Politics and whiskey

The sign above the bar used to read "Check your guns with the barkeep. No discussion of religion or the president." Small wonder--politics is intoxicating enough all by itself. Under the influence of a hot campaign, otherwise sensible people will say and do almost anything. Examples abound from both Denver and St. Paul, and the rhetorical binge will last until November. Speeches, ads, debates, press conferences, town meetings, photo ops, talking points, rallies, interviews, analysis, commentary, spin control, message management, opposition research, triangulation and segmentation. Yikes!

While I have had to forgo the consolations of whiskey in my life, I am unable to wean myself from politics. It sort of sneaks up on you, just like whiskey, and the sane person at the back of the brain looks on in horror as the tirade pours forth. I slip away from work to sample strong drink in the dim back booths of the blogosphere. I bolt my dinner, washed down with shots of cable news. Mornings lost in anger hangover, evenings lost in partisan email. The disease is progressive, and prone to quadrennial relapse. I would pray for recovery, but don't get me started on religion.

In the family

How you report the news when you have become the news is one of the most ticklish problems in journalistic ethics. A case in point is a story that will air in a few minutes on All Before Five, and again tomorrow (Friday) during the Eight O'Clock Hour. Recently, in a rare FCC "filing window" for applying for broadcast licenses, NCPR applied to upgrade its facility in Lake Placid to a higher-power license. Our public radio neighbor to the south, Northeast Public Radio (WAMC), also made an application that, if successful, would transfer the Lake Placid 91.7 fm frequency from NCPR to them.

The news was first aired in the region this morning on Saranac Lake station WNBZ, in a feature story by Chris Knight who, in addition to his duties at WNBZ, is a frequent freelance reporter for NCPR on Adirondack issues. While NCPR is committed to retaining the frequency on which it has served Lake Placid for over twenty years, we needed to find a way to cover the story in a fair and balanced way that would place the public interest ahead of the institutional interests of the station. Toward that end, the station manager and the news director sought advice from the Poynter Institute, an organization that provides training in journalistic ethics. They recommended that we use an outside editor with no connection to either of the parties to the dispute to oversee NCPR's coverage. Suzanna Capelouto, news director of Georgia Public Broadcasting, agreed to fill that role. The reporting by Chris Knight that you will hear on NCPR tonight and tomorrow was edited by her.

NCPR's position on the dispute and links to other coverage, including Northeast Public Radio.

Postmodern Situation Room

My brain, alas, is slightly pre-postmodern, and discombobulates when frames of reference become too tightly intertwined. Take the fake news—The Daily Show from Tuesday--CSPAN shows a congressman objecting to calling a group of senior Bush advisors “the Vulcans” because, given what he sees as their truculence and deficiency in logic, they should instead be called “the Klingons.” News of a sort. The Daily Show picks it up and calls the nearest thing to a Vulcan, Spock portrayer Leonard Nimoy, for comment. Another Trek veteran, George Takei interrupts. So we have policy examined via fantasy, reported as news, rendered as satire, given context by actors reprising their fantasy roles. Small wonder that modern newsrooms all appear to be modeled on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise (the set of the bridge, that is). In the next half hour we find that fake conservative talk host Stephen Colbert will have real conservative talk host Bill O’Reilly (who was the mold from which Colbert was struck) as his guest, and that Colbert will also appear on O’Reilly’s show. A double-dittoheader.

Looking for relief from the media mirrorball, I fire up my office radio today for On Point, only to find an hour-long look at anti-terrorism policy as colored by the Fox thriller series, 24. The superhuman antics of Agent Jack Bauer are contrasted with actual ops, and an alarming number of real anti-terrorism types declare their fandom—Yikes!

Mostly I like to think “What is reality?” is a rhetorical question. But apparently, this is a fantasy I can no longer afford. The “point of contemplation” in my yoga class this week concerned how the body can experience that which has never happened to it, solely through the impact of our thinking. In a sense we become, therefore, what we watch. At the moment, I am sore all over.

You too

Much has been made of Time magazine’s person of the year selection for 2006—You—as in you, the citizen journalist, blogger, YouTuber, myspacer, etc. The accompanying article describes the selection as helping to deconstruct the “Great Man” theory of history, and to recognize the increasing democratization of media. Never mind that Time has been dining out on the “Great Man” theory since 1927 with this very feature, and that the ownership and control of mass media continues to consolidate toward the fortunate and unaccountable few, despite the explosion of new media. As one of Time’s “yous,” I appreciate the value of the growing capability to communicate to audiences without mediation. Old wisdom said “Freedom of the press belongs to them that own one.” In the new paradigm we all—potentially—own one. And that is big news.

What we don’t each own, however, is an audience. My home video—yawn; Osama’s home video—above-the-fold news. The large impact made in 2006 by citizen journalism, the “macaca” video and similar bits, comes when they are echoed in the larger media that has a mass following of eyes and ears. And that media world is an exclusive and ever-shrinking club. For them, new media is a new source of sources. While that has value in itself, it is not the Revolution. New media looks to me more like the Gold Rush, where everybody and his brother set out to stake a claim and started panning streams in the wilderness. A few got rich, most went home, and the big mining companies bought up everything in sight. The $1.6 billion Google gobble of YouTube is a case in point.