Maybe it's for the best

I had intended to make a post today lamenting the lingering, slow death of print journalism in this country. With the Seattle Post-Intelligencer publishing its final print edition today to go to a pure online format (a step taken late last year by the sorely under-rated Christian Science Monitor), and the Tucson Citizen closing up shop this weekend ... well, rumors of the death of newspapers may be exaggerated, but not by much. The patient is gout-ridden, racked by fever and cough, and clearly on the deathbed.

Instead, I find myself stunned at the reaction of various members of the Washington press corps to the exchange of words between Dick Cheney and White House press secretary Robin Gibbs.

For those who might possibly have missed it, Cheney was on the air last weekend busily deeming the Obama administration a failure, and ranting about how his decisions, particularly vis-a-vis Guantanamo, had weakened America's security. Considering he was in office when the greatest terrorist attack on American soil ocurred, one might recognize him as an expert on weak security ... but that's neither here nor there.

When asked about it during a press briefing yesterday, Gibbs responded "I guess Rush Limbaugh was busy, so they trotted out the next most popular member of the Republican cabal." He subsequently added shots about how Bush and Cheney had failed in their duty to bring swift justice to the 9/11 perpetrators, and the importance of not taking advice from Cheney on the economy.

The admittedly sarcastic tone Gibbs used was immediately sized upon by various reporters, who complained about the manner in which the former Vice President was being addressed. Those complaining included Chip Reid of CBS and Rick Klein of ABC.

Seriously??!! I mean, seriously?? For years these folks allowed Cheney to oversee the virtual destruction of our Bill of Rights as well as instigating a wide-spread regime of torture, just two name two of the hideous innovations he was instrumental in instroducing to our country, yet hardly a peep could be heard. If anyone deserves to be treated with a distinct lack of respect, Cheney is near the top of the list, yet apparently it's more important to defend his dignity than to defend our nation's integrity.

I'm embarassed for my former profession ... all-in-all, maybe it's for the best it's a dying field.

Update: Shortly after posting this, I saw via Tedski at R-cubed the Citizen has been granted at least a temporary stay of execution.

Ignorant opinions

As a blogger and blog commentator, if there is any subject I know well it's publicly proclaiming one's opinion on some matter about which one knows little or nothing. I'm an expert.

ThinkRight provided a post yesterday in which he helpfully provided link to letters the Arizona Daily Star received vis-a-vis their simultaneously published articles on Gabrielle Giffords (discussing her 1st year in Congress) and Tim Bee (announcing plans to run against Giffords this fall), as well as a response by the Star's Debbie Kornmiller.

Not surprisingly, a number of the letters submitted took the respective length of the two articles (the Giffords article was considerably lengthier) as signs of clear bias on the Star's part. I take the letters as clear evidence the writers have no clue what they are talking about.

Full disclosure: Way, way back in the dawn of time I worked as a reporter for the Star, and knew both Bobbie Jo Buel (slightly) and Debbie Kornmiller (somewhat better). I haven't seen or spoken with either in at least a decade, mind you.

What I do know is Kornmiller's explanation rings true. There is no way, given the amount of time invested in the two different subjects those articles were ever going to be the same length. If the Star was going to run them the same day (which the Giffords article had apparently been scheduled to do for some time before Bee scheduled his announcement), then they made they best choice they could by featuring them with equal prominence on the front page.

One might argue they could have moved the Giffords piece a week earlier or later ... but, frankly, shifting something which had months of work invested in it just to accommodate Bee's story would have given more weight to Bee's announcement than it deserved.

The Star may have its biases, but the length of the articles in question is a thin reed on which to make the case.

Televised trolling

A PEW Research poll earlier this year found the widest gap in 20 years of measure political party self-identification, with Democrats enjoying a +15% advantage (50% - 35%). The same poll shows increasing majorities favor democratic positions on such questions as "government should help more needy people, even if debt increases?". Support for increases to minimum wages was solid even among Republicans (69%), and higher among Independents and Democrats. A majority (59%) favored immigration reform which provided some form of path to citizenship for current illegal residents. Etc.

Across a wide range of social and economic issues, the clear trends since 1994 (with some exceptions) favor liberal positions. On virtually every major issue, voters have more confidence in Democrats' ability to deal with matters than the current administration.

It would seem nearly unarguable that the nation as a whole is trending left. To the extent voters are irate with Congress, they are upset at it not being liberal enough. In particular, people want to see more done by Congress to get our forces out of Iraq at the earliest reasonable date.

Somehow, none of this seems to sink in to large portions of our D.C.-based media, which consistently harps on the supposed "dangers" of not acting in a "bipartisan" manner (a particular favorite of columnist David Broder), or of being seen as "too confrontational". The latest offender I saw over the weekend was Cokie Roberts opining on "This Week" about the big risk Democratic candidates would take if they move "way to the left".

I'd make some crack conflating Ms. Robert's first name with the type of drug-induced haze she must be in to make such a comment in the face of all evidence to the contrary ... except for the fact another panelist, David Gergen, agreed with her.

I simply don't understand how much willfulness is necessary to make statements like this, without a shred of actual evidence to support the claim. It's as if both Roberts and Gergen are acting like real-life concern trolls.

Frankly, my major concern is that Democratic candidates might actually pay some attention to these blithering morons. The sooner Clinton, Obama, Edwards et. al., stop paying any heed to these pundits - who apparently form all their notions within the warm cocoon of the DC beltway - and pay more attention to what voters actually say they want as opposed to what Roberts, Gergen and their ilk would like those voters to think the better off the candidates will be.

Update: Digby has a post on the same matter here.

*****

The NY Times has an op-ed piece today by Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack this morning discussing how wonderfully things are finally going in Iraq. Glenn Greenwald has a nice, lengthy response to it here.

My only addition to Greenwald's piece is to note I made mention of Pollack and his long-standing support of the Iraq war and occupation in a post last week. A perusal of O'Hanlon's writings will make clear he shares Pollacks views on this matter.

There is nothing particularly new about long-standing supporters of the war telling us: "Yes, things in Iraq have been terrible, but now they really are getting better. We swear. Really. Trust us. Just give it six more months." This claim has been made by different people repeatedly for some years now, and has been wrong every time.

There is no reason either O'Hanlon or Pollack should be any more credible now than they have been in the past.

The guys who got it right

In the run up to the Iraq war we saw and heard a great deal from individuals promoting the war: William Safire, Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Peter Beinart and others of their ilk were nearly ubiquitous on the television news talk shows, on the editorial pages, pushing the case for a war some of them had been advocating for a decade or more.

There were a few dissenters. Phil Donahue tried to host guests who challenged the administration's case. For his pains, his MSNBC show was canceled. Howard Dean gave a speech a month before the war that was nearly prophetic in anticipating the future course of events in Iraq. It's worth reading if you haven't - the degree of accurate understanding of what might (and, to a large extent, did) happen is breathtaking. For his foresight, Dean was labeled a "nut", "unpatriotic", and roundly vilified.

However, nobody got things as "right" as Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel.

Landay and Strobel were both senior reporters for Knight-Ridder (now McClatchy), and in the run up to the war they were amongst the very few writers consistently challenging the administration's claims on nearly every topic - the existence of WMDs in Iraq, the alleged ties between Saddam and al-Qaeda, the significance of the "aluminum tubes" the administraton claimed were intended for centrifuge manufacturing, Iraq's alleged nuclear programs. On point after point, Landy and Strobel's contacts inside the government and intel agencies were painting a very different picture for them than the administration was painting for the country.

Unlike individuals such as George Tenet, who were also aware of this all along but waited four years to let everyone know, Landay and Strobel were publishing at the time, voices in the wilderness, crying for attention but receiving none while reporters such as Judy Miller of the NY Times were printing near-propaganda pieces echoing the administration talking points.

As we now know, on point after point, Landy and Strobel were right. Kristol, Beinart, Krauthammer, et. al., were all wrong.

In any "rational" world, you would think the individuals who were so completely, demonstrably wrong for so long about so many things would be shunned, their views sidelined. You would especially think this given the alleged "liberal" bias of the national media. You would think.

Krauthammer continues as a national syndicated columnist for the Washington Post. Beinart is an editor-at-large for the influential periodical The New Republic, as well as a regular contributor to the Post. Kristol is editor of The Weekly Standard and a regular guest on Fox News where, among other things, he now advocates yet another war, this one with Iran.

Landay and Strobel continue to work for McClatchy, where they write articles disputing the case for war with Iran and don't get regular invitations to appear as guests on Fox news. Neither has been hired to replace Miller at the NY Times (she resigned as part of a leak scandal, not for her poor pre-war reporting). Virtually no one has heard of them.

Apparently, it pays to be wrong.

Various Items

I have a small list of items to get down on ... paper(?) ... today.

1) Tedski at Rum, Romanism and Rebellion (R-Cubed) reports that the most recent gossip making the rounds has Rick Renzi resigning from the US House of Representatives by Friday. That would be tomorrow.

There was a great deal of discussion about potential issues Renzi had in the run-up to the election last November. Predictably, left-leaning blogs were all over it (admittedly, mostly with hopeful speculation in place of any actual hard information), while right-leaning one's tended to downplay it. For example, right-leaning Greg Patterson at Espresso Pundit had the following about the affair on Oct. 24, 2006:

There is a weird conspiracy theory going around the lefty blogs. The theory is that Congressman Rick Renzi has been indicted but the US Attorney for Arizona is sitting on it so that Republicans don't lose the seat.

The Arizona Republic ran a story on Oct. 26 (unfortunately, now only available by paying for access to their archive) essentially dismissing the entire issue.

Well, time passes and we zoom ahead to last week's Wall Street Journal article about the matter, and the problems being hinted at last fall are given greater substantiation, to the extent that, within a week, the buzz is whether Renzi can survive the month, much less his full-term. It's embarrassing (or, at least, should be), particularly given how long the original hints have been out there, that it takes a news outlet from New York to break the story rather than one of our in-state papers or stations.

2) As an extra-special bonus related to item 1, the entire affair opens the door further to accusations that Paul Charlton, the US District Attorney who was overseeing the Renzi investigation before being asked to tender his resignation as part of the Gonzales affair, was asked to step down as a means of halting, or at least delaying until after the election, any possible indictment in the case.

Given the amount of time which has passed since the election, I find it doubtful the DA's office was on the verge of announcing an indictment last Oct. or Nov. However, given the timing Charlton's placement on the now-infamous "firing list" in Sept. 2006, it certainly seems increasingly likely the two events -- the Renzi investigation and Charlton's firing -- are closely related.

3) Leading Republican Presidential candidate said the following a couple days ago (via Poltitic0):

MANCHESTER, N.H. —- Rudy Giuliani said if a Democrat is elected president in 2008, America will be at risk for another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001.

But if a Republican is elected, he said, especially if it is him, terrorist attacks can be anticipated and stopped.

“If any Republican is elected president —- and I think obviously I would be the best at this —- we will remain on offense and will anticipate what [the terrorists] will do and try to stop them before they do it,” Giuliani said.

Whether or not Giuliani is the best candidate remains open to question (particularly after making the above statement), but it's nice to know that _all_ that is needed to keep America safe from terrorism is a President with an "R" representing their party affiliation.

According to Rudy if, say, Hillary Clinton were to win election next year, she need simply change her party affiliation to Republican shortly before the inauguration and we will all be safe for the next four years.

One might, if one were feeling peckish, note our current placeholder on the high seat has an "R" for party affiliation, yet somehow failed to "anticipate or stop" the greatest terror attack ever on US soil. If one were feeling peckish. Which I'm not.

4) The Washington Post has an article this morning detailing the extent of private political briefings held in various government agencies after the mid-term elections. Although the author mentions "20 private briefings" in "at least 15 government agencies", a pair of paragraphs further down in the story make clear this has been common practice for the length of the Bush administration:

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said that he was not familiar with the details of the briefings for other agencies, but that the projected fate of specific candidates was "certainly" discussed. He also said that in addition to the 20 briefings given in 2006-2007, "there were others throughout the last six years," making clear that this was a common Bush administration practice during each election cycle.

Stanzel said that Rove "occasionally spoke to political appointees at departments and agencies" but that his presentations were more "off the cuff" and were meant to convey "their importance to advancing the president's agenda."

Such briefings are potentially illegal in at least two different ways under the Hatch Act of 1939:

a. It's illegal to use the resources of these agencies (such as meeting space, office resources) to promote a specific political party.

b. It's illegal to "coerce" government employees to into acts which would favor some political party.

Given the details uncovered about one such briefing at the General Services Administration last January, it's at least arguable some, if not all, of these briefings violate the Act on both counts.

As a piece of unrelated trivia, there was an earlier Hatch Act of 1887 which set of land grants to states for the purpose of setting up experimental agriculture stations. As far as I know, the Bush-Cheney-Rove triumvirate hasn't managed to violate that one yet.

5) Some blog I clicked through today (and I'd like to credit it, but now I can't find it again) led me to this item, about a new design for solar panels.

As the story notes, the design isn't perfected yet -- apparently there are issues with overcoming the resistance within the cell. That part, I suspect, is just a case of engineering -- not easy, necessarily, but not likely to be innovative as well.

The hard part, the breath-taking part, is already done - the new panel design, using nano-towers in place of flat panels to trap the incoming solar energy. It's the exact same principle grass uses, or pine needles. Like many extremely clever ideas, it's really simple once you think about it. The hard part is thinking about it in the first place.


6) In the run-up to the Iraq invasion I was regularly frustrated with the apparent inability of the press to ask questions I was interested in getting answers to. For example, why were certain pieces of intelligence (such as those originate from Douglas Feith's group) given greater weight than other pieces, which on the surface seemed like they would be more reliable?

When I was in journalism school, it was hammered into my head repeatedly that you _never_ simply accepted what you were told by any government official, you _always_ assumed there was more to the story, and your job was to find out what that was. Otherwise, you might as well be working for TASS in the cold-war era.

Well, PBS aired "Buying the War" last night, a documentary by Bill Moyers which reviews the media oversight, or, more correctly, the lack thereof, in the run up to the Iraq invasion. I have not managed to watch it yet, although it's safely taped for viewing tonight or this weekend. If you missed it, it is also available online. By all accounts, it is a scathing, damning indictment of the failure of the press to live up to it's role as an adversary and inquisitor of our government.

That role is the sole reason the press has been granted special privileges under our Constitution. As a famous comic-book character often says, "with great power comes great responsibility". In the run up to the war, our press accepted the rights, and failed the responsibilities.

And now a word from our sponsors ...

The Philadelphia Inquirer is introducing a new column in it's business section. Nothing new or newsworthy about that. What makes this column new, different and, in my mind, potentially dangerous is the new form of advertising which it will introduce -- column sponsorship.

The column, a daily collection of notes and entries, will be sponsored by Citizen's Bank beginning Apr. 30. It will run with a sponsor label, and be boxed in green, a color associated with the bank in it's marketing.

The article quotes Inquirer editor William K. Marimow as saying the sponsor will have no control over the column content, and I would bet in a legal sense he is correct -- that the contract specifies no "veto" power or "mandatory inclusions" from Citizen's Bank will be permitted. However, there are other ramifications.

In my checkered career I have spent time (several years) working as a newspaper reporter. This was admittedly a while ago (late 80's, early 90's), but I can't recall _ever_ knowing or caring who was advertising with the paper. I don't recall _ever_ having a discussion about it with other reporters, copy editors, anyone. It simply wasn't relevant to us. Maybe the managing editor and his department heads knew and worried about such things (although I suspect what mattered to them was the amount of ad revenue rather than the specific sources), but we peons who gathered and sifted the information actually printed in the paper simply didn't care about these matters.

Now, I realize newspaper circulation and readership has been dropping, and the industry has been struggling for some time now, with widespread layoffs, declining newsholes and stifling budget cuts. Any source of revenue has to be at least considered, and I am sure Citizen's Bank is paying a pretty nice sum to have it's name splashed every day on the front page of a major Philadelphia newspaper.

Still, as a reader it would concern me. If I were a business reporter helping cover this beat, submitting items for this column, wouldn't I at least _consider_ second guessing myself if an item up for consideration was potentially a negative for Citizen's Bank? Remember, unlike most advertising (which is allocated to the paper in general), the money generated by this sponsorship will be (at least partially) directly applied to the business department budget. Given how tight the job market is four journalists these days, how can that thought _not_ be in the back of a writer's mind?

It may simply be a matter of doing what is necessary to survive. If it's a question of column sponsorship or no newspaper at all, then perhaps we have to bit our tongues and accept the matter, and just be (even more) aware of the inherent biases in what we read. As this NY Times article makes clear, other larger, papers around the country will be watching this experiment with interest. If it works, expect to see similar sponsorships sprout next year.

We already have Chase Field, Reliant Park, Qwest Field. Will we have Kroger's sponsoring
Paul Krugman, or Greg Hanson brought to you by the Phoenix Suns?