Mass media sub-blime

Thanks to chance of rain, I figure out why I never watch pop TV. Product placement is rampant and expected... e.g. what car they drive, which soda is consumed, but to put it in the dialogue is going a bit too far. I really expected more from a show set in Santa Monica.

Blogging is not journalism... most of the time.

Every once in a while I get reminded of the fact that blogging is not journalism. At least it does not rise to that level most of the time. There are exceptions, Chris and Sheril at Intersection, dengre at DailyKos. But too often bloggers only grab something, repeat it, possibly provided their own interpretation… generally political. What they don't do is to ask some very basic questions, beginning with "Does this story make sense?". It it doesn't, they re-interpret it until it does.

Such was the case with the story that has been making the rounds headlined "1,500 farmers commit mass suicide in India." It seemed to be everywhere. I first found it at Green Change, referring back to a story in the Belfast, IR Telegraph. After commenting on the story… in which I accepted it at face value… I decided to check it out in more depth. The truth turned out to be even more interesting than the original story.


I was very surprised when I did a google search on "Indian Farmers Mass Suicide". The story was all over the place… mostly in American sources and mostly those that consider themselves to be progressive. Alternet, Huffington Post, Common Dreams, IndyBay, Democratic Underground. There were more, but you get the picture... but even Free Republic repeated the Belfast Telegraph story and they are hardly "progressive".

I looked for the story in Indian source news and did not find it. It should have been a sign of something wrong. All of the Indian news today was focused on the elections and in particular, the death of a number of police and election workers in the State of Chhattisgarh, the same state where the suicides were supposed to take place. So, it was not enough new to push aside the election and the attacks by "Maoist rebels".

Then, I dropped the word "mass" from my search and still had a hard time finding an Indians source, but when I did I began to uncover the truth. It was a story in DownToEarth, Science and Environment Online. In this, freelance journalist Shubhranshu Choudhary went to Chhattisgarh and did what all good journalists do. He talked to people, asked questions, read reports and completed all of that before deciding what the story was going to be.

Nawagarh in Durg district of Chhattisgarh is a small place by all standards. As in all small places here too everyone knows everybody and it was not difficult to find a local journalist as soon as we reached Nawagarh. We were looking for help to investigate the story of a farmer’s suicide in Chhattisgarh. A simple enquiry at a local paan shop on the roadside got us the address and directions to the most famous journalist in town.

What Choudhary found was that Indian newspapers did not consider the deaths of a few farmers to be a story. There was no mass suicide... not 1500 all at one time. But, there were about 4 suicides per day.

“The figure is not just for this year. Chhattisgarh remains at the top of the list every year since its inception. 1,593 farmers committed suicide in the state last year according to the data provided by state police to the National Crime Records Bureau,” I said. It means four farmers die every day by committing suicide and in the tally, Durg is just behind Raipur, which tops the list amongst the districts of Chhattisgarh.

Choudhary concluded…

Suicide is a complex issue and needs deeper investigation. A journalistic enquiry can only provide pointers to this problem—to draw attention of the people who are in a position to study the matter in detail and take appropriate action.

But will anyone heed the pointers? Not only Chief Minister Raman Singh but the opposition Congress also does not see any farmers’ suicide in the state. Some members of the farmers’ wing of the Congress party tried unsuccessfully to include the subject in the Congress manifesto for the last assembly election.

A high-profile Congress leader told me righteously, “We also visit the villages. We do not see any farmer committing suicide. So how can we include the issue in the manifesto?”

Maybe the reason no one can see is because no rich farmer is committing suicide.

So, what did I learn other than that the problems of the poor are not the problems of all.

The original story, for all of the sensationalism of the use of the term "mass suicide" in the headline, got some things right and missed others. Like farming everywhere, the results are affected by the weather. The Telegraph's reporter cited a falling water table. This, in a State that averages 1.4 meters of rain per year. I also found a similar story that involved crop loss from flooding and the ensuing suicide of the farmer.

When everyone can publish whatever they want, then the onus is on every reader to make sure that they have the latest, most effective, bullshit detector.

I need to stop watching Bill Moyers Journal on Friday evenings. I don't sleep well after. This time, he talks of the role of politics in controlling the media. There are those on the left who think it is the other way around, but I am not sure that they really understand what is happening with the 4th Estate.


Moyers begins this segment by citing novelist Russel Banks.

we choose our presidents not on the basis of their experience or even their political views, but on how well they tap into our basic beliefs, our deepest communal desires, including our religious or spiritual beliefs.

It is clear to see that is what is happening with Sarah Palin. It seems that no matter what the media does, and they have done a lot, people have responded to Palin at a visceral level that defies rational analysis.

He then goes on to show a CNN segment where Campbell Brown, not one of my favorite journalists, gained some esteem by not accepting the talking point that being the nominal commander of the Alaskan National Guard provided Palin with any valid experience. All Campbell did was to keep repeating the question that the McCain/Palin publicity flack kept ducking.

Can you tell me one decision that she made as Commander in Chief of the Alaska National Guard, just one?

This was set up as "belittling" her experience and the result was to cancel a McCain appearance on CNN.

This is the entire segment. The cited material as almost at the end.

We Greens have a real quandry. The truth about candidates does not make it through the media. Many of the public are reacting to the myth rather than the facts. The corporate media becomes the enemy, not of the public, but of the politicians who rail against the media so that you stop trusting them.

From the days of founding of this country, we have been told that an informed citizenry is essential for Democracy. Now, we have a bunch of politicians who are trying to make us stupid, who do not want us to be informed, but rather to be controlled.

If people want a myth to believe, what are we giving them? I hope that is is one of a new future, not a bleak past, of potential to be realized, not of opportunity squandered.

We may turn to the Internet, but then the responsibility for determining truth is now on us. Caveat emptor. I am not sure that most of us are up to the task. The internet is a very Balkanized space where people who share beliefs reinforce those beliefs with each other and do not reach beyond their immediate. If we are looking to the Internet to be the way we tell the world about ourselves, that we attract new members, then we probably need to provide a degree of professional management of what we say and how we say it.

If there is any one position in this party that we need to turn into a full time paid position, it is that of press secretary. The work to counteract the BS that is generally available is just too daunting to rely on volunteers to get the job done.

The work

Fair pay for fair work.

The idea that information is free seems to be a mantra for the Internet. Some ask if that is not just a capitalist scheme to short change those who supply content... for free.

Consider Huffington Post. Paying their writers is "not our financial model" says the founder, Ken Lerer. Yet, time and again the progressives who loudly support Danny Glover and Unite Here, who march with the California Nurses Association when they strike over wages and benefits, have no qualms about using venues that do not pay the writer, or the reporter.

This argument was brought forward by Stephen Smoliar at The Rehearsal Studio. Smoliar is a scientist and writer by trade. The Rehearsal Studio is where he tries on / works out ideas that may or may not find their way into other content. His view is the progressivism has lost touch with the world of work.

Whether or not you agree with that, you have to pay attention to those who he cited in this post, especially Timothy Egan, whose NY Times blog entry, Save the Press, is quoted liberally. Egan is fighting for his job. He wants to be paid for doing what he does, as we all do. However, what he does is to write, and content is a commodity to be acquired and the lowest price and resold for what ever anyone can make out of it.

If any of those guys on the docks heard that I was now part of a profession that asked people to labor for nothing, they’d laugh in their lunch buckets — then probably shut The Huffington Post down. Doesn’t the “progressive” agenda, much touted on their pages, include a living wage?

So what is it about Huffington Post, or OpEdNews that makes them the model to be emulated? Well, it seems to be in the best tradition of the worst of Capitalism, to make money off the labor of someone else.

Is there a Green Solution? What we currently have are venues for private publishing (Green Party Watch or Green Commons if it gets revived???) and an attempt to build a social networking site for Greens. (Green Change.) Yet, I have no answer for my wife when she asks me how much I am making for all the time I spend here and would not my time be better spent completing the very long list of homeowner tasks that we have agreed must be done.

Is Pop Culture Going Green?

If Vanity Fair magazine is representative of pop culture, then it is going Green in a very strange way.

Some my have noted that I will, on occasion, reference a post by David Roberts at Gristmill. He has a guest blogger role at Vanity Fair (Green Beat) going on and today's makes an interesting point about Global Warming and the Media. The short piece is here:

But is is worth posting in it's entirety.

What I Learned from the Mainstream Media About Global Warming

1. Efforts to address climate change will be enormously expensive, and will raise costs for ordinary families.

2. Politicians are B.S.’ing about it; none of them will tell the honest truth about the enormous costs.

3. Everything we’re currently doing to address the problem is utterly futile.

4. Most solutions, like driving a Prius, are mere affectations of do-gooding elites.

5. The public doesn’t care about global warming; they find it dispiriting and disempowering.

What nobody in the mainstream media ever seems to do is pause and wonder whether their relentless repetition of points 1–4 has anything to do with point 5.

(For the record—and more on this later—No. 1 is false. Nos. 2 and 3 are half-true. No. 4 is false. No. 5 is about 75 percent true.)

Well so much for Roberts' opinion. Now, where you you put Vanity Fair in the list of Green publications? Well, they did put out a Green Issue with a photo of Madonna on the cover. Huh?

On the other hand, Vanity Fair does do some good investigative reporting and this week's story entitled "Monsanto's Harvest of Fear" should be required reading.

Still, going back to David Roberts and the Green Beat, it seems that Vanity Fair is convinced you have to use celebrity to sell everything. e.g. the following:

• Cindy Crawford: The Power of Eco-Moms
• Q&A: Ed Norton Turns Green (Actually, He Always Has Been)
• Cindy Crawford: How You Can Make a Difference on Earth Day
• Green Beat: Will the Rothbury Festival Outdo Live Earth? By Adam Spangler

You get the picture by now. I wonder just how much this use of celebrity to carry the Green Message helps the cause and how much it trivializes is. I guess that we will not know because no one will do the research and report on it.

(Posted earlier today to EcoAction Committee Email List.)

Do we need a new narrative?

Maybe I am trying to hard and so finding connections that are not really there. This is one of those times where the book I read seems to connect to the blogs I read.

The book, in this case, is Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter. (short, early? version here). I have been doing some reading in Green Economics and Caplan's discussion of voting behavior in economic terms seemed to fit. His conclusions were that voting behavior is rationally unrational. In other word, it can better be explained after we stop expecting it to be rational as we vote against our self interest time and time again in very predictable ways. Just consider the way that illegal immigration will emerge as having a far greater role in the upcoming presidential election than it deserves.

Caplan uses the term preferences over beliefs to describe the fact that often we prefer to believe one thing about the way that the world works than the opposite, even when the facts say that we are wrong. The easiest example, in fact the one that he uses to describe how much this influences voting behavior, is that of the amount of foreign aid given by the US Government. Most people think that this is a huge problem when, in fact, it is less than 1% of government spending. Clearly, we should not give much credence to a Rush Limbaugh rant against foreign aide.

Having just finished this, I stumbled across Stephen Smoliar at The Rehearsal Studio where he comments on the media and the stories it tells: Hate Makes the World Go Round.

...the social system itself keeps going with the persistence of that pink bunny that commercialism has now embedded in our consciousness. I suspect the reason it prevails is that, while those who make it are always making messes, our culture seems to have been endowed with a talent for compensating for those messes. In other words, if we have any common goal at all, it is to apply our lives and fortunes to get out of a mess once we wake up to the fact that the mess is biting our collective asses.

I wonder if this talent is recognized by all and leads back to Caplan's problem. According to Caplan, the reason that we do not make wise choices is because the "cost" to an individual of a bad choice is very small, often orders of magnitude less than the "cost" to make a more informed decision. The personal cost to drive a gas guzzling SUV might be minimal but the social cost when a 1 million do is very high. So, the individual does not react "rationally" and prefers to believe that global warming is not real for any number of reasons.

All this, of course, is anathema to not just [journalist Bob} Franken but the whole culture of the mainstream media; and the problem has nothing to do with whether or not those media are being run by a handful of conglomerates more concerned with quarterly reports than with the concept of a "public trust." Rather, the problem is a narratological one: the need to deliver a "story" that not only addresses the classic 5WH formula of journalism (who, where, when, what, why, how) but brings the ingredients of that formula to some form of closure. Closure requires that any mess be "cleaned up" and delivered in a "neater package," under the assumption that readers do not want to be left feeling that the mess is still there.

If we indeed want to bring a larger electorate to a Green understanding, we may not be able to accomplish this only with facts and doomsday scenarios. We need a new narrative, one of challenge and triumph. It does not lead to utopia, but gives us a fighting chance to go on and meet new challenges. In any case, there are those who consider Utopia's boring.

Calling it like it is... chutzpah???

Thanks to a note from Genevieve Marcus, I found myself going through a blog called The Rehearsal Studio by San Francisco writer Stephen W. Smoliar. Since he write well about three subject that are dear to me... music, politics and the failures of the 5th Estate... I set up a feed to my browser and hit pay dirt on day two.

Here is a little fact the Smoliar unearthed and which very few others have mentioned, especially the nightly news broadcasts. The following four Senators did not bother to vote on the appointment of Judge Michael Mukasey as Attorney General.

Senator Joe Biden (DL)
Senator Hillary Clinton (NY)
Senator Chris Dodd (CN)
Senator Barack Obama (IL)

I seem that they all had something more important to do and anyway, their vote would not have counted. At least that is the way that Smoliar spins it. Better to read the entire post. I truly wonder whether Tim Russert will ask this one of Obama, who is his guest for the full hour on Meet the Press this Sunday morning.

After you read Smoliar's piece, take some time to ponner about all of the lesser of two evils pressure you will get to join the fight against the terrible Republicans. Join who in the fight? Not those four candidates. As my friend Alex would say, there was never a better time to vote Green.

Water Crisis Media Blitz

I have already written about the media blitz that is taking place, sponsored primarily by the Association of California Water Agencies. It is on radio, tv, and summarized at CalWaterCrisis.org. The goal is to convince everyone that there is an urgency to solving this problem this year, not some time in the future when it may, like in New Orleans, be too late.

We all understand the basic idea that should be guiding everything. One clear definition comes from Mark Crispin Miller's Introduction to a recent book by Thom Hartmann (Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class).

Here's a bit of wisdom on which the "left" and "right" can easily agree: If you let things go, you'll have to pay for it eventually; and the longer you don't deal with it, the more you'll have to pay. Wait long enough, and you'll pay dearly -- when you could have done the right thing all along and at little cost.

There are two things of which I am positive. One is that the we have been more than willing to let things go, generally because it would wreck the current budget to do anything. Let me repeat the example from the Visalia Times-Delta that I posted last January.

Tulare County's levee system is a disaster waiting to happen, and no one is taking the lead in addressing it.

That was then and relatively little has been done.

It is enlightening to see how the major newspapers of California have dealt with the subject in their editorial pages.

• Sacramento Bee: Stop the Rush on the Governor's Water Plans. 09/14/07 (Reg. required).

  There may be a need for future surface storage of water, but Schwarzenegger hasn't come close to making a case for these projects. Indeed, it's surprising that a governor with such an innovative record of tackling climate change still focuses only on 19th-century tools for solving the state's water woes.

• San Francisco Chronicle: Wise Floodplain Planning. 09/10/07.

  The benefits of more rational land-use decisions in the deep flood plain are not just about dollars and sense. Our system of levees is aging and vulnerable to earthquakes or major storms. Human lives are at stake.

• Contra Costa Times: Water Crisis Looming. 09/21/07.

  FOR TOO LONG, California has been unwilling to develop a comprehensive, long-term water-resource plan, and to build the infrastructure necessary to provide a dependable source of water for the future.

• Stockton Record: Special legislative session unlikely to meaningfully address state water issues.

  Prepare to be overwhelmed by theories on resolving California water policies.

• San Jose Mercury News: Water conservation should be first on California legislative agenda

  The governor and lawmakers are in a special legislative session, attempting to craft a solution to California's water woes. But their focus on multibillion-dollar bond proposals that would pay for dams, reservoirs, canals and other expensive water works shouldn't be getting the most attention.

  Instead, policy-makers should be requiring more conservation and efficient water use. Reducing wasteful water use offers the most cost-effective way of ensuring California's fragile water supply.

• Fresno Bee
Time's running out for a solution to water problems.

The Bee has long argued for a "three-legged stool" to stabilize California's water problems.

We think new reservoirs -- including one at Temperance Flat northeast of Fresno -- and expansions of existing sites are important elements. Those who benefit directly should bear much of the cost, but there are also public benefits that we should all pay for.

Increased underground storage -- sometimes called "water banking" -- is also essential.

We must -- and we can -- do a much better job of conserving water. Recycling and reusing our existing supplies is a source of savings that we've barely scratched. The state's universities, including California State University, Fresno, have much expertise that should be focused on these issues, with more investment in research.

• Los Angeles TimesCoping With Drought.

  Careful consideration of proposals to re-engineer the delta should be one part of the effort; serious dedication to conservation, another. Planners across the state should think twice before they allow development of lush suburbs or vast farmlands in hydrologically-challenged regions. All Californians will have to work for a water system that works for everyone.

• San Diego Union-TribuneApathetic lawmakers ignore looming shortages.

  There is plenty of room for compromise over the outlines of Schwarzenegger's water rescue plan. It would be more than outrageous, however, if apathy prevented legislators from even voting on it.

• Riverside Press-EnterpriseWater Sense?

  The Legislature's special session on water issues needs to sidestep longstanding policy disputes and focus on the immediate need to protect the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the state's primary water supply.

• Orange County Record. Court-induced drought

  The Schwarzenegger administration is pushing for a $5.9 billion plan to assure continued supplies from the Delta, according to published reports, and is warning about a coming crisis. So no matter what, the likely result will be forced conservation, more bond debt and higher prices for water consumers. Once again, government will have been the main obstacle to progress.

There are a number of different views. However, all but the Libertarian voice, the Orange County Register, take the position that we need action now. The Register would allow natural cycles and market forces to determine which rich sub-division get the money and would not be at all unhappy if California Agriculture moved to Mexico.

The legislature is getting the pressure that it needs to do something, anything that will allow them to say that they did something. Let us all just hope that they don't do the wrong thing (building expensive new dams to catch less water than we are getting now.)

I will continue this with two more posts today, one compares two different plan (Gov. Schwarzenegger's and State Sen. Don Perata's.) Then in a third post, I will combine the recommendations of the Planning and Conservation League and Restore the Delta. These all should be considered together.

Be careful what you ask for

We are often reminded to be careful what you ask for, as you just might get it. There may be no other sphere of activity where that warning is more pertinent and less heeded than American politics. Many would agree that our current political system is broken and most of them have some idea of how to fix it. The choice of fix all depends on the particular evil that you see in the current system. I would like to expand this with a few observations from California's political history. (which you can skip if you understand the importance of unintended consequences.)

When Hiram Johnson was running for the office of Governor of California (1910) he based part of his progressive campaign on a Constitutional Amendment to create an Initiative Process in California.

The intent of this amendment, now the way of life in the Golden State, was to break the connection between such monied, pro-growth and development, interests like the Southern Pacific Railroad and the State Legislature in Sacramento. There was a belief that giving the people of California the capability to override the Legislature, to make the will of the people the ultimate source for legislative action, would deter further ethical lapses by legislators and give the people the ability to correct to most egregious of those actions.

The unintended consequences of Johnson's Folly, as the Initiative Process has been called in some quarters, is the fact that the same monied interests have just moved their funds from outright bribery of legislators to the manipulation of an ill-informed, disinterested populace through sophisticated (or not) media campaigns.

Slogans and code words have replaced analysis of facts. A case in point have been the recent "takings" initiatives in 8 Western States. While these efforts were advertised as protecting private property from eminent domain abuses, they were really aimed at destroying the ability of local governments to use zoning or environmental regulations to control growth or the quality of life in the community.

You can make a similar case about term limits in California. The term limit legislation was passed to curb the control of one man, Willie Brown, arguably the most powerful politician in California in the 1990's. However, even though Brown was forced from his role as Speaker of the Assembly, we have all paid a price for this as uninformed newcomers to the legislature take time to understand how things really work and the history behind various legislative agendas. As a result they have come to rely more and more on the assistance of outside activists, often legislative staffers who have lost their position when the boss was term limited out and who are now paid lobbyist. Those with money to pay the lobbyist salaries are now in a position to write the legislation. This was unintended consequence of term limits.

The Green Party has a fundamental belief in the decentralization of power. Along with that comes the Jeffersonian notion that the only "safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves."

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree.Notes on Virginia Q.XIV, 1782. ME 2:207

It is questionable that the people are being educated. Most of what you hear or see in the media is mis-information, slanted or only a partial story. A significant amount of television coverage is the result of producers determining what the story is before they gather the facts and so they only gather the facts that fit the story. The rest of is worse. The two talking head format that gives two interpretations of a question without any ability to marshal the facts that says one, or both, are wrong. So, the media is complicit in the propaganda war.

The only participants in the General Assembly of the Green Party are those with the time, money and energy to become deeply involved in the processes. They are self selected, just like the members of the CC and just like our candidates. There is no draft for service to your community.

If we are to rely on the wisdom of a Standing General Assembly, if we are to rely more on local structures based on county boundaries to do the work, then we need to invent a lot of information infrastructure to go with it. In the month of May, we actually had 45 different people contributing to the Green Cal-Forum Email List. This is up from earlier months. Reading through the lists, there is a general lack of agreement on the interpretation of our history, of the meaning of our past actions, of the probable results of future actions, and these are the well informed, committed activists.

I will expand this into a series of posts, because I firmly believe in the Jeffersonian ideal. We need to have a well informed membership if we are to have an impact on society. We need to have a well informed citizenry if we are to be able to bring others into the party. If these goals for political freedom are to be maintained, we must begin to do more than we currently do.