Pure Twaddle

A telling article on MSN.com shows how reliant on Wikipedia modern journalism has become, much to the truth’s detriment. Shane Fitzgerald, college student in Ireland, posted a fake quote on recently deceased Oscar-winning French composer Maurice Jarre‘s Wikipedia page. Although the quote was completely unattributed, manifold news agencies picked it up and published it as fact. It was not until days later that anyone found out it was a hoax, and only until Fitzgerald contacted the news agencies to tell them.

The Guardian newspaper was the sole company to publicly apologize for publishing the completely false information. Other news agencies have either ignored the error, quietly corrected it, or simply blamed Fitzgerald outright. Most deliciously, Wikipedia editors had removed the quote within an hour because it could not be verified.

And news companies wonder why people are losing faith in their product.

Popularity: 28% [?]

T.V. viewing is at an all-time high, according to the Nielsen Company, at 151 hours per month per average adult. That’s three-tenths of each waking day sitting in front of the boob tube. This news is disturbing, considering a majority of Americans don’t even read one book a year anymore. So how much T.V. do you watch?

I find television to be very educating.  Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book.  -Groucho Marx

Popularity: 49% [?]

Perhaps the internet is not the cause of the decline of print journalism, but merely a symptom. Spurred on by cell phones and instant information gratification, we have no more time to sit down and read the New York Times Sunday edition cover-to-cover.

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Popularity: 24% [?]

Since when did David Broder, columnist and University of Maryland journalism professor, get a job with the Obama administration? Here are some quotes from his Washington Post opinion piece summing up Obama’s First 100 Days and their translations into normal speech:

What he has shown — and it is an important accomplishment in itself — is a mastery of the art of managing the presidency.

Trans: Obama hasn’t screwed up yet. Yes, this is a major feat.

And it is surprising, because there was no reason to assume that he had the skills to direct such a large enterprise.

Trans: We were expecting a shite-show considering his complete lack of executive experience.

Obama had a few stumbles in assembling his Cabinet and, as a result, lost the services of one potential major asset, Tom Daschle, his original choice to manage his health-care initiative.

Trans: Sure, six known tax cheaters seem like a lot, but isn’t it better to keep people above the law if they follow your political agenda?

Hardly a day has gone by in the first three months that Americans have not seen Obama on their TV screens in a variety of roles — chiefly as economic salvage director for seriously shattered housing, credit and employment systems.

Trans: Nope, we’re not sick of showing him on the TV yet.

But they’ve also seen him as commander in chief of armed forces fighting two wars, diplomatic traveler engaged with world leaders, and agenda-setter for Congress — to say nothing of first father, first fan, first consort of Michelle and first master of Bo.

Trans: “Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed.”

But the overture has gone well, and so far, the cast seems to know its parts.

Trans: I’ve memorized my lines, now where’s my appointment?

Popularity: 34% [?]

The Senate has just announced they have come up with a bipartisan deal for a staggeringly gigantic stimulus package that they hope to vote on by Tuesday. Naturally, they released this news about two hours after most respectable journalists have packed up for the weekend and gotten themselves nicely plastered at Applebee’s happy hour.

This whole charade of discussion is disgusting and has brought out the worst of both sides; mainly from the Republicans, who have shown extreme weakness and disorganization in making a stand. After a few whiney calls to fairness, they have tentatively agreed to a slightly-less-than-$800 billion spending bill. They have shown the requisite opposition to it and are trying to wash their hands of the deal, but not too much in case it actually works. House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said in a statement right after the announcement on Friday, “ultimately this bill should be judged on whether it works, and 90 percent of a bad idea is still a bad idea.”

So he thinks 90% of it is wasteful spending and pork, but he is willing to try a wait-and-see approach to it? Is this really the kind of leadership we’re going to get out of the opposition in the next four to eight years?

What is most disturbing is that none of the major networks or major pundits have clearly broken down and laid out the components of this bill. Conservative critics scream it’s mostly waste which won’t help anybody, while Liberal cheerleaders degrade the Republicans as Neros who would rather play fiddle than put out the fire. The less-biased reporters ignore the thoughtful approach, instead calling the blows to each side as if they were ringside at a Holyfield fight. Whatever happened to “we report, you decide?”

Of course the Democrats are going to produce a bill chock full of government-expanding programs. Since most of America voted for them that’s what we are going to get. And who is blames them? That’s their platform and they’re sticking to it. But arguing over what money goes where is wasted breath.

There is a more insidious problem here that is overlooked by nearly every media organization (except the Wall Street Journal). Whether the bill is filled with pork or not is a moot point. No matter what form a giant stimulus package takes, be it infrastructure overhaul, massive education spending, or stimulus checks, we are going to severely increase inflation.

When you dump trillions of fabricated dollars in the economy, inflation will rise. There is no escaping it. With the ridiculously poor returns on investments and bank accounts, the last thing we need is our current cash supply to decrease in value. What good is “saving or creating” 2.5 million jobs when their salaries are paid in a worthless currency?

And yes, “borrowing from our grandchildren” is a euphemism for printing money. And we all know how that worked for the Weimar Republic. From Wikipedia:

Since striking workers were paid benefits by the state, much additional currency was printed, fueling a period of hyperinflation. The 1920s German inflation started when Germany had no goods with which to trade. The government printed money to deal with the crisis; this allowed Germany to pay war loans and reparations with worthless marks and helped formerly great industrialists to pay back their own loans. This also led to pay raises for workers and for businessmen who wanted to profit from it. Circulation of money rocketed, and soon the Germans discovered their money was worthless.

Sound familiar?

So the next time you listen to your favorite commentator, see if he mentions inflation. He will not. While everyone is ogling the familiar kabuki play on the floors of the House and the Senate, we are implicitly agreeing that the only way to get ourselves out of this self-made debt hole is to borrow and spend more. Pure lunacy.

Popularity: 24% [?]

Boingboing posted an article showing that even the SF Examiner saw the potential in “electronic newspapers” as far back as 1981. According to a KRON report from that year, the newspaper cooperated with seven other major newspapers to create a dial-in delivery service that allowed users to get the whole paper (minus “pictures, ads, and the comics”) in a short two hours.

According to the Examiner’s editor in charge of programming the day’s edition, “this is an experiment. … We’re not in it to make money. We’re probably not going to lose a lot, but we’re not going to make much either.” Well, they get points for being half right. I would give anything to read their report on the experiment.

Funny enough, at some point we’ll revert back to hand-held copies if e-paper ever lives up to the hype.

The last line is the saddest. Here’s the video:

Popularity: 18% [?]

Day four of the Obama vacation watch. According to a tw0-page article on the Washington Post website, there is nothing new to report. But it’s good to know they are keeping an eye on the situation.

From the article:

But this month, returning to his former home as president-elect, Obama has gone from Hawaii’s tourist in chief to its hermit in chief. He has been unusually private at the start of his 13-day holiday vacation, providing an early glimpse of what any tropical getaways during his presidency may be like.

The editorial staff considers this front-page news, folks.* Meanwhile, Pakistan is amassing thousands of troops on the Indian border in preparation for a possible war.**

*I know it seems I’m picking on the Post, but it’s verging on idolatry at this point.
**Does anyone else think it’s weird that I have to reference a foreign news source on this?

Popularity: 25% [?]

The Washington Post is hastening its slide from the preeminent newspaper on national politics to a non-glossy celebrity tabloid. It has been obsessively covering Obama, whom they adoringly call “44,” since his sudden appearance two years ago, amplifying the adulation even more since he was elected. Now, I like Obama as much as the next guy, but this recent article (on their 44-blog) is too much.

A choice quote (emphasis mine)

On Sunday, Obama awoke early for a 7:15 a.m. workout at a gymnasium at a sleepy Marine Corps base on the island of Oahu. Michelle Obama, carrying an iPod and headphones, joined her husband for the 45-minute exercise session, according to a media pool report. As they emerged from the gym, Obama, in a gray shirt soaked with sweat, lifted his right hand to give a quick salute to a couple uniformed Marines standing nearby.

and:

Obama, a left-handed golfer, sported black shades and wore a white polo shirt, brown cargo shorts, short white socks and golf shoes. About midway through the course, Obama stopped by the snack bar, where he purchased two hot dogs, two passion-orange sodas, one Powerade and one Coke. He also bought two Spam musubi, a sushi-like Hawaiian delicacy consisting of Spam and fried egg on a slab of rice, all held together with a dried seaweed wrap. (He paid a total of $17.75, but it was unclear whether the president-elect ate a Spam musubi.)

Please tell me more about the musubi! Did he eat half and save the rest for later. Did he like it? Did it transport him to his Spam-eating days as a child child, frolicking on the beaches of Hawai’i, musubi in one hand, and a dream of changing the world in the other? So many questions, WP, so many questions!

As our economy burns, as the Feds hand over trillions of dollars to whomever asks for it, as thousands of Americans lose their jobs, this is the best original reporting the Post can produce. The newspaper that broke the Watergate scandal, the newspaper with 47 Pulitzer prizes, reads like an unneccesarily verbose twitter feed. The difference is the Post costs $.49/week.

Update (18.06): The comments on the article’s page make me lose even more faith in the WP’s readership.

Popularity: 18% [?]

The subject of undecided voters came up in a recent episode of Wait, Wait! Don’t Tell Me!, National Public Radio’s weekly news quiz. Peter Sagal and the crew lambasted these Americans, portraying them as miserable idiots who should not be allowed to go outside on their own, much less vote in a national election. Although it was mostly said in jest (and cleverly so), there was a patronizing tone stemming from a disbelief that after so many months anyone could be unsure of who should be president.

With the Election Day around the corner, cable news channels, newspapers, and blogs are currently addicted to polls and projections. This data show that nearly half of decided voters want John McCain, and a little more than half want Barack Obama as president. This fifty-fifty distribution, which has been a consistent reality for the past two presidential elections and for this entire election season thus far, is an unfortunate artifact of our polarized political system. It is a guarantee that we will rarely know in advance who will win the presidency and that half the nation will be disappointed for at least four years.

The remainder of those polled is the 10% who have not made up their minds. But who are these people and why haven’t they yet decided after so close to the election? Are they truly idiots; mouth-breathers who are too stupid to vote or care about the issues?

This being only my second presidential election (I missed 2000 by a matter of months), I am fairly new to the game. In the past I certainly paid attention to the campaign news, especially those addictive polls whose nervous ticks send shudders through media coverage. I was also of the mind that, if by late October of an election year you haven’t decided on a candidate, you need to evaluate your commitment to Democracy. That is, I was until this election cycle.

Let me first mention that I have decided on a candidate; but it took me until recently to do so. Barring some major development that may come to light in the next week, I’ll hold fast to my choice. That said, I was part of that mysterious 10%; one of those idiots that would be heavily sedated the entire day on November 4th if Mr. Sagal has his way. To understand why it took me so long to decide, we need to look at the media and how it handles campaign coverage.

Modern political journalism is ratings-driven. Every election cycle cable news channels look more and more like play-by-play coverage of a month-long football game. The focus on minutiae and daily developments dominates the headlines until the next shocking gaffe or revelation bumps it out; e.g. today Palin wore a $100 scarf; twenty years ago Obama shook Roy Ayers’s hand; yesterday McCain made a funny wincing face at a speech in North Carolina, and so on. This cycle repeats every few days until the final day when it culminates with the big game, the actual casting of votes.

The ostensible reason behind this recent trend of obsessive, up-to-the-minute coverage is that by totaling up all of these random little points, voters can develop a more complete image of the candidates. There is a flaw in this explanation.

Take the game Trivial Pursuit. In the standard edition, there are thousands of questions on history, science, arts, entertainment, geography, and sports. Imagine sitting down and memorizing every single question and answer. Sure you may accumulate a huge sum of dates, names, and places, but you’ll have absolutely no context of historical events. You may be able to date of the Battle of Waterloo, but if you would never be able to write an essay on why the Duke of Wellington prevailed over Napoleon in 1815.

In today’s political coverage, we are presented with immeasurable little facts about four strangers on the national stage that, although fill the airwaves, do not form a cohesive picture. Like the Trivial Pursuit questions, we get a small glimpse of a fact, but we don’t know how it fits in with the whole.

Thus the real point of this coverage is not to inform but to get ratings. And the only ones who appreciate such coverage are those who have already settled on a candidate, providing an exciting emotional roller-coaster, similar to a football season. One day it looks like your candidate is going to lose, the next his opponent knocks himself down five points with a political fumble.

This is fine if you are paying to the coverage for entertainment; but if you are not a rabid fan of either team in the big game, play-by-play coverage becomes boring at best and alienating at worst.

Generally, the undecided are a skeptical voting bloc. They rely on their instincts instead of party lines. They want to know a candidate – his character, his policy plans– before they submit whole-heartedly to him. They weigh the pros and cons of each man. They debate whether it is worth voting for a third party to voice our true opinion. They want to know what they are getting themselves into before they pull the lever. The constant coverage may supply a wealth of information about McCain and Obama, but it does not give anyone on the fence a good idea of how either will do as a president.

Lacking in any kind of long-term, analytical coverage, this election has become a beauty pageant. Those ten-percent are forced to choose the one who wears flag pins, or who best went from rags to riches, or who has the best elocution. We must base our decision on whatever meaningless detail we pluck from the flood of data that comes at us. The is no big picture, no overall impression we get of any of the candidates, so we hold on until the very last minute, hoping for that last bit of inspiration that we know is never going to come.

Popularity: 11% [?]