Sunday, August 2, 2009

What's Wrong with America

I was just watching Bob Shieffer interview Larry Summers on Face the Nation on CBS. I dislike Summers. I think he is too close to Wall Street. But that's not my worry this morning. I'm watching the interview and notice that time and again that Shieffer is interrupting Summers' response to ask another question with the implication that Summers' isn't "telling it all". Odd. The US had just gone through a nightmare eight years and I don't recall any news organization stepping on the toes of administration spokesmen with questions that implied a distrust in the answer and an impatience to "get at the truth".

During the Bush years there was a crying need for the media to ask hard questions; they didn't. Here was Summers with a message that the US six months ago was wavering between bad recession and outright depression and now, six months later, the question under debate that Shieffer keeps pushing is "are we out of the recession now?". That doesn't strike me as an issue that requires tough questioning. The pushiness of Shieffer would have made more sense in the context of pushing Cheney over "what proof is there of weapons of mass destruction?" or Bush over "heckova job Brownie" in the midst of the most pitiful response to an emergency in US history. I don't get it.

But the problems are not just weak reporting and misplaced "aggressiveness" of the media...

Here is a post by Dean Baker on The American Prospect that raises some serious questions:
Washington Post Gives Whiny Reporter 2000 Words to Complain About Free Speech

Usually newspapers are big defenders of free speech, but not the Washington Post. It gave Ian Shapira, one of its reporters, nearly 2000 words to complain that a website had ripped off his story. The problem was not that the website had plagiarized the piece. Shapira acknowledged that his story was credited and even linked to by the website, which was a major source of readers for the original article.

However, Shapira is upset that the website may have made money off his work, because it sell ads based on viewership. In this case, the website piece based on Shapira's article drew 9,500 views. By way of response, Shapira wants "news organizations" to have the right to sue others that use their work without permission and profit from it.

This is a fascinating proposal coming from a "news organization." Let's think this one through for a moment. First, Shapira does not even know that he was harmed by the website piece. It is entirely possible that more people viewed his piece on the Post's site as a result of the version appearing on the website. So, if Shapira had his way, fewer people might have seen his piece. That may be a good thing, but how does he benefit from this?

There is a simple point that anyone who knows economics (taboo at the Post) would make. If people opt to read the piece on another website rather than the Post, then there must be some reason. Obviously they prefer something about this alternative venue. Perhaps the layout is better, the mix of articles is better, or maybe the person who wrote the spinoff piece for the website is a better writer.

If the protectionist measure advocated in this piece succeeded in shutting down the competition, then there would be a clear loss to readers. This loss would likely dwarf the loss to consumers that the Post routinely whines about so loudly when anyone suggests a tariff on imports or any other barrier to trade. After all, those forms of protection rarely add more than 10-15 percent to the price of a product. In this case, the Post's proposal may make the product unavailable altogether. Yet again, we see that protectionism is just fine with "free traders." The only issue is who is being protected.

Finally, let's consider what the enforcement of the Post's measure looks like. First who is a "news organization?" Is this a title that one registers for with the government? Does the Post get the title but not its website competitors? I suppose those big bucks dinners with lobbyists and policymakers really are worth something.

As a practical matter, it would be an incredible affront to the first amendment if the Post and other major newspapers and established news outlets were given any special ability to sue under such an act, compared to websites or for that matter think tanks. (If someone takes the major findings of a CEPR paper and uses it for a newspaper article, should we able to sue, even if we are credited [often we're not]?)

In reality, this proposal is a recipe for a vast legal morass that would result in the bullying of small websites by "news organizations" that could afford to hire high-powered lawyers. It is a protectionist measure that both carries high economic costs and is an obstacle to the exercise of free speech.

There is one legitimate point in this piece: the current newspaper model is not viable. But rather than trying to save the horse and buggy industry by outlawing the automobile, how about trying to adapt. There are alternative ways to support news writing and other creative work that take advantage of the possibilities offered by the web, rather than trying to stifle them.

Unfortunately the Post is not interested in alternatives to their business model (I've tried). The problem is that we have a creative class that is just not very creative. So instead we get the comical sight of a newspaper arguing against free speech.
I remember the late 1950s and 1960s when there was great fear around the world of "superiority" of American business methods, of the the "can do" American attitude, and the sense that "progress" was attainable. Today the mood is of phony claims, pushy "reporting", crony capitalism in the heart of Wall Street, and of corruption in a bought Congress. Sad.

Meanwhile, this morning I watched an idiotic "opinion piece" by Ben Stein on CBS's Sunday Morning complaining that Obama was trying to do "too much". Stein kept saying "Mr. Obama do only one thing". Funny, when the airline crashed in the Hudson River and there were a number of activities to coordinate (notify the tower, glide to a crash landing, deploy evacuation chutes, organize and orderly evacuation of the plane, bring in local boats to collect survivors, etc.) I don't remember anybody castigating Sullenberger to "do only one thing".

If Sullenberger had followed Stein's advice and "did only one thing", say focusing on communicating with the tower, and not searching for an alternative landing site, the plane would have crashed into buildings instead of soft landing on water. If you focus only on deploying the evacuation chutes without organizing the passengers for an orderly evacuation, the people would have paniced and many would have died in the crush of sauve qui peut.

It would be so nice if the world were the one-problem-at-a-time fairyland that Ben Stein inhabits. In the real world crisis requires action on many fronts. Ben Stein has been wrong time after time. He argued that the market was "sound" back in 2008 just as it plunged. He argued that Bush's policies in Iraq were a winning strategy as Iraq descended into a hell-on-earth. Why does the media continue to give time to this clown? (And I don't even go near Fox "News" which is a completely absurd clown show that has given up the pretense of news under the banner of "fair and balanced".)

I've started reading Simon Schama's The American Future. The introduction is very moving. Schama talks of the "rebirth" of democracy as he relates what he saw in the Iowa caucus of January 2008.

So there is lot's wrong in America. But as always, there are lots of seeds of hope. My optimism says that we are on the brink of a rebirth. It won't all be pristine and pure. There will be lots of flaws. Obama and the Congress are in the clutches of Big Money. But things are starting to move again. It is like early spring shoots showing up with winter snows keep swirling around. Something better is around the corner.

Now... if only there was some way to "clean up" the media in the US so that it provided news and not entertainment, if the snake oil salesmen were replaced by earnest young reporters eager to find news and not pontificate with blighted ideologies dressed up as "news". There's lots wrong, but I think I see a little of some things that are right.

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