I was wrong: people really are content with our political system

Looks like it's time for a mea culpa.

It seems Americans are overwhelmingly content with how our political system is functioning.

I believe there were only four candidates who were on the ballot in enough states to form an electoral college majority. Democrat Obama, Republican Romney, Green Jill Stein and Libertarian Gary Johnson.

If you wanted a candidate who represented real human beings (presuming you didn't consider corporations to be such), if you wanted someone who opposed militarism and if you wanted someone who opposed corporate control of government, there were only two choices: Stein and Johnson. They were very different candidates but they were the only candidates who were pushing those fundamental conditions needed to make America into a true republican democracy.

I thought the time was right for a decent smaller party showing. People were very lukewarm about Obama and Romney. The last few years saw some very significant grassroots movements in the Tea Party (which we forget really was grassroots originally before it was hijacked by the far right money machine), by Occupy movement and the Ron Paul insurgency inside the Republican Party. This was anti-establishment discontent we hadn't seen since the days of the Vietnam aggression. Johnson and Stein were two very active, substantive candidates. They were aggressive in their use of social media (whose influence on politics is vastly overstated but in the face of a media blacklist, it was the best they could do). Each represented a significant demographic: true small government advocates dissatisfied with Republican hypocrisy on the issue and progressives disillusioned with Obama's complete abandonment of their agenda. I knew the media blacklist would be a significant barrier but I still Johnson and Stein had a reasonable shot to get 5 or 6 percent of the vote between them.

They actually combined to get 1.3 percent of the vote; all smaller candidates only combined for 2 percent. Now, 1.3 and 2 percents were orders of magnitude greater than the amount of media coverage they received, but it was still only 2 percent who voted for real change of some sort or other to our political system. 

Thus 98 percent of voters voted to fundamentally preserve the status quo.

Americans complain about divided government but elected another divided government.

Congress has an approval rating of 21 percent but 90-something percent of incumbents were re-elected, as is usually the case.

People complain about both Democrats and Republicans but over 99 percent of members of Congress will be of those two parties.

Everything bad piece of public policy Americans complain about was enacted by Republicans, Democrats or, more often, both. Every 'onerous tax,' every 'job killing regulation,' every billion wasted on corporate welfare, every war of aggression that you complain about was enacted by one or both of the parties supported by 98 percent of the voters.

From this, I can draw one of two conclusions. Either Americans are actually fairly satisfied with the functioning of our political system or they are unhappy but aren't really interested in doing anything about it. Either way, the incessant whining is not compatible with either of these two options. If you're happy, why are you whining? If you're unhappy, then go beyond whining and try to do something about it.

I was wrong. I believed people when they said they wanted certain things or held certain values. But I guess was wrong to assume they'd vote for those things or values. And of course, some truly did. But from what I can tell, most didn't. Most voted against a candidate, not for one. That's their prerogative. And I'd be wrong to say I don't understand the reasoning. But I simply fail to see how change will every happen if only 2 percent of the people are willing to make it happen. 

Or maybe they really don't want it to happen. Maybe they are not interested in any sort of real change on the federal level. So be it. I accept that's democracy. Just quit whining when you get what you choose.

Now people need to take the next step and quit whining about what they don't want or are not willing to change.

The insidiousness of lazy, casual bias

In a rapidly changing landscape, there is one article of faith among the pooh-bahs of the press: the main reason that traditional media are better than the new media is trustworthiness. Blogs, Twitter and other Internet outlets merely echo rumor and speculation, often because of an ideological agenda. Newspapers, magazines and broadcasters are superior because they always verify claims before publishing them. Or at least that's the contention.

The actions of the Glens Falls Post-Star give lie to this claim and also highlights the daily's rapidly declining standards. 

The Post-Star has long been a divisive part of the community with its editorials reflexively hostile to teachers unions. These editorials wrongly demonize teachers for wanted to be treated like high-qualified professionals when the real culprit for high school taxes is a completely insane structure of education funding in the state. However, a recent editorial highlights just how lazy and casual this bias is.

Its October 1 "Boos and Bravos" section, which states the paper's formal editorial opinion, deplored the 16-month contract impasse between the teachers union and the school board in Warrensburg. Pretty vanilla stuff. In the past, the paper has also called for more transparency in budget negotiations. No objection there.

But the paper goes on to declare that because of the wording of state education law, it can only surmise that this is a stall tactic by the teachers union...

Wait, what?

I thought they were a newspaper. Why do they have to "surmise"?

If they wanted, they could do some actual journalism to try to reveal whether the impasse really was because of a "stall tactic" or whether there was some other reason. 

What would a responsible news outlet would do? Do in a little digging, find out the truth and then let that reality guide their editorial opinion 

Instead, the paper does exactly what the pooh-bahs so often convict the new media of doing: publishing reckless, inflammatory speculation to suit an ideological agenda.

The previous week, the paper did publish a news article on the impasse. But the article did not quote district or union officials as to their positions. 

The paper may or may not have reported on such details in the past, but if it had, then it could have cited those details rather than just "surmising." 

It just assumes that this particular impasse is the teachers fault -- a position that conveniently correlates with its past editorials against teachers unions -- for no concrete reason. This sort of lazy, casual bias is the most insidious kind.

The gutting of The Post-Star's staff and the economic straits of its parent company have been widely chronicled in this blog.

Maybe The Post-Star doesn't have the resources to do decent journalism of the sort that getting to the bottom of this story might require. But if they can't inform the public about what's going on in Warrensburg, then it should remain silent until it's willing and able do its job. Reckless speculation with no stated basis in fact is beneath what a purportedly responsible news organization should be engaging in.

An inconvenient truth

Earlier this month, The Post-Star's Will Doolittle published a blog entry regarding a Syracuse Post-Standard article on the Adirondack Park Agency and the Adirondack Club and Resort in Tupper Lake. Doolittle, a long time harsh critic of the Agency and of green groups, criticized the central New York daily for shallow, 'he said, she said' journalism. He goes on to add further 'context' that the Syracuse paper should have, in his opinion, included about how the environmentalists were wrong.

I left a comment on the PostStar.com blog saying that Doolittle was essentially attacking the Syracuse paper for not pushing his personal viewpoint. I also pointed out that the shallow 'he said, she said' transcription (not journalism) is a staple of most newspapers and broadcast outlets, including The Post-Star itself. Maybe that's why the daily doesn't do any reporting on Fred Monroe's taxpayer-funded anti-APA activist group.

I guess the comment hit too close to home. The comment has not been published more than two weeks later.

Media corruption and sycophancy

A couple of recent stories highlight the current ethical state of the corporate media.

Yapping head David Gergen, a senior analyst at CNN, came under fire for not being sufficiently transparent about his ties to Bain Capital, the private equity firm once lead by GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney. In addition to yapping about the current presidential race, Gergen has been a spinmeister in the administrations of presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton.

The Huffington Post reported: Gergen, while acknowledging his "bias" on Monday [July 16], wrote how he's "come to admire and like the leaders of Bain Capital" because the firm "stands out for the respect in which it is generally held and for the generous philanthropy of some of its partners."

Commentator Andrew Sullivan said this embodied "what's wrong with the press corps."

And he's right. This is hardly the first time the corporate media has offered openly biased observers, under the guise of objective analysts, with financial ties to topics they were discussing. 

There are many other examples but the most infamous recent one was during the aggression against and occupation of Iraq. The War Department hired a number of retired senior military officials to spout the party line. They were presented on cable news [sic] shows as objective, credible analysts, not paid flacks of a Pentagon propaganda campaign.

I suppose this isn't surprising since, while liberals like to single out Fox, there is precious little journalism on any of the so-called cable news channels. It's all speculation and analysis... apparently corrupted analysis.

But there is a different form of corruption, which shows the degree to which the 'watchdog' media is in bed with, or perhaps afraid of, those it's supposed to be watching.  

The Guardian, much derided by one regular reader of this blog but a much more vigorous watchdog than any daily in this country, reported that several major US media outlets have been submitting quotes to the campaigns of President Obama and Mitt Romney for approval before publication. The UK daily cited The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times as papers who were reviewing this policy.

The Guardian reported: Jay Rosen, professor of journalism at New York University agreed that "this is not a new problem", but said it had got worse.

"There have always been sources that tried to win these terms, and lately more and more have succeeded. What was new and significant in the Times story was that quote approval is now the norm for a whole layer of campaign sources; most of the reporters working the beat had already come to terms with that, the Times suggested."

Rosen said that reporters told him that the process has been building for years under George Bush and now Barack Obama.

It is not clear why this was done. But the corporate media has shown that it prizes one thing above all else: access. It doesn't seem to care if it actually uses that access for any sort of public service, as long as the reporters (not all of them act as journalists) get invited to fancy parties and White House comedy jam sessions. I suspect the quote approval abdication of duty was done to preserve this meaningless access.


In an industry that pats itself on the back as the national guardian of transparency and questioning - the party line is the democracy would collapse if such sycophantic reporting disappeared -  the degree to which the big corporate media outlets themselves are compromised would shock a lot of people.

Then again, given the decreasing respect in which the media is held, maybe it wouldn't.  


Update: James Fallows has a good column on how the media will have to start understanding the difference between 'objectivity' and 'neutrality.' It's telling how truly substantive investigative reporting - Fallows for The Atlantic, Seymour Hersch for The New Yorker, Matt Taibbi for Rolling Stone and independent author Prof. Chalmers Johnson - is all found outside the context of daily newspapers and television.

Also, for those interested, Prof. Rosen is on Twitter.

Organic food turns people into jerks, and other deceitful headlines

Recently, a news story made the rounds about a study that concluded that organic food turns people into jerks. NBC News' Today show was one of many mainstream media that ran virtually identical headlines on this topic.

This instance of media bias may have been merely sloppy headline writing or some overworked copy editor in search of a good headline, but the effect was to mislead readers. It's a perfect example of how merely consuming the news media, even generally respected sites, can make you LESS informed, not more, if you do so uncritically.

The headline implies that eating organic food turns people into jerks, according to the study. But when you actually read the articles and use those critical thinking skills, you find out that the subjects don't actually EAT any organic food. They are merely SHOWN PICTURES of organic food.

So an intellectually honest headline would read, "Does *seeing pictures* of organic food turn you into a jerk?"

What's worse is that none of these news outlets bothered to raise questions about the credibility of research on the effects of organic food where none of the subjects actually ate organic food as part of the study. How such a flimsy study got such wide and uncritical media play perhaps creates a greater suspicion of media bias.

Polls show we're not doing our job

This morning, North Country Public Radio just did a news brief, about 30-ish seconds, about (what else) a pol -- this time,l showing that hardly any New Yorkers knew anything about the primary challengers to NY Democratic US Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. I have heard similar polls relating to Massachussetts' Democratic US senate candidate Elizabeth Warren's primary challengers. Is it possible that this is because the mainstream media refuses to do any actual reporting on said primary challengers?

The Post-Star war on underage drinking (part 2)

by contributor Mark Wilson

Also see part 1

New York State keeps detailed motor vehicle accident statistics, compiling them year-to-year and county-by-county. Those data as well as the aggregate state figures compiled since 2001 are available online at safeNY.gov. The standards for data collecting and reporting have remained consistent since 2003, the year New York lowered the blood alcohol content standard for drunk driving, and the year the Glens Falls Post-Star initiated its policy on publishing names of teenagers busted for drinking.

Data in the following comparison are derived from police-reported accidents—collisions resulting in fatalities, personal injury or property damage. These records are more uniform within each region and over time than DWI ticketing, for example (another standard measure), which varies regionally and seasonally, skewed by periodic local crack-downs, check points, etc.

To get a sense of how the Glens Falls region’s statistics for underage drivers involved in alcohol-related accidents stacked up against the average statistics across New York, we set the number of alcohol-related-accident drivers aged twenty and younger both regionally and statewide against the number of alcohol-related-accident drivers from all age groups and compared the resulting percentages. A consistent drop in the regional percentage against the statewide percentage would suggest that the campaign was influencing underage drinking trends favorably.

The results
While eight years of data form no solid basis for statistical analysis, the regional numbers—despite countervailing swings in the middle years of the range—seem to track overall with the statewide norms (even to the point of convergence with state figures in 2009 and 2010, the most recent years evaluated). While this may not be enough of a statistical sample to determine failure of the Post-Star’s policy and overall campaign, there is nothing here to encourage their advocates, either.

Not surprisingly Post-Star editors have not brought statistical analysis to bear on their policy of shaming teenage drinkers. Nor have they cited the statistics in their periodic recommitment to the campaign. If anything they seem to be spurred onward by their own often overheated editorial rhetoric on the subject: “Underage drinking is dangerous and if you don’t believe me, I will show you the headstones.”

Ken Tingley publicly declared his own immeasurable standard for continuing the crusade:

“If there is one young person who learns the lesson, if there is one young person who gets grounded for life for embarrassing their parents, if there is one young person who pauses to consider whether to accept a beer at the next party because they don’t want to see their name in the newspaper, then it is worth it.”

There is little doubt, given the power and range of the Post-Star’s editorial voice, that the shaming policy and Mr. Tingley’s angry bluster have successfully reached any number of kids (and/or their parents). On the same token, given the contrary nature of so many adolescents, can anyone doubt that as many kids may have reacted (sadly) predictably to Mr. Tingley’s bullying and ignored the grim statistics, or worse, headed defiantly in the opposite direction?

The lack of movement of the underage drunk driving numbers against the backdrop of statewide figures suggests, at the very least, that some neutralizing backlash may be at work here.

The broader picture
One of the more troubling aspects of the Post-Star policy is its selective and asymmetric targeting of underage drinkers for the sake of reducing the deaths of young people in motor vehicle accidents.

In 2010 alcohol was the primary cause of 30.5% of all motor vehicle fatalities throughout all upstate counties across all age groups. Speed, by comparison, was the primary cause of 29.2%. The statistics in the three counties served by the Post-Star were quite different: In Saratoga, Warren and Washington counties alcohol was responsible for 20.6% of motor vehicle fatalities, claiming seven lives, while speeding was responsible for 35.3% of motor vehicle fatalities claiming twelve lives. Moreover, in 2010 speed caused 439 injuries across the three counties (31.9%), while alcohol caused only 174 (11.3%).

When you add to that the fact that teenagers are far less likely to drive drunk (accounting for 9.3% of all drivers in alcohol-related accidents statewide) and far more likely to speed (accounting for 22% of all speeding-caused accidents statewide), the math becomes clear: speeding—and not drinking—is by far the deadliest behavior by drivers young and old on our roadways. It comes as no surprise that the Post-Star is devoting none of its diminishing resources to publishing the names of speeders in an effort to embarrass them and their families in a misguided effort—no matter how well-intentioned—to alter their behavior.

Two final thoughts on this subject
This challenge to (and argument against) the Post-Star’s policy of publishing names of teenagers fined for drinking should not be interpreted in any way as condoning the behavior. While it may be a rite of passage—as even Ken Tingley concedes—it remains reckless as it ever was. When combined with driving it has abundant potential to be life-destroying. The sole concern of this post is that the approach undertaken nine years ago by the editor of the Post-Star to combat the issue may simply have made matters worse.

The Post-Star is in many respects a fine newspaper. It is, to be sure, a troubled newspaper belonging to a troubled corporation in a troubled industry in a weak economy. The last thing the editors and publisher of the paper should be doing at this stage is alienating its future readers and subscribers in a way that from any angle looks like a double standard. The Post-Star needs to descend from the bully pulpit and get back to its number one responsibility to the community: reporting news.

This article was published as part of a collaboration with the AdirondackAlmanack.

The Post-Star's war on underage drinking (part 1)

by contributor Mark Wilson

Ken Tingley is back in his bully pulpit. Two Sundays ago in his weekly column, the Editor of the Post-Star defended his newspaper’s policy of publishing the names of teenagers ticketed for violating underage drinking laws. In blunt and patronizing language, the crusading editor took on a recent South Glens Falls High graduate who had dared to leave a comment on the Post-Star's Facebook page objecting to the policy:

Mr. Mumblo was probably playing video games and reading comics when we reported the death of 17-year-old Jason Daniels in Warrensburg on May 18, 2003, and four months later, the death of 19-year-old Adam Baker, also in Warrensburg.

The policy was best described in a harsh editorial that ran on June 12, 2011, nearly eight years into the campaign:

Underage drinkers get their names in the paper. We publish the names of all kids arrested for consuming alcohol. We hope the embarrassment factor helps serve as a deterrent to parents and their kids. Not only does the kid’s name go in the paper, it goes on our website. And the Internet is permanent. So whatever they get caught doing today will follow them the rest of their lives.

From this it is hard to tell if the editorial board is angrier at the kids or their parents. The editorial proceeds to insult the children it hopes to protect:

Kids fib... Kids are lightweights... Kids are reckless... Kids are terrible drivers.

The final line of the editorial—A dead child is gone forever—reveals that the true target of the editorial (and the policy for that matter) is the parents; the humiliation of the children is merely a baseball bat to the gut to get their parents to pay closer attention.

Some HistoryOn June 15, 2003, as New York State prepared to drop the DWI blood alcohol content standard from .1 to .08 percent, and after a succession of fatal underage drunk driving accidents in the region surrounding Glens Falls, Ken Tingley wrote a column outlining the Post-Star's policy on reporting crimes:

Here is what are (sic) policies are now:

• We don't use the name of the child under age 16 charged with any offense - even if it is a felony - but we include the age, sex and town of residence. One exception: We will publish the name of any minor who is being prosecuted as an adult.

• We don't use the name of the child age 16, 17 and 18 if they are only charged with misdemeanors or violations, but we include their age, sex and town of residence.

• We do use the name of minors age 16, 17 and 18 if they are charged with felonies.

• We do use the name of anyone 19 or older charged with any offense if the crime is deemed newsworthy because of unusual or interesting circumstances.

• We've also left it up to the discretion of the editor to print the name of a minor if major crimes or unusual circumstances are involved.

The column concluded with hints of transition:

With the recent debate over underage drinking in our communities, we debated recently whether it might do some good to start listing the names of teens arrested for underage drinking. We currently do not print those names unless there is a felony charge.One of our editors suggested that we should print the name of all teens arrested, that the embarrassment of arrest might be an appropriate deterrent for a young person, that it might even bring a weightier meaning to some parents who don't seem to take the issue that seriously.It is something we will probably be looking at in the future.

The future arrived less than five weeks later when the Post-Star published the names and ages of six minors from Corinth who were charged with “the noncriminal violation of possession of alcohol by someone under 21.” The policy has remained in effect ever since.

According to data compiled by New York State, in 2003 the number of underage drivers involved in alcohol-related accidents in Saratoga, Warren and Washington Counties stood at 19. The number rose to 25 the following year and dropped to 17 in 2004. In both 2005 and 2006 the number of underage drunk drivers involved in accidents shot up to 42 and has been declining steadily toward the 2004 level since. 2010 is the latest year for which the state has compiled statistics.

In June 2008 after another cluster of alcohol-related traffic fatalities involving minors, the Post-Star ran an exasperated editorial under the headline “Message is not getting through.” It began:

We give up.

No one seems to be listening anyway.

Sanctimonious and preachy? Out of touch with reality? OK, we concede. You're right. Underage drinking is a rite of passage. A tradition. We all did it as kids. There's nothing that can be done to stop it. Kids are gonna do what kids are gonna do.So have it your way.

Naturally, the editorial does not give up and charges once more unto the breach to deliver the message. It ends with a poignant appeal to the reader not to let the newspaper abandon the crusade.

By this point, nearly five years along, the policy of outing teenagers charged with non-criminal alcohol violations —despite the absence of any evidence that it was doing any good— was so conflated with the broader cause of stopping underage DWI as to be inseparable. For all practical purposes, under guard of the sharp hyperbole of the Post-Star’s editorial position, unquestionable.

This article was published as part of a collaboration with the MoFYC blog.

Next, Part 2: Questioning the Unquestionable

The curious intersection of journalism, editorial agenda and loss of faith in the media

It's pretty clear from anyone reading Post-Star editorials is that the paper's agenda is devoted to making people believe that Adirondack Park Agency regulations are suffocating the (human) life out of the Adirondack Park. This is despite the statistical fact that the Park's population is growing *faster* that New York's population as a whole.

However, that agenda is also reflected in its supposedly objective news coverage. I've written about this before so I won't belabor previous points. But more recently, reporter Jon Alexander described Hamilton County as 'on the endangered list.'

Now, this was tagged as 'analysis' (ie: opinion) but it does give some insight into his point of view, which happily corresponds with the editorial board's agenda. In a column in Adirondack Almanack, John Warren took serious issue with Alexander's 'analysis.'

Yet in a purportedly objective news story yesterday (doesn't seem to be available online), Alexander notes that Saratoga County's population is growing while Most of the North Country continues to hemorrhage population...

(Again, don't forget the data you'll never see the daily report on)

But the graphic accompanying the article showed that from 2010 to 2011, Hamilton County lost 0.8% of its population, Essex County lost 0.3% of its population,Washington County lost 0.2% of its population and Warren County actually *gained* population. (And even Saratoga County's 'boom' was a modest 0.4%)

While these numbers aren't stellar, they hardly constitute a 'hemorrhage.' But when there's a narrative to conform to...

Additionally, Hamilton County lost 42 residents last year. If the county continue losing that many people every year, it would take 115 years for the 'endangered' county's population to run out. And there's no indication yet that this decline is a long term trend. Hamilton County *gained* population in every census from 1950 to 2000. And since the county was founded, its population has increased in 14 out of the 20 censuses. The county's population has had modest ups and downs in its history, but mostly ups.

But this is not the only seeming intersection of editorial agenda and journalism.

Another of the daily's agendas is its crusade against school spending, which it attributes to malefic and greedy teachers unions.

In an article on Friday (also not available online), education reporter Omar Ricardo Aquije described a meeting between the Glens Falls school board and residents regarding the district's proposed budget.

According to the article, both in text and graphic, the overall tax levy would remain identical from the current fiscal year to the next.

And yet, the jump headline on the inside page B5 blared "Residents question raises, tax increases."

I questioned this discrepancy in an email; the reporter indicated that his figures were correct and that the headline (typically written by layout people... or copy editors, assuming they still have any) was incorrect. The reporter wrote the story honestly. But the headline writer's mistake, was it incompetence or outright deceit? Neither reflects well on the paper's declining standards.

A correction ran in the following day's issue, as usual in print significantly smaller than the original wrong headline.

I don't have any evidence that this was intentional deceit on the part of the paper's backroom staff (I don't blame the reporter, since his text was correct). But this is a very significant error, given how sensitive a topic school budgets are in this area. It certainly undermines what's left of the paper's credibility when these sorts of significant 'errors' in purportedly objective articles just happen to oh so conveniently jive with the paper's editorial crusades.


But for its faults, at least The Post-Star isn't stealing material from regional blogs and writers. More on that later this week.

Update: Today, managing editor Ken Tingley tells us that credibility is key to what they do. No wonder they're in so much trouble.

Media diversity

'Liberal': we need to forge an international consensus and get UN approval so we can nuke Iran (or whatever the officially decreed Hitler-esque regime of the month happens to be).

Conservative: Screw the UN. Let’s nuke Iran now!

This is what passes for a diversity of voices in the mainstream media.

Greens and media bias, Occupy and outsourcing police

A show on the excellent al-Jazeera English explored the question of whether the Green Party could influence this year's US elections. It's a sad indictment of our corporate media and its biases that the only mainstream media outlets that acknowledge the existence of the third largest party in the United States are non-American ones. In a related piece, NPR's Ombudsman explored accusations by American hero Ralph Nader that the public broadcaster ignores real progressives.

Speaking of NPR, it also pointed that just because that rumors of the Occupy movement's imminent death are greatly exaggerated.

Privatization of public resources, one of Occupy's main objections, have led to some disastrous scandals. The partial privatization of the military led to a variety of scandals with Blackwater including corruption, impunity and human rights abuses. The privatization of some prisons has led to Orwellian nightmares like Pennsylvania's Kids for Cash scandal. But a few people were making a lot of money out of these hideous abuses. So it's appalling, yet not surprising, that a few police forces in Britain are also outsourcing some of their public safety duties. Let's hope this reckless experimentation is short-lived and, especially, that it doesn't cross the Atlantic.

The media's complicity in the rush to war against Iran

In Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi has an article about the militaristic establishment's preparations for another military aggression, this time against Iran, and the media's complicity with this insanity.

The below graphic lists the dozens of US military bases in the region that surrounds Iran (the country in blue in the middle), thus showing how Iran is a threat to America.

Bits and pieces

DEATH THREATS IN THE NAME OF ‘LAW AND ORDER’
Albany (NY) County’s district attorney David Soares has admitted that he and his office has received death threats in response to his refusal to prosecute participants of the Occupy Albany movement for non-violent activities like violating curfew. From the infamous pepper spray police thug in Davis, CA to the violent crackdown against peaceful Occupy movements in places like Oakland and Denver to the above death threats, you’ve seen remarkably little violence from those protesting in the name of democracy with most of the violence being committed by people doing so in the name of ‘respect for law and order.’ Quite a different reality to the one intoned by the yapping heads.

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WHAT’S THE STRANGE COMBINATION OF LETTERS ON THAT STREET SIGN (B-I-K-E L-A-N-E) SIGNIFY?
Bravo to the Burlington, mayored by a Progressive Party mayor not coincidentally, for lowering the speed limiton the Vermont city’s streets. The Burlington Free Press reports that it was done to enhance the safety of bicyclists and pedestrians. Yet another reason Burlington is probably the coolest city in the northeastern US.

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YES, EVEN REFS ARE HUMAN TOO
Recent stories in the soccer world a very troubling, from the attempted suicide of two referees, to the apparent suicide of Wales national team manager Gary Speed to the suicide not that long ago of German goalkeeper Robert Enke. It should serve as a wake-up call reminding soccer fans that a little re-humanization is long past due. There is so much vitriol and nastiness in soccer fandom that it’s easy to forget that the targets are all human beings, with families and emotions. Passion should never be used as an excuse to act like barbarians.

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IN DISTRACTION WE TRUST
Economic inequality, unemployment, massive corporate welfare, institutionalized anti-democracy... the country is facing so many problems and what is the latest meaninglessness that Theocrats want us to freak out about? The president’s failure to mention God in his Thanksgiving address (only the spoken one; he did include it in the written one). You can just call it The Great Distraction.

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THE REVOLUTION WILL BE TELEVISED... JUST NOT HERE
I saw this great graphic on Facebook, which showed the covers of TIME magazines editions for other parts of the world compared to its US edition. Gives you an insight into the editorial judgment [sic] of their vaunted professional editors.

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THE PROBLEM WITH COLLEGE STUDENTS: THEY HAVE TOO *LITTLE* DEBT
I was gobsmacked to read a newspaper article with this headline: "The other student loan problem: too little debt." Only a bank-obsessed culture would look at this issue and wonder if the problem is students with too *little* debt rather than taking a hard look at whether a university education, whether the cost of a fancy piece of paper is massively overpriced. Investigative journalism at its finest.

What if a corporate party threw a bash and nobody came? The paper would still report on it

Today’s Post-Star had a story about a Democrat running against Congressman Chris Gibson. The Democrat held an ‘event’ at the Washington County Municipal Center... except the only person he apparently talked to was an aide to his opponent, who happened to be there on other business.

So an event held by a corporate party candidate where nobody shows up merits a story (with photo!) on the front page of the local section. But when it comes to an event by smaller party candidate (Howie Hawkins) held at a local cafe jam packed with dozens of people in which the candidate gave detailed answers to dozens of intelligent and pertinent questions from ordinary citizens? It gets only a cursory mention buried in the newspaper’s blog.

Maybe next time, Greens should hold a flash mob doing Zumba and then maybe the local ‘news’ organization would notice.

"Reporting on a murder is taking a pro-homicide position" and other absurdities

North Country Public Radio announced that it is planning on doing a story on area gay couples who are getting married when it takes effect in New York. Seems pretty straight forward (no pun intended). Gays have never been able to legally marry in the state so doing a story on something that's never happened before seems a no-brainer.

Some of the enlightened commenters on NCPR’s In Box blog whined that such reporting constitutes the station “taking a political stance” on marriage equality.

Strangely, the “political stance” accusation wasn’t leveled at the public radio station when it aired a long interview with the Catholic archbishop of Ogdensburg railing against the gay marriage bill.

According to this sad logic, if a news outlet interviews a convicted murderer, it’s taking the political stance of being pro-homicide.

Those fishing for the dreaded “liberal bias” ogre will look under every nook and cranny for the tiniest semblance of evidence and are not bound by the logic of normal people.

In the same announcement, NCPR also mentioned that it was going to include in the report the views of municipal clerks who have religious reservations about issuing marriage licenses to gay couples (of course they should issue the license or resign on principle).

For some reason, this inclusion was not subjected to the “taking a political stance” accusation; in fact, it wasn’t even acknowledged by the whiners in question. According to the whiners, NCPR's real bias isn't that it's ignoring the anti-gay marriage position; it's that the station is including the pro- side.

But it’s well-known that selective vision and hearing are critical elements in any martyr complex.

You won’t read this in The Post-Star

The Post-Star has a pretty overt agenda against teachers unions. This manifests itself not only in local columns and editorials but in their selective reporting of facts and a slew of op-ed pieces which, shock of shocks, tilt one way on the issue... most recently, earlier this week. You’re more likely to be exposed to the perspective of the teachers unions on Fox News (sic) than in the Glens Falls daily. Their anti-labor position is not surprising since they took great pains some years ago to bust their own unions.

The paper has disproportionately targeted the Queensbury school district for alleged extravagant spending. This is inexplicable given the below facts, although it’s worth noting that the paper’s managing editor lives and pays taxes in Queensbury.

So I was pleased to read a good story on the district written in the independent Chronicle. Although the weekly’s editor Mark Frost is personally more vocally anti-union than Tingley in his columns, The Chronicle’s news article was much more nuanced and complete.

The weekly noted that In per pupil spending, Queensbury ranks as one of the lowest in the region and in the state, while ranking in the top 74 for academic test results in the state, [Superintendent Douglas] Huntley said. There’s “tremendous efficiency” in having all their buildings on one campus.”

It’s a key fact that I’ve also discussed here in this blog. And although I’ve mentioned it to them repeatedly, I’ve never seen this fact acknowledged, let alone addressed, by the corporate daily. Is it because it undermines their editorial line? I guess you can get away with that when you have a Pulitizer Prize.

Media deceit, smaller party candidates and good business sense

When challenged about their blacklisting of smaller party/independent candidates, the Post-Star and other corporate outlets usually offer the rationalization that they don't have 'space' or 'resources' to waste on candidates they decree 'no one is interested in'... despite evidence to the contrary.

The lack of resources argument is a common theme. In this blog piece, Post-Star managing editor Ken Tingley began: "I’m often surprised when a reader suggests that we should get one of our investigative reporters on a story," before going on to explain how expensive journalism was. Though readers can rest assured that they will always find resources to do dubious pieces on anything related to the Adirondack Park Agency or green groups.

Still, Tingley's admission is rather startling. If I ran a newspaper, I wouldn't be surprised when readers suggested investigating a story. I'd be flattered.

One reader of this blog emailed me with these comments on the blog piece (posted with his permission): He states that the P-S has eight news reporters and five sports reporters. The staff email directory lists nine news reporters and six sports reporters (not counting stringers). Unless this is his way of announcing another round of staffing cuts, Mr. Tingley should really consider getting someone to check his arithmetic as well as his grammar and spelling.

Incidentally, Mr. Tingley's latest tweet—beside the explanation of how difficult it is to assign investigative pieces—is a comment to the effect that with baseball playoffs coming it will be tough getting to work for the next few weeks. Priorities, Ken.


The Post-Star, like most corporate media outlets, has chosen not to cover any of the five smaller party candidates on the ballot for governor of New York.

(To its credit, the Long Island paper Newsday is co-sponsoring a debate on October 18 involving ALL the gubenatorial candidates.)

Despite its blacklist against candidates it decrees 'not serious,' The Post-Star managed to find precious resources and space to run a story on some guy running a write-in campaign, one who admits to consciously "not taking many positions, hardly any at all."

However, the 'lesser known candidates' on the ballot mentioned in a side graphic to the article (but nowhere else) are on the ballot precisely because they gained thousands of signatures to put them there.

The paper claims not to have space or resources to cover these serious candidates (who take actual positions!) who've done the hard work of generating interest but they find resources and *front page* space to cover this Green Tea guy (to say nothing of all the empty personality politics and polls analysis articles about the major party candidates).

In response to past criticisms of the same nature, Tingley has emailed me to complain, angrily asking me to tell him when his paper has been unfair. In his mind, they give about equal coverage to both the Democratic candidate and the Republican candidate, hence it's fair.

Or to put in a way the former sports editor might understand. In his eyes, an umpire can be biased against the other 28 Major League Baseball teams but as long as he treats the Red Sox the same as the Yankees, then he's 'fair.'

In the corporate media's eyes, fairness means ignoring the overwhelming majority of the candidates or given them only the occasional token mention while running hundreds of empty articles on polls or the personal lives of the major party candidates. Fairness means ignoring smaller party candidates in a nation where the majority of people want more than two parties. All we need now is the self-appointed advocates for the public to report on those that already exist. Who knows? Maybe if newspapers gave their audience what it wanted, it might prevent that audience from shrinking even more.

Media bias quantified

I've written often, some have said ad nauseum, about the media bias against smaller party and independent politics and the perspective they could add to the political discourse if given the chance.

John Warren, over at Adirondack Almanack, recently provoked an interesting discussion with an essay on the same topic.

One of the commenters challenging John was Chris Morris, a self-described "upstate journalist" who works for "modest wages."

In the course of the discussion, Chris replied to one of my comments as such:

My original protests with John concern the sweeping generalizations he made about the "local media" having ignored [Eric] Sundwall, which are not accurate. Did the Post Star largely ignore his candidacy? Yes. Did the Times Union? Yes. Did the Press Republican? No. The Enterprise? No. WNBZ? No. Watertown Daily Times? No. And so on.

His claims don't stand up to journalistic scrutiny.

I search around the websites of the newspapers he implicitly praised for both the phrases 'Tedisco' and 'Sundwall' (as a search for 'Murphy' would've brought results unrelated to the special election). Republican Jim Tedisco, Libertarian Eric Sundwall and eventual winner Democrat Scott Murphy all ran in the recent NY 20th Congressional District special election.

WNBZ's online archive not go back far enough to analyze.

I couldn't get good numbers for The Adirondack Daily Enterprise, as their search mixed in letters to the editor and news articles and I think their search was limited to 100. However, the search gave 36 results for 'Sundwall' and 100 for 'Tedisco.' They definitely seemed to do better than the others. However even this least unfair local media outlet's reporting was (bearing in mind the imprecision of the numbers) still at least around a 3:1 imbalance for the Republican. That is considered 'good' in the current environment.

A search of the other two sites was more definitive as it gave articles only.

A 2009 Plattsburgh Press-Republican search for 'Sundwall' gave seven results total, two of which were identical and only two of which were local reports. Of those six unique articles, one was about Sundwall's exclusion from the ballot, four merely mentioned in a cursory fashion that he was running and one was about his declaration of candidacy and... ZERO mentioned anything about his platform or ideas.

A 2009 P-R search of 'Tedisco' gave 63 results.

A 2009 Watertown Daily Times archive search of 'Sundwall' gave one result, about the governor's call for the special election in which Sundwall's name was mentioned only in passing.

A 2009 WDT archive search of 'Tedisco' gave 88 results.

If this meets the definition of 'not ignoring,' zero articles in these last two papers that actually discuss his ideas or platform, then it's a sad illustration of how low the journalistic bar has been set and of exactly how suffocating this media bias really is.

The trials and tribulations of the print media are well-documented. I wonder if any will figure out that maybe it makes better business sense to not completely ignore the 25 pct. of the population who are neither Democrats nor Republicans.

20th Congressional District update

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

I've heard critics contend that The Post-Star would rather ignore an important political event entirely rather than give newsink to a 'third party' candidate. I always assumed this was just hyperbole but I was wrong.

Yesterday, there was a Congressional debate between Libertarian Eric Sundwall and Democrat Scott Murphy answering questions from journalists and each other.

Republican Jim Tedisco did not attend the debate, which is shocking as he's never before met a camera he didn't like. Tedisco instead attended a razzle dazzle PR event on his own, answering tough questions from Facebook users and Twitters.

There was zero coverage of the debate in The Post-Star's print edition. I can only presume this is because they couldn't reasonably run a story on a debate that only covered one candidate. So rather than deigning to cover a 'third party' candidate, they chose instead to ignore the event completely in the real paper.

Fortunately, the debate co-sponsors decided it was worth it for the public to know what happened. The Times-Union did some reporting on it while WMHT.org is making video of the debate available online.

From time to time, The Post-Star has done some decent coverage of the race. But the good stuff has almost invariably been ghettoized in political reporter Maury Thompson's blog and has not appeared in the much more widely read print edition.

Thompson had good Q & A segments with all three candidates, blog only.

He did offer some coverage of the aforementioned debate, but it was not run in the print edition either. It was posted on the blog at 8:42 PM, more than early enough to appear in the real paper if their de facto anti-'third party' editorial policy were different.

Thompson also had not one but two stories on 'donations' made to the campaigns of the major party candidates. Both were worthy pieces that deserved more prominence than being online only.

Speaking of which, Planet Albany blog also had a piece on money and the 20th CD race.

The Glens Falls Chronicle has an extended interview with Scott Murphy in its current issue. I presume the weekly will question Tedisco and hope they will query Sundwall. In future sessions, editor and veteran journalist Mark Frost should target his questions a little better. Asking if state taxes are too high is legitimate question for someone who's running for governor or state legislature. Asking about the recently ratified Glens Falls School District teachers' contract (which Frost has railed against) is a legitimate question for someone who's seeking a seat on the school board. Neither, especially the latter, is appropriate for someone who's running for Congress, which has no jurisdiction over either.

And you wonder why newspapers' fortunes are in the toilet

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

We in the media don’t purposely shut down anyone not with a D or R after their names. We do want to encourage all candidates. But we do have a reality to face. How much space and effort should we devote to a candidate who legitimately has little or no chance of winning? Is that fair to our readers and the candidates? We do try to cover legitimate third-party candidates when we can. But Mr. Sundwall, until the last day or so, wasn’t on the ballot, so voters could not have voted for him. Mr. Cerro is not on the ballot at all and didn’t try to get on it. How much coverage should they expect? If you can’t generate a lot of support, then why should the media be expected to devote a lot of time to your candidacies? This forum was supposed to be about negative ads and their impact, so we’ll go back to that now. But I just wanted to explain a little bit of our position." -Post-Star editorial page director Mark Mahoney on a forum.

His words. Not mine.

To summarize:

They can't afford "much space and effort" to candidates they've arbitrarily decided have "little or no chance of winning" (because calling up Eric Sundwall and asking him a few questions would take a ton of time). But they do have resources to run fluff pieces of Tedisco with his dog and of Murphy eating dinner with his family as well as a piece on the "flap" about what Murphy wrote 20 years ago when he was a teenager.

They don't "purposely shut down" smaller party and independent candidates. They just choose not to give them any coverage.

They do "want to encourage all candidates." They do this by only covering the major party candidates.

Thanks for that clarification.

Actually this is one of the useful things about the paper's forums. It allows you to draw out the editors and goad them into actually saying what we all know they're thinking.

Note: What Mahoney and the paper's managing editor Ken Tingley would contend that their bias against smaller party and independent candidates is standard practice in the corporate media. Tingley said exactly that to me an email -- which, for ethical reasons, I won't publish or quote from. Given the well-documented troubles of the print media, is this really the right time for The Post-Star or any other newspaper to be content with just following the herd? Ultimately, newspapers that continue to fail to provide distinctive, useful information like this that readers want will remain in the herd as it waltzes off the edge of the cliff. Unlike many bloggers, I wouldn't welcome this one bit. But no one could say it wasn't self-inflicted.