I want to tell you about some movies I have seen. If, however, you are patient, there will be a payoff about journalism.
I saw "Jarhead" yesterday, a film based on a novel by an ex-Marine who served in the first Gulf War. It’s less a war movie than a study of the young men who become US Marines and of the extraordinary pressures they face in training and waiting, waiting for combat.
Very impressive. Quite respectful of the soldiers. Not anti-war. Just tough-minded. The polar opposite of the World War II movies I grew up on, which were fables.
Last week, I saw "Syriana," an attempt to dramatize the complexities of foreign policy and, in particular, oil policy, in the last 35-40 years.
It doesn’t fully succeed in humanizing the story and its attempt to describe the nexus of oil and money and Arab nationalism and Islam is often downright confusing. Yet it comes very close, a lot closer to its target than most journalism I read.
A while back, I saw "Lord of War," with Nicholas Cage. It’s about the international arms trade that involves both private arms dealers and the world’s major powers.
Also,"Good Night and Good Luck," George Clooney’s tribute to Edward R. Murrow which was intended, too, to remind us that TV once dallied with journalism. However, it also reminded me that Murrow’s most dynamic descendent is Fox News. (Murrow pioneered advocacy. They do it every day. Difference? He was up front about his goals, they deny the obvious.)
Looking back at the four movies, I conclude that if journalism is supposed to find truths and convey them, you do better to frequent the multiplex these days than watch or read daily journalism.
Since the movies make you sit through umpteen ads and previews, you may want to take along a small magazine. Judging from Consumer Reports, at least, they can be worthwhile. This year, the Consumers Union publication revealed that EPA numbers on gas mileage are inaccurate and raised real doubts about the safety of our food and our drugs.
Who says there’s no good reporting around? You just have to look for it in all the wrong places.
Here is the my column for th Albuquerque Tribune published Thursday, Dec. 22.
IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS
If such strong convictions on war, religion comes from genes, then Bush swims in DNA pool.
By Arthur Alpert
Everybody knows Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle but nobody knows mine.
With his formulation, the German creator of quantum mechanics (1901-1976) provoked an uproar in science and energized philosophy, too. Ergo, it’s famous.
The Alpert principle - stated simply as "It’s just possible that I’m wrong" – is obscure. We live in an age of certainties. Doubt is out and I do not know why.
Genetics? I was born fearful and have struggled toward self-confidence. Does this explain why my strong political views stop short of certain? Did heredity gave Osama bin Laden the opposite, a lack of self-doubt? Maybe, but George W. Bush sure knows what he thinks and he was a troubled guy until born again. So discard DNA as the sole mother of all certainty.
Is certainty a form of paranoia? Maureen Dowd of the New York Times enjoys painting Vice President Cheney cowering in his bunker. It's plausible - why else would he conflate 9/11 and Iraq and so often warn of the Apocalypse? Nobody doubts Mr. Cheney’s intelligence, so unless you think he’s cynical, you have to consider the possibility he’s ruled by fear.
Or maybe, it’s about belief. As a card-carrying agnostic, I’m no expert, but (like Justice Stewart with porno) I know it when I see it. Happily belief or faith often inspires love, kindness and art. Unfortunately, true believers provoke murderous events, too. Historically, the wholesale spillers of blood are hardly relativists, No, they are sects and societies fearful of doubt. Like the Soviet and Maoist Communists. Like countless armies fulfilling what they say is God’s plan.
Which makes Lincoln wishy-washy. Abe was speculating even in mid- Civil War that "God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party…" What a wimp.
Does morality breed certainty? We know the rules, you don’t, you die. This has a certain logic if morality equals decency. It doesn’t. Remember Huck Finn struggle to find the Good. Should he uphold morality, everything God-fearing folks hold dear, by ratting on the escaped slave, Jim? Or help his dear friend, Jim, and risk burning in Hell?
Certainty bears such bitter fruit. My country is a serial torturer. The President, having misled us into a war of choice, conducts it secretly and outside the Constitution. Opinion is split but millions of Americans still applaud. Outrageously, the warmongers characterize doubters as immoral or treasonous. And liberals, defamed, snivel, pleading for decorum.
Me, I leave manners to Thelma Domenici, who advises on and writes about corporate social skills and manners. My view is that people who wrap themselves in flags and religious symbols to wage optional war and subvert my Constitution, who characterize dissent as disloyalty, need to be properly identified. They are Fascist wannabees.
Still, I don’t know how they arrived, internally, at certainty. Surely they think themselves innocent, even heroic. So I hesitate to condemn them the way they do me. Besides, I’m always spotting villains who, it turns out, wear red noses and floppy shoes..
So I wish them well. Maybe Christmas will pacify the paranoid, divert the God-told-me-to-bomb-first gang. Funny, I know no carols about sending trusting young soldiers to die for - what’s the latest party line? - spreading democracy None preaching secrecy, intolerance, wealth as virtue or supply side economics. Nope, Christmas, as I remember it, is about an infant bringing news of love and peace and hope.
Yes, maybe Christmas will help, but I am far from certain.
Alpert is a semiretired journalist in Albuquerque. Email him at ArthurAlpert@swcp.com. His column runs the fourth Thursday of the month.
A while back, I wrote umpteen times about the way the Albuquerque Journal and other newspapers identify their Op Ed contributors. I worried that many who were associated with think tanks and other orgnaizations I did not know were not, in fact, hgonest opinion-mongers.
Today's New York Times carries a story that justifies my worries, I think.
Here is the article.
On Opinion Page, a Lobby's Hand Is Often Unseen
By PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 - Susan Finston of the Institute for Policy
Innovation, a conservative research group based in Texas, is just the
sort of opinion maker coveted by the drug industry.
In an opinion article in The Financial Times on Oct. 25, she called for
patent protection in poor countries for drugs and biotechnology
products. In an article last month in the European edition of The Wall
Street Journal, she called for efforts to block developing nations from
violating patents on AIDS medicines and other drugs.
Both articles identified her as a "research associate" at the institute.
Neither mentioned that, as recently as August, Ms. Finston was
registered as a lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and
Manufacturers of America, the drug industry's trade group. Nor was there
mention of her work this fall in creating the American Bioindustry
Alliance, a group underwritten largely by drug companies.
The institute says Ms. Finston's ties to industry should not have
prevented her from writing about those issues. Nor is there a conflict,
it says, in the work of Merrill Matthews Jr., who writes for major
newspapers advocating policies promoted by the insurance industry even
though he is a registered lobbyist for a separate group backed by it.
"Lobbying is not a four-letter word," said the institute's president,
Tom Giovanetti.
But organizations like the institute, which bills itself as an
independent, nonprofit research group committed to a "smaller, less
intrusive government," are facing new and uncomfortable scrutiny over
their links to special interest groups after the disclosure this week
that the Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff had paid at least two outside
writers for opinion articles promoting the work of his clients.
One writer, Peter Ferrara, an advocate of privatizing Social Security
who is often quoted by news organizations, including The New York Times,
works for the institute as a senior policy adviser.
The other, Doug Bandow, a scholar for the libertarian Cato Institute and
a columnist for the Copley News Service, resigned from both after
acknowledging that he had received as much as $2,000 an article from Mr.
Abramoff for writing in support of his lobbying clients, including
Indian tribe casinos. Mr. Abramoff is now the focus of a federal
corruption investigation involving his gifts to members of Congress.
The issue of whether supposedly independent writers and researchers are
having their work underwritten - directly or indirectly - by lobbyists
and other special interests is hardly new.
But the payments by Mr. Abramoff and a closer review of the work of the
Institute for Policy Innovation, a group founded in 1987 by a former
House Republican leader, Dick Armey of Texas, are evidence that the ties may be much closer than research
organizations, conservative and liberal, would prefer to admit.
The Bush administration acknowledged this year that it had paid outside
writers, including Armstrong Williams, the conservative columnist and
television commentator, to promote the Education Department policy known
as No Child Left Behind.
Executives in the public relations and lobbying industries say that the
hiring of outside commentators to promote special interests - typically
by writing newspaper opinion articles or in radio and television
interviews - does happen, although it is impossible to monitor since the
payments do not have to be disclosed and can be disguised as speaking
fees and other compensation.
While major newspapers and magazines usually insist that outside writers
disclose conflicts of interest, editors do not routinely conduct
background checks, especially for authors affiliated with credible
research groups.
Brian Groom, an editor at The Financial Times who handles opinion
articles for the newspaper, based in London, said he did not recall
being told of Ms. Finston's ties to the drug and biotechnology
industries before publishing the article.
The editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal, Paul Gigot, said
in an interview that "we're absolutely convinced" the paper was not told
of Ms. Finston's industry ties. The paper might still have run the
article, he said, but with more information about her background.
David Rickey, chairman of the board of ethics of the Public Relations
Society of America, an industry group that includes lobbyists, said the
industry opposed the use of outside writers to promote a client's
interests unless the financial ties were fully acknowledged. "This is
going to sound pretty much mom and apple pie," he said. "But if there is
a conflict of interest, it must be disclosed."
In announcing the departure of Mr. Bandow last week, the Cato Institute
said it required its writers to disclose all affiliations that might
influence their work.
Mr. Giovanetti of the Institute for Policy Innovation said that he, too,
insisted that "anyone working with I.P.I. must disclose any pertinent
lobbying relationships and conflicts of interest whenever they act on
behalf of I.P.I., including published projects."
But he also suggested it was naÔve to see a conflict of interest in the
articles by Ms. Finston or by Dr. Matthews. There is no accusation that
Ms. Finston or Dr. Matthews, unlike Mr. Ferrara, received direct
payments from an outside lobbyist like Mr. Abramoff for an opinion article.
Mr. Giovanetti said it was "no surprise that a person can move back and
forth between the worlds of lobbying and public policy, just as a person
can move back and forth between policy and politics."
In a brief interview, Ms. Finston said that she left the pharmaceutical
manufacturers' association in May and that the filings showing her as a
lobbyist as recently as mid-August were in error.
She said that she notified the institute this fall that she would be
ending her relationship with it to turn her attention to the American
Bioindustry Alliance, the new trade group, but that her articles were
already in the pipeline for publication. She said she believed that the
papers had been told of her industry ties by the institute. "It's clear
that there shouldn't be any subterfuge," she said.
Dr. Matthews, who holds a doctorate in philosophy, said in an interview
that he was careful to identify his ties to the Council for Affordable
Health Insurance, an industry group based in Alexandria, Va., when
writing about insurance issues for outside publications.
He noted his affiliation with both the council and the institute in
several recent opinion articles, including one published Dec. 5 in USA
Today titled, "Medicaid Is Still Welfare." The article recommended that
the government allow participants in Medicaid, the federal health
program for more than 50 million low-income people, to "move into
private insurance." The council's Web site identifies it as an "advocacy
organization promoting free-market health insurance reforms."
Dr. Matthews said that while he was identified as a lobbyist in
Congressional records, he lived in Texas and "can't think of the last
time I was on Capitol Hill talking to a legislator."
Mr. Giovanetti said the institute had a policy of not identifying its
individual donors. But he did reveal that it received no money from
health insurance companies, lessening a possible conflict of interest in
its relationship with Dr. Matthews. Asked if the institute had accepted
money from pharmaceutical manufacturers or any drug companies affiliated
with Ms. Finston, Mr. Giovanetti would not comment.
Yesterday I saw "Good Nght and Good Luck", the George Clooney movie on Edward R. Murrow's confrontation with Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy. It's very, very good - spare, well-written, restrained. But here is what struck me:
Murrow's famous speech to the Radio-TV News directors Association suggested that television was shirking its duty by doing entertainment rather than devoting time, money and energy to news and public affairs.
It didn't happen that way. What came to pass, of course, is that entertainment infiltrated and captured news and public affairs. The documentaries are gone, replaced by news magazines that are more entertaining than probing. Evening newscasts contain a little less news content, a lot less foreign news (war reports excepted) and rely heavily on features. Morning TV is almost pure entertainment aimed at a specific demographic - women 18-35. And local TV news isn't news; for the most part, it illustrates the police blotter.
Fact: Michael Scanlon, Jack Abramoff’s former partner and former top aide to Rep. Tom DeLay (Rep., TX) pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe a Congressman.
Fact: Rep. Bob Ney (Rep., Ohio) accepted gifts from Abramoff.
Fact: Rep. Randy Cunningham (R., CA) admitted he took bribes.
And the Wall Street Journal says the Justice Department is investigating Abramoff’s dealings with other members of Congress, many of them from the GOP.
It follows, right, that the Justice Department will pursue these cases with vigor.
I am not so sure. In fact, I suspect otherwise. The Attorney General is, after all, a presidential pal of long duration. Also, he’s the brain who wrote a memo giving legal wiggle-room to torturers at the Pentagon and CIA.
And Watergate, where the cover-up involved the Attorney General, wasn’t that long ago.
Yet I have seen no suggestion in any coverage of the burgeoning scandals that the Justice Department will do less than its duty.
Faith-based journalism, again.
In fairness, we all tend to assume that our institutions are trustworthy until we are shown evidence to the contrary. That’s human, not just journalistic, nature.
Reporters, however, are supposed to exercise skepticism, not faith.