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While I’m waiting
For the hosting data center to “reboot to fix latency they call it”, I’ll share this link on media self-absobrtion by Claudia Rosette. It’s the best article I’ve read so far about the Newsweek debacle. Money grafs”
But the chief victims to date have been the rioters themselves, some of whom died as the violence escalated. A Washington Post report Monday quoted an Afghan dry-goods salesman, Del Agha, who joined one of the riots, as saying: “We wanted to have a peaceful demonstration, but the demonstration was like a car and some people who are the enemies of Afghanistan took the steering wheel and turned it in the wrong direction.”
As recounted in the Arab News, an English-language newspaper based in Saudi Arabia, Afghans angered by the Newsweek story “have lashed out in fury in all directions. The fact that not only government and UN buildings were burned, but even mosques shows the depths of their rage. The same level of public anger has been reported from Pakistan, Indonesia, Egypt and many other Muslim countries.”
Let’s pause right there. We are hearing that Muslims, infuriated by a report of blasphemy, went on violent rampages that resulted in . . . dead Muslims and burned mosques. Meanwhile, not only is Newsweek apologizing and retracting, but the U.S. government is regretting the loss of life.
What’s really going on here is two stories. One involves Newsweek and the ups and downs of U.S. journalism. The other involves a swath of the Islamic world in which anger, fueled by years of gross political misrule, is a chronic feature of life–seeking to acquire a target. What produced these particular riots was the intersection of Islamic-world furies and that brand of U.S. self-absorption in which no subject is more fascinating to the American media than any possible misdeeds of the U.S. itself.
One media flaw that this (and every other article I’ve read) misses is that the media will not acknowledge that there are large parts of the world that are unreachable to them, yet it acts like it’s giving you the whole picture. It will not admit ignorance.
While we’re awash in celebrity stories, and the white house press pool will devote considerable time to getting their affectations right, we hear very little about the hundreds dead in Uzbekistan, and next to nothing about Darfour. Yet one never sees Peter Jennings saying “we have no Central Asian news tonight because the government won’t allow us in. Now J-Lo and P Diddy are back together….”
The two points are not entirely related but I thought I should get them on paper.
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The classics never die
I came across this again today, suffice it to say, the classics never go out of style.
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Thoughts on the media
First is this article from Virginia Postrel,
Some people say they want “just the facts,” and fault reporters for introducing too much analysis. Others complain that stories do just the opposite, treating all sides in a conflict as equally valid. The news-buying public seems to want contradictory things.
But one person’s contradiction is another’s market niche. Those differences help answer an economic puzzle: if bias is a product flaw, why does it not behave like auto repair rates, declining under competitive pressure?
In a recent paper, “The Market for News,” two Harvard economists look at that question. “There’s plenty of competition” among news sources, Sendhil Mullainathan, one of the authors, said in an interview. But “the more competition there has been in the last 20 years, the more discussion there has been of bias.”
The reason, he and his colleague, Andrei Shleifer, argue, is that consumers care about more than accuracy. “We assume that readers prefer to hear or read news that are more consistent with their beliefs,” they write. Bias is not a bug but a feature.
In a competitive news market, they argue, producers can use bias to differentiate their products and stave off price competition. Bias increases consumer loyalty.
I’ve always though that the media should admit to having a side instead of pretending that they follow some conceptually impossible standard of objectivity.
The other is this very cool map of where all the news is coming from, called Buzztracker.
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Things that annoy me, part million and four
The headline “Jane Fonda Film Banned From KY. Theaters” caught my eye immediately, and I started wondering if some combination of veterans and film critics had seized power in a subtle coup in order to have the power to ban a movie.
I then read the article and I find that a theater owner isn’t showing the movie. Some ban. Why won’t newspapers let words mean what they’re supposed to? I suppose I’ve blacklisted the movie by not seeing it. It being a small world, all of this happened in Elizabethtown (near Fort Knox), ancestral home of the French clan.
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Very Cool Blog
75 Degrees South, life in Antartica.
HT Instapundit.
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Notable
This post from RJ Rummel, while not terribly timely is worth reading, it points out the little known fact that Hitler, while he was elected chancellor, was not elected dictator for life as many seem to think.
Also, he has an interesting historical bit at the very end, to wit:
Note that during his Beer Hall putsch of 1923 in Munich, Hitler launched an unrealistic attempt to rally the public and take over the government. As Hitler and his supporters “marched on Berlin” they were met by police lines blocking their path. Someone fired a shot, and the police then fired into the crowd of marchers, where Hitler and his bodyguard were in front. His bodyguard was hit, and wrenched Hitler to the ground, dislocating his shoulder. Goring was shot in the leg, and 14 marchers and 4 policemen were killed.
Think about how the world would have been changed if one of those many bullets had killed Hitler. And think of this, when commentators treat the present as though the inevitable outcome of irresistible forces. Because one man survives a hail of bullets, everything – everything — human in the world is changed.
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Jimmy Martin RIP
He actually passed away several days again, but I’m finally getting around to writing about it. He was certainly one of the towering figures in bluegrass, both as a songwriter and as a showman.
This article from Gritz goes a long way for an interview. It does not go into what exactly was wrong with him in term of mental illness. I’ve heard it was definitely something serious; and judging from live recordings he always seemed very odd. It also touches on the many feuds he’s had with people.
He does have several pieces of high praise for Earl Scruggs who is yet another towering figure in the genre who probably won’t be in this world for much longer either.
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In place of a longer thought
Songs for John Doe was an anti-war record put out in the early 40’s by dutiful Soviet apparachiks the Almanac Singers (Pete Seeger, Woodie Guthrie and the rest). For a brief period Stalin and Hitler were allies (and invaded Poland together, a little known fact). This record was their take on the matter, taking the position that America should not go to war for US Steel and JP Morgan, which was of course the only possible reason it would. They changed their tune the moment Operation Barbarossa began.
I have quite a few thoughts about this topic, but in general it would seem that the human condition is indeed timeless. I’ve got a quite a few thoughts on the matter that I’ll get into words over the next week or so.
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The other quote of the day
As work has been very heavy lately blogging will be light, but this is a nice little quote.
“Research has been shown to cause cancer in rats.”
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Quote of the morning
Probably not true, but from a commenter on Yglesias
“…I was reminded of Kurt Vonnegut’s statement to the effect that the human tendency to think their problems would be solved if only they were smarter is like giraffes thinking their problems would be solved if only their necks were longer.”
