Keeping An Eye On The Media

May 7th, 2010  |   

Rhinos And Media Moguls

I’ll bet you didn’t know that the first day of May is Save the Rhino Day. Well, it is, or it was. It’s a day set aside each year to educate people about rhinoceroses—a day to call for support efforts to save the mammoth, horned animals from extinction.

If you’ve paid attention to the news, you may know that May 1 was also the date for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. That’s the day when White House correspondents, news media personalities and a host of celebrities dress up for an evening with the President. This year President Obama competed with Jay Leno for laughs, and won.

You may think I’m a stick-in-the-mud, but I think this event is an enormously depressing sight to watch. So I don’t pay attention to this farce, except for the spot replays on television, blogs, and newspaper stories. In the TV clips I see a lot of forced and nervously self-conscious laughter on the part of media todies preening over one another and fawning over the president like a bunch of teenagers nestling up to a rock star.  

So what do I want from the folks who deliver information to me about what’s going on in the world?

Here’s what I want from the Washington press corps, and other news media folks as well. I want them to keep far away socially from the president—and any other people they report on—as far away as a rhino from a safari hunting for big game.

The Fourth Estate—the press—exists to report on the members of our three branches of government, not to party with them. Forget the schmoozing and sucking up to powerful politicians or public figures.  

Alex Jones, in his fine book “Losing the News: The Future of the News That Feeds Democracy” gets it right when it comes to the number one organizational value and mission of traditional news organizations. It’s simply to be a democratic watchdog committed to accuracy, balance, accountability, independence and checks on profit. Entertainment news (The Today Show, Oprah Winfrey), tabloid journalism (local papers and radio/television lead –with bleed news), and advocacy journalism (The O’Reilly Factor and Countdown with Keith Olbermann), have their place, but rock-solid watchdog reporting is the vehicle that provides information that helps people function as citizens in coping with the world. Investigative reporting is a critical component of watchdog reporting. It keeps democracy alive. It plays the truth-telling game, not the ratings game.

I want a watchdog press, not a bunch of lapdogs wagging their tails for crumbs thrown from tables full of powerful people. Watchdogs, like junkyard dogs, are not indoor dogs. They belong outside. And as for chumminess on the part of the press corps, it may get some charming reporter in for an “exclusive” interview with the politically elite, even higher ratings for the network or publication she or he represents, but it won’t result in getting beneath the political rot that lies hidden inside the chambers of power.

Most of all I don’t want rhinoceroses or watchdogs to be extinct.

Can An Old Lapdog Learn New Tricks?

Three days prior to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, James Risen, a reporter for The New York Times, received a subpoena requiring him to provide documents and to testify in front of a grand jury about confidential source material for a chapter in his book, “State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration.”

The chapter in question has to do with Risen’s account of a botched CIA covert effort to disrupt Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons. Risen, got his information from a CIA case officer who was willing to say that this spy game backfired and actually “assisted the Iranians in joining the nuclear club.”
 
Risen says he will not comply with the demand that he turn over his confidential source papers and that he will ask a judge to quash the subpoena. If the judge does not do that, and Risen still refuses to turn over the papers, he will be held in contempt of court and will be sent to jail.

The New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, reminds readers “that the public interest is served by not forcing certain categories of people to disclose information. Lawyers don’t have to reveal confidences of their clients. Husbands and wives don’t have to tattle on each other. Clergy don’t have to reveal what is told to them in some situations. (I once said I would eat my files before turning them over to Tyson Foods when they went after my records in search of the names of farmers and poultry workers I worked with.) And I would argue that the public interest in a vital, truth-seeking, aggressive press is at least as great as in these other exceptions.”

Kristof concludes: “Overall, I think that history will suggest that news organizations were too restrained in reporting security abuses in that period (the Bush Administration); our problem was that we were more lapdogs than watchdogs. And if the Obama administration is going to start going after journalists, there couldn’t be a worse time to create a chilling effect.”

Kristof seems to be in sync with Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press who says that there is no difference between Bush and Obama when it comes to addressing the press. “News organizations” he says, “face a crisis in their business model, and the prospect of huge legal bills, hefty daily fines, and losing a reporter to jail becomes a real disincentive to the kind of edgy, aggressive reporting that we need more of. So come on, President Obama. How about a bit more change we can believe in?

Here’s what I would have liked to have seen happen at that White House Correspondents’ Dinner. I would have liked to have seen those black tie and gorgeously gowned and coiffed reporters and media stars stage a walkout. On their feet they would respectfully say they were leaving the event in solidarity with their colleague James Risen. Call it a kind of a resurrection happening. The press rises, three days after the Obama administration tries to bury Risen with a subpoena.

A bit much, you say? Sort of like trying to teach an old lapdog new tricks.

“Brownie’s” Back And He’s Anything But Green

Lo-and-behold, look who’s showing up on TV these days—Michael Brown—“Brownie,” the guy who headed up the Federal Emergency Management Agency when Hurricane Katrina swept across the Gulf Coast wrecking havoc from Florida to Texas, especially in New Orleans. He left that post after he incompetently botched the rescue effort.

Five years later, “Brownie’s” back on the scene pontificating about the oil rig disaster off the Gulf Coast. His message?   President Obama’s is lovin’ the oil spill “because now he can pander to the environmentalists and say, ‘I’m going to shut it down because It’s too dangerous.’”

You know what “Brownie’s” doing these days, aside from TV network hopping with his ridiculous message? He’s employed by companies that offer consultation about disaster relief and which give advice about technology that claims to screen for terror suspects. My question: Does he have a machine that can detect a phony disaster relief expert?

Kent State Remembrance—The National Guard Then & Now

This past Tuesday marked the 40th anniversary of National Guard shooting on the Kent State campus in which 4 students were killed and 9 wounded. The students were protesting President Nixon’s decision, the day before, to widen the Vietnam War, sending troops to invade Cambodia, and stepping up the bombing of Cambodia. 

That was in 1970 when I was a minister at Trinity Church in Martinsburg, West Virginia. At that time I was protesting the war, and shortly thereafter, I took a phone call in the middle of the night from a pilot whom I had come to know as his minister in Annapolis while he was a midshipman at the Naval Academy. He was flying bombing missions over Cambodia and was calling me drunk and telling me to “get us the hell out of here.”

The bombing of Cambodia actually dated back to early in 1969 when President Nixon, with the help of National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, developed the bombing plan. They tried to keep the bombing hidden from Congress and the American people. Pilots were sworn to secrecy and their “operational logs” were falsified.

When The New York Times revealed the secret bombings, thanks to government leaks, Kissinger went ballistic. “We must do something! We must crush those people! We must destroy them!” He meant both the Times and the leakers. This prompted Nixon to go wild with phone taps and paranoid accusations leveled at his top administrative officials. This was intended to chill the press, as well as folks eager to spill the beans about the failure of the Vietnam War. But it ultimately led to Daniel Ellsberg leaking the Pentagon Papers to the press—information which finally exposed the lies told to the public about the war.

The National Guard wasn’t on any campuses this year on the anniversary of the Kent State shootings because there is no military draft to prompt antiwar protests by students—protests against the war in Afghanistan.

While I’m wishing for news media reporters to stand up and protest the targeting of James Risen, here’s a second wish. Ironically, it involves the National Guard—not, of course, to get them off the campus, but to get them out of Afghanistan and back home.
The message –stop the shooting—is as good a message today as it was at Kent State.

Immigration Debate—Who’s In And Who’s Out

This week Joe Scarborough, the talk show host of MSNBC’s wildly popular  show “Morning Joe,” engaged in a vigorous, heavily-caffeinated verbal exchange with Eugene Robinson, the Pulitzer Prize winning columnist at The Washington Post. These two gentlemen usually, pretty much, sing the same tune. But not when it came to talking about a column that Robinson had written about the subject of immigration.

Robinson, has been pounding home the message that comprehensive immigration reform is the place to begin dealing with immigrants already here without proper papers, as well as immigrants who continue to cross the border. What sent Joe into a hissy fit was when the conversation focused on “securing the border.”

Robinson wrote: “It would be possible to build a 2,000-mile-long Berlin Wall, complete with watchtowers. But it would be stupid and counterproductive. The U.S.-Mexico relationship is vital, economically and politically, and the border has to be permeable enough to permit a massive legitimate daily flow of goods and people.”

Joe didn’t like that Berlin Wall analogy. It was like blood spilled in shark infested water, and Joe morphed into the Great White Shark. The Berlin Wall, he said was built to keep people in, said Joe; building a wall along the 2,000 mile Mexican border would be done to keep people out.

Robinson’s shark repellant was his reasonable argument and gentle smile. Build a 2,000 mile long wall? Joe, walk that border! You’ve got to be kidding!

After watching this exchange, I had two thoughts.

Putting up a wall along the Mexican border, either concrete and barbed wire, or by stationing  National Guard and military troops along the border, really does lock us in and keeps us cocooned in our own fear, xenophobia, racism and myopic prejudices. 

And furthermore, if we want to talk about crossing borders, we are the experts. It’s our nation that has crossed the border into Central and South America time, and time again, to plunder nations and tribes for our economic gain. And we have done it with military might and at great expense to the people living in these countries. Ask Central Americans who have fled our financed wars in their countries—people who are here because they are poor and need money. They will tell you, if they trust you enough for you to hear the truth, about the death and destruction we have caused in their native lands.

The Circus Packs Up & The Media Moves On

Ringling Brothers Circus was here in town last week. I have a real love of the circus and a fascination for the work that goes into setting up and tearing down the equipment necessary to make the circus a sustainable community. It’s a city unto itself.

The morning after the last evening performance, I checked the circus area and it was totally empty—as if the circus hadn’t been there. Walking home, I thought about the disappearing circus the exodus of the media after the recent mine disaster here in West Virginia ended and the final memorial service was over. Media equipment and personnel have moved on to other places—the oil spill along the Gulf Coast, Times Square, Wall Street, and whatever spot pops up with a child that’s disappeared or a celebrity who has run off with another celebrity to whatever place invites celebrity hanky-panky.

With that in mind, let me give you, especially readers outside of West Virginia, a quick briefing on what’s going on here in coal country, where we do keep up with the news.
• Don Blankenship, the CEO of Massey Energy—the company that owns the Upper Big Branch mine where the disaster took place—has abandoned his uncharacteristically quiet posture. He’s back to mouthing off. He’s calling environmentalist and critics of the coal industry “evil.” He likes to call us folks  “greeniacs,” and “people of the far-left communist persuasion.” I guess that includes Senator Byrd, who has now spoken out strongly about the harm the coal industry is doing across Appalachia. A recent study, by the way, links mine stream pollution with high cancer rates.                                           

• Since the mine disaster, federal mine inspectors have found hundreds of safety violations in a nine state sweep. In West Virginia, 23 mining operations were cited with 500 violations, and in Kentucky, six mines halted production because of nearly 300 violations.

• Hearings, focusing on the disaster, are about to begin but they are not public enough. Folks here want all hearings wide open to the media and public scrutiny. Some will be closed. A good piece of news is the fact that workers and family members are coming forward to talk with officials about the problems in the mine. Death may bring a lifting of the veil of fear and secrecy that has kept people silent about Massey and other coal companies.

• One of the veils of secrecy that may be the hardest one to lift is the one that folks near the mines are reluctant to talk about. That’s the fact that some people phone a mine when they see mine inspectors in the area. The call is an early warning signal that allows for some cleanup to take place prior to their arrival.

A Bit Of Levity From Fat City

I leave you with a bit of humor. It has to do with fat—a subject I am paying my own personal attention to since I have begun a diet to reduce a tire around my waste so that I can get into summer shorts. On top of that, Men’s Health Magazine has just recently named Charleston the second fattest city in the United States.

Now, let’s have some fun. I’ve just read a newspaper report about a retired military officers’ study which says school lunches are making U.S. kids so fat that many can’t meet military’s physical fitness standards. Our national security is threatened by fat kids! Fat kids can’t fight! Remember the days when being gay or having flat feet or being a seminarian or having hemorrhoids (Rush Limbaugh was deferred from the draft during the Vietnam War) would get you out of serving in the military. Now it’s fat that has become the problem.

Given all that, I leave you with this:  Peaceniks unite! Proclaim this message: Kids, pig out and pork up for peace. There’s good precedence for this, even some heroes to emulate. Heck, Pope John XXIII was a roly poly peacenik. And Buddha never went to Weight Watchers. And the Rotund One, Kate Smith, is probably singing in heaven, with harp accompaniment, “God Bless America,” because she was the best at it while she was here on earth with us years ago. Fat is downright patriotic!

Entry Filed under: Fig Tree Notes Archives