Dems' Convention, one year ago . . .

Here's what was going on in media-land in the last week of July 2004. Much of the news focused on the Democratic National Convention, held in Boston last July 26-29. (Remember those days, they seem so long ago now . . .). Anyway:

1.)
USA Today reported on the incomplete and frankly crap performance of the networks on convention coverage – and the surprisingly good performance of PBS. (Here’s something where PBS really can say, “If PBS doesn’t do it, who will?”) Here’s why. Says USA Today, It was "well known before the convention started that the three old-line broadcast networks - ABC, CBS and NBC - would air just three hours of the proceedings during prime evening hours" of the convention weeks (and none of it on Tuesday). "The cable news networks promised they would fill the void in coverage." And indeed, the three most-watched cable news networks - CNN, Fox News and MSNBC - did devote "a lot of airtime to reports from inside and outside the FleetCenter.” But “there's been too much talk and commentary from pundits and celebrities, too much promotion of the cable networks' stars and too little coverage of the speeches, delegates and issues before the nation. The only network with "true convention coverage" is PBS, said Tom Rosenstiel, director of Columbia University's Project for Excellence in Journalism. PBS, expanding on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, had three hours of the convention each night and ratings "jumped significantly compared with the 2000 conventions." Especially on the Tuesday night, PBS says, an estimated 7.7 million viewers tuned in to some or all of its coverage. Its rating was up 32% from the second night of the 2000 Democratic convention. PBS says its number of viewers surpassed those watching CNN, Fox News and MSNBC combined. Those cable networks together drew 6 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. (From Benton's Communications-related Headlines).

2.)
A Center for Digital Democracy report, coming out at the same time as networks are being slammed for their minimal Convention coverage, notes that “the three major broadcast TV networks are merely spinning lame excuses for why they will not be covering the national political conventions for more than a few hours this summer. It’s all 'tightly scripted,' 'it’s not interesting,' or there’s 'no news,' they suggest. Yet TV broadcasting will largely reap an unprecedented $1 billion or more from political ads sold this election season."

3.)
Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post, meanwhile, also had a go at cable’s convention coverage – especially that of Fox News. In Fox-land, noted Kurtz, former Vice President Al Gore's speech was allowed to run for all of 40 seconds before host Bill O'Reilly "broke in with his own commentary." Speeches by Sen Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Rev Al Sharpton (D-NY) were also on Fox for just a couple of minutes. "Some Fox executives see their approach as counterprogramming[!], since the speeches are widely available elsewhere. 'You could make a very good case for not being here until Thursday - even for the cable channels,' said Brit Hume, Fox's Washington managing editor. 'If we were inventing this from scratch and there was no history here, no tradition, no custom, we wouldn't design it this way. You wouldn't anchor from here, you just wouldn't. Nobody has quite had the stones to say let's call a halt here.'" (I wish someone at Fox had the stones to fire Brit Hume annd the rest of that group of propagandists.)

4.)
Bad news on the "Rock-the-Vote" front: A Reuters report noted that, "while about half of college-age students are registered to vote, only one in five actually does. (By comparison, three out of five people over the age of 55 vote, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.)" In the November election, early indications that the young adult vote had increased substantially proved to be mostly illusory.

5.)
DBS Satellite versus cable news (i.e., not about the election): Communications Daily quotes media statistics showing that between 1995 to 2004, cable's 91% share of the pay TV market had shrunk to 73%. As a result, "the cable industry would like the FCC to acknowledge that that means there is "vigorous rivalry" between cable and DBS. A declaration by the FCC that the market is highly competitive could have an impact on how cable is regulated."

In the news: What's in a face?

Laurence W. Britt in Rochester's City Paper asks a serious question about the MSM news: "Do you ever wonder how some stories in the news get covered extensively; others, seemingly more important, get little coverage, and still others get no coverage at all?"

Britt contrasts what he calls "Cold News" with"Hot News" (and, no, this has nothing to do with Marshall McLuhan's notion, or probes, of Hot Media and Cold Media from Understanding Media). Instead, he gives a few examples of so-called "Cold News" stories, including:

• The "lost" $8.8 billion allocated to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.
  
• The attacks on Iraqi oil pipelines
  
• The "huge deficits in our trade balance, the weakening dollar, the federal budget deficit (now at record levels, with no end in sight), continual records in personal bankruptcies, an almost non-existent savings rate."
  
• "How unpopular America has become around the world"

All of these stories are, of course, undercovered by the MSM. Contrast this with the following "Hot News" stories which, as Britt points, are tremedously overcovered.

• The Laci Petersen trial;
  
• The Robert Blake trial;
  
• The Michael Jackson trial;
  
• The Terri Schaivo story;
  
• The runaway bride story [Jennifer Wilbanks];
  
• The missing teenager in Aruba story [Natalee Holloway];
  
• The new Harry Potter book story;
  
• The Carl Rove story

So why is the first group of "Cold Media" stories given short shrift while the second "Hot Media" group receives saturation coverage. Well, unfortunately it's not that hard to figure out, Laurence. The first group contains stories that are arcane, diffuse, multidimensional, require more in-depth knowledge of context, and are much harder to place within a TV news format (especially in a US TV news format, which just doesn't do "news" very well.) The second group is simple, one-dimensional, requiring only a simple manichean determination among audience members of right and wrong, good-versus-bad. The first group ("Cold News") raises issues of political controversy, and very effective spin machines and attack dogs in political circles (especially on the Republican side) make it uncomfortable for news organizations to pursue such stories, for fear of being labeled "liberal media" or some such thing. The "Hot News" stories (mostly) don't have to worry about that aspect, so these stories are usually pretty "safe" - news organizations can speculate endlessly and screw up royally on aspects of these stories and get away with it. Screw up on a "Cold News" story in this era of the blogosphere - or show incompetence in trying to turn a Cold story into a Hot one - and all hell will break loose tout suite (Dan Rather and "memogate," anyone?).

But the most important difference between Britt's "Cold News"/"Hot News" stories - at least for the cable news stations, is that the "Hot" stories all have a "face" attached to them. And usually a pretty female face. I've talked about this before, when I reminded anyone paying attention (all three of you) that Natalee Holloway (see right), the missing teenager in Aruba, was simply joining "a class of news figures anointed by the media (albeit fleetingly) as instant news 'celebrities.'" Their number includes Chandra Levy, Pvt. Jessica Lynch, "runaway bride" Wilbanks, etc. Still, it's not essential to have a pretty female face (though it really helps). If the face is famous enough (or can quickly be made so by a willing media), and the story is simple enough, then that story will have legs. Once you have your "face" all you do is slap it all over a news network, and attach a simple storyline to it, and voila - it's one for the water cooler! Court trials are great for this, providing the point of law at issue is simple (i.e., "Did Michael Jackson have sex with a small boy?" works really well; but "Did Worldcom's Bernard Ebbers commit serious fraud?" is less good, because i.) the face doesn't have much celebrity value and ii.) the issues are complex and multidimensional).

Media scholars have tackled this issue from multiple perspectives, among them semiotics and framing. Semioticians and their descendants in visual communication analyze the power of a face as a sign that connotes various (polysemic) meanings within dominant sign systems. Media ecology scholars from Neil Postman on note the tendency for television to emphasize the visual and affective over the rational. Cultural studies scholars, drawing on social constructionism and narrative analysis, note that the "story" that we're presented with, wrapped around a prominent media "face," is a complete media construct, very different from the "real" person living in the real world. Others, investigating this area from a framing effects perspective, posit that news, and the framing of news, can be considered along two different dimensions: the thematic and the episodic.

The difference between the two is this: Long-form journalism (mostly print news but also including some in-depth documentaries) tends to be thematic, emphasizing more background and contextual information (e.g., "What were the multiple interacting causes that led to the Iraq War?"; "What causes poverty in the United States?"). Television news, on the other hand, is overwhelmingly episodic, reducing issues to a sequence of isolated, disconnected episodes (e.g., "another three soldiers die in Iraq;" "Pvt. Jessica Lynch is a hero tonight;" "Here's a story of a young woman who fought her way out of poverty," that sort of thing). Episodic frames tend to emphasize individual agency and simple solutions. Whether talking about the Iraq war, the "war on terror", poverty, crime, corporate scandals, or whatever, episodic frames attribute social problems, and their solutions, to individuals rather than the system at large or the institutions that make up that system. In fact, a medium (such as television) dominated by episodic frames will tend to ignore the more complex issues altogether, shifting attention instead to "news" episodes that facilitate simple, manichean situations involving individuals, such as murders, celebrity scandals, and trials (especially celebrity trials). In such a system, dominated by visuals, the human "face" invariably becomes the main signifier around which an episodic story is wrapped. That's why editors today nearly always encourage their newsworkers to try and "personalize" a story. That's why you end up learning (or think you're learning) a lot about one person or one family or one soldier or one victim in a story, and very little about the deeper (thematic) causes of whatever it is the news is supposed to be reporting on. It's also why most people who watch a TV news bulletin can recall very little detail about what they watched 24 hours after watching it - because news bulletins typically fail to provide the "connective tissue" of meaning and context to the isolated news fragments they present. (One of the most prominent scholars doing work in this area of framing, btw, is Stanford Political Communication Professor Shanto Iyengar (see, e.g., Is Anyone Responsible? How Television Frames Political Issues.)

Of course, spin doctors know all this instinctively - have done since they were about 10 years old, I think - but annoyingly, it always seems to be Republican spin doctors that make more hay from it. If you want a simple explanation for why John Kerry lost the election to George Bush last November, it's because Karl Rove et. al. put Kerry's face on a simple, manichean, negative story - well alright, two stories: Kerry the flip-flopper and Kerry the medal-hog with a dodgy military record. Forget all that stuff about ideology and policy differences. The Republicans beat the Dems to the punch in the "face" race, and that was that.

So that's where we are: news stories that have "legs" in our cable-drenched environment are those that are simple and easy-to-understand tales of right and wrong with a prominent "face" on them. And that's why Republicans are worried about the whole Karl Rove-Valerie Plame incident (here's some background and latest developments). Because it deals with a subject and person - Rove - that would normally be relegated to "Cold" news, and is pushing him uncomfortably to a "Hot" News zone. The thing Rove fears most is that his "face" will become solidly identified with "dirty tricks" and "liar." Of course, the "Plame Affair" is utterly inconseuqential compared with the epic tales of deceit and subterfuge associated with this administration's Iraq War policies. But that doesn't matter - well not to Bush and his cabinet anyway. All the stuff about illegal wars and WMD's and reconstruction corruption and Halliburton and Bechtel and 2,000 dead coalition soldiers and 25,000+ dead Iraqis matter not a jot - because these are "Cold" news stories and have all been safely neutralized. Nobody but nobody has had to resign or be impeached because of this stuff. But the "Rove-Plame" stuff could be much more important, could be ... it depends. Yes, the John Roberts nomination has attempted to bury the Rove story. But it might not. After all, Karl Rove now has a "face", and it's increasingly well-recognized.

More Lakoff

Funnily enough, it's almost exactly a year since I first wrote about George Lakoff in my (pre-blog) journal. The Friday, July 23 edition of NOW – With Bill Moyers had an excellent piece on language in politics – including an interview with Lakoff, who was arguing, more than three months prior to the election, that the Republicans had already clearly won the battle of framing public issues with terms such as “tax relief”, "clear skies", “common sense forest management” etc. – plus of course classics such as “death tax” and “pro-life”. (Lakoff's Berkeley web page is here).

That “NOW” edition - which lasted a whole hour a year ago, before Tomlinson got to it - also had an excellent segment on local TV news and its failure to cover politics and public affairs properly. As David Brancaccio made clear: If voters were "relying on local television news to help them make decisions in this important election year, recent studies show that they may be left in the dark. By some estimates, more than half of local news broadcasts may not cover politics at all in the weeks before the election, and important local races and issues are often completely ignored. In a nation where the public owns the airwaves, are local stations driving corporate profits at the expense of the communities they are supposed to serve? Absolutely!"

Framing is as framing does

It's taken me a few days to get round to writing about this, but I can't ignore or let pass last week's New York Times Magazine cover story, by Matt Bai: "The Framing Wars" (published July 17). The article focuses on George Lakoff, a linguistics professor at Berkeley, whom the author calls (inaccurately) "the father of framing." Anyway, Lakoff's how-to book on the subject, Don't Think of an Elephant!, has taken the Democrats by storm. And it's got everyone thinking about framing (a term I've brought up many times in this blog). After their shattering defeat in last November's presidential election, Democrats were desperate for an answer to what went wrong. It seems they've found their answer. Notes Bai, "Even before the election, a new political word had begun to take hold of the party, beginning on the West Coast and spreading like a virus all the way to the inner offices of the Capitol. That word was 'framing.'" So what is framing? Well, it can mean lots of things, but the article tries to define the term in the context of the current acrimonious political climate.

Exactly what it means to ''frame'' issues seems to depend on which Democrat you are talking to, but everyone agrees that it has to do with choosing the language to define a debate and, more important, with fitting individual issues into the contexts of broader story lines. In the months after the election, Democratic consultants and elected officials came to sound like creative-writing teachers, holding forth on the importance of metaphor and narrative.

Republicans, of course, were the ones who had always excelled at framing controversial issues, having invented and popularized loaded phrases like "tax relief" and "partial-birth abortion" and having achieved a kind of Pravda-esque discipline for disseminating them. But now Democrats said that they had learned to fight back. 'The Democrats have finally reached a level of outrage with what Republicans were doing to them with language,' Geoff Garin, a leading Democratic pollster, told [the author] in May.

Well, about flippin' time! There's a lot more I'd like to say about this piece, but I'll have to save the rest for another day.

A Visual Comm take on the news

BAGnewsNotes ("Where The Analysis Of News Photos Is A New Art") is an interesting site I came across that studies news developments through its visual communication elements. It's slightly tongue-in-cheek but also pretty smart. Recent visual analyses have been done of Karl Rove on the cover of Time and Supreme Court nominee Judge John Roberts. Here's what the site had to say about yesterday's page 1 story on the New York Times:

Here we are on Day 1 of the White House's combined "Hello Mr. Roberts/Forget About Karl" campaign, and what does the paper do? They use their headline to directly quote (and thus propagate) the key memes (these used to be called "metaphors") Karl wishes to embed to underpin the nomination process and cripple any opposition. (Quotation marks in blue.)

Very interesting. Will be added to my bookmarks list.

Disneyland at 50

Thye LA Times runs a fascinating piece on the history of Disneyland, now celebrating its 50th birthday. Anyone studying modern American culture has to deal with Disney and Disneyland, so this is a useful piece.

Some appropriate commenst on Disney's cultural significance from scholars and cultural critics quoted in the article:

• "'There's still nothing to compare it to,' said Jamie O'Boyle, senior analyst for the Philadelphia-based Center for Cultural Studies and Analysis. 'It is a cultural magnet for people…. Walt didn't build an amusement park. He really built the first virtual reality.'"
  
• "Others are less flattering, saying the park is too artificially controlled and idealized. Italian author Umberto Eco suggested that Disneyland is 'the Absolute Fake.' After facing tooth-baring alligators on Disneyland's Jungle Cruise, Eco was disappointed at seeing none while taking a paddle-wheel steamer down the Mississippi. 'You risk feeling homesick for Disneyland, where the wild animals don't have to be coaxed,' Eco wrote in the 1975 essay, 'The City of Robots.'"
  
• Among other American cultural developments, "The modern museum, . . . reflects the Disneyland experience by featuring special lighting, music and full-immersion exhibits. At banks and airports, people wait in 'switch-back' lines pioneered by Disney. And Disneyland brought the word 'guest' into the lexicon of customer service. Disneyland has influenced Madison Avenue too, giving lessons in corporate synergy, branding and cross-promotions. Think Happy Meals, Kodak Moments, The Lion King on Broadway. Margaret King, who studies Disney and wrote the entry on theme parks for the Guide to United States Popular Culture, said it's all part of the 'Disney effect.' 'It's huge. Disney has just permeated our culture. It's almost easier to look for something that has not been affected,' she said."
  
• "Disneyland's Main Street inspired cities to inject downtown revivals with old-town ambience. It contributed to the design of the modern-day shopping mall by linking stores so shoppers can meander from one to the next without stepping outside. And mimicking Disneyland, today's malls grew into entertainment complexes with movie theaters, restaurants, and, in some cases, amusement park rides. Architects and urban planners greeted Disneyland with rave reviews in journals and at professional conferences. One called Disneyland 'a symbolic American Utopia.'"
  
• "Some critics say . . . 'Disney Realism' is actually 'Disney-fication' - a veneer that gives everything a more positive glow at the expense of history or reality. In the 1950s, one of the few representations of blacks was an Aunt Jemima greeting diners at her Pancake House. Attractions such as 'Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln' gloss over weighty subjects like slavery; in 'It's a Small World,' Chinese children are represented wearing coolie hats. As a result, political protesters found Disneyland the perfect stage because its Utopian backdrop contrasted starkly with such social problems as war and discrimination."

From July 04: Robert Thompson, quotemaster

Also from a year ago: The Boston Globe noted the rising influence of TV and pop culture guru Robert Thompson, the Syracuse University professor who has for some time been the source of first choice for journalists looking for a good quote about the power of US media culture. As Temple University's Mass Media & Communication Digest noted, Thompson's "big-picture, what-does-it-all-mean comments pop up daily in national newspapers, TV shows, and radio programs. Ask him about anything that appears on the tube or bubbles up in pop culture, from the crackdown on televised indecency after Janet Jackson's flashy Super Bowl halftime performance to the idea that terrorists invade US homes via TV newscasts, and he delivers a witty answer packed with insight."

Thompson is an expert on his subject matter, and "teaches the only class on pop culture at the Center for the Study of Popular Television, which he founded seven years ago at Syracuse University." He has also co-authored a book on the subject, Television in the Antenna Age, "which looks at how television as an industry, art, and technology influences our lives." The book was published last December.

One year ago - a lot going on

Mid July 2004 seemed to have a flurry of media-related news going on, and I was trying to keep track of it, mostly through scanning the major news media web sites, and by following developments on the excellent Benton Foundation Communications-related Headlines mailing list service. Here are some of the things I was looking at a year ago (before I started this blog).

(July 14) filesharing woes Media Statistics
Almost a year before the MGM v Grokster decision spelled another blow for fileharing technology, UK-based technology firm CacheLogic released a study showing just how big the problem was getting. Its study found that Internet users were downloading twice as many films, games and music as they had been a year previously (2003). "'One of the biggest myths put forth by the music industry – that they are winning the war on file-sharing -- is simply wrong,' said Andrew Parker, co-founder of CacheLogic. 'It's a case of displacement,' he added. 'Users are just moving to new networks.'" (I wonder if that'll continue to be the case.) The number one reason for the increased traffic, of course, is the proliferation of broadband Internet connections. CacheLogic "estimates Internet users around the globe freely exchange a staggering 10 petabytes - or 10 million gigabytes - of data, much of it in the form of copyright-protected songs, movies, software and video games." Interestingly, the popularity of file-sharing is costing the largest Internet service providers millions of dollars per year each in bandwidth and network maintenance costs.

(July 14) movie ratings
The New York Times reported on a study from the Harvard School of Public Health that found that the movie ratings system run by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) was confusing and murky. Basically, the researchers found that a movie rated PG or PG-13 today has more sexual or violent content than a similarly rated movie in the past. They found significantly more violence in G-rated animated films compared with nonanimated films and concluded that "physicians should discuss media consumption with parents of young children."

(July 13) convention coverage
With the country already in election fever as it approached the first party convention, the New York Times also noted that the NBC, ABC and CBS networks had announced their intention to broadcast only three hours each of the Democratic and Republican conventions in prime time. "The coverage corresponds to the highest-profile speakers. For the Democrats, that means former President Bill Clinton on Monday; Senator John Edwards on Wednesday; and Senator John Kerry as he accepts the presidential nomination on Thursday. For the Republicans, the prime-time coverage aims to show Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California on Tuesday, Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday and President Bush on Thursday." For the remainder of convention coverage, viewers would have to turn to CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, or CNBC on cable (and Telemundo for Spanish speaker). The networks also said they would offer additional coverage in the digital TV format. PBS, meanwhile, planned to carry three hours of prime-time broadcast coverage each night of both conventions.

(July 13) VOA undermined Media Statistics
According to USA Today, nearly half of Voice of America's (VOA) 1,000 staffers signed a petition protesting what they call the "piece-by-piece" dismantling of VOA. "The 62-year-old service reaches 87 million people in 44 languages. The petition asserts that the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees U.S taxpayer-funded broadcast outlets, has been funneling money into new radio and TV stations that are not subject to the same journalistic standards and monitoring as VOA." The new broadcast outlets (including Radio Sawa) "are directed primarily at the Middle East, where the U.S. image is at a historic low." The petition "goes on to accuse the board of 'killing VOA; by closing its Arabic radio service, reducing English-language broadcasting and launching services with "no editorial accountability" and limited breaking news."

One year on, we're a bit clearer on the source of this political interference, as we note that the Broadcasting Board of Governors - which oversees VOA and all other US public diplomacy/propaganda operations - is being run by none other than Ken Tomlinson, who is also chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting here's his bio on the BBG web site). And we come to understand that interference in VOA's activities is surely in line with Tomlinson's interference in CPB. (And here's CJR Daily's take on Tomlinson.

(Most information and direct quotes adapted from Benton's Communications-related Headlines, unless noted otherwise).

Is there any Intelligent Life down there?

Intelligent Life, The Economist’s summer 2005 lifestyles-for-the-global-rich-and-trendy crowd, has a few harsh words for America’s television: It could be heading for global irrelevance.

Contributor Caitlin Moran notes that America’s traditional easy global dominance of scripted dominance - in place for more than half a century - is possibly coming to an end, the victim of the new conservative ascendancy in the culture wars. She argues:

Over the past year, a schism between America and the rest of the world has begun to open. Triggered by the amusingly inconsequential revelation of Janet Jackson’s nipple during a half-time performance at last year’s Super Bowl, and fueled by America’s historical inhibitions about sex, a rising sense of moral and religious hysteria has swept through American TV.

She runs through the various pieces of evidence, many of which I have already commented on in mediaville: the $550,000 fine on CBS for showing the Jackson breast; a decision by Fox to “pixelate animated nudity in the cartoon Family Guy;” PBS’s cowardly decision to remove from a docudrama (Dirty War), “scenes of a woman in a shower being decontaminated after a nuclear attack”; and PBS president Pat Mitchell’s decision to pull an episode of Postcards From Buster that featured a lesbian couple. Moran concludes: “For the first time since the 1960s, American television looks in danger of being created in a mode of what isn’t possible, rather than what is.” As a result, what she calls “the seemingly endless expansion of liberalism in the world of television is suddenly going into reverse.” She continues:

If broadcasters accept the principle that non-sexual nudity—the actual human body, no less—is in itself obscene, then we are only a step away from homosexual characters being removed from scripts, morally ambiguous characters being censored, and similar edicts on there being subjects that art (even if only television) isn’t allowed to touch anymore.

And though Moran doesn’t make this point, I will: It starts with children’s programs. Every conservative agenda item in America is promoted by a plea to “consider the children”—this in a society with thee West’s highest infant mortality rate and where no-one considers giving mothers a proper amount of paid maternal leave (6-12 months) to look after their children when they are most vulnerable! But I digress, if only slightly.

Moran sees a clear link between this increasing Puritanism and the rising reluctance of media producers to take on controversial political matters—witness the rapid rise in sci-fi dramas and “nostalgia dramas.”

Of course, while American television languishes, European TV powers ahead, tits and ass and all. She focuses on two fascinating examples of British cheeky inventiveness, both of which would be unimaginable in the US mainstream: The Guantanamo Guidebook, produced for Channel 4, in which volunteers (contestants?) "are ‘mildly tortured’ in the manner of Camp X-Ray” (see The Guardian's take here); and Sky One’s Badly Dubbed Porn, “in which ‘classic’ porn movies are redubbed by comedians.” And British TV also manages to tackle other controversial subjects in the political as well as the moral realm. Coincidence? I think not. The two go hand in hand. (For the moment America has HBO, but how long can that diamond in the rough survive the turn to conservative morality?)

Anyway, I think I’ll have plenty to tune in to next time I’m home!

Rove controversy

I loved Jon Stewart's take on the White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's performace over the Valerie Plame issue in Tuesday night's The Daily Show. After watching some clips of the grilling McClellan got during a press briefing, he commented something like: "Wha ... They seem to have replaced the White House Press Corps with actual journalists." (Very good.)

Although it's easy to get confused about the whole Rove-Valerie Plame thing, Slate's Timothy Noah ("Rove Death Watch, Part 2") breaks it down quite effectively:

What Rove told Cooper was that Joe Wilson was married to a woman who worked for the CIA. He said this apparently without checking—as any minimally responsible person would do—whether this was information that needed to be kept secret. And that's the generous interpretation; it's possible (though doubtful, I think) that he passed along this information knowing that he was blowing Plame's cover and pretty much destroying her CIA career. (There has been some dispute about whether Plame was technically undercover when she was exposed. I apply a simple test: Did her friends and neighbors know she worked for the CIA? They did not. Ergo, she was undercover.)

From July 10, 2004

The New York Times reported this time last year that the Federal Trade Commission issued its fourth report since 2000 on entertainment violence; the results were mixed. The FTC credited studios, music labels and video game makers for better following self-imposed guidelines, including clamping down on the sale of R-rated movie tickets to underage teens and providing better rating information to parents. But the commission also faulted these organizations for continuing to "advertise violent and explicit movies, games and music in media widely watched by teens." It also criticized the online music business for being lax in keeping children from downloading songs with explicit lyrics. (Information from Benton's Communications-related Headlines)

Spirit of the blitz lives on in London?

As London recovers from the terrorist Underground/bus bombings, the US media coverage has begun to pick up references to the so-called "spirit of the blitz" in London (the Blitz being the German bombing of British cities in WW II). References have been made regularly on cable news, PBS's "News Hour," on NPR, and the national press. And numerous news organizations have noted that this was the deadliest attack on the people of London since WW II. And with pronouncements by Blair and the Queen, who toured a London hospital to meet the wounded, the Blitz is emerging again as a historical exemplar and frame for interpreting this event on both sides of the Atlantic.

The New York Times, in its second-day reporting (Alan Cowell, "First Details of Bombs Emerge; Toll Reaches 49"), notes that "many people sought to invoke the memory of Britain's bulldog wartime spirit, when Londoners grew accustomed to German bombing and confronted it with gritty humor. 'If London could survive the Blitz, it can survive four miserable events like this,' said Mr. Blair. He spoke of 'this wonderful great diverse city' and called London and Britain 'one united community against atrocity.'" And one AP report quoted by Juan Cole really ramps up the war imagery. Cole introduces the piece in obvious WWII/Blitz terms, by writing "London began digging out on Friday". He then quotes the following passage, talking about the Friday after the bombing:

Much of London was eerily quiet. Bombed stations were shrouded in security curtains, and refrigerated trucks waited outside to carry away bodies. Bouquets of fresh flowers and cards scribbled with thoughts for the victims of London's worst attack since World War II piled up outside the stations near the bombed lines. "Yesterday, we fled this great city, but today we are walking back into an even stronger, greater city," said one card near St. Pancras Church, near where a bomb shredded the bus. "The people who did this should know they have failed. They have picked the wrong city to pick on. London will go on."

Yes, it's 1940 all over again. Or maybe 1941. Of course, part of this is driven by the fact that London - and Britain - is getting set to celebrate the end of WW II 60 years ago. But then WW II retains a much deeper resonance - and immediacy - in Britain than in the United States. One major reason for this is that, unlike any US cities, London and other UK cities suffered continuous heavy bombing raids that killed tens of thousand of people. This has left a very deep impression on the national psyche. And it's a clear historical parallel that still resonates in London to this day. When the 9/11 attacks happened in New York, there was no such obvious historical analogy for New Yorkers (and the US media) to attach themselves to - so one had to be created out of whole cloth. In London the Blitz provides a ready-made mediated "myth" and frame for Londoners to attach themselves to.

US audiences seem to instinctively to be able to empathize with the spirit of Londoners - perhaps more so than, say, with Madrid after its Al Qaeda train bombings last year. Why is this? It could just be that, as Tom Friedman put it, the London bombings "are profoundly disturbing" because, in some ways, "a bombing in our mother country and closest ally, England, is almost like a bombing in our own country." But there's more to it than that.

Another AP report, republished in the New York Times on July 8, perhaps provides a clue as to why this is. The article, "Bombs Likely Won't Leave Emotional Scars" suggests that London's experience with trauma of this type will help them shake off this incident all the more easily. It quotes James Thompson, a lecturer in psychology at University College in London, who argues that The Tube is a terrifying target for so many Londoners. He says: '''This is hard for us because so many of us are tube users. But whether it will be for us what Sept. 11 was for America, I would doubt, because we have so much more experience with this sort of stuff.'' Another trauma specialist quoted in this article

agreed that previous experience is a crucial factor in determining how well a population fares psychologically after a tragedy. While the United States had never considered itself vulnerable at home until Sept. 11, 2001, London has had a long experience with attacks -- from the Nazi blitz during World War II to the Irish Republican Army.

What also will help Londoners recover more quickly is that there is no sense of surprise over why attackers may have struck, Thompson added.
''In the Sept. 11 incident, there was a colossal sense of bafflement over 'What have we done to deserve this?' I don't think in England anyone is saying: 'Why do they hate us?''' Thompson said, noting Britons have long been aware throughout history that their foreign policy is unpopular with some. Also critical to psychological recovery is the meaning that individuals, or the society, give to the attacks, the experts said.

All this mythical British stoicism and ability-to-cope-in-a-crisis is ready-made for American audiences because of a historical and ready-made UK-US parallel that still works in this country: Edwin R. Murrow's reporting from London during the Blitz. Murrow was successful in transmitting to his American audiences the "myth" of London's and Britain's heroic and stoic resistance against the Blitz (aided by a very effective British propaganda campaign aimed at breaking down US neutrality). And the heroic stoicism was perhaps the key ingredient here. It's something that Americans can easily attach themselves to - especially given New York's own newly created post-9/11 "myth" of heroic stoicism.

Addendum: Slate's "international papers" section provides a useful overview of British press coverage of the bombings.

Judith goes to jail!

I'm just trying to get caught up with my blog posts on a busy week: Well, it's actually happened. New York Times reporter Judith Miller has been jailed by a US court for refusing to testify in an investigation into the unmasking of CIA agent Valerie Plame in 2003. As part of the grand jury hearings, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald successfully pressed the issue and got his way. Matt Cooper, meanwhile, said he's "received a 'somewhat dramatic' message from his source telling him he was free to testify." So Cooper, whose bosses at Time had already given up his notes to the special prosecutor, was off the hook. Fitzgerald "is investigating who in the Bush administration told the press Valerie Plame - the wife of former US ambassador who had criticised the president - was a CIA agent. Ms Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, had earlier attacked President George W Bush over evidence he had presented to justify the assault on Iraq. Mr Wilson later alleged that his wife's name was deliberately leaked in order to discredit him." (Latest indications are that the source was none other than Karl Rove himself.)

The consequences of this development could be dire for American journalism. The BBC quotes Bill Kovach of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, who "alleges that the case is part of a trend in which the government has sought to control the press's ability to cover its behaviour." States Kovach: "'There have been concerted efforts, especially by the Bush administration, to reduce the availability of information and to tone down the aggressiveness with which the press pursues it. . . . This is not just attributable to 9/11, but it appears to be a continuation of three decades of efforts.'"

See here for an AP report that also includes information on Robert Novak's role in all this.

Finally:

A "Valerie Plame incident" timeline, courtesy of the BBC:

"July 2003: Valerie Plame's work is revealed by conservative newspaper columnist Robert Novak
"Sept 2003: Department of Justice launches probe into allegations that White House staff illegally blew her cover
"Feb 2005: Appeals court rules Miller and Cooper must testify about their sources to inquiry
"June 2005: Supreme Court refuses to take up the case."

From July 8, 2004

One year ago: The New York Times reported that the National Endowment for the Arts announced a new report, called Reading at Risk, charting “a precipitous downward trend in book consumption by Americans.” The survey was announced by NEA Chairman Dana Gioia at the New York Public Library on July 8th. Based in part on 2002 Census Bureau data, it found that fewer than half of Americans over 18 now read novels, short stories, plays or poetry. In addition, "the consumer pool for books of all kinds has diminished; and that the pace at which the nation is losing readers, especially young readers, is quickening." The study starkly depicted current trends, and further fuelled "debate over issues like the teaching and encouragement of reading in schools, the financing of literacy programs and the prevalence in American life of television and the other electronic media that have been increasingly stealing time from readers for a couple of generations at least." It also raised more "questions about the role of literature in the contemporary world." (Quotes from Benton's Communications-related Headlines)

Karla Homolka's free

The release yesterday of convicted Canadian killer Karla Homolka from jail has caused an uproar in Canada. (Here's the latest news from the Globe and Mail. I haven't time to write a great deal about this right now, but here's a CBC timeline of events surrounding the Homolka/Paul Bernardo saga, going all the way back to 1987. When CBC reported back in late June that Homolka was about to be released from prison, she was said to be "fearing for her life" and was "going to court to seek an injunction that would ban media coverage of her." This is a fascinating tale.