The lead story in the New York Times this morning is the Tel Aviv suicide bomb blast that killed five Israelis, wounded dozens more and may have done great harm to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
That story made page 12 of the Albuquerque Journal, three paragraphs worth.
The Times put the latest news on the Pope’s condition second.
That story, too, made page 12 of the Albuquerque Journal. Four paragraphs.
The Journal also put the latest from Iraq (including the deaths of three more US soldiers) on page 12.
Ditto the latest from Afghanistan, where the Taliban – you remember them – killed nine Afghan soldiers and lost 10 of their own.
Page 12 was the last page of the first section.
On the front page, the Journal led with Governor Richardson’s decision to target "gaming addiction." Also on page one: a traffic accident involving a school bus, DOE’s report saying Sandia Labs understated "Nuke risks" and, at the bottom of the page, accounts of an Española cop who shot himself and a Belen teacher accused of offering to hide a student’s drug paraphernalia.
Outrageous?
Well, no.
Clearly, the page 12 stories are more important than those the Journal put on page one. But consider:
Newspapers – most of them - are losing circulation. Younger readers prefer TV and radio and the Internet for their information.
But those mediums do not supply local news. (We'll treat "local TV news" in a moment.)
So when local and regional newspapers cover news in their geographic base areas, they play to their strength. And serve the public’s interest in what is going on around them.
That is one reason we newspaper readers who complain when our local papers scant national and international coverage ought to think again. There is another. We who cherish national-international coverage above the local are better educated and more affluent than most in the community. Ours is an elitist preference.
So, no, I do not think the Journal editor’s decisions this morning were outrageous. Sure, I would have made room for one of those page 12 stories on the front page by moving the idiotic Española cop inside. But news judgement is endlessly debatable.
Something to think about.
PS Local TV news, so-called, pretends to be news, but it’s an illustrated police blotter, a fact-based entertainment product retailing fear. In fact, it relates to real news much the way "reality" programming resembles reality.
The Albuquerque Tribune does me the honor of publishing my column the fourth Thursday of each month. Here is yesterday's:
A Dying Breed
‘Me’ nation replacing middle-class ‘we’ generation, which gladly joined
to propel greater good
Where are the belly laughs?
The President tells us Social Security is in "crisis," then it’s not He says Social Security will go bankrupt unless we act now but his plan, the White House confirms, won’t prevent it. Still, to move Social Security dollars to Wall Street, he contemplates borrowing billions.
Inane? Sure. We should be guffawing. Instead, folks with straight faces engage in serious debate. Why? Follow me to the obituary page. I think I’ve found the answer
Understand. I read the obits every day, happily, inspired and educated by how people lived their lives.
Watching the World War II generation move swiftly off-stage, for example, I re-learn the meaning of the phrase, "rising to the occasion." Almost all obits tell triumphal stories of men and women navigating this brief voyage bravely and with caring. (Dear Aaron Copland. Love "Fanfare for the Common Man", but the title’s stupid! They don’t exist.)
When a venerable Mrs. Candelaria recently passed away, the obit said, "Her Catholic faith was an important part of her life." Lots of older folks had faith and thereby found community. It makes sense. What’s the Torah but the account of a people learning to live together as God demanded? What’s Christianity without social justice? (No, Pat Robertson’s version doesn’t count.)
Mind you, when these old folks grew up, they had to hang together. You don’t fight joblessness, the banks or Dust Bowl alone. Family, neighbors, eventually the whole nation had to lend a hand.
Came Pearl Harbor. I was a kid and memory’s a trickster, but I believe we’ve never since been so united.
In 1945, Americans set about making life better for everybody. We taxed ourselves to pave roads to suburbia, help families buy houses. Even picked up the tab so GIs might improve themselves at college.
It’s called cooperation. It produced the middle class.
Yet folks tell me I’m naïve. This is a new era of self-made Americans. Oh yes, they do it themselves.
I observe these self-made folks. They’re dynamic. Charitable, too.
But they have no sense of "us."
So when the Mob puts out a contract on Social Security they shrug. It’s a Ponzi scheme, they say. If I had a buck for every mid-boomer who’s said that, I’d be on the beach at Cannes. Young workers paying for the secure retirement of older folks? Gotta be a scam.
I explain how insurance and investments differ. How adjustments can preserve the system. They’re deaf, their total focus on the potential return from stocks and bonds. As if Social Security was about "return."
Finally, I get it. They come in ones. Untied. Each will rise on individual merit to Trump-dom.
Who’s naïve now - or delusional, rather? A generation born on second base that thinks it hit a double. And that the market shall save us.
Some fogies like Allan Greenspan, who once worshipped Ayn Rand, agree. Today’s Libertarians, too, deify naked individualism, disdaining a religious or secular common good.
So say goodnight, Gracie, to the ties cherished by Mrs. Candelaria and her church friends, the CCC guys and Okies and Greatest Generation. Forget social justice, Arthur Miller.
The nation’s not roaring at the President’s "reform" because Americans who believe in "we" are dying - which I don’t find that funny.
Alpert, a semi-retired newsman from Albuquerque, writes a Web log at www.alpertstruth.com. His column appears in Insight and Opinion the fourth Thursday of the month.
"Health Care to Devour More of Pay" is the headline of the lead story on page one of the Albuquerque Journal today.
The Knight-Ridder story by Tony Pugh reports on new projections from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released yesterday.
That makes it a "hard news" story technically. But the story, which continues on page 2, is heavy on information from CMS, includes a few comments from experts and ties the projections to the Bush budget. That brings it very close to what we used to call a dope story.
Gosh, it’s been a long time since I’ve used that term and I am not sure how to define it, which is what I want to do. Let’s say the reporter fills it with information ("dope") on a single topic in order to give the reader a good sense of the situation or the lay of the land.
That contrasts with hard news, which gets its tough texture from an event. An example (also on page one today) is "Infant Found Safe."
Yet if the dope story is softer, it's not as soft as what’s called "news analysis," wherein the reporter gets still more room to make connections between facts.
(If I am dated or just being a dope here, I would appreciate editorial advice from any practicing newsman or newswoman reading this. Thank you.)
My point, in any case, is to praise dope stories and news analyses and editors who use them prominently.
I figure the dope story – because it’s not tied to a single event – enables the reporter to be more thoughtful and to give the reader more substance.
This can be critical. Imagine, for example, if reporters and editors had – over the years from the 1950s, say, to the ‘90s - supplied readers with thoughtful treatments of what was happening to medicine.
It’s quite possible, I think, that the public might have chosen a less awful health system than the Iron Maiden within which we now torture ourselves.
Putting it another way, the public never saw the process.
Or, the nation moved from professional medicine to the health business without getting a chance to vote on it.
That’s my thesis and I’m sticking to it.
Though I know that analyzing the press in terms of bias, political and otherwise
is lots sexier.
Matthew Miller announced yesterday that he won’t write his syndicated newspaper column any more, "at least for some time."
This so-called liberal has been arguing (forever, it seems) that what the nation needs lies midway between the liberal and conservative positions, that the parties are organized to block "common sense solutions" and - in this last piece – that the nation needs a third party in the middle.
That is balderdash, but before I deal with it, consider Dan Balz’s Sunday story in the Washington Post headlined:
"Democrats' Grass Roots Shift the Power
Activists Energized Fundraising, but Some Worry They Could Push Party to Left"
Here is the gist:
"As Dean takes the helm as party chairman, Democrats now face a competition between what might be called the Dean model and the Clinton model, between confrontation and triangulation. This amounts to a contest between a bold reassertion of the party's traditional philosophy that fits the polarized environment of the Bush presidency vs. a less provocative effort to balance core values with centrist ideas that proved successful in the 1990s but has since produced a backlash within the party."
Who deals in reality, Miller or Balz?
Balz, of course.
Miller - the innocent rationalist - talks about ideas, not power. He contrasts liberal vs. conservative as if they are real, not labels. As if the GOP is conservative and the Democrats liberal. And he’s managed to blind himself to the fact that GOP conservatives are almost powerless in their party, Democratic liberals likewise. Further, he conceives of the political spectrum as if it is fixed; meaning that the nation’s move to the Right has escaped him.
Finally, Miller forgets to count the votes. There is no traction for his middle-of-the-road solutions because the White House – having governed, run and been reelected on a Far Right platform - has little need to compromise with GOP conservatives and none whatsoever to be nice to Democratic "liberals."
[In Balz’s story, Eli Pariser, who runs the MoveOn political action committee, says approximately that, in his terms:
"I think it's pretty clear that the era of triangulation is over," he said. "The reason for that is that if you step halfway between Republicans and Democrats, you get your head cut off by Republicans. There's no compromise and no mercy, so I think it's pretty clear that Democrats need to be an opposition…"]
Balz is reporting the nitty-gritty. Sen. Clinton and Governor Richardson dance the triangulation waltz daily. The grassroots’ choice of Howard Dean as party chairman reflects the power of the other side.
Admittedly, Balz’s picture is a snapshot. The Democrats’ debate may take on different colors next month. Maybe there’s a synthesis between the "triangulators" and the "opposition."
Meanwhile, Miller thinks rationality will carry the day. To plumb the depths of his silliness, read the New York Times story on what George W. Bush told a friend (who recorded the comments) as Bush was contemplating going after the White House.
Those taped comments on people and tactics, plus the record of his administration and two presidential campaigns, remind us that belief - Bush’s certainties, that is – is what wins power, not rationality.
PS On considering the tapes, the press finds most newsworthy the question of whether Bush smoked pot! Even NPR! How discouraging.
PPS The Albuquerque Journal used Miller often as a "liberal" Op Ed voice. I wonder how they will fill that space, with somebody bold or namby-pamby.
PPPS Dan Balz's story is a reminder that journalism can be useful.
In considering George Will’s Newsweek column yesterday, I blamed him for ignoring "the stock and bond markets’ rules and regulations and schemes that give them an edge over John Q. Investor."
That was imprecise.
I would like to improve upon it with examples borrowed from Charles Jaffe’s "Your Funds" column in today’s Albuquerque Journal.
o Massachusetts charged A.G. Edwards (brokers) with illegal rapid trading that effectively defrauded fund shareholders. Supposedly, the firm allowed preferred clients some 31,000 timing trades that moved more than $2 billion and resulted in transaction costs paid by other shareholders. Arcane? Hard to grasp? Exactly.
o Putnam and Franklin Templeton have admitted to similar practices.
Jaffe’s point is that big funds generally deny wrongdoing, then promise no more of it and complain that regulators are overzealous - all to the end of getting away with slaps on the wrist.
My point, you remember, was that Wall Street investors take not only the obvious risk – losing money when their stocks or bonds disappoint – but also the risk of being cheated by some little-known scheme like "illegal rapid trading."
Something to think about before considering putting Social Security dollars into the markets.
Unless, of course, you are George Will shilling for the Administration, which is shilling for Wall Street firms.
In the February 14 Newsweek, George Will writes a screed against the Democrats (not the Republicans) who oppose the Administration’s plan to "save" Social Security by ending it.
The crux of the Democrats’ objection, he says, is this: "Equities markets are terribly risky – indeed, are as irrational and risky as roulette."
Noting that roulette has no element of skill, Will claims to be amazed that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid would compare "America’s capital markets, which are the foundation of the nation’s economic rationality and prosperity…" with that game of chance.
Years ago, I covered Wall Street for Financial News Network and briefly, CNBC. The most respected stock analysts and market experts told me that "America’s capital markets" are casinos. They felt their experience and tools improved the odds, but recognized that they were, in fact, gambling.
Score one for the anti-Will side.
But Will's screed has lots of holes. He neglects to mention the House odds …er, I’m sorry….the stock and bond markets’ regulations and schemes that give them the edge over John Q. Investor.
Nor does he mention that Wall Street has been rife with good, old-fashioned corruption from the days the traders sat under a tree in little old New Amsterdam.
Reid, mind you, also was wrong. Investing is not just gambling. It’s gambling in a den of thieves.
Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put money into the markets. I do. But like any wise gambler, I use dollars I can afford to lose. And I bet very, very carefully through two atypical and (thus far) honest mutual fund companies.
That’s very different from diverting Social Security taxes to the fine, upstanding folks at Merrill. Lynch.
There is more in Will’s Newsweek column to dispute, but why go on? Yes, Will writes a column or two each year promoting classic conservatism. Mostly, however, he shills for the Republican Party, hardly a conservative organization. Or, he promotes corporate America, whose operations subvert conservative values like family, prudence, hard work, discipline, persistence, traditional morality – every day of the week.
I wish William Safire would un-retire.
Autumn Gray had an interesting story in the February 10 edition of the Albuquerque Journal’s Business Outlook section – some New Mexico scientists are working on how to fight terrorism psychologically and an economic development expert thinks their work will lead, in time, to New Mexico companies in that field.
Ah, but the headline was…well, let’s say insufficiently considered. It read:
"There’s room for business at the very root of this war."
Now I don’t subscribe to the theory that we launched our attack on Iraq to take their oil or to subsidize Halliburton. But you must admit the war has handsomely rewarded American oil companies and Halliburton and other contractors with ties to the White House
So yes, there’s room for business at the very root of this war. Now give us a headline for Gray’s story.
You can find it in the Albuquerque Journal this morning. It's nestled next to mutual fund tables on page B7.
"BofA Units Agree to Settlement" is the headline. The lead sentence/graph tells us: " Bank of America Corp. is paying $675 million to settle state and federal charges of improper trades that hurt the returns of ordinary shareholders."
Hmmm. There they go again, those liberal media types. Reporting the story. I mean. And giving it so much prominence! Next they'll be telling us the President's Social Security "reform" would put billions of tax dollars in the hands of Bank of America and other Wall Street institutions.
Those darn liberals.
My candidate for the most under-reported story of the week is the promotion of Karl Rove to Deputy Chief of Staff at the White House.
John Dilulio, George W. Bush's first choice as director of the White House's "faith-based" operation, quit the post after less than a year, telling a reporter he found almost no substantive policy discussions. It was all politics, he said, perpetrated by the "Mayberry Machiavellis."
That was four years ago.
Now political honcho Rove - Dilulio sure was wrong about the Mayberry part - will have more power over policy.
Not much of a story, is it?
I gave been reading the newspapers and Newsweek, listening to NPR and some talk radio. What I pick up is growing pressure on Washington Democrats to respond to President Bush’s Social Security proposals.
I predicted the other day that the Democratic Party, determined to move to the right, will sell out on Social Security. Adjustments to deal with the new demographic reality are required, no doubt. But any "privatization" of the federal insurance system would kill it.
So when Democrats respond to the pressure – as they will shortly - by offering their own proposals, look for the word "compromise" in proximity to the word "privatization."
That spells "sell out." Or, if you prefer, Bush wins again.
The Albuquerque Journal carried an Op Ed piece Feb. 9 by one Michael Goodwin, identified as a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Daily News. Goodwin opined that the Democrats are committing suicide by choosing former Vermont Governor Howard Dean as party chairman. He said Dean "will take the party over the cliff and into an abyss of fringe liberalism that has no foundation in the American populace." He put Dean and Michael Moore in the "wackadoo wing" of the party, called him extreme and chided those who think Dean a moderate for overlooking "his far-left campaign for president."
The piece runs 15 paragraphs, yet Goodwin never defined "liberal" or "extreme" or "far left."
As a columnist, I know and appreciate the freedom we get to state and defend a point of view. It's also great that we are exempt from most of the rules imposed on reporters. But the columnists I respect back their arguments with some evidence and some logic.
Goodwin is not alone in substituting name-calling for thinking, but he has a
Pulitzer, fer gosh sakes. I never knew they awarded them for distinguished labeling.
Yesterday I wondered out loud if President Bush’s new budget called for ending subsidies to farmers or agribusiness. Today I have an answer from an unlikely source.
I refer to Rich Lowry, of the National Review. In his syndicated column in today’s Albuquerque Journal, Lowry says the big dollars go to the big producers, 60% of the public money to 10% of the farm corporations, not the family farmer.
He also argues that the farm subsidy system didn’t work well when the New Deal invented it during the Depression and has no justification whatsoever post-Depression.
Not only that, says Lowry, it's senseless to give money to "one of the country’s more marvelously efficient industries…" And yes, he terms the subsidies "welfare."
Sometimes you gotta love those Libertarians.
I am so delighted with Lowry’s argument that it is with some reluctance that I point out:
1) Subsidies helped agribusiness get that big, marvelous and efficient, 2) so did anti-trust violations and just plain crookery (see Archer-Daniels-Midland), 3) and so did protection from Midwestern lawmakers, notably Senators Hubert Humphrey and Robert Dole, both of whom received rich rewards from the industry.
I have no reluctance, however, in speculating that Bush’s cuts in farm subsidies are window-dressing and probably won’t survive the budget process. Republicans and many Democrats, you see, buy the Libertarian jeremiads against government interference with the free market when that interference is restraint on big business. But when the interference is the helping hand – well, why slap it down? Subsidies, tax breaks and tax holidays are not interference. you see.
Conclusion: While it's fun reading Lowry's Libertarian argument against subsidizing oour most prosperous corporations, the practical effect of the Libertarian program to weaken Washington is to strengthen the corporations, not me and not you.
I have read umpteen stories on the President’s budget proposals, several of which report he would cut subsidies to "farmers." Is that true or would subsidies to corporate agriculture go down?
I don’t know the answer because reporters traditionally don’t distinguish between the old MacDonalds, sunburned, in overalls and the executives at Cargill and Archer-Daniels-Midland and other huge "farm" corporations.
I will keep reading in hope of finding the answer.
Gosh, I like Donald Rumsfeld.
Sorry, but he’s brilliant and tough and has a wonderful respect for words, as he demonstrated in parrying every thrust from Bob Schieffer and Tom Friedman on Face the Nation this morning.
Of course, that does not make him a good Secretary of Defense. Even the most intelligent of us don’t grasp who we are inside and consequently mess up our dealings with external reality.
Consider Rumsfeld's comments on "Meet the Press" this morning. (Videotape made it possible to do both programs.) "Your heart breaks," he said, at the ultimate sacrifice made by US soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. He also was moved, he said, by the bravery of the Iraqis who voted last week.
No mention of the Department of Defense policy banning TV cameras at the arrival in the US of the coffins of those brave young Americans whose sacrifice so affects him. (We saw those pictures during the Vietnam War.)
No mention, either, of any of his several miscalculations, some of which contributed to the need for more coffins. (The closest we got to that was when Schieffer raised the celebrated "You go to war with the Army you have" balderdash, against which Rumsfeld held his ground.)
Is Don Rumsfeld cynical? Hypocritical? I doubt it. We all edit our minds and psyches, erasing, rewriting, forgetting (or in shrinkspeak, repressing). He's entitled to do the same.
I just wish the news guys – assuming they remember – would remind us of the contradictions more often. They don't need to scream, just look at the record.
What follows is not a comment on the news biz.
At the top of Page 13 of the Albuquerque today is a story headlined "Congress May Boost Indecency fines."
Near the bottom of the page we read about and see a photo of the State of the Union hug between the mother of a dead US Marine who died in Iraq and an Iraqi woman who just voted for the first time.
I am happy for the Iraqi voter. And moved by the Marine’s sacrifice. Particularly when I read that he told his mother he was in Iraq to protect her.
But no, he wasn’t there for that reason. That was the lie his leaders told him. Which makes me wonder what indecency is. And if we ought to levy fines on politicians who tell young soldiers lies – about protecting their mothers, for example – so as to pursue neo-con geo-political schemes.
Janet Jackson’s exposed breast killed nobody.
George W. Bush, hiding and shading and misusing information, has snuffed out the lives of many thousands.
What’s indecent?
As you read accounts of George W. Bush’s drive to kill Social Security, watch out for Democrats who use the word "compromise."
The Democratic Establishment – which includes the Clintons and Bill Richardson - is determined to move the party rightward, again, before the next election.
(Bill Clinton indicated, remember, that he was open to some privatization of Social Security when he visited Albuquerque for a forum on the subject a few years ago.)
On the principle that you cannot be "a little bit" pregant, "some privatization" will mean the death of the system.
So "compromise" will be how the Democrats sell out on Social Security in their single-minded (and poorly reasoned) attempt to regain the White House.
You wouldn’t know it from reading our local newspapers, but a huge fight within the Democratic Party is coming to an end, Governor Richardson was a major combatant and he lost.
There have been paragraphs, of course, about Bill Richardson’s role in selecting the new Democratic Chairman, just no thoughtful dope story.
Not so at the New York Times, where the battle between former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, who wanted the job, and lots of other Democrats engaged in a stop-Dean campaign, was the top national story a couple of days ago.
Today, the Journal notes that John Wertheim, chairman of the state Democratic Party, has endorsed Dean. I take that to mean that Governor Richardson has thrown in the towel, but wants distance from the defeat.
If I am correct in thinking that we are inundated with facts but short-changed on meaning these days, then editors ought to be re-thinking what they do.
Consider this morning’s Albuquerque Journal. On the first page of the "Metro & New Mexico" section, is Jim Ludwick’s story from the State Legislature headlined "Lawmakers Try to Block Impact Fees."
On the next page, we find Ludwick story about Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez wanting to see "new faces" on the City Council.
The reason for the move in Santa Fe to block impact fees is that the Albuquerque Council passed them over the Mayor’s opposition. That’s why he would like new faces there.
So the two stories belong side-by-side.
Mind you, there are good reasons the editor built the page the way he or she did – like the importance of stories, the desirability of having variety of them, their length, the optimal size of the color photo and how everything fit in the allotted space.
I’m just a fool for making connections whenever possible.
There is good news from Iraq. A lot of Iraqis, mostly Shiites and Kurds, voted in the elections. At the very least that tells us not all Muslims and not all Arabs follow Osama bin Laden. It may have even more hopeful aspects.
This good news, however, doesn’t mean that Iraq is a democracy or will ever become a democracy. Or that the Mideast will become democratic. Or that democratic nations there would be preferable to the current authoritarian regimes. It does not mean that the worst is past in Iraq. Nor that the US will escape Iraq any time soon.
Also, lest we forget - this good news cost a great deal – the lives of almost 1,500 young American soldiers and I don’t know how many thousands of Iraqis (military and civilian both). Billions of dollars, too.
Good news, then, but a flickering light in a very dark cave full of dangerous pitfalls.
Which is what makes Sen. Pete Domenici’s comments on the Iraqi elections so cheap.
"This election is…," he said on the Senate floor, "a great vindication of President Bush’s idea that Iraq, once a danger to the world, would go in the direction of being a peace-loving country."
Now Pete Domenici is nobody’s fool. So that "vindication" statement – so simplistic, glib and arrogant - cannot represent his real understanding of what’s happening.
No, the Senator’s comments are politics as usual. Hardly deserving of any special attention. Except that the front page yesterday of the same issue that reported the Senator’s comments on page D3 told us that another young man from New Mexico kid won’t be coming home.
In that context, I find Domenici’s politicking tawdry.
"St. Pete" indeed.
I wouldn’t spend time on this except that nobody else will.
Watch the editorial and Op Ed pages of our New Mexico newspapers for the next several days. Nobody will hold the Senator to account on the editorial or Op Ed pages.
Such is the nature of the press these days.