An unfair and unbalanced media rant

I've been reading a book called "The Republican Noise Machine" by David Brock, who formerly worked for an affiliate of the Washington Times and is now a regular on the Al Franken Show. The subject of this book is the so-called "echo chamber effect" that occurs in the right wing media. To quote the book's introduction:

Because technological advances and the race for ratings and sales have made the wall between right-wing media and the rest of the media permeable, the America media as a whole has become a powerful conveyor belt for conservative-generated "news," commentary, story lines, jargon, and spin. It is now possible to watch a lie move from a disreputable right-wing Web site onto the afternoon talk radio shows, to several cable chat shows throughout the evening, and into the next morning's Washington Post -- all in twenty-four hours. This media food chain moves phony information and GOP talking points -- manufactured by and for conservatives, often bought and paid for by conservative political interests, and disseminated through an unabashedly biased right-wing media apparatus that follow no rules or professional norms -- into every family dining room, every workplace, and every Internet chat room in America.

As I may have mentioned, I have a morbid fascination with the creationist movement. I'm not very far into the book, only 60 pages or so, but I see a pattern being outlined that looks very similar to the way modern creationism is trying to worm its way into our education system.

It seems that in the late 60's, some of the best and brightest in the Nixon administration decided that the press was being unreasonably hostile towards them. Those annoying reporters were always running stories claiming that Vietnam was a disaster (which it was) or that Nixon authorized illegal activities to get himself reelected (which he did). So they started to form think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation that would try to push their way into the public consciousness and demand that the conservative side of every story be heard on every possible occasion. The charge that the media is liberal didn't just come from nowhere; it was a meme that was intentionally dreamed up and pushed out there.

Fox News uses the slogans "fair and balanced" and "We report, you decide." It seems that they are trying to appeal to some mythical gold standard of journalism whereby you report both sides of every story, with no comment or bias whatever, and then let the audience decide for themselves who is right. Not only does Fox (obviously) fail to achieve this lofty goal, but in my opinion, the goal itself is crap.

You can't inform the public by just presenting everything that could possibly be presented and then saying "Well, decide for yourself." When presenting a blatant lie, journalistic integrity would imply that you should state that it's a lie. The media isn't there to post non-judgmental stories like "Adolph Hitler: was he right?" If George Bush and Karl Rove issue a press release stating that the earth is flat, it's not the media's responsibility to run a "fair and balanced" headline screaming "Shape of earth in question! Is it really a globe? Our studies reveal that many people disagree." Of course that would be dumb. People can disagree all they want, but the shape of the earth is an irregular sphere.

As Dan Rather recently demonstrated, it's really important that the media check their sources and decide whether a story is credible BEFORE they run with it, rather than just reporting "We heard that blah blah blah". But there is a major double standard at work, because CBS has a reputation for having journalistic ethics, while Fox does not. When Fox runs a picture of John Kerry at a podium with Jane Fonda, which later turns out to be an extremely clumsy Photoshop job, people say "Oh, that's just Fox." When Matt Drudge breaks the story that someone is having an affair with an intern, and we learn that he pulled the story completely out of his butt, nobody cares. When Rush Limbaugh cites "statistics" that he totally made up, he pleads "I'm not a news show! It's just entertainment!"

But the line between entertainment and news has really gotten blurred, and I think it's at least partly due to this very deliberate effort that the Republicans have made since the 70's to demand that the media show no "bias", not even a bias towards being correct. (I think it's very revealing that Fox News' slogan is NOT "Fair, balanced, and accurate.") All that matters is that it be "balanced", meaning that if you have one person on TV saying that we really landed on the moon, you must have a crackpot appear at his side claiming that it was all a government conspiracy. And furthermore, the program must not identify this guy as a crackpot, because that would be biased.

This reminds me of what I witnessed at the textbook hearings in here in Texas last year. Creationists go from state to state, demanding what? That we teach creationism? No no no, that is so eight years ago. What they want us to do is "teach the controversy." They want us to teach our students that SOME people disagree with the theory of evolution, and the jury is still out. Never mind that the "jury" are not scientists who do research; they're ideologues who are openly pushing a religious agenda. But to point that out would not be "fair" and "balanced" because it's passing a value judgment.

But that's bull, because science is all about passing value judgments. It's important and necessary for scientists to come up with crazy ideas that MIGHT be true, but then those explanations have to be tempered by reality and experiment. This is the part where you filter out the ideas that are crazy because they're innovative from the ideas that are crazy because they're ridiculous. Science will always be beset by crackpots who believe that they've invented a perpetual motion machine or "proven" the existence of ESP that mysteriously vanishes when somebody tries to measure it. But because science is a selective process, ideally the enormous number of crazy ideas are supposed to get winnowed down to the ones that are true. Same thing that evolution does in selecting for traits that have survival value.

That's how science is supposed to work, and in my opinion, that's also how journalism should work. Journalism is not, and should not be, about being a mouthpiece for every lie, every slander, every conspiracy theory that happens to be in the public consciousness. It should be about wading through the marketplace of ideas and selecting the ones which appear, to the best of our investigative understanding, to be accurate. Journalists should NOT be fair to con artists and hucksters. They should NOT be balanced by giving an interview to one liar for every truth teller.

What journalism should be doing is the science of information. It should find out the truth and report it. This is obviously an idealistic goal. Science doesn't always "work" the way it's supposed to because you have bickering and internal politics and desire for personal glory among scientists. And also because human knowledge is always going to be limited, so what we regard as "true" will only be the best guess given the available evidence. Likewise, I don't expect journalists to be infallible; only that they do more than pay lip service to reporting on real stories.

Journalists need to quit worrying about being fair and worry more about being right.

Air America Radio

I've been listening to Air America Radio at various times since it began. In case you hadn't heard Air America is the new privately funded liberal radio network that is meant to compete with all the right wing talk shows. It's on radio stations in five cities, as well as XM radio. I live in Austin, TX, which is not in one of the sweet spots, so I have to go listen to it via RealAudio on their web site. Al Franken, former Saturday Night Live Veteran and author of Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, is host of "The O'Franken Factor" at 11:00 (noon eastern time), a title intended solely to piss of arch-rival Bill O'Reilly. I try never to miss an episode of O'Franken when I'm at work, and I occasionally catch bit of other shows, particularly The Majority Report with my favorite underrated movie babe, Janeane Garofalo.

Quite honestly I think Al started a bit weak but ramped up very quickly. On day 1 he felt a lot like he was relying too much on rehearsed material and an awfully large percentage of his jokes fell flat. (Except when he brought in Bebe Neuwirth -- "Lilith" from the show Cheers -- to play Ann Coulter. That was a riot.) But each day has been exponentially better than the last, and I know that Al will make a great host in the long run.

I'm happy to have a real liberal media for a change. I hope a station will open in Austin soon. Years ago when I first moved here, there was a fun, witty, slightly left of center host named Shannon Burke (a guy) on one of the local AM stations, sandwiched between Dr. Laura and G. Gordon Liddy. One day without warning, the whole station got shut down and changed overnight into a crummy oldies station. As far as I know, the poor guy just showed up for work one day and they told him, "This station doesn't exist. Go home."

One thing that has been a real downer for me is trying to find a place to discuss the show. When I like something, I want to get together with like minded people and just chat about it. However, finding a place to discuss the show on the net has been tricky, because every conversation quickly gets loudly commandeered by conservatives presenting such deep and well-thought out arguments as:

1. He sucks.
2. He's not funny.
3. Ha ha, liberals don't get it.
4. I give it six months, tops.
5. It will be so sweet when George Soros loses all his money.
6. U suck.

Of course I expect a certain amount of discussion on this level. It's the internet. But in this case, the focus of right wingers is so strident that you'd think it was the Second Coming of Clinton or something.

I'm a long time member of the Motley Fool message boards. The main place where people talk about Air America is on the appropriately named "Political Asylum" board, where half the contributors are screaming raving Bushies to begin with. And a quick search for "o'franken" on Google Groups will quickly reveal that the place where Al discussions are MOST popular is alt.fan.rush-limbaugh. Nuff said, right?

I know this is how modern conservatives operate. As Michael Moore, Tim Robbins, the Dixie Chicks, and Valerie Plame will be the first to tell you, ever since Bush took office the first order of business for dissenters is to shout them down. It's not "I respectfully disagree with your opinions," it's "HOW DARE YOU talk back to me when I'm telling you the way things are?!?"

The comical thing about all this is that after years of angry blowhards on talk radio, the number one comment you hear about Air America hosts is "They're SO NEGATIVE!"

A close second is "What these lefties just don't get is that you can't just have a popular radio show for your agenda... you have to be ENTERTAINING." This bit of brilliant advice is usually delivered by competing radio hosts in a wise tone of voice that indicates they've just revealed to you the meaning of life. Yeah guys, no shit!!! And here I thought that Air America just got on the air so they could broadcast policy discussions on tobacco imports from Zimbabwe.

There's actually two funny things about this claim when it comes from conservative talk show hosts. The first is that people like Limbaugh, Hannity, and O'Reilly are RARELY funny to anyone who doesn't already agree with them. Their idea of highbrow humor is "liberals suck", followed closely by pointing out that some liberal woman is not terribly attractive, if you know what I mean. Most consistently unfunny comic strip? Mallard Fillmore. When you think of the comedy greats, who generally pops to mind first? Monty Python? Lenny Bruce? George Carlin? One key element of comedy is a certain irreverence for society's sacred cows. That DEFINITELY does not mesh well with right wing ideology.

The other silly thing about the claim that "You can't set up a radio network just because you have an agenda" is that this is EXACTLY what conservatives did when they set up their media empire. Rupert Murdoch didn't just wake up one day and say "Hey, I'll start buying up a whole lot of TV and radio stations and newspapers, and maybe a few of them will just happen to promote a right wing message." Limbaugh was nothing before he started getting backing from political groups like Capital Cities and ex-Bush adviser Roger Ailes. So I just don't buy it.

Nevertheless, it's hard to listen to all the slams on Al and Air America and not get a little pessimistic. I want this station to do well. I want to be able to turn on my radio and be able to hear something that is neither Rush nor a RushClone. It worries me that this effort will actually fizzle for whatever reason, and it will be even harder for anyone else to ever attempt such a thing again.

And finally, I don't believe any of the other stereotypes about liberals that are suddenly popping up in the wake of Air America's launch. You know... liberals are too policy oriented, and they don't care about entertainment. Liberals are a bad target market. Liberals don't listen to talk radio.

If I myself am any indication, liberals like to laugh. And we DO have an interest in talk radio. It's just that we've been listening to Limbaugh and Hannity for years -- in small doses -- because there's NOTHING ELSE ON. Sometimes I do, in fact, listen to the above just to get myself irritated. But don't think for a moment that this means I wouldn't rather listen to somebody who's right. Nevertheless, I will not be at all surprised to find that a large part of Air America's demographic is conservatives, for the same reason that I listen to Limbaugh (when I can stand it).

Is there any such thing as legitimate spam?

I had two articles about online advertising to read on my Palm today. One was from the New York Times, and it was about the growing difficulty that advertisers have with pop-up blockers. AOL, Netscape, and the upcoming new version of Internet Exploder all block pop-ups. Webmasters can't make you look at their pop-ups, so that form of revenue is drying up. The other article was from Wired news, and it was about big companies that want to send out mass mailings, but they are having to watch their language because their mails get caught in anti-spam filters.

Here's the Wired article.

Now, as far as pop-ups go, I find that I'm on the fence and oddly sympathetic. I, personally, HATE pop-ups and cheerfully use my own blocker to its fullest capacity. On the other hand, I patronize many free web sites, enjoy their content, and understand that they must rely on advertising revenue to stay alive. They often complain that they are having a hard time staying afloat with the decline of advertising dollars. I realize this makes me something of a hypocrite, because I want their content to survive but I do not ever read their ads. Nevertheless, I understand the issue.

But bulk email is a whole 'nother matter. Hey big corporations, you want to bulk email me but can't get past my spam filter? Hang on, let me play a sad song on my virtual violin.

[screeeeech]

Okay, enough of that. To all bulk emailers who didn't get my permission, I say "Fuck you!" I am NOT obligated to read your ads. You aren't offering me anything of value. I pay monthly fees for my internet connection, email provider, and web hosting provider. You don't give a dime to me OR to any of them, and I'm not obligated to read anything from you.

In my view, there is no such thing as a legitimate reason to send me advertisements that I didn't ask for. And I don't care whether you're Coca-Cola or Taiwan's local "herbal viagra" dealer -- if I WANT information on your product, I will seek out your web site. And if you think your ads will tell me something I want to know, you can bloody well pay the rate that you need to to get a billboard, newspaper or television ad. Don't ask me to spend MY extra time using a service that *I* pay for so that you can worm your way into my consciousness.

I strongly favor anti-spam measures that require the sender to correctly identify themselves. And it's not because I care about separating the "legitimate" ads from the non-legitimate ones. It's because I long for a day when I will never see fifteen messages with the same header, each coming from a different variation of "q83xji2zr@hotmail.com". When a company is required to put just one single, verifiable address on all their junk, it will make it that much easier for me to block their ass. Nyah.

Dreamcatcher (movie, **) and thoughts on Stephen King

Warning: this review contains small spoilers for "The Stand" and "The Tommyknockers."

There's a problem I've had with Stephen King for many years, ever since I read "The Stand." Very few of his books have ever really worked for me.

What bugs me about The Stand is that the initial story is brilliant. There is a creeping disease that gradually kills 99% of the world population, leaving the survivors terrified and adrift in a world full of corpses. It's brilliantly written, and it can keep you up at nights. My favorite part is a single chapter where the story jumps from person to person, watching the disease get passed along and using descriptive language like "For a tip, he gave the waitress a dollar that was crawling with death."

But after the disease finishes taking its toll, what happens next? You get a group of people having dreams about this sweet old lady, and they gather at her house... and then there's an evil guy who turns out to be a demon or something. Eventually it turns into a ridiculous battle of good vs. evil, and you have something that started out as a very good and disturbingly realistic story, which turns into a comic book.

I also read "The Tommyknockers." Again, scary beginning, with some odd change coming over the people of one town, at first giving them some sort of telepathic powers, and gradually brainwashing them and causing them to turn on outsiders and others who don't get involved in the groupthink. But what turns out to be the cause? Aliens. The hero has to fight on a spaceship. It's silly.

And now we have "Dreamcatcher," which I have not read, but it follows the same pattern. It starts with characters who have an interesting power, and we have a backstory that causes us to care about them. Then we get them trapped in a small town where people are dying and they can't leave, and there's some terrifying wormy things that we get brief glimpses of. Seriously creepy. The first half of the movie is a perverse pleasure to people who enjoy horror movies done right.

But this movie also becomes a comic book, when we get the cliche giant faceless alien and the insane military commander. Ginny and I discussed the movie afterwards and tried to pin down at what point the movie "jumped the shark." We decided it happened the first time the redheaded guy started talking like John Cleese. Sorry folks, somebody should have pointed out to the director that John Cleese is not scary. After that it was, once again, not a horror movie but a comic book.

I have a new theory.

Stephen King really knows how to write good horror. I mean, he is the best known horror writer in America; that has to count for something, right? And I've seen it. I've been wrapped up in his books before. I know the man can write.

I think that King's greatest talent is coming up with a scary scenario. He probably gets an idea in his head, and he thinks "Wow, now that would be seriously creepy." And then he writes a book around that.

But at some point, more often than not, he gets stuck. He has already accomplished the scene that he had in his head, and he doesn't know what to do next. So he starts writing a completely different story. He says "Aw hell, lets just throw some demons and aliens in there." Once he loses the original thread, it shows. But he can't just abandon the book, so he writes the new book, which didn't begin with a great idea. So the endgame of his original story is a mess.

There are a few exceptions to this rule. Misery remains my all-time favorite Stephen King book. King is 100% true to his original high concept from beginning to end. He starts with a guy being held captive by a scary insane lady who wants to keep him. As the book goes on, the insane lady is revealed to be even more insane than we thought. Most of the terror is psychological, seen through the eyes of the main character. No supernatural element is ever introduced. And his victory in the end is over the same scary lady that was imprisoning him through the entire book. It was a satisfying ending.

Ginny tells me that Cujo was similar, although I haven't read it.

One more book that I think represents King at his best is called "Eyes of the Dragon". This isn't even a horror novel. It's more like a fairy tale for young adults. It has scary parts in it, but it's really about telling a story. It has supernatural elements like magic in it, but the magical theme is established from the beginning, so King never violates the spirit of the story that he originally set out to tell.

At first I thought that King is good at writing psychology and bad at writing about magic, but I've come to realize that he's pretty good at both... as long as he sticks to one or the other.

Score: ** out of 5.

The Right to be Heard?

Commonly heard from creationists: "We don't want to harm science education! We just want our science given 'equal time' with evolution. Stop censoring us!"

From school prayerists: "You people just want to stifle our freedom of speech by telling our kids that they are not ALLOWED to pray."

Welcome to the information age, where "freedom of speech" has taken on whole new dimensions. It wasn't until recently that these people started angling for the free speech sympathy ploy.

The internet has created a whole new way to express ourselves. Anybody, ANYBODY can create a web site, contribute to a message board, or spam 20 million people at a piddling cost and with almost no effort at all.

But we're still getting used to this new power, and lots of people are still very unclear on the concept. They believe that since they have the ability and the right to say anything to anyone, that also translates into the right to make people listen.

So people will sign up for a special interest group and demand that you read and discuss their 200 page thesis. They'll send ads by the millions for viagra, mortgage rates, shady "business opportunities", and porn to people who have no interest in any of the above. And they'll scream "censorship!" at any hint of criticism.

Meanwhile, in the offline world, creationists have had to subtly switch their tactics from "Only the Christian creation myth may be taught" to "Don't you want to be open minded about what you teach?" The school prayer advocates have tried to reframe the debate into saying "Well, don't we have the RIGHT to pray wherever we want to?" Judge Roy Moore is fighting a campaign against imaginary oppression, acting like his right to free speech is being suppressed because he can't use his government position as a pulpit to inflict his biblical puritanism on everyone who walks through his court doors.

I think that spammers and religious "free speech" advocates share the same misconception. They both think that their right to free speech is the same as their right to strap you to a chair and make you listen.

No one has that right. What newcomers to the internet age still have to understand is that with their new freedom comes an obligation to be interesting, compelling and polite. Nobody has to listen to anybody unless they are interesting. That's nothing new; it's always been the case that people who are arrogant, obnoxious, and downright rude will get you disliked and ignored by most people. But people think those rules of etiquette have been, or should be, thrown away so they can use their power of expression as a weapon.

Gentle reader, Mister Manners here can see right through it.