The Nature of Things

Little did I know when I wrote this post back in the fall of 2013 that the problem that I was describing was going to get so much worse in the years to come. Television news was to become a megaphone for lying liars who could not speak without lying and it would never call them out for their lies. Instead, they blast those lies at an easily led public twenty-four hours a day. Is it any wonder that the public is no longer able to recognize the truth? What passes for "truth" these days is whatever you can get the most people to believe. I never watch television news anymore. I gave up on it in 2016. I read that some television journalists now actually do call a lie a lie. Better late than never, I guess. Not Chuck "That's not my job!" Todd though. He's still peddling the same "he said, she said," "both sides do it" shit.  ~~~ Thursday, September 19, 2013 Should journalists point out blatant lies that politicians tell? During a segment on ...

You know what pisses me off about the 2016 presidential campaign? A lot of things, actually. But there is one thing in particular that I feel the need to rant about today. Throughout the campaign, I've heard and read journalists considered (at least by themselves) to be knowledgable about such things describe the election as a choice between "the lesser of two evils." Thus do they normalize a completely unqualified and clueless candidate the likes of which this country has never before seen and - please God! - never will see again. Not only do they normalize him, they set this man who is the worst that America has to offer, a man who personifies misogyny, racism, privilege, and anti-intellectualism, on the same level with a candidate who is intelligent and qualified, perhaps the most qualified candidate who has ever sought the office, at least in my lifetime. This is a woman who has spent her entire adult life working to make the world more just, equal, and caring for pe...

For those of us who are old enough to remember CBS News when it actually stood for integrity and truth-telling, their current debacle with their fake, sexed-up Benghazi story is especially infuriating. This is the kind of phony journalism that we've come to expect from Fox News. We had looked for something better from the network of Walter Cronkite, Eric Sevareid, and Edward R. Murrow. The 60 Minutes story that was presented as an eye witness account to the attack last year on our consulate in Benghazi was trumped up from beginning to end. Their "eye witness" was a liar, whose lies were easily disproved by actual journalists who bothered to check. He was never actually there on the night of the attack.  CBS now says it is undergoing a "journalistic review" of the story which started as soon as they learned there was an issue with it. The question is why was there no journalistic review before the story ran? Why was it not vetted and confirmed before it was show...

During a segment on "Morning Joe," former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) speculated that most opponents of the Affordable Care Act have been fed erroneous information about the law. (MSNBC reporter Chuck) Todd said that Republicans "have successfully messaged against it" but he disagrees with those who argue that the media should educate the public on the law. According to Todd, that's President Barack Obama's job. "But more importantly, it would be stuff that Republicans have successfully messaged against it," Todd told Rendell. "They don't repeat the other stuff because they haven't even heard the Democratic message. What I always love is people say, 'Well, it's you folks' fault in the media.' No, it's the President of the United States' fault for not selling it."  - from TPM What is the responsibility of an ethical journalist when it comes to reporting news on which there are two diametrically opposed ...

NPR has announced a new editorial policy which consumers of news can only hope will set a new standard for other news organizations. They have committed themselves to eschew "he said, she said," or more often, "he said, he said," reporting in favor of actually reporting the truth. What a concept! As journalism critic Jay Rosen wrote, in reporting on the change: NPR [now] commits itself as an organization to avoid the worst excesses of “he said, she said” journalism.  It says to itself that a report characterized by false balance is a false report. It introduces a new and potentially powerful concept of fairness: being “fair to the truth,”  which as we know is not always evenly distributed among the sides in a public dispute. Maintaining the “appearance of balance” isn’t good enough, NPR says. “If the balance of evidence in a matter of controversy weighs heavily on one side…” we have to say so. When we are spun, we don’t just report it. “We tell our audience…” This ...

The Republican campaign for the presidency has mostly been hostile to the press. Santorum and Gingrich routinely slam the "elites" of the "liberal media." At times you would think they are running against the media rather than against Romney or even Obama. Romney has not been as outspoken in identifying the media as the enemy, but neither has his campaign done much to woo the media. Apparently, all that is changing . According to Politico , the Romney campaign is on a "charm offensive" to try to cozy up to the reporters who are following their candidate around the country. Even the standoffish candidate himself is said to be making himself more available to reporters and trying to interact with them on a human level. Of course, interacting on a human level is not something that Romney is noted for, so I'm not sure how much help that will be to his campaign. Politicians and the reporters who cover them are supposed to be in an adversarial relationship, ...

I grew up with a great admiration for the profession of journalism. People like Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Eric Sevareid were early heroes of mine. Later, the dogged investigation of Woodward and Bernstein in trying to crack the Watergate case and drag all those dirty little secrets into the light was a source of inspiration to me. Later still, I married a journalist and, nearly thirty-seven years later, I am still married to him, so you can take my word for it that I do respect and even revere the profession of journalism. It makes me very angry to see it misused and abused. Andrew Breitbart, who died today, was a prime example of the most serious kind of abuse and misuse. Andrew Breitbart, a conservative blogger and activist who used undercover video to bring discredit and disgrace to his liberal targets, died Thursday. He was 43. Mr. Breitbart was as polarizing a figure as he was popular. Hailed by the political right as a truth-teller who exposed bias and corruption, he...

Journalism, when it is done right, can be a dangerous profession. We've had at least three tragic reminders of that fact this week, all of them related to the conflict in Syria. First, award-winning reporter Anthony Shadid of The New York Times died tragically and unnecessarily. His death was apparently the result of natural causes, a severe asthma attack, but if he had not been in that dangerous part of the world, trying to shed light on the murky situation there for his readers, he would probably have gotten the medical attention that he needed in time to save his life. But then, later in the week, two more journalists, Marie Colvin of the Sunday Times and her companion, French photographer Remi Ochlik were killed in the shelling of the city of Homs. There have been suggestions that journalists are actually being targeted by the repressive Syrian regime as it tries to hold on to power. They don't want the story of their brutality to be shown to the world and so they must s...

Reporting by the mainstream media, by which I mean mostly the inside the beltway media, regarding the Obama administration's rule about providing contraceptives as preventive health care under the new Affordable Care Act has been noticeably co-opted by the Catholic bishops. The press has basically swallowed hook, line, and sinker the outrage of these allegedly celibate old men who are in no way affected by the rule. Even such normally reasonable pundits as E.J. Dionne and Mark Shields   have fallen in lockstep with their more conservative fellows on this issue. They are sure that President Obama has rung the death knell for his presidency and for his hopes for reelection with his stance on this issue. Catholics will never support him now. Republican leaders in Congress are trying to latch onto what they see as a winning issue by hopping on the bandwagon One thing you might notice about all the reporters reporting and all those pontificating on the issue: They are almost all middl...

As one who has fumed impotently for years about the buying and selling of my country's government and institutions by rich, mostly rabidly right-wing corporations and the super-rich, I had frequently wondered whether Americans would ever awake from their apathy and take to the streets to demand change.  It seems that finally we may be stretching, yawning, maybe putting one foot on the floor, and preparing to ever-so-tentatively stand up for ourselves and face up to the powers that be.  That, at least, is the message that I take from the movement that has become known as Occupy Wall Street and has now spread around the country, even into Houston !   This, I think, is the most hopeful event that I have witnessed in many years. And what has been the media's response to thousands of people gathering in New York and elsewhere to protest the buying of our democracy?  Its first response was to ignore it. Literally, for days into the demonstrations, you could not find any ...

Rupert Murdoch and his media empire are being investigated and castigated for their sleazy, dishonest, and probably illegal practices in managing the news.  It couldn't happen to a more deserving mogul. Murdoch is a thug who has done much to destroy the honorable profession of journalism in all the countries where he practices his black art.  A lot of journalism's ills can be traced back to his rise.  But not all. Journalism in this country is in a sad, sad state and that has led or contributed to many of the ills from which the country suffers.  Journalism has abdicated its responsibility as a fair and impartial referee of events.  Instead, it seems only concerned with what will capture readers or viewers.  The more lurid (and often misleading) the headline the better.  Journalism, in short, has become part of the entertainment industry and is obsessed with non-stories like the Charlie Sheen debacle or Donald Trump or, yes, Sarah Palin, the quitter ...

This is a momentous and exciting time in the history of the world. All over the Middle East and across North Africa, ordinary people are rising up to demand that basic human rights be respected in their countries and that citizens have a say in how they are governed. In our own country, across the Mid-West, workers are marching in the streets and standing up for their rights to have some control over their own working lives. They are demanding that their dignity and the dignity of their work be respected and not denigrated and scapegoated. In Washington, one of the nation's major political parties is doing its dead-level best to take this country back to the mid-nineteenth century. In China, the government is cracking down on reporters, sometimes beating and arresting them as they attempt to show the effect of all the unrest in their own country. In short, there is plenty of serious news to keep even the 24/7 news cycle of the cable news networks busy reporting it. So what do...

Do you know what the average monthly private sector job growth was in the last year of the George W. Bush presidency? There was no growth. We LOST an average of 317,250 jobs per month. Do you know what the average monthly private sector job growth has been in 2010? We have GAINED an average of 95,888 private sector jobs per month. (Per Bureau of Labor Statistics records.) Do you know what the federal deficit was in the last full fiscal year of the Bush presidency? It was $1,416,000,000,000. Do you know what the federal deficit is for fiscal year 2010? $1,291,000,000,000, a decline of $125,000,000,000. Yes, Obama and the "tax and spend" Democrats have actually reduced the deficit . Do you know where the stock market ended up on the last day of the Bush presidency? The Dow ended at 7949; NASDAQ at 1440; S&P 500 at 805. Do you know where the stock market ended today? Dow at 11,118.49; NASDAQ at 2507.41; S&P 500 at 1183.26. That's an increase of approxima...

Daniel Schorr has died at age 93 . He had a long and eventful life and was active right up to the very end. According to his obituary, he died after an illness of a few days. That's certainly the way to do it if you can manage it. Schorr worked for many news organizations during his long and storied career, most famously probably for CBS where he was one of Ed Murrow's boys. But for the last quarter century of his life, he worked for NPR as a commentator. I looked forward to hearing his take on the week's news on the Saturday morning Weekend Edition show. As a newsman, Schorr was famous for his integrity and for standing up for his principles. That integrity earned him a place on President Nixon's "enemies list" back in the 1970s. He said that being on that list was one of the things he was proudest of, even prouder than he was of the Emmys that he received. Daniel Schorr was an old-time newsman, one who took the role of the journalist in society seriou...

A couple of days ago, I was reading a story in the newspaper about President Obama's trip to Savannah where he had talked about the need for health care reform. As so-called journalists generally do these days, this writer had ended his story with a quote from a bystander that was meant to be an equal counterweight to everything the president had said. It's a stupid technique, because, in fact, there are not always two equal sides to every story. The truth and lies are not equal, and yet some who call themselves journalists insist on giving them moral equivalency. Nevertheless, this local man was quoted as saying something to the effect that the government has no business getting involved in health care. The only thing that government should do is fight wars, build roads and run prisons. Other than those three things, it should stay out of our lives. In this man's perfect world, there would be no police or fire departments. It would be every man or woman for his or h...

So the latest talking point by Republicans is that no terror attacks occurred in the United States during the Bush presidency. Over and over they have repeated this revision of history since Christmas. And they do it with a straight face. I guess the first person I heard it from was Dana Perino, Bush's ditsy last press secretary. Then, Karl Rove, that paragon of honesty, joined in. Several commentators on Fox News, the propaganda arm of the Republican Party, picked up the meme and repeated it ad nauseum . And now we have Rudy Giuliani - yes, THAT Rudy Giuliani of the "a noun, a verb, and 9/11" presidential campaign - claiming that there were no terroristic attacks on the country during the years 2001 through 2008. And his interviewer, George Stephanopolous, did not say, "What the hell are you talking about?" No, he just sat there and blandly went on to the next question on his script. That is my main quibble with this story. I no longer expect to hear tr...

There's been some discussion lately of just what we should call this decade that is winding down to its final days. It has been a decade of notable selfishness and lack of introspection, but the "Me Decade" sobriquet is already taken. Now, one of my favorite columnists, Leonard Pitts, has weighed in on the discussion. His suggestion is that we call it the "Uh-Oh Decade." I think the name is highly appropriate, for our country if not for the world. From the Supreme Court's ill-advised decision to stop the counting of votes in Florida in 2000, through all the lies and obnoxious swagger of the Bush years, the unwarranted war, the betrayal of American principles through the torture and humiliation of prisoners, the trashing of laws protecting the environment and public health - well, the list goes on and on. It has been one long series of uh-ohs. One of the most troubling aspects of the last ten years for me, though, has been the demise of journalism. Perha...