Over at World Politics Watch, an interesting analysis (from Harvard, no less) of how the media sold out in the Israel/Hezbollah conflict.

Journalists did Hezbollah's work, offering little resistance to the Islamic militia's effort to portray itself as an idealistic and heroic army of the people, facing an aggressive and ruthless enemy. With Hezbollah's unchallenged control of journalists' access within its territory, it managed to almost completely eliminate from the narrative crucial facts, such as the fact that it deliberately fired its weapons from deep within civilian population centers, counting on Israeli forces to have no choice but defend themselves by targeting rocket launchers where they stood. Hezbollah's strong support from Syria and Iran -- including the provision of deadly weapons -- faded in the coverage, as the conflict increasingly became portrayed as pitting one powerful army against a band of heroic defenders of a civilian population.

Gradually lost in the coverage was the fact that the war began when Hezbollah infiltrated Israel, kidnapping two of its soldiers (still held to this day) and killing eight Israelis. Despite the undisputed fact that Hezbollah triggered the war, Israel was painted as the aggressor, as images of the war overtook the context.

This is one of the things that was most true during that time period - the media were continually looking for "access", and willing to do anything to get it. The fact that Hezbollah were caught staging "accidents" and faking photographs was amazing: even more amazing was the few media outlets that were willing to expose it. You'll note the highly left-wing and disgusting YouTube, which has suicide bomber videos and Jihad propaganda to this day, has pulled their copy lest someone see Hezbollah's propagandists for who they really are.

At the end of the day, I'm not surprised to see the media sell out; I am, however, disgusted at the lengths to which even Harvard researchers admit the media goes.

NBC has gotten some bad press for running the videos of Virginia Tech Mass Murderer Cho Seung-Hui. Mickey Kaus sums up the argument pretty succinctly:

Isn't Michael Ledeen right--NBC shouldn't have shown that video. It seems less like an "ethical challenge" than a no-brainer. Why encourage other potential Cho's to try for a similar publicity bonanza? This isn't a Unabomber like case where publicizing a killer's electronic media kit might help identify him.

I don't think I agree that the situation is that black-and-white. I'm not sure I agree with NBC, but I don't think their position is indefensible.

First, ideally speaking it's NBC News's job to show the news. By any objective measure that video was news. It's not a case of the news being caught on video but rather of the video itself being news. Before we saw the video everyone wanted to know "Why?!" and that video is, at least in part, a piece to that puzzle. Should news be suppressed simply because it benefits the wrong people? Sometimes they should, but refusing to show the news should never be the "no-brainer" decision.

The problem is that, as Kaus points out, it arguably encourages "potential Cho's". This is definitely problematic. I'm not sure, however, that I completely buy into it. It assumes that Cho and people like him are rational actors. I think it's more likely to make the next basketcase produce a video in addition to people, but I don't think it's going to be any more or any less an enticement of someone to actually commit the murders than the media's coverage absent the tapes. The same arguments made to suppress the video can be made to refrain from identifying the killer or covering the news story at all.

After Columbine many believed that was going to be just the beginning. It was the first time that the general public really got to know the killers and the killers became celebrities. It was the first one big enough for it to "stick". But instead of being the start of another round of school shootings, it was the high point (or low point, depending on how you look at it). The fact that Klebold and Harris became celebrities counterintuitively seemed to have no bearing on the actions of similarly disaffected young men or whatever bearing it had was overcompensated for by school administrations' measures enacted in response to the tragedy.

It's possible that time will make a clear fool of me on this and there will be more killers and more videos. But I think it's ludicrous to say, as Ron Coleman does, that "The blood of the victims of the 'next one' is on the hands of everyone in the decision-making chain at NBC for this utterly inexcusable decision". If it does happen again I don't think it'll be at all clear that the video is to blame.

I do have some problems with the videos. I believe that in addition to releasing clips they ought to have posted the whole thing online and basically put it in the "public domain" so to speak. The days when news organizations got to decide precisely what bits and pieces of the news we got are (or should be) over. Secondly, I'm not entirely comfortable with the fact that they showed the video before the situation was resolved. I don't buy into the "we were trying to assuage the killer" defense. Whatever merits they had, it's difficult to refrain from questioning their motives as it the whole thing came across as sensationalism at its worse and an attempt not only to report the news, but capitalize on their monopoly over a portion of it.

I don't know what I would have advocated if I'd been in the newsroom. I would be deeply uncomfortable running that video but it also wouldn't feel right to suppress it considering its newsworthiness. And whatever skepticism I had I wasn't there and whether they did it for the best reasons or the worst I'm not as sure as other people seem to be that it was the wrong thing to do.

Update: I'm actually more amenable to this argument:

The important thing is the victims; and yet, it is the madman's name we all know. Newspapers don't print the names of rape victims, by general agreement, so why not perform the same service in the case of shooting sprees?

Video or no video, Cho got what he wanted in the sense of publicity. Even without a video we'd seemingly know every last detail of the guy. The video is, in my mind, the icing on the cake. Refusing to even name the shooter would be a much bigger abandonment of journalistic reporting (which I should point out that I do not believe 'abandonment of journalistic reporting' to be a bad thing some of the time, regarding ongoing military operations and police investigations to name a couple), but it could at least be effective. Refusing to air the video strikes me as a half-measure.

NPR does a rather self-indulgent piece on how the media is "afraid of doing their jobs" or something to that effect.

I'm not sure why reporters should be afraid to do their jobs. It's their sources that have something to fear. Without the possibility of facing consequences, anonymous sources will simply use the media as a bat in intradepartmental disputes, which compromises what they're doing. That may be a good thing if they're doing something I disagree with, but it could compromise things that most of us find acceptable measures to take in the name of national security.

I thought Walter Pincus had a good point at the end that when a story is big enough, people will take chances to do what's right. The government has a legitimate interest in keeping all kinds of covert operations covert. Maybe the current administration is using legitimate rationales for illegitimate behavior; I really don't know. Not all information should be available to us at all times, particularly when it comes to law enforcement, intelligence, and military matters. There are reasons that some thing and there are some things that we shouldn't know about because we don't want terrorists to know about them.

One reporter wondered if things were going to have to go back to the big, bad days where they had to actually go somewhere and meet their sources. Heaven forbid. The non-existent constitutional right to anonymity includes a clause preventing people from being forced to leave their house to get a story, I suppose. Whatever the case, the media's whining here is quite unseemly.

Q: You ever get the feeling that everything that seems to pass as "media analysis" of the motivations of the workings of the Bush administration comes down to "Because Bush is a pooh-pooh-head and nobody likes him because he's a pooh-pooh-head!!!!!!!"

A: Yes

Q: You ever wonder if Bush - who claims to be pretty oblivious to media opinion - sometimes makes decisions out of some petulant attempt to spite the media or anyone else that tries to tell him what to do?

A: The thought does cross my mind from time to time.

When you have someone that did something wrong, you pin them against the wall for having done something wrong. When you can't prove that they actually did do anything wrong, you pin them against the wall for not telling everyone what they did or leaving the appearance that they might have done something wrong.

Is the media bored? Or just exceedingly self-absorbed and/or petulent?

That's the most benign explanation I can come up with to explain the media's fascination with Dick Cheney's shooting incident. Don't get me wrong, it's interesting stuff. Possibly tragic, depending on what all comes of it. And I would expect the New York Times to try to make hay of it and I'm not surprised that a former press secretary or two takes the opportunity to point out some pretty valid flaws in the handling of the situation.

But even so, I find the ominous tone of it all to be quite curious, to say the least. According the the Judd clan, reporters are even asking if there will be federal charges filed or if Cheney will have to step down. Folks, if you have any reason to believe that this was anything accept an honest accident besides the belief that Cheney is just that evil, please step forward with it. If you can even think of a motive for why Cheney would intentionally shoot a donor and supporter, I'd like to hear it.

Absent that, there is a noticeable lack of meat to the story.

Cover-up? There was nothing to cover up. Fitzwater compares it to an incident where George H Bush collapsed. That kind of thing is significant because it affects the chain of command of our government. Had Cheney been accidentally shot, that would be Page 1 news. Right now this is news, but more of the entertainment variety. Even the likely lawsuit or settlement is probably more celebrity news than political news. If the man dies, of course, everything changes. If they bring Cheney up on charges (beyond a fine for not having all the right licensure), that changes things as well. But both of those appear to be unlikely and this, at present, is more interesting than hard newsworthy.

So all I can think of is that the media is really bored, really interested in stories (including non-story stories) that let the administration look bad, or so self-important as to be the most important thing to consider when someone is accidentally shot.

I wish that blogger had categories. Centinel, for instance, has this great feature where he explores what he heard on NPR on the way to work. He's been blogging for a year now and I would love to go back and catch all of his posts. He reminds me of the intuitive nature regarding what I like about NPR and also the mindset that can be a bit of a turnoff.

I used to listen to public radio a while back because they were one of the only stations to play untested regional and local acts. I also listened to their newscasts off-and-on. Eventually they started playing less of variety of local music, it seemed to me, and it seemed like every time I turned around they were having a pledge drive.

On weekends in Salt Lake City while Camille was doing a rotation down there, I watched non-profit television while she was showering or getting ready for work or otherwise occupied. It had some interesting television that you're unlikely to really find elsewhere. But they, too, were having a fundraising drive. It's the cost of not having advertisers, I suppose. But it's a particularly irritating cost to me.

Commercial entertainment has a reasonably well-outlined end-user agreement. You agree to watch or listen and to occasionally forget or become too lazy to turn the channel during commercial breaks. In return, the advertisers give the station money so that they can continue to entertain you provided that enough people are watching to justify the continuation of the program or station providing the entertainment. Sure, I get annoyed with all the commercial break as well as the nature of the commercials themselves.

There's also direct-to-audience entertainment. The EUA is a bit different here in that you pay a base fee in order to avoid commercials altogether. Premium cable (HBO, Showtime, etc.) work in this model, as does satellite radio, pay-per-view, film rental, and film/music purchase. When I get a bit more money freed up I'd like to utilize more of these modes of entertainment, but absent that I can still turn to commercial entertainment.

Public entertainment, however, basically works on the honor-and-shame system. They work on the honor system insofar as no one has to pay for it in order to get it. However, the MO turns to shame every drive. I don't blame them one iota for needing money (we live in a quasi-capitalist country, after all), but it's all so vague. It's sort of like that friend that does you favors and says that you can pay him back later or whenever you can. In some ways I would prefer a tit-for-tat method, whereby I know what I'm going to be paying and when. Unless I'm close to someone, I generally don't like favors that aren't completely necessary. Partially it's because I don't know what they're going to need. Partially it's because I don't want to forget the favors that people do for me and end up seriously in their debt. That latter part is especially true of friends. It's odd in that I don't generally hold others to a particular favor-for-favor standard, but I fear that they will me. I couldn't blame them if they did, but that starts making things more complicated.

With public radio (which I will mostly use as an example here because I've partaken in that a lot more than public television), there is no ledger. I find that off-putting. Every now and again they have a drive, of course, and I'm free to donate at that time. If they had a basic voluntary membership program I might not have such a problem with it. I would have to evaluate it like I would evaluate any other expenditure (and I would try to even though membership would be voluntary), but at least then I could pay my dues and be done with it.

Except that even if I pay my dues, they will continue to ask for more money. They may be talking to me, but I will feel like they are whenever they're listening. They said that they only had the drives a couple times a year, but it seemed like it was quarterly drives lasting three months a piece. And then even to the extent that they have membership programs (where you get a card, some coupons, a mug and a bumper sticker), they often have increasingly elaborate ones so there's always more ways to give to move up the philantropist echelon - and there's always more ways to feel guilty when you can't give.

A long time ago I regularly read the Jewish World Review. Moreso than any other source, it introduced me to a kind of conservatism that I had not really been introduced to before. It had the obnoxious kinds, to be sure, but also really thoughtful conservative and libertarian commentary. I owe a lot of my political and social philosophy to the ideas introduced to me by that site. But after a while it seemed like every time I went on there they were desperately asking for more money. I have no doubt that they were in a money crunch, but eventually the guilt I felt about not being able or willing to help out was more than my enjoyment of the site. I haven't been over there in some time.

I can't blame them for needing money, and if they didn't ask for it they would never get it. But I often find myself preferring the subscription model and/or those that provide commentary and such as a labor of love. And I'll take advertisements. Whatever, so long as we're square by the time I am finished reading, watching, or hearing what they have to say.

I'm a little late to this party, but then I usually am.

The basic thrust of the debate is that one of the FEC commissioners suggested that the FEC might want to start regulating Internet speech:

The real question is: Would a link to a candidate's page be a problem? If someone sets up a home page and links to their favorite politician, is that a contribution? This is a big deal, if someone has already contributed the legal maximum, or if they're at the disclosure threshold and additional expenditures have to be disclosed under federal law.

Certainly a lot of bloggers are very much out front. Do we give bloggers the press exemption? If we don't give bloggers the press exemption, we have the question of, do we extend this to online-only journals like CNET?

I have two basic observations:

First, I don't see it happening for a while. The whole "The Internet is Different" Kool-aid still has a few years left in it. Ten years from now the Internet salex tax and McCain-Feingold will probably be a reality. In what form (for either) I do not know. But it won't happen for a while as campaigns haven't yet been able to fully exploit the Internet yet. But once they can, it'll be another "loophole" that has to be closed.

Second, I can think of no reason why the Internet should be exempt. If we, as a nation, have decided that "clean" elections are more important than the freedom of anyone (including big, bad corporations) to speak freely, then we've made that decision. The different between television and the Internet is only a matter of (a) dollars required and (b) people reached.

As most of you know, I thought McCain-Feingold was a travesty and the fact that the courts believe that shutting big-time donors up was more important than our right to speak freely was absolutely obscene. I would not nearly have had the problem with McCain-Feingold if it had only limited money, but they took it a step further and said that people couldn't take out the ads independently of the campaign. It's one thing to talk about yelling "Fire" in a crowded theater. It's another to talk about pornography. But once you start talking about what can and cannot be said at all about political candidates when it matters most (the 60-90 days before an election), that's the very essence of free speech.

And yet the people supported it, congress passed it, the President signed it, and the court agreed with it.

And with that, what's the point in writing out an exception for bloggers? Are we the "right" kind of people to be able to speak our mind on candidates and issues? Or do we have to prove that we're journalists first... by a standard determined by the government we wish to influence. Are the ways we contribute to campaigns Constitutionally different from those of PACs because we're the right kind of people with the right things to say?

Says who?

Says us, I guess.

Says those who couldn't stop the legislation from being inacted in the first place. (motto: We're too ineffectual to be censored!")

And says some of those who decided that it was the government's job to decide who can talk to who and say what about what when it matters. (motto: We meant them. Not us. Them!)

Yawn.

As often is the case, I can't quite remember how I got to a story on how Howard Dean "gets religion." The article itself is dated (Dean is the frontrunner for the Dem nomination) and is a recap of what I already knew. In the center is about candidate Dean, to the right articles on how Dean is the frontrunner, and to the far left that Bush won the election. It doesn't say against whom, leaving someone that just woke up out of a coma believing it might have been Dean.

But that's not why I'm posting this. I'm posting this to ask y'all if it would be any more possible for CBS to find a less flattering and more evil-looking picture of the president for the Bush Won masthead?

I don't think it is...

When I read about a soldier's critical questioning of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, my first thought was that Specialist Thomas Wilson almost certainly had a career in politics ahead of him. The gumption that it takes to make such a move - along with the articulate way that he did so - made me feel that he might have had something more in mind than asking Rumsfeld about tank armor. I'm generally quick with such speculation and often wrong, but that was the first thought that went through my mind.

Then it came out that he was coached by a news reporter, Lee Pitts, who was frustrated that he himself couldn't get Rumsfeld to answer the questions (and said reporter did not disclose this in his report).

In one sense, it doesn't matter. It appears the line of questioning was credible and even Rumsfeld and the Administration believe so. It's unfortunate that a reporter needs to use an intermediary to get such questions answered - and that doesn't speak particularly well of the Administration.

But on the other hand, I'm not particularly comfortable with a journalist staging a confrontation and, in my generally paranoid conservative manner believe it has as much to do with staring down a "conservative administration's lies, lies, lies" than anything else. But one of the maxims I've heard (from a comic book, I think, so consider the source!) is that reporters ought to report the story and never become a part of it. Pitts definitely crossed that line.

It turns out that Pitts's newspaper had a similar critique.

Update: Here's a more critical look from the Investor's Business Daily at the reporter and the media coverage surrounding it all:

The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, among others, gave it front-page play. TV networks and National Public Radio gave it prominent airtime. Quite a coup for a lone questioning GI.

Except, as it turns out, the question wasn't authentic. It was planted by Chattanooga Times Free Press reporter Edward Lee Pitts, who is embedded with the 278th Regimental Combat Team. In a memo to his paper -- and posted by the Drudge Report -- he admits to working "on questions to ask Rumsfeld" with the GIs.

What was portrayed as soldiers' genuine anger was, in fact, a staged media event.

Indeed, only one "tough question" was posed to Rumsfeld -- Pitts'. Others, respectfully, asked about armor. But it wasn't the "grilling" newspapers reported. And the questions were asked only because Rumsfeld was man enough to tell the assembled GIs to do so.

Lex has some pretty even-handed comments on the CBS/hoax story that I mostly agree with:

CBS, for its part, is moving away from defending the authenticity of the documents while continuing to defend the authenticity of their contents. I know my saying the following will make me unpopular with my conservative friends, but: This makes Dan Rather guilty of, at worst, misdemeanor reckless disregard. He should have been more careful in determining the authenticity of the memos or should have been more careful in explaining the difference between the likelihood that the memos were authentic and the likelihood that, authentic or not, they accurately reflected Killian's thoughts at the time (there's much more evidence in support of the latter notion).

But there's zero evidence Rather knowingly broadcast false information about Bush's service record, and the idea that he should be fired, let alone that anyone else higher ranking than he at CBS should be, is laughable (although he and CBS might want to ponder the notion that he should leave simply to help restore the network's credibility). This is a boneheaded lack of judgment unbefitting someone of Rather's rank in the industry, but it is in no way, shape or form as serious as, say, Jayson Blair's serial fabrications for The New York Times...

[Note: I cropped the post mid-sentence because that's a can of worms I'd rather not open at the moment]

Short of catching the forger red-handed, there really is no way of proving that they are false. That said, I came in to it pretty open-minded I believe that the story the document portrayed is probably more accurate than not, regardless of the documents themselves. That said, the pro-forgery side has made the case a lot more definitively than the anti-forgery side has and to say "may be true, may not be" (which is the gyst of Lex's first paragraph)is giving CBS something of a free pass. When an accusation is made, the burden of proof is on the accusor to demonstrate proof (and the authenticity thereof). They've tried and failed to do that.

As to the question of forgery, whether or not the content is true is pretty irrelevent, in my view. The story was not that "Bush evaded service," but rather "Bush evaded service and we have proof!" Without the documents, there wasn't much of a story in the original broadcast. If they'd brought the secretary on to say that Bush's supervisor thought Bush was getting a free ride, that would have been a story, but without the imact of documented proof.

Secondly, CBS demonstrated little desire to investigate the documents once they were run. They dismissed their critics as if what they had to say didn't matter because they were CBS and the critics weren't. They were far more interested in making the documents credible than they were in finding out if the documents were, in fact, authentic. That is far more troubling to me than the documents in the first place. The next time that any CBS journalist talks about "the quest for the truth" or anything in that regard, I'll have to restrain myself from laughter.

All of that said, I have to agree with Lex on the larger part of the argument insofar that I haven't seen any proof of malicious intent on the part of CBS. They were probably too eager to believe the documents in the first place, but that could easily have less to do with blatant partisanship and a lot more to do with tit-for-tat with Kerry and those accusing him of being a less than stellar sailor. Goose, gander, and all that.

There is, of course, the matter of the documentation experts claiming that they warned CBS, but I've seen little to back up their claims and they have as much incentive to lie. Some of them were named to prove that the documents were true. There is a good chance that they didn't look very closely in the first place, signed off on it, and then later feared that their reputations would go down with Rather's. That they have run away from it at the very least suggests that the documents are not credible (if they were sure of the doc's authenticity, I doubt they would have done what they did), but not necessarily more than that.

CBS is quite guilty of shoddy journalism and of being more interested in 'getting the story' than the accuracy thereof, but it doesn't yet equate to "perpetuation of fraud" as Beldar somewhat convincingly argues. At least not yet. If it is proven that Bill Burkett (a Bush-loather with a less-than-credible history of accusations against Bush and a vendetta against the Texas National Guard) is the source, then it becomes journalism so shoddy that Rather should be fired. But I'm not convinced just yet.

But the question at this point isn't whether the documents are authentic (the case that they are authentic is pretty difficult to make at this point), but whether (a) CBS knew it when they ran the story, (b) CBS knew that they might be but figured no one would notice, or (c) CBS really had no reason to believe that they weren't.

Just as the burden is on CBS to prove the documents are real, it's on CBS's critics to prove that this was all intentional and malicious.