Second-Day Lede
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
More voices in the mix
Congratulations to Air America, the new liberal talk radio network, which launched today at noon on a handful of stations. If you're not within earshot, you can tune in online. Not only does the network feature such informed, entertaining liberals as Al Franken, Chuck D, and Randi Rhodes -- it also offers live reports from Wally Ballou, played by Bob Elliott himself.
So far the low point has been Rhodes shouting over Ralph Nader. Before that, they managed to go nearly six hours without anybody shouting, period, let alone over a guest.
Congratulations to Air America, the new liberal talk radio network, which launched today at noon on a handful of stations. If you're not within earshot, you can tune in online. Not only does the network feature such informed, entertaining liberals as Al Franken, Chuck D, and Randi Rhodes -- it also offers live reports from Wally Ballou, played by Bob Elliott himself.
So far the low point has been Rhodes shouting over Ralph Nader. Before that, they managed to go nearly six hours without anybody shouting, period, let alone over a guest.
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Stuff we'd rather not hear
National Public Radio Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin is also campaigning against cliches.
BBC icon Alistair Cooke, who dispatched his last Letter from America last month, died last night. He was 95.
And this -- this is just appalling. But then, what else can we expect from Robert Novak:
NOVAK: Congressman, do you believe, you're a sophisticated guy, do you believe watching these hearings that Dick Clarke has a problem with this African-American woman Condoleezza Rice?
EMANUEL: Say that again?
NOVAK: Do you believe that Dick Clarke has a problem with this African-American woman Condoleezza Rice?
Oh, and Dr. Rice will be testifying under oath and in public after all. That's yet another Bush flip-flop.
National Public Radio Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin is also campaigning against cliches.
BBC icon Alistair Cooke, who dispatched his last Letter from America last month, died last night. He was 95.
And this -- this is just appalling. But then, what else can we expect from Robert Novak:
NOVAK: Congressman, do you believe, you're a sophisticated guy, do you believe watching these hearings that Dick Clarke has a problem with this African-American woman Condoleezza Rice?
EMANUEL: Say that again?
NOVAK: Do you believe that Dick Clarke has a problem with this African-American woman Condoleezza Rice?
Oh, and Dr. Rice will be testifying under oath and in public after all. That's yet another Bush flip-flop.
Monday, March 29, 2004
Parrots, reporting live
The other day I suggested that if news organizations want to use dead reporters, the venerable Edward R. Murrow might be a good choice. But today I've found an even better suggestion: Monty Python's dead parrot. Because it seemed the whole press corps was made up of parrots today, parrots reporting live.
I could tell they were parrots because all they did was parrot, all day long. "...but Rice said it was unprecedented for a National Security Advisor to testify before a congressional..." (that's a composite, not a direct quote from any one of them). They offered no other side to that story, they just squawked and squawked the same line over and over all morning. I didn't expect to be complimenting the man who pompously declares, "Stand by for hard news!" every day at 5 p.m. (on a channel broadcasting same all day and all night!), but finally around noon, CNN's Wolf Blitzer was the first TV news personality to do anything but parrot that quote from the reluctant witness. He must have gotten around to reading last Saturday's Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial, which called the National Security Advisor on that claim before she even made it on the Sunday morning news shows or 60 Minutes.
The other day I suggested that if news organizations want to use dead reporters, the venerable Edward R. Murrow might be a good choice. But today I've found an even better suggestion: Monty Python's dead parrot. Because it seemed the whole press corps was made up of parrots today, parrots reporting live.
I could tell they were parrots because all they did was parrot, all day long. "...but Rice said it was unprecedented for a National Security Advisor to testify before a congressional..." (that's a composite, not a direct quote from any one of them). They offered no other side to that story, they just squawked and squawked the same line over and over all morning. I didn't expect to be complimenting the man who pompously declares, "Stand by for hard news!" every day at 5 p.m. (on a channel broadcasting same all day and all night!), but finally around noon, CNN's Wolf Blitzer was the first TV news personality to do anything but parrot that quote from the reluctant witness. He must have gotten around to reading last Saturday's Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial, which called the National Security Advisor on that claim before she even made it on the Sunday morning news shows or 60 Minutes.
Friday, March 26, 2004
Why should the media impose 'balance' on a story that isn't?
Sean Aday of The Gadflyer addresses that important question in "He Said, She Lied: The media in an imbalanced world." Your assignment: read it before Monday.
Sean Aday of The Gadflyer addresses that important question in "He Said, She Lied: The media in an imbalanced world." Your assignment: read it before Monday.
Thursday, March 25, 2004
Good at hiding?
A species of mountain lion that has not been seen in New Jersey for nearly 200 years has been sighted near a pond in Mahwah. That's what the lede says, but if you read the whole story you discover that numerous hunters and farmers have reported encounters with "big tawny-colored cats" over the past few years.
The cats apparently are much better at hiding than the brown bear, because so many of those have been sighted in the Garden State that the state even had an official bear hunt last year.
A species of mountain lion that has not been seen in New Jersey for nearly 200 years has been sighted near a pond in Mahwah. That's what the lede says, but if you read the whole story you discover that numerous hunters and farmers have reported encounters with "big tawny-colored cats" over the past few years.
The cats apparently are much better at hiding than the brown bear, because so many of those have been sighted in the Garden State that the state even had an official bear hunt last year.
On Jeopardy! -- bay-bee
Some of the people who shout over each other on political talk programs will be joining other celebrities for a special week of Jeopardy! in May. Remember, folks, you'll have to wait until Alex Trebek finishes saying the last syllable of the last word of the answer BEFORE you ring in, and then you have to wait until he calls on you to say the question. Or if you can't be that civilized, then at least make sure that everything you shout is in the form of a question.
Some of the people who shout over each other on political talk programs will be joining other celebrities for a special week of Jeopardy! in May. Remember, folks, you'll have to wait until Alex Trebek finishes saying the last syllable of the last word of the answer BEFORE you ring in, and then you have to wait until he calls on you to say the question. Or if you can't be that civilized, then at least make sure that everything you shout is in the form of a question.
Elvis
No, not a sighting: that's what they were arguing about on New Year's Eve in a Staten Island firehouse. Specifically, the disagreement that left a firefighter critically injured was over the date of Elvis's birth.
No, not a sighting: that's what they were arguing about on New Year's Eve in a Staten Island firehouse. Specifically, the disagreement that left a firefighter critically injured was over the date of Elvis's birth.
Dawn of the Wounded
A moviegoer watching Dawn of the Dead yesterday at a Times Square theater in New York accidentally shot himself in the leg with the gun he happened to have in his pocket. Remember, New York has been on orange alert since the color-coded alerts were invented, even as the rest of the country has gone back and forth between yellow and orange.
If you're confused about which guns you're allowed to own, Say Uncle offers this handy reference guide. But as Johnny Cash once sang, "leave your guns at home" when you go to the movies, OK? Even the drive-in.
A moviegoer watching Dawn of the Dead yesterday at a Times Square theater in New York accidentally shot himself in the leg with the gun he happened to have in his pocket. Remember, New York has been on orange alert since the color-coded alerts were invented, even as the rest of the country has gone back and forth between yellow and orange.
If you're confused about which guns you're allowed to own, Say Uncle offers this handy reference guide. But as Johnny Cash once sang, "leave your guns at home" when you go to the movies, OK? Even the drive-in.
Refer Madness #4 -- Special LIVE Edition
This Thursday we offer a special LIVE edition of Refer Madness. All day long, we'll be adding new refers to interesting news and commentary elsewhere in the blogosphere and cyberspace beyond.
This Thursday we offer a special LIVE edition of Refer Madness. All day long, we'll be adding new refers to interesting news and commentary elsewhere in the blogosphere and cyberspace beyond.
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Ban these, too, says Plain English Association
'At the end of the day' tops this list of the most irritating cliches in our language, at this point in time (that's #2 on the list). Here's the whole Top Ten:
1) At the end of the day
2) At this moment in time
3) Like,(as a form of punctuation)
4) With all due respect
5) To be honest
6) Let's touch base
7) I hear what you are saying
8) Going forward
9) Absolutely
10) Blue sky (thinking)
'24/7' also made the list, which I appreciate. I'd also like to nominate "...and the good thing about that is..." -- not only because it's overused, but because it's just plain wrong. Is there ANYTHING that has only one good thing about it?
'At the end of the day' tops this list of the most irritating cliches in our language, at this point in time (that's #2 on the list). Here's the whole Top Ten:
1) At the end of the day
2) At this moment in time
3) Like,(as a form of punctuation)
4) With all due respect
5) To be honest
6) Let's touch base
7) I hear what you are saying
8) Going forward
9) Absolutely
10) Blue sky (thinking)
'24/7' also made the list, which I appreciate. I'd also like to nominate "...and the good thing about that is..." -- not only because it's overused, but because it's just plain wrong. Is there ANYTHING that has only one good thing about it?
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Ban these words, please! Part 2: Words that TV news could do without
...Annnnnnnd we're back with another edition of Ban these words, please! Thank you for joining us on this Tuesday.
ARE there words and/or phrases that should be banned from television news, not because of offensiveness but the annoyance of overuse or misuse? That's all coming up. Please stay with us for a special report on words and phrases that we feel should no longer be allowed on TV news.
...annnnnnd...let's start with AND, especially at the beginning of a sentence. While it may be useful for floor directors advising "talent" that they are back on the air, viewers already know that "we're back" without any explanation. Annnnnnnnnd there's no reason to begin all your sentences with "annnnnnnnnnd" if you're not a floor director yourself.
LIVE -- as in, "Our Joe Blow is live in front of the courthouse that won't be open for another five hours. Joe, what are the latest developments this morning?"
As long as all your reporters are alive when they're reporting, it's a waste of your time and ours for you to point out that they are live. If you do use dead reporters, I recommend the legendary Edward R. Murrow.
OUR (also OUR OWN)-- as in the same example.
If a reporter is on your air, reporting for you, that should be enough. If that reporter is a freelancer, stringer, special correspondent, or similarly labeled independent contractor, they are not "yours." Acknowledge the freelancers working for you as the independent contractors they are. If you are unsure about which reporters you can call yours, ask yourself, "Does our parent company provide health insurance, sick pay, vacation, and other benefits for this reporter?" If not, omit the "our".
Coming up -- There is a classic rule for public speaking that was once explained to me like this: tell em what you're gonna tell em and then tell em and then tell em what you told em. TV news has rewritten that: tell em what you're gonna tell em and take a quick break and then tell em what you're gonna tell em and then tell em what you're gonna tell em and then take a short break and then tell em what you're gonna tell em and then tell em what you're gonna tell em and then, if there's time left, tell em, and then if there's still time left, fill it with a mixture of what you think about what you just told em and intermittent chuckling.
Just briefly, real quick -- best illustrated by The New York Times's Elisabeth Bumiller's unbelievably stupid question to John Kerry in the New York Democratic presidential debate: "Really fast, last, on a Sunday morning, President Bush has said that freedom and fear have always been at war and God is not neutral between them. He's made quite clear in these speeches that he feels God is on America's side. Really quick: Is God on America's side?
How _____X_____ does it feel? When I was a cub reporter, the journalists' incessant chant was just as Bob Dylan immortalized it: "How does it FEEL? How does it FEEL?" But no more. Now the journalist fills in the blank -- how frustrating does it feel? How bad does it feel? "How worried are you, ma'am, about your missing child?" All that's left for the interviewee is the intensity of the specified feeling.
Our hearts go out to you. (Usually followed by: Let's take a short break.). Yes, let's.
Give me a sense... If you must say this, make it "Give me some sense..." at least until an interviewee replies, "Ma'am, if the Good Lord didn't give you any, there's nothing I can do to help you."
Thank you for taking the time -- stop saying this, especially to:
-- the desperate parent of a kidnapped blond white child (the parents of nonblond, nonwhite ones rarely get the chance to go on TV, do they?)
-- a flak ("public relations person") or spokesperson
-- any politician
-- one of "your" reporters.
Thanks for joining us, and tune in again next week when we go after some words and phrases we'd rather not see in print news media.
...Annnnnnnd we're back with another edition of Ban these words, please! Thank you for joining us on this Tuesday.
ARE there words and/or phrases that should be banned from television news, not because of offensiveness but the annoyance of overuse or misuse? That's all coming up. Please stay with us for a special report on words and phrases that we feel should no longer be allowed on TV news.
...annnnnnd...let's start with AND, especially at the beginning of a sentence. While it may be useful for floor directors advising "talent" that they are back on the air, viewers already know that "we're back" without any explanation. Annnnnnnnnd there's no reason to begin all your sentences with "annnnnnnnnnd" if you're not a floor director yourself.
LIVE -- as in, "Our Joe Blow is live in front of the courthouse that won't be open for another five hours. Joe, what are the latest developments this morning?"
As long as all your reporters are alive when they're reporting, it's a waste of your time and ours for you to point out that they are live. If you do use dead reporters, I recommend the legendary Edward R. Murrow.
OUR (also OUR OWN)-- as in the same example.
If a reporter is on your air, reporting for you, that should be enough. If that reporter is a freelancer, stringer, special correspondent, or similarly labeled independent contractor, they are not "yours." Acknowledge the freelancers working for you as the independent contractors they are. If you are unsure about which reporters you can call yours, ask yourself, "Does our parent company provide health insurance, sick pay, vacation, and other benefits for this reporter?" If not, omit the "our".
Coming up -- There is a classic rule for public speaking that was once explained to me like this: tell em what you're gonna tell em and then tell em and then tell em what you told em. TV news has rewritten that: tell em what you're gonna tell em and take a quick break and then tell em what you're gonna tell em and then tell em what you're gonna tell em and then take a short break and then tell em what you're gonna tell em and then tell em what you're gonna tell em and then, if there's time left, tell em, and then if there's still time left, fill it with a mixture of what you think about what you just told em and intermittent chuckling.
Just briefly, real quick -- best illustrated by The New York Times's Elisabeth Bumiller's unbelievably stupid question to John Kerry in the New York Democratic presidential debate: "Really fast, last, on a Sunday morning, President Bush has said that freedom and fear have always been at war and God is not neutral between them. He's made quite clear in these speeches that he feels God is on America's side. Really quick: Is God on America's side?
How _____X_____ does it feel? When I was a cub reporter, the journalists' incessant chant was just as Bob Dylan immortalized it: "How does it FEEL? How does it FEEL?" But no more. Now the journalist fills in the blank -- how frustrating does it feel? How bad does it feel? "How worried are you, ma'am, about your missing child?" All that's left for the interviewee is the intensity of the specified feeling.
Our hearts go out to you. (Usually followed by: Let's take a short break.). Yes, let's.
Give me a sense... If you must say this, make it "Give me some sense..." at least until an interviewee replies, "Ma'am, if the Good Lord didn't give you any, there's nothing I can do to help you."
Thank you for taking the time -- stop saying this, especially to:
-- the desperate parent of a kidnapped blond white child (the parents of nonblond, nonwhite ones rarely get the chance to go on TV, do they?)
-- a flak ("public relations person") or spokesperson
-- any politician
-- one of "your" reporters.
Thanks for joining us, and tune in again next week when we go after some words and phrases we'd rather not see in print news media.
Monday, March 22, 2004
Chasing the cat in the box, missing the story
If the conditional tense were suddenly eliminated from our language, the people who tell us what's going on in the world would suddenly find themselves at a loss for words. If they couldn't report anything they didn't know for certain, if they couldn't speculate about either the future or the past, the silence would be deafening.
The other day, for example, the news machinery was running at top speed, fueled by reports that a person who may be one of the leaders of al-Queda might be among a group of fighters that may be surrounded by the Pakistani army (possibly assisted by the U.S. Army), in a place called Waziristan on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, While the non-American news organizations (usually called "the international media") managed to avoid climbing that spiral of what-ifs and maybes and continued telling us about the news that was actually happening, the domestic media got stuck in conditional mode.
They didn't tell us about the violence in Kosovo, sparked by the drowning deaths of two children. We didn't hear much about the bizarre, possibly staged, assassination attempts on both the president and vice president of Taiwan on election day eve, or the equally bizarre replay of our 2000 election that ensued. They were about to tell us about the day's new round of explosions in Baghdad when the maybe-maybe-maybe story broke, not hypothetical blasts but real ones, but Wolf and the rest of the pack seem to have forgotten all about what was actually happening as they turned their (and our) attention to the hypothetical scenario in a place with no live video.
Maybe they measured the Baghdad blasts by the old man-bites-dog rule and decided they weren't news, really. Everybody knows that if a dog bites a man it's not news, but if a man bites a dog, that's news because it's unusual. The Baghdad blasts happen every day, so are they still news? Apparently not -- not if a possible "high value target" might be involved in what might be a firefight in a place so remote that all you can do is point to it on a map over and over. Maybe if there's a day without explosions there, we'll get a live breaking-news report. Maybe. (Hey, I've learned from watching them.)
With the notable exception of crusading journalist Lou Dobbs (may he remain on the air for decades to come), they stopped talking about the economy, stupid or not -- except to report on how the markets were reacting to their reporting on the speculation that somebody who might be somebody, referred to as "that guy" by at least one TV news reporter, might be surrounded, and presumably subsequently captured or killed, by a bunch of other guys who may or may not be on our side.
They even stopped, for a few hours at least, going on and on about the latest breaking developments in the stories that usually expand to fill the space available, like the live reports from bleary-eyed stringers standing outside closed courthouses at 4 a.m local time to give us what we need to know about motions that might or might not be filed in the Scott Peterson trial, or the charges against Michael Jackson or even his sister's overexposed parts.
And they showed us, once again, that the laws of physics also apply to journalism. In this case, the journalists were after what the physicists refer to as Schroedinger's Cat:
Physicist Erwin Schroedinger's cat was a hypothetical critter that lived, or didn't live, in a box that had, or didn't have, something in it that could kill it, or not kill it, at any moment, and there was a 50-50 chance. The box was sealed with the cat and its potential death inside, so from the outside nobody could tell if the cat were alive or dead at any given moment. The cat exisited as a half-dead, half-alive entity: as long as the box was closed, it was nothing but a probability wave.
The barking news hounds' cat, Ayman al-Zawahri, one of the apparently gazillions of #2 masterminds in al-Queda, may not even have been in the box at all.
If the conditional tense were suddenly eliminated from our language, the people who tell us what's going on in the world would suddenly find themselves at a loss for words. If they couldn't report anything they didn't know for certain, if they couldn't speculate about either the future or the past, the silence would be deafening.
The other day, for example, the news machinery was running at top speed, fueled by reports that a person who may be one of the leaders of al-Queda might be among a group of fighters that may be surrounded by the Pakistani army (possibly assisted by the U.S. Army), in a place called Waziristan on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, While the non-American news organizations (usually called "the international media") managed to avoid climbing that spiral of what-ifs and maybes and continued telling us about the news that was actually happening, the domestic media got stuck in conditional mode.
They didn't tell us about the violence in Kosovo, sparked by the drowning deaths of two children. We didn't hear much about the bizarre, possibly staged, assassination attempts on both the president and vice president of Taiwan on election day eve, or the equally bizarre replay of our 2000 election that ensued. They were about to tell us about the day's new round of explosions in Baghdad when the maybe-maybe-maybe story broke, not hypothetical blasts but real ones, but Wolf and the rest of the pack seem to have forgotten all about what was actually happening as they turned their (and our) attention to the hypothetical scenario in a place with no live video.
Maybe they measured the Baghdad blasts by the old man-bites-dog rule and decided they weren't news, really. Everybody knows that if a dog bites a man it's not news, but if a man bites a dog, that's news because it's unusual. The Baghdad blasts happen every day, so are they still news? Apparently not -- not if a possible "high value target" might be involved in what might be a firefight in a place so remote that all you can do is point to it on a map over and over. Maybe if there's a day without explosions there, we'll get a live breaking-news report. Maybe. (Hey, I've learned from watching them.)
With the notable exception of crusading journalist Lou Dobbs (may he remain on the air for decades to come), they stopped talking about the economy, stupid or not -- except to report on how the markets were reacting to their reporting on the speculation that somebody who might be somebody, referred to as "that guy" by at least one TV news reporter, might be surrounded, and presumably subsequently captured or killed, by a bunch of other guys who may or may not be on our side.
They even stopped, for a few hours at least, going on and on about the latest breaking developments in the stories that usually expand to fill the space available, like the live reports from bleary-eyed stringers standing outside closed courthouses at 4 a.m local time to give us what we need to know about motions that might or might not be filed in the Scott Peterson trial, or the charges against Michael Jackson or even his sister's overexposed parts.
And they showed us, once again, that the laws of physics also apply to journalism. In this case, the journalists were after what the physicists refer to as Schroedinger's Cat:
Physicist Erwin Schroedinger's cat was a hypothetical critter that lived, or didn't live, in a box that had, or didn't have, something in it that could kill it, or not kill it, at any moment, and there was a 50-50 chance. The box was sealed with the cat and its potential death inside, so from the outside nobody could tell if the cat were alive or dead at any given moment. The cat exisited as a half-dead, half-alive entity: as long as the box was closed, it was nothing but a probability wave.
The barking news hounds' cat, Ayman al-Zawahri, one of the apparently gazillions of #2 masterminds in al-Queda, may not even have been in the box at all.
Friday, March 19, 2004
Most underplayed story of the week
And it's good news, too: "Mass Extinction Not Inevitable," WIRED News reports.
And it's good news, too: "Mass Extinction Not Inevitable," WIRED News reports.
Thursday, March 18, 2004
Refer madness #3
Our weekly list of refers to good reading elsewhere in cyberspace begins with congratulations to TomPaine.com, which just won the 2003 Herbert Block Freedom Award from The Newspaper Guild-CWA, for being "a consistent voice of reason and democratic discourse at a time of increased political attacks on civil liberties and a flattening of discourse in the mainstream media."
"Like its historical namesake, TomPaine.com promotes informed public discourse, which is essential in a democratic society," TNG-CWA President Linda Foley said. "The group's continuing efforts to promote anti-establishment viewpoints on issues of the day are exactly what Herb Block's cartoons did for readers of the Washington Post."
Second, if you haven't seen Donald Rumsfeld explaining what he said he said, click here to watch Moveon.org's latest ad. This one's simply an excerpt of a news program, but it speaks for itself. Of course, the Defense Secretary's manner of speaking has already been noted in the literary world:
Third, please welcome The Gadflyer to our online political discourse. So far, it looks good, but it's just in the process of launching.
Next, Calpundit Kevin Drum has moved to the Washington Monthly, where his new Political Animal blog picks up the thread uninterrupted.
Then there's cousin Buddy Don. Not only has he given us more than 100 chapters of his fictional life story (so far), but he offers his pinions as well from time to time, and this week he's been on a roll. If you have trouble understanding his hillbilly dialect, he's also provided a dictionary.
Last, your tax dollars at work: "Iraq on the Record," prepared at the request of Rep. Henry Waxman not only counts (237) the Bush administration's misleading statements about Iraq, but it has a search feature. You can type in keywords such as "mushroom cloud" or "smoking gun" to find the quotes in which one or more administration official used that term.
Our weekly list of refers to good reading elsewhere in cyberspace begins with congratulations to TomPaine.com, which just won the 2003 Herbert Block Freedom Award from The Newspaper Guild-CWA, for being "a consistent voice of reason and democratic discourse at a time of increased political attacks on civil liberties and a flattening of discourse in the mainstream media."
"Like its historical namesake, TomPaine.com promotes informed public discourse, which is essential in a democratic society," TNG-CWA President Linda Foley said. "The group's continuing efforts to promote anti-establishment viewpoints on issues of the day are exactly what Herb Block's cartoons did for readers of the Washington Post."
Second, if you haven't seen Donald Rumsfeld explaining what he said he said, click here to watch Moveon.org's latest ad. This one's simply an excerpt of a news program, but it speaks for itself. Of course, the Defense Secretary's manner of speaking has already been noted in the literary world:
Third, please welcome The Gadflyer to our online political discourse. So far, it looks good, but it's just in the process of launching.
Next, Calpundit Kevin Drum has moved to the Washington Monthly, where his new Political Animal blog picks up the thread uninterrupted.
Then there's cousin Buddy Don. Not only has he given us more than 100 chapters of his fictional life story (so far), but he offers his pinions as well from time to time, and this week he's been on a roll. If you have trouble understanding his hillbilly dialect, he's also provided a dictionary.
Last, your tax dollars at work: "Iraq on the Record," prepared at the request of Rep. Henry Waxman not only counts (237) the Bush administration's misleading statements about Iraq, but it has a search feature. You can type in keywords such as "mushroom cloud" or "smoking gun" to find the quotes in which one or more administration official used that term.
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
'It's a scene from hell here, Wolf'
There's a time to talk about what the news industry does wrong, but today let's focus instead on what it does right. Kudos to CNN Baghdad Bureau Chief Jane Arraf for her excellent live reporting today, distinguished not only by the courage and tenaciousness she displayed, but especially by her honest acknowledgment of the horror and outrage she felt as she reported from the scene of today's bombing. Unfortunately, Wolf Blitzer's breathless Chicken Little approach to the story was nowhere near as exceptional.
There's a time to talk about what the news industry does wrong, but today let's focus instead on what it does right. Kudos to CNN Baghdad Bureau Chief Jane Arraf for her excellent live reporting today, distinguished not only by the courage and tenaciousness she displayed, but especially by her honest acknowledgment of the horror and outrage she felt as she reported from the scene of today's bombing. Unfortunately, Wolf Blitzer's breathless Chicken Little approach to the story was nowhere near as exceptional.
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
What didn't Kerry say, and when didn't he say it?
I had the TV news on today most of the time I was perusing the first annual State of the News Media report from the Project on Excellence in Journalism, and to be honest I found out more about what's wrong with the news industry from today's news coverage than I did from the report. Nothing against the report, except that I do wonder who they expected to read it: seems unlikely that either the average consumer of news or the average producer of it would take the time to read through all 500 pages. Academics might take the time, but the people who need it most probably won't get it. Besides, it's full of numbers, and editors always tell us that numbers put readers, viewers, and listeners to sleep. I don't mean to dismiss the report, but I find today's news a more vivid, immediate illustration of the problem. We'll have more on the report itself later in the week.
The other day, a reporter transcribing an audio recording of a John Kerry campaign event got one of the words wrong. But his report was the only account of the event, because he was a "pool" reporter covering the event for all news organizations everywhere, by agreement. This is sort of like a "fair catch" in football, when a player receiving the ball on kickoff can signal to the opposing team that if they let him catch the ball without tackling him, he'll stay put without being tackled. For various reasons, such as short-staffing on the part of news organizations or limited access to an event, the news industry often depends on a single reporter or photographer to provide pool coverage. On the local reporting level, that hardly matters because -- except in very big cities (i.e., "media markets"): -- there's probably going to be only one reporter covering the story anyway.
So this reporter, Patrick Healy of the Boston Globe, quoted Kerry as saying "foreign" when he really said "more." Which means it wasn't "foreign leaders" that Kerry said would prefer him to Bush as U.S. President, but "more leaders."
The Bush/Cheney campaign came out swinging, armed with the erroneous transcript, its spokesmen and women absolutely incredulous at the very idea that there might be either foreign leaders or more leaders who would prefer to deal with someone other than the current occupant of the White House. And the press corps responded not by pointing out the obvious, that of course there are leaders that would prefer someone other than Bush, even anyone-but-Bush, but by parrotting the Bush campaign's demands that Kerry name the names behind this ludicrous nonstatement.
Comic David Letterman jumped on the nonstory last night: "John Kerry says that foreign leaders want him to be president, but that he can't name the foreign leaders. That's all right, President Bush can't name them either."
The TV talking heads did stumble a time or two as they acknowledged that the reporter who said Kerry had said what he said had since said that Kerry had actually said something else, but they weren't about to let the facts get in the way. Not just the facts about what Kerry said, but the more important fact that, as the Pew Charitable Trust reports in a study released today, "A Year After Iraq War: Mistrust of America in Europe Ever Higher, Muslim Anger Persists." Here's the summary:
"A year after the war in Iraq, discontent with America and its policies has intensified rather than diminished. Opinion of the United States in France and Germany is at least as negative now as at the war's conclusion, and British views are decidedly more critical.
Perceptions of American unilateralism remain widespread in European and Muslim nations, and the war in Iraq has undermined America's credibility abroad. Doubts about the motives behind the U.S.-led war on terrorism abound, and a growing percentage of Europeans want foreign policy and security arrangements independent from the United States. Across Europe, there is considerable support for the European Union to become as powerful as the United States.
The latest survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, conducted from late February to early March in the U.S. and eight other countries, shows that Muslim anger toward the United States remains pervasive, although the level of hatred has eased somewhat and support for the war on terrorism has inched up. Osama bin Laden, however, is viewed favorably by large percentages in Pakistan (65%), Jordan (55%) and Morocco (45%). Even in Turkey, where bin Laden is highly unpopular, as many as 31% say that suicide attacks against Americans and other Westerners in Iraq are justifiable."
There's your story, folks. And not just that, but the people now in charge of this country don't want to hear it. They seem unwilling to even consider the possibility that the world isn't on their side. And that's your lede story.
Your story is also that it is more and more often the case that there is only one reporter covering a story, and that the entire news industry, and its consumers, are depending on that lone reporter, and that the reporter on whom all that depends is a human. The story is not that the reporter in this case made a mistake and fessed up to it; but that reporters make mistakes all the time, and they usually don't admit it. And the story is that even after the reporter sent out a correction, Vice President Dick Cheney is still out there using the erroneous quote:
'I noticed recently that Senator Kerry has been making some observations about foreign policy. (Laughter.) He's been telling people that his ideas have gained strong support, at least among unnamed foreigners he's been spending time with. (Laughter.) Senator Kerry said, and I quote, "I've met foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly, but, boy, they look at you and say, you've got to win this, you've got to beat this guy, we need a new policy, things like that." End quote.'
Cheney said that on Monday. But even after the correction went out, it's still on the whitehouse.gov web site.
All that fuss over whether Kerry said what he said distracted the entire media machinery from the latest news about attitudes toward the U.S. -- a much bigger story any way you look at it. That brings us to one of the main points in the State of the News Media report:
"Those who would manipulate the press and public appear to be gaining leverage over the journalists who cover them."
I had the TV news on today most of the time I was perusing the first annual State of the News Media report from the Project on Excellence in Journalism, and to be honest I found out more about what's wrong with the news industry from today's news coverage than I did from the report. Nothing against the report, except that I do wonder who they expected to read it: seems unlikely that either the average consumer of news or the average producer of it would take the time to read through all 500 pages. Academics might take the time, but the people who need it most probably won't get it. Besides, it's full of numbers, and editors always tell us that numbers put readers, viewers, and listeners to sleep. I don't mean to dismiss the report, but I find today's news a more vivid, immediate illustration of the problem. We'll have more on the report itself later in the week.
The other day, a reporter transcribing an audio recording of a John Kerry campaign event got one of the words wrong. But his report was the only account of the event, because he was a "pool" reporter covering the event for all news organizations everywhere, by agreement. This is sort of like a "fair catch" in football, when a player receiving the ball on kickoff can signal to the opposing team that if they let him catch the ball without tackling him, he'll stay put without being tackled. For various reasons, such as short-staffing on the part of news organizations or limited access to an event, the news industry often depends on a single reporter or photographer to provide pool coverage. On the local reporting level, that hardly matters because -- except in very big cities (i.e., "media markets"): -- there's probably going to be only one reporter covering the story anyway.
So this reporter, Patrick Healy of the Boston Globe, quoted Kerry as saying "foreign" when he really said "more." Which means it wasn't "foreign leaders" that Kerry said would prefer him to Bush as U.S. President, but "more leaders."
The Bush/Cheney campaign came out swinging, armed with the erroneous transcript, its spokesmen and women absolutely incredulous at the very idea that there might be either foreign leaders or more leaders who would prefer to deal with someone other than the current occupant of the White House. And the press corps responded not by pointing out the obvious, that of course there are leaders that would prefer someone other than Bush, even anyone-but-Bush, but by parrotting the Bush campaign's demands that Kerry name the names behind this ludicrous nonstatement.
Comic David Letterman jumped on the nonstory last night: "John Kerry says that foreign leaders want him to be president, but that he can't name the foreign leaders. That's all right, President Bush can't name them either."
The TV talking heads did stumble a time or two as they acknowledged that the reporter who said Kerry had said what he said had since said that Kerry had actually said something else, but they weren't about to let the facts get in the way. Not just the facts about what Kerry said, but the more important fact that, as the Pew Charitable Trust reports in a study released today, "A Year After Iraq War: Mistrust of America in Europe Ever Higher, Muslim Anger Persists." Here's the summary:
"A year after the war in Iraq, discontent with America and its policies has intensified rather than diminished. Opinion of the United States in France and Germany is at least as negative now as at the war's conclusion, and British views are decidedly more critical.
Perceptions of American unilateralism remain widespread in European and Muslim nations, and the war in Iraq has undermined America's credibility abroad. Doubts about the motives behind the U.S.-led war on terrorism abound, and a growing percentage of Europeans want foreign policy and security arrangements independent from the United States. Across Europe, there is considerable support for the European Union to become as powerful as the United States.
The latest survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, conducted from late February to early March in the U.S. and eight other countries, shows that Muslim anger toward the United States remains pervasive, although the level of hatred has eased somewhat and support for the war on terrorism has inched up. Osama bin Laden, however, is viewed favorably by large percentages in Pakistan (65%), Jordan (55%) and Morocco (45%). Even in Turkey, where bin Laden is highly unpopular, as many as 31% say that suicide attacks against Americans and other Westerners in Iraq are justifiable."
There's your story, folks. And not just that, but the people now in charge of this country don't want to hear it. They seem unwilling to even consider the possibility that the world isn't on their side. And that's your lede story.
Your story is also that it is more and more often the case that there is only one reporter covering a story, and that the entire news industry, and its consumers, are depending on that lone reporter, and that the reporter on whom all that depends is a human. The story is not that the reporter in this case made a mistake and fessed up to it; but that reporters make mistakes all the time, and they usually don't admit it. And the story is that even after the reporter sent out a correction, Vice President Dick Cheney is still out there using the erroneous quote:
'I noticed recently that Senator Kerry has been making some observations about foreign policy. (Laughter.) He's been telling people that his ideas have gained strong support, at least among unnamed foreigners he's been spending time with. (Laughter.) Senator Kerry said, and I quote, "I've met foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly, but, boy, they look at you and say, you've got to win this, you've got to beat this guy, we need a new policy, things like that." End quote.'
Cheney said that on Monday. But even after the correction went out, it's still on the whitehouse.gov web site.
All that fuss over whether Kerry said what he said distracted the entire media machinery from the latest news about attitudes toward the U.S. -- a much bigger story any way you look at it. That brings us to one of the main points in the State of the News Media report:
"Those who would manipulate the press and public appear to be gaining leverage over the journalists who cover them."
Monday, March 15, 2004
Looking for excellence in journalism, finding mediocrity
The Project on Excellence in Journalism has issued its first annual State of the News Media report, and I'm perusing it as I type. It's a hefty document -- the executive summary is 34 pages -- so it's going to take me awhile to read it all. Meanwhile, you might want to take a look at it yourself. At first glance, it appears that the news about the news industry is not good.
The Project on Excellence in Journalism has issued its first annual State of the News Media report, and I'm perusing it as I type. It's a hefty document -- the executive summary is 34 pages -- so it's going to take me awhile to read it all. Meanwhile, you might want to take a look at it yourself. At first glance, it appears that the news about the news industry is not good.
Friday, March 12, 2004
Licensed to...
A second-day lede on yesterday's item on the rights of salamanders, et al. The State of New Jersey, which goes out of its way to allow salamanders of all sexual orientations to mate, but only recognizes the unions of opposite-sex human couples, has given your humble blogger the same rights as the salamanders: I get to use the roads, too. I'm unlikely to exercise the driving privilege much, as one must be a native New Jerseyan (i.e., "guy") to be able to navigate the place: the road signs here, when there are any at all, are even more obtuse than the ones in California, where "west" and "Orange" are considered opposite directions.
The New Jersey licensing process is now the new New Jersey licensing process, although only some of the bureaus have the new digital equipment. The guy next to me was a native "guy" with an existing analog license, and he wanted to swap it for one of the new ones. He showed me his old one, and I couldn't believe it: no picture. None. Not digital. Not analog. None. It looked like something a high-school kid could have forged back when I was in high school (in those days, the "copy machine" was called a "mimeograph."
In the process of improving the process, the motor vehicles bureau has changed some things but not everything. Some parts of the process now take longer than they did before the switch to digital. Some take less time, and some may no longer be necessary. But as one bureau employee explained today, they haven't necessarily adapted the rest of the process to the new gee-whiz digital gizmos, so sometimes there's way more that enough time between one step and the next, and other times there isn't possibly enough. Then she handed me yet another set of papers, told me to go fill them out and then wait until my name was called. I had barely stepped away from the counter when I heard my name. I responded in keeping with local customs: "You talkin' to me?"
"You Janet?" The bureaucrat replied, answering my question with a question.
"Yes."
"Your application, please."
"I haven't had a chance to fill it out yet -- your colleague just gave it to me less than a minute ago."
"Go fill it out and then come back up here."
I guess I was too slow. As I rushed back to the counter with my quickly-filled-in form, the worker walked away. Very, very slowly, she walked over to the time clock on the far wall, where she punched out for a break. She noticed me standing there as she walked -- very, very slowly -- to what I presume was the break room. More than half an hour later, one of the other workers there noticed that no one was working that position, and as a result, the lines weren't moving properly. No one could use the fancy digital gizmo until the worker returned, because it was registered to her thumbprint alone and she hadn't bothered to log out when she clocked out. She had to interrupt her break to log out so that someone else could log in and do her job. But then she went right back to her break. As all this was going on, several other employees were announcing to their colleagues that they were going home early, and they did.
"You should see it here on Thursday evening," the native Jersey guy said. "That's the only night they're open late. I tried to get in here last week, and the line was around the block."
A second-day lede on yesterday's item on the rights of salamanders, et al. The State of New Jersey, which goes out of its way to allow salamanders of all sexual orientations to mate, but only recognizes the unions of opposite-sex human couples, has given your humble blogger the same rights as the salamanders: I get to use the roads, too. I'm unlikely to exercise the driving privilege much, as one must be a native New Jerseyan (i.e., "guy") to be able to navigate the place: the road signs here, when there are any at all, are even more obtuse than the ones in California, where "west" and "Orange" are considered opposite directions.
The New Jersey licensing process is now the new New Jersey licensing process, although only some of the bureaus have the new digital equipment. The guy next to me was a native "guy" with an existing analog license, and he wanted to swap it for one of the new ones. He showed me his old one, and I couldn't believe it: no picture. None. Not digital. Not analog. None. It looked like something a high-school kid could have forged back when I was in high school (in those days, the "copy machine" was called a "mimeograph."
In the process of improving the process, the motor vehicles bureau has changed some things but not everything. Some parts of the process now take longer than they did before the switch to digital. Some take less time, and some may no longer be necessary. But as one bureau employee explained today, they haven't necessarily adapted the rest of the process to the new gee-whiz digital gizmos, so sometimes there's way more that enough time between one step and the next, and other times there isn't possibly enough. Then she handed me yet another set of papers, told me to go fill them out and then wait until my name was called. I had barely stepped away from the counter when I heard my name. I responded in keeping with local customs: "You talkin' to me?"
"You Janet?" The bureaucrat replied, answering my question with a question.
"Yes."
"Your application, please."
"I haven't had a chance to fill it out yet -- your colleague just gave it to me less than a minute ago."
"Go fill it out and then come back up here."
I guess I was too slow. As I rushed back to the counter with my quickly-filled-in form, the worker walked away. Very, very slowly, she walked over to the time clock on the far wall, where she punched out for a break. She noticed me standing there as she walked -- very, very slowly -- to what I presume was the break room. More than half an hour later, one of the other workers there noticed that no one was working that position, and as a result, the lines weren't moving properly. No one could use the fancy digital gizmo until the worker returned, because it was registered to her thumbprint alone and she hadn't bothered to log out when she clocked out. She had to interrupt her break to log out so that someone else could log in and do her job. But then she went right back to her break. As all this was going on, several other employees were announcing to their colleagues that they were going home early, and they did.
"You should see it here on Thursday evening," the native Jersey guy said. "That's the only night they're open late. I tried to get in here last week, and the line was around the block."
Thursday, March 11, 2004
Refer Madness, Second Edition
It's Thursday again, and that means it's time for a second round of Refer Madness, featuring "refers" (pronounced RE-fers) to some interesting reading elsewhere in cyberspace.
First, let's doublecheck the calendar: mine says it's Thursday, March 11, 2004. Yours too? OK. Keep that in mind as you read this news item. The U.S. government says it's got a plan for 24-hour surveillance of the place they suspect Osama bin Laden may be hiding, and they'll be implementing it "soon."
Meanwhile, this photo is from my local cable channel's "community bulletin board" -- this morning!
Next, it appears that in New Jersey, salamanders of all sexual orientations have more rights than same-sex human couples. In keeping with the "Amphibian Road Kill Reduction Project" in New Brunswick, a road was shut down so that salamanders could cross it to mate. Meanwhile, although the courageous mayor of Asbury Park did officiate at the licensed wedding of one same-sex couple, the state intervened and put future same-sex Garden State weddings on hold. When I moved to New Jersey myself a few years ago, I was advised by one of the natives that technically, everyone in New Jersey is considered a "guy" -- but I guess it doesn't say that on marriage licenses here.
It's Thursday again, and that means it's time for a second round of Refer Madness, featuring "refers" (pronounced RE-fers) to some interesting reading elsewhere in cyberspace.
First, let's doublecheck the calendar: mine says it's Thursday, March 11, 2004. Yours too? OK. Keep that in mind as you read this news item. The U.S. government says it's got a plan for 24-hour surveillance of the place they suspect Osama bin Laden may be hiding, and they'll be implementing it "soon."
Meanwhile, this photo is from my local cable channel's "community bulletin board" -- this morning!
Next, it appears that in New Jersey, salamanders of all sexual orientations have more rights than same-sex human couples. In keeping with the "Amphibian Road Kill Reduction Project" in New Brunswick, a road was shut down so that salamanders could cross it to mate. Meanwhile, although the courageous mayor of Asbury Park did officiate at the licensed wedding of one same-sex couple, the state intervened and put future same-sex Garden State weddings on hold. When I moved to New Jersey myself a few years ago, I was advised by one of the natives that technically, everyone in New Jersey is considered a "guy" -- but I guess it doesn't say that on marriage licenses here.
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Ban these words, please
These aren't the famed "seven dirty words" or even words that have caused trouble for anyone in the media lately. But please, if we must ban words, let's start with these. Today's installment: words that should be banned from public radio. In coming days, we'll also include words and phrases that should disappear from television and print media as well. I'm not saying anybody should be fired for using these words; if they were, there'd be nobody left on the air.
1) Sort of
2) Kind of
(Eliminating those two phrases alone would make room for 30 percent more content on public radio.)
3) Arguably (Enybody who's been through as many divorces as I have knows everything, absolutely everything, is arguable)
4) If you will (What are you going to do if I won't? Get arguable?)
5) Um (Eliminating this one would make room for another 7 percent more content)
6) Support (If they're giving you advice or letting you cry on their shoulder, then go ahead and call it "support." If it's money, it's "underwriting.")
7) On the other hand (I know it's easy to imagine that every story has only two sides, but few do, actually. While Harry Truman may have longed for a one-handed economist in hopes of eliminating that phrase, journalists should go in the other direction, and become more like the many-handed Hindu god Vishnu. Or better still, the "television-handed ghost" in Amos Tutuola's book, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts:)
These aren't the famed "seven dirty words" or even words that have caused trouble for anyone in the media lately. But please, if we must ban words, let's start with these. Today's installment: words that should be banned from public radio. In coming days, we'll also include words and phrases that should disappear from television and print media as well. I'm not saying anybody should be fired for using these words; if they were, there'd be nobody left on the air.
1) Sort of
2) Kind of
(Eliminating those two phrases alone would make room for 30 percent more content on public radio.)
3) Arguably (Enybody who's been through as many divorces as I have knows everything, absolutely everything, is arguable)
4) If you will (What are you going to do if I won't? Get arguable?)
5) Um (Eliminating this one would make room for another 7 percent more content)
6) Support (If they're giving you advice or letting you cry on their shoulder, then go ahead and call it "support." If it's money, it's "underwriting.")
7) On the other hand (I know it's easy to imagine that every story has only two sides, but few do, actually. While Harry Truman may have longed for a one-handed economist in hopes of eliminating that phrase, journalists should go in the other direction, and become more like the many-handed Hindu god Vishnu. Or better still, the "television-handed ghost" in Amos Tutuola's book, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts:)
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
Crosstalk disturbs the curtained clouds of America's airwaves
Censorship is only one of many threats to freedom of speech
A new arrival in heaven was on a tour of his new home, the old joke goes. The angels were flying him from cloud to cloud, pointing out important landmarks and the homes of celebrities, when the new guy noticed that one of the clouds had curtains all around it. "What's up with that?" the newbie asked (he was from Jersey, OK?). "Oh, that's the [insert name of religious group here]," one angel explained. "They think they're the only ones up here."
Until very recently, radio in America was a lot like that, with public radio and commercial radio rarely even acknowledging each other's existence even though they were next-door neighbors on what was once called "the dial." Listeners, of course, have always seen right through those curtains, if they perceived them at all. They routinely jump from one station or band to the other, they assume that everybody in radio probably knows everybody else, and they don't hear much real difference between the loud, compressed ads on commercial radio and the slick-but-subdued "underwriting" on public radio. Those listeners would be surprised to learn how uncommon it is for journalists or other radio "talent" to move successfully -- or even attempt to move -- from one realm to the other.
Not only do public radio and commercial radio each have their own organizations, conventions, and publications, but other than engineers -- who focus on laws of physics that apply everywhere -- people who work in one radio world rarely get together with their colleagues in the other realm. Shop talk would be difficult in any case, because they even have separate jargon, and to be honest, the public folks kind of look down at the commercial people as having sold out for advertising, while those in commercial radio look down at the public people because, frankly, underwriting generally produces smaller paychecks than advertising does. Similarly, AM and FM radio do acknowledge each other, especially when they share the same markets and/or owners, but they also tend to keep to themselves.
But early in 2004, distressing sounds began filling the airwaves, to the extent that all the curtained clouds in radioland suddenly started picking up each other's signals. That cacaphony of crosstalk delivered a disconcerting message: not only are they not alone, but they're not in heaven, either. And if they're not very, very careful, they may not even be in radio much longer.
The problem began not with a sound but with a sight: the notorious Super Bowl flesh flash. Days earlier, there was a touch of dramatic foreshadowing, but it seemed more humorous than ominous at the time. When candidate Dennis Kucinich held up a pie chart to illustrate a point in a January radio debate, everybody laughed and pointed out that visuals don't matter on the radio. Turns out they do, as Congress, the Federal Communications Commission, and private enterprise have subsequently made clear. (Once again, Kucinich was right, and once again, it did him absolutely no good.)
So now you've got your public-radio people coming out in support of the likes of Howard Stern, and the embattled shock jock speaking out on behalf of a public-radio commentator who was fired by one of the nation's top public stations because an obscenity she blurted in a prerecorded program didn't get edited out before it aired. You've got right-wing pain-pill-aficionado Rush Limbaugh taking Stern's side as well. And you've got one of the most progressive, open-minded people in public radio taking shockingly conservative action to protect her station and its license from the aural equivalent of the exposed areola.
So far the FCC's jurisdiction does not extend into new-media spheres such as cyberspace or satellite networks. Nor does the FCC regulate cable-television programming as it does the public airwaves, so cable comics can continue using words that can't be broadcast and adult channels can still be adult. But as economist William Hamilton pointed out some decades ago, and Clear Channel Communications illustrated just last week, “Business succeeds rather better than the State in imposing its restraint upon individuals, because its imperatives are disguised as choices.”
In the case of the Nipplegate ripple effect, private enterprise may well be making the choices it does in response to such powerful government imperatives as a 20-fold increase in fines. But while government may be taking the lead in protecting us from bare breasts and worty dirds, that censorship is only one of many serious threats to our public avenues of communication. For the past decade or so, under Democrats, under Republicans, more and more of what was traditionally considered public intellectual property has been claimed as private. Every time the copyright on Mickey Mouse was about to expire, Congress extended the term for all copyrights, and those extensions were upheld by the Supreme Court. Public-domain material whose copyright has long since expired, distributed digitally with copy-protection, has become the private property not of the original author, but the owner of the copy-protection code. Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig tells us all about it in his new book, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity:
That book won't be officially published until later this month, but even as Lessig was finishing it, yet another threat to the public discourse emerged, yet again in the halls of Congress. Traditionally, while compilations of facts, such as directories or databases, can be protected by copyright, the facts themselves were considered public property. But in January, the "Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act," a bill that would have put the raw material of those databases -- just plain facts -- under copyright protection for the first time, got preliminary approval from the House Judiciary Committee. Now that some light has been shown in its direction, the bill appears dead for this session, with nary a mention remaining on the web site of the congressman who sponsored it. But the threats to the public domain, to fair use, and to free expression are still very much alive.
I was reminded of all that the other day when my husband and I were shopping, and the cashier made a mistake, giving our receipt to the customer in front of us, and vice versa. "Oh, %$#@!" she exclaimed when she realized what had happened. She's lucky she doesn't work in radio. And she's even luckier that so far, the word she used hasn't become anybody's private property.
Censorship is only one of many threats to freedom of speech
A new arrival in heaven was on a tour of his new home, the old joke goes. The angels were flying him from cloud to cloud, pointing out important landmarks and the homes of celebrities, when the new guy noticed that one of the clouds had curtains all around it. "What's up with that?" the newbie asked (he was from Jersey, OK?). "Oh, that's the [insert name of religious group here]," one angel explained. "They think they're the only ones up here."
Until very recently, radio in America was a lot like that, with public radio and commercial radio rarely even acknowledging each other's existence even though they were next-door neighbors on what was once called "the dial." Listeners, of course, have always seen right through those curtains, if they perceived them at all. They routinely jump from one station or band to the other, they assume that everybody in radio probably knows everybody else, and they don't hear much real difference between the loud, compressed ads on commercial radio and the slick-but-subdued "underwriting" on public radio. Those listeners would be surprised to learn how uncommon it is for journalists or other radio "talent" to move successfully -- or even attempt to move -- from one realm to the other.
Not only do public radio and commercial radio each have their own organizations, conventions, and publications, but other than engineers -- who focus on laws of physics that apply everywhere -- people who work in one radio world rarely get together with their colleagues in the other realm. Shop talk would be difficult in any case, because they even have separate jargon, and to be honest, the public folks kind of look down at the commercial people as having sold out for advertising, while those in commercial radio look down at the public people because, frankly, underwriting generally produces smaller paychecks than advertising does. Similarly, AM and FM radio do acknowledge each other, especially when they share the same markets and/or owners, but they also tend to keep to themselves.
But early in 2004, distressing sounds began filling the airwaves, to the extent that all the curtained clouds in radioland suddenly started picking up each other's signals. That cacaphony of crosstalk delivered a disconcerting message: not only are they not alone, but they're not in heaven, either. And if they're not very, very careful, they may not even be in radio much longer.
The problem began not with a sound but with a sight: the notorious Super Bowl flesh flash. Days earlier, there was a touch of dramatic foreshadowing, but it seemed more humorous than ominous at the time. When candidate Dennis Kucinich held up a pie chart to illustrate a point in a January radio debate, everybody laughed and pointed out that visuals don't matter on the radio. Turns out they do, as Congress, the Federal Communications Commission, and private enterprise have subsequently made clear. (Once again, Kucinich was right, and once again, it did him absolutely no good.)
So now you've got your public-radio people coming out in support of the likes of Howard Stern, and the embattled shock jock speaking out on behalf of a public-radio commentator who was fired by one of the nation's top public stations because an obscenity she blurted in a prerecorded program didn't get edited out before it aired. You've got right-wing pain-pill-aficionado Rush Limbaugh taking Stern's side as well. And you've got one of the most progressive, open-minded people in public radio taking shockingly conservative action to protect her station and its license from the aural equivalent of the exposed areola.
So far the FCC's jurisdiction does not extend into new-media spheres such as cyberspace or satellite networks. Nor does the FCC regulate cable-television programming as it does the public airwaves, so cable comics can continue using words that can't be broadcast and adult channels can still be adult. But as economist William Hamilton pointed out some decades ago, and Clear Channel Communications illustrated just last week, “Business succeeds rather better than the State in imposing its restraint upon individuals, because its imperatives are disguised as choices.”
In the case of the Nipplegate ripple effect, private enterprise may well be making the choices it does in response to such powerful government imperatives as a 20-fold increase in fines. But while government may be taking the lead in protecting us from bare breasts and worty dirds, that censorship is only one of many serious threats to our public avenues of communication. For the past decade or so, under Democrats, under Republicans, more and more of what was traditionally considered public intellectual property has been claimed as private. Every time the copyright on Mickey Mouse was about to expire, Congress extended the term for all copyrights, and those extensions were upheld by the Supreme Court. Public-domain material whose copyright has long since expired, distributed digitally with copy-protection, has become the private property not of the original author, but the owner of the copy-protection code. Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig tells us all about it in his new book, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity:
That book won't be officially published until later this month, but even as Lessig was finishing it, yet another threat to the public discourse emerged, yet again in the halls of Congress. Traditionally, while compilations of facts, such as directories or databases, can be protected by copyright, the facts themselves were considered public property. But in January, the "Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act," a bill that would have put the raw material of those databases -- just plain facts -- under copyright protection for the first time, got preliminary approval from the House Judiciary Committee. Now that some light has been shown in its direction, the bill appears dead for this session, with nary a mention remaining on the web site of the congressman who sponsored it. But the threats to the public domain, to fair use, and to free expression are still very much alive.
I was reminded of all that the other day when my husband and I were shopping, and the cashier made a mistake, giving our receipt to the customer in front of us, and vice versa. "Oh, %$#@!" she exclaimed when she realized what had happened. She's lucky she doesn't work in radio. And she's even luckier that so far, the word she used hasn't become anybody's private property.
Monday, March 08, 2004
Stern warnings
Update: see comment below, and new post above. jdd
Blogger's note: This post is just a draft; stay tuned for an updated, expanded version soon. Thanks! jdd
A pie chart and a nipple illustrate what's happening to radio
Everybody chuckled back in January when Dennis Kucinich pulled out a pie chart to illustrate a point in a radio debate. But that was before February's Super-Bowl nipple flash. Now it's March, and we're learning that visuals do too have an effect on radio.
Howard Stern is no stranger to flesh on the radio: putting naked women in front of live mics is his trademark stunt. What a strange twist that the exposed breast that may end his career was never even on his show, except in whatever mention he made of it after it was broadcast live on national television. But now that FCC fines have ballooned like a starlet with a silicone job in the wake of the boob-on-the-tube incident, Stern says he's "a dead man walking" and will soon broadcast his last show. Listeners in six cities where Stern was heard until recently won't hear that last show or any other, because Clear Channel, owner of the Stern affiliate stations in those cities, had already pulled him off the air.
Meanwhile, in public radio, Los Angeles station KCRW fired commentator Sandra Tsing Loh after she blurted an obscenity in a taped program -- a word she said she thought the engineers would cut before broadcast. "It is the equivalent of the Janet Jackson performance piece and there is not a radio or TV programmer today who does not understand the seriousness involved to the station," KCRW General Manager Ruth Seymour told the BBC.
At this point, we should explain for those just joining us that the rules for over-the-airways broadcasting are quite different from those regulating any other kind of broadcasting, such as cable TV, satellite or Internet. That's because the public airwaves are considered public property, property that is governed by the Federal Communications Commission, a group of political appointees currently chaired by Michael Powell, son of Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Meddlesome conservative busybodies hiding behind the nipple shield are charging forward to claim jurisdiction over our airwaves, and they're gaining ground fast. But all the excitement over the bared breast and its consequences is itself a distraction from an even bigger story: not only is free speech on the public airwaves under threat, but the public domain is being claimed by private enterprise. And worse, now even facts, long assumed to be in the public domain, may soon become private intellectual property as well. And that's the real obscenity.
Update: see comment below, and new post above. jdd
Blogger's note: This post is just a draft; stay tuned for an updated, expanded version soon. Thanks! jdd
A pie chart and a nipple illustrate what's happening to radio
Everybody chuckled back in January when Dennis Kucinich pulled out a pie chart to illustrate a point in a radio debate. But that was before February's Super-Bowl nipple flash. Now it's March, and we're learning that visuals do too have an effect on radio.
Howard Stern is no stranger to flesh on the radio: putting naked women in front of live mics is his trademark stunt. What a strange twist that the exposed breast that may end his career was never even on his show, except in whatever mention he made of it after it was broadcast live on national television. But now that FCC fines have ballooned like a starlet with a silicone job in the wake of the boob-on-the-tube incident, Stern says he's "a dead man walking" and will soon broadcast his last show. Listeners in six cities where Stern was heard until recently won't hear that last show or any other, because Clear Channel, owner of the Stern affiliate stations in those cities, had already pulled him off the air.
Meanwhile, in public radio, Los Angeles station KCRW fired commentator Sandra Tsing Loh after she blurted an obscenity in a taped program -- a word she said she thought the engineers would cut before broadcast. "It is the equivalent of the Janet Jackson performance piece and there is not a radio or TV programmer today who does not understand the seriousness involved to the station," KCRW General Manager Ruth Seymour told the BBC.
At this point, we should explain for those just joining us that the rules for over-the-airways broadcasting are quite different from those regulating any other kind of broadcasting, such as cable TV, satellite or Internet. That's because the public airwaves are considered public property, property that is governed by the Federal Communications Commission, a group of political appointees currently chaired by Michael Powell, son of Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Meddlesome conservative busybodies hiding behind the nipple shield are charging forward to claim jurisdiction over our airwaves, and they're gaining ground fast. But all the excitement over the bared breast and its consequences is itself a distraction from an even bigger story: not only is free speech on the public airwaves under threat, but the public domain is being claimed by private enterprise. And worse, now even facts, long assumed to be in the public domain, may soon become private intellectual property as well. And that's the real obscenity.
Friday, March 05, 2004
Pin the tail on the story
The press corps has spent the past 24-hour news cycle bumbling around like a bunch of blindfolded kindergarteners in its attempt to cover the outrage over the Bush/Cheney campaign's use of images from the World Trade Center attacks, including one of a team of firefighters hauling the flag-draped remains of a fallen brother out of the Ground Zero rubble.
Somehow one reporter got the notion that the only people with any right to say anything about the political use of those images are those who lost loved ones, or at least someone they knew, in that day's terrorist attacks. And from there it seemed the rest of the pack just followed the leader. (More often than not, when a pack of reporters takes off chasing a story, all but a few of them are actually chasing each other.) They tried to outdo each other, pulling in widows and former co-workers, preferably in twos, following the lazy journalist's assumption that if you talk to two people, you've covered both sides of the story, that assumption a result of the more widespread misconception that there are only two sides to any story.
And while those most vulnerable to the traumatic impact of those images are way too young to vote (or be interviewed without their parents' permission), the media machine completely ignored the effect those ads, or their coverage of them, will almost certainly have on children.
While the reporters were asking 9/11 survivors (and honey, we are ALL 9/11 survivors, just as those of us who are old enough to remember are all survivors of the Vietnam war) to quantify just how bad (or good) the political use of those images made them feel, their producers were busy putting together montages of 9/11 images to illustrate the news about the controversy over 9/11 images, much easier news to illustrate than problems with Social Security. That leads us to another news biz insider term: tragedy porn. I trust that one is self-explanatory.
Visuals are very, very, very important in the news biz (outside of radio, where the choice bits are called "actualities"). They're important in newspapers -- I once had an important story buried, without so much as a refer on the section front, because a competing story came with "good use of yellow" in its illustration. But visuals are everything in television. So when visuals themselves became the news of the day, the people who went to school to study things like "good use of yellow" just couldn't help themselves.
Meanwhile, as usual, the news was frequently interrupted by advertising. Coincidentally, some of those ads were the very same ones they were talking about, and showing along with lots of other 9/11 images, in the programming they interrupted. It was like a snake eating itself: "I'm George Walker Bush and I approve of this message"...political ad using 9/11 images...news about political ads using 9/11 images..."easy money from Green Light"..."I'm George Walker Bush and I approve of this message"..."You lost your husband on 9/11; nice to have you with us..."
The peak of the whole experience for me was a shameless, thoughtless segue on WCBS-TV's noon news, going from their live coverage of the controversy over the images to a story that had happened earlier in the day over in Germany. "The conviction of a man accused of helping the 9/11 hijackers was overturned today..." the talking heads droned; behind them flashed yet another image of Twin Towers rubble.
The news corps talked all day about the ads, even as they avoided pointing out that the Bush/Cheney campaign's "$10-million ad buy" was paying their salaries. And that's the elephant in the living room.
Meanwhile, they missed the day's big story, perhaps because the visual that was supposed to go with it didn't turn out as planned. The signing of the interim Iraqi constitution was postponed again today after the Shi'a faction balked at the last minute. Early this morning, I saw the council members assembling for their group photo op right before the scheduled signing, and then disassembling. There were only three women, all with their heads covered, in the group of about 20 people. There's your story, boys and girls.
The press corps has spent the past 24-hour news cycle bumbling around like a bunch of blindfolded kindergarteners in its attempt to cover the outrage over the Bush/Cheney campaign's use of images from the World Trade Center attacks, including one of a team of firefighters hauling the flag-draped remains of a fallen brother out of the Ground Zero rubble.
Somehow one reporter got the notion that the only people with any right to say anything about the political use of those images are those who lost loved ones, or at least someone they knew, in that day's terrorist attacks. And from there it seemed the rest of the pack just followed the leader. (More often than not, when a pack of reporters takes off chasing a story, all but a few of them are actually chasing each other.) They tried to outdo each other, pulling in widows and former co-workers, preferably in twos, following the lazy journalist's assumption that if you talk to two people, you've covered both sides of the story, that assumption a result of the more widespread misconception that there are only two sides to any story.
And while those most vulnerable to the traumatic impact of those images are way too young to vote (or be interviewed without their parents' permission), the media machine completely ignored the effect those ads, or their coverage of them, will almost certainly have on children.
While the reporters were asking 9/11 survivors (and honey, we are ALL 9/11 survivors, just as those of us who are old enough to remember are all survivors of the Vietnam war) to quantify just how bad (or good) the political use of those images made them feel, their producers were busy putting together montages of 9/11 images to illustrate the news about the controversy over 9/11 images, much easier news to illustrate than problems with Social Security. That leads us to another news biz insider term: tragedy porn. I trust that one is self-explanatory.
Visuals are very, very, very important in the news biz (outside of radio, where the choice bits are called "actualities"). They're important in newspapers -- I once had an important story buried, without so much as a refer on the section front, because a competing story came with "good use of yellow" in its illustration. But visuals are everything in television. So when visuals themselves became the news of the day, the people who went to school to study things like "good use of yellow" just couldn't help themselves.
Meanwhile, as usual, the news was frequently interrupted by advertising. Coincidentally, some of those ads were the very same ones they were talking about, and showing along with lots of other 9/11 images, in the programming they interrupted. It was like a snake eating itself: "I'm George Walker Bush and I approve of this message"...political ad using 9/11 images...news about political ads using 9/11 images..."easy money from Green Light"..."I'm George Walker Bush and I approve of this message"..."You lost your husband on 9/11; nice to have you with us..."
The peak of the whole experience for me was a shameless, thoughtless segue on WCBS-TV's noon news, going from their live coverage of the controversy over the images to a story that had happened earlier in the day over in Germany. "The conviction of a man accused of helping the 9/11 hijackers was overturned today..." the talking heads droned; behind them flashed yet another image of Twin Towers rubble.
The news corps talked all day about the ads, even as they avoided pointing out that the Bush/Cheney campaign's "$10-million ad buy" was paying their salaries. And that's the elephant in the living room.
Meanwhile, they missed the day's big story, perhaps because the visual that was supposed to go with it didn't turn out as planned. The signing of the interim Iraqi constitution was postponed again today after the Shi'a faction balked at the last minute. Early this morning, I saw the council members assembling for their group photo op right before the scheduled signing, and then disassembling. There were only three women, all with their heads covered, in the group of about 20 people. There's your story, boys and girls.
Thursday, March 04, 2004
Refer Madness
Five columns a week is a lot of writing for me and a lot of reading for you, especially considering that this is not my only blog. Besides, there's a lot of good stuff out there that I don't need to write because somebody else already did. So we're introducing what we hope will be a weekly feature: Refer Madness, in which we send you off to other exotic outposts in the Blogosphere to read what's been written and posted on other walls.
Since one purpose of this site is to let you in on how news is cultivated, harvested, processed, packaged, marketed, and distributed, we're throwing in another insider term: refer, in this case with the emphasis on the first syllable, as in RE-fer. Journalists don't always deliberately misspell words when using them as jargon (like "lede" or "graf"); sometimes we just mispronounce them. That's the case with a refer, or a headline, blurb, photo or graphic on the front of a magazine, newspaper, or a newspaper section front, referring the reader to the story somewhere inside. In a news "budget" meeting, in which editors sort through the day's stories and decide what gets published and where, you'll sometimes hear an editor say, "We can refer that," meaning that the story has a high enough priority to get a headline on the front, but not quite high enough to land there itself. So it's both a noun and a verb. Questions? Post 'em in the comments field for this post. Now on with the first edition of Second-Day Lede's Refer Madness:
Apocalypse November!: South Knox Bubba, point man of the legendary Rocky Top Brigade, has outdone himself and everybody else in the Blogosphere today with a dramatic and hilarious piece of political commentary. Bubba, the entire editorial staff of Second-Day Lede (that'd be me) is giving you a standing ovation. Bra-VO and YEE-ha!
Exploding Twenties: The most linked-to news item in the Blogosphere is a disconcerting one, and it's sorta kinda related to yesterday's post here about sci-fi genius Philip K. Dick's fictional solution to the problem of counterfeiting. I don't know if it's true (can't spare the Twenties to find out), but it's got some interesting photos. Speaking of Philip K. Dick, I included a link to the official Philip K. Dick site yesterday, and this morning I went back to check it out in more detail. Good news: even though Dick died in 1982, he's got a new book coming out March 9, it's all his writing and never before published in its entirety. Lies, Inc. is an expanded version of The Unteleported Man. I recommend the latter, and look forward to reading the former. Here they are (more refers below):
This next one is also a second-day lede on yesterday's post: here's a firsthand account from a computer science professor who served as an election judge on Super Tuesday, and his assessment of e-voting.
Finally, a refer not to a single post but to a whole category of news coverage. Here's today's Google News search on the term "gay marriage." What you find there will change as the news changes.
Five columns a week is a lot of writing for me and a lot of reading for you, especially considering that this is not my only blog. Besides, there's a lot of good stuff out there that I don't need to write because somebody else already did. So we're introducing what we hope will be a weekly feature: Refer Madness, in which we send you off to other exotic outposts in the Blogosphere to read what's been written and posted on other walls.
Since one purpose of this site is to let you in on how news is cultivated, harvested, processed, packaged, marketed, and distributed, we're throwing in another insider term: refer, in this case with the emphasis on the first syllable, as in RE-fer. Journalists don't always deliberately misspell words when using them as jargon (like "lede" or "graf"); sometimes we just mispronounce them. That's the case with a refer, or a headline, blurb, photo or graphic on the front of a magazine, newspaper, or a newspaper section front, referring the reader to the story somewhere inside. In a news "budget" meeting, in which editors sort through the day's stories and decide what gets published and where, you'll sometimes hear an editor say, "We can refer that," meaning that the story has a high enough priority to get a headline on the front, but not quite high enough to land there itself. So it's both a noun and a verb. Questions? Post 'em in the comments field for this post. Now on with the first edition of Second-Day Lede's Refer Madness:
Apocalypse November!: South Knox Bubba, point man of the legendary Rocky Top Brigade, has outdone himself and everybody else in the Blogosphere today with a dramatic and hilarious piece of political commentary. Bubba, the entire editorial staff of Second-Day Lede (that'd be me) is giving you a standing ovation. Bra-VO and YEE-ha!
Exploding Twenties: The most linked-to news item in the Blogosphere is a disconcerting one, and it's sorta kinda related to yesterday's post here about sci-fi genius Philip K. Dick's fictional solution to the problem of counterfeiting. I don't know if it's true (can't spare the Twenties to find out), but it's got some interesting photos. Speaking of Philip K. Dick, I included a link to the official Philip K. Dick site yesterday, and this morning I went back to check it out in more detail. Good news: even though Dick died in 1982, he's got a new book coming out March 9, it's all his writing and never before published in its entirety. Lies, Inc. is an expanded version of The Unteleported Man. I recommend the latter, and look forward to reading the former. Here they are (more refers below):
This next one is also a second-day lede on yesterday's post: here's a firsthand account from a computer science professor who served as an election judge on Super Tuesday, and his assessment of e-voting.
Finally, a refer not to a single post but to a whole category of news coverage. Here's today's Google News search on the term "gay marriage." What you find there will change as the news changes.
Wednesday, March 03, 2004
Truffle-skin ballots may be our only hope
As the media machinery drones on in its one-note post-Super-Tuesday Democratic primary coverage today, ("John Edwards dropping out...our top story...John Edwards dropping out...Kerry won big, so Edwards is dropping out...we'll be back after these messages...most of our "news team" has gone home to sleep it off...though a lot of them will get reassigned or laid off now that it's a two-man [that is if you don't count Nader] race...Welcome back...This just in...John Edwards giving up..."), let us turn our attention to the most overlooked, and most important, election day story, a story that the Cleveland Plain Dealer broke way back in August, 2003. The report quoted a letter -- that's right, it was in WRITING -- from Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold, Inc., which has a subsidiary called Diebold Election Systems. According to the company's web site, "Over 109 million voters in 5,500 counties accurately and securely cast their votes using a Diebold election system solution." To familiarize voters with its "solutions," Diebold offers this handy online demonstration. (Their slogan -- I am not making this up -- is "Just say the word, and Diebold will provide a solution." No word on whether that was in the controversial letter.)
So the head of that company sent a fund-raising letter out to his fellow Republicans, stating that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
All that is a story again now, in earnest, because an estimated 10 million people will use Diebold "solutions" to vote in the primaries, and especially because an estimated 50 million people will vote electronically in November's presidential election.
So how did it go yesterday with more Americans voting via those "solutions" than ever before? Depends:
WIRED News reports "Snafus Aplenty in E-Voting."
According to The Washington Post, the new voting systems got "high marks."
The Financial Times took a "good news, bad news" approach.
The AP's technology writer reported scattered glitches, sticking closely to his beat and the assigned task.
CNET said it went smoothly.
The Tri-Valley Herald in California broke from the pack entirely to cover an angle no one else seemed to notice: Those glitches were driving some voters away.
All of which reminds us why you should always, always, always, get your news from more than one source. And it reminds us of the old three-source rule, which regrettably seems to be optional these days. But most of all, it reminds us that science-fiction visionary Philip K. Dick called it decades ago. In one of Dick's parallel sci-fi universes, counterfeiting was so easy that the only negotiable currency remaining -- i.e., the only thing left that couldn't be copied -- was truffle skins:
We need to find some of those truffle skins, and use them as our ballots this November.
As the media machinery drones on in its one-note post-Super-Tuesday Democratic primary coverage today, ("John Edwards dropping out...our top story...John Edwards dropping out...Kerry won big, so Edwards is dropping out...we'll be back after these messages...most of our "news team" has gone home to sleep it off...though a lot of them will get reassigned or laid off now that it's a two-man [that is if you don't count Nader] race...Welcome back...This just in...John Edwards giving up..."), let us turn our attention to the most overlooked, and most important, election day story, a story that the Cleveland Plain Dealer broke way back in August, 2003. The report quoted a letter -- that's right, it was in WRITING -- from Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold, Inc., which has a subsidiary called Diebold Election Systems. According to the company's web site, "Over 109 million voters in 5,500 counties accurately and securely cast their votes using a Diebold election system solution." To familiarize voters with its "solutions," Diebold offers this handy online demonstration. (Their slogan -- I am not making this up -- is "Just say the word, and Diebold will provide a solution." No word on whether that was in the controversial letter.)
So the head of that company sent a fund-raising letter out to his fellow Republicans, stating that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
All that is a story again now, in earnest, because an estimated 10 million people will use Diebold "solutions" to vote in the primaries, and especially because an estimated 50 million people will vote electronically in November's presidential election.
So how did it go yesterday with more Americans voting via those "solutions" than ever before? Depends:
WIRED News reports "Snafus Aplenty in E-Voting."
According to The Washington Post, the new voting systems got "high marks."
The Financial Times took a "good news, bad news" approach.
The AP's technology writer reported scattered glitches, sticking closely to his beat and the assigned task.
CNET said it went smoothly.
The Tri-Valley Herald in California broke from the pack entirely to cover an angle no one else seemed to notice: Those glitches were driving some voters away.
All of which reminds us why you should always, always, always, get your news from more than one source. And it reminds us of the old three-source rule, which regrettably seems to be optional these days. But most of all, it reminds us that science-fiction visionary Philip K. Dick called it decades ago. In one of Dick's parallel sci-fi universes, counterfeiting was so easy that the only negotiable currency remaining -- i.e., the only thing left that couldn't be copied -- was truffle skins:
We need to find some of those truffle skins, and use them as our ballots this November.
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
Cooke files his last 'Letter from America'
Sad, but not unexpected news today from the BBC: The world's longest-running spoken radio program is ending, as 95-year-old cross-cultural icon Alistair Cooke is retiring after 58 years of weekly dispatches to the world from his adopted homeland. He's only giving up his marathon career on the advice of his doctors, and considering that he was propped up on pillows for his final dispatch, it appears the doctors have a valid point.
They say the U.S. and Britain have a special relationship; Alistair Cooke has been the embodiment of it for several years longer than I've been alive. Born in Britain, he became an American, and for 58 years, he sent weekly dispatches to his homeland and the world, dispatches that added up to 2,869 shows totaling to more than 717 hours of broadcasting. While we can't complain about his retirement, it is a pity indeed to lose his weekly outsider's view of the United States at a time when America and the rest of the world desperately need to understand each other better.
He didn't know his last 'Letter' would be his swansong; he just propped himself up to talk about what was going on that week, as he'd done so many times before. But it's as fitting an end to his long career as anything could be. Sit back, relax, and listen online to Alistair Cooke's final 'Letter from America'. You'll have to click on that link and then click on the words 'The Last Letter' to hear it in -- it wouldn't be fair to the BBC, or to Mr. Cooke, to link to it directly. (UPDATE: So many people from all over the world were trying to listen to Cooke's last letter yesterday that the BBC's audio server just couldn't accommodate them all. Fortunately, the Letter is also available in text form here.)
Sad, but not unexpected news today from the BBC: The world's longest-running spoken radio program is ending, as 95-year-old cross-cultural icon Alistair Cooke is retiring after 58 years of weekly dispatches to the world from his adopted homeland. He's only giving up his marathon career on the advice of his doctors, and considering that he was propped up on pillows for his final dispatch, it appears the doctors have a valid point.
They say the U.S. and Britain have a special relationship; Alistair Cooke has been the embodiment of it for several years longer than I've been alive. Born in Britain, he became an American, and for 58 years, he sent weekly dispatches to his homeland and the world, dispatches that added up to 2,869 shows totaling to more than 717 hours of broadcasting. While we can't complain about his retirement, it is a pity indeed to lose his weekly outsider's view of the United States at a time when America and the rest of the world desperately need to understand each other better.
He didn't know his last 'Letter' would be his swansong; he just propped himself up to talk about what was going on that week, as he'd done so many times before. But it's as fitting an end to his long career as anything could be. Sit back, relax, and listen online to Alistair Cooke's final 'Letter from America'. You'll have to click on that link and then click on the words 'The Last Letter' to hear it in -- it wouldn't be fair to the BBC, or to Mr. Cooke, to link to it directly. (UPDATE: So many people from all over the world were trying to listen to Cooke's last letter yesterday that the BBC's audio server just couldn't accommodate them all. Fortunately, the Letter is also available in text form here.)
Monday, March 01, 2004
Homophobes attack heterosexual marriage
The people who claim traditional opposite-sex marriage is under attack are absolutely right, and they ought to know, because they're the ones attacking it. Maybe that's because they've admitted they're going to lose their battle against same-sex marriage.
Even as he was bashing both heterosexual and homosexual marriages yesterday, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania) conceded defeat on the issue in the Leap Day debate-before-the-debate on CBS News's Face the Nation. When host Bob Schieffer asked, "Is there a difference between being for or against same-sex marriage and being for or against this amendment?", Santorum insisted there was not, because "the fact of the matter is, unless we amend the U.S. Constitution, the courts will require it." We presume that by "it," the Senator meant "the full legalization of same-sex marriage," rather than same-sex marriage itself. (That reminds us of Jon Stewart's succinct commentary on the issue: "Are they going to MAKE us marry gays?" Because if not, I don't see the problem.")
Santorum attacked not only same-sex marriage, but opposite-sex marriages that are not focused on procreation. "It is a- an obligation on those of us who have to make the laws to make calls as to what is the best way in-in in the case of marriage, to raise children." So Senator, should people applying for marriage licenses be given fertility tests, with those who fail pledging to adopt? What about marriages between heterosexuals who aren't able to reproduce, who plan to remain childless, or whose children are no longer children?
Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin), the only openly lesbian member of the House of Representatives, was the voice of reason when Santorum blamed same-sex couples for the erosion of the American family. "To make these false associations -- to somehow indicate that same-sex couples are somehow to blame for some of these problems in society -- is harmful," she said.
Meanwhile, officials at the Social Security Administration have decided not to accept even opposite-sex marriage certificates issued in San Francisco as evidence of a legal name change. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said Mr. Bush is "now discriminating against San Franciscans gay and straight."
You have to look beyond the news to find some of heterosexual marriage's staunchest champions. Every week, the Fab Five of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy help hapless heterosexual men clean up their acts so that they might have a better chance of finding a girlfriend, or, if they've already got one, of turning that girlfriend into a fiancee and then a wife. We watched the show Saturday night, and when the freshly-spiffed straight guy got down on his knee to propose -- with his gay life coaches cheering as they watched on video, there wasn't a dry eye in our house or theirs. They were so happy the guy was getting married, and nobody mentioned the fact that (except in San Francisco and New Paltz, New York) the Fab Five aren't allowed to do that themselves. Someday, they'll show an episode of that show along with other artifacts of the days when bigotry was acceptable, like Song of the South, or maybe Gone With the Wind, with the slaves helping Miss Scarlett get all gussied up for another encounter with Rhett Butler:
The people who claim traditional opposite-sex marriage is under attack are absolutely right, and they ought to know, because they're the ones attacking it. Maybe that's because they've admitted they're going to lose their battle against same-sex marriage.
Even as he was bashing both heterosexual and homosexual marriages yesterday, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania) conceded defeat on the issue in the Leap Day debate-before-the-debate on CBS News's Face the Nation. When host Bob Schieffer asked, "Is there a difference between being for or against same-sex marriage and being for or against this amendment?", Santorum insisted there was not, because "the fact of the matter is, unless we amend the U.S. Constitution, the courts will require it." We presume that by "it," the Senator meant "the full legalization of same-sex marriage," rather than same-sex marriage itself. (That reminds us of Jon Stewart's succinct commentary on the issue: "Are they going to MAKE us marry gays?" Because if not, I don't see the problem.")
Santorum attacked not only same-sex marriage, but opposite-sex marriages that are not focused on procreation. "It is a- an obligation on those of us who have to make the laws to make calls as to what is the best way in-in in the case of marriage, to raise children." So Senator, should people applying for marriage licenses be given fertility tests, with those who fail pledging to adopt? What about marriages between heterosexuals who aren't able to reproduce, who plan to remain childless, or whose children are no longer children?
Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin), the only openly lesbian member of the House of Representatives, was the voice of reason when Santorum blamed same-sex couples for the erosion of the American family. "To make these false associations -- to somehow indicate that same-sex couples are somehow to blame for some of these problems in society -- is harmful," she said.
Meanwhile, officials at the Social Security Administration have decided not to accept even opposite-sex marriage certificates issued in San Francisco as evidence of a legal name change. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said Mr. Bush is "now discriminating against San Franciscans gay and straight."
You have to look beyond the news to find some of heterosexual marriage's staunchest champions. Every week, the Fab Five of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy help hapless heterosexual men clean up their acts so that they might have a better chance of finding a girlfriend, or, if they've already got one, of turning that girlfriend into a fiancee and then a wife. We watched the show Saturday night, and when the freshly-spiffed straight guy got down on his knee to propose -- with his gay life coaches cheering as they watched on video, there wasn't a dry eye in our house or theirs. They were so happy the guy was getting married, and nobody mentioned the fact that (except in San Francisco and New Paltz, New York) the Fab Five aren't allowed to do that themselves. Someday, they'll show an episode of that show along with other artifacts of the days when bigotry was acceptable, like Song of the South, or maybe Gone With the Wind, with the slaves helping Miss Scarlett get all gussied up for another encounter with Rhett Butler:
