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Bad news bears change tone of media script

When the Ameritrade company launched a $200 million marketing drive to explain the joys of online trading in autumn 1999, a barrage of TV commercials invited viewers to join in the fun. The news was bullish, and the firm's motto -- "Believe in yourself" -- provided an upbeat message. Tech stocks led advances in self-affirmation.

A senior vice president at Ameritrade proclaimed that online investing "empowers individuals to take control of their financial lives." Within several months, the Nasdaq composite index nearly doubled. When spring 2000 began, plenty of satisfied new customers were glad to be playing the click-and-invest game.

Now, four seasons later, the Nasdaq is less than half of where it was. Losses have been particularly devastating for many of the investors who'd found the get-with-it advertisements and other media hype too irresistible to resist a year ago.

Eating Crow, Eating Dog

Commander-in-Chief Bush doesn't want to eat crow, but the truly big question is whether those captive boys and girls from the U.S. surveillance plane are being forced to eat dog without their knowledge. The Canadians, eager to discredit their rival, China, as a host of the 2008 Olympics, have been putting out stories about the Middle Kingdom's trade in St. Bernard dogs, which the Chinese fatten to succulence, then slaughter and prepare in various delectable dishes too numerous for individual citation at this time.

The Turks, also vying to host those 2008 games, are similarly printing St. Bernard atrocity stories discreditable to the Chinese Peoples' Republic. Will the Olympic Committee, of which Henry Kissinger (a lobbyist for the PRC) is a member, order tests of Chinese athletes to see if they have been strengthened by the tasty musculature of the St. Bernards?

U.S. - China Dispute: From Other Side of Media Window

It's not easy to look at ourselves as others might see us. For a country, the need is especially acute in times of international crisis -- but that's when nationalism and other reflexive biases are most likely to become pivotal.

One of the ways to test for media slant is to put the shoe on the other foot. A big story this month provides an opportunity for inquiry in the world of intense media spin.

Here are some excerpts from actual U.S. news coverage, with only one type of change -- I've reversed the references to China and the United States. The mirror-image narrative is worth pondering.

ABC World News Tonight: "There are concerns about national security and a Chinese military flight crew that was forced to make an emergency landing during a surveillance flight along the East Coast of the United States. The Chinese spy plane was equipped with sophisticated intelligence-gathering technology."

CNN: "Chinese military officials say that they are, first and foremost, concerned about the safety of the crew. They want that crew returned back to China."

Stones and Glass Houses, Said and Sontag

Here's a parable about what is intellectually respectable and politically safe in this country, and what is not. It concerns two of this country's best known public intellectuals, Edward Said and Susan Sontag.

It's a backhanded tribute to his effectiveness as spokesman for the Palestinian cause that the attacks on the Palestinian Said have, across the last couple of years, reached new levels of envenomed absurdity.

The latest storm over Said concerns a trip to Lebanon he took last summer, in the course of which he and his family took the opportunity to visit the recently evacuated "security zone" formerly occupied by Israeli forces, first the terrible Khiam prison, then a deserted border post, abandoned by Israeli troops, and now crowded with festive Lebanese throwing exuberant stones at the heavily fortified border.

Freep Heroes - Spring 2001

FREEP HEROES

Subcommandante Marcos and the Zapatistas

As the Zapatistas say, “Our struggle is yours.” As we go to press, Subcommadante Marcos and the Zapatista delegation are in Mexico City attempting to negotiate an indigenous Bill of Rights, long overdue after 509 years of the conquistadors. We salute their efforts and stand in solidarity with their struggle against corporate “neo-liberal” economics ravaging Central America under the guise of “Free Trade.”

THE FREE PRESS SALUTES

Columbus City Councilwoman Charleta Tavares

Once again, we salute Charleta Tavares. With the School Board moving in the opposite direction in restricting citizen input, Tavares has courageously opened up the committee she chairs on Council, the Health, Housing and Human Services Committee, to more citizen’s input. Tavares understands that when democracy isn’t working just right the solution is not to hide in the bunker, but to invite more participation.

ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE

Ex-Columbus Public Schools Superintendent Rosa Smith

The non-issue of 'media finance reform'

WASHINGTON -- During the first days of spring, cold winds blew through the nation's capital. The weather was an apt metaphor for the chilling effects of a perennial news industry desensitized to its own numbing. Don't worry, we've been told countless times: Media outlets are diverse enough to maintain vigilance.

"I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that doesn't have a slant," E.B. White observed in a 1956 essay. To that candid assessment he added a more dubious one: "The beauty of the American free press is that the slants and the twists and the distortions come from so many directions, and the special interests are so numerous, the reader must sift and sort and check and countercheck in order to find out what the score is. This he does."

The Noise on I-40

NEW MEXICO -- Drive across the United States, mostly on Interstate 40, and you'll have plenty of time to listen to the radio. Even more time than usual if, to take my own situation, you're in a 1976 Ford 350 one-ton pickup, ploughing along at 50 mph. By day I listen to FM.

Bunked down at night, there's some choice on the motels' cable systems, all the way from C-SPAN to pay-as-you-snooze filth, though there's much less of that than there used to be, or maybe you have to go to a Marriott or kindred high-end place to get that. By contrast, the choice on daytime radio, FM or AM, is indeed a vast wasteland far more bleak than the high plains of Texas and New Mexico I've been looking at for the past couple of days.

It's awful. Even the religious stuff has gone to the dogs. I remember 20 years ago making the same drive through the Bible Belt and you'd hear crazed preachers raving in tongues. These days, hell has gone to love. Christian radio is so warm and fuzzy you'd think you were listening to Terry Gross.

Greenhouse Gas and Global Warming: The Great Delusion

Before the coal industry told him to quit putting his foot in his mouth, even George W. Bush, born and bred in a Texas oil patch, subscribed to the notion that global warming is largely caused by the so-called "greenhouse gasses," the responsibility of us humans. Bush's Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill, hands out to his fellow cabinet members horror scenarios about the earth frying.

But do all those gloomsters about global warming really know what they're talking about? Remember those dud forecasts of a blizzard-of-the-century in the northeast United States earlier this month? If the weather folk can't figure out what's happening for the rest of the week, why do they think they can tell us what the climate will be across the next decade, the next 50 years or the next century?

The Digital Promise of a Global Village

Many Americans have seen the digital dream of global communications vividly expressed on TV commercials for Cisco Systems. Eager to promote its theme of "empowering the Internet generation," the giant high-tech firm paid for a lot of lovely ads with adorable children from different countries asking: "Are you ready?"

By now, we understand that our response is supposed to be -- must be -- affirmative. But our best answer may be a question: "Ready for what?"

History tells cautionary tales. After the first rudimentary telegraph went into operation 207 years ago in Europe, media analyst Armand Mattelart says, "long-distance communication technology was promoted as a guarantee of the revival of democracy." During the next several decades, a powerful concept took hold -- "the ideology of redemption through networks."

After Hanssen: What are Spies For?

The air now quivers with gloomy assessments of the secrets "compromised" by the FBI's Robert Hanssen, a senior official who stands accused of working for the Russians since 1985.

If you believe the FBI affidavit against him filed in federal court, Hanssen betrayed spies working for the United States, some of whom were then executed. Among many other feats, he allegedly ratted on "an entire technical program of enormous value, expense and importance to the United States," which turns out to have been the construction of a tunnel under the new Soviet Embassy in Washington D.C. He trundled documents by the cartload to "dead drops" in various suburbs around Washington D.C., often within a few minutes walk from his house.

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