Letters to the Editor
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Michael Ware
I saw him on Maher Friday and many don't know what to make of him today because he sounds like he's stumping for McCain. I think it's really the other Powell Doctrine he's advocating: The Pottery Barn rule
Some won't see any difference, I suppose.
Romenesko:
From DAVID KILEY, BusinessWeek: I know covering the war from Iraq is a tough job. But I have been confused about the role of CNN correspondent Michael Ware. First on NPR, and then again on Bill Maher's show, Ware has been speaking more like an advocate for John McCain than a reporter covering a story. In both interviews, Ware waxed about how dangerous it would be for troops to withdraw as fast as 12-15 months after a new President is inaugurated. On Maher, he even went so far as to push the position that Iraq would quickly become a playground for terrorists sitting atop one of the world's biggest oil supplies.
Is this covering a story, or running for office? I'm not even saying Ware is wrong. But since when is it his role to advocate one side of a policy being debated in the U.S.? He could certainly present the arguments of both sides and give his expertise about where each argument falls down. But I confess I was left with the feeling that I was listening to a reporter about as objective as Ollie North on Fox. Is Ware really fit to properly cover the occupation of Iraq and deliver reports for voters to digest in an election year if he's so openly in the tank for one side?
http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=13227
Ware a year ago:
Michael Ware: “I dont know what part of Neverland Senator McCain is talking about…”
Watch it here at Crooks & Liars:
http://tinyurl.com/3xewe5
He gets no pass from Ware. It's pretty brutal.
And MMFA:
http://mediamatters.org/items/200703290009
A transcript is here:
McCain’s credibility on Iraq ‘has now been left out hanging to dry’
Posted March 28th, 2007 at 9:35 am
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10338.html
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Why McCain's foriegn policy blunders don't really matter (to his supporters)
Think about it: he'll continue to extend Bush's tax cuts and has promised to appoint extreme Right judges to the Supreme Court. Of course those blunders don't matter (to his supporters).
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One of my biggest gripes
not just about the establishment media, but about people in general, is the tendency of most people to engage in stereotypical "thinking" that is based not on verifiable and continually evolving evidence, but on preestablished and locked-in assumptions and prejudices that are often simply not answerable to reality. I.e. most people simply take as a given that certain things are undeniably true, and then proceed to base their take on reality upon those assumed truths, whether or not they're actually true, rarely bothering to verify or re-verify whether they're true, and overtly denying any evidence that might contradict the alleged truthfulness of those assumptions. We all do this to some extent. Most people, though, do it way too often, in my opinion, making intelligent discussion with them frustrating if not impossible.
The classic example, of course, is people in the middle ages, including most "experts" at the time, who believed that the earth was flat and the sun, planets and stars revolved around it. Everyone just KNEW that this was OBVIOUSLY true, to the point where challenging it was beyond insane, like disputing that water was wet or the sky blue. Even when overwhelming evidence came in that these were not true, people continued to deny it, because it so fundamentally violated and offended their preestablished views of reality.
Sadly, while most people no longer believe that the earth is flat or the center of the universe (although I'd pretty much put global warming deniers and creationists in this camp, all the worse in their case because unlike their medieval counterparts, there is overwhelming evidence that they're astoundingly wrong), many, of not most people continue to operate according to the same general mode of stereotypical and prejudiced "thinking" that allowed their medieval counterparts to deny reality for centuries. This manifests itself in such relatively innocuous ways as people assuming that bottled water is better than tap water, in more serious ways as people believing that shows like 24 are accurate reflections of reality, and in insidious ways as assuming that all Muslims are evil and want to destroy America.
Thus the inability and/or unwillingness of so many "journalists" and pundits to challenge the widespread assumption that McCain is a very serious and knowledgable foreign policy expert, even though he has never, to my knowledge, evidenced the slightest bit of sophistication and expertise about foreign affairs, or military policy and strategy, or domestic affairs for that matter. The guy is a lazy and uninformed boob, who has somehow managed to fool so many alleged "journalists" into believing that he's an expert in anything. His entire career, and alleged expertise, is based on his having been a POW in Vietnam, which while it certainly makes him deserving of our sympathy and honor, and doubtlessly shaped his character and outlook in profound ways, could not possibly make him an expert in broader foreign policy and military issues, any more so than surviving a massive fire makes one an expert in preventing and putting out fires. And he appears to have expended very little effort in his post-POW life in doing the work required in actually becoming an expert in these fields. Instead, he married a rich heiress whose money helped him launch a dubious career as a hack politician. He is no more an expert in any of these fields as Bush was a successful businessman. Both got to where they are because of money, connections, and media manipulation.
I'm guessing that the media's infatuation with McCain is about more than just unchallenged assumptions (i.e. he was a POW and everybody says that he's an expert in foreign policy, so he must therefore be one), and also has to do with his gruff charm and tendency to run off at the mouth in ways that make him seem independant-minded. Plus, he benefits from the built-in assumption that has been established by the RWNM since Nixon, that Repubs are inherently more knowledgeable and expert in foreign affairs. But clearly, to me at least, much if not most of this can be attributed to the stereotypical way of thinking enagaged in by most of the establishment media--i.e. they start out with a preestablished narrative and take on reality that they never think to question because to their pea-brained minds they are self-evidently true even if reality shows otherwise, and then proceed to come up with "facts" that verify what they already believed to be true and which only crazy people would dispute. In college this is called handing in an "F" grade paper. In today's world this is called quality journalism.
Of course, the people who own and run the establishment media are smart enough to know all this. But since they're more interested in maximizing profits and increasing their market share and power, than in putting out quality journalism, which their experience has shown is better achieved through such hackery, they're not about to do anything to fix this. They like that their "journalists" are doing this, because it's good for business, and so long as it continues to be good for business, they will continue to allow if not encourage it. And the only way to end this practice, I believe, is to come up with a media business model that is not just profitable and high quality, but profitable BECAUSE it's high quality. I think it's possible. And I think that it'll happen. It's already happening, on a small scale, e.g. TPM, Truthdig, YouTube, blogs, etc. And it's just a matter of time, I believe, before some Mark Cuban type of entrepeneur figures out a way to turn this into a viable big business model, as an ethical counterpart to Fox News, let alone CNN, NBC and the NY Times. Perhaps not in this election cycle, but fairly soon. I think that the public is sick of being lied to, and is starving for some truth and substance.