December 13, 2006: World Bank Optimism

Some (all?) stories are best read in context. Today's Financial Times ran a story under the headline "World Bank offers robust global outlook." Here are the lead paragraphs:

The World Bank's annual global economic prospects report, released on Wednesday, is a rare thing these days: a study glowing with optimism about the future for globalisation.

The report not only says that the global economy should do well in the next two years, but that globalisation between now and 2030 will proceed apace.

This is one of those articles I had to read all the way from beginning to end, just to see if anywhere in this rosy account was any column space devoted to the more pessimistic account from the World Bank's own independent assessment arm. Sure enough, any evidence of the World Bank's own exercise in self-criticism was missing from this story; but then that assessment was yesterday's news (actually from December 8)! Have we come to the point where the annual report from the World Bank is about as credible as the annual reports from Enron used to be?

Alternative, it this just evidence of the extent of our addiction to optimism? The other day I was watching La Haine on the Sundance Channel. There is a running gag about a guy who has been pushed off the roof of a skyscraper. As he passes each floor, he says to himself, "So far, so good!" The punch line is: "It's not how well you fall but how well you land!" The independent assessment of the World Bank seems to be asking questions about how this institution will land, but the annual report would rather talk about how well they are falling!

November 28, 2006: Terrorism 101

One of the things that makes Max Rodenbeck's essay on terrorism for the November 30 issue of The New York Review so compelling is his choice of introductory quotations. The one from Clausewitz could be expected: where else would we turn when having to confront the fiasco of our own military adventurism. However, it is the perceptiveness of the second quotation that is far more fascinating:

The actual reason for the failure of the US policy in its political field and international relations is their lack of information regarding the world's realities and also the enclosure of the decision making people of that country in their own fabricated and false political propaganda.

It would not be hard to imagine these words coming from the apologetic mouth of Robert McNamara in The Fog of War, but that guess would fall about as far from the mark as one might imagine. No, the author of that sentence is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; and the text is an entry from his personal blog written after his visit to New York this past September. Of course one of the ways in which we all deprive ourselves of "information regarding the world's realities" is through our assumption that those who disagree with us substitute fanaticism for reflection; and, as far as Ahmadinejad is concerned, the media (with the possible exception of Mike Wallace), do a very good job of fueling that assumption. I suspect that Ahmadinejad's blog is written in a language that I cannot read very well (if at all); so I have no idea how consistently reflective he is in his writing. However, Rodenbeck made a powerful rhetorical move by situating him next to Clausewitz as the "voices of reason" that preface his analysis.

His next rhetorical move resides in his choice of language to describe the current "state of play" in those military adventures:

What has happened … is that the mental construct that framed the Bush administration's reaction to September 11 as a "war" is beginning to fall apart.

At the end of the day, it is not a matter of the illogic of White House rhetoric about democracy. Instead, it is about a "mental construct," "fabricated" (to use Ahmadinejad's language) by virtue (sic) of "lack of information regarding the world's realities." We can, of course, address the question of whether this lack of information had to do with the willful decision to sublate information in deference to faith; or we can flip the coin around and blame it on the myopia of those "dogmas" of Western civilization that sublate other cultural perspectives in deference to "scientific" thinking. Whether we followed the faith-based path of fundamentalism or the rationalist path that consumed McNamara, we blundered badly; and there is a supreme irony that a blog entry by a supposed faith-based fundamentalist should reveal such reflective insight into our blunder.

Most of Rodenbeck's article has to do with why it took so long for the general American public to recognize this insight; but he never really factors in the role that media play in shaping public opinion (or the role that the White House played in controlling those media). Instead, he writes about books that will probably never come to general public attention. The core of the article focuses on a "Terrorism 101" textbook entitled What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat:

One of the best [recent explanatory books] is by Louise Richardson, a Harvard professor who not only has been teaching about terrorism for a decade, but brings the experience of an Irish childhood, including youthful enthusiasm for the IRA, to understanding the phenomenon. As she explains, she had always thought it wise for academics to stay out of politics. The sheer boneheadedness of Washington's incumbents, who have ignored decades of accumulated wisdom on her subject, prompted her to write a belated primer.

Nevertheless, we can see the problem in getting out Richardson's message when, at this point in the article, Rodenbeck's rhetoric fails him. He decides to outline a dozen points from the book, and I believe that contemporary rhetoric would do well to acknowledge the cognitive impact of honoring "Miller's magic number" (seven plus or minus two). The Macarthur Report on media literacy makes a similar rhetorical blunder; but, while each of the Macarthur items can be distilled down to a relatively manageable phrase, each of Rodenbeck's points involves (at least) one paragraph of subtleties that would impede such distillation. Whether we like it or not, the path to public opinion leads through quick slogans and compelling images; and there we have it. Those "boneheads" know how to play the slogan-and-image game; and, once again, analytic thinking, regardless of how powerful its message may be, is left out in the cold. Once again we must confront that postmodern world in which fiction rules with a double-edged sword.

November 19, 2006: Rush to Judgement?

Last Tuesday night an Iranian UCLA senior, Mostafa Tabatabainejad, declined to show his identification to UCLA police officers when requested to do so after 11 PM in Powell Library. According to his attorney, Stephen Yagman, and as reported by the Los Angeles Times, he "declined because he thought he was being singled out because of his Middle Eastern appearance." The Times continued the account as follows:

The lawyer said Tabatabainejad eventually decided to leave the library but when an officer refused the student's request to take his hand off him, the student fell limp to the floor, again to avoid participating in what he considered a case of racial profiling. After police started firing the Taser, Tabatabainejad tried to "get the beating, the use of brutal force, to stop by shouting and causing people to watch. Generally, police don't want to do their dirties in front of a lot of witnesses."

He said Tabatabainejad was hit by the Taser five times and suffered "moderate to severe contusions" on his right side.

The Web page for this story, filed the following Friday after Tabatabainejad had retained Yagman's services, also included a link to a YouTube site with "video evidence" of the incident. This site has attracted considerable attention and provides links to several supposed "on the spot" recordings, one of which is also available on Truthdig. As of this morning, this particularly video has been viewed 344,777 times and accrued 2976 comments. The comment count at Truthdig is only up to 46 but is more "on topic" than the YouTube comments (such as "Worst camerawork I've ever seen, even for a citizen journalist..."). However, it is because I agree with this particular comment that I put those scare quotes around the word "evidence." At the end of the day, there is far more audio than video here; so one can assume that, should this matter ever come to trial, there will be justifiable debate over whether it would be legally admissible as evidence. (For that matter I can imagine the judge asking which members of the panel from which a jury was selected have seen any of the YouTube videos.)

The Truthdig comments exhibit an extremely passionate reaction to the incident. From my vantage point in the grand scheme of history, I was almost immediately reminded of when the National Guard fired on protesting student at Kent State and the rhetorically passionate photograph taken of the consequences. In the wake of yesterday's musical reflections, I was also reminded of when and why Coltrane composed "Alabama." However, it is important to remember that rhetoric is not logic (and, for that matter, that legal decisions are not necessarily made on the basis of either logic or rhetoric). Therefore, in the wake of all this passion, I feel a need to reproduce my own contribute to the Truthdig comments:

About ten years ago there was a case in Northern California involving environmental protesters getting pepper-sprayed by the police. My wife decided to give the students in her class the project of trying to interview as many of the parties involved in this incident as they could. Sure enough: both sides explained the motives for their actions clearly and sympathetically. What did the kids learn? Be very careful when the media try to get you to take sides when you do not know all the facts! Ten years ago this kind of dispute could have been settled by a good impartial judge. Today I’m not so sure ...

What I do know for sure is that there is more to this story than will ever be resolved by YouTube videos or Truthdig comments. The lesson this time around is that there is a fine line between creating forums for public discourse and muddying the waters of due process of law. I have the greatest sympathy for any judge who will have to deal with Mr. Yagman.

October 27, 2006 (2): Jenkins' List

As a result of my regular reading of Confused of Calcutta, I found myself looking at the Executive Summary of the Macarthur Report, "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century," written by Henry Jenkins and his colleagues at the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program. The basic thrust seems to be a shift of "the focus of literacy from one of individual expression to community involvement." In other words it is all about "social skills developed through collaboration and networking;" but what are those skills? Here is the list that the Jenkins group compiled:

Play — the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving

Performance — the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery

Simulation — the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes

Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content

Multitasking — the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.

Distributed Cognition — the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities

Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal

Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources

Transmedia Navigation — the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities

Networking — the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information

Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.

What fascinates me about this list, however, is how asocial, if not antisocial, it is. I do not see anything in the list that explicitly addresses the ability to engage in intersubjective communicative actions. Put another way, everything on the list (including Negotiation) is basically content-based. (Yes, that also includes the reduction of Play to problem-solving.) After all, if we are going to be talking about "media literacy," we have to remember that the "media" are just that: the channels through which communication, in all of its intersubjective glory, may be allowed to take place. Somehow or another, we need something on the list that honors Isaiah Berlin: Differing opinions should lead to dialog, but dialog does not have to lead to convergence of opinion. The intersubjectivity is a matter of each side reaching enough understanding to acknowledge, if not honor, the other’s point of view. This is the ultimate social skill for which we must all strive in an age of too many trigger-happy people with the power to end it all with a bang (not a whimper)!

September 07, 2006 (1): A Quote for Today

It has been a while since I created a "commonplace book" entry; but I could not pass up the opening sentence from a report by Joe Conason that I saw this morning on Truthdig:

To observe the Washington press corps is to wonder why so many people who don’t remember what happened yesterday and can’t master basic logic are expected to analyze politics and policy.

August 05, 2006 (1): "Reasoning between Informed Participants"

Truthdig has initiated an interesting discussion on a column about the approach the press has been taking to reporting the role of fundamentalism in Bush's policies. This discussion included, among other items, a comment by Hilding Lindquist that "voting is the packaging that comes with the gift of reasoning between informed participants." I voiced a slightly contrary opinion that I would like to elaborate on here.

My own position is that the best packaging for the "reasoning between informed participants" is consensus. It is through consensus that we recognize the need to both make a decision and honor the differences of opinion behind that decision. The extent to which Americans still believe that consensus is more important than voting results is reflected in the study conducted by Pew Forum study on Religion & Public Life, recently reported in "The Raw Story." Here is the important quote from that study:

Abortion continues to split the country nearly down the middle. But the large majority in favor of finding 'a middle ground' on the issue extends broadly across the political and religious spectrum. Only one group expressed unwillingness to find a middle way. Two-thirds (66%) of those who support an outright ban on abortion say there should be no compromise. In contrast, two-thirds of those who want abortion to be generally available are ready to seek a compromise.

This gets me back to my current inclination to bash mass media. The mass media are not interested in consensus, because consensus does not sell stuff. Ultimately, the marketplace is all about voting--choosing one product over another. So it is only natural that the media are going to report in a way that encourages a mind-set that favors electoral choice (voting with your pocketbook, as it were) over consensus. Folks of my age were probably first aware of this during the Kennedy-Nixon debates; but I am sure that the influence of the market mentality on the reporting of political matters goes back much further than that.

This takes us back to the hypothesis that our problem is not that America is not a population of "informed participants" but that the mass media are doing everything they can to keep them from being "informed participants!"

August 04, 2006: Wikipedia Goes to War

It all seems to have begun when last week's Onion ran a front-page story (which also appeared on their Web site) entitled "Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence." The Web site included the above captioned photograph. I really felt this was a great example of how sharply-focused humor can often tell a story far better than the most reasoned argumentation, the The Onion really has a knack for seeding their text with throw-away gags that too easily slip by unnoticed.

Did this article prompt Stephen Colbert to enter the fray? While there was no explicit acknowledgment, the timing of his July 31 broadcast makes one think. The Media Blog on CNET News.com provided a nice account of the whole affair, complete with a link to the YouTube video. However, while it appears that Wikipedia did not pay attention to The Onion (perhaps because they figured that Onion readers know what satire is, which is why they read The Onion in the first place), they decided that they would not let Colbert's jab go without a response. (Do they assume that Colbert's viewers do not know what satire is and now turn to Comedy Central as their primary source for news and commentary?) Yesterday's Media Blog reported that Wikipedia is trying to ban Colbert from interfering with their content. Admittedly, Colbert gave them more cause for concern than The Onion: If Colbert was not only celebrating the inaccuracies on Wikipedia but also encouraging his viewers to seed Wikipedia with bogus content, then I can understand why the editors at Wikipedia would be worried.

My question, though, is whether or not this was the right way for Wikipedia to react. The fact is that content maintenance is a far more delicate problem than Wikipedia has led us to believe. After all Wikipedia already had to deal with deliberately contributed bogus information in their article about John Seigenthaler, Sr.; and Seigenthaler raised quite a stick when he discovered it. Nevertheless, it appears that the way in which Wikipedia responsed was to incorporate information about the controversy into their article about Seigenthaler as evidence of how their system "works." The problem is that this situation was an isolated case. Their reaction to Colbert seems to be an admission that their "solution" would not scale up to a more massive attack on their content. So their "Plan B" reaction appears to be to censor Colbert; but there are a variety of ways in which we can envision a samizdat campaign to undermine Wikipedia content (without there necessarily being any involvement on Colbert's part).

Personally, I think that anyone interested in this episode would do well to bone up on Gresham's Law (possibly by reading the Wikipedia entry before anyone tries to muck with it). If "artificial" currency (such as paper fiat money) drives out specie, content that is "artificial" (in the sense of being made up without necessarily being in any way warranted) can drive out content that is more "substantiated." Come to think of it, isn't that what the Bush administration has been trying to do with mass media?

August 03, 2006: On "Climate Porn"

The BBC News Web site ran an interesting story about the Institute for Public Policy research accusing the mass media of indulging in "climate porn" in their presentation of environmental issues. (The above captioned image comes from that article.) In light of my recent attempt to address the problem of communicating the issues of global warming to the general public, this story piqued my interest. I certainly found it interesting as an attempt to analyze the ways in which the media are handling the global warming issue. On the other hand the story was also interesting for what it did not say: It did not really get into the difficulties inherent in reporting scientific results to a lay audience. This is a complex story that requires sorting out concrete evidence, interpretations of the evidence, and the extent to which conclusions can be said to be based on evidence, interpretations, or some combination of the two. That stuff just does not fit into a sound bite the way a shot of a lone polar bear floating on a small island of ice in the middle of nowhere does.

In other words, much as we would like to believe otherwise about the manipulation of mass media to warp the minds of the general public, the global warming story is just plain hard to report. Too much reasoning needs to be applied to evgen the most indisputably concrete data. Not only is the general public loath to engage in such a laborious effort (can you blame them?); but also the details of the argument are so intricate that it is easy for opponents to find plenty of nits to pick, regardless of how significant those nits may be to the overall thrust of the argument. In other words, no matter how sound and significant the argument may be, it is just too vulnerable to attack, regardless of the limited rationality of the attack.

Having said all that, I have to admit that I am not yet sure of my own position (on how to report about the environment, since I am pretty confident that there is genuine cause for alarm over global warming). I agree that there is something sensational (if not pornographic) about images and language more directed at seizing the attention than guiding it; but that has been a problem at least since Plato had Socrates complain about it in "Gorgias." Also, I dislike the strategy of fighting fire with fire, even when the fire comes from the likes of Congressman Roy Blunt, who has declared that, if he holds on to his seat in the House, he will make sure that there will be no action on global warming for the entire 110th Congress. On the other hand I also feel strongly that ignoring the climate problem (as Blunt is determined to do) is not going to make it go away and will probably make it worse. So, as the old joke goes, perhaps you really do have to whack the mule on the head with a two-by-four "in order to get his attention."

(Note: I would not presume to imply that Blunt or any other member of the Congress is a mule; as another old joke goes, that would be an insult to the mules!)

July 12, 2006: Why Irrationality?

Reading Jim Hansen's report on global warming in the July 13 New York Review left me wondering why it should be so hard to communicate such a painfully clear message. My reflex was to resort to a comment by Herbert Agar (which I used to associated with James Reston): "The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear." This is what makes the title of Gore's lecture/book/film so appropriate: the inconvenience of it all. On the other hand, Antonio Gramsci may have come closer to the mark with his theory of ideological domination. Here is how Randall Collins explained it in his Theoretical Sociology text:

The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, writing a few years later in his Prison Notebooks (1928/1971), however, argued that the working class is most afflicted by the power of the dominant class’s ideology. If not deceived by outright illusions, their minds are subject to ‘contradictory consciousness,’ with confused and fragmented judgments on the nature of the world they inhabit. This is because the ruling class is hegemonic: controlling not only property but—even more importantly—the means of producing beliefs about reality. These include religion, education, and more recently, the mass media. Thus the working class is severely crippled in its ability to revolt against the dominant order, or even think critically about it. (For modern examples, see Gitlin [1979] on the power of television, or the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s [1984] theory of the stratification produced by differences in personal taste and styles of entertainment, which he calls ‘cultural capital.’)

In other words, in less elevated langauge, what we prefer to hear is what the media tell us we prefer to hear.