Hillary Clinton Develops Drawl

This morning, while with my daughter on her newspaper rounds, we had the radio on and heard a clip of Hillary Clinton addressing an audience down south. As I listened, I realized that she had added more than a hint of a drawl to her voice. Although she obviously lived in Arkansas, she was born in Chicago, went to college in Massachusetts, and represents New York in the US Senate. Just where the hell did the accent come from, when she normally doesn't have it? This seems like one of the most condescending and cynical political acts I've noticed in a long time. Why isn't anyone in the conventional media noting this? Are they all scared because the Clinton campaign accused them of bias?

A Need for Rhetoric

Usually people dislike the idea of rhetoric, equating it with empty communications. But it is actually the study of how to frame and understand arguments. A Scientific American article suggests that people fall prey to "reasoning errors" in the media, which explains why, for example, that nearly half of Americans in 2003 falsely thought that there was solid evidence of a link between Iraq and al Qaeda:

News shows often have an implicit bias that may motivate the portrayal of facts and opinions in misleading ways, even if the information presented is largely accurate. Nevertheless, by becoming familiar with how spokespeople can create false impressions, media consumers can learn to ignore certain claims and thereby avoid getting duped. We have detected two general types of fallacies—one of them well known and the other newly identified—that have permeated discussion of the Iraq War and that are generally ubiquitous in political debates and other discourse.

I think it is again time for schools to teach formal rhetoric. Why not let people learn what a bandwagon or straw man tactic is?

W. Thomas Smith And Journalistic Practice

There has been significant "coverage" of the problems in the National Review blog entries from Lebanon of W. Thomas Smith. And, to be fair, I'll note that Tom is a friend of mine. However, when I look at all the charges and counter-charges, I find a number of highly disturbing things floating to the top.

First, there is no doubt that Tom Smith screwed up in some big ways - and I've said that to him personally. Blog entries must be just as seriously pursued as something for a print magazine, and you need to take all precautions because the haste can push you into making errors. So saying that something was "just" a blog entry was a poor approach. Normally, you'd have an editor at least, and possibly multiple editors and fact checkers helping to prevent mistakes from occurring. While a writer must take total responsibility for his or her work to approach it professionally, the publication also must take responsibility. Instead, the National Review web editor has apparently written everything off as being the mistake of trusting a "freelancer." But what does that mean? Do staff people gain a measure of infallibility the moment they take staff positions? Didn't the editor have a responsibility to ask about the sources of information? Has she tried pushing all responsibility off on Tom because she didn't want to raise the question of what her position in all of this was? Why didn't she ask about the sources as the posts were going up? Wasn't she acting as an editor at all?

Certainly when you have sources that are likely to be biased and that probably aren't authoritative, you cannot put together a collection of observations and state them as fact. Tom should have stated what sources he used - or even if one had to be unnamed (and I don't know if that would have been true), mention that there was such a source. But let's be realistic about the state of journalism, which is one of my concerns about all this. Many, many stories state information as "fact," even if the reporter did not see them first hand. The more grounded reporting might use terms such as alleged or supposed or claimed. But there are many stories where reporters will check with multiple sources and then use the information as though it were fact. I'd be greatly surprised if some of the Middle East-based journalists who are pointing fingers at Tom didn't do the same. In fact, by effectively saying, "I check with my sources and they said it was nonsense, so he must have made it up," they are treating what sources tell them as indisputable revealed truth. This is a disaster in the making. Is the only difference whether someone's sources are for or against Hezbollah?

Look at the chain of logic: a reporter says, "I never heard this, and neither did my sources, so it cannot be true." So how could tens of thousands have been killed in Rwanda over the three weeks before there was any media coverage? Weren't there journalists in Africa who had Rwanda as part of their beats, and shouldn't their sources have known? Or, using the same logic, did the massacres never happen for those three weeks because the journalists didn't hear about them? It's the semantic equivalent to the philosophical question of whether a tree falling in a forest, far away from everyone, actually makes a sound. Why didn't business journalists see the dot com crash coming? (I know of some that did, by the way, but most business publications at the time didn't want to hear anything negative because, well, all those experts, with their own motivations, said everything was ducky.)

More pointedly, why didn't the Middle East correspondents report that Hezbollah forces were massing near the Israeli-Lebanese border last year, before the war broke out last year? Logic tells us either a) they did know and said nothing, in which case their motives are highly suspect, or b) they didn't know and yet such a massing could happen anyway. Either the assumption that they would have to know is wrong, or their integrity is questionable, but in either case, journalists' not knowing about something is hardly proof that it couldn't have happened, no matter how "obvious" you'd think it would be. (Frankly, troops massing at a border should be a whole lot more obvious than a few thousand armed militia wandering around a city of between 1 and 2 million people, depending on the source you use.)

Finally, the mainstream press seemed to jump onto this story and make sweeping statements without having the information to back it up. I saw pieces on The Atlantic's web site, CJR's web site, and elsewhere say that Tom had been fabricating. At face value, the worst someone could accuse Tom of is being highly sloppy. But fabrication? That has carries the implicit meaning of knowingly making something up. I saw a column that Howard Kurtz wrote for the Post where apparently he used some quotes from things Tom wrote but never even stated that he has tried unsuccessfully to reach Tom for a direct comment. Is this how journalism is supposed to work?

Again, I know Tom and like him. Yet, I don't mean this as a defense of what he did, or didn't, do. Instead, I'm questioning the approach that the mainstream press has used in this story as a case in point of how much of what we read should be strongly questioned. The results were at least as sloppy as Tom's worst mistakes, and, in my opinion, far surpassed them in recklessness.

Reality of Reality TV

To get a sense of what the business of reality television is like, check this link to a MediaChannel.org post by media prankster and "socio-political satarist." (I was about to use the same phrase, and realized that it was on his web site - certainly one of the more interesting approaches to web site navigation I've seen.) Apparently, at least for this reality show about being a prankster, the producers want to own outright anything you send them as an example of your work, and they don't want to pay you a penny. That seems like the biggest hoax there could be.

Stand Down From Objectivity

The American Journalism Review has an interesting articleon whether the mainstream media could literally learn something important from the Daily Show. It's one of the few serious examinations of the issue, and one that, I think, is long overdue.

I've become convinced that no matter how the Emperor seems to react, he wants to know that he's striding nude through the land. How tiring it must be to carry such pretense, to be constantly waiting for someone to point out the obvious. As time goes on, the investment in the image is enormous, and no one - not one of us - wants to let go. Because in the story of the Emperor's New Clothes, we'd all like to think that we're the little boy who pointed out the obvious. We're not. We're the people around the emperor, all helping to maintain the fictional image.

In this case, it's the public that is tired of the media maintaining the stentorian tones, weighing in on the Issues of the Day, and otherwise not saying what the reporters know is actually happening. Think of the flack that broke out when private emails from the Wall Street Journal's Iraq correspondent became public knowledge. Suddenly, someone who was there said what she saw. But none of it had been coming out in the paper, and the Journal apparently kept her from further reporting at the time until the 2004 election was over.

I'm a member of the media, and can understand trying to support principle. But is the real interest of the media to protect so-called objectivity? Or is it to support self-image and to try and reduce criticism? Over the years, I've found that people who are standing for something generally come across as courageous. In contrast, the media most often reeks of fear, treading cautiously, testing each step as if creeping over a frozen lake of public opinion. The sad fact is that the water thawed long ago and instead of consuming itself with staying above the fray, the media should be concerned about drowning.

This is a critical time for our country and the world. It's during periods of apparent calm and "localized" violence (turmoil in Iraq and other parts of the world being conveniently elsewhere) that the forces generally marshal for calamity. Massive conflict doesn't come out of the ether, and the biggest downturns in economies have happened after long stretches of what appeared to be prosperity. But always there is the weakness or problem under the surface, the topics that no one wants to address. If the media continues to avoid saying what it sees and knows, the time will eventually pass in which it can freely express truth. Then that period passes, and suddenly freedom is no longer an option.

Media Leekage and Pop Culture's Immortality

I got an email from Salon and noticed a title I couldn't resist: I work with the most annoying man alive:

I work at a community college and come into daily contact with a man who has absolutely no idea that his mannerisms drive everyone around him crazy! He is a very nice man and goes the extra mile on everything, but he likes to talk in a faux Jamaican or Southern accent about half the time.

He high-fives people constantly when either he or they make some kind of statement he thinks is "right on" -- even folks who barely know him and don't share his gregarious personality. He also says "Oh nooooo!" in a high-pitched Mr. Bill voice, or "Are we having fun yet?" more times a day than I can count.

This is apparently (for I've started a subscription to Salon via the Well - and I don't know how long I'll keep it going) an advice column written by Cary Tennis and the complaint a letter looking for advice.

Tennis answered with a first line that excited me (sorry, low excitement threshold today): "One of the lesser-studied problems of the postmodern world is that of fictional seepage." Tennis plays it for a laugh, how fictional characters seep through the membrane between the real and fictional worlds. But let's think about this a bit, because there's a lot more to this concept than humor.

There's no doubt on my part that the content of the media, taken in total, has a shaping influence on our culture. Simply look at how many people end up quoting lines from sitcoms or movies or even television commercials. This isn't something new. I've seen song lyrics and plays and literature from the 19th century, at least, that had popular culture references from the time that are unrecognizable now.

Politicians do it because they want to show that they're hip and in-touch with the people (which makes me think of the ironic story former child star Patty Duke tells of having to learn popular dances from teenagers hired as tutors when she was on a popular television show in which she played the stereotypical teenager). People do it because they like to be clever. But I think they also do so because they see such references as iconic. These snippets of dialog come with a range of associations indicating thoughts, observations, reactions, and emotions. The few words become more of an image than language, presenting a synthesized (as in completed and artificial at the same time) experience. There's no need to work and digest personal experiences, understand their meaning, and find your own way to express them. You just reach for the off-the-shelf part.

The more we sit in a bath of tepid media - don't want to shock the audience out of a buying mindset, after all - the greater our collection of parts. Obviously the co-worker isn't a specific character from a BBC comedy, as Tennis jokes. But there's a good chance that the high-fives come from one image of how modern people act, the Mr. Bill imitation from Saturday Night Live reruns, the accents from somewhere else. It's a darkly amusing thought until you turn the light onto yourself. Which of my pet phrases come from something I've heard, watched, or read, even if I no longer remember the original source? How much of my body language and mannerisms are so much aping? What opinions or beliefs do I have where I haven't worked them out, but have just accepted them from the New York Times or talk radio, and I only parrot? How often do I force myself to find a new way to express a concern or question the ideas I hold dear. When you start looking around and at yourself, and try to distill the original from the imposed copies, suddenly the concept isn't so funny. It's not seepage; it's a fire hose that can drown you if you're not careful.