Category: Social Media

Media: cut on the bias

This week, Vivian Schiller, the head of NPR (National Public Radio) resigned.  This was immediately after Ron Schiller (no relation) a worker bee at NPR was caught on tape telling a couple of reporters — disguised as members of a fictitious Moslem organization — that the Republican Party had been hijacked by the Tea Party movement.  He went on to say that the Tea Party membership were “sort of white, middle America, gun-toting …. seriously racist, racist people.”  Not satisfied with that, he intimated that most Americans were “uneducated” bumpkins.  (This isn’t exactly the way it happened, but it’s close enough.)  You can see the actual tape, if you want.  It’s all over YouTube.

This whole series of events fanned the flames under the ever-popular accusation that the media has a leftwing bias.  I’m going to lay this controversy to rest right now.  It does.  However, to be fair, it also has a rightwing bias.  It all depends on who you’re listening to this afternoon.  The fact is the media is slanted.  There is no such thing as fair reporting.  Journalists and editors construct news stories in such a way as to elicit a preconceived response from you the public.  This bias is in every news source from the mega circulation New York Times, CNN and Fox right down to the smallest community radio station and alternative newspaper.  Anybody who tells you anything different is either very young, delusional or lying.

Every news agency — from Al Jazeera to The Jacksonville Bugle — makes a big show of being committed to fair and balanced reporting.  They all say, “We don’t make the news; we just report it.”  This is crap. 

First of all, news agencies decide which stories they’re going to cover and which get a miss.  For example, as Gaddafi battles for his place in the sand have you heard anything about the economic trouble in Greece or Ireland lately?  I doubt very much that either one of them has gotten its financial house in order and is currently living happily ever after.  So — where did they go?  No, reporters don’t make the news; that’s true.  But they do pick and choose.  This is not a nefarious plot to deceive the public.  It’s just trying to cram 24 hours’ worth of unholy mayhem into two-and-a-half written columns or Top of Hour headlines (complete with traffic, sports and weather.)  There just isn’t enough time.  So editors and reporters decide — in advance — what they’re going to tell you.

Next, somebody has to write the story.  Regardless of how it’s presented, somebody’s got to pound out the words.  Any journalist will tell you that every news story consists of Who, What, Where, When and Why.  Obviously, Who, What, Where and When are easy — a German Shepherd with a thumb can figure those ones out.  The real problem for journalists is Why, because without Why, you don’t have a story.   The unfortunate thing about Why is it’s endless.  You can connect Colonel Gaddafi’s current problems back to Cleopatra and the Ptolemy Dynasty — if you have enough time.  But there’s the rub.  Ordinary news stories are about six minutes long, at best.  But there is no way in hell anybody can explain the situation in Libya in less time than it takes to make Kraft Dinner.  Even Bill Shakespeare couldn’t do it.  Journalists, therefore, pick a side and turn Why into blame.  If you’ll notice, in most social or political news stories, somebody always ends up wearing the black hat.  It’s just easier that way — especially when you’re working to a deadline.  And all news comes with a deadline. 

Finally, journalism is a tough job, and most journalists simply aren’t up to the task.  They have little or no experience outside the media, and they don’t have any particular expertise.  It’s interesting to note that when the CNN crowd appeared on the Celebrity Jeopardy Invitational, they all lost.  What kind of credibility is that when you get your intellectual ass kicked by the guy who played “Lenny” on Laverne and Shirley?  Furthermore, it’s difficult to explain to the general public what’s going on in complicated places like Libya, for example, when you have no idea yourself.  It’s quite a bit easier to trot out Gaddafi — looking like a lunatic — and then cut the camera to jet trails and explosions.  Nobody (outside of the nutbars at Fox) has actually come right out and said Gaddafi’s a maniac, but everybody gets the idea.

Most journalists work on this same principle.  They have no background on the subject they’re covering, so they bring their opinion to the story, instead.  It’s quick and easy.  The unfortunate thing is then they have to manipulate the story to support their original opinion; whereas, in fact, it such be the other way around – the story should dictate the opinion.  For example, Dan Rather believed George W. Bush was a bad president, so when evidence showed up to support his belief, he didn’t bother to check it.  He rushed it through to the six o’clock deadline.  It was a bad mistake.

So how do we escape the media bias?  We don’t.  There is only one way to avoid being swept along the path of least resistance that most journalists take.  We have to start listening to the people we don’t agree with — even those fools at Fox.  If we don’t, we’re just as bad as they are.  For example, I don’t think Ron Schiller, the guy who started this storm, ever stepped outside his comfort zone in his life.  Maybe if he had, he wouldn’t have become such a bigot.

International Women’s Day 2011

Yesterday was International Women’s Day; in fact, it was the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day.  This is a landmark occasion, so, at the risk of being condemned to patriarchal hell for all eternity, I’ve decided to write a few words.  To the arch-feminists in the crowd: yes, I understand I can’t speak with any authority about women.  To the folks caught in a 19th century time warp: no, I haven’t sold out my gender.  To everybody else: keep an open mind.  (One of the hazards of living in the 21st century is the disclaimers just keep getting longer and longer.)

Either way, International Women’s Day is an important event.  It’s a day to stop for a moment, take out the equality scorecard and see how everybody’s doing.  There are three schools of thought on women’s equality: 1) Women have come a long way in one hundred years, 2) No, we (they) haven’t and 3) Oh, God!  Do we have to do this again?  Personally, I roll with #1 — with a ton of asterisks, if, for no other reason than a couple of weeks ago, Hillary told Hosni to clean out his desk.  In 1911, she’d still be baking pies, defending husband Bill and staring down the gossip in the hope that he might be home for dinner.  See what I mean?  There’s something very plus ca change about the relationship between Venus and Mars in our society, but that’s my whole point.

Women may be doing all the things men do, but our world is full of subtle illustrations that women’s equality is quietly missing the mark.

For example, female role models have changed over the last hundred years.  Back in the 20th century, long before anybody thought about the equality of the sexes, the public faces of women’s achievement were people like Helen Keller, Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt.  As the women’s movement gathered speed girls looked to Shirley Chisholm, Sally Ride and Sandra Day O’Connor as the kind of people they wanted to emulate.  These days, however, despite over half a century of better education and opportunity most girls know more about the Kardashian sisters and Snooki than they do about Indra K. Nooyi or Olympia Snowe.  And it’s important to note that Snooki is actually replacing the likes of Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie.  This has been going on for a while.  Don’t get me wrong: I’ve got nothing against either Snooki or Kim Kardashian.  They both strike me as very good businesswomen, who have taken limited resources and turned them into substantial bucks.  I just don’t think the girls I knew, back in the day, who worked so hard to be taken seriously by their male counterparts, envisioned sexual marketing as the conduit to equality for their granddaughters.  It’s really all about image versus substance.

The female image has also changed quite a bit since 1911.  In film, for instance, women spent most of the last century as emotionally confused damsels in distress.  Today, they’re far more independent.  They get to choose their partners.  They solve problems.  They have their own storyline.  In action movies, sometimes they get to saddle up with the men and go out and do battle with the monster or the villain.  This all looks very much like an equal opportunity to get eaten by the swamp beast, but take another look.  The boys are wearing some heavy-duty armour but she’s dressed in high heels and a thong.  In other words, it’s “We’re all in this together honey, but you don’t get as many clothes.”  It’s pretty much the same in all movies.  There’s always an extra button undone.  I have no problem with filmmakers portraying female sexuality, but times have changed and movies should also.  When Halle Berry comes walking out of the surf in Die Another Day (2002) she looks remarkably like Ursula Andress walking out of the surf in Dr. No (1962.)  I understand the director did this on purpose.  My question is why?   (And I’m not even going to talk about Catwoman, which is a disgrace.)  I think most people find it hard to believe that any assistant district attorney, or vice-president, or special government agent spends that much time falling out of her clothes.  Yet this is the image of women we’ve all come to expect, if not accept.

Of course, in the end, it’s not only about image.  We just happen to live in a visual age.  It’s how we judge ourselves.  And it’s how we judge women.  At this point in time, celebrities — male and female — hold pride of place in our society.  Scientists, doctors and economists do not.  Sex sells.  These are all facts; we might not like them, but they do exist.  Therefore, it’s only natural that young girls are looking at wild and crazy Kim Kardashian and steering away from stern and steady Condoleezza Rice.  However, history has a way of sorting things out.  Let me tell you a story.  One hundred years ago, in 1911, Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.  At the same time, she was being ripped apart in the French newspapers for having a love affair with Paul Langevin, a married student who was five years younger that she was.  This went on for months.  Today, history remembers Marie Curie but has all but forgotten the love affair.  Chances are good that, on International Women’s Day 2061, people will remember Irene Rosenfeld, Angela Merkel and Sonia Sotomayor; Snooki, Kim and Khloe will all have been swept away.

Legal Aliens: We are not alone

Yesterday, the British Ministry of Defence declassified 35 documents and released them to the public.  They’re all about UFOs.  There are over 8000 pages of absolutely brilliant stuff: pictures and drawings, eye-witness reports and secret investigations.  There are testimonials and detailed descriptions of sightings by policemen, air traffic controllers and members of the military.  There’s even stuff about a debate in the House of Lords.  It’s really cool and you can download it for free HERE at the British National Archives.  This stuff covers everything except one teeny-tiny, itty-bitty point.  There is not one scrap of tangible evidence that extraterrestrials have ever visited Mother Earth – not even on a flyby.

Now, before every nerd west of Cape Cod pulls up his fightin’ pants, let me assure you that I believe there is other intelligent life in the universe.  I went to school like everybody else; I understand that there are millions of galaxies, billions of stars and trillions of planets.   I know that the universe is billions of years old.  Simple logic dictates that when you’re dealing with numbers this big, probability is no longer a percentage; it’s a certainty.  Somewhere, sometime, some thing crawled out from under that rock and became self-aware.  It’s a fact.  Anybody who still believes we are alone in the universe obviously flunked Math 12 and didn’t do very well in Science, either.  However, having said that, I don’t believe flying saucers are zipping around our stratosphere, playing peekaboo with American F-18s.  I don’t believe spacemen showed up one day and built Stonehenge and the Pyramids.  And I sure as hell don’t believe aliens crash-landed at Roswell, New Mexico and the government is keeping them on ice in the basement of the White House.  None of this stuff is true.  Here’s why.

Every single theory about alien visitations runs into the same three insurmountable problems.  The first one is the total and complete lack of any evidence.  Just FYI, grainy photographs and jerky videos do not constitute evidence.  I have a 13-year-old niece who Photoshopped Santa Claus with a fighter jet escort; shiny disks in the sky wouldn’t be a problem.  And all those eye-witness accounts are, at best, circumstantial.  I’m sure that the people who report these things do see something (in most cases, I don’t think they’re actually lying) but there’s a huge leap of faith between shapes that move in the distance and alien invaders.  That’s why they call them UFOs: the big word to remember is “unidentified.”  It doesn’t mean “unearthly.”  People see things, but what they see is a whole different matter.  After all, any detective will tell you eye-witness accounts are the least reliable evidence at a crime scene.  Without any physical evidence to back them up, photos, videos and eye-witness accounts are suspect, at best.

The other thing that bothers me about all these eye-witness accounts is that 90% of the spaceships are flying saucers, and 99% of the aliens look like ET.  Billions and billions of planets, but Toyota has more different kinds of vehicles than the aliens do?  That doesn’t make any sense.  As far as that goes, there’s no reason aliens should have two arms, two legs and a head, either.  Again, billions and billions of planets: you would think that one or two of them might have had a different evolutionary track.  So why, then, do all reported alien sightings feature creatures and technology easily recognized by humans?  Finally, to all those people who claim they’ve been abducted by aliens, I want to know one thing.  Why did they give you back?  Why aren’t you in a zoo somewhere — or stuffed — in some Martian Museum of Natural History?

The second insurmountable problem with alien visitations is, quite simply, why.  Why are aliens coming here?  What’s the attraction?  We are a small planet, revolving around a tiny star in a minor galaxy, tucked away in the corner of the universe.  We’re so far off the Intergalactic Interstate we probably don’t show up on all that many maps.  Our sun is barely visible from Pluto, for god sake.  Anybody else who’s looking wouldn’t even see us.   So why come here?  Are they trying to learn from our exemplary environmental record?  Or is it our successes in international relations?  Or maybe they just want to download some apps?  The truth is we don’t have that much to offer sophisticated beings capable of intergalactic travel.  Perhaps they’re just going Jane Goodall on our ass and studying us, like chimpanzees.  If they are, you’d think they’d want to get a little closer look than stealing a fat guy from Pig’s Nose, Arkansas and probing him.  The only reason I can see that maybe — just maybe — those bright lights in the sky are spaceships is if they’re stolen, and a bunch of alien crack addicts are joyriding in the back of beyond.  Aside from that, there’s no reason for them to come here and certainly no reason for them to come back several thousand times.

This brings us to the third and final insurmountable problem.  Why do aliens always show up in weird places?  Let’s assume, for a second, that there is something here that aliens might be interested in.  Why don’t they just go there and either get it or study it?  There’s no reason any being (from whatever planet) would take the time and trouble to come all the way here and then dick around, flying over Heathley Common in England, making crop circles.  You’d think they’d want to talk to somebody from MIT — or visit the Louvre — or have lunch with Mandela or Obama (or even Ignatieff — he’s a smart guy.)   But no — they go sneaking around in the twilight, over some schoolyard in Nebraska.  Even if aliens can’t figure out who’s running the show on this planet, they must know who the dominant species is and where the majority of us congregate.  Yet you never have alien sightings on 5th Avenue, New York — or Trafalgar Square — or the Kremlin.  It stretches the elastic of disbelief to the breaking point to have several thousand alien sightings but none of them in a populated area like the Tokyo-Yokohama corridor, or Cairo.  This just doesn’t make sense.  After all, if your ancestors built the Pyramids, why not go back there?

What does make sense, however, is despite the intervening 500 years since Copernicus, humans still think that we’re the centre of the universe and that beings from far and wide can’t wait to eyeball us (if they even have eyeballs.)  We’re not folks!  Get over yourselves.  Aliens have way better things to do with their time than flying around the suburbs, waiting for Meghan and Eddie to read the instructions on their Handycam.

The documents from the Ministry of Defence are fun, though, and a great read.   And, quite honestly, I have no logical explanation for half the stuff that’s in there.