With this recent ABC interview, President Bush has effectively recast the U.S. national security debate from finding actual caches of WMDs to neutralizing perceived impending threats to America the Bush way. His patriotic rhetoric belies, in my opinion, a humbling reality and grave tactical mistake that he and his Administration have certainly not acknowledged to the public– more troublesome, perhaps, not even to themselves.
America may be a land of unlimited opportunity, but it certainly is not a land of unlimited resources. American military power is one such limited and even fragile resource which has arguably been overcommitted to war with Iraq. The reality of what paltry American military forces are left to deal with countries who REALLY DO have WMDs and REALLY DO wish America ill places America in greater peril than ever since 9/11. When does the national security debate focus on THAT, as I fear it should?
Osama bin Laden is, in my book, a dangerous military strategist, currently in command of courageous and loyal troops who realized that hijacked Boeings are de-facto WMDs and may well have other very interesting insights on just how to fight a jihad in downtown Manhattan that may be shared with us any time now. It is a disgraceful fact that the search for Osama was put on the back burner while we focused for months on finding some neutralized bearded guy hiding in a spider hole. So now that we’ve found Saddam, now that we’ve all but given up on finding Iraqi WMDs, isn’t it time at last for an all-out push to find Osama, the enemy of America who started this whole mess by killing ten times the American citizens in New York than have died at Saddam’s hand in Iraq?
Not according to Dubya. He’s supporting Pentagon decisions regarding the ultra-secret Task Force 121 commando unit previously hunting Saddam, redeploying them to hunt insurgents in Iraq who are not a threat to America, instead of Osama in Afghanistan, who is. According to that last link, Dubya has also supported pulling out half of the 800 commandos in Afghanistan who were directly hunting for Osama and sending them to looking for harmless-to-America Iraqi insurgents, too. Ditto for the 1360 people who have been reassigned from the Iraqi Survey Group’s WMD hunt that David Kay is abandoning. And in the ultimate in bad decision making, Dubya has made National Security Advisor Condi Rice and her staff head of Iraq reconstruction efforts. Huh? Just who’s left minding the store? Does Dubya think there aren’t enough WMD national security threats out there to keep our National Security Advisor and her staff occupied fulltime? Sheesh.
Unfortunately, there are. In one report that was barely covered in the next-to-last sentence of isolated U.S. media reports, David Kay himself said one “African country” that was not Niger (but that he declined to identify) had offered to supply Iraq with uranium. Kay found no evidence that Saddam followed up on the offer. Hmm, wonder who this “unnamed African nation” offering uranium to dictators is, and why we haven’t clobbered it already like Dubya said we would in the OTHER, non-yellowcake State of the Union address from 2002?
Maybe this secret font of uranium is from the terrorist nation Libya, the rogue nation that downed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Its nutty Muslim leader, Col. Moammar Gadhafi, recently acknowledged a serious nuclear weapons program. But here’s the thing I don’t understand. Dubya has been negotiating with Libya for months to Make America Safer From Libyan WMDs and is willing to allow UN inspections to handle Libyan nuclear disarmament. These are EXACTLY the same two steps Dubya refused to take a year ago because we were in Imminent Danger from Saddam. We start a $150-billion-plus war in the name of national security against Arabs that have no nukes, then talk for months and send in the UN to deal with Arabs that do. Huh? I just don’t get it. And Libya has oil, too…but not as much as Iraq.
Well, if we’re not going to hound and pound Saudi Arabs who kill Americans by the thousands or Libyan Arabs who have bona-fide nuclear weapons programs, we might as well get back to talking about the defenseless Iraqi Arabs we utterly clobbered nine months ago. And that’s where the article in today’s Washington Post that everyone should read comes in – remember that? In a nutshell, the article says America has totally backpedaled from our grand pronouncements of what we promised to do in Iraq for those freedom-loving, democracy-craving Iraqi people. Just like we’ve backpedaled from our grand pronouncements of what we promised to do in Afghanistan, but that’s another story I’m sure you don’t want me to get started on now. I’m sure the Afghani people understand your impatience with me to end this rant.
Notes the Washington Post article: “There’s no question that many of the big-picture items have been pushed down the list or erased completely,” said a senior U.S. official involved in Iraq’s reconstruction, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Right now, everyone’s attention is focused [on] doing what we need to do to hand over sovereignty by next summer.”
These big picture items now being ignored include replacing daily government handouts of food to 90% of Iraqis with cash payments of $15 per day to allow growth of “supermarkets”; privatizing state-run industries that would throw thousands of workers out of work (probably to become additional insurgents) in a necessary step in creating a viable economy that could lower Iraq’s 60% unemployment rate; dissolving armed Kurd and Shiite militias that are protecting their ethnic groups (over two-thirds of Iraq’s population) from the Saddam-Sunni minority remnants that ruled over them for decades; and most importantly of all, establishing an Iraqi constitution before sovereignty turnover.
Dubya has made frequent comparisons to how hard reforming Iraq would be; well, he’s right about that. He often compares the process of stabilizing Iraq to the reform of Germany and Japan after World War II, a process that officially took seven years and practically took even longer. So just what kind of totally idiotic lunacy is handing over sovereignty to Iraq by next summer? In a land where 90% of the people are getting food handouts, where 60% are unemployed, where 50% of the New Iraqi Army troops mustered have just up-and-quit, where militias from more than one ethnic group are still in operation, WHERE THERE IS NOT EVEN A CONSTITUTION IN PLACE? This isn’t the response of an America who gave Germany and Japan a new start that eventually let them regain their status as major world powers. This is a recipe for a very bloody civil war five minutes after we hand government over to a bunch of bickering, grievous people who aren’t ready to govern themselves yet.
Why is Dubya so hellbent on turning over sovereignty in Iraq by July 1, 2004? One reason and one reason only: to get ready for a re-election bid as American President on November 2, 2004.
There is something worse than going after Osama only half-heartedly, not like a rat terrier that smells something down in a hole. There’s something worse than the hypocrisy of decimating one nation while secretly dealing with and sending in UN surrogates to disarm a more dangerous one. There’s something worse than the hypocrisy of condemning another nation of failing to consider international implications of their actions to secure freedom when you yourself do the same thing. There’s something worse than handing over a county to almost assured civil war. There’s even something worse than WMDs.
That something is to use the powers of the American Presidency for personal gain.
I like your site for the amalgamation of various scientific information, but I am quite tired of your political ranting.
The George Bushes as I understand it are quite rich. I’m quite sure he does not need to invade Iraq for personal gain.
Are there not sufficient conspiracy kook sites on the net already? Do we really need you, too.
For the record, I’m insinuating that Dubya is throwing the Iraqi people to the wolves in order to assure he stays in power, not for financial gain. As for your fatigue, fee free to skip my political rants. Lots of people skip the palentology articles, too.
The poor dream of having enough
The affluent dream of becoming rich
The Rich dream of becoming richer
“More is never enough!”
I for one am not tired of rickyjames pointing out George Bush Jr’s f**up’s. I think that rickyjames keeps posting his commentarries here(did I spell that right?, doesn’t look like it) because he does not see the major news media putting George Bush or his administration on the spot and asking him why they have not lived up to their promises from before, plus, like rickyjames pointed out, it doesn’t seem to matter to anyone that we spent $150+plus billion dollars to start a war with a country that does not have any WMD, and that was indeed contained. True, Iraqi’s did not have the best of lives under Sadaam but they are in good company, much of the rest of the world is in the same bad shape. I think with his posting, he just wants to start a debate that will at the very least reach some people here and get them thinking about whether or not we need someone like Shrub in power.
I also don’t understand why the major media outlets don’t question Shrub’s actions on Iraq, granted I don’t usually watch the media because more often than not, they get things wrong, but the only thing that I saw the media get hyper about was Shrub’s State of the Union speech where he talked about Iraq buying uranium(?) from Nigeria which turned out to be false later on. Apparently to the media, as long as Shrub doesn’t say anything wrong in his State of the Union speech, then it’s all good.
I wish there was more of a national debate on Shrub’s actions regarding Iraq and that there were enough people to recall Shrub from power. I disagree with many of Shrub’s actions to date, not only regarding Iraq but many other policies, especially his unilaterism regarding many international conventions. As the Washington Post article says, I think Shrub finally realized that the US’s military might is a finite resource that cannot be used to take over the world. I picture Shrub, like a lot of uninformed citizens, thinking that since we have the best armed military and the largest economy it shouldn’t be too hard to make people do what we want them to do. I believe that past US military success has hinged on having the hearts and minds of the people we were freeing and also many allies to share the burden….while it may be that the US shouldered more than most, it would not have been so victorious on its own.
I know, rickyjames, you said it was your last posting regarding Iraq, but if you find out something significant regarding Shrub and his actions towards Iraq I hope you will post it.
thanks
My juices as an investigative journalist wannabe have been reinvigorated and renewed by your comment. Thanks.
Ricky-james,
I can entirely handle it if you do not appreciate a candidate or politician that I may like. But what really makes me wonder, is when you HATE the candidate!
That is like, SOOOO 3rd grade!!
I also have my doubts that anyone who hates a politician, just because his personal philosophy may infringe in some manner on how they might happen to live (in a moral kinda way) cares deeply about the lives, much less the lifestyles, of the people in Iraq.
Let me say that again. I don’t hate Dubya. I really don’t. As a person I’m sure he’s a fine guy that would be fun to be around. Certainly that’s how the biography of him I read came across.
The thing that gets me about Dubya is that out of close to 300 million Americans, he flat out IS NOT the best leader this country can come up with on the Republican side. He has a Name on him and a Machine behind him. That’s pretty much it, and that’s not good enough qualifications to run this country by a long shot in my book.
Then there is just this whole aura or cloud of ineptness that surrounds his efforts, which I am willing to acknowledge are mostly sincere in his own way, not evil. Literally last month the Official Word about our goal in Iraq was Democracy For The Iraqi People. Tell me, just where did that go?
Actually, I didn’t hate anybody at school until I was in 5th Grade, and that was only because they bullied me for my intelligence etc. Guess I was a slow bloomer.
I can’t say for sure, but I doubt Ricky has a personal hatred for the man George W. Bush. From this posting and others of Ricky’s that I’ve read, what horrifies him is the administration’s agenda which blatantly concocts excuses for finishing up Daddy’s business under the guise of finding WMDs and helping Iraq become a democratic state… All this at the cost of billions of American dollars and hundreds of young American lives, and how much better off will the Iraqi people be by next summer?
And where, really, are all the 9/11 TERRORISTS in Iraq? EVERY religious faction in the country terrorizes its rivals… These groups hate not only Americans; they hate each other. Mustn’t we surely broaden the terrorist search to include Saudi Arabia… and continue what we SAID we would do in Afghanistan, rather than practically abandoning the people there and giving up on the real terrorist mastermind?
To answer you literally, no, Ricky’s comments aren’t SOOO third grade. Third graders don’t have the capacity to look much past the here and now. Ricky has mentioned the long years taken for re-establishing solid governments in Japan and Germany, and I agree that Iraq may actually be worse off than before if the U.S. just abandons what it’s begun so that a presidential candidate can proclaim a victory.
Ricky feels strongly that our country is making HUGE mistakes in our supposed fight on terrorism, and he’s as dismayed as some of the rest of us are that so many Americans would rather beat their chests, wave a flag, and say, “We won,” when we’ve LOST money, military personnel, and the capability to keep another Saddam from rising to power in Iraq the instant the Americans leave.
to be genuinely upset with the Bush administration, who:
— Sent us to war with Iraq on *lies* about non-existent WMDs. Tens of thousands have died, and we are no safer.
— Presided over the loss millions of US jobs, including 1 in 7 manufacturing jobs since 2000.
— Created the civil-rights abomination ironically named the “Patriot Act.”
— Turned the USA into unilateralist warmongers in the eyes of the UN and the world community.
— Turned a blind eye as ENRON, WorldCom, etc. went on their crimewave.
— Thinks forests must be cut down to “save” them.
— In short, will do or say *anything* that will benefit corporations, regardless of the environmental, constitutional, or human cost. This is the very definition of fascism.
Shame on us for taking it personally!
Try this: RadioSubversion.com
Well, I get the feeling that some readers are so sure I’m bashing or even hating Bush that they’re ignore my main point. My bad, I did end on the for-shame finger-pointing on Dubya. Let me end on this.
I do believe Dubya & Co. are insisting on this Rush To Iraqi Sovereignty by July 1 solely for their own 2004 political campaign gain. I can just hear the 4th of July speech that Bush’s writers are crafting for him now – We’ve won, on this great day celebrating American freedom we welcome the newly-sovereign Saddam-free Iraqis into the fold of free nations, we’ve won, we’ve won. IF Dubya can get the media coverage on Iraq greatly shut down just after that turnover and his Big Speech a few days later, (and I wouldn’t put a planted, pre-planned long-term media diversion – um, maybe just plain election coverage madness? – past him and Karl Rove at that point), THEN he thinks his problems with Iraq are over.
I’m afraid they’re just beginning.
Here’s what Iraqi sovereignty really means. If whoever is put in charge issues an edict on July 5 that all American troops are to pull back to Kuwait in 30 days, then in August there’s no American troops in Iraq. If they decide to set up a theocracy complete with Saudi style mutaween religious-police, then that’s what happens without American interference. If they decide to continue to prevent women from voting, or decide to put them in burqas, then that’s the way it goes. Any wacko direction the newly sovereign Iraqi government decides to go down, we as Americans who declared them sovereign have to stand back and watch. Whatcha wanna bet democracy will be the wacko direction they decide to go down on their own? Oh, that’s right – we’ve already bet $150 billion and 300+ American lives!!! Roll them dice!!!
If the Kurds decide the day after we turn over sovereignty to declare themselves an independent nation – something they’ve only been trying to do for oh, every day in the last century or so (and they’ll never get a better shot at it than now) — then that’s insurrection but hey, it won’t be a U.S. problem – it will be an Iraqi problem!!! Except they won’t have an army to deal with it, so guess the Kurds get what they want. Oops, there goes a third of Iraq’s population, headed out in their own direction. Turkey may well invade to prevent their own Kurds from joining the fun, and the U.S. will no longer have the responsibility for stopping that Turkish invasion – It’s an Iraqi problem!!!
If the Shiite Muslim majority enacts Saudi-style laws or rulings that are punitive in nature to the Saddam-Sunni Muslim minority that treated them like crap for twenty years, or heck, just start lining Sunnis up for execution after 30-second war crime trials right beside the beheading block, well, we as Americans will have to just stand back and watch it happen just like we watch the sword-wielding Islamically justified beheadings in Saudi Arabia today. Wonder if it will get covered live on Court TV.
Maybe the Sunnis won’t let themselves be picked on by the Shiites. Bang. Civil war.
Maybe Iraq decides to stop selling oil to American infidels, or decide to raise its price via OPEC membership to the highest levels possible – they’ve got a country to rebuild!!! Well, get ready to stand in line at the gas pumps of America and pay $2 per gallon. They’re sovereign, remember?
If a bomb goes off in the middle of the Iraqi Ruling Council and kills them all, it’s up to the sovereign Iraqi government to reconstitute itself. If some strongman leader rises up and declares himself the temporary ruler to sort out the mess, that’s sovereignty – and it’s how Saddaam got started back in the 1980s.
But Dubya’s got the November 2004 election issues in America under control!!! We gave them Iraqis what they said they wanted and what we said we would: their country back with Saddam gone. Isn’t America great?
Sheesh. Dubya and his people aren’t dumb. They know this could go Bad in a heartbeat and THEY HAVE DELIBERATELY DECIDED TO TAKE A BIG, BIG CHANCE that Iraqi reconstruction can be done on the cheap FOR POLITICAL POSITIONING IN THE NOVEMBER 2004 ELECTION. This is not prudent stewardship of power for either Americans or Iraqis. This is a preventable tragedy of monumental proportions in the making…of Dubya’s making. If we’d returned German sovereignty in the summer of 1946, the Nazis would control the Bundstag today. Given the fanaticism behind Islam, this could end up being worse. It’s one tomorrow I don’t want to explore.
As a Middle East SF author, rickyjames is not as good as Saddam Hussein. Admittedly, Saddam also was able to enhance his creations with old facts, U.N. inspector performance art, pyrotechnic props, and gas mask deceptions. But his works seem to have not been particularly memorable and he is not getting the recognition which he deserves. And Saddam did take the reclusive author role to an excessive extreme.
Ricky, I think I advised you a long time ago that controversial/outrageous statements were a good way to drum up conversation on a site like this – not that I disagree with what you said :-)
But rather than ranting about the problem, perhaps it’s time for scientifically-oriented people to work on solutions. Personally, I’ve become involved in Howard Dean’s campaign; I was out on our local streets last week getting petition signatures for our state, and I’m one of the moderators of the “Science and Technology” topic at the Dean Issues Forum – the blog over at Scientists for Dean is pretty active too. Come check it out, if you’re at all interested in defeating “Dubya”.
And now I need to spend a bit of time thinking about an interesting suggestion from gypsysoul…
The thing that gets me about Dubya is that out of close to 300 million Americans, he flat out IS NOT the best leader this country can come up with on the Republican side. He has a Name on him and a Machine behind him. That’s pretty much it, and that’s not good enough qualifications to run this country by a long shot in my book.
You can’t name a single US president (save for Washington, maybe) where that isn’t true. Even Jefferson had contemporaries that may have been far better leaders. Honestly, was Gore, the guy who flunked out of college, the best the Democrats had? That’s why when he and W debated the only thing they disagreed about was HOW they were going to “save medicare” and not much else. Since W is such a bad leader with no more experience than Howard Dean (they were both govenors and both have substantial professional experience) why didn’t Gore push that point? Were Dole or Clinton the “best leader” this country could come up with? We’ve got far bigger problems than the president if that’s the best we’ve got. Reagan and Mondale? We have Bush because Gore was the best we came up with against him, that’s why many of us voted Green. If you put two losers in a race, you end up with a loser as the winner.
And then a war for personal power? The few democrats of consistency right now are playing the war as a negative thing. First it’s only about oil, then we’re pulling out too soon for the election. A) It’ll never be as bad as Nazi Germany, Germany had peaceful neighbors, Germany had power, money, and means. Iraq only has oil and a fairly well educated population and they are hated by every other country in the area. B) It is about oil, that’s a very large variable in this equation, we don’t pull out if we can’t move the oil. Will we pull out before the election? I think you’re dreaming, too much money and power at stake.
Now you’re supposed to argue that Imperial America is interferening with Afgani and Iraqi democracy by not pulling out and letting them establish it on their own (with the help of Syria and Iran…) That’s what Amy Goodman would say.
We should get back to science, this is far from it and has little to do with it, this is a great web site and I’d hate for it to go down the toilet because of politics jading anything.
Ricky-James,
When persons sort of parrot what the pop-media/academic culture happens to be saying, I am, quite frankly, disappointed.
And precisely how does one even know which issues have been thought through very ‘critically’ by people we listen to, or which sets of ideas have any basis in reality at all? On a superficial level, one really does not initially know these things. (by thinking critically, I don’t mean, of course, “I feel, therefore I think ” …” “) Judging by most of what you’ve said so far, RJ, the bulk of what you listen to seems to be highly reactionary. I guess I don’t perceive the pres as stupid at all. And outside of listening to what other “political” sources have said about him, where exactly do you get this idea from?
One can carry on endlessly about the presidential foreign policy missteps, but only time will tell what he really did and how he performed his duties. People with misgivings (another word for “FEELINGS”, mind you) towards a person’s, or politicians, ideology just don’t seem to have the patience to wait for the outcome. But whatever the public perception of the pres. may be, he is certainly not a man of poor character.
Let’s make you the pres for six weeks or so – alright? What would you have done if some opposing state sponsored a terror group which attacked your beautiful state, and killed a few thousand innocent human beings? hmmm?
All kinds of solutions seem “perfect” in hypothetical-ville, don’t they.
but I’m not so sure I can come up with anything original beside what the pop-media / academic culture already happens to be saying. There’s a lot of people talking and digging out there and somewhere, one or more of them has already covered just about every angle there is on an issue. Is agreeing with perceived valid points they make “parroting” – or even automatically bad? Is there some other group that offers other, better and even unasailable insights – the “un-pop” (religious) right and conservative media like FoxNews who criticize media and academics for being what they are? And these critics are correct instead of pop media/academics because…???
As far as the point I think you’re making that nobody can be sure the press is accurate or correct in their assessments, this is EXACTLY a point I have made repeatedly in my writings here. I have repeatedly urged readers to literally be skeptical of the writings of others, specifically including my own. I offer opinions and opinions only – even when I say something is a fact, I would like readers to always keep in the back of their mind that I could be wrong. I certainly have been before, and publically admitted it on these pages more than once when I was.
Now, I don’t believe I’ve ever said here that Dubya is stupid. I don’t believe he is. In fact, I’ve written in this very thread (last paragraph of my comment What Iraqi Sovereignty Really Means) that “Dubya and his people aren’t dumb.” I do believe that despite his history degree from Yale and his MBA from Harvard, he is not a very intellectually “deep” person and looks for “social engineering” and “wheel and deal” solutions rather than rational or logical ones to the problems he confronts. In this, he is a consumate politician. However, I personally believe that his actions with Harken Oil to avoid going bankrupt were illegal, his actions with the Texas Rangers to build his fortune using public funds were immoral, and both are blemishes on his reputation and character that are conveniently ignored today. There is no equivalent to Ken Starr investigating Whitewater when it comes to Dubya, which for the life of me I don’t understand.
Finally, I don’t want to be prez for six weeks, and I don’t want to set myself up as an authority as is implied by “WWRJD”. I am just an opinionated citizen. I try to remain openminded and call things like I see them until somebody can show me why I should think otherwise. I’ll try to listen when they do. I agree that no matter how fervent the hue and cry today, only history can judge if a Prez has done good or blew it. If I were Prez, I don’t know if history would judge how I’d play my poker hand any better or worse than the way Dubya is playing his poker hand.
I do know I’d play it differently. For one thing, if I were Prez, Saddam would still be in power, along with all of the other tinpot dictators out there in the world who are no better than him that we aren’t doing squat about, and as another Ricky once said, the Saudis would have a whole lot ‘o ‘splaining to do to the American troops tossing THEIR corner of the world. And the North Koreans would be looking at a whole lot more troops than we’ve got over there now to get a REAL nuclear threat shut down.
When I first read The second-dumbest people in the news, I thought possibly the editor who wrote the piece was being slightly harsh. But after much thought, I realized he was in fact quite accurate.
Political stuff aside…a very, very happy new year to you, Ricky !
Will get to the rest when I have a little more time. Have some concerns that an achieved article may not work so…
The second-dumbest people in the news:[Daily Edition]
Bret Stephens. Jerusalem Post. Jerusalem: Aug 8, 2003. pg. 16.B
Full Text (1327 words)
Copyright 2003 The Jerusalem Post)
EYE ON THE MEDIA
Let’s stipulate from the outset that not everything about Fox News is appalling. Brit Hume is an able journalist. Neil Cavuto is watchable. I like some of their political commentators, Fred Barnes most of all.
The rest of it is bunk. Talk-show host Bill O’Reilly is a self- righteous bully. Anchor John Gibson gives the impression of being not very bright, although that may have to do with his hairdo. Political commentator Monica Crowley was caught plagiarizing by the Wall Street Journal. News items are treated as if they were offerings on Fox’s line- up of action shows debuting this fall: “We got the Jakarta explosion, we got the hunt for Saddam!” There is no in- depth reporting, while a great deal of air time is wasted on chit-chat. I hate the use of the term “homicide bombing”: All bombings that result in death are “homicide” bombings; “suicide bombing” accurately describes a specific act. And there’s something about the way that Fox mixes salacious reporting with censorious commentary that’s totally repulsive. Is Kobe Bryant guilty of sexual assault and adultery? Well, we’ve got the vaginal trauma to prove it!
Simply, Fox News is more of a parody of a news program than an actual news program. Not that this seems to bother the Fox people themselves; part of their almost-redeeming charm is that they are blissfully not in earnest. Beyond all the tub-thumping, the American flag waving in the corner of the screen, this is “news” that seems to have an audience of Bart Simpsons in mind. As such, Fox News comes close to being a parody of America itself.
Would that it went all the way. But thanks to people like Hume and Barnes, Fox retains a patina of seriousness that turns what would otherwise be a good joke into a bad caricature, the very picture of what the rest of the world thinks of as Right-wing America. And because Fox News has leapfrogged over its more staid competitors in the ratings, it is also seen as the journalistic equivalent of 1984, a dystopic universe in which Rupert Murdoch’s boot stamps forever on the honest reporter’s face. The upshot – depressingly – is an excellent argument for the old behemoths.
OF ALL of Fox’s sins, this one is the worst. For those routinely depressed or enraged by the inadequate or biased reporting of CNN or the BBC, Fox News is there to prove that perhaps they don’t do such a bad job after all. I don’t think much of Jonathan Mann and his “Insight” program on CNN, but next to Shep Smith’s “Studio B” Mann looks like Ed Murrow. I was turned off by the BBC’s coverage of the war in Iraq, with its ill-concealed gloating over apparent Coalition reversals. But that’s nothing next to the embarrassment of, say, watching Fox reporter Wendell Goler unable to get right the name of Palestinian arch-terrorist Abu Abbas. Meanwhile, there is no doubting that some BBC programming is fantastically good – Tim Sebastian’s “Hard Talk” above all – as is, in the US, the “News Hour with Jim Lehrer,” which appears on public television.
The conclusion one is tempted to draw here is that quality journalism and market forces pull in opposite directions, and that any society that wants the former had best devote a subsidy to it. Certainly the BBC makes this argument. Amid increasingly vocal calls to revoke or revise the Corporation’s charter – or to privatize the BBC outright – it warns that such a step would mean losing the very touchstone for objective, informed and independent journalism. Privatize us, they say, and there will be nothing but Fox News.
In fairness, there really is something to this. In America, at least, none of the best magazines turns a profit: Commentary, The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Weekly Standard all depend on the largesse of wealthy patrons to stay afloat. Meanwhile, People, In Style, Cosmo and Maxim rake it in.
But there is a crucial difference between a magazine like The Atlantic, which is privately supported, and the BBC, which survives on an onerous compulsory tax. Then too, it’s an open question just how objective, informed and independent the BBC is. “More and more,” writes Labor MP Gerald Kaufman in The Wall Street Journal, “there are accusations from different sections of the political spectrum not that the BBC supports one party or another but that it sets its own agenda on different issues and tailors its presentation to fit that agenda.”
The proximate cause of Kaufman’s musings is, of course, the David Kelly scandal, where it appears that misrepresentation of Kelly’s views by BBC correspondent Andrew Gilligan contributed to the government scientist’s suicide last month. But anyone who watches the BBC from Israel could not have been surprised by the affair. According to a study conducted last year by Media Tenor, a Bonn-based media research group, 85% of the BBC’s coverage of Israel was “negative”; another 15% was rated “neutral”; none was “positive.” This has been going on for decades. Nobody noticed in part because Israel is far away, in part because the negative coverage conforms to existing prejudices. With the Kelly story, however, Israel’s once- dismissed complaints about the BBC are beginning to seem like part of a larger pattern of questionable reportage and editorial spinning.
In other words, the journalism on offer from the BBC is often no less tendentious than what you get on Fox. This is not to say that it isn’t better than Fox’s: the breadth of the BBC’s coverage is vastly greater, its biases are not so crudely expressed, and the general tenor of its programming isn’t so sophomoric. But these advantages are offset by the fact that the BBC is so desperately in earnest. It really does see itself as an “independent” and “objective” voice merely because it isn’t governed by considerations of profit. And it also sees itself as a bulwark of decency, duty bound to enlighten the masses and speak truth to power.
The result is coverage that is deceiving principally because it is self-deceiving. How many BBC reporters come to Israel, for instance, sincerely convinced that the core problem here is “the occupation”? Nearly all of them, I should guess. And how many have stopped to wonder how their coverage would change if they tested the proposition that Arab rejectionism was instead to blame? Probably very few.
I’VE DEVOTED this column to Fox News and the BBC because they are often viewed as being the opposite poles of broadcast news: one baldly partisan, the other scrupulously objective; one populist- conservative, the other high-toned and cosmopolitan; one relentlessly profit- driven, the other “in the public interest.” As with most poles, too, they have a great deal in common, political agendas and moral smugness above all. I resent both of them; one for having given a bad name to conservatives, the other for having given it to journalists.
It would be nice to find some middle route. Public ownership is not the way. The fact that the BBC isn’t answerable to advertisers only means that its biases run in favor of statism and all that it implies. It also makes the BBC an arrogant organization, which goes far to explain its present travails. Yet a private news organization that seeks ratings above everything else is going to wind up turning reportage into entertainment, which is exactly what Fox News has done.
Ultimately, consumers will seek, and news organizations will provide, content that is reasonably accurate and sober. At least that’s true when it comes to business news, headlines, the weather. But the aims of journalism, I’ve always thought, go beyond establishing basic facts to sifting competing claims about the truth. In this latter task, it seems, the thoughtful news consumer walks alone.
Of course, he can also turn off his TV.
bret@jpost.co.il
First off, I’m grinning here, so don’t think I’m mad – bemused would be a better word. That said….
You’ve gone on record here saying you’re disappointed to think that I have merely parroted previously expressed stands by the pop-media and academia. In Texas Hold ‘Em Poker, we’ve reached a stage here called the Showdown, where the posturing is over and you gotta show your cards.
Show mw a link where the pop media / academia have discussed or noted that :
1. Invading Iraq (which has never killed Americans in a terrorist attack) while negotiating and sending in UN inspectors to Libya (which has, more than once) over nukes is somewhat hypocritical and shoulda been done the other way around (like WWRJD after the Saudis got done ‘splaining).
2. Abandoning Iraq by next summer is a political election year ploy by Dubya far more than a prudent timetable for establishing promised democracy there
3. Watching Iraq after next summer may well be a skybox seat to all manner of unpleasantness
Find those references (or come up with them yourself without parroting, like I did) and you’ve got yourself a hand of three aces. I think the pop media / academia have left all of them in the deck while they play with other, lower trash cards. That leaves ’em with a weak hand. They lose. Too bad…for all of us.
I am glad that you’re not mad.
But…did you read all the way to the last line, by any chance? That was the point of the WHOLE article, R.
“…But the aims of journalism, I’ve always thought, go beyond establishing basic facts to sifting competing claims about the truth. In this latter task, it seems, the thoughtful news consumer walks alone.
Of course, he can also turn off his TV.”
And I didn’t feel that the critique was exactly favorable to Fox, either. So I can’t quite figure out what you thought was ironic about the whole thing.
Hope we can at least agree that most news sources are fairly corrupt. I.e. don’t listen to anybody – especially not to yourself! ;)
Well, I just sort of blew past that last line in the article (which I thought was quite good – thanks for posting it) because I took it as sort of a humorous line to end on. I never thought he meant it literally as a possible option – which upon reflection I see he did and you do, too.
I don’t think you should deliberately isolate yourself from ANY information input. Even stupid terrible TV shows like Coupling (which blissfully was cancelled almost instantly) or (I’d better duck) Friends (which wasn’t) are sources of valuable insight on the people who make such shows and those who watch them.
Same with Fox News and even BBC. Sure. you can turn them off because they’re drivel. But you can also learn a lot from drivel. Just don’t forget you’re watching from the outside and don’t be sucked in.
Happy New Year, Calia!
I guess that would take care of critical thinking, or even irrational thinking. Let’s just not think at all, shall we?
My belief is that, no matter how unbiased an attempt any source makes (and I agree that the vast majority make no such attempt), the source can only report what its human vision and mindset permit. All news is some sort of “spin,” in other words. We as members of a semi-educated culture MUST thoughtfully separate the wheat from the chaff. Certainly, we make mistakes in judgment according to our own vision and mindsets, but when I can’t depend upon my own sorting out– my own thinking– I don’t want to be here anymore.
You would disagree with some of the most famous advice found in all of the Bard’s words:
This above all: to thine own self be true–
–HAMLET
I liked Dr. Shermer’s comment that we must be open-minded, but not to the extent that our brains fall out. That leaves plenty of room for thoughtful analysis of all the “parroting” we must process, then at last arriving at some conclusions that are true to what we can personally accept. Neither blindly believing the conservative/liberal bias of the media OR
shutting it all out to the point of not thinking at all–denial–is going to solve anything.