AN INFORMED ELECTORATE?

Joan!! Do pop in more frequently girl. Yes, I saw part of that Frontline show too. Big sigh.

The BBC is, you are both quite right, a good exterior source of news. Of course, here in Canada we have the state funded CBC as well (actually a contributor to that Frontline investigation). The BBC and Guardian are two sites I check most mornings.

I think quinn is pointing to something else in here that is a negative. I assume two things; that the TV news functions as we've described it above (quick, digestible, trite soundbites), but I also consider it true that the media are being increasingly spoon fed those sound bites by political machinery which has become exquisitely adept at manipulating the form (West Wing does a fine portrayal of this). So, what is getting broad public issue isn't very much news but rather pre-scripted government propaganda - not meaning it quite that extreme, but you know what I mean.

I almost never watch television news now - because of the poor quality of most, and the shallowness of the ok ones.

I mainly get my news from quality news magazine radio - I am able to hear this on my way to and from work - I find that almost all of the content that I see in the two newspapers that I skim at work I have heard already - with some fairly informed debate, and excellent, well back-grounded searching interviews.

I confess I do not now do a lot of background searching - but if I do, i will mainly do that on-line.

I probably know less about what is going on, though, in the last two years of my life, than since I was a tiny child. I think this is because I don't want to hear it any more. Stupid, I know, but there it is.

I know exactly what you mean, though, Boss. When young, and first reading history, i used to dream of martial glory. By the time i was old enough to enlist, however, i no longer had those illusions. When i did enlist, although i was offered OCS (oops, sorry--Officer Candidate School), i turned them down. I could have opted for it later, and i wanted to see what kind of army i was in. This was 1970--73, and it was a pretty sorry army. I gave up the idea of a military career.

When i first got out of the army, i could not watch a war movie. Now, i just find them unrealistic and boring. (BTW, the B/W John Ford classic, The Red Badge of Courage, is one of the best--i saw it a few years ago, and like it immensely, again. The lead role, The Youth, is played by Audie Murphy--a genuine "hero" as the most decorated soldier of WWII--and the famous war-time cartoonist, Bill Mauldin played the role of The Loud Soldier. Mauldin and Murphy came to be great friends, and Mauldin said that Murphy used to call him early in the morning, saying that he only slept when sufficiently medicated, but that he had slept soundly, for a short while, after making that movie.) The reality of people getting stabbed, shot, blown to pieces--all of this comes too readily to mind when watching the news, and i turn away, genuinely sickened, when i see that sort of thing. My imagination, and the images supplied by experience, are sufficient that i sometimes am obliged to put down a newspaper or a book i am reading, because the images have become too vivid.

Setanta

Yes. It is precisely why I find the euphemisms of war and weapons so repugnant. We all know of posters here who talk about war as if it were a board game. Perhaps when online technology improves, we might be able to send them a packet of burning human flesh odor in response.

Blatham and Setanta:

When an administration wants to sell a country on war they use words that will incite people..,"Axis of Evil", "Evil Doers", "They want to destroy the American way of life..."(yeah, take away your SUVs and your 200 cable stations !). Many people that do not pay attention to the media or do not read, are taken in with this so-called "nationalistic fervor." They prefer to stick their heads in the sand, rather than demonstrate thoughtful responses to events. To see it happening again, just makes me a little crazy.

It's true, nothing comes out of the White House lately without a polished, full color brochure. Rove knows about sales strategies.

Lola

Well said, indeed. One of the reasons I'm so in love with Joan Didion's analyses is her astute awareness of how media presentation and language are being used ('compassionate conservatism', 'evil') by both parties to deceive and mis-direct attention.

Is this anything different than what's been coming out of the Whitehouse since at least the Kennedy Administration? (and probably well before that as well!)

different only in both quatity and quality.

Everything this administration does is from a "marketing" point of view...More than any I can remember. Notice the different themes on the backdrops to Bush's speeches? I have never seen that before. All the little nuances of Madison Ave there.

I think you hear a lot fewer complaints from people when they want to buy what the administration is selling. Of course, it would be a lot more productive to identify what items within the text of the brochure bother you, rather than disclaiming the brochure itself.

As a related aside, consider the construction of the White House itself. I am reminded of a phrase from the movie, "The American President", wherein Michael Douglas says, "The White House is the single greatest home
court advantage in the modern world." This is not by accident. The White House was built to sell an image both of the country it represents and of the men who inhabit it every four years or so.

Taking the salesmanship out of politics might not be a bad thing, but you'd have to take the politics out of politics to do it. Of course, all we would be left with then is leadership, and that doesn't seem to be what we want. (Or if it is we have not yet figured out how to express that desire clearly enough to bring leaders to the forefront and drive the politicians out of government.)

tress and fishin

I think Lola, dys and I understand the points you argue - that policy initiatives have to be communicated, that both parties study polling data like hawks, that the Madison Avenue trend is pervasive, and that all of the buggers grab babies any chance they get.

But DiIlio's experience (I can link this if you're not sure what I refer to) with this administration is not to be ignored. And then, there is the matter of two very new and profound changes in American foreign policy - pre-emptive war and power hegemony. And there are policy initiatives internally, perhaps equally profound, as in reproductive and church/state issues. And all of this riding on an election where this President got fewer votes than his opponent.

So more than ever, my impulse is to demand truth and openness, but these guys seem as likely to deliver on that as Nixon or Bill Casey.

The problem i have is not with the packaging--most of the Irish i knew (by which i mean "Irish-Americans") in the early 1960's weren't buying the "Camelot" image of Kennedy's administration--to them, it was just a case of "lace-curtain" pretensions (the American Irish will know what that means, i won't take up the space here explaining it). In general (and generalities are the only way to speak of millions of people as a whole), i would hazard the estimate that most people are aware of the packaging. It is rather what is being sold. Kennedy wanted to sell us social security disability benefits, civil rights reform and a war on organized crime. The Shrub is trying to sell us imperialist war. Given time, Kennedy might have disenchanted the majority of the population. Death so young, with no lingering bad tastes in the mouth, made Kennedy the icon of a generation. I doubt the same could ever be said of the Shrub. His presidency starts with that bad taste in the mouth, and then the political pay-offs began--the tax cuts, closed-door energy policy deliberations (sure, i'm gonna believe conservatives who'll tell me there's no proof of chicanery--we're talking image here, and that is not a good image).

Lola's comment is to the point in this discussion for another reason. When Kennedy was elected, there were only three networks in operation (and ABC wasn't available in much of the country--for those who will tell me there were more television ventures than the "big three" i would remind them that most "media outlets" [and they were not yet known by that name] were not available to the majority of Americans). Only gradually has television taken over as the source for the news for the majority of Americans. TW's point about whether or not one is inclined to take at face-value the polished press releases of the White House is well taken, but it is also much to the point here, in that we no longer live in an age in which people would actually read a newspaper analysis of a White House press release--so the press secretary has direct, and usually unfiltered, access to the electorate. If that electorate takes the party line at face value, and investigates the issues no further, then they will be more prone not to question issues of foreign policy, of war, of economic policy, of energy policy, of environmental policy . . . and so it goes . . .

Our "media outlets" get their information straight from the White House marketing department, just as this adminstration by passes the congress. It's the direct access to the news sources that is different. Carl Rove is a direct mail marketing genius and he knows his stuff. We're being fed junk mail for news. And I agree with JoanLee, where are the muckrakers?

Just a wee bit of exageration there? How long has the White House Press Corp been around? What was the 1st administration to have a press secretary?

Yeah, ok, fishin, it was a little bit exaggerated, but not too. All the news sounds the same to me lately with a few exceptions. And it's all very polished. I don't think this is just business as usual. I think the news media has gone a bit soft and lazy on us. And Rove is there to take up the slack.

fishin

You, I think, already understand that there is a strong case to be made - and many of the older newsmen like Cronkite, Bill Moyers, and others often speak to this - that modern news media and news reporters are decidely not the way they used to be... http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/1996/1120/cronkite.html ...and that the short sound bite increasingly demanded of those reporting plays into the hands of PR boys in either party. I don't know how many links I've posted here and on abuzz to analyses of depth and length which hardly anyone has bothered to read because many are simply not used to such pieces or because they are short of time. But I think such study, even the small amount I do myself, is the only way around simple acceptance of and blind faith in Authority.

"lazy' and "indifferent" - they make up their minds on the last sound bite!

ps...and of course, Lola has it right as regards Rove's earlier career and his expertise.

Lola and blatham, Sure, I do agree that Rove plays the game. Does that really make him any different than his predecessor? Or his Bush I's press secretary?

I worked for the Secret Service from 1993 to 1997. I've sat in the audience in more than a few Whitehouse (and Pres. wannbe) news briefings and speeches and seen all the BS that goes on behind the scenes before anyone walks up to the podium. I saw Clinton do it, Gore, Dole, Kemp, Keyes, Forbes and Perrot too. If anyone really thinks that everything isn't fully scripted (and has been for some time..) they're out of their gourd! Every one of these guys has a full team of PR people that tell them what suit, tie, shirt, shoes and socks to wear to each and every event. Those same PR teams decide what the backdrop will be, the lighting, the makeup, whether the speakers hair will be combed or mussed up, the height of the podium, etc..

Has the press suddenly gotten lazy in the last two years? I doubt 2 years has made a whole lot of difference in the grand scheme of things. IMO, the very same situation exists that existed 2 or 3 years ago.. The only thing that's changed is which side of the fence doesn't like what's being put out there.