[lit-ideas] Re: Fw: Pew Internet Report on the Future of the Internet - more...
- From: "Steven G. Cameron" <stevecam@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 08:25:04 -0500
*Additionally, this viewpoint of ethical lapses in our media from this
mornings newspaper. In light of recent history (numerous ethical
questions in the press and plagiarism among previously well-considered
authors) is this concept and on-going one we may need to address -- in
terms of media literacy??
TC,
/Steve Cameron, NJ
http://www.nj.com/search/index.ssf?/base/columns-0/1105426385135900.xml?starledger?colmul
Talk is cheap but spin can cost you
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
How many more of these bozos did Bush buy?
I allude to Armstrong Williams, the radio talk-show host who we recently
learned was on the payroll of the Bush administration to the tune of
$240,000. What's next? Will we soon find out that Rush Limbaugh or Sean
Hannity has done something unethical? Actually, they do so every day.
Both of these characters, as well as the great mass of other radio
"conservatives," regularly do commercials, i.e. they take money from
people to say good things about them.
This, of course, is the same thing that Williams did, but in a slightly
different form, when he accepted money from the Education Department to
push the No Child Left Behind Act.
Am I the only conservative in America who feels like throwing up every
time I hear Hannity go from touting the virtues of some politician to
touting the virtues of some steakhouse?
No, I'm not. Yesterday, I discussed this question with Jamie Dettmer,
who recently became communications director at the Cato Institute, a
free-market think tank in Washington.
"It has always horrified me," said Dettmer, who is from England and
until recently wrote for both English and American publications. In
England, Dettmer said, the idea of a radio pitchman doubling as a TV
commentator or newspaper columnist would be seen as clearly unethical.
Dettmer took a charitable view of the situation on this side of the
pond. Since the great mass of journalists at America's major newspapers
are liberal, he reasoned, conservatives have little choice but to take
advantage of the airtime offered by those radio talk shows.
There's something to be said for that, I guess. But I fail to see why
these radio clowns can't adhere to the same code of ethics that we print
journalists follow. The standard defense for these hucksters is the
argument employed by Armstrong. He said he is not a journalist but a
"commentator." Commentators, according to this view, can take cash on
the side all they want.
Ridiculous. The minute a commentator takes money to give an opinion --
whether on the quality of a restaurant's steaks or the quality of an
administration's policies -- that commentator has a conflict of
interest. A politician with a similar conflict of interest could find
himself facing criminal charges.
That could be the case with Williams, according to Richard Kielbowicz, a
professor of communications at the University of Washington. Kielbowicz
is the co-author of a study that ran in the Federal Communications Law
Journal titled "Unmasking Hidden Commercials in Journalism."
Kielbowicz said it's possible this incident represents a violation of
the laws against what is known as "plugola." That term is tied to the
payola scandals of the 1950s, when record companies were found to be
bribing disc jockeys to get records played. "Plugola" is the practice of
paying on-air personalities to pitch a product without telling the
audience of the payment.
"Any party who supplies to an employee or station content to be aired
and pays or gives something of value for it to be aired has to disclose
the payment to the station, and the station should disclose it to the
audience," Kielbowicz said.
There's also a law passed in 1913 prohibiting federal agencies from
using public money to influence political debate. "This became an issue
later, most notably in World War I, when the Wilson administration hired
platoons of journalists to shape information about the war effort," he
said.
I have no idea whether the Bush people are hiring platoons of talk-show
hosts to shape information about the current Wilsonian exercise in Iraq.
But it certainly seems so. Virtually all of these radio types parrot the
daily spin coming out of the Bush White House. Worse, they characterize
as liberal anyone who criticizes the conduct of the war, though from the
very beginning the harshest critics have been conservatives.
Among them is Dettmer. A month before the war began, he wrote a piece
for Insight magazine titled "After Saddam, an Uncertain Future."
Dettmer, who has had long experience covering the Middle East, warned
that "Iraq all too easily could fall into a perpetual civil war pitching
Shi'ite Muslims, Sunni Muslims and ethnic Kurds against each other, all
determined to carve out their own political fiefdoms." Got that right.
Other conservatives have similarly argued that there is nothing
particularly conservative about investing thousands of lives and
hundreds of billions of dollars in a dubious nation-building scheme. But
if my e-mail is any indication, these hardheaded conservatives have been
drowned out by the fuzzy- minded talk-show types.
Are these guys on the take? Or are they just stupid? That is the
question of the moment. Conservatives had better hope it's the latter.
Paul Mulshine is a Star-Ledger columnist.
Eternitytime1@xxxxxxx wrote:
>
> In a message dated 1/10/2005 11:34:17 AM Central Standard Time,
> andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
>
>>* Just 32% of these experts agreed that people would use the
>>internet to support their political biases and filter out information
>>that disagrees with their views. Half the respondents disagreed with or
>>disputed that prediction.
>
>
>
>
> Hi,
> That was is interesting in light of the WSJ opinion article that is below.
> I especially was curious in light of this note in it:
> In his new book, "Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation," radio
> host and law professor Hugh Hewitt calls the new media a form of "open-
> source
> journalism" in which gatekeepers can no longer control what reaches the
> public. Readers and listeners interact with bloggers and talk show hosts so
> that a
> free market of ideas and information can emerge. "Blogs analyzed the
> Washington state election shenanigans in a more sophisticated and
> comprehensive way
> than the mainstream media," he told me. "When a swarm of blogs and new media
> focus on a story it can fundamentally alter the general public's
> understanding of an event or person. Ask John Kerry, Trent Lott, Tom Daschle
> and
> soon-to-retire CBS anchor Dan Rather if they think the new media changed
> people's
> perceptions of them."
>
> Thinking about the future and 'the new media',
> Marlena in Missouri
>
> JOHN FUND ON THE TRAIL
> Don't Count Rossi Out
> A stolen election in Washington state? Not if bloggers can help it.
>
> Monday, January 10, 2005 12:01 a.m.
>
> The new media--talk radio, bloggers and independent watchdog groups--have
> followed up their success in exposing Dan Rather's use of phony memos by
> showcasing another scandal: Washington state's bizarre race for governor,
> which
> features a vote count so close and compromised it allows Florida to retire
> the
> crown for electoral incompetence. If Democrat Christine Gregoire, who leads
> by
> 129 votes and is scheduled to take the office Wednesday, eventually has to
> face a new election, it will have been in large part because of the new
> media's ability to give the story altitude before it reached the courts.
> When the idea of a revote was first broached three weeks ago by a moderate
> Republican former secretary of state, Ms. Gregoire's reaction was swift:
> "Absolutely ludicrous." With Republican candidate Dino Rossi filing a formal
> court
> challenge last Friday alleging a massive breakdown in the vote count, she
> may still think the idea of a court-ordered revote is laughable, but her
> legal
> team is taking it seriously. "There's not even a 50-50 chance a court would
> rule with Republicans to set aside the election," says Jenny Durkan, a
> Gregoire confidant who is representing state Democrats. Hardly an expression
> of
> supreme confidence.
> The feeling that a revote is possible is buoyed by polls showing the public
> still thinks Mr. Rossi, who won the first two vote counts before falling
> behind in the third, actually won. His legal team has also compiled a strong
> body
> of evidence showing irregularities, certainly one far more detailed than
> that which North Carolina officials used last week to order a statewide
> March
> revote of the race for agriculture commissioner after a computer ate 4,438
> ballots in a GOP-leaning county. Without those votes, the GOP candidate was
> leading by 2,287 votes out of 3.5 million cast.
> In Washington state, the errors by election officials have been compared to
> the antics of Inspector Clouseau, only clumsier. At least 1,200 more votes
> were counted in Seattle's King County than the number of individual voters
> who
> can be accounted for. Other counties saw similar, albeit smaller, excess
> vote
> totals. More than 300 military personnel who were sent their absentee
> ballots too late to return them have signed affidavits saying they intended
> to vote
> for Mr. Rossi. Some 1 out of 20 ballots in King County that officials felt
> were marked unclearly were "enhanced" with Wite-Out or pens so that some had
> their original markings obliterated.
> Most disturbing is the revelation last week by King County officials that at
> least 348 unverified provisional ballots were fed directly into
> vote-counting machines. "Did it happen? Yes. Unfortunately, that's part of
> the process in
> King County," elections superintendent Bill Huennekens told the Seattle
> Times. "It's a very human process, and in some cases that did happen."
> King County elections director Dean Logan, Mr. Huennekens' boss, also
> concedes the discrepancy between the number of ballots cast and the list of
> people
> who are recorded as voting. Even though the gap is 1,200 votes, he says,
> "that does not clearly indicate that the election would have turned out
> differently." Are voters supposed to trust an election merely because it
> can't
> "clearly" be shown to be hopelessly tainted? Mr. Logan is certainly singing
> a
> different tune now than he was on Nov. 18, when he responded to charges of
> voting
> irregularities in an e-mail to colleagues, which read in part:
> "Unfortunately,
> I have come to expect this kind of unsubstantiated crap. It's all too
> convenient, if not now fashionable, to stoop to this level when there is a
> close
> race."
> Slade Gorton, a Republican former state attorney general and U.S. senator
> who is advising Mr. Rossi, says a court should order a revote rather than
> declare valid one of the two earlier vote counts that Mr. Rossi won. "No one
> can
> govern effectively under the cloud this race has created," Mr. Gorton says.
> He
> notes that state law doesn't require any showing of fraud to contest an
> election. "That is irrelevant to whether the election should be done over,"
> he
> says. "The law is quite clear in giving a court the right to void any
> election
> where the number of illegal or mistaken votes exceeds the margin of victory,
> and it has done so in the past."
> Mr. Gorton notes that Sam Reed, the Republican secretary of state who
> certified Ms. Gregoire's victory, issued a report in 2003 noting that King
> County's
> sloppy election procedures could lead to just this sort of election
> meltdown. "The county is not consistent in their ballot enhancement
> procedures," Mr.
> Reed's report concluded. "Ballot enhancement, while done in full view of
> political observers, did not use the procedures outlined in the Washington
> Administrative Code. Inconsistencies in how this procedure is handled
> significantly
> increase the possibility of a successful election contest."
> Much of the evidence uncovered on King County's flouting of election laws
> first appeared on _Soundpolitics.com_ (http://soundpolitics.com/) , a blog
> run
> by computer consultant Stefan Sharkansky. A former liberal who worked for
> Michael Dukakis in 1988, Mr. Sharkansky calls himself a "9/11 conservative
> mugged by reality." He uses his knowledge of statistics and probability to
> illustrate how unlikely some of the reported vote count changes are. He also
> uncovered the fact that in Precinct 1823 in downtown Seattle, 527, or 70%,
> of the
> 763 registered voters used 500 Fourth Avenue--the King County administration
> building--as their residential address. A full 61% of the precinct's voters
> only registered in the last year, and nearly all of them "live" at 500
> Fourth
> Avenue. By contrast, only 13% of all of King County voters registered in
> 2004.
> Not all of the voters at the county building are homeless or hard to find. A
> noted local judge and her husband have been registered at the county
> building for years. When I called her to ask why, she became flustered and
> said it
> was because of security concerns, specifically because "the Mexican mafia
> are
> out to get me." When I pointed out that her home address and phone number
> were easily found on the Internet and in property records, she ended the
> conversation by refusing to answer a question about whether she had
> improperly voted
> for state legislative candidates who would represent the county building but
> not her residence.
> Even liberal officeholders in Seattle privately acknowledge that the
> combination of bloggers, talk radio and local think tanks like the Evergreen
> Freedom
> Foundation have helped skeptics of the election's validity win the public
> relations war. Evergreen president Bob Williams says his group isn't focused
> on
> overturning Ms. Gregoire's election so much as on highlighting the obvious
> problems in the vote count that cry out for permanent legislative fixes. He
> notes the public is paying attention: A poll taken last week by Seattle's
> KING-TV found that by a 20-point margin state residents back a new election,
> and
> by 53% to 36% they don't think Mr. Rossi should concede.
> Seattle Times columnist Joni Balter says the attack on the vote count by
> Republican-leaning media "is by now a near-military operation--air, land and
> sea." She blames radio hosts Kirby Wilbur, John Carlson and Mike Siegel for
> keeping listeners updated and in a constant state of outrage. "There's a lot
> to
> be outraged about," responds Mr. Carlson, an unsuccessful candidate for
> governor in 2000. "Last week, I did 13 out of my show's 15 hours on the
> election
> and people wanted more."
> In his new book, "Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation," radio
> host and law professor Hugh Hewitt calls the new media a form of "open-
> source
> journalism" in which gatekeepers can no longer control what reaches the
> public. Readers and listeners interact with bloggers and talk show hosts so
> that a
> free market of ideas and information can emerge. "Blogs analyzed the
> Washington state election shenanigans in a more sophisticated and
> comprehensive way
> than the mainstream media," he told me. "When a swarm of blogs and new media
> focus on a story it can fundamentally alter the general public's
> understanding of an event or person. Ask John Kerry, Trent Lott, Tom Daschle
> and
> soon-to-retire CBS anchor Dan Rather if they think the new media changed
> people's
> perceptions of them."
> Similarly, when Christine Gregoire takes the oath of office as governor on
> Wednesday, she will still face a threat to her seat of power should the new
> media keep up the pressure and more evidence of a tainted vote count emerges
> in
> court.
> She would do well to recall what happened in Minnesota after the 1962
> election for governor there. Republican Elmer Anderson won a squeaker and
> was sworn
> in, but a recount of disputed ballots ground on. A hundred days into Mr.
> Anderson's term, a panel of three state judges ruled that Democrat Karl
> Rolvaag
> had actually won by 91 votes. To end the legal wrangling, Mr. Anderson
> dropped any appeals and calmly left office, allowing Mr. Rolvaag to move
> into the
> governor's mansion.
> You can expect the new media to talk up that historical example a lot as
> they seek to instill in the public's mind the belief that Washington state's
> election for governor isn't over just because after Wednesday someone
> occupies
> the office.
> Copyright © 2005 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
>
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