If Bill Frist comes to my town, I will protest outside, dressed up as a duck.  In my hand will be a sign that says "Quack".

I have long believed that we need to have full financial disclosure for news organization and for editors, reporters, commentators, and pundits, for both print and electronic media. "Follow the money" was a good rule for exposing the abuses of Watergate, and knowing where the money comes from would be a good way to understand (and perhaps eventually stop) what is corrupting the media now. I would also like to see a law prohibiting foreign ownership of media. A free and independent American press is integral to the functioning of our uniquely American system as a democracy.

Tim Russert mentioned Frist's mis-diagnosis of Terry Schiavo this morning when interviewing with John McCain. 

   Yes, the RW in the media are like a giant embodiment of a troll, a kind of 'corporate freeper'.  Freepers and trolls, mostly RW, indeed reflect the same mentality that animates the media under discussion.

   The issue, of course, Gitlin recognizes as one of accountability.  Presumably, the creeps ye will always have with ye, but the lack of accountability is a kind of political analogue to AIDS in our society -- and make no mistake about it, the consequences of systematic silence are just as deadly as the disease itself, as the button suggests.   Then we have to analyze not the statements, but the silence.  One could even develop a 'sociology of silence'.

Such a sociology has long been one of my great interests. Why, for example, is there more organizing around the issue of animals rights (protesting at dog and cat shows and such) in a month, in  the Bay Area CA's "Action for Animals" calendar, last time I checked, than around the issue of ending absolute poverty ("world hunger" in a year?).  The circle of perversity is closed when you consider that an ecologically centered development program for the economically impoverished areas of the world is the only way that myriads of habitats and the species dependent upon them can be saved. 

Silence is found in other areas, some as blatant as the absence of even a Greenpeace type organization canvassing to end absolute poverty.  Today, with the Iraq War and the peace movement a burning issue, why has no one put together an organization not only to canvass door-to-door for members and donations like Greenpeace, but to mobilize the members the way ACORN does in chapter towns?  I'm no Saul Alinsky--this is a no-brainer.

The dynamics in these cases is what I describe as the 'dark matter' of underground repression -- glass walls that prevent organizers from addressing certain issues, or addressing those issues effectively.  With the media lockdown that accompanied Votergate 2004, can anyone really doubt how this country's media system really works?

    The media lockdown should not be denied, or more temptingly, seen as a single oddball moment explained as a sui generis example.  It isn't.  It is a dimension, or what Hegelians call a 'moment' of how he media function every day of their existence.  The first thing they teach you at journalism school is to 'clean up your quotes'.  (You don't embarrass famous people by quoting them as speaking as inarticulately as they really do.  That is something you do only with, say, the homeless -- to lend "authenticity")  And that's just lesson one in the refined art of 'justifying the lying'.  You have to know how to gather facts and properly verify them, to better spin them in a way that promotes, even if it doesn't necessarily linearly conform to, 'the program'. (The latter point, I must confess, is not original to me).

    So we get to several of the examples Gitlin cites.  Swift Boat vets.  I carried on long and as loud as I could about the silence, not just of the MSM, but of the DEMOCRATS, and the 527s, and indeed the opposition progressive and left leaning media for months as the bogus flipflop spin was propagated and not debunked, until it crystallized into a national cliche.  Only after the Republican Convention, indeed particularly in Jonathan Chait's cover story of The New Republic issue of Oct 18, was there a thorough debunking.  (The earliest I have found attacking the validity as distinct from the hypocrisy of it are from spinsanity Sept 7.  I would be interested in postings of earlier ones that fit my description.   Some journalists (David Corn at The Nation) claim that they did so, but haven't furnished any examples on request.

    A similar spot silence accompanied the SwiftBoatVeteransForSlime (they call themselves for 'truth' but as Lincoln said, calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.)  I remember distinctly that folk at the unimpeachable (like I'm the angel Gabriel) Counterpoint had some people peddling some of that nonsense at the time too.  Someone should call them on that.  But when both Bush pere and Dole came out with the same 'where there's smoke there must be fire line' while in a clumsy but unexposed choreography, Bush and Cheney played 'above the fray', their asses were so far out they were blocking the jet stream.  But no one kicked them.  This was a silence like the others above -- a strategic media/political lockdown.

     Now to accept even one example of a real lockdown is like accepting a single claim of flying saucer abduction.  If that's true, then the entire paradigm of presumption used must be, well, full of it.  Well the existing paradigm of the media and politics that is used, even by braver Noam Chomsky, does not nearly go far enough in explaining the nature of machine politics in the US.

     You want to change this system, seriously, and not just pretending?  Time to wake up and smell the horses***!!!!!

Good point, but...
 
The best way to prod the public and Congress into action is with vigorous press coverage.  That gets people talking and drives the issues.

but remember, the Repugs know what they're doing.  These people aren't amateurs.  They know that most people think the whole thing is bogus, but also really don't give a crap.  How many people who are not already dedicatedly antiBush at this point are going to shift their political thinking because of Terry Schiavo.  Making more of an issue out of it risks harping on a moot issue (which Repugs can do and get away with it).  At the same time, they can toss some red meat on the cheap to their rightwing religious "hot squat Christianity" so-called culture of life crowd.  The protests about it make it a little more enticing as an issue, lending it that little bit of frisson that it needs to be more than a triviatum to that key element of his core constituency.

To the extent that politicians use things like this to launder underlying issues, the solution is to bring those issues up explicitly and shatter the glass wall of restriction, the globe of silence around that aspect of any issue.  Only that will give the Repugs regrets about these tactics.

    Note how, although abortion is one of the most popular issues for the Democrats, one of the most likely issues where so-called moderate Repugs (who unanimously voted for Janet "Liberalism is Slavery" Brown for the federal bench in the Senate) tend to deviate from the Party religion to get votes.  But in polls, those who say that abortion was decisive in how they voted are two to one Repug.  (This in turn provides a cellophane fig leaf of cover for the likes of Al From, in their quest to dump abortion from  the Democratic platform).

Judy Miller? I thought that was you. 
It is not a journalist's job to "report what the politicians say". A journalist's job is to UNCOVER the truth!

I don't agree at all that it is up to the politicians to keep these stories alive. The role of the press that led to them being mentioned in the Constitution, is to be an independent force, watching what the politicians do and reporting on it. If they renege on that responsibility we get dunces like Bush reelected to the presidency - how could voters have voted against Bush for the lies leading up to the Iraq invasion if the proof of those lies was not publicized by the press? Politicians do have a responsibility to keep the oppositions feet to the fire, but the press has an independent responsibility to do the same.

<i>The media reports what the policiticans say. You guys want the media to do the politicians job for them. ...The politicians have to create the fray.</i>

It is sadly true that politicians seem to have to create the fray nowadays, but the media should *not* just be reporting "what the politicians say."  The media has a duty to the public interest, not just to politicians' interests.  The media's job is to investigate claims, to question political authorities, to present information the public needs to know when voting, to uncover the truth. 

Our short-term goal may well be to get the politicians on our side into "the fray", but  we have to keep our eyes on the long-term issue here, because it is truly a threat to our democracy.  Liberal democracies need an independent, proactive, critical, discerning media that reaches the masses.  The only all-pervasive media outlets right now are network tv news programs, and they are failing to inform the public. 

Lately there seems to be a tendency in public discourse to conflate the public's interest with political parties' interests.  It comes up a lot in discussions about media, but also  in discussions about voting issues.  One striking example was in the aftermath of the 2000 elections, when one would often hear that the butterfly ballot was the "Democrats' own fault" and so we shouldn't complain about it.  Well yes, it was the Democrats' fault, and the Democratic person who approved the ballot can be blamed for it, but the result -- that the public was disenfranchised -- is worth complaining about and addressing.  Same thing with the contested recount -- it was suggested that Gore only asked for the counties favorable to him to be recounted, so it was his own fault that the Supreme Court stopped the count.   If you think about elections as wrestling matches between two individuals struggling for the gold medal, that makes sense, but that's not what an election is.  An election is about finding out who the public wants to represent them.   If neither political party's approach to addressing that makes sense, then the courts, the media, we the people, have a responsibility to figure it out.  Democracy isn't just a wrestling match between political parties; it's about representing the public interest.   

Given the 3 assassinations in the 60's, the rabid nature of many of the foot soldiers in the army of the right, the indifference of the middle, and the profit monomania of the corporate media, is it any wonder that even well intentioned journalists, especially those not sold on an afterlife, are afraid to try a 'year of living dangerously'. 

We have this state of media now which is Republican biased.  But in their mind they want to be thought of as being the middle.

What we need is an alternative to the Leadership Institue which churns out by the thousands  Conservative journalists like Jeff Gannon to frame their reports in the conservative light and anti-Democrats.

Or better still,  we have to bring back integrity in the media by self-policing and having written ethical professionalism policies that they should hold the journalists to.

Someone like AP or Tim Russert should not write stories that Gov Dean said this or Swift Boats Allegations  or Durbin compared this, etc  which the reporters know is not the whole true story or the substance of the message or the story.  They are erasing the distinction  of yellow journalism and professional journalism.

There must be a way to make Media work for the TRUTH instead of just whining about the state of MEDIA.  Republicans know how to play the game(CBS Rathergate, CNN, Newsweek-Quran). 

We Democrats should have a seminar on how to work with the current media  without sacrificing our convictions.

Media Matters does a lot of what you suggest. We need to  support Media Matters and get the MSM to pay attention.

First of all, people like Judith Miller and Elizabeth Bumiller aren't afraid of the right wing. They are members of it.

Second, reporters have to justify their stories and requests for salary increases to editors who have to justify them to owners, almost none of whom are liberals. A couple of leading papers (NYT, WaPo) used to have liberal publishers who appointed liberal editors-in-chief but they don't any more.

This phenomenon is even more pronounced on TV. The networks are all owned by companies with right-wing CEOs and almost all of the affiliates are owned outright by right-wingers. The most any liberal reporter can do is drag something back to the center.

The upshot is that any story with a liberal slant has to be double- and triple-checked because the reporter and his editor will catch hell from the boss if there is a mistake. But the boss won't be all that upset if there is a pro-right wing mistake.

Todd,

Re: Frist's Schiavo "Diagnosis," did Dr. Frist abet a violation of AMA Ethics Opinion E-5.045?

In a 2001 report by the Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, (CEJA Report 3_ A-01) the Council "provides guidance regarding ethical filming of patients by discussing the scope of patient privacy and confidentiality; the responsibility to obtain informed consent; and the importance of ensuring the objectives in filming are first and foremost educational."

The AMA subsequently adopted the recommendations of the report. (AMA Ethics Opinion E-5.045.)

The fundamental position of the Council is that patients must consent to being filmed. In Schiavo's case, she wasn't in a position to consent to being filmed, just as she wasn't in a position to consent to any course of medical action.

But what are the ethical standards regarding the filming and dissemination of video of footage of medical patients? Did Dr. Frist uphold such standards? (<span class="blogfooter">Barney F. McLelland raised the question yesterday.)</span&gt

The Council notes that when it comes to care giving, "exceptions to obtaining consent are provided in relation to individuals who are 'unconscious or otherwise incapable of consenting.' Under such circumstances, treatment is undertaken based on the implied consent doctrine that a reasonable person capable of consenting would want to receive medical care that is in his or her best interests.  However, since filming a patient confers no therapeutic benefit, this standard should not be applied to unconscious or incapable patients when the issue in question is filming."

So then, because filming Schiavo provided no therapeutic benefit, it would appear that whoever filmed her and then subsequently released the footage to Sen. Frist, not to mention major news organizations, violated Schiavo's privacy. To the extent that Frist abetted or encouraged such a violation, as a licensed doctor, his ethical breach seems all the more severe. Dr. Frist should have known better.

The issue of Frist questioning the diagnosis of persistent vegetative state based on a viewing of the video is completely unprofessional on its face, but it wasn't the only, or indeed the first ethical breach in this case. Whoever taped her and then released the video, clearly did not do so to provide "therapeutic benefit" to Schiavo, nor were the objectives of the filming "first and foremost educational," the Council's other main criteria besides "informed consent" that might allow such filming.

The report does say, "a possible exception exists when the person in question is permanently or indefinitely incompetent (e.g. permanent vegetative state or minor child). In such circumstances, if a parent or legal guardian provides consent, filming may occur."

However, given that Schiavo's legal guardian, her husband Michael, threatened legal action after several videos of the brain damaged women made in 2002 were posted on the Internet, it is fair to conclude that such consent did not exist.

What's more, the videos were used in a manner that not only wasn't therapeutic nor educational, but was in point of fact politically motivated. A typical example of the politicization of the video footage are the comments of one Wesley J. Smith, who was named "one of the nation's top expert thinkers in bioengineering because of his work in bioethics," by the National Journal.

After Smith viewed the videos in 2003, this "top expert thinker" concluded that the "videotapes of Terri clearly show her responding to requests. For example, a closed-eyed Terri is asked to open her eyes by a doctor. Her eyes flutter and she does as he requests. She is asked in another video to follow a balloon with her eyes, and she does."

One wonders whether this "top expert thinker" might want to amend his views given that Schivao's autopsy showed conclusively that the woman was blind, because in the words of the medical examiner, the "vision centers of her brain were dead." Does this "top expert thinker" really believe that Schiavo was "following a balloon with her eyes," given that she was blind?

Perhaps more importantly, if a violation of AMA Ethics Opinion E-5.045 occurred, what is Dr. Frist's culpability in such a violation? The CEJA notes that should it find evidence of an ethics violation, it "has the authority to acquit, admonish, censure, or place on probation the accused physician or suspend or expel him or her from AMA membership," in accordance with AMA rules, including this one.

Where are the before and after shots?  On the daily show, where they always are...

I agree that we need to work the ref (Media Matters is our savior), but I also find that the MSM ignores our complaints. The first column by the new NYT ombudsman sounded like a complete suckup to conservative Christians. After all the e-mails I, and thousands like me, sent the Times over the years of horribly irresponsible coverage, they showed that their only concern was sucking up to evangelicals.

It doesn't matter how many e-mails we send about Miller, they will ALWAYS defend her. They defend their stories on WMD and ignoring of the DSM, yet self-flaggelate over correctly reporting Koran abuse.

To put it simply, the media doesn't give a F*$%k what progressives think. They aren't there for you.

Also, stop watching cable news shows. I am so much happier now. 

Sheesh Todd: just a low rating and not even a word in self-defense. How about your pathetic attack on the "left" in the NYT 2002 ? Look, you have made use of your moments with the microphone to attack the dissenters for not being respectable enough and even to spread the moronic right wing slander about the left not caring about 9/11. Now you want to complain that the rethuglicans control the media. Well pin a medal on yourself and how about you read Letter from a Birmingham Jail - a document addressed precisely to hand wringing collaborators like you.  

sounds like a parody of a radical position.  and weird is spelled the way i just did

side point -- over the years since I first got a computer I have emailed over 50 letters to the NY Times, all of them timely and almost all of them sufficiently short.  NONE of these have ever been printed.  They are virtually all reasonably crisply written, unlike most of my posts -- the latter are more like a written form of conversation.

          In the case of Matt Bai in particular, who wrote that crucial piece in the Oct 10 NY Times Magazine, which painted Kerry falsely as soft on terror, I wrote a letter which never got printed, with an interesting twist.  (I noticed from RealClearPolitics.com, which I follow for RW journalism, there were literally daily columns, from Dick Morris to Charles Krauthammer etc etc, for weeks across the country echoing and magnifying the distortions of that one Bai piece, which also became the main theme of the Bush campaign, supplanting 'flipflop'.)  None of the letters that were printed, none, took Bai to task the way I did.  For them to excise all the letters debunking that article from their published letters would be a case of awful journalism that could be politically decisive in an election -- in contrast to having someone reasonably prominent publish a column or major article rebutting Bai's claims about Kerry.  Never mind the stuff about 'reality based'/Bush which only appeals to liberals -- Bai completely avoided the fact that Kerry was calling for a militarily MORE vigorous approach to terrorism as distinct from Iraq, and suggested at numerous points that Kerry was less interested than Bush in forcibly crushing Al Qaeda.  Together with the RW attack-and-further-distort media machine, that probably was indeed decisive.  So the policy that led them to turn down my letter there (never mind the letter itself) also was of decisive political importance -- and this from a paper officially supporting Kerry!

Paul is a genuine hero of the opposition while Todd Gitlin has used his prominence and position in the most opportunistic and shameful ways. This is not a new critique: I quoted Naomi Klein above and contrary to the person who does not understand the definition of ad-hominem it is not a personal attack.  The right wing control of the media and the "frame" for discussion is helped immeasurably by the liberal-tsk-tsk alliance that, in the face of a grostequely mendacious far right government sees its primary task as lending credibility to right wing smears. Here is Todd Gitlin, bravely complaining about Tim Russert now, while  his access to the NYTimes two years ago went towards castigating the "left" for not properly lining up after 911. During the next crisis, Todd will undoubtedly wring his hands in horror about the presence of Anarchists at a protest march or the failure of someone to have good attendence marks at the Noam Chomsky Hate Week.  God knows, I'm no fan of the therapeutic left in the country, but  the problem with this country is not Noam Chomsky or the Park Slope Anti-Imperialist Alliance. By taking on the role of policeman of what is acceptable dissent, Gitlin does his part no less than Tim Russert and Judy Miller.

Wow Todd, very impressive. According to you, it's "inappropriate" to point out your shameful role as a participant in the very media debacle you now decry. And yet you are unable to muster a word in your own defense. Since it's likely that going to the library is too demeaning for someone of your august level, I will releive you of the burden of looking up MLKs essay and give you a short quote:

----

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

Paul has done a lot of independent journalism on the web and his work has been widely circulated. Todd writes a series of articles in the Globe, the Times, and so on about the stupidity, anti-semitism, and dubious loyalty of "the left" and now has the chutzpah to step up as if he were shocked, shocked, I tell you, about the whoreish nature of the establishment press. Furthermore, when called on it here, he doesn't have the decency to respond, except to violate standards and rate my note as "inappropriate". FYI Todd, it is not inappropriate to find your behavior less than exemplary and it is not disloyal for Americans to oppose Bush's insane policies without getting clearance from the self-appointed dissidency loyalty police.  I'm not ashamed to be seen with Anarchists and vegeterian animal rights activists and any other kind of marginal citizen who is standing up for freedom and human rights and civil liberties, but I would be ashamed to be seen with some careerist self-booster who thinks that being respectable in the eyes of the employers of Judith Miller is a worthwhile goal.

I am very much not a Gitlin fan, in case you hadn't noticed.  But this stuff (which clearly is exactly what I thought -- you having other, not necessarily invalid, issues of dispute with the author) I'm sorry belongs in personal blogs.  Just run a blog critiquing Gitlin, invite your friends to participate and rate it 'recommended' and it will have its own spot on the front page of the site.  What more could you ask?  I just hate to see, imagine some guest of the prominence of the ones we've had comes along, say Lieberman.  He is FAAAAAR from being my favorite.  Or Al From.  Talk about a new word I coined today based on the French word degueulasse -- "pukative".  Are there going to be people swarming to the thread just to trash him?  This is a REALLY great site.  Sometimes people are so caught up in their agenda they become parasitic to the institutional framework for their pursuit of what they believe in.

    In this case, in the main, I am NOT taking issue with what you are saying, but where you are saying it.  There are a few specific points in what you said about Gitlin, and some very important criticisms that you overlooked.  But the point is

    PERSONAL BLOG!!!!!!!!!!! that's what I do with my stuff too

Personal blogs ARE an open forum.  And if someone wants to start a thread, say, taking Josh Marshall's inventory, or Todd Gitlin's it's the appropriate way to do it.

Otherwise it becomes 'relevant due to the name on the masthead' that you just attack the person as your only point, using whatever is discussed as a hook or foot in the door to take their inventory