Science Debate 2008: A Good Idea

Wow.

Truly impressive, Karen. What a phenomenal piece you've given us.

I can't imagine a better use of a couple of hours of the candidates' time.

Yes, yes and yes.

I'll try to dig up what the candidates have to say about "...the growing gap between our need for scientists and engineers and the capacity of this country's educational system to produce them".

Thank you so much, Karen.

Way to go KT. Now that the Texas gangsters have run out the clock, you cluck worriedly about SEVEN YEARS of trashing Federal research integrity for the convenience of the big campaign donors. You are a real tiger at the gates of scientific integrity!

Nobody can accuse Time magazine of sleeping on the job. This article shows that you were zealous guardians of the planet. Too bad about the last seven years.

You people are loathsome cowards who let this ugly gang run wild, and are now printing a few feeble, ass-covering stories to pretend you had a clue. May the cries of Bush's tortured and dying victims fill your dreams for the rest of your miserable lives.

KT here--

HH (my biggest fan, though Martin Gale is a close second):

Alas, I was writing, sweetheart, you just weren't reading. As far back as 2002, I had written this one: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,361521,00.html

And please see the FDA chapter of this one:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1109345,00.html

w00t! Thanks, Karen. (Any column inches available in the dead tree edition)?

Science will not be a problem in a Huckabee Cabinet - he already has a list and is out recruiting - preparing to advise McCain should McCain win.....
http://thefiresidepost.com/2008/02/08/a-look-at-huckabees-cabinet/

WOOHOO!!!

Way to go Karen!

Now we must try to get some responses from the candidates. It is one thing 'to not respond to an invitation' and quite another 'to refuse it'.

What I would not give for evidence-based decision-making in my government.

That would be an awesome debate. I really hope they all accept.

Considering that one of the important questions in the Republican debates was if they even BELIEVED in science in the first place - OK that wasn't literally the question but anyone who's willing to use the phrase "just a theory" in a sentence is someone who either A: doesn't understand science at all or B:(much more likely) understands science just fine but realizes that the only way to succeed in the Republican primaries is to disavow that knowlege.

I'd say a science debate would be a good idea but the reason its not likely to happen is pretty obvious.

IT'S ABOUT TIME. (no pun intended towards HH)

Scientists should have gotten politically involved a long time ago, especially if the Christan Right was going to force the creationist agenda down everyone's throat.

P.S. McWaffles in a science debate would provide more yuks than a Bugs Bunny cartoon. "I was against teaching kids about God pressing the ON button, before I was for it".

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/02/12/mccain-creationism/

In theory, having debates is a great idea. However, all the debates so far have been extremely bad and a public disservice.

All of the "debates" so far have been simply opportunities for the candidates to give speeches. The ones that have featured user submissions were hampered by gatekeepers with their own agenda. Based on what I've seen so far, the science debate would be no different.

For instance, CNN didn't ask this question which has since gone on to get over 47,000 views: youtube.com/watch?v=1KxDhesWutc

Instead, they asked much weaker questions about that topic:
youtube.com/watch?v=nIbDAVQMKGM
youtube.com/watch?v=wm0uWz2BS9M

A much better way to select user-generated questions is described here:
nomoreblather.com/how-to-make-the-cnn-youtube-debate-worthwhile

And, a much better way to conduct a debate is described here:
http://nomoreblather.com/policy-debates

The bottom line is that the latter proposal - with experts from across the spectrum - is the only way to avoid someone putting their thumb on the scale. If you don't have a problem with someone fixing the debate to their advantage, then you don't want a real debate.

I would LOVE to see this.

Let's hear a republican candidate get up on a stage and explain how the earth is 6,000 years old.

That is quite the substantial body of Bush bashing you've penned over the years and cited here Karen Tumulty. You sure set HH straight.

I guess classes that teach the history of intrepid reporting will be cutting back on the time they schedule for the study of Lincoln Steffens so that they'll be able to cram a more fully representative sample of your work into their one semester courses. Let's see, you saw something 600 words worth of wrong with the Bush administration in late 2002. And three weeks after Katrina made landfall in Louisiana, you provided an extensive, multi-faceted review of Michael Brown, FEMA and the government disaster response that failed. Good thing too, the general public otherwise would have quite likely missed hearing about that story.

In their 1988 book "Manufacturing Consent" that "blame America first" kook Noam Chomsky and his coauthor wrote:

*************************************
The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda.

In countries where the levers of power are in the hands of a state bureaucracy, the monopolistic control over the media, often supplemented by official censorship, makes it clear that the media serve the ends of a dominant elite. It is much more difficult to see a propaganda system at work where the media are private and formal censorship is absent.

This is especially true where the media actively compete, periodically attack and expose corporate and governmental malfeasance, and aggressively portray themselves as spokesmen for free speech and the general community interest. What is not evident (and remains undiscussed in the media) is the limited nature of such critiques, as well as the huge inequality in command of resources, and its effect both on access to a private media system and on its behavior and performance.

A propaganda model focuses on this inequality of wealth and power and its multilevel effects on mass-media interests and choices. It traces the routes by which money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalize dissent, and allow the government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public. The essential ingredients of our propaganda model, or set of news "filters," fall under the following headings:

(1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms;

(2) advertising as the primary income source of the mass media;

(3) the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business, and "experts" funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power;

(4) "flak" as a means of disciplining the media; and

(5) "anticommunism" as a national religion and control mechanism.

These elements interact with and reinforce one another. The raw material of news must pass through successive filters, leaving only the cleansed residue fit to print. They fix the premises of discourse and interpretation, and the definition of what is newsworthy in the first place, and they explain the basis and operations of what amount to propaganda campaigns...
****************************************

Granted, these days anti-Islamofascism is a weak stand in as a rallying cry for anti-communism but what's an Establishment to do?...it has to play the hand it's dealt.

Keep up the good work Karen, keep asking the tough questions. And, I am being sincere now, good luck with your science project.

Thanks, Karen. Hope you can get a response from those guys.

Also, I don't think that HH an CMike's point is entirely without merit. Now, it wasn't your job alone to be covering this stuff, so I don't know how far it goes. But their argument, that one brief article about one guy was not adequate to describe what was going on, is not implausible.

Also, 7 years ago, I would have instinctively dismissed Chomsky as an America-hater. I also thought that what I saw on TV and read in the news was a sensible, centrist view of the world, and I supported the Iraq invasion. I don't think that stuff anymore. I still think that Chomsky is a huge exaggerator-- ie, I disagree with him that the collapse of Iraq was part of the Bush administration's master genius scheme, rather that it reflected the Bush administration's incompetence and reliance on best-case scenarios-- but I don't think he should just be dismissed out of hand, either.

It's strange that Chomsky once appeared on TV, right there next to William F. Buckley, who engages in a civil discussion with him. What the heck happened to our political discourse?

Elvis--

I think you should read some more Chomskhy. It's true that he is intentionally provocative--that he'll do things like take the logic used to support an American military venture and apply to some other situation and note the hypocrisy. It's weird, for example, that the US considers "Red" (Marxist influenced) Shiism as the bane of the world's existence in Iran, but a centrist strain in Iraq.

On the question of whether instability is the goal in Iraq, first, consider Doug Feith:

Feith, whose (inevitable) book on the invasion and its aftermath will be published in March, told me that the neoconservatives—at least those inside the administration—did not hope to create new borders, but did see a value in “instability,” especially since, in his view, the Middle East was already destabilized by the presence of Saddam Hussein. “There is something I once heard attributed to Goethe,” he said, “that ‘Disorder is worse than injustice.’ We have an interest in stability, of course, but we should not overemphasize the value of stability when there is an opportunity to make the world a better or safer place for us. For example, during the Nixon presidency, and the George H. W. Bush presidency, the emphasis was on stabilizing relations with the Soviet Union. During the Reagan administration, the goal was to put the Communists on the ash heap of history. Those Americans who argued for stability tried to preserve the Soviet Union. But it was Reagan who was right.”

from http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200801/goldberg-mideast

Consider further that the US has done nothing, actually worked actively against a situation where there is a sustainable sovereign state in Iraq with a functional defense force. Right now, no armor, nor air, no functional chain of command, no logistical capability. Consider that the Iraqi "government" not only does not have a monopoly on the use of force, but has no authority on the deployment of armed forces, foreign and domestic. The Iraqi "government" does not even have the authority to arrest and jail civilian foreign nationals who commit rape and murder.

US policy pursuing stablility and the rule of law under an Iraqi government would not include these features.

Consider further that the US Congress periodically dictate what legislation the Iraqi parliament is to pass.

Now consider what US policy has been during the "insurgency." At first the US funded and supported the Shia groups that had been part of the government, starving out the Sunnis, and implicitly supporting ethnic cleansing in mixed areas. Most recently, the US has been strengthening the Sunnis with guns and money, ostensibly to defeat the "al qaeda' forces. Whether this ostensible reason for aid is the actual reason or not, the effect is greater instability within Iraq.

It's hard to come with policies of stabilization that the US has adopted.

OTOH, if you consider that the policy goal of the Iraq war is the establishment of permanent bases in Iraq, you can see how instability supports that goal. A functional, stable Iraqi state that reflected even weakly and indirectly the will of the populace would not support the presence of a large military force in support of Israel's regional interests. It is not at all unreasonable, nor does it require huge exaggeration, to conclude that the US is pursuing instability in Iraq as a proximate policy goal. it is certainly the case that the US is doing little to encourage a stable state developing.

disagree with him that the collapse of Iraq was part of the Bush administration's master genius scheme, rather that it reflected the Bush administration's incompetence

At this point I'm ready to promote this as Dirks' addendum to Occam's razor.

"If there are two competing explanations for an event and one calls for someone being surprisingly brilliant and the other calls for them to be incredibly stupid - stupidity wins every time."

I use the also use the same logic to dismiss the standard 9-11 conspiracy theories.

KT here--

I guess this is a personal note. One of the great frustrations about doing this blog, and particularly of responding to comments, is that so many of our commenters decide that every topic is a reason to attack the media, and me in particular. I try not to get drawn into these discussions about the media, because I feel like they bring out the abusive side of many of our commenters, and quite frankly, it gets tiresome to be the target of it all the time. Also, I see all of this from the other side of the looking glass, one where it is getting harder and harder to do the kind of job that I got into this business to do.

The reason is that the business model has changed so much in such a short time. This week, the LA Times, NY Times and Washington Post all announced major layoffs in the newsroom. Everyone is shutting down foreign bureaus. The reporter who does real shoe leather reporting at federal agencies is a dying breed. And the rest of us are running faster and faster, even as commenters like the ones I deal with here accuse us of being "lazy."

Our commenters go on and on, for instance, about what they see on cable television. What that does, of course, merely encourages cable TV to keep doing what it is doing. Why don't you just switch the station? Or better yet--go out and buy a newspaper or magazine that is doing the kind of journalism you say you want to see? (Yes, it's out there, but may not be for much longer.)

I was struck a few weeks ago by this piece in the Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/18/AR2008011802874_pf.html

KT here--

And, no, before you go there: The internet is not a substitute for that kind of reporting, which is expensive to do, and based on relationships and expertise built over decades. I'm not just talking about the Dana Priests and Jim Risens of the world, but also the old courthouse reporter, or the guy who knew labor inside out, or the six or seven science reporters that every major newspaper used to have on staff, or the medical writer with an MD.

First off, jay, as to the meta-issue of Chomsky on TV, I say let 100 flowers bloom. If there's always room for William Kristol, why not for Chomsky, too.

As to the specifics of Chomsky's views on US policy in Iraq, I think that he's very, very wrong to hypothesize that the US is run by mastermind strategists. He said:

"It’s a very complex ethnic mix in Iran; much of the population isn’t Persian. There are secessionist tendencies anyway and almost certainly, without knowing any of the facts, the United States is trying to stir them up, to break the country internally if possible. The strategy appears to be: try to break the country up internally, try to impel the leadership to be as harsh and brutal as possible.

That’s the immediate consequence of constant threats. Everyone knows that. That’s one of the reasons the reformists, Shirin Ebadi and Akbar Ganji and others, are bitterly complaining about the U.S. threats, that it’s undermining their efforts to reform and democratize Iran. But that’s presumably its purpose.

I don't think that's the case. I think that we threaten Iran because our leading strategists think that we're good and Iran's bad, and the Iranian people yearn for democracy and good, and they will greet us as liberators. That's the same mentality, I submit, that got us into Iraq.

CENTCOM's original plan in Iraq called for us to have 5,000 troops in Iraq by Dec. 2006. Admittedly that's CENTCOM and not Feith, and the Feiths were the ones calling the shots. It was Dereliction of Duty revisited. But I think that Bush believed, when we invaded Iraq, that everything would be rosy because America's awesome, and everyone will love us. Assume incompetence before malevolence-- though the Bush administration has, I admit, shown both in spades.

Plus, before we invaded Iraq, we had troops in Saudi Arabia. Did we really go through the effort of invading Iraq just to move 5,000 guys there from Saudi Arabia? I really don't think that we invaded Iraq to appease Osama and ease tensions with the Saudi government by getting our troops out of there.

Now, the argument that our goal now is to keep troops in Iraq forever is a much stronger one. But that's the administration's #3 or 4 rationale as to what we're doing there. I really don't think that was what they thought at first.

@KT:

What I'm sure many commenters fail to realize is that much of the fault that can be found in the media is in the audience.

This article sort of throws the problem in sharp releif.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20080215/cm_huffpost/086816

The two stories waging an unequal fight for airtime come together in this: the Illinois shooter proved a key point about terrorism. Random, horrifying violence attracts cameras like carrion attracts vultures.

If budget's are tight, the first thing that's going to go is the substantive reporting that everyone is lamenting the lack of and the last thing standing will be the People magazine crapola.

While I may occasionally join the chorus kvetching that the stories thatI know are vital are being given short shrift, I nevertheless appreciate that you are sensetive to what gets said here and are willing to engage with your readers.

THAT is the true power of the Internet. I'm glad to see you use it, and needless to say, I wish more of your collegues were as willing as you are to take advantage of the interactivity.

KT is giving us a victim sob story. Yes, it's really tough having a Time Magazine byline and showing up on the Daily Show. It's almost as bad as being burned alive by white phosphorus in Fallujah or waterboarded by the CIA.

But KT is deceitful by omission. She tells us nothing about how stories are spiked and which stories are encouraged. When it comes to her marching orders, her lips are tightly sealed. If you want to create dead silence among the Time-Warner staffers, you need only utter the name of their boss, Richard Stengel. Stengel is the corporate creep who pulls the punches and manages the spin that helps keep Bush from being impeached, tried, and jailed.

KT has normalized a grossly distorted model of journalism in which doing her job amounts to being a cog in a propaganda machine that serves America's plutocratic owners. KT is a frog who has been boiled one degree at a time. She doesn't view being kept away from forbidden stories as censorship and she does the best she can within the narrow guidelines in which she is permitted to write. KT's idea of professionalism is to observe and write about whatever is visible between the editorial blinders on her head.

KT might as well be working for General Electric, Exxon, or Citigroup. These advertisers are her real employers, and she will never be allowed to write anything that endangers their collective interests. Mr. Stengel will see to that.

Karen, lord knows that by your willingness to participate here, you receive a ton of unfair and unrelated criticism-- some of it has come from me. Thanks for your patience and your commitment to making this blog unique and worthwhile. It must be difficult to do sometimes.

Many of us here are discussing these issues in the abstract-- not just trying to call you out. I remember that, in response to the demands that you guys watch the Moyers documentary on the run-up to the invasion, you pointed out some good articles that you'd written. I felt bad that you'd taken it as a personal criticism against which you felt compelled to defend yourself. The meat of your response in that post, from my perspective, was your statement along the lines of, "the media did a not-so-great job in the run-up to the war-- stipulated."

That's the sort of larger issue that most of the critical commenters here (ok, there are some exceptions) are trying to discuss-- we're not generally looking for you personally to confess your sins.

Now, a couple times you have said things that have been criticized, and you've almost always been kind enough to engage the point, whether conceding or disagreeing. That's all that most of us want!

All that most of us want is that you be aware of the central criticisms of media coverage-- ie, that it's ok to criticize certain candidates for character issues, but not others, with no meaningful distinction; or that substantive issues are almost never discussed; or that the media's comfort with the narrative that every moment is always fraught with peril for Democrats doesn't always seem to comport with public opinion or voting patterns or really much of anything but a habit of regarding Dems as losers and the GOP as tough guys.

As to the Future of Journalism issue, it might be that, as David Simon suggests, the media industry will come to be regarded like the music industry-- had they embraced the Internet, and been doing a better job of getting good stuff out there, rather than pushing the most disposable, lowest-common-denominator stuff they could find, maybe they'd have come out better. Or maybe not, who knows.

You're right, of course, that ideally, we'd have newspapers with experts on local courthouses and legislatures and science issues. But as you point out, that's simply not happening. The Internet may not be an ideal substitute, but it might also be the best we've got. Glenn Greenwald has a JD and years of experience. The folks at ScienceBlogs have expertise in their fields. Marcy Wheeler (and Tom McGwire) knew more about the Rove/Plame story, and provided infinitely more useful background, than any "reputable" news source. And respectfully, I don't think there is any cable news network that even tries to cover issues. People on the left tend to like Olbermann, but the bulk of his show is celebrity garbage and Dana Milbankism too.

I really think that the answer for newspapers and news magazines is to engage their readers with sound, aggressive reporting. If the Post or whoever renders their coverage as bland and celebritified as possible, then it's easier for readers to give up the habit of buying the paper when something better comes along.

It's only natural to feel defensive when you see anti-media stuff in response to your posts, but I hope you realize that little of it is directed at you personally. The issue of media behavior, writ large, is bound to come up, repeatedly, at a site like this. Thanks for continuing to engage in this discussion, despite the sometimes unfair and scattershot criticism that you receive here.

KT here (one more time, and then I'll step down off my soap box):

The very cheapest thing for TV networks to put on the air is a couple of talking heads who will fight with each other. But guess what? People will watch it--or at least enough people to move the small amounts of numbers that matter in cable. Covering a war, on the other hand, can eat up an entire budget in no time. And time is becoming the most precious resource of all, I'm convinced. That little FDA story that I did in 2002 may have been only a few hundred words, but it took a lucky tip, and then weeks of work to confirm it against a bureaucracy that was denying it. That required winning the trust of people within the government enough that they would give me internal memos, knowing that if they were ever found out, they would lose their jobs. When your news staff is shrinking to nothing, fewer and fewer reporters are going to be allowed to disappear for months to dig into something like Walter Reed or secret prisons or domestic surveillance.

"you are sensetive to what gets said here and are willing to engage with your readers."

Bull$hit!

1. KT is the ONLY ONE even willing to speak to the rabble here, possibly because she drew the short straw, and someone has to pretend this is an interactive blog.

2. KT discloses NOTHING about how Time Magazine works. Her lips are ziplock sealed when it comes to who decides what gets covered and how.

3. KT's standard exculpatory declaration is that she is just doing her job. The Pravda writers said the same thing.

4. Reality check: If a man from Mars read KT's articles on the Bush Administration, absent all other information, would he know that he was reading about a war criminal who was one of the worst Presidents in American history?

Karen,

As Elvis said, most of us really appreciate your substantive contributions and your willingness to engage with us. It is certainly one of the things that keep me coming back here. Before Swampland, I had ignored Time for years. You were the first of the group assembled, apart from AMC, to really "get it" about the blog thing.

I am an avid reader of my daily newspaper -- sometimes in order to keep my sanity while Hardball is on, I read the paper. I am concerned that the quality of the paper has gone down -- the suburban section is now reduced to a Sunday "magazine" which has photos and poems submitted by local high school students. Very nice for their families, but doesn't tell me anything about local zoning problems for example. At least the Philadelphia Inquirer still has some major news coverage, but less and less.

Bob Somerby wrote a column yesterday pointing out a very bad column by Gene Robinson, which expressed how I feel when I see Robinson on Hardball. For me, good writing helps my own thinking process.

I think the problem with newspapers, as with so many other things in society -- department stores, tv and radio stations -- began with the corporate takeovers, which demanded larger and larger profits and threw substance out the door.

I think this blog entry explains it well.

http://roguecolumnist.typepad.com/rogue_columnist/2008/01/whats-really-wr.html

Back to the Science Debate, while it would be great, I will be surprised if it happens because as others have pointed out, McCain has absolutely nothing to gain. But, days before the PA primary would be really good for voters.

When your news staff is shrinking to nothing, fewer and fewer reporters are going to be allowed to disappear for months to dig into something like Walter Reed or secret prisons or domestic surveillance.

Geez, Karen, it sounds like you're agreeing with the media's harshest critics. You're not saying that news coverage is any good-- you're saying that in light of cutbacks, good coverage is really unlikely.

I just wish that newspapers and cable news and news magazines would drop the pretense that they're anything other than infotainment, if that's the case.

It's frightening as hell to think that everyone in the media knows that you can watch CNN and Fox and read the Post and Times all day every day, and come out uninformed for all your efforts.

It seems like this makes the classic complaint that op-ed pages should be open to people like Greenwald and digby-- and not just Richard Cohen and Joe Klein-- all the more crucial. If the news division is simply incapable of getting the job done, then let's at least have someone somewhere who's somewhat skeptical of government proclamations writing editorials.

Like I said, I really appreciate your willingness to engage in this discussion. And I hope that I'm misconstruing and caricaturing what you said. But the idea that the media is simply incapable of doing solid investigative reporting really hadn't even occurred to me. I am scared and confused.

No issue has galvanized me more than the administration's war on science. We need to bring back a respect for objective analysis in government, media and our public discourse.

We should have different political views based on different interpretations of objective reality, not choose a reality to fit our interpretations.

Here is a news item from Juan Cole. Professor Cole is not a professional journalist. Yet he is the most reliable source of independent information on the Iraq war, because he reads the Arabic language press and multiple independent news feeds and does not apply the CorpoAmerica news filter to his analysis. Compare this report with what you read about Iraq in Time Magazine:

Contrary to the glowing depictions of Iraq in the US press, Baghdad is engulfed in a lake of sewage so big it can be seen on Google Earth, many neighborhoods lack water, and electricity supply is insufficient and spotty. Although the Iraqi government crows about building clinics, the fact is that most nurses and physicians have fled, and medicines are in short supply. Last I knew, water purification was being impeded by US blockades on chlorine trucks coming in from Jordan. Some 70% of Iraqis do not have access to clean water, and there have been 100 recent cases of cholera in the capital, especially in the slum of Sadr City.

What the "professionals" at Time Magazine and other commercial news organizations are producing is garbage compared to what is freely available from independent experts like Juan Cole and Glen Greenwald. As this quality difference becomes increasingly obvious to millions of Americans, the credibility of CorpoAmerica's propaganda organs will vanish. Good luck in your next career, KT.

Karen:

Thank you for responding to commentary.

First, I'd like to point out that your counter-criticism is entirely appropriate. Those of us who are here not simply to mouth off like Maury Povich's daytime show audience members truly appreciate the thoughtful response, even if it represents an ideology or perspective to which all of us do not necessarily subscribe. It is also perfectly appropriate to express frustration and/or outrage at the constant critique, especially when such expression is accompanied by clear arguments for your position.

I read the Simon piece, and in light of what it (and other similar pieces) proposes is happening to journalism, your criticism of blog commentary (and blogging) is cogent and worth exploring. One could have a similar conversation about the evolution of the music industry, in my opinion. I need to think about what you've put forward in greater detail before I respond to the substance of Simon's (and your) analysis.

I can't let this go unremarked, however:

In place of comprehensive, complex and idiosyncratic coverage, readers of even the most serious newspapers were offered celebrity and scandal, humor and light provocation -- the very currency of the Internet itself.

This is idiotic. The very currency of the internet is an almost immediate dissemination of what actually happened. Nobody has to take a reporter's (or an editor's, ultimately) word anymore for what the facts were at a remote location. We can see for ourselves; we can report what happened ourselves. It's not complex coverage, for certain, but in disseminating the most basic product of journalism (an objective eye and ear to real events not in immediate view), it is unrivaled. Ignorance of this fact does not lend credibility to Simon, regardless of his expertise otherwise. I could go on, but I won't.

In any case, you've given me a lot to think about (and hopefully write about) by this criticism. By all means, hit back--hard. You're under no obligation to protect the precious feelings of your commenters, so call our product tiresome, or abusive or frustratingly obtuse or ignorant or whatever you think it is. In Joe Klein's poorly conceived responses to the his critics in the blogosphere, he made a number of errors, of which perhaps the most egregious was intimating (when not stating outright) that his work and methods are above reproach from those uncredentialed (and therefore necessarily unqualified) voices daring to speak from the outside of his particular professional community. For this, he continues to be rightly mocked, and his credibility has also suffered appropriately. This foolish, ideologically (and probably ego)-driven and ultimately worthless counter-critique is not what you have given us today, and so you should not expect a similar response.

Thank you once again for engaging your audience, Karen. Point taken.

As this quality difference becomes increasingly obvious to millions of Americans, the credibility of CorpoAmerica's propaganda organs will vanish. Good luck in your next career, KT.

Gosh, HH, I never would have pegged you to be such a believer in the invisible hand.

"a believer in the invisible hand"

America has become what Taichi Sakaiya calls a "knowledge-value" culture, in which status is attained by high consumption of information. That is why access to a cell phone, iPod, and broadband internet are sought, not just by the affluent, but by all who wish to display high-status characteristics.

What the myopic moguls of CorpoAmerica's mass media do not grasp is that the quality edge of Internet-sourced independent news has knowledge-value cachet, and the early exploiters of it are just the leading edge of a mass migration away from CorpoAmerican junk journalism like Time Magazine.

Shorter version: ordinary people quickly emulate the consumption patterns of elites in America. Elites are already deserting commercial news sources; the mass audience will follow.

Good luck in your next career, KT.

Gee, I wish I were so confident in my pronouncements.

I'm afraid that heirarchies are a self-assembling phenomenon and that faith in the great equalization power of the net is rather overrated. It is human nature to live in swarms after all.....

Posted by HH | February 16, 2008 11:08 AM:

That is why access to a cell phone, iPod, and broadband internet are sought, not just by the affluent, but by all who wish to display high-status characteristics.

HH:

Surely this can be said of all commodities, if we accept these phenomena as further evidence of Baudrillard's theories extrapolating commodity fetishism?

...Or, speaking from a non-structuralist or non-post-structuralist perspective, don't these products make many everyday tasks convenient as hell?

KT--

The subject comes up a lot because the way the media has permitted the administration to indisputably lie has been a very important element of its "success."

The decline of local newspapers is an important story, but that has to do with the death of an advertising model supplanted by the internet. It has nothing to do with the media ignoring story after story of the administration saying things that are simply not true, over and over again.

For the sake of relevance, the administration has embarked on a deliberate strategy of distorting and obfuscating science involved with everything from global warming to the effectiveness of condom use. These lies and distortions could easily have been exposed, but instead the media, or, if you prefer, TIME has chosen to treat outright falsehoods as a "point of view."

So it does come up a lot.

Re: cable news. I once wrote to a newspaper writer about an issue that that I believed had been covered very inaccurately. He wrote back, saying that to the degree I was correct, the inaccuracies were mostly to be found on television, rather than print media. I believe that he was largely correct about this--that the teevee is worse than print at conveying an accurate story.

But that doesn't mean that print media should be let off the hook.

On the question that elvis raised, it applies just as much to TIME as to cable stations. The spectrum of opinion goes from Joe Klein to Bill Kristol. Editorial control deems FISA an unimportant story. And there's as much coverage of Jesus as there is of science.

That's distinct from the decisions to cover poltical and policy news in a way that

I think the science debate schedule should be more flexible for right now.

There is likely to only be one debate on this because not a lot of supporters of any of the candidates are too interested in how science is handled.

That's the reality, partly caused by the mainstream medias' unwillingness to take a stand on it, and because of Republican imposed PC from the time they took power until not long ago. The press went with Republican PC, and sometimes, still does.

The debate should take place AFTER the two candidates for president have been determined. Everyone is too busy on the Dem side scrambling for the lion's share of the delegates for nomination, and McCain gets a free pass on a subject that his party has shown major weaknesses in.

Of COURSE they passed!

"faith in the great equalization power of the net is rather overrated."

This very discussion forum, in which we are particpating, is an open revolt of news consumers against their "informed sources." We are not some quirky privileged elite; we are a random sampling of literate people who are simply fed up with CorpoSpeak garbage masquerading as "news."

Has it escaped your notice that almost every post by the Time blog writers is met with a storm of criticism from us? Responses to Chutzpah Joe Klein's posts routinely run 100-to-1 negative. If you believe in the normal distribution, this means that there is something seriously wrong with Time Magazine, not with us.

This Wile E. Coyote indifference to the gravity of objective reality cannot last much longer before KT, Joe Klein and the rest of the crew crash into the canyon floor. Internet-informed people are just not buying their crap any more, and the rest of the public will follow.

What I find bizarre is that people expect a candidate to be an expert on everything. To really know about issues at a level that goes beyond just a simple knowledge base and then be able to tell the American people how he or she would do it better. I think about my job and my life -- which is pretty busy from sun up to sun down -- and I have no time to focus on anything outside of what my specific career choice entails. My continued trainings and professional development are very specific to my line of work. I would need to spend hours a day researching science or the environment or world relations or joining activist groups to understand the topics people are expecting the presidential candidates to discuss. Like most Americans, I just rely on the experts in those fields to do their jobs, yet I may have one cause that I truly embrace and spend 'free' time to support.

How can any one man or woman know ALL things or BE all things to all people? That is what is frustrating to me about the attacks going on in this campaign by people expecting so much from these candidates. To me, it's not about being a know-it-all.

Yet the one thing that a world leader MUST be able to do is unite people. To inspire people to become involved. To bring experts together, rely on their talents and life long commitment to their line of work for the good of a people. The continued bully tactics, negativity and divisive politics for as long as I can remember in my adult life has defined this nation as an ego-centric, survival of the fittest, selfish and wasteful peoples. While the rest of the world moves on, we look like a bunch of parents fighting at a little league game that's suppose to be about the kids.

I dunno, KT, the mainstream news media truly has themselves to blame. The boomers degenerating the value of news into spectacle was a problem, but your industry carried them along into oblivion like a bad parent with a bratty child.

All the OJ trials and Tonya Hardings and Clinton scandals made your producers very rich, and yes, that was thanks to the boomers whom are a sad, star-f***ing lot, but losing the serious viewers and the impressionable young to foreign sources and the internet forever was still your own end. Even Jonathan Alter, at the height of the Lewinsky scandal, decried the media as "rich, fat, and greasy". If that's his opinion, then what will be ours?

As someone who read TIME and Newsweek every week since I was 15 years old (32 now, possible actually even longer; I distinctly remember reading about Kadaffi being bombed in TIME...), I saw it all happen. The magazine would go from good cover stories on especially foreign matters to...Jenny McCarthy holding a cigar with the caption "Why Are Cigars Cool?". This was long before the internet arrived to take your readers away. Hell, remember the TIME story about "HOW GREAT THE NINETIES ARE?" The dialogue sounded like "We're gonna be rich forever!" and even discussed how racism is on the wane and almost gone. You can practically taste the all-American hubris, arrogance, class warfare and cluelessness.

The growing Beltway bias was also extremely palatable and cloying to deal with. I still to this day recall TIME's coverage of Newt Gingrich's gang capturing the White House. The cover was this evil elephant from hell stomping a defenseless donkey. The article read as if Gingrich was Hitler storming the beer hall, and Tom Foley practically a crime victim. Whatever your politics (I'm independent), the rampant bias and obvious disdain for something the then-fed-up electorate demanded felt extremely condescending then and still does now. It was essentially Crossfire without the privilege of Kinsley and Buchanan leering at each other. It was a failure of honest public discourse and, along with the Clintons, the major trigger for Newt to let his egomania get out of control. And it is, in fact, how Rush, QH, and Faux News got their proverbial round objects rolling. Even progressives got fed up with the elitist democrat pandering and the result is die-hards like HH convinced you are on "their side" (from his perspective, the MSM might as well be).

I honestly think the only way to save American news is to federally fund it (and regulate said funds, so they aren't pissed away on Britney Spears and pundits). Take it AWAY from the corporate pigs as they have obviously failed at this, and empower the real journalists to do real stories again.

"Take it AWAY from the corporate pigs as they have obviously failed at this, and empower the real journalists to do real stories again."

One of the (obviously) unwritten stories in the US commercial news media was the deliberate crippling of US Public Broadcasting at its inception and the subsequent further damaging of its independence by "corporate sponsorships."

Unlike the UK, with a powerful centralized BBC, that is willing to slug it out with the government, in the US the corporate-coin-operated Congress decided to make the PBS a hodge-podge of weak, locally-funded stations with no coherent national editorial voice. Slowly starving this organization of Federal funds forced it into the hands of Mobil and Archer-Daniels-Midland. Hey presto! CorpoAmerica speaks through PBS.

You want to see Adam Curtis documentaries on PBS ("The Power of Nightmares" or "Century of the Self"). Never happen, baby. Funny how that worked out.

I agree that Swampland has been a kind of lightning rod. But one thing I would point out: I wouldn't have come here if it wasn't for things like Joe Klein calling Paul Krugman a "dilettante," or Jay Carney making the mistake about Bill Clinton being mired in the 30's, and then comparing us all to Rush Limbaugh for claiming otherwise. And then you have a former gossip blogger covering important news beats (I find her a charming person, and she does sincerely work at what she does, often successfully, but doesn't it say something about your priorities?).

So maybe you guys didn't know what you were getting into when you were being provocative like you were, but it seems to me that you were asking people like us to show up. And we did. ; )

About the newspaper layoffs--I disagree with HH (who I mostly ignore on this blog) that things will settle out in an agreeable way and the invisible hand will fix everything (nice way to put it, Elvis). A couple years ago, Jay Rosen had a post where he reported a meeting between bloggers and media owners. One of the points of discussion:

...No one really knows what will guarantee into the future the big capital expense of a fully staffed newsroom. This is what worries Big Media people, and they argue that it ought to worry us. They have most of the rest figured out, they believe. But not how to fund the newsroom. As David Weinberger wrote: “They’re facing the possiblity of genuine discontinuity.”

I don't think the founders of this country intended the fourth estate to be tied as tightly to financial interests as it is today. Probably other business models will have to emerge, including non-profits. But I don't think things will necessarily go smoothly.

Interesting question: What would the pre-Iraq War coverage been like if there had been more media diversity? I bet there would have been more Knight-Ridders (the only ones who got the story right). It would be interesting to try and figure out how much the pre-war news suffered because of poor media diversity.

But then you see things that tell you that things weren't much better before the Internet. Look at this lecture by Naomi Oreskes on the subject of climate change, how in the 80's, American prestige media was basically hoodwinked by movement conservative institutions. Apparently, you didn't need the Internet, or pressures from today's Wall Street to have that happen.

"the big capital expense of a fully staffed newsroom."

Times have changed. What is Juan Cole's budget? How much does Salon pay Glen Greenwald? The Internet provides a network with more reach than any rival commercial broadcast or print empire, and it is dirt cheap to use it.

We used to have professional telephone operators to place calls. Now we all dial our own telephone calls. We will eventually rely on trusted networks made up of a combination of paid and unpaid news gatherers.

Consider this simple question:

Is there more value in the information content posted by readers of this blog or of the Time "reporters" on this blog?

Want more proof? Go to this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAUDcmaJNWQ

You would never have heard about this documentary from KT. The future of journalism includes a big tombstone for CorpoAmerica's Time Magazine.

I think there is still good journalism, just not in the American corporate media. And especially not in the DC corporate media. I don't buy that it is the audience's fault. Trivia, gossip, and blood has always generated more ratings than solid serious journalism. That isn't new. People *do* seek out serious news, they just go elsewhere these days to read it.

I don't think it would be a terrible thing at all if the Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, General Electric style of "journalism" ultimately failed. Time Magazine has only produced one worthy story this year, the one on the Seigelman case. (And the corruption in Alabama justice was discussed in detail on this very blog about a month before Time published that story.) Everything else Time Magazine has produced, from what I see, is either something on pop culture or a repetition of every other outlet and a rewording of press releases issued by interested parties: campaigns, Congressional offices, lobbying groups. Feel free to remind me of another original story. It isn't necessarily the journalists' fault, to the extent that they cover the stories assigned to them, but the focus on the quarterly bottom line, ultimately.

It isn't a bad thing that this kind of corporate "journalism" is becoming unprofitable. It's becoming unprofitable because it fails to provide the consumer with anything of value. Let it go ahead and fail, and we can get on with a more competitive model of news gathering and dissemination.

That "capital expense of a fully staffed newsroom"? But it is fully staffed with political generalists without expertise. Of what value is a newsroom staffed with a group of people whose only interest and only output is political gossip? Close down that shop and no one would be the wiser.

Karen,
Thanks for joining us in the penny seats. I do sympathise with all of your points, and you're right, the Internet is no substitute (to date, only Jos Marshall has really gotten anywhere, and he only has life four guys and some TVs).

My media hatred has actually abated quite a bit, and I mostly credit CBS's Public Eye (until they fired Felling) and Swampland. Most of the time, I just want to understand the POV of someone in the business, and without hearing it, I'm left to come up with all sorts of explanations as to "why".

Going through the archives, I was surprised at how many articles by you and Jay I remembered from previous campaigns, and honestly, I don't think your Gingrich article during impeachment was as bad as I thought all reporting had been. Gingrich was described as using the politics of rage, and there was skepticism about Gingrich's claims at being reluctantly forced to be a jerk by his constituents. There were things that bugged me (after tracking down the tapes of Bush's debate training, Jay seemed to find it more important to note the head of the advertising company was a Democrat than the fact they were the PR agency for Bush/Cheney). There were things that impressed me -- how you spoke out against the misuse of the Love Story quote.

For what it's worth, I don't watch cable, even MSNBC, for the reasons you state -- having blowhards opine about things they know nothing about no longer riles me up. I'd rather go to CNN or CBS, not because they're great, but because they actually do some reporting -- having people go cover things -- and *some* of the people they interview, like Gergen, aren't shills. I subscribed to Time again because I'd rather get my news that way - cable is useless, and should be watched, only in an effort to gather ammunition to undermine them.

The great journalistic crimes I see are done by bringing on someone like Jake Tapper or John Solomon, who there is just no way around this, purposely distort stories to get linked on Drudge.

If you had demonstrated "inside the village" thinking, I might jump on you, but your response is earnest and makes me appreciate the job you guys do a little more. What you have done more than anything is demonstrate that there are people out there who want to do a good job. I was worried. I had begun to think journalism had become lobbying, passing along this meme for that story/telecom bill.

I think the Clinton madness, followed by the Bush rally-around-the-flag, had created a unique aligning of the planets where the typically healthy desire among those tasked with objective analysis (reporters, intelligence analysts, scientists) found their knee-jerk even-handedness and open-mindedness being exploited. Splitting the difference usually works, until things get so lopsided that a neutral pose becomes an agent of the cynical and partisan.

It is my hope that by cleaning house, and giving a fatal blow to the politics of corruption, cynicism and hyper-partisanship that Bush used so effectively, and allow everyone to return to sanity in a way that is impossible now.

The thing we have in common is that the media-bashers, unlike the "liberal-media" conspiracists, WANT an effective, healthy fourth branch of government that provides a check on power and provides empirical, objective reporting of the story. Whether that means a BBC, or competition from TPM or what, I don't know, but we're not the enemy. That, more than anything, is what drives me nuts. We aren't out to destroy you. We're out to save you. Seriously. You may not think you need saving, but we do.

"We aren't out to destroy you. We're out to save you. Seriously. You may not think you need saving, but we do."

Well said. KT is smart enough to know what has happened to American journalism, but she feels powerless to change it. We have the power to change it.

A few points need to be made here...

First, Karen...try not to let commenters get under your skin. While it is great that you read and take seriously our comments, don't go overboard. For all you know, some us could be commenting during the computer time we earned for doing our chores at the insane asylum.

Secondly, while the journalists these days do often imbue their reporting with a good heap of fluff, inserted narratives, etc...it is important to keep in mind that these folks are just cogs in the wheel of a huge for-profit corporate enterprise that needs to pay the bils and the shareholders. The issue is that because the nitty gritty of policy is boring to most beyond the average swampland commmenter, they have to impose narratives on the news in order to make it more entertaining. The ratings for the cable news shows and the circulations for the MSM print publications is dropping precipitously. And so some of their (bad) behavior is attributable to mere surivial instinct, not necessarily malicious intent.

A lot of this is the fault of our fellow citizens who though supply and demand, get the inane coverage that they crave.

As this author points out, our culture is getting dumbed down...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/books/14dumb.html?em&ex=1203310800&en=ed986aa2c486c13d&ei=5087%0A

When anti-intellectualism is the majority sentiment in this country, it's not particularly surprising that media often devolves the way it does. Of course there is still great, measured journalism on the News Hour on PBS....but this stuff is dull to most and only survives due to government funding.

Anyways, this is a long topic I could go on and on about...but the main point is that most of the reasons media is bad is systemic and not personal. There are some, like Karen, who I think are trying to do a good job in a bad system. And there are others who probably relish and abuse their roles as meme builders just a bit too much. But they're all cogs in the economic wheel....

"But they're all cogs in the economic wheel"

This is just fatalistic rubbish. Sweden, Britain, and France all work with the same "economic wheel." But they don't have a servile commercial "press" that enables gangsters and war criminals. Blair had to fight a pitched battle with the BBC to defend his "sexed up" Iraq war intelligence.

Only our coin-operated political system enables plutocrats to pervert and cripple journalism. How do you think we got down to FIVE CORPORATIONS controlling 90% of the news Americans see? By some natural law?

This twisted belief that anything that emerges from the marketplace, however crookedly rigged, is a manifestation of some law of nature would justify slavery and child labor. There is nothing natural or inevitable about the degradation of American journalism into a Punch-and-Judy show that enables war crimes and torture. It was done deliberately by ruthless individuals to maximize their personal advantages.

If we don't clean up this rotten mess, America will forever remain the laughingstock that Bush and Cheney have made it.

Memekiller: Here here to your last paragraph.

RKA: I disagree about "anti-intellectualism is the majority sentiment in this country", at least on the broadest scale. At best anti-intellectualism is maybe confined to the boomer set and the institution of ribald consumerism/star-f*cking they left behind; Selfishness and self-absorption go hand-in-hand with stupid. The rest of us are mostly victims of the modern day American education system, like the game show contestant in the article. Susan Jacoby should be more mad at her age group for the general state of our union than accuse all Americans of enjoying being dumb.

Meanwhile, look at the difference between someone who watches Faux News versus an NPR/PBS viewer. I couldn't care less if NPR/PBS is "boring" in comparison, the urgency is still keen and fatalism may be very dangerous.

We need improvement across the board and, you know what, if the American masses truly in the end opt for idiocracy and spin, maybe it would be ideal to simply jump ship and teach the country a real lesson.

This message is for the commentor named HH:

You need to calm down.

You make very good points about the failings of modern journalism and the depredations of the corporate-journalistic model. Points with which I most heartily agree. But if you continue to apply your criticisms so broadly and viciously you will only undermine the progress you claim to seek. In other words, every problem is not a nail - you need not use your hammer every time. And, yes, this is coming from the same commentor that called Jay Carney an idiot (and referred to his interview of Rush Limbaugh as 'fellatory'), so I am not afraid to apply that particular tool. (The hammer, NOT the fel ... oh, nevermind)

My point is that Karen has proven herself to be, in my opinion, a part of the potential solution. Her role is not that of Jay Carney or Joe Klein but rather that of the more straight reporter. We are not likely to motivate her to embark on some great Progressive campaign but she is also much less susceptible to the kind of purely partisan rantings that make up so much of the media.

But the role of the straight reporter is one that we in the commentariat ought to encourage and this particular post offers no better illustration as to why. In this post she discusses the movement seeking to debate scientific policy and issues with the presidential candidates. How did she find out about it? I do not know - but there is a chance that it was from the posting of the information by me and others right here on this blog. And, as an employee of Time magazine, she has a much better chance of her phone calls being returned than do mine.

This is the value of the straight reporter - a person with access, resources and eyeballs that is open to the suggestion of topics and links to further information that this medium was designed to provide. In other words, we are a good reporter's free and infinitely skilled research department. Anything that she needs to know we can provide and we improve the journalistic product by doing so. If Joe Klein was not so sure of his analytical brilliance then it would work for him too. Jay Carney is a conservative and, therefore, impervious to evidence.

You have a white-hot burning opinion about modern journalism - and you are not incorrect - but sometimes progress can be made with less heat. And when you are ready to march on Washington to fight media consolidation and demand a return of the Fairness Doctrine I will be right there by your side if not already a couple of rows ahead of you. But in the meantime I see the potential for progress in not eviscerating a straight reporter that has shown a willingness to discuss, ask and learn from us.

Hear hear, Terrapinion!

The topic of the Science debate is one that has been championed with increasing frequency in the past week by KT's commentators. When she does go ahead and post on the subject, what is the purpose of trying to eviscerate her? When commentary is uniformly negative irrespective of the content of the blog posts, it ceases to be useful for either party involved. Some commentary evinced in this thread exhibits that exact quality.

Terra, Anon, & HH --

I've been lurking here for a few months, and created an account solely to say what Terrapinion and Anon said. The two of you beat me to it, curses, curses. They were also far more respectful than I had intended to be, and they took the wind out of my outraged sails.

I can still add, HH, that if you're going to harangue Ms. Tumulty about a post on a science debate, you make a basic error by referring to the commenters here as "a random sampling of literate people" when it's quite clearly a self-selecting sample. I know you know that, the rest of that paragraph acknowledges it. Statistics 101, sir.

Thanks for commenting, Highway Rob.

"But in the meantime I see the potential for progress in not eviscerating a straight reporter that has shown a willingness to discuss, ask and learn from us."

Look, KT is either with the Time-Warner program or she is not. This organization enabled the Iraq War and protected Bush from being labelled a torturer.

You don't seem to grasp that KT only writes what she is permitted to write. She refuses to tell us how her stories get spiked, because she wants us to believe that Time Magazine is just a bunch of straight shooters. The reality is that she will get smacked down if she takes just one step out of line.

So here is a challenge that will test your opinion of KT and prove my point. Here is a link to a WaPo story indicating that there may be thousands of hours of undisclosed interrogation videotapes at Guantanamo.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021303164_pf.html

Let's have "straight reporter" KT ask Richard Stengel, her boss, if she can cover this story. What do you think he will say? Then how will she explain the decision?

You don't seem to grasp that KT only writes what she is permitted to write.

HH, this very thread is proof that you're wrong. Not that there are zero contraints on what she can write about, but it certainly appears that she is receptive to topics suggested here. Hooray!

At least now I get why most folks here are polite (usually) and you act ... differently. You think that due to the violence inherent in the system, nothing can change (until Taichi Sakaiya's prophecy comes true, I guess). Well, I think this thread shows otherwise. And I think that Karen has been extremely willing to engage criticism here-- even obnoxious criticism. And I think she deserves credit for that.

If you're just here to blow off steam, I'd rather you do it somewhere else.

"you make a basic error by referring to the commenters here as "a random sampling of literate people" when it's quite clearly a self-selecting sample.

Please explain to me how the overwhelmingly critical response of the posters on this forum is a false representation of the opinion of educated Americans on Time Magazine "journalism." By what magic are adulatory and encouraging posts made to vanish, and by what dark art are uniformly critical posts of varying degrees of asperity hurled at the usual suspects here?

Klein, Carney, Tumulty, and, to a lesser degree, Cox, are consistently pelted with the blog equivalent of rotten fruit and vegetables for most of what they post here. Is this because the denizens of the Internet are evil demons? I humbly suggest that it is because Time Magzine, and the cowardly people who write for it, betrayed the American people by putting their careers ahead of their integrity. They wrote feel-good pieces about murderers and torturers because their bosses told them to.

So KT is willing to talk to us here. BFD. She still writes what Stengel tells her to write, and she still looks away from inconvenient truths when told to. Praising the lesser evil is a dubious strategy for reforming American journalism.

"You don't seem to grasp that KT only writes what she is permitted to write.

HH, this very thread is proof that you're wrong."

Show me the proof. Show me a story that KT insisted run in Time Magazine over the objections of her editor. She has never breathed a word here of who OKs her stories and which ones have been killed. For her to reveal the actions of the people behind Time's CorpoAmerica propaganda curtain would violate a fundamental taboo and entail career suicide.

KT is part of a corrupt system, and that is why KT is part of the problem. "Nice" people like KT are integral parts of a propaganda machine that allows innocent people to be tortured to death in secret US prisons.

HH - You wrote: "So here is a challenge that will test your opinion of KT and prove my point. Here is a link to a WaPo story indicating that there may be thousands of hours of undisclosed interrogation videotapes at Guantanamo.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021303164_pf.html

Let's have "straight reporter" KT ask Richard Stengel, her boss, if she can cover this story. What do you think he will say? Then how will she explain the decision?"

Thanks for the reply. I would like to hear KT's thoughts on the matter as well but I imagine that Stengel's reply would be that her assignment, currently, is the Presidential campaign - in other words, it is not her beat. But I am only guessing about the reaction of a man for whom I hold an extremely low opinion.

But I do not think that that is the most constructive use of this space. I think that if you want to see more coverage of the issue that you have presented in your example then you need to engage KT in a way that any normal human might find, well, engaging. Post the link and ask her opinion. Try to present additional information so that she has the appropriate resources at hand. See if you can persuade her to work the issue into her beat (what do the candidates think about this issue? what do her sources say?). Or, in the case of your example, see if you can get KT to forward your thoughts to the reporter at Time that IS covering that story. And then be mature enough to realize that you are not the only one vying for her time and attention.

Look, HH, you and I agree on the threat that corporate media presents to journalism and democracy. Where we differ is that I believe that this forum can be a constructive medium for positive change - and I am trying to be constructive in my interactions here. What constructive purpose do you believe that you are fulfilling?

What constructive purpose do you believe that you are fulfilling?

I am ripping away the facade of "normality" that is the most effective tool of CorpoAmerica's propaganda machine. They have normalized torture. If someone had told you, in 2000, that Bush would be torturing prisoners a few years later, would you have believed it? No, you would have considered it a bizarre and fantastic claim.

But here we are. And nice, decent people like KT, "just doing their jobs" are what persuaded the American people that "harsh interrogation" was a good way to protect us from terrorists. Time-Warner, GE/NBC, Fox, Disney, and a few other soulless corporations have been critically important enablers of the most destructive presidential administration in my memory. I must remind you that character is defined by ACTIONS, not by posturing, table manners, or choice of words. KT and her colleagues have actively participated in an organization that has enabled and defended war criminals. That is the ultimate judgement on their characters, however "nicely" they may behave on this forum

What Terrapinion said.

Or:

"Nice" people like KT are integral parts of a propaganda machine that allows innocent people to be tortured to death

Even if that is true, acting like a huge dick all the time on this forum is not part of the solution.

I am ripping away the facade of "normality"

For whom? To what effect?

May I be forgiven for feeding the troll...

HH, I have no burden of proof here. I don't know, nor do I care, whether the commenters on this blog are representative of educated America or not. I tend to doubt it, though. The sample here is of people worked up enough to comment. And I would posit that a great many of those people game here to give Klein a hard time, so it's skewed toward people worked up enough to comment about one single issue. [Note to anyone else reading: I recognize that whether the group is representative is irrelevant, since the number of people who agree with a proposition is only the weakest of circumstantial evidence of the truth of that proposition, but it's the topic that HH and I appear to have chosen.]

So. To return, for kicks, to a topic that drove everyone crazy here a few weeks ago, we now have a high school personality type for you, HH. You're the guy who comes to the party, sits in a corner and complains about how lousy the party is, but who won't leave. So may I say, dude, do a couple of tequila shots and loosen up. We all seem to be fairly intelligent people here. Being intelligent should be fun. I've been paying attention. I'm outraged. But, my friends (drink!), I've still got a smile on my face.

Hook 'em, Karen, and keep up the good work.

"Nice" people like KT are integral parts of a propaganda machine that allows innocent people to be tortured to death

Even if that is true, acting like a huge dick all the time on this forum is not part of the solution.

I am ripping away the facade of "normality"

For whom? To what effect?

Not for people like you, who value polite conversation above everything. You would prefer polite falsehoods and evasions to the bitter truth.

Please show me where my views are mistaken, and I will promptly recant. Please point out my errors of reasoning, and I will swiftly correct them. Please tell me where I have wronged Time-Warner, and I will instantly apologize.

I wish there were some sweet, lilac-scented way to say that these people have enabled murder and torture, but I can't think of one. Can you?

Very interesting debate here between HH and everyone else. Definitely an eye opener. Thank you.

Getting back to the post at hand, as a chemist, I don't expect political candidates to know the ins and outs of chemistry, biology, physics, etc. But what I do expect them to understand is how the Scientific Method works, and how science can be used to help the country. Ask a Question, come up with a Hypothesis, develop and perform Experiments that can validate or disprove your Hypothesis, and come to a Conclusion.

In other words, candidates should know that asking a Question that can't be answered (intelligent design), or changing the Conclusion because it's not politically feasible (too many to count) undermines americans' faith in what Science can do for us.

HH:

I wish there were some sweet, lilac-scented way to say that these people have enabled murder and torture, but I can't think of one. Can you?

I've given this much thought today.

Surely you can't stop with Karen, right?

Aren't you really accusing every American of war criminality?

...and back on topic for a second:

What zippy509 said.

Please tell me where I have wronged Time-Warner, and I will instantly apologize.

Nowhere that I'm aware of. (Though it's a bit tendentious to dismiss this post as meaningless because it's not in the print version of Time.)

But, by stating your position in a manner calculated to produce maximum defensiveness and minimum engagement, you're wronging your own point of view.

Not for people like you, who value polite conversation above everything.

OK, not for me. That leaves 6 billion - 1 people you might be writing for. But as far as I can see, you're writing for the benefit of one person.

HH,

Your YouTube link is outstanding. I recommend everyone watch the Three Part series.

"Surely you can't stop with Karen, right?

Aren't you really accusing every American of war criminality?"

Aha! Now I see. Nobody is really at fault here. It was the Big Bang Event that caused the murder and torture committed by the Bush administration.

Time Magazine and its dutiful scribblers are no more guilty of enabling these horrors than average American taxpayers or the primordial ooze from which we evolved.

Time Magazine occupied no special place in the workings of the Bush administration. Karl Rove planted information with Time Magazine because he chose reporters at random when he wanted to put out a story.

This is all just a big misunderstanding. KT is really a crusading reporter eager to expose the murderers and torturers in the Bush administration. She just hasn't gotten around to it.

CMike,

Adam Curtis's outstanding BBC documentary exposing how the "War On Terror" was manufactured will never be aired on US TV networks.

"An American network executive who wouldn't even let his name be used said "we would be crucified if we showed that here". These documentaries are like a graduate course in how the American and British public has been herded like cattle since the end of World War I."

Source: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/22/212041/57/454/425671

You could ask KT why Time-Warner won't broadcast "The Power of Nightmares," and she would say "That's not my department." KT is just a good soldier doing her job, and making sure that the average American sees the world in the correct way.

Here is the link to "Century of the Self," which explains how the engineering of psychological manipulation was adopted by corporations and politicians:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8953172273825999151

Let me say I agree with everybody else. HH, when you are always at max volume, it just doesn't get heard anymore and becomes noise.

I have multiple problems with the media. I differ some with KT's blame of budgets being the main factor in the decline. I would argue that the media has always been flawed.

Go back to Watergate. Most reporters and papers missed it, or ignored it, or even downplayed it.

Was the golden age Hearst's era?

Media "objectivity" is the big problem. "President Bush says the earth is flat, others differ", type journalism is the crap that is destroying the profession.

"HH, when you are always at max volume, it just doesn't get heard anymore and becomes noise."

This is where we came into the movie. What you are really saying is that the truth needs to be slowly, deftly, and cunningly revealed to people, so that they feel that they are discovering it for themselves. Yes, the truth is so important that selectively disclosing it, and artfully, shrewdly revealing it, bit by bit, is the way to MANIPULATE people into believing the truth.

You are such a thoroughly conditioned consumer of manipulation that you cannot accept the facts in front of your face if they are not presented with a sufficient degree of style and spin. That is why you trust KT, an integral part of the Time-Warner propaganda machine, because she tells folksy anecdotes about her cub reporter days, and she never steps out of line. You don't trust a harsh stranger that puts uncomfortable facts in front of you.

Reality check 1: if all you had ever read about the Bush administration were KT's stories in Time Magazine, would you conclude that Bush was a war criminal who was the worst President in modern American history?

Reality check 2: Copernicus beats Ptolemy, no matter how rude and crude Copernicus is and how smooth and slick Ptolemy is.

Reality check 3: spin and style don't change the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, or the extent of remaining oil reserves, or the number of dead Iraqis.

Sleepers awake.

You are getting results HH. Why, I am sure that screaming at KT is going to make everybody else in the media to become fearless truth tellers. It's only because you were so loud that this day is dawning.

Thanks buddy.