Tag: media

Here’s an interesting look from Slate’s Jack Shafer into the notorious incident up in Minot, North Dakota a few years ago when a train derailment threatened the city with a poisonous vapor cloud, but authorities couldn’t alert the population because all the Clear Channel-owned stations were on robot control …

I don’t know who looked less credible on last night’s edition of “60 Minutes”, George W. Bush or the president of Duke University, but the CBS News crew deserves a shout out for allowing both men to present their case regardless of how anemic each was.
It is fashionable to avoid ever complimenting bigfooting mainstream media for doing a decent job on a truly influential public figure. Presidential interviews in particular are generally way too deferential. And God knows history is not being kind to network news orgs and major newspapers for the way they capitulated in the face of Bush’s sky-high approval ratings prior to the Iraq invasion. (A failure I fully expect them to commit again, the next time a popular politician scams the public as baldy.)
Anyway, when you write about the MSM some unwritten law of cynicism says you’re supposed to niggle, I guess.
But Scott Pelley I thought got as much out of Bush as I would ever expect from a network correspondent allowed the kind of access Karl Rove has been cooking up for certain key media outlets as he desperately seeks support for Bush’s escalation in Iraq. (Pelley even declined to use the word “surge” in his knee-to-knee interview with Bush at Camp David, hitting him instead with the far more precise, “escalation”.)
Sure, Pelley could have wiped Bush’s face with a long list of outright lies and distortions the guy has engaged in — from Iraq to Intelligent Design to Kenny Boy Lay to Global Warming — but Pelley’s not Noam Chomsky and CBS isn’t TPM Muckraker.
What struck me was how Bush brought nothing new to his rationale for continuing the fight with US troops, and his weirdly rigid gait and stance as Pelley and he did the strolling-interview shtick around Camp David. You’d think Rove or somebody would be working with Bush full time, especially in the aftermath of his stiff, discomforting demeanor in the actual primetime speech last week. If nothing else, at least fake an appearance of confidence.
I’m sorry, I think Bush is losing it. (Pelley asked him as much.) The smirk never did anything for me, but I think Zoloft zombie when I watch him now.
BTW, let me go on record here, or in any betting pool anyone wants to start, and say that I see the prospect of a bonafide constitutional crisis if Bush and Cheney try to gin up some kind of Gulf of Tonkin rationale for attacking Iran. If they try something like that the only people willing to support him will be the talk radio choir, a gang of cynical bullshit artists that would rally behind him if announced he was deporting everyone lacking a first generation northern European bloodline.
But ask yourself, if Bush tries something militarily, based on his interpretation of “presidential authority”, how far would you be from accepting/consenting to a state sponsored coup d’etat?
As for the Duke president … pitiful chump. His position in the first hours of the rape charges against the lacrosse players was not enviable. He had every good reason to trust the DA — the now wholly discredited Mr. Nifong — but clearly overreacted to the roar of black activists and handed down highly punitive judgment well before all the facts were known.
The whole case is another example of the work left to be done in applying reason and perspective to race relations in this country. Fundamental to every individual and institution, particularly a toney institution like Duke, is the fear of being charged as racist. Like pedophilia, that sort of thing doesn’t wash off easily. As a consequence, you get frightened, ill-considered, media appearance-driven decision-making like we see at Duke.

A nagging techno-glitch has had the mighty Lambert mainframe down for a few days. Anyone out there who knows a sure-fire, never fail fix for preventing a router from crashing the cable internet connection, drop me a line.

As on election night, I spent the post-Bush “surge” speech with MSNBC. Since Fox is … well, Fox … and useful only as a window into the White House spin room, and CNN wouldn’t say “feces” if it had a mouthful, the Chris Matthews-Keith Olbermann act is my idea of the going gold standard in cable chatter. Besides, damn me to hell, but I love so splendid a clash of titanic egos.

Not to be a complete sexist swine, but watching Keith and Chris maneuver for higher ground is like watching a couple society divas duel for preeminence at a power lunch. See, the thrust of top end jewelry! Watch, the parry of the finest cosmetic surgery hedge fund money can buy!

Olbermann has been where he has been since Bush Co. started taking this thing — this Iraq-muddled-with-terror thing — over the cliff five years ago. That said, his latest “Special Comment” was unusually angry/passionate, which is damned refreshing, even if it is garnering him ratings. But what was noteworthy was Matthews, who, in answering a simple question from Olbermann about the White House’s political strategy, delivered his own angry stemwinder, lacerating the neo-cons and snapping at the end that it isn’t so much what Bush knows that we don’t, but rather what we know that Bush doesn’t. (Olbermann gives that rhetoric another twist in his “Special Comment” by wondering if even Bush knows what Bush knows.)

There may be some degree of theatrical shtick to this burst of passion, but I’m not one to complain. This isn’t Nancy Grace harping on some missing teenager, or homicidal husband, or Sean Hannity gasbagging Nancy Pelosi’s winery. Iraq is a monumental disaster and its encouraging to see someone in the MSM, say so … loudly.

The report Friday that The Fox News Channel, (“FNC” in acronym argot, or “Faux News” if you aren’t drinking the Kool-Aid), was the 8th highest-rated cable channel of 2006 wasn’t exactly a press-stopper. But for those who don’t follow this stuff, #8 may seem low considering the tankers of ink media types dump into re-cycling Fox’s hype and press releases. (Personally, I’m one of those who thinks of Fox News as far more marketing scheme than news service; a marketing scheme with a client base of one … itself. Face it, all of Fox’s “reporting” is orchestrated to heighten its brand.

Anywho … the basic report merely compared FNC with its cable rivals, CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline and MSNBC, all of whom trailed at considerable distance. The cursory report did however note that FNC, home to Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity as if you needed to be told, lost 26% of its audience among 25-54 year-olds over the course of ’06, while CNN lost 17% and CNN Headline 5%. Only MSNBC, (up 7%) and business-news CNBC (up a fat 32%) showed growth, among newsies.

Duly noted in most leads was that O’Reilly’s numbers, while down, were still substantially greater than Keith Olbermann’s. Olbermann, a hero to liberals for his righteous articulation of patriotic anger during the ’06 campaign, is clearly the act driving MSNBC’s numbers. He was the cable media story of the fall. (Several reports noted that Olbermann, a man blessed/cursed with a prodigious ego — right down to the Murrow-like quarter-profile he gives his Murrow-like “Special Comments” — is clearly positioning himself for something better than a life at the country’s 36th-highest rated cable news network.)

Don’t hold your breath though waiting for, say, CBS to acknowledge its Katie Couric mistake and dare something as unhinged and open to crackpot bombardment as dropping an unabashed truth-speaker to power like Olbermann on to its anchor desk. This country is far closer to a president with the middle name of “Hussein” than a liberal sensibility with an off-beat sense of humor fronting a network news division.

Also, while I’m thinking of it, let the record show that MSNBC’s Olbermann-Chris Matthews election night duet was TV’s most engaging analysis act, in no small part because of the fun of the tension of two cocks of the walk in full plumage display barely contained by the same puny camera frame.

But what is rarely referenced in these cable network reporting stories is what Americans are really spending their time watching. I mean, O’Reilly scored, on average, an audience of 2.3 million. Big whoop. (Even less big really, when you consider the average age of your cable news watcher is older than the average newspaper reader, practically an IV drip crowd, and that Fox’s viewers are the oldest — and male-est — of the bunch.)

Basically, the real cable story is, “screw news”, Iraq, off-year elections and Lou Dobbs howling about porous borders withstanding. The USA Network, with all entertainment, had double Fox News’ primetime average, ditto TNT, (“The Closer” did great business for them), and, as usual, ESPN, this year with “Monday Night Football” pulled down the bulk of the weekly “most watched program” bragging rights. (Worth noting is that the premium package Disney Channel is #2 in the US).

I could prattle on, but you get the idea. A reminder, really. Most of the country’s cable watchers remain pretty damned resistant to the cable news shtick. Too bad, perhaps. But maybe it is an example of “wisdom of crowds” and we are generally refusing to engage with all shtick, all the time.

Already a little light in the reporter-body department, KSTP-TV lost another one when Ross Kirgiss, a 13-year vet, abruptly cleaned out his desk, apparently over the New Year’s weekend, and vacated the Hubbard ranch. Colleagues who have tried to contact him since say they’ve heard nothing back.

I’m told Kirgiss had several months to go on his latest contract, but that for whatever the reason finally had enough and bailed under the cloak of a holiday. In the biz that’s called a “burn your bridges” move.

Several KSTP staffers remember Kirgiss not being too pleased when the station yanked the consumer beat he enjoyed doing, being further annoyed when he was slid back into the general assignment pool, and being mightily peeved when the suits started consumer reporting back up … without him.

How much that played in his decision, I can’t say. But Kirgiss is gone, and KSTP, which still hasn’t replaced Joe Schmit, Mike Binkley and Kristin Stinar … has others spread pretty thin. Like, for example, Tom Hauser, who is doing super duty anchoring the morning show, (Binkley’s old job), while still hosting “At Issue”, and covering politics.

Can you stand on an overpass in blizzard? Obstruct the view of a burning house while covering a fire? Issue warnings to stay off thin ice? Apply immediately to 3415 University Avenue.

Difficult decision tonight. Watch the premiere of the new series, formerly titled, “Let’s Rob Mick Jagger”, (now known as “The Knights of Prosperity”), or catch a screening of the Judi Dench-as-crazed-repressed-lesbian flick, “Notes on a Scandal”? I hear Jagger is actually pretty funny in the former, but, damn, I’m a sucker for psycho grand dames.
Until I decide on that weighty matter, I continue to monitor the trepidations of the Star Tribune staff in the wake of the paper’s sale to Avista Capital Partners. As I’ve said previously, there isn’t much in the way of precedent to reassure either the community or the staff that the Star Tribune will be a better newspaper under private equity management. Maybe that’ll be the case, but, believe me antennae in the Strib newsroom are up and on hi-gain for the earliest indicator of Avista’s true intentions, the canary is in the mineshaft and sniffing for gas.
Avista won’t close on the Star Tribune purchase until late February, but the new operators will play a role in deciding on a replacement for editor/Sr. VP, Anders Gyllenhaal, who is leaving for the Miami Herald. The choice of a known commodity, like the Strib’s current managing editor, Scott Gillespie, will, I’m told, be viewed positively by the newsroom. Along with being familiar with the area and to the staff, Gillespie is generally regarded as, both “a human being” and more newspaper man than corporate accountant. Anyone can change, of course, when their career suddenly depends on squeezing 8% more profit per quarter out of the company turnip, but the consensus of the moment seems to be that Stribbers much prefer their chances with Gillespie than yet another grey slacks and blue blazer transient from the Avista management training farm.
The appearance of the latter type will evoke two responses: A glut of resumes on city streets from every non-revenue-producing Star Tribune employee, and a “battle stations” call to the various unions.
Veteran business writer, Mike Meyers, a “silverback” in the Strib newsroom, believes if Avista, “is going to squeeze, they’ll squeeze early.” He isn’t sure if any of his colleagues should be comforted by publisher Keith Moyer staying on, since logic suggests there’s a significant advantage … to Avista … in having a guy in place who knows where cuts can be made.
No hippie, Meyers insists he’d like to see Avista, or any owner make gobs of money via the Star Tribune’s papa gorilla status in the Twin Cities advertising market. He reminds me that the paper’s share of all local advertising revenue actually increased over the past year to a whopping 40%-plus — in a year allegedly so grim for mainstream newspapers.
“But there are an awful lot of ‘strip and flip’ artists out there,” says Meyers, returning to most Stribbers’ default position of guilty until proven innocent.
Personally, Meyers is fascinated with the real estate Avista is picking up, at a time when a very well-heeled developer, Vikings owner, Zygi Wilf, is making loud sniffing noises of his own, downtown and around the Metrodome, where the Star Tribune owns five city blocks.
“The $25 million figure for all that property is a joke,” says Meyers . “The true value is much closer to $100 million. I mean, the land under the new Target store [on Nicollet Mall] sold for $27 million in 1998.”
If true, Avista is almost guaranteed a fat profit on its’ fire sale investment of $530 million, even if it flips the keys to someone new in a couple years. More to the point, Avista could … COULD, I say … achieve its profit goals without laying off staff and reducing coverage, as so many other publicly-owned papers are doing.
There is no consensus on whether a decision to scale back or dump completely the myriad ancillary publications the Strib is churning out, including the recently launched entertainment freebie, VitaMN, is a canary killer. If resources currently being consumed by all these peripheral publications were reoriented back into the primary product — the daily newspaper — instead of a death swoon the little birdy might even chirp brightly.

As someone who never tired of railing at copy editors sucking the life — the precious bodily fluids — out of my copy, I realize this blogging thing has the downside of requiring me to re-re-read my own stuff. Brutal. But I’ll do my best to keep the corrections coming, promptly.

“Par” Ridder. Not Parr.

Is it me or has the eulogizing of Gerry Ford now gone on longer than his presidency? Let enough be enough or at least let someone on the air who attempts to put Ford in some kind of rational perspective. By the 24 hour mark after his death, I was maxing out on the “decency” of the old guy and how many times he was credited with saving the Republic, the flag, Michigan apples and football from the throes of Watergate. And that from well-paid professionals like Charlie Gibson, Katie Couric and Brian Williams who were alive and allegedly conscious when Ford did his thankfully brief, unelected stint in the White House. Come on.

I’m not a fan of the journalistic impulse to play unsolicted national eulogizer. Most of the time it feels like self-importance has trumped journalistic sense. Yes, yes, Ford was President and we/they (the networks) must, of course, show excessive respect for the office, at least at the moment of passing. But here’s a thought, if only for, you know, a little competitive differtiation. How about seizing the opportunity to put history in context and deliver a quick, clear-eyed analysis of what Ford did and didn’t do, based on the 30 years that have passed and how much clearer it all is now?

Somewhere in 24/7 newsland maybe someone got in a word about the way Ford — with his “Midwest decency” — carried water for just about every viperous twist of statecraft that played during his long career in D.C. And yeah, that willingness to question little while agreeing to much probably is why Nixon tapped him to replace Spiro Agnew.

Christopher Hitchens is an acquired taste — often like swallowing curdled milk — but in the Slate.com column attached below he nails perfectly the press’s refusal to apply realpolitik journalism to the endless Ford remembrances.

What’s more, with Ford’s funeral and burial, you can bet he and any further analysis of his role in stage-setting the world he have today will be forgotten quicker than last year’s “Project Runway” losers.

Our Short National Nightmare
How President Ford managed to go soft on Iraqi Baathists, Indonesian fascists, Soviet Communists, and the shah … in just two years.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Friday, Dec. 29, 2006, at 2:08 PM ET

One expects a certain amount of piety and hypocrisy when retired statesmen give up the ghost, but this doesn’t excuse the astonishing number of omissions and misstatements that have characterized the sickly national farewell to Gerald Ford. One could graze for hours on the great slopes of the massive obituaries and never guess that during his mercifully brief occupation of the White House, this president had:

1.
Disgraced the United States in Iraq and inaugurated a long period of calamitous misjudgment of that country.
2.
Colluded with the Indonesian dictatorship in a gross violation of international law that led to a near-genocide in East Timor.
3.
Delivered a resounding snub to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at the time when the Soviet dissident movement was in the greatest need of solidarity.

Instead, there was endless talk about “healing,” and of the “courage” that it had taken for Ford to excuse his former boss from the consequences of his law-breaking. You may choose, if you wish, to parrot the line that Watergate was a “long national nightmare,” but some of us found it rather exhilarating to see a criminal president successfully investigated and exposed and discredited. And we do not think it in the least bit nightmarish that the Constitution says that such a man is not above the law. Ford’s ignominious pardon of this felonious thug meant, first, that only the lesser fry had to go to jail. It meant, second, that we still do not even know why the burglars were originally sent into the offices of the Democratic National Committee. In this respect, the famous pardon is not unlike the Warren Commission: another establishment exercise in damage control and pseudo-reassurance (of which Ford was also a member) that actually raised more questions than it answered. The fact is that serious trials and fearless investigations often are the cause of great division, and rightly so. But by the standards of “healing” celebrated this week, one could argue that O.J. Simpson should have been spared indictment lest the vexing questions of race be unleashed to trouble us again, or that the Tower Commission did us all a favor by trying to bury the implications of the Iran-Contra scandal. Fine, if you don’t mind living in a banana republic.

To enlarge on the points that I touched upon above: Bob Woodward has gone into print this week with the news that Ford opposed the Bush administration’s intervention in Iraq. But Ford’s own interference in the life of that country has gone unmentioned. During his tenure, and while Henry Kissinger was secretary of state, the United States secretly armed and financed a Kurdish rebellion against Saddam Hussein. This was done in collusion with the Shah of Iran, who was then considered in Washington a man who could do no wrong. So that when the shah signed a separate peace with Saddam in 1975, and abandoned his opportunist support for the Kurds, the United States shamefacedly followed his lead and knifed the Kurds in the back. The congressional inquiry led by Rep. Otis Pike was later to describe this betrayal as one of the most cynical acts of statecraft on record.

In December 1975, Ford was actually in the same room as Gen. Suharto of Indonesia when the latter asked for American permission to impose Indonesian military occupation on East Timor. Despite many denials and evasions, we now possess the conclusive evidence that Ford (and his deputy Kissinger) did more than simply nod assent to this outrageous proposition. They also undertook to defend it from criticism in the United States Congress and elsewhere. From that time forward, the Indonesian dictatorship knew that it would not lack for armaments or excuses, both of these lavishly supplied from Washington. The figures for civilian deaths in this shameful business have never been properly calculated, but may well amount to several hundred thousand and thus more than a quarter of East Timor’s population.

Ford’s refusal to meet with Solzhenitsyn, when the great dissident historian came to America, was consistent with his general style of making excuses for power. As Timothy Noah has suggested lately, there seems to have been a confusion in Ford’s mind as to whether the Helsinki Treaty was intended to stabilize, recognize, or challenge the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. However that may be, the great moral component of the Helsinki agreement—that it placed the United States on the side of the repressed populations—was ridiculed by Ford’s repudiation of Solzhenitsyn, as well as by his later fatuities on the nature of Soviet domination. To have been soft on Republican crime, soft on Baathism, soft on the shah, soft on Indonesian fascism, and soft on Communism, all in one brief and transient presidency, argues for the sort of sportsmanlike Midwestern geniality that we do not ever need to see again.

Finally to the Mayaguez. Ford did not dispatch forces to “rescue” the vessel, as so many of his obituarists have claimed. He ordered an attack on the Cambodian island of Koh Tang, several hours after the crew of the ship had actually been released. A subsequent congressional inquiry discovered that he, and Henry Kissinger, could have discovered as much by monitoring Cambodian radio and contacting foreign diplomats. Eighteen Marines and 23 USAF men were killed in this pointless exercise in bravado, as were many Cambodians. The American names appear on the Vietnam memorial in Washington, even though their lives were lost long after the undeclared war was officially “over.” The Ford epoch did not banish a nightmare. It ended a dream—the ideal of equal justice under the law that would extend to a crooked and venal president. And in Iraq and Indonesia and Indochina, it either protracted existing nightmares or gave birth to new ones.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His most recent book is Thomas Jefferson: Author of America.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2156400/

The surprise sale of the Star Tribune to a recently-formed private equity partnership has left reporters and other mid-level employees in a full churn of speculation, almost none of it good. There just isn’t handy model for these things improving the service to community or the professional/personal lives of working stiff journalists.

Nick Coleman got a round of “atta boys” from Strib colleagues for his column ripping McClatchy management for pretty much bailing on all the noble promises it made to the staff and community. It was ballsy stuff. Its refreshing to read someone brave enough to bite off the hand that fed him. My understanding is Coleman’s fill-in, holiday week editor, Nancy Barnes, took heat from McClatchy suits in Sacramento, but, bottom line, supported the column.

If you want to play cockeyed optimist, (i.e. delusional sap), here are a couple speculations floating in the aftermath of the Strib sale.

1: Avista, the private equity gang, may well have bought in strictly because the paper came available at such a startling fire sale price, roughly 40% of what McClatchy paid less than a decade ago, (and that because dumping the Star Tribune was McClatchy’s easiest, fastest, one-step move to avoid a brutal capital gains tax bill). Avista may have figured that at a price like that they can flip the thing in three-four years and see a profit … at which point … perhaps … maybe … a truly private and possibly LOCAL ownership offer … might … be feasible.

At $1.2 billion, (McClatchy’s buying price), there isn’t anyone in Minnesota with the means to take the paper over. Certainly not with every major revenue indicator pointing downward. BUT … at $530, plus Avista’s profit/carrying charge, there might be three or four.

Those three or four will take great interest in what becomes of the Los Angeles Times, where billionaire David Geffen, perhaps with one or two other tycoons, may take that paper private, and out of the grinding, reductive profit demands of Wall St.

“Private” doesn’t guarantee a commitment to full staffing and adequate resources to cover the 14th largest media market, but “LOCAL private ownership”, under the kind of “benign despot” model, holds out a glimmer of a dream whereby the one person responsible for any naked gutting of a high profile institution like a daily newspaper, would be available around town and have to submit to the kind of terse, country club bar confrontations that have an influence far larger than the mutterings of a couple hundred $60k/year reporters.

2. The other speculation is a win/lose proposition for local newspaper employees. Avista COULD decide that one way to goose profits would be to make a concerted effort to truly control the entire Twin Cities market.

The St. Paul Pioneer Press of today is competition in name only. Gutted first by Knight-Ridder’s private equity investors, hollowed out again by Media News this past Thanksgiving, and facing the very high likelihood that Media News will continue to devour it for profits via next summer’s Guild contract negotiations (or lack thereof), the Pioneer Press is in no position to suppress a full Star Tribune “surge” across the east metro. (It hasn’t been for years.)

Pioneer Press publisher, Parr Ridder, came to town talking the generic line of being a geographical alternative to the Star Tribune. The gaping hole in that logic being that the the Strib can be found everywhere the Pioneer Press is, while the Pioneer Press hasn’t ventured west of the Mississippi since Herbert Hoover. The two papers often sit side by side each other east of the river. One twice the size of the other, with indisputably broader coverage of the entire Twin Cities “community”.

Point being the Pioneer Press’s lunch is there for the taking … assuming Avista “invests” in the cost of expanded circulation and east metro staffing … not something a quick-turn equity crowd is expected to do. BUT, if they begin and show progress devaluing the Pioneer Press to east side shopper status, Avista’s successors might let that inform their judgment.

But for the foreseeable future world class skeptics will be asessing Avista’s every move for the first indication of business-as-usual profit-by-decontenting.

According to conventional mythology a new blog is born every second, each with an average readership of … one. I hope to do better than that, if only for the sake of Rake publisher, Tom Bartel, who, after months of brutal negotiations has finally consented to attach my idle, crackpot meanderings to his otherwise sober-minded publication … and who also owns a lot of guns.

My primary concern here is much the same as it was for the 15 years I played media reporter/critic at the St. Paul Pioneer Press. At its’ most basic it is this: Who is manipulating who, how and why? Not only is the influence of media pervasive and inescapable in modern America, it is in

a state of furious flux. Much of the so-called mainstream media, TV networks, daily newspapers and radio empires is suffering from their Faustian bargain with their investors. They’ve diminished the integrity and relevancy of their products, substituting — in my humble opinion — a lot of knucklehead pandering, also known as bullshit — for truth, accuracy and information useful to sustaining better lives and common culture. Very ironically, a lot of this heavily researched “entertainment” and “news” is also humorless and ponderously self-important. Come on folks, there is a happier medium, somewhere between giddy celebrity worship and homogenized, risk-averse corporate-speak.

In case you wonder, I owe the title of this blog, “Lambert to the Slaughter”, to local media luminary, Tim Sherno, whose name, (as I read the notarized memo he sent), “is synonomous in the Twin Cities market with Edward R. Murrow, William O. Douglas and John C. Holmes.”

The implications of sale of the Star Tribune, the new found reverence for the wisdom of Gerald Ford, and the visuals of the last minutes of Saddam Hussein are all topics I’ll get to before the banks open again on Tuesday.