reflectivepundit

Media as Propaganda Vehicle for so-called Tea Party and Its Champions

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Tax Day was a big day for the so-called tea party and its creators and champions. With the exception of Representative Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota) and other hard-core right-wingers the tea partiers displayed a much gentler face than during the angry confrontations they sought in town hall meetings at the height of the health care reform debates. This is how Jessica Jellin reported on CNN’s Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer from the Washington tea party event: 

“Right now, Wolf, we're listening to the hip-hop sounds of the Tea Party rapper Hi-Caliber. And, as you can tell, this is a very calm crowd, a happy crowd. There's a lot made of some of the anger and upset during the protests during the health care bill's passage, very different kind of mood here, polite folks who are just here protesting the fact that there are, in their words, just too many taxes.”

Obviously, Congresswoman Bachmann did not stay on message to display a gentler face of the movement she promotes and, in some observers views, leads. As reported in the same CNN program, Bachmann unleashed another of her frequent outrageous outbursts.“We're on to this gangster government, and we are not going to let them have their way. They don't get to take over any more of our economy. We're done with that game. We're done,” she said. “And I say it's time for these little piggies to go home.”

It seems Representative Bachmann is unaware that the “gangster government” includes the Congress in which she serves and that therefore she is one of the “little piggies” that she says need to go home. Blitzer did not set her straight on this and merely mustered a benign comment: “That is pretty colorful language, I should say….”  His guest Alex Castallanos, a Republican strategist, justified Bachmann’s remark and threw in a government-mafia connection. “She's referring to a government that right now -- on all levels -- takes over 40 percent, nearly 50 percent of a country's wealth, of the money we all work for… Not even John Gotti took that much money from people. So that's what she's talking about the gangster government.”

Never mind that Fox News and the network’s stars Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck were involved in the creation of tea party protests and strive on what continues to be a symbiotic relationship, most of the rest of the news media were from the beginning and continue to be compliant propaganda vehicles for what is in reality the tea party wing of the Republican Party.

The White House--a Bastion of Jocks? And What About Gender Bias in Sports Reporting?

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Has President Barack Obama committed an unforgivable offense against gender equality by playing hoops with male members of the administration and congress only?

Two weeks after ABC News reported on an all-male game of basketball on the White House court and comedian Jay Leno enlisted Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services and a former college basketball player, to poke fun at the president for excluding women, the New York Times revisited the president’s alleged faux pas and its larger meaning in today’s edition.

According to reporter Mark Leibovich, the issue transcends that one particular all-male basketball game in that the “technical foul over the all-male game has become a nagging concern for a White House that has battled an impression dating to the presidential campaign that Mr. Obama’s closest advisers form a boys’ club and that he is too frequently in the company of only men — not just when playing sports, but also when making big decisions.”

And not enough with Obama’s preference to play hoops with the guys, the Times mentions also that according to “Mark Knoller of CBS, the president has played 23 rounds of golf since taking office, none of which have included women…”

Is it true or a figment of media hype that at a time of pressing foreign and domestic policy  problems and issues—just think Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, health care reform, economic woes, etc., etc.--, the people in the White House are concerned about this so-called gender issue?

In spite of Hillary Clinton at State, Valerie Jarrett as the closest Obama adviser in the White House, Sonia Sotomayor as pick to join the Supreme Court, and a number of influential women in White House and cabinet, were are told that Obama’s White House is a bastion of male power and according to the Times “rife with fist-bumping young men who call each other “dude” and testosterone-brimming personalities…” 

While I am not sure that female members of the administration and congress would want to play basketball with the guys, there are probably enough female golfers who would love to give the president and the guys a run for their money.

Since the lack of female participants in the president’s relaxation time on basketball courts and golf courses is deemed evidence enough for the political correctness guardians to weigh in, the Times should be the last one to dwell on this.

Deceptive Propaganda and Health Care Reform

By Brigitte L. Nacos
The images of mostly old Americans in chaotic townhall meetings this fall are unforgettable as are the untrue arguments against meaningful health care reform made in those gatherings. Although enjoying the benefits of their government-run Medicare entitlements, the elderly in particular ranted and raved against a public alternative to private health insurance.

The deceptive propaganda campaigns (just think of death panels) by conservative ideologues and a greedy insurance industry have misled rather than educate certain segments of society. Thus the outcry against the alleged horror of government bureaucrats making decisions about health care needs—although bureaucrats in insurance companies decide day-in and day-out what medical treatments will be paid for--or not.

When a propaganda of fear warns of socialism and communism taking hold and replacing good, old capitalism, such nonsense tends to scare the hell out of those who fear to be the losers of reforms.

It is a disgrace that a rapidly growing number of Americans do not have any health insurance. But not only Republicans but also several Democrats in the U.S. Senate do not embrace meaningful health care reform that must include a public option. Therefore, MSNBC’s talk show hosts Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow called for setting up temporary free clinics for the uninsured to shame those conservative Democrats--Lincoln and Mark Pryor (both D-Ark.), Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Harry Reid (D-Nev.)—into joining the majority of Democrats and prevent a filibuster against health care reform in the Senate.
 
Until last night, when I happened to look at Larry King Live, I had never heard of “The Dr. Oz Show” and its host Dr. Mehmet Oz. But this physician’s account of his involvement in such a clinic in Houston drove home the plight of many, many millions of men, women, and children without health insurance.

There was the gripping account of a little girl that was recently examined in one of those temporary clinics in Houston. Although working, her mother has not been able to afford health insurance. As it turned out, the little girl had a hole in her heart. One wonders how many treatable health problems are not discovered for lack of insurance.

And that in the United States—not some third world country!

Golf, U.S. Women’s Open, and Gender Bias in Sports Reporting

By Brigitte L. Nacos
Today, the fourth and last round of the United States Golf Association’s (USGA) U.S. Women’s Open, the most important event of the year for professional female golfers, is being played at the Saucon Valley Country Club in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. But contrary to the complete coverage of the recent U.S. [Men’s] Open Championship at Bethpage, New York, there has been very little media attention to this year’s championship and major ladies’ events in the past. Indeed, whereas literally all major and non-major tournaments of the Professional Golf Association’s (PGA) tour and Senior PGA tour tend to be covered generously, those of the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) receive little or no attention at all.

To be sure, this is nothing new. Yet, I found it particularly disconcerting that today’s New York Times “SportsSunday” Section displayed a large, four-column report and picture about next week’s [men’s] British Open site at Turnberry, Scotland, which was continued on an inside page. Taken together with a column by Dave Anderson on the duel between Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus at the 1977 British Open, the Times managed to devote more space to the up-coming men’s major tournament than to the current U.S. Women’s Open.

Yes, the women’s tour does not have stars like Tiger Woods or Phil Michelson, but one reason may well be that the sports media tried too hard to promote Michelle Wie as the female Tiger Woods and more or less ignored the accomplished young players.

Using and Misusing Communication Technology: The Case of Iran

By Brigitte L. Nacos
The propaganda war between the power-holders and the reformers in Iran has not been a one-sided triumph for citizen journalism that overcame the silencing of the mainstream media by Iranian authorities. Instead, the same Internet and global satellite phone systems that have transmitted compelling images from the streets of Tehran and elsewhere are also effective venues for the government to spy and crack down on electronic voices of dissent. As Farhad Manjoo writes in an excellent post at Slate (“The Revolution will not be Digitized”),“The crackdown in Iran shows that, for regimes bent on survival, squashing electronic dissent isn't impossible. In many ways, modern communication tools are easier to suppress than organizing methods of the past.”

Ironically, as Christopher Rhoads and Loretta Chao of the Wall Street Journal revealed, European telecommunication companies were instrumental in helping the Iranian authorities to establish “one of the world's most sophisticated mechanisms for controlling and censoring the Internet, allowing it to examine the content of individual online communications on a massive scale.” Rhoads and Chao identified Germany’s multinational Siemens AG and Finland’s Nokia Corporation as jointly providing the Iranian government with the technological monitoring means. 

The idea of the global village, brought together by advanced communication technology, in which different peoples would learn about and understand and respect each other, was a utopian pipedream all along. Even in Francis Fukuyama’s optimistic picture about the triumph of democracy in “The End of History and the Last Man,” the communication revolution did not figure at all because he recognized that “communication technology itself is value-neutral.” It can be used by those who fight for freedom and human rights but also by those who deny basic liberties.  

Like the well-known practices of the Chinese government, the case of Iran points to the uncomfortable reality: The most advanced communication technologies tend to be more advantageous for oppressive regimes than for dissenters and citizen journalists among them—not the least because of corporations in the West whose profit imperatives trump what one former president called the “value thing.” Siemens and Nokia may have had a particular role in the case of Iran but these two corporations are no exceptions, when it comes to censor the Internet. Just think of Internet providers, such as Google, Yahoo, and  Microsoft and their compliance with the People Republic of China’s censorship policies.   

Post-9/11Torture and the Need for a Truth Commission

By Brigitte L. Nacos 
According to Eric Brahm, a “truth commission's main goal is to establish what happened in the past. Truth commissions do not normally have the power to prosecute.” Such a body typically sheds light on human rights violations, war crimes, and hate crimes that were encouraged, blessed, and perpetrated by officials or agents of the very state that creates a truth commission after the offensive practices have been halted as morally and legally wrong. While the need for truth commissions arises typically in the wake of abuses by authoritarian states, such a body would be well suited to investigate and write the complete chapter of post-9/11 torture in U.S. controlled prisons abroad.

Given the pressing problems on his plate, President Barack Obama has reason tell us that it is more important to look ahead rather than be distracted by problems in the past. But there is a way to keep the eye on the ball of today’s and tomorrow’s decision-making without completely ignoring past wrongdoings. The calls for the prosecution of former officials in the White House, Department of Justice, and Department of Defense are justified in the face of the already available evidence, but I prefer the establishment of a truth commission with full access to all relevant information rather than the prosecution of the by now well-known cast of torture advocates and defenders that would widen the divisive partisan and ideological divide.

If we want to learn from the shocking decisions that involved top-officials in the Bush administration and what was revealed to some members of Congress, including leading Democrats, we need to learn the whole truth and let the chips fall wherever they may. Otherwise former administration officials, such as Vice-President Richard Cheney, can continue their propaganda campaign of fear in defense of the utility of torture in bolstering homeland security.

I agree with David Epstein’s take on the liberal media’s cavalier reporting about the Bush administration’s torture record (as we know it so far) compared to their never-ending attacks on both Bill and Hillary Clinton because of the Monica Lewinsky affair. Remarkably, the same moral guardians in the fourth estate who never tired of condemning the sex scandal in the White House have not shown such such an appetite to denounce the Bush administration’s torture policy. Instead, they continue to avoid the “t” word and report benignly about “enhanced interrogation.”

All the more reason for a truth commission.  

Note to Pres. Obama: Public Diplomacy Must Aim at Largest Audience

By Brigitte L. Nacos
That President Barack Obama is sticking to his campaign promise of changing America’s foreign policy approach was obvious, when he granted his first formal White House interview to the Arab TV-network  al-Arabiya and used the occasion as a platform to address the Arab and Muslim street. As Karen DeYoung reports in the Washington Post, the responses to the president’s outreach “have been largely positive.” But her assessment is not based on polls of or interviews with regular Arabs and Muslims but rather on the reactions of various government officials. While there is no doubt that leaders of governments and of non-governmental groups took notice of Obama’s promise for a new start in America’s relations with the Muslim and Arab world, one wonders how many members of general public in these countries watched the actual interview.

Unfortunately, by selecting the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya network rather than the Qatar-owned al-Jazeera, the White House selected a moderate medium with a rather modest viewership over a more Arab-centric network with the by far largest audience in Arab countries.

This, then, was a missed opportunity in public diplomacy in that it did not aim for and did not get the attention of the largest segment of the targeted audience. As the 2008 Annual Arab Public Opinion Poll of the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland found by surveying representative samples of the public in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, taken together al-Jazeera has 53% of the audience whereas al-Arabiya has only 9%. Similarly, a December 2008 survey found that more than 50% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza al-Jazeera was the most watched satellite television compared to 10% for al-Arabiya.

Unlike traditional diplomacy or government-to-government communications—often during person-to-person contacts--, public diplomacy is directed to foreign publics and therefore must aim at reaching the largest number of people. You do not have to agree with the medium of communication as long as you are assured that an interview, a speech, and messages in whatever form are aired in their original form. In other words, al-Jazeera, not al-Arabiya, is the by far best platform for public diplomacy with Arabs and Muslims.

Israeli-Palestinian Clash: Who Is Winning the PR War?

By Brigitte L. Nacos
The following is the lead in  today’s article by Rachel Shabi published in The Guardian:

“Israel believes its has won broad international support in the media for its actions in Gaza thanks to its PR strategy, which through a new body has for months been concerned with formulating plans and role-playing to ensure that government officials deliver a clear, unified message to the world's press.” Shabi reports furthermore, that “Israeli officials have also enjoyed a clear edge with coverage. An Israeli foreign ministry assessment of eight hours of coverage across international broadcast media reported that Israeli representatives got 58 minutes of airtime while the Palestinians got only 19 minutes.”
If true, such a PR victory would be a remarkable change from the experience during the 2006 conflict with Hezbollah. But a less than cursory review of some media content does not reveal the most important coverage patterns and characteristics and their likely impact on audiences.
For a week now, newspaper headlines and broadcast leads refer typically to Israel’s “assault” or “attack” on Gaza—not to rockets launched from Gaza against Israeli targets as the cause of renewed hostilities. But neither headlines nor the explanations that Israeli officials give in the international broadcast media match the dominance of mass-mediated images of Palestinian children and women killed and injured by Israeli airstrikes. Take today’s online slideshow in the New York Times titled “Seventh Day of Gaza Attack,” eight of the 11 images depict scenes in Gaza, 3 show damage in Israel caused by rockets launched by Hamas. A Washington Post report from Beersheba titled “On Both Sides of the Border, Wounded Bodies and Minds,” is accompanied by the heartbreaking picture of a wounded Palestinian boy being carried into Shifa Hospital after an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City. A comprehensive slide show on the Post’s web site includes several photographs of sites in Israel hit by Hamas rockets and Israelis mourning victims of such attacks but most and the most shocking visuals are of Palestinian victims and their loved-ones.
I mention the Times and Post as examples here because there is no reason to suspect that these newspapers would wittingly slant their headlines, articles, and visuals of this conflict against Israel and in favor of Hamas. It is in the nature of asymmetrical warfare that more harm is inflicted on the weaker side and that this is reflected in the news. More so than in the past, today’s instant and 24/7 global reporting of such conflicts plays into the hands to terrorists, insurgents—the weaker side.

New Medium and New Push to Narrow America's Ideal vs. Reality Gap?

By Brigitte L. Nacos
Throughout American history, when the inevitable gap between the declared ideals and the reality established by political institutions was deemed unacceptably wide, movements emerged that fueled creedal passions in favor of narrowing the disparity. In his book American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony, Samuel Huntington identified four what he called creedal passion periods that produced movements for change--the revolutionary era in the 18th century, the Jacksonian period in the early 19th century, the progressive period in the early 20th century, and the era of civil rights/anti-Vietnam protests in the1960s and 1970s. In all periods, one of the goals was, as Huntington put it, "the opening up of the processes of decision-making to public participation." 

It is particularly striking as Huntington recognized that each of the movements of those times was associated with the emergence of a new type of media. (1)The political pamphlet of the revolutionary period was central to the movement in favor of independence and a republican form of government; (2) the penny press—newspapers cheap enough for the masses—were instrumental in expanding democratic participation--albeit in the limits of the time; (3) the mass newspapers and news magazines with the advent of investigative reporting (muckraking according to Theodore Roosevelt) in the late 19th and early 20th period drove the progressive movement in its fight against corrupt political and business institutions and for participatory democracy; (4) the three national television networks shaped America's attitudes towards the struggle for African-Americans' civil rights and the Vietnam War and protests against.

I have wondered lately whether the new medium of our time, the Internet, would give birth to or facilitate a new popular quest for narrowing the once again widened gap between the promise of America and the performance of its institutions and the leading actors therein.

Reverse Gender Discrimination and the McCain/Palin Camp

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Surveying media coverage of Senator Hillary Clinton during the primary season and the media treatment of Governor Sarah Palin since she became the GOP’s vice-presidential candidate, E.J. Dionne asks in the Washington Post, “Is there one standard for Hillary Clinton -- a tough one -- and another, permissive standard for Sarah Palin?” The answer is crystal clear: Whereas most in the media seemed to compete for the top prize in the destruction of Hillary’s candidacy, they have lost their bark when it comes to Sarah’s run for the second highest office in the land.

During the primary season, I posted repeatedly on the media’ gross gender discrimination against Senator Clinton. Dionne’s example here is instructive: After Hillary falsely claimed that she had come under sniper fire, when she visited Bosnia more than a dozen years ago, the media never let her forget her mistake. There has not been a comparable reaction after it was established that Palin and her handlers lied when they claimed that she visited U.S.troops in Iraq. Never mind that Hillary had actually visited Bosnia at the time but Sarah did not make it into Iraq and counted a stop-over in Ireland as visiting a foreign country.

By labeling even criticism and questioning of Palin by and in the media or from any other quarter as sexist, the McCain/Palin campaign has pulled of an astonishing swift-boating act: they intimidated and pressured the talking and writing fourth estate into practicing reverse discrimination/reverse sexism in favor of the female candidate and at the expense of her male counterparts.

This is the new rule of the general campaign season: simply because she is female, the least known candidate in the race must be treated soft and gentle. When Charles Gibson interviewed Palin last week, he followed that rule and was still attacked for displaying gender bias. From what I saw and heard, Gibson was not at all tough but remained cool and professional in the face of Governor Palin’s—let’s say—inadequate performance.

Some of the media watchdogs are now actually helping to enforce the new female protection tenet by dwelling on remarks that have nothing to do with the untouchable Sarah or express legitimate concerns—but are deemed sexist by a McCain/Palin team whose agenda, ironically, does not promise to end true discrimination against women.