I don't think I'm good at spotting liars. I don't usually recognize the that I've been lied to until after "things just don't add up," and that might be a long time after the lie occurs. I'm almost always surprised when it turns out that my trust was betrayed. This two-minute How-Cast video gives a brisk summary of some some advice that resonates with me. Now I'll just have to see if I'll be able to employ this advice to good effect.
Because the citizens keep losing out to the political clout of banks, insurance companies and other well-monied industries, it's especially good to see the People of the United States win one against the telecoms. The FCC came down strongly in favor of net neutrality today. This is an incredibly important day for those of us who believe in grassroots politics and the fair and free exchange of ideas. For those not clear on the stakes, I refer you to my earlier report on the importance of net neutrality based on Tim Wu's explanation at the 2007 National Conference on Media Reform in Memphis. Today, the FCC announced two new guiding principles regarding use of the Internet:
- Broadband providers cannot discriminate against particular Internet content or applications; and
- Providers of broadband Internet access must be transparent about their network management practices.
Here are today's words of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski:This is how I propose we move forward: To date, the Federal Communications Commission has addressed these issues by announcing four Internet principles that guide our case-by-case enforcement of the communications laws. These principles can be summarized as: Network operators cannot prevent users from accessing the lawful Internet content, applications, and services of their choice, nor can they prohibit users from attaching non-harmful devices to the network. The principles were initially articulated by Chairman Michael Powell in 2004 as the “Four Freedoms,” and later endorsed in a unanimous 2005 policy statement issued by the Commission under Chairman Kevin Martin and with the forceful support of Commissioner Michael Copps, who of course remains on the Commission today. In the years since 2005, the Internet has continued to evolve and the FCC has issued a number of important bipartisan decisions involving openness. Today, I propose that the FCC adopt the existing principles as Commission rules, along with two additional principles that reflect the evolution of the Internet and that are essential to ensuring its continued openness. Fifth Principle of Non-Discrimination The fifth principle is one of non-discrimination -- stating that broadband providers cannot discriminate against particular Internet content or applications.
Today I took my two daughters to a movie. The theater was located in a large suburban shopping mall in Southwest St. Louis County, "Crestwood Plaza." I had not been to this mall for several years, and I was shocked at what I saw. Approximately 40% of the stores have been shuttered and the entire place was like a ghost town. A lonely security guard told me that the stores have been rapidly failing over the past two years. That comports with my recollection. Two years ago, this mall was a packed and thriving shopping area located in a solidly middle-class community. Crestwood Plaza is not an isolated story; shopping malls are failing all across America. [I've posted a gallery of today's images many of these shuttered stores along with this post. If you don't see that gallery, click the title to this post to go to the permalink, where you will see those thumbnails.] I sometimes get snarkish when someone tells me they're going to a shopping mall. I sometimes ask the Intrepid shopper to do me a favor and buy something practical for me, "Could you please buy me a hammer." I usually get the same reaction, a puzzled look accompanied by a response "They don't sell practical things like hammers at shopping malls." Now I'm not denying that malls sell clothes or that we need clothes. Most mall clothes are for far more than staying warm or covering up. They are much more often than not, for impressing others. For that reason, I'm not shedding tears for the shattering of dozens of mall stores at Crestwood Plaza or anywhere else. The failure of most of the stores means that we won't be buying things we don't actually need. Because Hallmark no longer sells its commercial greeting cards, we might be "forced" to create and send our own personalized cards and letters to each other. Now that Libby Lu gone, our pre-teen daughters can get back to being children rather than obsessing about their sex appeal. In my mind, many of these store closings are mostly good things, although I am saddened by the thought that so many people have lost their jobs due to these shutdowns. See these terrific videos by Josh Golin of CCFC regarding the dangers of turning our children into rampant consumers. Another silver lining is that the mall owners have been forced to do something different with their space in order to survive (assuming they do survive). What they've done at Crestwood Plaza is to lease out many of the "store" spaces to art galleries, educational facilities, community theaters and other arts and crafts workshops for children and adults. In other words, it appears that the mall owners are opening up their malls for people who want to develop their minds and skill-sets rather than simply their pocketbooks.
This month's issue of The Atlantic includes a detailed and thoughtful article by Mark Bowden, "The Story Behind the Story." For 25 years, Bowden worked as a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Using the media frenzy over Sonia Sotomayor's isolated phrase "wise Latina" as his case study, Bowden keenly describes what has happened to journalism before our very eyes. Not that it was obvious while it was happening, which brings to mind George Orwell's: "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." And just look what is now in front of our noses:
With journalists being laid off in droves, ideologues have stepped forward to provide the “reporting” that feeds the 24-hour news cycle. The collapse of journalism means that the quest for information has been superseded by the quest for ammunition . . . The reporting we saw on TV and on the Internet that day was the work not of journalists, but of political hit men. . . . This process—political activists supplying material for TV news broadcasts—is not new, of course. It has largely replaced the work of on-the-scene reporters during political campaigns, which have become, in a sense, perpetual. The once-quadrennial clashes between parties over the White House are now simply the way our national business is conducted. In our exhausting 24/7 news cycle, demand for timely information and analysis is greater than ever. With journalists being laid off in droves, savvy political operatives have stepped eagerly into the breach. What’s most troubling is not that TV-news producers mistake their work for journalism, which is bad enough, but that young people drawn to journalism increasingly see no distinction between disinterested reporting and hit-jobbery.All you need to join the modern fray is a laptop and an internet connection. Not that Bowden is dissing the idea of citizen journalists. Far from it, bloggers of all stripes have often kept the mainstream media honest. Nonetheless, we now live in an era where it is easy for an idealogue to pose as a journalist in his or her spare time, Bowden is proposing that journalism has morphed into post-journalism, an enterprise where balanced truth-seeking is not a prerequisite. Rather the enterprise of post-journalism usually like a sport and, quite often, it is war:
The truth is something that emerges from the cauldron of debate. No, not the truth: victory, because winning is way more important than being right. Power is the highest achievement. There is nothing new about this. But we never used to mistake it for journalism. Today it is rapidly replacing journalism, leading us toward a world where all information is spun, and where all “news” is unapologetically propaganda.
The search for conflict certainly makes economic sense. Conflict screams for our attention and, of course, it sells ads. What's more interesting: A) Jack and Jill take a walk or B) Jack and Jill have an argument? What's more compelling, batting practice or a real ballgame. What's more compelling: peaceful protests, or protests involving rock-throwing and teargas? We are, all of us, addicted to conflict pornography. We no longer see much need to listen to people who disagree with us, not when its socially acceptable to villainize them. As Bowden comments, "The other side is no longer the honorable opposition, maybe partly right; but rather always wrong, stupid, criminal, even downright evil." And again, bringing down one's opponent, especially while one is filled with Nietzschean ressentiment, feels fun. What does Bowden propose as a solution? It's not looking good:Unless someone quickly finds a way to make disinterested reporting pay, to compensate the modern equivalent of the ink-stained wretch (the carpal-tunnel curmudgeon?), the Web may yet bury [press critic A. J.] Liebling’s cherished profession. Who, after all, is willing to work for free?
While reading Bowden's article I kept thinking that the same thing that has infected journalism has spread to politics. Yes, politics has always been contentious. But now our political system is so wrought with anger and accusations (and corruption) that it seem absolutely incapable of dealing with any major problem. I suspect that the causal arrow points from journalism to politics on this--that if we could somehow mute the fake journalists, our politicians might be better able to calm down and work better with each other. Total speculation, I know, and I'm not optimistic about seeing the sad state of journalism improve.The raging health care debate "debate" is almost entirely devoid of facts, an issue on which I've previously posted. Instead of discussing fact, then, we tend hurl vague accusations, like calling the reformers "communists" (and you've GOT to see this). I "blame" Obama for this lack of specificity, but I realize that the vicious opposition mounted by huge self-interested insurance companies and health care providers might require that he not play all of his cards at this point. But isn't it odd that our politicians aren't at least clarifying the term "health care coverage" when they refer to national health care coverage? Defining this term would make a huge difference to the public reaction to any national plan. Here are two possibilities (though there are others): A) The national plan will offer gold-plated coverage much like the expensive United Health Care coverage I buy for my family through my employer. For the record, the pre-tax cost of this coverage is about $20,000 per year for my family. Is the Obama proposal to provide every citizen with this kind of coverage? If so, I can see why there is massive resentment to the proposal. Many working people can barely afford health insurance coverage at all, and the coverage many people do purchase is not nearly as comprehensive as the expensive coverage I purchase. Of course people who can can only afford to buy their own rudimentary policies will resent that the government might buy gold-plated policies for everyone else, including many highly irresponsible people. B) The national plan will offer a rudimentary coverage only. It will cover x-rays and casts for broken arms, but not heart transplants and expensive drugs that only marginally increase one's chances of surviving an illness. It wouldn't keep people suffering from terminal illness on life support when there is no reasonable chance that they would ever leave the hospital. It would cover only a small subset of the treatments covered by gold-plated policies. It might be akin to the Oregon Plan. I believe that there would be massive resistance to the national coverage described in A) but far less resistance to the coverage described in B). At least Oregon's legislators had the cajunas to specifically state what was covered under their plan and what was not (Oregon's prioritized list is available for all to see). Oregon had the fiscal responsibility to make certain that they could afford the level of health care to which they were committing. Oregon dealt head-on with the accusation that they were "rationing" health care; absolutely they were, just like private plans ration health care only to those who pay those high premiums. Both responsible and irresponsible health care plans "ration" health care. Therefore, it is not a criticism of any health care plan that it "rations" health care. Here are the guiding principles to the Oregon Plan:
In 1987, the Oregon Legislature realized that it had no method for allocating resources for health care that was both effective and accountable. Over the next two years, policy objectives were developed to guide the drafting of legislation to address this problem. These policy objectives included:Our national conversation regarding health care is so dysfunction on so many levels that it's hard to know where to begin. I'll make only one more point in this post, however. Opponents of current proposals often make accusations that there will be "death panels," indicating that some sick people will be allowed to die. As a nation, we need to grow up and deal with the fact that this happens every day in every hospital in the country: we shouldn't be allocating huge amounts of money to maintain pulses in people who have become living corpses. There are some families who "can't let go" no matter what (e.g., Terry Schiavo), and our national plan needs to have specific guidelines for these situations. In fact, every private insurance plan should have guidelines for determining when further treatment is likely to be futile and a provision for ending coverage at that point. The alternative is to make policies so horrifically expensive that many people can't afford policies that cover tratments likely to make an immediate positive impact on their lives. Only when we put these issues clearly on the table can we begin to have a real conversation.• Acknowledgment that the goal is health rather than health services or health insurance • Commitment to a public process with structured public input • Commitment to meet budget constraints by reducing benefits rather than cutting people from coverage or reducing payments to levels below the cost of care • Commitment to use available resources to fund clinically effective treatments of conditions important to Oregonians • Development of explicit health service priorities to guide resource allocation decisions.