Author: Patrick Maines

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Ship of Fools

Imagine that every person in the United States were aboard a large life raft, in the open ocean, amidst a hurricane.  In that circumstance how many of the nation’s factions would be pressing their special interests?  Would the environmentalists yammer on about “global warming"?  Or the political class about the likely composition of the presidential tickets in 2012?

Surely the answer to those questions is no.  In that situation the only issue that would be of interest to everyone aboard would be how to survive their predicament.

As it happens, everyone in the United States is aboard that life raft.  It’s called the USS Economy.  But because of their own tunnel vision and fundamental lack of knowledge, aided and abetted by the distracting, sententious, and superficial reportage of the media, the people still don’t fully realize it.

This country’s current and prospective fiscal and economic problems are of such a magnitude that if they are not satisfactorily addressed, and soon, the United States is at serious risk of evolving, at tremendous speed, from a prosperous and democratic country into a banana republic.

The evidence of this calamitous portent is not only easy to find, it’s coming in the windows!  It’s shown in the decline in GDP, employment, tax revenue at all levels of government, and in the growth of the national debt.  And these depressing data are reflected in the decline of virtually all asset classes as investors here and abroad reset their portfolios to the new and emerging realities. 

Nor is the threat of declining living standards and loss of opportunity the only thing we have to fear.  Though it’s noted almost never, the principal reason the United States won the Cold War is because our economy was bigger than that of the Soviet Union.  Because of this we were able to steer the course of commerce and technology around the world.  And because of this our military was bigger and better than the USSR’s.

But today it’s the Chinese who have the momentum in their economy — the same Chinese who, though they’ve adopted capitalistic economic reforms, much to their advantage, are still led by a corrupt and undemocratic political regime.  How long after the Chinese economy surpasses our own will it take before the Chinese military surpasses our own?

Despite these hard truths, too much of the media continue to misreport and under report the nation’s economic affairs.  Like a bakery offering everything from crullers to éclairs to donuts, they persist in delivering news that puts the trivial and fatuous on the same footing as the crucial.

Which is why I offer this modest proposal.  How about creating a national observance (call it Get Serious Week) during which all of the media, print and electronic, refrain from reporting on anything but the nation’s fiscal and economic challenges?  For one full week no stories, for instance, about professional sports (the true opiate of the masses); pop culture celebrities, quick or dead; or the campaigns of single-issue zealots who enjoy such a disproportionate claim on the media’s attention.

It would undoubtedly cost some eyeballs and ad revenue, but at a time when the concept of the “public interest” has been reduced to a cliché, it would be a refreshing demonstration of the virtue in the real thing.

 

Posted on By Patrick Maines

“Whale Wars”: Just Another Fish Tale

If you believe, as I do, that Greenpeace is to conservation what televangelism is to religion, all that  would need to be said about Animal Planet’s “Whale Wars” is that the “captain” of the Sea Shepherds’ vessel, Paul Watson, is a co-founder of that organization.  Because, however, Greenpeace disputes Watson’s claim, amidst what appears to be a long-running feud between them, perhaps more may be required.

So here’s some.  As reported on Wikipedia, Watson has, at one time or another, been involved in campaigns on behalf of wolves, sharks, seals, dolphins, American Indians, and now whales.  Along the way he has relieved himself of opinions like his belief “that ‘no human community should be larger than 20,000 people,’ human populations should be reduced to ‘fewer than one billion,’ and that only those who are ‘completely dedicated to the responsibility’ of caring for the biosphere should have children.”

Though the fact of it may not have reached Animal Planet, Watson has also developed quite a revealing take on the media.  As he says in his book, heroically titled Ocean Warrior: “Survival in a media culture meant developing the skills to understand and manipulate media to achieve strategic objectives.”

But enough about Watson.  It’s the show that’s the thing, and a good critique of “Whale Wars” was published earlier this month on the Huffington Post.  The author, Richard Spilman, harpooned the series for its approving portrayal of vigilantism and feckless grandstanding.

“So what’s the problem with Whale Wars?” he asks.  “The problem is that it is cheap exploitation in praise of what is nothing less than eco-terrorism.  It is the glorification of vigilantism on the high seas.  And oh, by the way, the Sea Shepherds do almost nothing to protect the whales where they really do need protection.”

Mostly what they do is speed around offending ships in inflatables and attempt to loft stink bombs onto their decks, all the while flying and wearing the skull and crossbones of the Jolly Roger, an amusing choice of insignia considering that they don’t actually fight, or even scare, anybody.

In any contest between whales and whalers I would root for the whales.  But if the choice is between whalers and the Sea Shepherds, I’m with the whalers.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

With Friends Like These

Signs of institutional meltdown are everywhere apparent.  Wall Street and Detroit are obvious examples, as are the states of New York and California.  But nowhere is the collapse of standards and credibility more alarming than among journalists and their profession.

Evidence of journalism’s implosion is seen not only in the declining readership and viewership of the MSM, and in public opinion polls, but also in the recent antics of journalists themselves and of those grant-giving foundations that support journalism programs.

A lamentably good example of the latter was provided last week by the Knight Foundation — the largest provider of funding for such programs at universities and nonprofit organizations — and by the Associated Press.

In a release dated June 15, the AP announced that it was launching a project “to distribute watchdog and investigative journalism from nonprofit organizations to its 1,500 member newspapers.”  Two days earlier, the Knight Foundation announced a new $15-million program of grants to several investigative news organizations.  Among them are two that the AP plans to include in its distribution, the Center for Investigative Reporting and ProPublica.

These two announcements herald the birth of what would have been unthinkable in better times, the spectacle of an established news organization like AP accepting and distributing handouts from third parties.

Such an arrangement is, and would be, objectionable even if the “investigative news” organizations in question possessed the qualities of balance and objectivity.  But these don’t, and you don’t need to be an investigative reporter to figure that out.

Take, for example, the best funded of them, ProPublica.  From their own website comes this revealing statement about their mission: “Our work,” they say, “focuses exclusively on truly important stories, stories with ‘moral force.’  We do this by producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.”

What this suggests, of course, is that ProPublica is likely to have little or no interest in some of the worst aspects of public policy in the USA.  Things like the disastrous dependency on government, forged after decades of welfare programs, in America’s inner-city neighborhoods.  Or like the ruinous role played by public employees and their unions on state and municipal finance.  Or the impact on the cost and provision of health care by ambulance-chasing trial lawyers.

Just by their mission statement it’s clear that ProPublica’s heart wouldn’t be in doing these kinds of stories.  But that’s not the only evidence of the organization’s unfitness for the role being given it by the AP.  There’s also the small matter of its founder and largest benefactor.

Billionaire Herbert Sandler and his wife, Marion (they’re always mentioned together because of the role each played in the founding of Golden West Financial), have painted, through their contributions to Democratic and leftist organizations like the Center for American Progress and Acorn, an unmistakable ideological profile, leavened with a fair amount of hypocrisy.

As Jack Shafer of Slate put it, in a piece published shortly after the Sandlers founded ProPublica in 2007: “What do the Sandlers want for their millions?  Perhaps to return us to the days of the partisan press … ProPublica’s Web site vows that its investigations will be conducted in a ‘non-partisan and non-ideological manner, adhering to the strictest standards of journalistic impartiality.’  But philanthropists, especially those who earned the fortune they’re giving away, tend not to distribute their money with a blind eye to the results.  How happy will they be if ProPublica gores their sacred Democratic cows?  Or takes the ‘wrong’ position on their pet projects: health, the environment, and civil liberties?”

Providing an almost comic dimension to the Sandlers’ ambitions is the fact that earlier this year Time magazine named them to their list of the “25 people responsible for the financial crisis,” and "SNL" did a skit in ’08 in which it was suggested that they should be shot.

Looming over the whole of the Knight/AP exercise is the elephant in the room that is the public’s growing lack of trust in the media.  A piece written last month by Melik Kaylan for Forbes.com summarized that distrust as follows:

“The Reagan years also ushered in the distrust of the Eastern-seaboard intellectual elites.  President Reagan understood and exploited the great divide between the heartland and custodians of news, who were chiefly in New York.  The two sides saw two different Americas.  Journalists and the institutions that formed their ideas saw a country composed largely of wronged minorities with fascinating grievances.  Much of the country saw itself as a unified coherent nation with its traditions under siege from insular power blocs who were back-scratching each other all the way up and down the seaboards.  Out of that disconnect grew the success of Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, Ann Coulter, Fox News, the blogosphere and the great decentralizing force of the alternative media."

By an ironic coincidence, on the same day that the AP came out with its announcement, the Gallup organization released the results of a new poll of Americans’ ideological attitudes.  It found that conservatives outnumber liberals by a margin of 2 to 1.  More importantly it revealed that only 5 percent of the people consider themselves "very liberal," a designation that accurately describes the investigative nonprofits the AP and the Knight Foundation have now embraced.

Leave it to them to explain, as the media continue their march toward oblivion, how such a biased and shabby program will improve the public’s trust in the mainstream media or in journalism.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

‘Breaking Bad’: An Appreciation

Every once in awhile something happens in medialand that elevates and refreshes, and at least partially reclaims the enormous potential of the industry.  Media coverage of the events of 9/11 is one example, and the minor miracle that is AMC’s series "Breaking Bad" is another.

For the uninitiated, who unfortunately are legion, "Breaking Bad" is the story of Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher who, discovering that he has late-stage lung cancer, embarks on a career as a methamphetamine producer.

As measured by the awards, which already include a Peabody and two Emmys, and by the reviews, "BB" has already established itself as perhaps the best show on television.  The writing, acting, directing, and camera work are achingly good.  Unlike the X-rated products that are consumed by people with the emotional maturity of children, whatever their age, "Breaking Bad" really is adult entertainment.

In this brilliant series human beings are complex, neither all good nor all bad, itself a kind of challenge to a world immersed in the poses and pieties of political correctness.  And then there’s the subtlety of it; the communication, with no more than a look or a word, of a world of meaning. 

But the best is the essential humanity of the production — the notion that, no matter how unequal our circumstances, we are essentially the same, and capable of great understanding and empathy.  How else to explain the poignant and touching relationship between Walter and Jesse, Walt’s wayward former student and now partner in crime?

Because of the way the series ended its second season — and because the producer (Vince Gilligan) has told us so — we know that "BB" will be back for a third year, a fact that virtually guarantees more awards and critical acclaim.  And that’s all to the good.  But there are aspects of this phenomenon that invite some further comment that go not to art but to the lesser realms of politics and commerce.

One such observation is the folly of trying to enforce content standards on TV fare where no account is given to the context in which certain words or pictures are used.  "Breaking Bad" features a number of words, and acts of violence, which by themselves might offend some people.  But where, as here, such things are employed not to titillate but to deepen and extend the reality of the experience, one would think many people might see what a mistake it is to allow any kind of governmental censoring scheme that is blind to such distinctions.

The commercial aspect of this show that rankles a bit is the fact of its distribution by American Movie Classics (AMC), owned by Rainbow Media Holdings, itself a subsidiary of the cable operator, Cablevision Systems.  Which is not to say anything derogatory about AMC.  Far from it, the network, and all involved, should be enormously proud of what they’re delivering.  (Which, by the way, also includes the terrific original series, "Mad Men.")

But why, one wonders, isn’t "Breaking Bad" being shown on one of the bigger cable networks, or indeed on one of the broadcast networks?  Kind of hard to imagine that AMC was the producer’s first choice when, were the show being aired on USA or TNT — not to mention, say, ABC — the audience would likely be orders of magnitude larger.  One assumes it may have something to do with the very qualities that make the show so rewarding —that  it’s seen as too smart or sophisticated for a mass audience. 

If so, that’s a shame, both for the country and for the industry, and something that’s being noted.  As Tim Goodman, TV critic for the San Francisco Chronicle and enthusiastic fan of the series, put it: “It’s like I’ve been freed from the tyranny of network programming.” 

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Whither Journalism? Part II

If journalism of a satisfactory depth, independence, and scale is going to survive, it will have to be produced by professional journalists employed by profit-making organizations.  As such it will require revenue streams that are sufficient for the purpose.  As a practical matter this means that newspapers will have to find ways of getting paid for access to their online content.  Advertising by itself will not do the trick.

But given the growing number of bloggers, citizen journalists, and news aggregating sites who specialize in opinion pieces (RealClearPolitics, Huffington Post, Drudge) there is a real question of how professional journalists can distinguish themselves from the rest of their online competition.

The view from here is that the question answers itself.  Professional news organizations, newspapers especially, should rid their online news pages of opinion and concentrate instead on the production of news and feature stories that run deep and straight down the middle.

Unfortunately this is the precise opposite of what is in vogue today, with media organizations like Newsweek and even the Associated Press moving in the direction of more rather than less opinion in their news stories.  It’s a mistake.

Opinion is the cheapest commodity in the world, precisely because everybody has one.  No need for inside or expert sources, for special expertise in the subject matter, or even for any real writing ability.  Opinion gains recognition in direct proportion to the extravagance of its expression.  As such, opinion is the “killer app” not of newspapers but of the blogosphere, which is why a site as undistinguished as Daily Kos attracts such a large number of visitors.

The problem for newspapers is compounded when the opinions they express in their news and editorial pages are too one-sided politically.  To give one example, the New York Times, which is losing paid circulation at a ferocious pace, reads these days very much like a house organ in its support of the Democratic party and policies.

To believe that this is not spotted, and resented, by people who are, say, Republicans or conservatives, is an exercise in self-delusion.  Even if one wants to argue that Republicans and conservatives are not in the majority today, they represent a very large minority for any business needing to sell itself to the public at large.

In any case, the main point is that newspapers and other professional news organizations should concentrate on doing those things, like in-depth and objective coverage of domestic and foreign affairs, which neither the news aggregators nor the bloggers have the talent or resources to do themselves.

Whatever their future revenue streams — from advertising and micropayments or walled content — it’s going to be necessary for the “mainstream media” to finds ways of distinguishing themselves from their online competitors.  One way of doing that would be to practice first-rate journalism and rigorous objectivity in the reporting and analysis of the news.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Whither Journalism? Part I

As evidenced by recent hearings in the House and Senate, the future of journalism is attracting a lot of attention these days.  And why not?  Hardly a week goes by without news of the shutdown, bankruptcy reorganization, or downsizing of a daily newspaper somewhere.  And pretty much everyone seems to agree that newspapers are the “gold standard” among journalism organizations.

Journalists themselves have been dedicating large quantities of ink to the subject.  But like the witnesses at the congressional hearings, the prescriptions of journalists are as notable for what they don’t recommend as for what they do.

Actually, journalists aren’t recommending much of anything.  For the most part they content themselves with finger-wagging diatribes under headlines that read like draft obituaries.  Stories, for instance, like Howard Kurtz’s in the Washington Post (The Death of Print?) in which it’s argued that the blame belongs with the Internet and unimaginative and slow-footed management.  Or Frank Rich in the New York Times (The American Press on Suicide Watch), whose villain is an ungrateful public which “thinks nothing of spending money for texting or pornography” but is unwilling to shell out for … the opinions of Frank Rich?

And then, of course, there are the ideological opportunists, like John Nichols of The Nation (David Simon, Arianna Huffington and the Future of Journalism) who, true to his “class warrior” conceits, sums things up this way: “There will be time for the debate about solutions.  For now, it is not just useful but necessary to be clear about the cause of the crisis in journalism….  It wasn’t the Internet.  It wasn’t the current economic downturn.  It was a lousy ownership model that saw civic and democratic values replaced by the rapacious greed and commercial calculations of big media companies.”

Well, enough of this.  Let’s consider some solutions, and one very bad idea that is being offered up as a solution.

To take the bad idea first, the granting of nonprofit status to newspaper publishers makes no sense from either a journalistic or a business point of view.  Looked at journalistically, such a development would lead inexorably to challenges of these companies’ nonprofit status by governmental or private parties who would allege political partisanship.  Sooner or later these challenges would find traction, either in the courts, Congress, or in media boardrooms, thereby compromising the papers’ very reason for being.

As a business proposition, nonprofit status seems even more bizarre.  After all, the papers that are most notably failing today aren’t the work of mom-and-pop organizations.  They’re the products of the biggest companies in the industry, like Hearst, McClatchy, Gannett, and the Tribune Company — all of which are not only private, for-profit companies, but publicly owned companies (save for Tribune) at that.  How would the shareholders (or creditors) of any of them fare in such an arrangement?

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Time Warner Cable and Consumption-Based Billing


Time Warner Cable has had quite a bumpy ride for the past couple weeks.  Having announced earlier a plan to conduct trials of a consumption-based billing policy, in which users would be charged based on the amount of data they download and upload, by week’s end the company was obliged to suspend the trials altogether.

What happened in between were the protests of some customers and bloggers, the usual mischief of some of the “public interest” lobbies (they’re from Washington and they know what you want), and most importantly, the intervention, as critics, of a congressman (Massa) and a U.S. senator (Schumer).

Aside from the fact that broadband users who consume unusually large amounts of bandwidth, downloading movies and the like, would have to pay more, it’s not immediately clear what’s wrong with consumption-based billing.  That is, after all, the way we pay for most things, and it protects those who use less from having to subsidize the payments of those who use much more.

No matter.  In an age when information “wants to be free,” and everyone is entitled to everything, arguments based on marketplace economics are probably not going to persuade a lot of people, and certainly not grandstanding members of Congress.

Which is why, at the end of last week, Glenn Britt, Time Warner Cable’s CEO, announced a suspension of the trials scheduled for later this year in Rochester, N.Y., Austin and San Antonio, Texas, and Greensboro, N.C.

In a display of their usual savoir-faire, several of the “public interest” moguls were full of gloating, like that of Timothy Karr of Free Press: “We’re glad to see Time Warner Cable’s price-gouging scheme collapse in the face of consumer opposition.  Let this be a lesson to other Internet service providers looking to head down a similar path.”

Only slightly less tiresome was the statement of Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge: “The company properly listened to its subscribers, the public and policymakers, all of whom (emphasis added) were highly critical of the proposition in the first place.”

The celebrations, however, may be a bit premature.  What Time Warner Cable said was that it was suspending the trials, not abandoning consumption-based billing, and that in the meantime it was going to deploy measurement tools, a kind of “gas gauge,” that would allow users to see how much bandwidth they were using each month.

Assume that some months from now it transpires that the vast majority of users consume bandwidth in amounts that would qualify them for the lowest and cheapest tiers, while only a small minority would have to pay at the highest rates.  Now that would be awkward, wouldn’t it?

Posted on By Patrick Maines

‘Fixing’ CNBC

From a viral video to an online petition campaign, the Jon Stewart smackdown of the hapless Jim Cramer has spawned quite the kerfuffle.  As an Associated Press story describes it: “Some liberal political activists and economists are seizing on comedian Jon Stewart’s attacks of CNBC to push an online petition drive urging the network to be tougher on Wall Street leaders.”

According to the website put up by the organizers, FixCNBC.com, the petition has attracted more than 15,000 signatures as this is being written.  So what are we to say of all this?  A wholesome exercise in media criticism?  An earnest effort in promotion of journalistic excellence?

Well … no.  Actually, the whole affair is little more than a kind of “would you believe” gambit by people whose reason for being is the promotion of their ideological beliefs.  Truly, if there were a Madame Tussauds of the American Left, virtually all the organizations and individuals involved in Fix CNBC would be found there: Free Press, Robert McChesney, Media Matters for America, Eric Alterman, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.  The list goes on and on.

Like the conservative Brent Bozell’s minions at the Media Research Center, the only interest these people have in the media is as vehicles through which they may spread their political ideas.  That, and nothing else.  Not the public interest in quality journalism, nor in any kind of objective coverage of news and public affairs.  And most certainly not in any sophisticated and even-handed coverage of the financial and economic crisis.

So far the network has not responded directly either to the Fix CNBC organizers, or to Jon Stewart.  It will be interesting to see if they can maintain that posture, or if, given the temper of the times, they are obliged to treat the subject of their alleged malfeasance as though it had merit, and issued from people of independent character.

Interesting too will be the response to this flap of others in the media.  On those occasions in the past when conservatives have organized similar protests, their activities have been condemned as heavy-handed if not positively threatening to freedom of the press.  But of course those were conservatives while these are "progressives," so who knows?

 

Posted on By Patrick Maines

What Do Political Reporters Know?

One of the differences between, say, your everyday community organizers on the one hand, and investors on the other, is that while both have opinions, the investors have money.  Not only do they have some money, in a very practical sense they have all the money. 

This is an important thing to know these days because, as measured by the relative value of every asset class — from common stock to collectibles, real estate to commodities — investors of all sorts are making it clear by their actions that they are deeply worried about the future, and growing more so.

Many people, perhaps most, know this already.  They know it because they are among those who have already lost their jobs, or fear they soon will.  Or because they have seen the value of their 401K plans cut by half.  Or because they own houses whose value has declined so much they no longer have any equity in them.

Or perhaps they know it because they are avid consumers of the financial and business press; media outlets like Barron’s, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, the Economist, IBD, CNBC.

If, however, they are among the lucky few who have not been personally wounded by the current crisis, and get their news of the nation not from financial journalists but from political reporters online or off, stories reaching them of investor angst may seem like a kind of nasty and unwelcome rumor, like the warmongering of a distant and unimportant country.

And why wouldn’t it seem that way to someone munching solely on the crudites served up by our political journos?  Instead of digging into the facts of what the markets are saying, they offer up one story after another sourced by a political pollster or partisan strategist.

Rather than write about the substantive aspects of our financial and economic problems, they write about which party or politician is pulling from the gloom the greater number of political points.  In other words, they write about opinions — their own, those of the political class, and those of what are said to be the people.

One of the most durable sayings in the world of finance is that money goes where it’s treated best.  This isn’t a political statement, or an opinion, or a matter of manners and morals.  It’s a physical law, like gravity.

And where is money going right now?  It’s going into gold that costs more than $1,000 per ounce, and into short-term Treasuries that are paying less than inflation.  And what is that telling us?  It’s telling us that investors — professionals and amateurs, Republicans and Democrats — are scared to death and doubt, given what they know now, that our government is pursuing strategies that will help.

But don’t expect political reporters to tell you much about any of this.  They didn’t do so last fall, when the economy might have been carefully examined in the context of the national elections, so why would they do so now?  They’ve got too many opinions to spin to get bogged down with something as dreary as facts.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

And Now for Something Entirely Different…

In Washington, the lingua franca of policy discussions is "lobbyspeak," a form of communication that seeks, among other things, to conceal any hint of personal belief or interest.

The allure of lobbyspeak is that it allows the speaker to say things in a way that inoculates him from the risk that someone might denigrate his arguments as being just his own opinions, as contrasted, say, with positions derived from case law, or precedent, or that runaway favorite, the “public interest.”

Considered in the larger scheme of things, this is not the worst thing in the world.  Among the initiated, after all, it is easily spotted, and in some cases even appreciated — like a risqué double entendre — for its naughty cleverness.  But it can be, and often is, remarkably tiresome.

Which is why I write today to commend a speech given in Washington this week by the president of the Consumer Electronics Association, the people who host the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.  Lobbyspeak it was not.

As reported Tuesday in the headline of a Broadcasting & Cable story, "CEA president Gary Shapiro says media has ‘failed’ the country by poorly analyzing important stories," the speech excoriated the press for their insufficient attention to the substantive aspects of the recently enacted stimulus legislation, and our financial crisis generally.

In a town in which many, association executives particularly, are loathe to say anything that might upset anyone — the press and policymakers especially — Shapiro’s speech before The Media Institute was stunningly different, and frank, and courageous.