The Hard Working Media

Telling the truth is hard work, especially when everyone wants to lie to you. That's why journalists have a tough job. But, just because it's hard doesn't mean they shouldn't work at it.

Here's a case in point. Your local newspaper/internet website probably showed the following picture of the recent Iranian missile test:



But, look a little bit closer. See anything suspicious? Maybe this will help:



That's right, Agence France-Press, the folks who distributed the image which it got from an Iranian website, are now indicating that it was digitally altered. The Iranian website now only shows the 3 missile image.

So, the most respected newspapers in our country are printing second hand versions of pirated "news" images from less than reliable sources. Nice. Could they be any lazier? Still have any questions as to how Bush got away with the WMD argument for Iraq? I thought not.

There will be the usual media self-flagellation over this for about 48 hours. Then they'll go back to putting their resources towards car wrecks and celebrity crap instead of reporting important news. This is why no one's crying over so many newspapers going under.

Dumb Polls

Yesterday, the LA Times screamed that Obama was leading McCain by 12 percentage points in their opinion polls. My first reaction was, "Big fucking deal? It's June." My second reaction was, "Man, could that be any more misleading?"

I do a lot of statistics as part of my job, so bear with me here. The poll is misleading because it was based on national opinions, but that's not how our presidential elections are scored. A more accurate poll would show which candidate is leading in which states and how that adds up in the electoral vote (see Bush v. Gore, 2000). Also, note that not all polls are equally accurate.

Good pollsters divide their samples into many groups (white men over 40, Hispanic females with children, etc) as they have different voting rates, regardless of what they say is their likelihood of voting. This year, one of the big wild cards could be the African-American vote. Obama's candidacy raises the question as to whether African-Americans will vote in greater numbers (which the polls can right now only guess at) in November than in past elections.

Don't necessarily be thrown by the excitement in the primaries as the turnout between them and the general election is not as highly correlated than you think. Also, Republicans only tend to get a sliver of the African-American vote (Bush got about 9%, and that was after some serious ass-kissing with some black evangelicals) anyway, so it's not as if Obama will get a much higher percentage. The big question is whether more African-Americans will come out and vote. The pollsters who have a bead on that will be the most accurate.

Newspapers and websites LOVE polls because they are a short-cut to discussing the real issues. Just be sure you read a bit more into them before deciding if they are telling you anything meaningful.

Getting Our Money's Worth

In today's LA Times there's an analysis of the War on Terror. Judging by the authors' affiliations, I wouldn't say that it's an unbiased appraisal of the war. I'm not accusing them of being liars. Rather, someone with a more conservative bent would probably choose to highlight other numbers.

The most telling numbers havde to do with terror-related convictions. There have been several high-profile terrorist arrests (see Detroit and Lodi), and the government doesn't have a real good conviction rate in them. However, here's where the Times article is biased. It says that only two people have been convicted of terrorist related activity in the US while having international connections (note how overly specific the authors are). But, their data cutoff date is over a year ago, so it wouldn't include the guy in Lodi. One could also argue that the goal is convict people of some sort of conspiracy before they blow something up.

The greater message of the data is what have we gained in terms of security from rounding all of these people up and spending $413 billion? The numbers presented look rather bleak. But, how do they compare to conviction rates for other complicated conspiracies (e.g., gang or mafia activity)?

And, what are we to make of the human sacrifices for the war? My sense is that a majority of the 3,867 U.S. soldiers were committed to their task and mission. But, what of the estimated 80,000 Iraqis? Sure, some of them were probably killed while trying to kill their countrymen for no other reason that they type of Islam they practiced. What would the rest say about their sacrifice for the US to remake their country? Perhaps that question will be better answered in the future. Right now, it seems like an awful waste.

1st Amendment Inanity

I almost feel bad for weekly news magazines/websites. By the time they go to press they are left in the dust with only crumbs of the good news stories. Take Time magazine this week. The whole Imus thing has come and gone, but they got to sell some copies (and having a nude woman on the cover would probably not fit into their corporate image). So, what do they do? They put up a patently ridiculous cover suggesting (but not saying) that maybe this whole thing is a first amendment issue. Whaaaaat?

Listen, if Imus were on public TV/radio I could listen to that argument for about half a second. Bu, since Bush wasn't threatening to arrest him (or have Cheney shoot him in the face), there are no free speech issues here. Oh, and freedom of speech and freedom from consequences of your speech are two completely different things.

In the meantime, I wonder why it took CBS two weeks to decide that what he said was offensive enough to get him fired? It's not like he added a significant amount of fuel to the fire afterwards. Between the Opie and Anthony show and Howard Stern, my guess is that the CBS lawyers were on top of these things in case they got sued for wrongful termination. I'm curious as to which big advertiser got their attention.

I think the over-under on Imus hosting a show on satellite radio is about8 weeks.

Scootin' to Prison?

No, not me. I'm not going all Andy Dufresne on you. Rather, I was thinking of the I. (Scooter) Lewis Libby (lotta handles for a preppie) verdict. For those who don't follow these kinds of things, here's the Cliff's Notes version:

1. Bush was staring through the looking glass for reasons to invade Iraq.
   
   
2. Through a series of forged letters, he came to believe that Iraq had obtained yellow cake, which can be processed into enriched uranium which can eventually be turned into the kind of uranium used in nuclear power plants or bombs.
   
   
3. The CIA had heard about these stories and sent a former African Ambassador, Joe Wilson to check it out. Funny story--it was all bullshit.
   
   
4. In his State of the Union address, which was vetted by then CIA Director (and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient) George Tenant, Bush used the yellow cake as evidence of WMD in Iraq.
   
   
5. Mr. Wilson was upset by this and unleashed his tongue in a New York Times opinion piece that accused the Bush administration of manipulating intelligence to support the case to go to Iraq (you don't say?).
   
   
6. Veep Cheney, outraged that anyone would have the balls to challenge his desire to go to war decides that he has to trash Wilson. For some reason, he decides the best way to do this is to ruin Valerie Plame's (Wilson's wife) career as a covert CIA agent. Read that again--Cheney wants to fuck with Wilson, so he outs an undercover CIA agent. Oh, and her specialty in the CIA? WMDs--you know, the stuff we're trying to keep out of the terrorists' hands. Don't want too many of them doing their jobs.
   
   
7. How does Cheney go about this? First, he implies that the whole thing is a boondoggle for Wilson setup by his wife. OK, I know nothing of the Wilson/Plame marriage. But I'm thinking if a trip to Niger is considered a boondoggle, they need some serious counseling. Second, he and his aides (particularly Karl Rove and Lewis) and the State Department (Richard Armitage) start leaking her name and what she does to the media (I'll get to them later). Robert Novak then blows Plame's cover in his column.
   
   
8. As it turns out, and I'm sure you'll be shocked by this, it's illegal to blow the cover of a CIA agent. Go figure. However, the law is not as cut-and-dried as you would think. The Justice Department decides that this needs to be investigated and they put Patrick Fitzgerald on the case.
   
   
9. As a result of a grand jury investigation, none of the leakers are indicted. However, Scooter is indicted for lying about what he knew when. Despite using the normally effective Steve Martin defense (I forgot....), he was found guilty on 4 of 5 counts.

There's tons about this episode that gall me. Starting with the obvious, Bush et al can't stand to be criticized. No surprise there. The extent that it bugs them and the pettiness to it is way over the top.

A big issue during the grand jury proceedings was whether journalists, such as Judith Miller and Tim Russert (what about Novak?) should have to provide information about who their "anonymous" sources are. The standard journalistic claim is that if reporters can't keep the confidentiality of their sources, knowledgeable people in the government won't spill their guts because of fear of retribution. OK, let's buy that argument for a minute. Ms. Miller was a reporter for the New York Times when Plame was outed. One of her big scoops in 2001 and 2002 was detailing how Iraq had stockpiled WMDs. Those stories were based on discredited Iraqi dissidents. But, it's not hard to see how they made her a favorite in the administration. This would allow her to develop sources for other stories. And, it may be the case that she could not have researched this story (note that she never wrote about it) or others without having these anonymous sources.

Now for the flip side of anonymity. Is someone more likely to spin (ok, lie about) a story if he knows he will remain anonymous? I'm sure that journalists need to weigh this every day. But, for an administration that's so fast and loose with the truth, why go to the mat (and Ms. Miller spent about two months in jail over this) for someone who's blowing smoke up your ass? If we're talking about whistle-blowers, I'm in favor of the anonymity, but a member of the government who's a witness to a potential crime? I'm not buying it.

Since the announcement of the verdict, Libby's lawyers have (predictably) announced that they'll go for a new trial or an appeal. In the meantime, his legal team may be angling for a pardon, like Bush the First gave to Caspar Weinberger, one of the Iran-Contra wheelers and dealers. An interesting tidbit about Mr. Libby: before joining the Bush administration, he represented Marc Rich (a very rich tax cheat whose wife was a big donor to Clinton and the Democratic party) when he successfully petitioned Clinton for a pardon. I'm sure he'll be able to put that experience to work now.

One last thing about Mr. Lewis is that he's an author of a book called The Apprentice (ranked #5,147 on Amazon and let's say that the online reviews are less than kind).

Is there a moral to all of this? Of course (sorta): First, in Washington, the cover-up always bites you in the ass more than the crime (regardless of who committed the crime). Second, big media is way more interested in protecting their sources (and the perks that come with access) than reporting the truth. Keep that in mind next time you're asked to trust an anonymous source.

Can You Have Your Head in the Sand With One Eye Looking Out?

Big media self-flagellation is a great thing to see. It's a bit more in vogue since Katrina, the story where the news media finally quit being a (face down) lap dog for W and decided to start asking some questions of our government.

L.A. Times columnist Tim Rutten regularly covers media issues and wrote a column (note that you may need to do a free sign-up to access LA Times content--I've found it pretty much spam free) about how the media covered the death of Anna Nicole Smith. I won't go on about Ms. Smith, other to say that when made up and photographed she was smokin' hot (when her weight was less than the average college offensive lineman) and the comparisons to Marilyn Monroe are ridiculous. Then again, my celebrity radar can be way off, given that I couldn't believe that so many people gave a shit about OJ Simpson. But, I digress.

Rutten's argument is that newspapers should be immune to public opinion and that for their survival they should choose between feeding its readers broccoli or ice cream. He claims that the ability to instantly measure the public's desire for a story via website hits is making the soft serve machines go into overdrive.

Newspapers have always been commercial ventures. For all of its great reporting [insert name of your favorite newspaper here] still had to sell Washington's Birthday white sale and classified ads. The Chandler family (who turned around the LA Times and made it into a real paper) was unapologetic boosters of any plan to grow LA so that it would have more subscribers for its advertisers. Maybe they don't have the same return as the condo development on the beach, but the owners have been happy to cede that for the power the paper gave them to shape public policy.

Where I disagree with Rutten is with the conjunction or. Why not and? If a page one story about Anna Nicole Smith gets at least some of the people reading about Iraq/Iran or some other topic that perhaps they should know about, where's the harm in printing them both? It's not like the LA Times doesn't have an entertainment section. Besides, higher readership might entice some local buyers to purchase it back from the Tribune Company of Chicago, who was the highest bidder.