Why Am I Writing This?

Date: September 14, 2009
Author: Bob Griendling
Categories: Uncategorized

An active, informative press is the foundation of a democratic society.  We’ve got active!  Informative?  Not so much.

I think journalism is one of the noblest professions.  Not because it was mine for five or six years—not always nobly–but because I think a lot of young, bright people enter the profession every year with, for the most part, good intentions.  But something happens so that the ones who can be, first and foremost, hyperbolic, contentious and shallow seem to get a lot of attention and drive the discussion.  Or that may be all we as a society want to listen to. 

That of course is the dilemma of modern journalism.  How does it remain relevant?  I have no clear answers.  But there are some things we can try—and things we shouldn’t do. 

This blog will focus on both.  I’ll link to the research, discussion and examples of possible solutions and, I suppose, reasoned judgments as to why the profession is just hunky-dory right now.

Though a journalist for a fairly brief time, I have dealt with journalists most of my professional life, as a consultant to businesses, non-profits and politicians and in grassroots campaigns.  Through those nearly 40 years, I have the sense that most want a good story done well, honestly.  That’s as good as most of us will do in our careers.  How can they write and broadcast informative stories in these times?  Are they captive of the sturm und drang of today’s society and unquenchable quests for profit.  Or are they willful co-conspirators?

Who the hell knows?  But I feel the press—mainstream and alternatives that are honest—need to lead rather than excuse themselves by claiming subservient to eyeballs and profits.  That leadership has to start at the top.  For the most part, reporters are not the main problem.  If journalism is done well honestly, or at least better than a lot of what we see, hear and read, I think we will tune in and it can make money.

I’m not  pining for a bygone era.  I’m not saying that there isn’t a lot USA Today, once considered heretical, cable television, often considered ill-considered, talk radio, with its glorious history of demagoguery, the tabloid freak shows and bloggers can’t teach us something about what makes good journalism.  But I would choose wisely.

I read The Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal most mornings with coffee.  How much I can read otherwise depends on my day, though my wife would say “too much.”

I’m liberal about most political issues.  I’ve also blogged since 2004 but fitfully at Commonwealth Commonsense.  It started out as a blog about Virginia politics, quickly got into the national scene and lately, I’ve written a lot about media issues.  So much so that I thought a separate blog made sense, er, commonsense.

My day-job journalism years were as a radio and television reporter, though I’ve written a few op-ed columns and freelanced even less. About half my broadcasting career was at public stations and half at commercial ones.  Why I left the profession had as much to do with a fast growing family, but if I hadn’t maybe I’d’ve ended up asking the future president, “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?” or writing for the umpteenth time about “death panels”–and been so proud of myself.

Still, I love the guy and gals of the press.  The News Commonsense blog is for you!

Declining Press Credibility

Date: September 14, 2009
Author: Bob Griendling
Categories: Uncategorized

There’s a damning reportout today by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.  But upon closer inspection, while not great, it may be not as depressing as it seems.  There are two stories about it at The Washington Post, one is an AP storyposted last night and another was part of Howard Kurtz’s regular Monday column.

Kurtz wrings his hands.

Public respect for the media has plunged to a new low, with just 29 percent of Americans saying that news organizations generally get their facts straight.

That figure is the lowest in more than two decades of surveys by the Pew Research Center, which also found just 26 percent saying news outlets are careful that their reporting is not politically biased. And 70 percent say news organizations try to cover up their mistakes. That amounts to a stunning vote of no confidence.

I guess that’s pretty bad, but, and as a blogger it pains me to point this out, according to the AP story,

The poll didn't distinguish between Internet bloggers and reporters employed by newspapers and broadcasters, leaving the definition of "news media" up to each individual who was questioned. The survey polled 1,506 adults on the phone in late July.

Ah, well, we bloggers don’t have the greatest reputation for accuracy or non-partisanship.  So while there’s been a drop off of 26% since 1985 in the percentage of people who think news organizations “get the facts straight,” 24 years ago nobody knew that bloggers would be invented. 

New York Times editor points that out.

"The great flood that goes under the heading `news media' has been poisoned by junk blogs, gossip sheets, shout radio and cable-TV partisans that don't deserve to be trusted," Keller told The Associated Press in an e-mail.

Ouch.

For the mainstream media, there is still a glimmer of hope.

Even as more people than ever don't believe everything in the news, Pew found that the public still seems to value the media. When asked how they would feel about a news outlet closing, 82 percent said it would be an important loss if there were no local TV news and 74 percent said it would be a major blow to lose their local newspaper.

Amen.

Gerry Connolly Lies to His Constituents

Date: August 26, 2009
Author: Bob Griendling
Categories: Gerry Connolly

For more than a month, I have been calling my congressman, Gerry Connolly, to ask when he was planning a town hall meeting.  Whether his Fairfax district office or his Capitol Hill office, I was always given the same answer:  He hasn’t planned any, or he hasn’t “finalized his schedule.”  Then I read this:

Still, [Connolly]  sought to put the best face on his own largely civil town hall, the third he’s held during the month among seniors, noting that he had conducted “a pretty meaty discussion.”

While they were described as meetings “among seniors,”  I have no doubt the meetings were open to the public.  Yet, his staff lied to me.  When I called his office this morning for an explanation, I was told that the meeting “was at the request of the Greenville community residents.”  Did that mean it was not open to the public? I asked.  The staffer repeated the previous answer.

I don’t know about some Virginia Democrats.  Sen. Warner and Connolly seemed to have lost any backbone they once had.  Here I am trying to counter the lying SOBs on the other side, and he won’t be honest with me about his meetings.

Is the Public Option A Sword to Fall On?

Date: August 19, 2009
Author: Bob Griendling
Categories: Healthcare, Media Criticism

Steve Pearlstein says no.

One goal of health-care reform is to begin to address these market imperfections. But there’s no particular evidence that a government-run insurance plan will be any more successful than what we currently get from big private insurers — unless, of course, the government-run plan is so big or so powerful that it can dictate prices to providers, as Medicare now does. Proposing that, however, would immediately unite doctors, hospitals and drug companies in opposing reform.

You also hear the argument that government-run insurance would have lower costs because it wouldn’t have to generate a profit (that’s true) and would be more efficient than private insurers (that isn’t). The evidence of greater efficiency is Medicare, which spends about 2 to 3 percent of its budget on administration. But if a government-run plan had to spend its own money to collect premiums, market itself to customers, maintain a reserve, and manage care in a way that lowers costs and raises quality — none of which Medicare now does — then you can be sure its administrative costs would be nowhere near 2 or 3 percent.

Pearlstein, who will discuss this article at 11 a.m. on The Washington Post web site, makes some cogent arguments.  But what strikes me most about this article is that I must read an opinion piece to get good information on the debate.  Shouldn’t Post reporters be detailing the pros and cons of healthcare reform?  Instead of spending time covering town hall shoutfests, shouldn’t reporters look into the debate and collect expert opinion on how reform might work, what consequences and trade-offs are, and what other countries have done to address the issues we face?

Swift Boating Healthcare Reform

Date: August 18, 2009
Author: Bob Griendling
Categories: Healthcare, Media Criticism, Message

Indeed, it’s the same scenario.

But what has been perfectly consistent is the way the press has, again, fallen for a right-wing smear campaign and dressed it up as news. Just as with the Swifties, the press has turned over its summer coverage to a band of agitators spreading misinformation. Five summers ago, the Swift Boat Vets helped hijack the election. They lied about documents, they lied about eyewitness, and they lied about their partisan affiliations and connections. For several crucial weeks during the campaign, journalists turned away from the pile-up of Swift Boat falsehoods and contradictions, rarely daring to call the Swift Boat attack out for what it really was — a hoax. Too spooked by the GOP Noise Machine and its charge of liberal media bias, the press propped up the Vets as serious men and showered them with attention.

The key point here is that the right has had a decades long, disciplined campaign to discredit the mainstream media.  The MSM, with their thin skins, reacted by bending over backwards to be “fair,” which means they give prominence to the most outrageous charges from the right, afraid of the abuse they might get if they resist.

Why doesn’t the left do the same?

A Pittance for the Poor

Date: August 18, 2009
Author: Bob Griendling
Categories: Income Equality

The rich are getting richer.

The wealthiest 15,000 households, those making more than $11.5 million a year, got a record 6.04 percent of the nation’s $8.7 trillion in income, according to the study by University of California-Berkeley economics professor Emmanuel Saez. The previous year those households amassed 5.46 percent of the total, the tax data shows.

In Saez’s study, the richest Americans represent the top 0.01 percent of all households. In 1928, the year before the Great Depression began, the share of the nation’s income for this slice of households was 5.04 percent.

Hey, the poor are getting richer, too. 

Tax Notes said the richest 0.01 percent of Americans has had greater income growth than the rest of the country since the early 1970s. From 1973 to 2007, the average income for taxpayers in that category grew 758 percent, or more than $30 million. Excluding the wealthiest 10 percent, the rest of the population got an average increase of $286 over that period, or about $8.41 annually, adjusted for inflation, Tax Notes said.

It’s enough for a pack of smokes and a coke.  And you get it every year!  What are you complaining about?

Is Obama Tough Enough?

Date: August 18, 2009
Author: Bob Griendling
Categories: Healthcare, Message, Obama

The left punditry is starting to come down on Obama, wondering whether, as Politico’s Roger Simon points out, Hillary Clinton was right:  You may campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose. 

In her former life as a presidential candidate, Clinton warned voters that Obama would let them down. She warned them that when the going got tough, he would fold up.

She said it was not just a matter of Obama lacking experience — that was the least of it — but that he lacked the strength, the toughness, the will to get the job done.

Obama seems at this juncture weak-kneed.  The right’s tried and true strategy of intimidation seems to be working, as it does whether they are in power or out.

Even Gene Robinson, the Washington Post columnist and one of Obama’s most ardent defenders, is beginning to wonder.

It’s true that politics is the art of the possible, but it’s also true that great leaders expand the scope of possibility. Barack Obama took office pledging to be a transformational president. The fate of a government-run public health insurance option will be an early test of his ability to end the way Washington’s big-money, special-interest politics suffocates true reform.

…What the president hasn’t done is the obvious: Tell Congress and the American public, clearly and forcefully, what has to be done and why. Take control of the debate. Consult less and insist more. Remind the Blue Dogs who’s president and who’s not.

Giving up on the public option might be expedient. But we didn’t elect Obama to be an expedient president. We elected him to be a great one.

It’s fair to criticize the country’s most progressive voices.  While some leaders are vocal, the progressive base is silent.

So where are the liberal protesters? The initiative has passed to the know-nothing right for two big reasons.

One is Obama himself. This president recoils from confrontation, even with those who are out to destroy him. He has had ample opportunities to put himself on the side of popular economic grievances and to connect America’s economic troubles to the forces that Roosevelt called "economic royalists." But Obama, whose propensity for consensus is hard-wired, keeps passing up those opportunities.

…Despite the president’s history as a community organizer, his style as president is to tamp down popular protest, not rev it up. I know of several cases in which the White House requested allied progressive groups to cool it.

Cohen’s second reason for the lack of protests is that unions can’t organize the necessary protests.  I disagree.  When you’re unemployed, there’s plenty of time to go to meetings and rallies to demand the change Obama promised.

Simon thinks that the president will eventually push for a public option and make it happen, even if it takes reconciliation so it can’t be filibustered.

I’m skeptical, but have been surprised before when Obama has pushed hard when he gets near the goal line.

I can’t believe that he thinks ditching the public option and other concessions to the right will help him electorally.  If he caves on this, I won’t be working for him next election.  By then, maybe I’ll have the opportunity to work for a new progressive party.  It may not be practical, but if you want to get a party to move in your direction, build a movement that threatens to take votes from them.  Maybe then Democrats, including Mr. Congeniality, will take notice.

White House Caves…Again!

Date: August 17, 2009
Author: Bob Griendling
Categories: GOP message, Healthcare, Message, Obama

What chance is there for a public option – or even significant healthcare reform, if the White House caves in to GOP pressure on such a small matter as this.

Following a furor over how the data would be used, the White House has shut down an electronic tip box — flag@whitehouse.gov — that was set up to receive information on “fishy” claims about President Barack Obama’s health plan.

…Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, wrote a letter to Obama raising privacy concerns about what the senator called an “Obama monitoring program.”

Media Incompetence

Date: August 14, 2009
Author: Bob Griendling
Categories: Healthcare, Media Criticism, Obama

Another voice calling for calling a lie a lie.  Obama’s hope for a new kind of politics because of media’s incompetence.

I warned that his vision of a “different kind of politics” was a vain hope, that any Democrat who made it to the White House would face “an unending procession of wild charges and fake scandals, dutifully given credence by major media organizations that somehow can’t bring themselves to declare the accusations unequivocally false.”

Krugman goes on to challenge Obama to get better at delivering his healthcare reform message.

It would certainly help if he gave clearer and more concise explanations of his health care plan. To be fair, he’s gotten much better at that over the past couple of weeks.

What’s still missing, however, is a sense of passion and outrage — passion for the goal of ensuring that every American gets the health care he or she needs, outrage at the lies and fear-mongering that are being used to block that goal.

What Krugman leaves out is that it is up to Obama to challenge MSM to engage in something remotely related to responsible journalism.  Right now, MSM is letting the cable news echo chamber define the debate.  At least the New York Times is trying.