As people who work in the media, we try to remind ourselves regularly that the rest of the world, or even the rest of America, is often not nearly as "up" on all the latest news stories as we are, or like those you read in our daily extended edition.
That said, we've been sharply critical of our American news media for some time now, as most of our regular readers are aware. What passes for news today, whether on TV, on the radio, in newspapers, or online is often a sickly-sweet combination of celebrity news, gossip, and fluff that's usually missing a key ingredient: News.
Without the ability to be properly informed, it's no real surprise to us that Americans can't even agree on objectively proven ideas in science or economics today. Battles like the one highlighted by Greg Sargent yesterday, between educated voters and ignorant politicans, have become all too common in the news too, as politicans seek to prove their ignorance as a badge of honor to a certain subsection of voters. It doesn't help that often, corporate media executives are more frightened about losing advertisers than about their teams producing honest, quality content.
Thankfully, we've been noticing a positive shift in the American news landscape lately. Over the last two days, that shift has become significant, with the launch of America's latest cable news channel, Al Jazeera America.
As former Nebraskan Ana Marie Cox pointed out accurately in The Guardian, "Al Jazeera America is the news channel Americans deserve." With a top-notch staff cherry-picked from CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, and elsewhere in the media world, that description already seems completely accurate.
From Richelle Carey and Antonio Mora, to Ali Velshi, Joie Chen, and Soledad O’Brien, to John Seigenthaler and David Shuster, the programming AJAM is producing is already more substantive and more informative than much of what their competitors are offering. They're also getting the jump on top stories too, having announced both the Bradley Manning verdict and the earthquake in Mexico before their competitors, while those same competing stations like Fox News were busy discussing weighty matters - like the reunion of pop music group N'Sync.
AJAM isn't the only recent positive change in the news landscape we've noticed.
MSNBC has been stealing some of the best writers and journalists in the business from different publications all over the print and internet world. Many of those are journalists we've linked to regularly in the past, and will continue to do so in the future.
We've also been watching HuffPost Live, and its growing and solid influence on more traditional media organizations. Online magazines like Quartz are also pushing our industry in new directions, like the story we cited earlier this week by Tim Fernholz about the Suez Canal.
The push that all of these new and upgrading news and media organizations are giving is one of quality first – a direction that's been sorely lacking in the media industry at most levels for far too long.
We realize that, for now, many of our readers are still stuck with too few quality media outlets - a local TV news show, a newspaper, or a radio station - that are too afraid to do real news well.
We have little doubt, however, that with the latest additions to our greater news media fraternity pushing them to do better, the days of all fluff "news" for the most common media outlet you have access to may be coming to an end faster than anyone had previously thought.
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Truth & Consequences
A few of our regular readers have quietly noted since our series of commentaries and cartoons focusing on the NSA leaks in early June, we've generally stayed away from in-depth discussions of the government's spying programs this summer.
With the sentencing today of U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning, and the events of this past weekend in the UK, we've decided to open up that topic again and let things fly, as several of the issues surrounding Private Manning, Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, and the U.S. government's spying programs have new information - but really haven't changed our positions.
As we noted in June, nothing that has come out about these government programs has truly surprised us. That Mr. Greenwald sent his significant other from their home in Brazil to Europe, to effectively be a document mule - and then somehow seemed shocked when his partner was stopped by U.K. officials looking for digital data that might contain "highly sensitive stolen (government) information" - also didn't surprise us. The behavior of both Greenwald and the U.K. authorities offended us, just as we're sure some of what the folks at the NSA have seen and heard might have offended them. It didn't shock us, though.
The latest stories about U.K. security officials trying to play the heavies to The Guardian newspaper weren't shocking either. Sadly, stories like this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's ever had any significant knowledge of what really goes on in government and in corporations at the highest levels.
While we remain in solid opposition to most of the PATRIOT Act, and the U.K.'s "Schedule 7," what most critics of either law seem to have forgotten this summer is that both are, in fact, laws - and have been for over a decade. That doesn't make either law ethically right. But railing against the two laws as unconstitutional or illegal at this point in time makes those using that kind of opposition look like idiots or fools.
If either law needs changing or repeal - and both do, desperately - the people to blame aren't the Executive branches of either government who are operating under those flawed laws. It's the Legislative branches of both the U.S. and U.K. governments that must be forced to take their oversight roles seriously and change those laws.
We still have little respect for Edward Snowden, the impatient coward who remains hiding in Russia, even as further facts come out that continue to impugn his credibility. At least Private Manning did the honorable thing, standing to face the crimes he knowingly committed.
The key difference between Manning and Snowden is indeed one of honor, for us - and it's one of the reasons we fervently hope PFC Manning is sentenced far more lightly than he might be otherwise, had his intentions been malicious or self-aggrandizing. The treatment that Bradley Manning has received at the hands of his own government while being detained for trial has also been shameful and deplorable, even by international standards. In our collective opinion, Private Manning deserves some modicum of payback - especially as he's generally remained respectful and even apologetic for his actions.
Private Manning could be locked away for effectively the rest of his life, or he could be sentenced more humanely, as an example both to Mr. Snowden and the world that our American government is not vindictive.
We're somewhat less than certain that will happen, though.
We are still certain of this: There are some things the average American simply does not need to see or know regarding national security.
Just because Americans believe they have a right to demand certain secret government information doesn't make those demands legal - and it doesn't make those Americans any more able to handle the truths those secrets might reveal.
With the sentencing today of U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning, and the events of this past weekend in the UK, we've decided to open up that topic again and let things fly, as several of the issues surrounding Private Manning, Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, and the U.S. government's spying programs have new information - but really haven't changed our positions.
As we noted in June, nothing that has come out about these government programs has truly surprised us. That Mr. Greenwald sent his significant other from their home in Brazil to Europe, to effectively be a document mule - and then somehow seemed shocked when his partner was stopped by U.K. officials looking for digital data that might contain "highly sensitive stolen (government) information" - also didn't surprise us. The behavior of both Greenwald and the U.K. authorities offended us, just as we're sure some of what the folks at the NSA have seen and heard might have offended them. It didn't shock us, though.
The latest stories about U.K. security officials trying to play the heavies to The Guardian newspaper weren't shocking either. Sadly, stories like this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's ever had any significant knowledge of what really goes on in government and in corporations at the highest levels.
While we remain in solid opposition to most of the PATRIOT Act, and the U.K.'s "Schedule 7," what most critics of either law seem to have forgotten this summer is that both are, in fact, laws - and have been for over a decade. That doesn't make either law ethically right. But railing against the two laws as unconstitutional or illegal at this point in time makes those using that kind of opposition look like idiots or fools.
If either law needs changing or repeal - and both do, desperately - the people to blame aren't the Executive branches of either government who are operating under those flawed laws. It's the Legislative branches of both the U.S. and U.K. governments that must be forced to take their oversight roles seriously and change those laws.
We still have little respect for Edward Snowden, the impatient coward who remains hiding in Russia, even as further facts come out that continue to impugn his credibility. At least Private Manning did the honorable thing, standing to face the crimes he knowingly committed.
The key difference between Manning and Snowden is indeed one of honor, for us - and it's one of the reasons we fervently hope PFC Manning is sentenced far more lightly than he might be otherwise, had his intentions been malicious or self-aggrandizing. The treatment that Bradley Manning has received at the hands of his own government while being detained for trial has also been shameful and deplorable, even by international standards. In our collective opinion, Private Manning deserves some modicum of payback - especially as he's generally remained respectful and even apologetic for his actions.
Private Manning could be locked away for effectively the rest of his life, or he could be sentenced more humanely, as an example both to Mr. Snowden and the world that our American government is not vindictive.
We're somewhat less than certain that will happen, though.
We are still certain of this: There are some things the average American simply does not need to see or know regarding national security.
Just because Americans believe they have a right to demand certain secret government information doesn't make those demands legal - and it doesn't make those Americans any more able to handle the truths those secrets might reveal.
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Educational Monkey Business
Many in the political media lament that August is the worst month of the year for news gathering. While President Obama was already back in DC and working yesterday, Congress is still out for another couple weeks - meaning that there is little news coming from the Capitol.
Schools, however, are back in session nationwide, and that lull in stupidity from Capitol Hill gives writers and journalists a chance to revisit certain issues we may not have been able to fully close out earlier in the summer.
For example, the student loan fiasco that got quietly resolved in July, and the legislation that President Obama signed earlier this month.
As we noted in July, and again before that in April, the student loan industry has become a massive racket, the kind of monkey on the back of Americans that seems cute at first and - literally for some - turns deadly later.
Even though the numbers surrounding America's student loan beast are clear and terrifying, we still encounter large numbers of people who scoff at the idea that the student loan problem is as bad as it is, or that America has broken any kind of contract that it's made with the young.
So we're going a bit gorilla today, and we're going to hit you over the head with a piece by Matt Taibbi, of Rolling Stone.
Taibbi, for his part, still has a chip on his shoulder against President Obama that we do not share. That said, the picture Taibbi paints of a fiscal and social disaster happening now, and stemming from the monster that is the student loan program is accurate, and is getting worse all the time. Just in the last decade, student loan debt has quadrupled.
In real-life terms, as Taibbi makes clear in his in-depth piece, this means everything from students having to sell drugs, to students committing suicide from the pressure of the crushing debt - debt that as we noted in April, was part of a social contract, one that America has welshed on.
Student loan companies now take such draconian measures as garnishing the federal disability checks of near-fatally injured former students, or going after the families of dead students trying to collect on higher ed. loans. Yet the best our government could do for a student loan relief bill this summer was to temporarily drop interest rates on the loans back below 4%.
That rate won't last, though. Unlike the plan financially wise members of Congress like Sen. Elizabeth Warren supported earlier this year, the plan that passed Congress in July ties the new student loan rate to the market rate. Which means it's a certainty that student loan rates will go up, and be even higher than they were before. While it's likely this issue will be tackled again, as Taibbi points out early in his piece, the focus on student loan interest rates is a distraction.
The real problem is the principal of the loans - as well as the principle that millions of American kids have been sold: That a college degree is a ticket to success, or at least a foot in the door for a decent paying job.
The truth today is that college loans are a scam. Even when they guaranteed good paying jobs, they were a risk.
Now, they're simply a monkey on the backs of millions of Americans - one that is dragging down the future of our entire nation.
Schools, however, are back in session nationwide, and that lull in stupidity from Capitol Hill gives writers and journalists a chance to revisit certain issues we may not have been able to fully close out earlier in the summer.
For example, the student loan fiasco that got quietly resolved in July, and the legislation that President Obama signed earlier this month.
As we noted in July, and again before that in April, the student loan industry has become a massive racket, the kind of monkey on the back of Americans that seems cute at first and - literally for some - turns deadly later.
Even though the numbers surrounding America's student loan beast are clear and terrifying, we still encounter large numbers of people who scoff at the idea that the student loan problem is as bad as it is, or that America has broken any kind of contract that it's made with the young.
So we're going a bit gorilla today, and we're going to hit you over the head with a piece by Matt Taibbi, of Rolling Stone.
Taibbi, for his part, still has a chip on his shoulder against President Obama that we do not share. That said, the picture Taibbi paints of a fiscal and social disaster happening now, and stemming from the monster that is the student loan program is accurate, and is getting worse all the time. Just in the last decade, student loan debt has quadrupled.
In real-life terms, as Taibbi makes clear in his in-depth piece, this means everything from students having to sell drugs, to students committing suicide from the pressure of the crushing debt - debt that as we noted in April, was part of a social contract, one that America has welshed on.
Student loan companies now take such draconian measures as garnishing the federal disability checks of near-fatally injured former students, or going after the families of dead students trying to collect on higher ed. loans. Yet the best our government could do for a student loan relief bill this summer was to temporarily drop interest rates on the loans back below 4%.
That rate won't last, though. Unlike the plan financially wise members of Congress like Sen. Elizabeth Warren supported earlier this year, the plan that passed Congress in July ties the new student loan rate to the market rate. Which means it's a certainty that student loan rates will go up, and be even higher than they were before. While it's likely this issue will be tackled again, as Taibbi points out early in his piece, the focus on student loan interest rates is a distraction.
The real problem is the principal of the loans - as well as the principle that millions of American kids have been sold: That a college degree is a ticket to success, or at least a foot in the door for a decent paying job.
The truth today is that college loans are a scam. Even when they guaranteed good paying jobs, they were a risk.
Now, they're simply a monkey on the backs of millions of Americans - one that is dragging down the future of our entire nation.
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