We spend too much time debating bias in journalism. In my experience, most of the failures of our press and broadcast news outlets derive from their corporate nature, from technology and from the quality of practitioners. The conscious slanting of stories is rare.
And news judgments are subjective.
Having said that, consider that on Tuesday the New York Times revealed an intelligence report given the Bush Administration two months before it warred on Iraq, a report warning that the project might produce difficult, unintended consequences. It wasn’t the Times’ lead story, but it was new.
I did not find it in the Albuquerque Journal, though. Later in the day, the Albuquerque Tribune put it on the bottom of page one.
Again, honest news people will differ on what deserves to be published, where, how and at what length. Still, given the Journal’s rightist tilt on its editorial and Op – Ed pages, I thought it worth mentioning.
Also worth mentioning: the Journal ran an Op - Ed piece today by a New Republic editor True, that magazine is not very far left any more, but it isn’t the National Review. Further, the piece said the Bush Administration’s tax policy is unprincipled.
Item: CBS perpetrated lousy journalism when it wasn’t skeptical of memos concerning President’s Bush Texas Air National Guard record.
This, after cowering before the White House on Iraq policy for more than two years.
Item: This CBS error is "the worst press scandal "of our era," according to syndicated columnist John Leo (Albuquerque Journal, today).
Not the press’s failure to question the war on Iraq? Not its buy-in to the WMD story? Nor its failure to debunk the fiction of a "war on terror"? Not Fox News, the fiar and balanced network?
Item: CBS has removed from the schedule a 60 Minutes report on the rationale for the war in Iraq because it would be "inappropriate" to air it so close to the presidential election, the network said on Saturday.
Inappropriate? Huh?
In China, TV news is operated and/or supervised by the government, so there is no dissent from Beijing’s fundamental policies.
In the US, some journalistic freedom remains. Given corporate cowardice, though, and the powerful rightwing drumbeat against "the liberal media," that freedom is shrinking.
OK. Before we embarked on the war on Iraq, the first President Bush's buddies wrote Op-Ed articles warning against that policy.
Today, Republican Senators, including Hagel and McCain, question the conduct of the war.
George Will writes in the current Newsweek that neo-conservatives "alarm almost everyone who isn't one - and especially dismay real conservatives." Some time ago, Pat Buchanan attacked the neo-cons. The libertarian Cato Institute has opposed the Iraq policy.
So how come most Americans believe the Administration is conservative?
The failures of the press these days are so many and so deep, it is difficult to say which are the most terrible. But the failure to distinguish between the Bush foreign policy and a conservative foreign policy surely ranks in the top five, don't you think?
Below, starting with the sub-head, is my article on China published in the Albuquerque Tribune yestrday, Sept. 23.
Sure China’s an ocean away, but from any view we’re starting to look more and more alike
By Arthur Alpert
Having spent a month in China, I am now a distinguished sinologist. Not!
I did pay attention, however, so brace yourself for a piñata of observations.
(Ignore any big ideas that descend, please. It’s difficult throttling my inner pundit.)
We have all watched China’s ruling Communist Party carve out zones of freedom where capitalists wheel-and-deal, creating wealth and jobs. And with almost everything we Americans buy labeled "Made in China," they seem to be going great guns.
Inside China, that looks like understatement. From auto, bus or train, I saw endless construction - suburban "villages," high-rise apartments, plants, retail centers, new roads, old roads widened.
I saw costs, too. In and between Nanjing, Beijing and Shanghai, there was no sky, just a dirty gray haze, for a month. (Exception: one day a patch of blue in Shanghai, near the sea.)
I’ve read the filthy air kills 300,000 yearly.
Every Chinese I spoke with was proud of the progress, but some muttered about corruption in high places. I flashed back to our robber barons and the graft that greased the railroads. Question: will the grandchildren of China’s thieves atone with philanthropic foundations?
Deep inside Beijing’s Forbidden City, the sacred ground of emperors, concubines and eunuchs, we found a place called - drum roll! - Starbucks.
Thus, money trumps tradition.
A lousy shopper, I loitered at Nanjing’s Confucius Temple market, admiring the merchants’ work ethic and pondering the fates that foisted Communism on natural-born capitalists.
The profit system is eroding sameness, but slowly. At Nanjing TV, I met the top executives. Good thing they had business cards because every male employee – no matter where on the ladder - wore trousers and an open-necked shirt.
Still, the government’s TV anchors dress like prosperous brokers, the women sporting stylish short haircuts. And lots of Shanghai’s young people dye their black hair blonde or red. Think of Brittany and Justin as global educators.
Tipping, I hear, is on the way, but I didn’t run into any. No petty cheating, either. Armed with beaucoup yuans and three words in the language, I took taxis in Nanjing, Beijing and Shanghai. Not one cabby took advantage. Two even ventured a welcoming phrase in English. We’re not, I concluded, in the Big Apple.
Collecting my laundry in Nanjing from the dour lady who’d washed it, I ventured a "Thank you" in Chinese. She smiled broadly and gave me a thumbs-up. Turned out, the Chinese loved our efforts. We’re not in Paris, either.
Neither are we home. Consider the Puritan attitude toward education. Signs on the path to our campus cafeteria told the kids that learning required huge effort, dedication and "pain". They do study long hours; when I told my students about the brief American school day, they groaned.
My middle school boys, unfocused, liked computer games and football (our soccer). The girls, calmer, chose reading, writing poetry, calligraphy, musical instruments, drawing, singing and dancing.
Hold that information for a moment, OK? I’m chatting over coffee with a Chinese woman in the travel business. She is 31, single and, she confides, worried she’s missed her chance at family.
Let’s review. Kids groan at their long school day. Girls mature before boys. A young woman fears she’s missed the marital boat.
Darn! Did I come halfway around the globe to find out that people are people?
Email Alpert, a semi-retired newsman, at ArthurAlpert@swcp.com. His column runs the fourth Thursday of the month in Insight and Opinion.
Today, September 20, 2004, Senator John Kerry finally got there. He said the war on Iraq was a "profound diversion" from the war on terror.
Brilliant.
Here we are less than two months from Election Day and the Democratic candidate finally joins the crowd he wants to lead.
For reasons I do not pretend to understand, many Americans think George W. Bush is a "strong" leader in a "war on terrorism."
Kerry cannot win if some of those Americans do not begin to question his strength.
It's been obvious for more than a year that Bush abandoned, subverted, shoved to the back burner the war on Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, gave up on pacifying Afghanistan and never pursued the backers of 9/11 - Saudi Arabia, notably. Why? To push a geo-political fantasy from the Neo-Cons, one that said we could bomb the Middle East into democracy by taking out Saddam Hussein.
Now Kerry is aboard. I think his decision probaby comes too late. It certainly will be too late if he now abandons today's theme. He must hit it hard and frequently to have any chance.,
Oh, and as I wrote here long, long ago - events must go his way, reminding the electorate that Iraq was a deadly mistake and that it remains a quagmire.
Yeah, Kerry needs a prayer.
Turns out I was not the only TV viewer to note a Heather Wilson campaign commercial in which Mary Ann Weems, the art promoter, describes the Congresswoman as "independent" and "nonpartisan."
That caught David Alire Garcia’s eye, too, he told us in yesterday’s Albuquerque Journal, so he set about checking it against the record.
His Op-Ed piece concluded she is neither independent nor non-partisan but rather a loyal, dependable vote for the GOP leadership. She voted with her party 91% of the time last year, 90% the previous year, 94% a year earlier, according to Congressional Quarterly records.
Alire Garcia notes that Steve Schiff voted the GOP line 78% of the time and Manuel Lujan 65% in the last three years of their respective tenures.
Admittedly, my political bias leads me to enjoy a piece like this; Wilson, like her political godfather, Pete Domenici, gets little scrutiny from the pencil press, and none from television "news."
But it’s also good journalism The daily newspapers should apply this formula to all our leading politicians at regular, predictable intervals. Leaders in non-electoral positions, too.
Mind you, what Alire Garcia did, while praiseworthy, is not rocket science. He took the candidate’s claims and compared them with the record. It reminded me of a recent New York Times evaluation of the new I Mac G5 - consumer reporting, in a sense, for the voter.
More, more.
The Albuquerque Journal still chooses not to identify the political bias of the think tanks - usually, but not always right-wing - whose material it publishe on the Op- Ed page.
Today's case in point is, once again, the Heartland Institute, which is libertarian.
Heartland is very unhappy that the Census Bureau has released numbers that may be misused by "proponents of government interference in the health care marketplace."
Yeah, that rhetoric tells you where Heartland is coming from, but wouldn't most readers benefit from identification of the source?
Remember when the White House lied to Republicans in the House who thought the Medicare prescription drug "reform" was too costly? Gave them a phony lowball estimate so they would vote "Yes"? It took a late night session, but Karl Rove got the bill.
Well, this week House Democrats offered a bill that would slap the Administration on the wrist for that lie (which, incidentally, violated the law). The House, however, voted 216 to 195 to defeat the move.
Tom Udall voted for the slap. Heather Wilson and Steve Pearce voted against.
It's hard to know how they reasoned, but I guess they were defending the right of White House Republicans to lie to fellow Republicans in the Congress.
And the country.
I picked up the voting information from Roll Call, a syndicated report the Journal carries every Sunday.
I thought I would pass it along in story form, because ...well, where else will you find it?
The current Atlantic Monthly (October) features an article by James Fallows entitled, "Bush's Lost Year." It is about 2002, when the Administration lost almost all interest in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden and the perpetrators of 9/11.
Though unemotional and careful, it comes across as a powerful statement that the war on Iraq is a distraction from the war on the perpetrators of 9/11.
Sen. Kerry - he who still cannot say in plain English what he believes about the war on Iraq - ought to read it. You may find it of interest, too.
The same issue contains a "Comment" by Joanthan Rauch that also is worth reading as a demonstration of how much we need George Orwell.
Rauch's argument is that the nation does better when power is divided, when the Executive and Legislative branches are in the hands of different parties.There's something in that, but Rauch's argument is incompetent, starting with his inability to properly define what is conservative and what isn't.
It gets worse after that but don't take my word for it. Read it. You know how bad movies can be entertaining? Well, bad political thinking can educate.
PS Turns out Rauch is a senior writer for The National Journal. I should have known.
Earlier today, Sunday, I attended a "debate" between Rep. Heather Wilson and her challenger, State Sen. Richard Romero at Congregation Albert in Albuquerque. I left early, though, because I was disgusted.
The problem? Both candidates got away with murder. They answered questions from the moderator and from the audience in turn. There were no follow up questions, so their answers - no matter how incomplete, evasive, inaccurate, insulting or fanciful - stood.
If I had stayed, I might have heard the candidates question each other. Fine. But that represents no check on their answers.
Both candidates, for example, told us that PAC contributions don't sway them - they vote their consciences. Wilson went on to opine that most people in Congress operated the same way.
Aaaargh.
There was nobody to ask, "Why, then, do entire industries, corporations,wealthy individuals and unions keep giving you big money? For their health?"
Or, "Why, then, has Sen. McCain said big money has bought the nation's lawmakers?"
Or, "How dumb do you think we are?"
Civic organizations, like the Temple Albert Brotherhood, oought to find new formats. Question-and-answer may serve the candidates' interests, but it sure doesn't help voters.
Yesterday I wrote at length about a story – CBS News’ advance on the Bush-Texas Air National Guard mess – that was absent from the Albuquerque Journal,
Turns out, it was just a day late.
The New York Times had it yesterday morning and the Albuquerque Tribune picked it up yesterday afternoon.
Today’s Journal billboards it on the front page and runs it on page 7.
Better late than never.
By the way, the Journal’s story today (from AP) mentions CBS only once, in paragraph seven. Some things never change in the news biz, including the reluctance of one news organization to credit a competitor.
CBS News uncovered new memos written by George W. Bush’s squadron commander in the Texas Air National Guard and interviewed Ben Barnes, the Texas Democrat who said he abused his power by helping young men, including Bush, get coveted spots in the Guard to evade Vietnam.
The story ran on the CBS Evening News last night and, longer, on Sixty Minutes II.
This morning’s New York Times, crediting CBS, carried the story, too.
But this morning’s Albuquerque Journal did not.
At the outset, let me say I think CBS puffed its story; neither the memos nor the Barnes interview caused my jaw to drop.
Having said that, the Journal’s treatment of the story is puzzling.
First, because the Journal did run a piece by Ron Hutcheson of Knight Ridder headlined "New Book. TV Ad to Take Aim at President’s Past." The CBS information might easily have fit into it or next to it.
Secondly, because Hutcheson’s second paragraph contains what looks like a reference to the CBS story. "On Wednesday, a new ad and a high-profile television interview suggested," Hutcheson wrote, "that Bush used political influence to avoid service in Vietnam, then went AWOL from his Air National Guard unit."
Nowhere in the body of the article is there any other reference to the "television interview," no identification of the interviewee or network.
Also, because a caption under an accompanying photo of George W. Bush in the cockpit of a TANG jet mentions Ben Barnes.
The story goes on to preview the forthcoming Kitty Kelley book on the Bush family and review Republican criticism of Senator Kerry’s Vietnam record and Democratic criticism of President Bush’s experience with the Texas Air National Guard. It quotes a college professor critical of attack ads and Senator John McCain, who beefs that the Presidential campaign is about what happened 30 years ago.
But it makes no reference to what CBS uncovered.
The explanation may be innocent, of course. After all, only yesterday the Journal ran an AP story (page 4) on Bush and the TANG. And while CBS advanced the story, it was hardly a blockbuster. Further, space is always a problem.
In the past, the Journal has done a good job of segregation, limiting its political views to the editorial and Op Ed pages rather than letting them influence daily news judgements. I hope that remains the case.
Today it was in Newsweek, but starting with the GOP convention in New York, I have seen it all over – Senator John McCain, we are informed, is a moderate.
Did we need more evidence that the news business is dense? No, but there it is.
I respect John McCain, despite his recent embrace of George Bush. And despite his political views. They are, incidentally, sometimes conservative, sometimes further right.
For example, McCain opposes the Supreme Court ruling governing abortion. And he favors the preemptive war on Iraq.
So where do the news folks get the idea that he is a "moderate"? Well, he championed campaign finance reform legislation, hoping to end the ongoing domination of the executive and legislative branches by corporate and other big donors.
And he frequently opposes the agenda of corporate America.
Neither view resounds in Washington, not with Republicans or Democrats. So the new numbskulls, desperate for a tag, have a problem. Their limited minds, you see, visualize the political world in only one way - a horizontal line running from right to left, with labels like "conservative" and "liberal" and "centrist."
Given that he’s not with his fellow Republicans and some Democrats admire him, they reason, he must closer to the center. "Let’s call him a moderate!" So what if his voting record isn’t.
Of course, McCain is not a typical Republican and his books – I have read two – explain why. His military background, time as a Vietnam prisoner-of-war and experience as one of the Keating 5 have produced an unusual politician, one who comes at issues from outside the (horizontal) box.
For simplicity’s sake, I will call his starting point a sense of honor. Some might prefer to call him an idealist. There's a case for Jeffersonian, too. Or the anti-Coolidge - he sure doesn’t think the business of America is business.
But guess what – on the horizontal line, there’s no place for honor, idealism or any of the other terms. Thus, John McCain must be a "moderate."
Where is George Orwell when we need him?
In this age of corporate "news product," I am almost always negative about the state of journalism. So it is a pleasure to note that some reporting survives. Last night, John Roberts did a report on the CBS Evening News that went beyond "On one hand…but on the other…."
Roberts examined the charge by President Bush that Senator Kerry has flip-flopped on Iraq, that Kerry voted for and against a bill funding the war.
Instead of being content to give us both sides, Roberts sought the truth of the matter. He told us Kerry did, in fact, vote for a bill funding the war with money obtained by rescinding the Bush tax breaks for the richest Americans. Then, Roberts reported, Kerry voted "No" on a bill that contained no such provision.
Roberts deserves praise. So does the CBS Evening News, whose reporting on the Administration has been craven.
I'm sad.
John Kerry will not win the Presidency unless he opposes President Bush on the Iraq War. It will not be enough to say that Bush mismanaged it. True, but insufficient.
Kerry may have lost this race already. Even if he has time, he may be unable to make the flip-flop required because he supported the war. As I see it, however, his only chance is to argue that Bush is a weak leader, that his war on Iraq distracted from and subverted the war on the terrorists who perpetrated 9/11/01. Which is, in fact, the case.
Of course, he needs to hit domestic themes, too - simply and strongly. But the issue in this election is Bush's leadership. If Kerry cannot persuade more Americans that Bush has misled, he will lose.
I cannot think of sadder news for the country.
I see by the morning paper that John Kerry is finding his tongue. Yes, he responded to Republican attacks on his fitness to serve by wondering about "those who refused to serve when they could have...." Later, he mentioned Vice-President Cheney's five deferments from military service.
Nice, but so late.
Why can't Democrats get into the gutter with Republicans?
I have yet to see Kerry, the Democratic Party or one of the left-leaning 527s buy an ad telling the story of President Bush's military record. After all, unlike the Swift Boat veterans, the Democrats could score by telling the truth.
All they have to do is recite the record - Bush ducked Vietnam (as did lots of other well-born politicos of both parties) by way of a slot in the "Champagne" unit of the Texas Air National Guard. He got the slot thanks to the influence of his dad's friends.
Yes, I know, liberals by definition are skeptics, doubters, not true believers. But that shouldn't keep them from getting into the arena with slimeballs.
No, I think their reluctance to fight back comes from other places. Like the mistaken idea that the opposition is decent, honest and conservative, which simply isn't the case. Like a faith in rationality, the kind that made German Jews
easy pickings for Adolph Hitler. Deep-down, maybe, the fear that once in the ring they will throw low blows, descending to their opponents' level. (Oh, the horror, the horror!)
Perhaps there are reasons that escape me. I would appreciate your suggestions. What seems clear to me is that if you do not slug it out, you lose.
Incidentally, the press is no help here because it's dedicated to the idea of balance, of two sides to every story. So reporters quit after conveying the pro-and-con rather than pushing to find the facts.
Heck, John McCain has bought that baloney. He told Jon Stewart last night that Kerry and Bush' both served "honorably." It is not just liberals, not just the press that shies away from truth.