Clinton and Media

With the elections for the Congress coming up in November in New York, one could ask if it’s really true. Is Hillary Clinton really running? Against who? For what position? While 2006 is considered like an “off-year” (no presidential elections), the medias seem to ignore or forget about those elections. Do they really? Leighley explains in his book “Mass Media and Politics” that media would talk about anything as long as people are interested. I remember from my American Politics class, Professor Pimpare saying how it was fascinating to observe that people could named you the name of the President but are incapable to remember who their U.S. House of Representative is. In the end of the day, he does much more for us than the President.

So to come back to Hillary Clinton, I found a very interesting article in the New York Times “THE NEW YORK PRIMARY: THE INCUMBENT; A Renominated Clinton Forgoes the Victory Dance” by Anne Kornblut (September 13, 2006) about the fact that Senator Clinton didn’t celebrated her victory at the primaries of the Democrat Party and instead went back to Washington. Maybe the intention of the journalist was just to criticize Hillary Clinton, but what I want to learn from that article, that if she felt comfortable to not have a party after winning the primaries, it is only because she knows that it wouldn’t be an issue. We are all aware of the fact that politicians depend a lot on their reputation, which bring us again to the question of how much the constituent know about their representatives.

For example, the New-York Sun, for September, published eight articles about Senator Clinton, while at the same time it publishes about four articles a day about the “war on terror”. Of course, one can argue that National Security interest more people, especially after 9/11, but as President Clinton said in his interview on Sunday night, if people want to know something it is because of the media. Media are responsible (partially?) for the level of interest and awareness that people have on some issues. In Newsday, which is a local newspaper, the editor chose to start publishing articles about the elections only a day before the primaries until three days later.

Leighley wrote that most voters won’t go and research about the candidates but will probably wait for the information to come to them. Considering the coverage that media offer to the “off year” elections, we shouldn’t be surprise if we’ll get, again, a low percentage of voters for the upcoming elections.

Cliton upset? Yes, and he admitted it

On this video from Fox News last night, Clinton answered to the journalist that if people were concerned about the reasons why his admnistration didn't kill Ben Laden, it was because of the desinformation that they were getting from "neo-con" medias.

“Declassifying” Steven Aftergood.

On Monday night, Steven Aftergood lectured us about an area that most people are unaware of: declassification of secret documents. Every year more than 20 millions documents are classified as secret and this requires a budget of 9 billions dollars to maintain an infrastructure like that. Steven Aftergood, according to the FAS (Federation of American Scientists) website is “directs the FAS Project on Government Secrecy, which works to reduce the scope of government secrecy, to accelerate the declassification of cold war documents, and to promote reform of official secrecy practices”. There are many levels of classified documents and there are about 4000 governmental employees who have the power to decide if a document should be release to the public or not. The question is of course, should we trust them? An organism like FAS has the role of counter balancing the power of the government, and I think their presence in D.C is more than necessary. Aftergood described his organism as apolitical, and without really explaining the benefits of the release of those classifieds documents, he advanced the idea that democracy is the best antidote to terrorism, here stopped by secrecy. While he acknowledged the utility of keeping some documents out of anybody’s hands, like war plans etc, he believed that the current administration has a policy of keeping things as secret without a good reason.
While I was hoping a great lecture and exciting news coming out of it, I’ve got a lot of “I don’t know” answers and a lot of speculations as explanation. Let’s be honest, Steven Aftergood has exactly the same rights than any other citizen in the country to declassify those documents.

Discovering Political Blogs

I decided to go on Little Green Football’s blog labeled Righty Blog according to Prof. Pimpare. And here there is: http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/entry=22542_Blair_Urges_Lifting_of_Palestinian_Sanctions&only

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Blair Urges Lifting of Palestinian Sanctions

Tony Blair has given some excellent speeches recently, full of ringing phrases about the big issues, confronting Islamic fascism, clash of civilizations stuff.

Then he does something like this. Blair urges lifting of Palestinian sanctions.

That’s right. While Hamas has not backed down one iota from their genocidal stance toward Israel, and continues to refuse to renounce terrorism, they make one token meaningless concession and Tony Blair’s ready to cave on the sanctions.

BRIGHTON, England (AFP) - Britain’s Tony Blair urged the lifting of economic sanctions on the Palestinian Authority, so long as a deal on a cabinet of national unity there meets international conditions.

He made the comments a day after returning from a three-day trip to the Middle East, during which he faced protests over his stance notably during the recent conflict between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.

“Yesterday’s announcement of a government of national unity in Palestine is precisely what I hoped for,” he said, referring to an agreement under which president Mahmud Abbas is to dissolve the current Hamas-led government.

“On the basis it is faithful to the conditions spelled out by the Quartet, that is the UN, EU, US and Russia, we should lift the economic sanctions on the Palestinian authority,” added the British prime minister.

The comments went from a four words sentence (“he’s an idiot”) to few lines. But, most of them reflected one thing: nobody read whatever the blogger wrote about Tony Blair. They all saw one word “Blair” and automatically a comment came up in their minds, translated into a blog on the internet. All of them were comments coming from rightists. Of course, one could ask himself what is the point of a blog if everybody agrees on the matter, but who said it had to be logic. People like to comfort themselves in their ideas so here is another way to do so. Concerning their political knowledge, for most of them it’s pretty hard to judge, since they just wrote few words. Others are completely ignorant on the question (“Has Cherie Blair converted to Islam yet?”) and comment more to comment than to make a point for a debate which is inexistent anyway. But some of them are actually well written, and the authors actually spent time and efforts composing them. The only thing is that they’re biased to their cause which leave the reader skeptic about anything they write.

Network (1976)by Lumet

Last night, I watched Network(1976), by Sidney Lumet, with Prof. Pimpare and some guys from the class (thanks to Gadi who arranged everything and the guy who brought the coke-sorry I don't know your name.) A journalist (Peter Finch) announced that he will commit sucide after learning that he's fired because of the bad popularity of his TV Show for which he worked during 25 years. He sinks quickly in a mystical madness, and is finally manipulated by UBS to become an insane preacher of the television news, transforming the TV Show into national success. At the same time, Lumet shows us the ascension of a producer (Faye Dunaway) manipulator and without scruples dedicating an immoderate worship to her career and the TV rating of her show. What impresses us especially in Network, it is the maitrise of Lumet to tell his story. The scenario - very complex - passes like a letter in the mail.The speeches of Finch for example, able alternatively to sell liberalism or to destroy the bases of the democracy. And then, this extraordinary scene where Jensen (CEO of the company) beats Beale on his own game and turns over it completely.
What to think about that movie? The idea was clear, the TV sells us whatever we would watch and has no scrupules to change any program if they don't "work". As Jensen explained to Finch, today there are no more goverments , there are big companies, big networks, and there is only one word: buisness!
Apparently this movie was very well recepted when it came out, but this idea of globalization of the medias and more generally of the rest of the world, nowadays isn't new. Medias need money in order to function and the only way for them to get it, is to have an audience. Of course, in this movie, the story went to the extreme. The real question would be more to find another system than to criticize the one we have. What are goverments supposed to do about it? In an ideal world, more competitive the medias are, better the news are. Let's not forget of the advantages of our system would be my comment on that movie.