Media Criticism

The title seems draconian but the promise by President Pervez Musharraf that he will relinquish his military uniform (again) and open the presidency to the democratic process must be fulfilled. Coverage of the Pakistani situation has been rampant in the mainstream media as well as alternative media sources as this ambivalent ally in the war on terror turns to hell in a hand basket. We must look past the promise of democracy in the midst of chaos to begin earnest steps toward realizing democracy in Pakistan.

I don’t think regular readers will be surprised by my views on the war on terror. A war against an idea, a tool of oppression and anarchy is foolhardy. The only thing more foolish than fighting terror is using feckless thugs, authoritarians and incompetent bureaucrats as our allies. In the same way that America got into bed with all manner of politician to fight Communism in the Cold War, America is allying itself with anyone as long as they say the right things about terrorism.

The Bush Administration may be content by pushing Musharraf in November 2007 that may never happen in January 2008 but Americans concerned with foreign policy want more than that. I think that the media coverage of riots, the house arrest of political reformers like Benazir Bhutto and the pressure applied by the West on Pakistan has been outstanding. Media pressure will only do so much against a flailing dictator like Musharraf and Americans need to push their representatives for action.

We need to mobilize an international coalition with the assistance of India and the European Union to enforce Musharraf’s promised steps. The occasion of stabilizing Pakistan may offer America an opportunity to offer an olive branch to Russia. It is important to utilize the United Nations General Assembly to promote the idea of peace keepers and international election observers in Pakistan to make sure that every vote is counted and every ballot has more than the name Musharraf available.

Above all else, voters throughout the United States need to press the candidates in both parties to come out tough for anything but a legitimately elected government in Pakistan. If America is going to be an interventionist power, we must work within the bounds of international politics and ally ourselves with nations that support democratically elected governments. We cannot afford Pakistan to fall into chaos as the Asian continent becomes critical to 21st century political, economic and social development.

An article in the fall 2007 edition of Dissent, a public affairs magazine, compared and contrasted several books by Democratic candidates to determine their usefulness in determining character. The article by David Greenberg looks at books by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Bill Richardson to cut through the mixture of modesty and self aggrandizing to find the truth. The conclusion in Greenberg’s article seems to be that the problem of ghost writing and help from aides makes it difficult to make heads or tails of a candidate’s claims to political success.

The lone exception to the problem that Greenfield calls “committee writing�? is Bill Richardson. His book Between Worlds along with some background research provide a picture of a candidate that is in love with name dropping, conventions and the pomp and circumstance of major party politics. This would seem to be objectionable to anyone that is tired of politics as usual but the author seems to have a grudging admiration for Richardson’s candor. I could understand this search for a silver lining by Greenberg after reading thousands of pages by people that have spent their lives winnowing speech down to its basic elements.

I have read a few biographies of prominent figures in the past including Colin Powell’s 1996 biography that prompted a draft movement for Powell within the Republican Party. In my experience, I have found few silver linings like David Greenberg has within the pages of Dissent. The one difference between my reading of Powell’s biography and my reading of current candidate books is that there are myriad online and print resources available to check on a politician’s claims.

Any good politician thinks about their short term prospects especially during an active campaign. If John Kerry had said he was building the Democratic Party for 2008 while running for president in 2004, he would have been creamed at the polls. Many politicians simply fail to realize that their place in politics is to compact the snow that will eventually become a massive snowball. Ron Paul fits into this camp with his grassroots campaign in 2008.

I think that Ron Paul has been receiving enough attention in the press based on the competition in the Republican field. There are plenty of candidates beyond Romney and Giuliani so why should Paul get more attention? The media has only begun to realize that Paul’s campaign is different from that of other candidates in the Republican AND Democratic fields. The problem for Ron Paul is that the media won’t help him in the short term. Ron Paul stories revolve around the shock of the candidate actually beating people financially on a quarterly basis. His aim should be a reform of the Republican Party back to roots laid down by people like Bob Taft in the 1940s: isolationist and libertarian.

His platform is appealing to Americans frustrated with the Bush Administration’s love affair with bureaucracy. Bush is not a traditional Republican but a tinkerer that benefited from a terrible attack on American soil six years ago. Paul would reorganize and decrease the size of government, recommit the country to the gold standard and draw back our influence in the world to reflect concerns over domestic defense. I think the gold standard idea is unrealistic in the modern economy but everything else sounds great to me. The problem is that as much as the American people complain about big government and overreaching presidents they are used to these malformed institutions.

Ron Paul will continue to gain supporters as the Republican debates continue into the primary season. Fred Thompson is a Reagan conservative that fails to realize that the Cold War is over, Mitt Romney is a stuffed suit and Rudy Giuliani is not desirable to a) conservatives, b) religious conservatives and c) libertarians. The problem is that Ron Paul does not fit the ridiculous form that we apply to each president. His frank manner is great to distinguish him in debates but Americans find it difficult to support people that speak common sense to power.

Since a reformed Republican party seems unlikely in the next generation, I am hoping that Ron Paul leaves the Republican Party and takes the mantle of the Libertarian Party in 2008. The major problem for parties like the Libertarian Party is that they get little press. If Paul is able to accomplish anything in the early primaries, he can bolt the party once partisan drones chose their leader. He will have run ads in the early primary states, built a following among independents and gotten his name in every major newspaper for months before the primaries even start. I hope that someone emerges from the Democrats to run as an independent to throw the two-party system into array and show Americans how fundamentally flawed our system is.

The recent passage of higher funding amounts for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program or SCHIP seems like a slam dunk for both parties. Democrats are able to put another aspect of their 2006 midterm campaign (improving health insurance to the uninsured) to bed and Republicans in the affirmative are able to put aside their stingy reputations for a good case. This bill is akin to a bill that promises computers to poor people or provides holiday decorations for every American. It is a slam dunk in a normal universe.

We do not live in a normal universe, however, and evidence of that comes with a threatened veto by President Bush. His proposal of $30 billion for the program was doubled by Congress in an effort to actually cover a large group of children. President Bush has forgotten that he has spent billions in support of the Iraq War, a missile defense shield, Leave No Child Behind and so many bad programs that waste American dollars. It is tough to become principled when you have been a rogue in a big boy’s suit for the last seven years.

I hope that some Republicans in the House realize that there is a political benefit to this program in 2008. House members are up for re-election every two years which means every step they take is scrutinized by activists. Conservative Republicans may not like increasing federal influence in health care but they do love children based on their pro-life tendencies and they do love to get re-elected. Support of SCHIP would affect their constituents and this bill is not some liberal boondoggle that would hand out morning after pills or free copies of Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book. It is time for a few Grinches to open their eyes to better government instead of rigid conservative dogma.

The website TMZ has been renowned for its ability to muckrake the dirty deeds of B list celebrities and has-beens over the last year. The Michael Richards racist tirade at LA’s Laugh Factory and Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic comments to police show the type of journalism engages in. Indeed, TMZ is so successful at this work that their web links are picked up by the mainstream media and disseminated with the TMZ logo to millions of people.

I hate to say that TMZ does a service because I think the lives of celebrities are none of my concern. When I pay to see a movie, I pay to see actors at work and I am not entitled to know about their private lives unless they become a hazard to the public. I will say that TMZ uses the type of journalism that major newspapers and cable news networks are beginning to use to pursue leads. The reason this website is able to accomplish successful (gasp) journalism is the topic matter is interesting to a voyeuristic public.

The in-your-face celebrity entertainment of TMZ is now on television. I question the necessity of another crass TV show about celebrity news though my local TV station runs it at 11:05 pm when no one is watching. I will not watch TMZ on TV because a) I think celebrity news is a waste of time and b) It will no doubt get homogenized and decrease its Web credibility with a few months in television no man’s land. If I had to choose between TMZ and, let’s say, Cavemen, I would be really hard pressed to make a decision. Harvey Levin may accidentally give me a laugh while he talks about TMZ’s latest search for celebrity dirt.

The people who read this blog are probably sick of me talking about the Democratic debates, the 2008 election and other aspects of politics that are fueled entirely by the media. I even get sick of these diatribes but I think I have given myself the unintentional mission of ending the long primary process once and for all, one blog at a time. To fuel this fire, the awful trio of the Huffington Post, Yahoo! and Slate are putting on a unique debate and a “mashup�? tool that allows people to put individual answers together into their own package. Here is a little bit more detail on the debate from the New York Times:

Here’s how it works: Charlie Rose is hooking up by satellite individually from his studio in New York with each of the eight Democratic candidates, who are scattered across the country. He’ll question them each for 12 minutes on three topics _ Iraq, health care and education. There will also be a “wild card�? question.

According to all three sponsors, these answers will be available on Friday through each website. The “mashup�? tool will also be available to help political and technological nerds the opportunity to get involved in yet another debate.

Marc Lampkin makes a good point in his latest post on the Huffington Post, a liberal blogging website headed by Arianna Huffington. Lampkin discusses the use of the “mashup�? tool as a way for people to hear what they want to hear from each candidate. Yahoo!, Slate and the Huffington Post should know better. This is already what the mainstream media does to candidates particularly the minor candidates who only make it on the news when they make a gaffe or do something silly.

If the Internet-using public is indeed tired with politics as usual and poor media coverage for their candidate, they should not resort to the “mashup�? tool. Instead, they should search for unabridged audio, video and written transcripts of their speeches to hear what they are saying around the country. Lampkin’s final point is that we will hear more of the same which makes a “mashup�? of what Obama, Clinton or even Kucinich or Gravel useless. Let’s stop pretending like high-tech gadgets and tools are really going to improve the process until we are actually ready to change the process in Washington D.C.

In the blur of primary debates, interviews and other coverage associated with the 2008 presidential election, it can be difficult to gauge media bias. I watch most of the Sunday morning shows and try to watch as many hours of news programming during the week as possible. In my experience, I have noticed an effort by most outlets to feign a dispassionate interest in portraying all sides of the election. The Media Research Center seems to disagree.

Fox News reported about the Center’s latest study indicating that there were nearly twice as many stories on Democratic candidates as there were for Republican candidates in the first seven months of this year. The Fox News story was peppered with calls by the Center for an end to this double standard. I think it is interesting that the Media Research Center wants equal time for a group of white conservatives when there is more diversity in the Democratic presidential field.

A successful African American senator, a woman with significant experience in government, a Southern senator turned poverty warrior and a group that covers the full gamut of political perspectives form the Democratic field. If I was a news director and I had to choose time for one side or the other, I would go with the more interesting debate. It is true that both sides should get equal time in the general election. The problem with equality of air time during the primary season is that there are not always two primary races that are interesting to the public. Many people feel that the Democrats have a more compelling fight on their hands considering the extreme unpopularity of President Bush and the Republican Party in general.

My major issue with the Media Research Center’s findings is that private media sources have no compelling reason to give equal time. If Democrats get better ratings than Republicans for MSNBC or CNN, they will follow that lead. We should support public media outlets at the local, state and national level in our search for equity in media coverage for national politics. The Center is howling at the moon in trying to fight a “double standard�? when so many better sources of protest and information have fought the same battle.

There are few things I dislike more than when President Bush tries to make an historical analogy and fails miserably. Bush gave a speech yesterday at the VFW annual convention in Kansas City where he compared the push for withdrawal in Iraq to a similar push at the end of America’s involvement in Vietnam. He made a similarly strained comparison between the Iraq War and the American Revolution after Fourth of July 2007. I cannot wait for the president to compare Iraq and the Mexican-American War or the French-Indian War.

While the analogy sounds great and draws applause from some conservatives, most reasonable people know that it rings hollow. I heard numerous programs on Wisconsin Public Radio (I live in Milwaukee) where the experts were trying to hide their bile for such a poorly constructed argument. Cheney, Bush and their group of spokespeople have denounced this comparison for years now because it denotes failure. I am convinced that the orchestration of this turn by the Bush Administration was the swan song of former puppeteer Karl Rove. The dynamics of surrounding nations was different in Vietnam as it is in Iraq even though war supporters have tried to cast the former as a defeat to communism and the latter as a failure against terrorism. Bush’s speech exposed his fatal flaw which is his inability to see the gray between black and white.

Alright, this is a bit conspiracy-theorist and I don’t completely believe that. I am having an issue, however, with the way Bush’s speech at the VFW was framed all week. Every time you saw an article on Hillary Clinton speaking at the event, it would indicate that President Bush would sweep in at the end of the week as a conservative salve for veterans. While the speech was recognized as a mixed blessing by most accounts, media outlets all over the country have subconsciously helped set up Bush’s effort to recast the war as a mission of American promise. As a nation, we need to look back the faux intellectualism that is inherent in making a comparison between past and present events to keep Republicans and war Democrats honest.

The media’s new baby is going above and beyond their journalistic duties to expose the issue of global warming. It is refreshing that the media has gone from zero to environmentalist in a hurry but a new Foreign Policy article exposes one of the more insidious results of the “green press.�? Global warming is the new Communism and every side is girding their defenses to protect their natural resources interests.

The point of the Foreign Policy article is that the expansion of interest in global warming by world leaders has turned a substantive issue into a tool against tyranny. The military and civilian leaders alike have claimed that melting ice caps and desertification will lead to anarchy in lesser states. These assumptions make people in Africa and Asia seem like brutes in a way that is all too familiar in these areas. I think the point that Foreign Policy makes most effectively is that an overwhelming supply of natural resources are more dangerous than a dearth of resources.

The press has picked up on this new global antagonism because newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post need to stay current. The excitement over global warming has made editors and writers fall over each other on their way toward the top of the green mountain top. We need papers to write editorials on a regular basis denouncing this disturbing use of environmentalism as a way of creating a new breach between the developed and developing worlds. If we are going to solve climate change issues, our journalists need to break through the same garbage we went through in the Cold War to cultivate the moment of promise we have in front of us.

As you may have gathered from reading previous posts, I read the New York Times politics blog The Caucus with a mixture of interest and bemusement. Some of their posts are interesting while others are examples of why the Times is deeply entrenched in institutionalized political moderation. I couldn’t help but notice an article today talking about Rep. Dennis Kucinich and a primary battle he will face next year for his House seat.

The premise of this article is that challenger Rosemary Palmer recently received an endorsement from former Democratic House candidate Paul Hackett, who has had run-ins with Kucinich in the past. All three people involved in this article are anti-war and share similar domestic beliefs. One of the things that upset me about the article was the comments of New York Times readers, including a comment stating that this article was a “hatchet job.�?

I agree with the general sentiment that the blog is the perfect place for the Times to highlight lesser-known candidates. It costs nothing to print these articles and people who read the blog are political junkies like me. The Times editorial staff is missing out on an opportunity to write about interesting candidates during one of the most competitive races in recent memory. While I dislike the venom that commentators used toward this article, I think that the Times could do more to provide voters information over the long primary campaign.

However, a “hatchet job�? seems like an overstatement. Everything I read in the Times piece seems accurate. Kucinich has been campaigning for president since 2003 and undoubtedly neglects some of his duties in the meantime. The Times has done a good job highlighting the consequences of running for president by a lower tier candidate, namely that they face challenges within their constituency. To the comments that the Times only cares for the major candidates while denigrating the bottom tier, I would say that they are doing a fine job for now on pointing out behind-the-scenes issues for every candidate on the ballot.