Let The Sun Shine In

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Today Tomorrow (per CHS) is a big day in the life of Firedoglake, the debut of the new, powerful and reader driven Oxdown Gazette. Oxdown will be run by Ari Rabin-Havt, formerly of Harry Reid’s office, an immensely talented and committed progressive voice. But the real power behind Oxdown will be you, and all the other readers, who heed the call and step forward to lend their voice to the work ahead. You are the future; the time is now.

Fittingly, one of the first substantive contributors anteing up at Oxdown is none other than our own longtime Emptywheel and FDL regular, masaccio. Following the lead started by Marcy in her The FISA Loss: Recommendations for the Future post, masaccio has taken the next step in formulating a progressive based action plan. He has done an excellent job identifying several key goals and discussing modalities for obtaining them, and the thoughts and suggestions previously made by many of you here at EW and FDL are an integral part of his discussion. Go read What Should Obama Do For Us? and make your own further suggestions as to what we can accomplish through, and obtain from, Barack Obama in return for our support and votes. Here is my suggestion.

I would like a full and definitive pledge to open and transparent government. When the Democratic leadership were campaigning to claim a majority in 2006, and after they seized that mandate in the election, there was a promise made to change the ways of Washington, specifically in Congress, and stop the secretion of legislation being proposed, stop secret manipulation in back rooms, and to insure that bills are available to the individual members of Congress and the public sufficiently ahead of time to allow intelligent analysis and informed review before voting on the floor.

But when it came to seminal landmark legislation fundamentally weakening and eroding the rights of, and guarantees made to, every citizen that are embedded in the Fourth Amendment, they reneged. When it came to the literal, and arguably unconstitutional, taking of vested monetary claims, by mass numbers of US citizens, being actively and affirmatively pursued in courts of law against co-conspirator telephone companies, the Democratically controlled House of Representatives reneged. Instead of living up to their promises, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Steny Hoyer, and a cast of cronies saw fit to do an about face and operate covertly and clandestinely out of sight, in the shadows, concealing Read more →

Networks or Newspapers; Dewey or Lippmann?

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I’m grateful for Eric Alterman’s long meditation on the future of newspapers, if only because he correctly balances a discussion of Walter Lippmann–who has rather bizarrely been adopted as the patron saint of American journalism–with John Dewey–who would in that formulation be the patron saint of blogging.

Lippmann likened the average American—or “outsider,” as he tellingly named him—to a “deaf spectator in the back row” at a sporting event: “He does not know what is happening, why it is happening, what ought to happen,” and “he lives in a world which he cannot see, does not understand and is unable to direct.” In a description that may strike a familiar chord with anyone who watches cable news or listens to talk radio today, Lippmann assumed a public that “is slow to be aroused and quickly diverted . . . and is interested only when events have been melodramatized as a conflict.” A committed élitist, Lippmann did not see why anyone should find these conclusions shocking. Average citizens are hardly expected to master particle physics or post-structuralism. Why should we expect them to understand the politics of Congress, much less that of the Middle East?

Lippmann’s preferred solution was, in essence, to junk democracy entirely. He justified this by arguing that the results were what mattered. Even “if there were a prospect” that people could become sufficiently well-informed to govern themselves wisely, he wrote, “it is extremely doubtful whether many of us would wish to be bothered.” In his first attempt to consider the issue, in “Liberty and the News” (1920), Lippmann suggested addressing the problem by raising the status of journalism to that of more respected professions. Two years later, in “Public Opinion,” he concluded that journalism could never solve the problem merely by “acting upon everybody for thirty minutes in twenty-four hours.” Instead, in one of the oddest formulations of his long career, Lippmann proposed the creation of “intelligence bureaus,” which would be given access to all the information they needed to judge the government’s actions without concerning themselves much with democratic preferences or public debate. Just what, if any, role the public would play in this process Lippmann never explained.

John Dewey termed “Public Opinion” “perhaps the most effective indictment of democracy as currently conceived ever penned,” and he spent much of the next five years countering it. Read more →

What To Get Teh Woman Who Knows Everything

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I am probably going to get in deep doo doo for this, but, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm". I have thought about doing this since Marcy took off for vacation, but have been hesitating because I wasn’t sure about letting the cat out of the bag as to her birthday. But, what da ya know, Looseheadprop has freed that kitty in her latest post at FDL (very nice post and timeline she did I might add, so take a gander at it).

At any rate, Friday is our intrepid leader Marcy’s birthday. I am here to tell you, keeping this here car known as the Emptywheel blog well maintained, full of fuel and on the road is more work than it looks like. Marcy not only does that consistently day in and day out, she does it with a style, grace, competence and consistency that is unmatched in the blogosphere. The effort she leads here is not only informational and enjoyable reading, it is of demonstrated importance in the effort to expose and repair all of that which is currently broken in our government. Quite frankly, I think you all know this better than I can put into words anyway.

So, in light of the foregoing, I am going to suggest that we have a little fundraising effort for the one that makes all of this possible here. I feel a little goofy doing this, but, you know, I can’t think of any more valuable or worthwhile endeavors. So, if you have a couple of extra Euros, please contribute to keeping this the finest forum in the toobz. You folks are the greatest readers and participants anywhere. Thank you.

Congratulations to TPMM

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Remember how Bill O’Reilly once tried to claim he had won a Peabody Polk award when Inside Edition earned it after O’Reilly left? Well, now Josh and the folks at TPMM have won one, fair and square.

Will Bunch captures the importance of this award, for Josh, and for the blogosphere, quite well (h/t folo).

The George Polk Awards are kind of like the Golden Globes of American journalism . Not as well known as those Oscars of the news business, the Pulitzer Prize, the Polk Awards are nevertheless probably a close second in terms of prestige, and this year I am especially blown away by the quality of the work they honor.

[snip]

But I want to highlight one Polk Award that shows there are emerging models for using the very tool at the root of the turmoil of the news business — the Internet — as a newfangled way to re-invent investigative reporting — by using new techniques that emphasize collaboration over competition and by working with readers and through collective weight of many news sources to expose government misconduct.

[snip]

Hopefully, this acknowledgment of what one savvy blogger and his team have accomplished is a milestone that will speed the day when mainstream journalists realize that the best kind of blogger like Marshall is truly one of our own kind, using new tools and a new way of thinking to break a news story that otherwise might have not been discovered.

I think there was never a doubt that TPMM provided coverage that was instrumental in exposing the scandal. I’m glad to see one of journalisms institutions recognizes that fact.

More Cable News

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We’ve been watching much of the Middle East lose chunks of their telecommunications traffic over the past week–without knowing what to make of it. I wanted to point to this post from John Robb, an expert on asymmetric warfare, with some meta thoughts on the possibilities of such disruptions.

  • Vulnerability. All of the same network vulnerabilities we see other infrastructures are in force with the Internet’s long haul systems (the network analysis of systempunkts applies). If this was a real attack rather than a series of accidents (the geographical concentration is interesting in this regard), then this was likely a capabilities test that yielded data on response times, impact, and duration.
  • Means. Attacks on undersea cables are within the capacity of small groups to accomplish. With precise mapping (these cables take very circuitous routes), a cable could be cut with as little as an anchor. However, nation-states are the most capable in this sphere (including, a growing number of micropowers). Why would a nation-state do this? Deterrence. Disconnection from the global communications grid is very likely become a form of economic/social coercion in the future (for standard national security reasons all the way down to an inability/unwillingness to crack down on rampant Internet crime, which is growing into a HUGE global problem).
  • Precision. It’s very hard to precisely target an attack’s damage. Regional impacts are unavoidable (collective punishment for everyone that connects to the target country?). Here’s a final point to consider: closed systems like China’s that route traffic through firewall choke-points, or other closely held infrastructure, are likely very vulnerable to an attack of this type. [my emphasis]

I’ve highlighted two points: this kind of attack could be feasibly launched by a small group. And the intent of such an attack might be political coercion. 

If you tie the notion of coercion to the two countries that lost the most service–Egypt and Pakistan–it has interesting implications. 

Put Your Own–I Mean, Your Very Own–House in Order First

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This op-ed on citizen journalism is a lot less offensive than I thought it’d be from reading The Opinionator’s take on it. While Professor Hazinski suffers from the same ignorance about how "citizen journalism" gets vetted that most professional journalists do …

Education, skill and standards are really what make people into trusted professionals. Information without journalistic standards is called gossip.

And while he also suffers from a misguided belief that journalism’s existing ethics–the ones that are failing us badly as a society, like so-called "objectivity" created by on-the-one-side-on-the-other-side-but-no-truth Joe Klein style of journalism–ought to be adopted by "citizen journalists" …

Journalism schools such as mine at the University of Georgia should create mini-courses to certify citizen journalists in proper ethics and procedures, much as volunteer teachers, paramedics and sheriff’s auxiliaries are trained and certified.

But at its heart, Hazinski’s op-ed calls for something that the Press has been fighting against for over two hundred years–real enforcement of professional journalism’s so-called ethics. Read more →

Really Bad Gitmo Propaganda

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The increasingly valuable WikiLeaks reveals that a Mass Communications Specialist at Gitmo has been altering Wikipedia and other web resources to hide detainee numbers and otherwise counter reports of poor conditions at the prison.

The US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has been caught conducting covert propaganda attacks on the internet. The attacks, exposed this week in a report by the government transparency group Wikileaks, include deleting detainee ID numbers from Wikipedia last month, the systematic posting of unattributed "self praise" comments on news organization web sites in response to negative press, boosting pro-Guantanamo stories on the internet news site Digg and even modifying Fidel Castro’s encyclopedia article to describe the Cuban president as "an admitted transexual" [sic].

Shayana Kadidal, Managing Attorney of the Center for Constitutional Rights Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative, said in response to the report:

"The military’s efforts to alter the record by vandalizing Wikipedia are of a piece with the amateurism of their other public relations efforts: [such as] their ridiculous claims that released detainees who criticize the United States in the media have ‘returned to the battlefield’."

We finally got rid of Karen Hughes as Chief Propaganda Specialist. But we’ve apparently got some schmo in Cuba trying to pitch Castro as a transsexual. 

Stuff like this always reminds me of my discovery, as a college professor, that most Americans have the crudest understanding of how language works. I can’t decide how to judge the trade-off. It means our government rarely gets away with propaganda. But it also reflects a widespread inability to think critically.

What Are Newspapers Best For?

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As you no doubt know, I appeared on a panel in Boston called "No News Is Bad News" over the weekend. It was a fascinating conference, with journalistic heroes like John Carroll and Anthony Shadid. Just as exciting, I got to meet phred, Selise, BlueStateRedHead, and others. And my own personal favorite–from my panel, at least–came when someone asked me what I would have done to prevent the Lewinsky scandal (and more importantly–picking up on a point I had made–having the press report on a topic that the majority of the country just didn’t think was important). I responded something to the effect that, "I would have liked to see the press reporting on the rise of the Scaife funded partisan press with some attention to the way it inserted stories into the non-partisan press; I would have liked to see people report on Ken Starr’s prosecutorial misconduct, and I would have liked someone to get up and say ‘It was just a consensual blow job between consenting adults.’" I think I repeated "blow job" a few times as I tend to do when you get me riled. According to phred, who was in the audience, some of the seniors in the audience gasped. At which Joe Lockhart, who was on my panel, responded, "Yeah, I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to say just that."

I then got into a fascinating conversation following John Carroll’s panel. He had said that we need to find a way to fund investigative journalists, and that blogs just wouldn’t do that. Afterwards, I agreed with him that blogs could not replace Dana Priest or Eric Lichtblau (at least not yet, though TPM’s crowd is doing a lot of the same work as Lichtblau). I also pointed out that David Carr–who has had a long simmering debate with Jay Rosen over whether bloggers could do original work and who admitted that we, the FDL team, had during the Libby trial [Big crow correction: Rosen informs me it was not Carr; I apologize for the error]–had described advising his college aged daughter aspiring to be a journalist to make sure her own writing was getting noticed on the Internet, thereby admitting the value of a reputation-based vetting system.

We need big companies to pay (and more importantly, legally protect) journalists like Priest and Lichtblau (and, just as importantly, Shadid). But do we need big media to report on culture and sports?

Which is why the two latest incidents of the NYT’s ham-handedness with blogs really resonates for me.

Boston: No News Is Bad News

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Just a reminder that I’m headed for Boston for what promises to be an interesting conference. Here’s the description:

No News Is Bad News

A freeand independent press is essential for democracy.  The press has aresponsibility to inform citizens about both the policies and theactions of the government and about credible challenges to thosepolicies and actions, to report on conditions that may require new ordifferent government initiatives, and to raise timely questions itselfabout debatable policies and the rationales presented for them.

Withthe recent controversies over the failure of the press to fully live upto its responsibilities in the runup to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, therole of the media in the outing of a covert CIA agent, the rise of theblogosphere and so-called citizen journalism, and the impact ofincreasing financial pressures on newspapers and magazines, publicconfidence in the mainstream media is at an all-time low.  What are theimplications of this for our democracy?  How might our faith in thepress be restored?

There is (free) registration,

As before, put a link below if you’re interested in get-together events associated with this.

No News Is Bad News

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I’m going to be a panelist on a conference in Boston a week from tomorrow (Saturday). The conference is:

No News Is Bad News

A freeand independent press is essential for democracy.  The press has aresponsibility to inform citizens about both the policies and theactions of the government and about credible challenges to thosepolicies and actions, to report on conditions that may require new ordifferent government initiatives, and to raise timely questions itselfabout debatable policies and the rationales presented for them.

Withthe recent controversies over the failure of the press to fully live upto its responsibilities in the runup to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, therole of the media in the outing of a covert CIA agent, the rise of theblogosphere and so-called citizen journalism, and the impact ofincreasing financial pressures on newspapers and magazines, publicconfidence in the mainstream media is at an all-time low.  What are theimplications of this for our democracy?  How might our faith in thepress be restored?

The rest of the panelists (aside from Andy Sullivan) are journalists–many of the good ones, people like John Carroll. My panel–Political Reporting–had a conference call today which got me really excited about the conference. It should be worth attending.

There is (free) registration, Read more →

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