course, these folks aren’t about to recognize the fact that, in many states, untrammeled splurging on public union employees has long unfairly penalized taxpayers.

The protesters’ assertions get a fair amount of attention from national media. We’re hearing less about the violent rhetoric and even threats that some have engaged in. Governor Walker has been compared to Hosni Mubarak and to Hitler, and one placard shows him being targeted by a sniper’s rifle.

National Review’s Jay Nordlinger reports that the governor and members of his administration have been threatened with violence. “I have heard from people closely connected to the threatened individuals,” Nordlinger writes. “Their letters are hard to take. The last few days have made quite clear that, if you cross the public-employee unions, you run risks: and not merely political risks. . . .”

Don’t the hazards of trying to reduce the extent to which taxpayers are looted deserve a few moments on the evening news?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people term limits

Term Limits, Good

During the last few weeks of Egyptian unrest, a phrase got bandied about with an unusual degree of assumed support: Term limits. We heard of their importance from The Christian Science Monitor,  The New York Times, and other news sources, some of which would normally pooh-pooh any push to establish, say, legislative term limits in America.

The writers and editors in question should find this odd. Why is it good for an executive in America to be term limited (as our Commander-in-Chief is), and even essential (as was often said) for commanders elsewhere, while it’s verboten for U.S. legislators?

Term limits’ rationale is clear. Journalists who wrote about the lack of term limits for Mubarak got the idea. They’re familiar with Lord Acton’s dictum: Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Term limits for executives prevent tyrannies from forming — or, if formed, from continuing till the rigors of mortis set in.

What do term limits for legislators prevent?

Not full-blown tyranny, exactly, but corruption. In a representative democracy, corruption can be subtle.

Term limits are just unsubtle enough to check some of that.

Take John Dingell, the politician to serve longest exclusively in the House. He took over his district from his father, who had served there 22 years — a 78-year dynasty!

Aristotle argued men should “rule and be ruled in turn.” Term limitation: a democratic principle to ward off both wannabe dictators and legislative dynasties.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies too much government

What Gets Lost in Washington

The current battle over “health care reform” is a great example of why representative government frustrates.

It’s not just that the vast majority of Americans who oppose the Democrats’ bill didn’t get their way. It’s that the proponents of socialized medicine (and that’s the real goal, here: The eventual complete government takeover of medicine) are playing a sort of obstacle-course race . . . as I argued yesterday.

Meanwhile, how the anti-Obamacare message hits Washington vexes, too.

Some partisan pundits and pollsters go so far as to say that the Democrats’ reform legislation suffers because it lacks a good name. “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” is not a catchy moniker. “Obamacare,” used primarily by its opponents, is super-catchy. And the Republicans repeal effort is pretty clever: “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.”

Though “job-killing” may reference a hot, current topic, it is far from the most salient thing one might say against the Democrats’ rushed-through plan.

Standard politics: Even when politicians do the right thing, they push it for the wrong reason.

Media folk are now beginning to spin the popular opposition to Obamacare. Carefully worded polls “prove” that Americans aren’t overwhelmingly against the plan.

Which misses the real point: Incredulity. Democrats ballyhooed the notion that further government intervention into medicine would reduce costs. Nonsense, of course. And Americans know it.

That common-sense skepticism is precisely what gets lost in all the politics.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people

Killer Apprehended, Vitriol’s to Blame

On Saturday, a mentally unstable 22-year old man opened fire in a shopping center in Tucson, Arizona, seriously injuring a congresswoman, murdering six and wounding eleven more.

According to the New York Times, “Bloodshed Puts New Focus on Vitriol in Politics.” The Washington Post’s coverage could have run under the same headline: “The mass shooting Saturday morning that gravely wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and killed a federal judge raised serious concerns that the nation’s heated political discourse had taken a dangerous turn.”

No mention of the person who actually pulled the trigger. Instead, insinuations that those who have strongly expressed their political opinions are the real culprits.

“The rhetoric has devolved and descended past the ugly, and past the threatening, and past the fantastic, and into the imminently murderous,” argued MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. Olbermann’s guest, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, while admitting he didn’t know the shooter’s motivation, suggested the violence was the “inevitable” result of “violent political rhetoric” and “incitement.”

The Huffington Post trotted out Arizona Democratic Congressman Raul Grijalva to relay the day’s message against “vitriolic rhetoric” from “extreme elements of the Tea Party.” Grijalva attacked Sarah Palin, arguing, “if she wants to help the public discourse, the best thing she could do is to keep quiet.”

Let us mourn the deceased, support the injured, prosecute the guilty. Yes. But it is indecent to twist an act of violence into an excuse to smear opponents and silence robust political debate.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people

Feeding the Narrative

Liberal NPR fired liberal reporter Juan Williams after he admitted on O’Reilly Factor to feeling nervous when sharing a plane with passengers dressed in Muslim garb. Williams also told O’Reilly it’s important to combat prejudice against Muslims, but that sentiment didn’t protect him. Honest man, out!

Some liberals, including Jesse Jackson, have joined conservatives in blasting NPR for the precipitous dismissal.

Various commentators have also been saying, “Hey, I never did like NPR’s smug condescending liberalism, so why are my tax dollars funding it?”

There are many reasons government shouldn’t be funding broadcasting — the unfairness of forcing us to pay people to noxiously condescend to us is surely one of them.

Some hate to admit that National Public Radio is what it is. For example, Politico.com scribe James Hohmann, relaying Jackson’s support for Williams, adds: “NPR CEO Vivian Schiller apologized for saying Williams should keep his views about Muslims between himself and ‘his psychiatrist or his publicist,’ but her remarks fed into the narrative that NPR is liberal, smug and condescending.”

Hohmann’s reluctance to state that Schiller’s remarks support that unflattering view of NPR, rather than merely “feed into the narrative” about it, is but a pretense at objectivity. Should another damning bit of evidence come up — for example, another NPR broadcast — would that, too, constitute just another incidental detail to be “fed into the narrative”?

No, Politico, let’s instead accept the obvious conclusion warranted by the abundant evidence.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people

Alaska Misfire

The wrong man was fired.

The campaign of U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller seems to have been at least twice targeted as November 2 approached. In one case, questionable doings came to light after a reporter with CBS Anchorage affiliate KTVA forgot to turn off his phone after leaving a message with a campaign spokesman. Newsroom reporters then chatted about how to sabotage Miller’s campaign — for example, by finding that “one person” among campaign supporters who is a child molester. The station claims that a recording of the incident gives a “misleading” impression.

Then we have the campaign of Senator Lisa Murkowski, Miller’s opponent, acting to kick conservative talk-show host Don Fagan off the air.

After the Alaska Division of Elections aided Murkowski’s write-in campaign by deciding to distribute lists of write-in candidates at polling places, a listener said he had now become a registered write-in candidate himself. Fagan then suggested — on-air, as part of his regular talk programming — that other listeners might want to do the same. Uh oh. The station fired him after the incumbent’s campaign threatened to sue the station for so-called “electioneering.”

Compare the two cases. It’s fine for any media outlet to push its political opinions — but not to fabricate smears. It’s fine for candidates to make any complaint they wish to media outlets — but not to coercively curdle speech they happen to abhor.

I say, the wrong man got axed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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ideological culture media and media people

Sometimes a Great Reversal

After World War II, European Social Democrats — the heirs of Karl Marx’s delusional vision — broke with their heritage. They rewrote their political principles, compromising. No longer would they go for socialism whole hog; they abandoned its key feature, the replacement of markets with total government control.

This was a great moment for modern civilization. It bequeathed Europe (and, perhaps, America) a clunky and intrusive (and unsustainable) welfare states, sure . . . but that’s far, far better than Communism.

We may be witnessing a similar groundswell of ideological shift in America’s stronghold of the status quo, the media. This week the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times endorsed budgetary rules that would take power and unlimited budgetary discretion from California’s out-of-control legislature:

It’s unfortunate that automated budgeting is necessary. But it is necessary. The state must continue to invest in the social welfare of its people, but we must do it in accordance with California’s projected growth so that we do not repeatedly yank from the young, the elderly and the poor the very services that we provided only a year or two before.

This may not sound revolutionary. But, as Tim Cavanaugh put it on Reason magazine’s Hit and Run, the Times — long an opponent of spending limits — has “acknowledge[d] clearly and publicly that out-of-control spending, not insufficient tax revenue, is suffocating the Golden State.”

And that is revolutionary. Not American Founder-revolutionary, but Social Democrat-compromise-y revolutionary.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.