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The Triumph of Hope over Experience

Archive for category Media Criticism

Boycott ESPN.com

Oct 20

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Media Criticism | No Comments

I used to look forward to reading Tuesday Morning Quarterback by Gregg Easterbrook Not only did he write a great sports column, it was filled with all kinds of other non-sports goodies (not to mention cheerleaders). It had to be one of their most read sections based on the number of people I know who reguarly read it. Well, Mr. Easterbrook not only was fired, but he has been removed from ESPN’s site as if he never wrote for them. At this point, ESPN hasn’t announced why he was fired. He just wrote an entry for his blog at The New Republic that some considered anti-semetic but which I found (contrarian that I am) pro-semetic. The passage in question:

“Set aside what it says about Hollywood that today even Disney thinks what the public needs is ever-more-graphic depictions of killing the innocent as cool amusement. Disney’s CEO, Michael Eisner, is Jewish; the chief of Miramax, Harvey Weinstein, is Jewish. Yes, there are plenty of Christian and other Hollywood executives who worship money above all else, promoting for profit the adulation of violence. Does that make it right for Jewish executives to worship money above all else, by promoting for profit the adulation of violence? “

The complaint was “Did he just blame Jews for being greedy, money-grubbing Hollywood executives partly responsible for today’s real-life violence?” Ah, no, what he did was say that two particular Jewish executives worshiped money above all else, and he went on to pretty much hold Jews to a higher standard implying that because of their experience of violence in the Holocaust they ought to understand the impact of the glorification of violence. And he did implicitly claim that the glorification of violence in movies does have an impact on societies world wide.

If Mr. Easterbrook had said that (all) Jews worship money above all else, that would have been clearly anti-semetic and wrong. But what he said (to me, anyway), is that these two particular Jews worshiped money above all else (and not because they were Jews). This is important, because we should be able to call out individual behavior regardless of whether or not that behavior has been an unfair stereotype of a particular group in the past.

Ms. Yourish wasn’t done though, she moved from the debatable to to the clearly wrong when she said that Mr. Easterbrook “All the while, of course, giving the Hollywood Christian executives (and other religions) a complete pass”. Obviously, she missed the whole statement “Yes, there are plenty of Christian and other Hollywood executives who worship money above all else, promoting for profit the adulation of violence.” In other words, Mr. Easterbrook in his column said that Jewish, Christian, and other Hollywood executives worshiped money above all else by promoting for profit the adulation of violence. He didn’t single out Jews in general; he singled out Michael Eisner and Harvey Weinstein in particular because they are the executives ultimately responsible for Kill Bill, which is what the column was about.

Now back to ESPN. Should they have fired Mr. Easterbrook? No. Even if his original post could be construed as anti-semitic or you don’t think Jews should be held to a higher standard, he quickly explained his position and apologized for any offence he might have given. He isn’t anti-semitic. If he was fired because he attacked his ultimate boss at ESPN, Michael Eisner, even though it was in a publication unrelated to ESPN or Disney, that is an even worse reason. Ultimately, I think some other sports web site (whether Fox Sports, or CBS sports, or Sports Illustrated) should pick up his TMQ column – not out of the goodness of their hearts, but as a shrewd business move – it’s popular. I know I won’t be bothering with ESPN.com without TMQ – their news and analysis isn’t any better than anybody elses.

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Kevin Vs. The Post

Sep 23

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Media Criticism | 2 Comments

The Saint Louis Post Dispatch is St. Louis’ only major daily newspaper. It’s not a very good paper, and tilts alarmingly to the left (though many a leftist also dislikes it). While I would have canceled my subscription long ago, the Other Fearless Leader has informed me that because we save more in coupons from the paper than we spend on it, we are not cancelling. Tightwad that I am, I have complied. At the last Midwest Blogbash, the idea of a PostWatch site was discussed and quickly dismissed because somebody would have to actually read it reguarly.

This morning over my breakfast, I felt compelled to write a couple of letters to people at the post. The first was over an article about the drop in City homicides. I sent the following letter:

I’m glad to read that homicide is down across the St. Louis Metro area. I found it odd that the focus of the article was on the city of St. Louis when, as you relate in the last quarter of the article, it showed one of the lowest homicide rate decreases. I suppose it is to be expected that the police and prosecutors pat themselves on the back, but it isn’t clear that the other jurisdictions are doing the same thing as the city and thus it isn’t clear that the undoubtedly fine police and prosecutorial work is the cause. Perhaps a follow up article could shed more light on this.

That’s right, the article was all about how the City of St. Louis had a big drop in homicides, had quotes from prosecutors saying what a great job the prosecutors were doing and how the locals and feds were cooperating, had quotes from the police about how their aggressive police work was paying off. And then at the end they let on that St. Louis County had a larger drop in the homicide rate, along with the all the neighboring counties in Missouri. No back pats for these guys, though.

Then, a headline for a front page article set me off (I can’t give a URL for that because the miserable Post website only puts selected articles on the net), and here’s my letter for that one:

I noticed on today’s front page a sub heading about the suicide bombing in Iraq says “attacks across nation intensify”. In what way have they intensified? Are they more frequent, more deadly, involve larger numbers of attackers? Given that it is over an article about a repeat bombing that wasn’t as bad as the first one, it seems to be particularly inappropriate. I’ve been reading that the attacks have been intensifying ever since early May, shortly after President Bush declared an end to major combat operations. This is odd, since just before the intensification process started we were fighting a major war. I have yet to see a chart showing the intensity of combat versus time in Iraq, yet many media outlets tell me over and over that the attacks have intensified. Quite frankly, not only is it not supported by anything in the article, I don’t think it’s supported by the facts in Iraq. Please keep the headline(s) closer to the facts of the article.

I’m sure I’ll get a nice email blah blah blah but nothing will change. The Post gives me a choice – either get my news off the net, or get my news from late night talk hosts.

UPDATE: No replies to my email so far, but Andrew Sullivan linked to an oped in the NYT that claims attacks have declined from an average of 25 a day in July to about 15 a day today – still too many, but certainly refutes the claim of “intensifying attacks”.

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Lies vs. Mistakes

Aug 20

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Media Criticism | No Comments

I’ll never be a good pundit because I can’t read minds. All the good pundits can. They can always tell when somebody made a simple mistake, no big deal really, and when somebody is a lying weasel of evil. I lack that talent, and so without knowing I tend to err on the side of caution. Oddly enough, it seems that there are two sets of pundits who consistantly disagree about the simple mistakes and deliberate lies. I guess if I just listened to one set or the other I wouldn’t be confused and I would be unshakable in my determination of the axis of lying evil weasels.

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The Plural of Anecdote Isn’t Data

Jun 6

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Media Criticism, The War on Terror | No Comments

The Volokh Conspiracy seems to add another blogger every time I read them (I’d link to them if I knew how to pronounce the name (yeah, like they care)), but that only makes them better. But that’s not the point; the point is that they have an email from a Naval Reservist in Iraq that’s well worth reading.

” The tension is high all around here [in Baghdad], but not necessarily because of the protests or potshots being taken at the Army patrols. Everyone wants to succeed and is working 24/7 to do it, but it doesn’t always seem as the world understands the issue because of the limited view the press provides. There is a very talented team assembled, with not the greatest access to the usual resources (phones, computers, air conditioning, etc). They’re also going to need some good people to fill their shoes in a couple of months; i.e., the President of Michigan State needs to head back to school at summer’s end.”

I’m happy to hear of his positive experience, but as he notes, it’s hard to tell what’s going on because of the limited view I have. You read negative stuff, you read positive stuff, and you try to get an idea of how things are going, of what’s happening over there. And frankly, you just can’t tell. Nor is it clear that you can sum it up with a single adjective like well or poorly. It’s a big country, and it isn’t going to be homogenous. If you asked people in this country how things are going here, you’d get a wide diversity of opinion. Yet when it comes to foreign countries, we want a single response. How’s safety over there? We’ll, I’m sure there are locations over there I’d be much safer in than certain locations right here in river city, but there does seem to be a security problem. And at the height of the negative reports on looting (including the Baghdad museum) in Iraq, there was an incident in St. Louis where a school was cleaned to the bare walls — apparently the theives started loading up a truck Friday night, worked through the weekend, and didn’t stop until there was nothing left to take. It was ignored local news; the press was too obsessed with looting in Iraq to worry about looting in some poor neighborhood of St. Louis. 

But I think there is one clear fact — that as of right now, whatever the reality is, whatever may come, the bulk of the Iraqi people are better off without Saddam as their leader.

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Brit Hume On The American Media In Wartime

Jun 5

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Media Criticism | No Comments

Hillsdale College has an adaptation of a speech Brit Hume gave there online [After June]. It’s not too long and well worth a read as he examines the media post 9/11 and how it’s been not just out of synch with America, but with reality.

“Cynical? We journalists pride ourselves, and properly so, on being skeptical. That’s our job. But I have always thought a cynic is a bad thing to be. A cynic, as I understand the term, means someone who interprets others’ actions as coming from the worst motives. It’s a knee-jerk way of thinking. A cynic, it is said, understands the price of everything and the value of nothing. So I don’t understand why Ted Koppel would say with such pride and ferocity – he said it more than once – that he is a cynic. But I think he speaks for many in the media, and I think it’s a very deep problem.”

Via Winds of Change

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Pinch Lied!

Jun 5

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Media Criticism | No Comments

Somehow, I don’t think that will be the headline in the NYT over this bombshell: Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd have resigned. Despite Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger Jr.’s earlier claim that he wouldn’t accept Mr. Raines resignation, he did. One can only hope that the NYT worries more about accuracy than advocacy in the future.

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Was It About Oil? Not According To Wolfowitz

Jun 4

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Media Criticism | 3 Comments

Yes, I know that the Guardian is claiming that Paul Wolfowitz let the cat out of the bag, and in response to a question about the difference in handling of North Korea and Iraq, said it was all about oil:

“Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defence minister said: “Let’s look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil.”

The problem is, he didn’t say that. Sad to say, you can’t believe everything you read in the paper. Here’s the actual question and answer, from the DOD transcript:

“Q: What I meant is that essentially North Korea is being taken more seriously because it has become a nuclear power by its own admission, whether or not that’s true, and that the lesson that people will have is that in the case of Iraq it became imperative to confront Iraq militarily because it had banned weapons systems and posed a danger to the region. In the case of North Korea, which has nuclear weapons as well as other banned weapons of mass destruction, apparently it is imperative not to confront, to persuade and to essentially maintain a regime that is just as appalling as the Iraqi regime in place, for the sake of the stability of the region. To other countries of the world this is a very mixed message to be sending out.

Wolfowitz: The concern about implosion is not primarily at all a matter of the weapons that North Korea has, but a fear particularly by South Korea and also to some extent China of what the larger implications are for them of having 20 million people on their borders in a state of potential collapse and anarchy. It’s is also a question of whether, if one wants to persuade the regime to change, whether you have to find — and I think you do — some kind of outcome that is acceptable to them. But that outcome has to be acceptable to us, and it has to include meeting our non-proliferation goals.

Look, the primarily difference — to put it a little too simply — between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq. The problems in both cases have some similarities but the solutions have got to be tailored to the circumstances which are very different.”

I suppose something can be lost in translating from english into german and then back again, since the Guardian was relying on the reporting of a couple of German newspapers. Since I don’t read german, I have no idea if the fault lies with the german papers (Der Tagesspiegel and Die Welt), the Guardian, or somewhere in between.

So what Wolfowitz said was, to put it in soviet terms, in Iraq the correlation of military forces was heavily in our favor while the correlation of ecomonic forces wasn’t too good; thus, the military option was used. In North Korea, the opposite balance obtains, so we are pursuing the economic option over the military. Why this is so hard for some people to grasp is beyond me – it isn’t exactly rocket science.

UPDATE: The Guardian admits it was wrong:

“A report which was posted on our website on June 4 under the heading “Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil” misconstrued remarks made by the US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, making it appear that he had said that oil was the main reason for going to war in Iraq. He did not say that. He said, according to the department of defence website, “The … difference between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq.” The sense was clearly that the US had no economic options by means of which to achieve its objectives, not that the economic value of the oil motivated the war. The report appeared only on the website and has now been removed.”

Next question is, will all those sites that ran with this story come out and tell you that it has been retracted? I’m not holding my breath.

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Al-Jazeera

Apr 3

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Media Criticism | 1 Comment

The Washington Post has an interesting article about the Washington Bureau head of Al-Jazeera, the only non-national Arab TV news network. Is it accurate, does it pander? Read the article and see.

Media Coverage Of The War

Mar 26

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Media Criticism | 1 Comment

I’ve been relying on the internet during the day and the cable news networks at night. I think having reporters embedded in the units has worked out great – in fact my biggest complaint about the coverage by the cable people is that they spend too much time with all their military retirees and not enough with their embedded reporters. I think context is important, but a little goes a long way. And if these guys really do know what’s going on, they sure as heck aren’t going to broadcast it where the Iraqi’s can pick it up. So its great to have somebody talk in generalities over a map, but you could do that 10 minutes out of an hour and have it covered.

I’ve also found myself watching MSNBC the most. I can’t put my finger on it, but they just seem to have the best coverage. Britt Hume on Fox is the best when he’s on, but he still only comes on for an hour in the evening, and then it’s all downhill from there. 

I happened to catch the morning Centcom briefing this morning on the radio. It’s amazing how little info they give out — and rightly so. Some reporter asked this morning for them to describe what the war plan was, or at least how many thrusts were being made into Iraq, and how many at Baghdad, since the Iraqi’s already know this. Well, maybe they do, and maybe they don’t. Why run the risk? The press seems to act like they’re not entirely sure that the military only shows the best LGB video. C’mon guys, of course Centcom only shows the best. 

Is it possible for the media organizations to send people who have done some homework? Some guy this morning was asking if they kept video of all the precision strikes, and when could he get his hands on it? They put this video dog and pony on every war, couldn’t you have thought to confer with the military before the war as to what kind of video you could get and when, and what had happened to it after other wars? They have public affairs officers for just that sort of thing. And while you’re at it, wouldn’t it have been nice to know what kinds of weapons we use, whether their guidance system does make a record, what the classification of that record is, and so forth, instead of asking what for what percentage of the strikes are such videos available? Do you honestly think the military keeps track of that number in the middle of a war? If you can’t look at the video, and tell immediately whether it’s from the designator of a LGB, from the seeker of an IIR weapon, or from a JDAM, you shouldn’t be at that conference, let alone asking questions. OK, that last sentance was a trick – there is no video record for JDAM since it’s an INS/GPS weapon.

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And He’s One Of The Good Ones

Mar 24

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Media Criticism | No Comments

I enjoy Gregg Easterbrook’s writing, especially in his Page 2 Column for ESPN. For The New Republic, he’s a jack of all trades, like all journalists, writing on any and every subject. The problem isn’t just his, but endemic to journalism. His columns are a worthwhile read, but often contain errors. For instance, his article about tanks has a few mistakes while the overall sentiment is correct. For instance, he talks about the vulnerability of tanks in the urban environment. But where he talks about infantry walking behind tanks (he must have watched Patton), the technique that evolved in WWII for America was to keep tanks behind the infantry in cities, and use them as direct fire artillery. In other words, when the infantry ran into a problem, the tank would move up just enough to hit building where then enemy was holed up and blast away with high explosive rounds.

And when he gets to the difference between and the Abrams, a tank, and the Bradley, an infantry fighting vehicle (IFV – a term which, along with Infantry Carrying Vehicle (ICV), has replaced the term Armored Personnel Carrier (APC) because of the increased capability), he claims the Bradley is called a Fighting Vehicle in a huh? moment, but is really a baby tank. Talk about your huh? moments. He notes the lack of the cannon used by tanks in a Bradley, but somehow fails to notice the crew compartment. The Bradley is designed to transport an infantry squad, if not in comfort, at least in a lethal package. And then he says the Marines now have a Bradley Junior in the LAV. Well, they had them in Desert Storm, and the Stryker vehicle is also the LAV-III. Given the controversy around the Stryker in the military, you’d figure he’d know that.

And that’s just his most recent piece. Earlier one’s also contain mistakes. That’s the problem with even smart media people. They make enough mistakes you never know how much you can rely on them.

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