Robert Paterson's Weblog

This Is How It Starts « Rosenblum TV

Hitler arrives at Nuremberg for rally 1933 – another very popular orator

Normally I don’t write about politics here.

But not today.

I recently posted a note to Hoda Kotb from the Today Show. She had an item on her Facebook page asking what she should cover in her show.

Most of the answers posted related to shoes or clothing or divorces.  I told her she should speak out about the growing trend to publicly accepted racism in our culture, with Muslims paying the role of the Jews this time.

So far, she is sticking to shoes. Kotb, by the way, is Arabic for book.

The Failings of Public Education

When I went to school in the 1960s, almost all of my teachers were women.

They were women because in those days, the only jobs women could get were teacher, nurse or secretary. And so the smartest went into teaching.

And they were good. Very good.

When new opportunities opened for women in the 70s, (and I am old enough to remember when a woman going to Harvard Business School was still a big story), the smartest flocked to careers as lawyers or MDs or CEOs.  They followed the money.

In the days when women had no choice, schools could get away with paying teachers $23,000 a year, or less for women, and no one said a word – and they were able to attract the best talent in the country.

When other opportunities became available, the schools should have responded by making teaching as competitive as law, and paying as much.  But they didn’t. Instead, we debased the public educational system in America.  Oh, there are still those who teach out of pure dedication, but that’s like asking people to go to medical school and then head off to work for Medcin sans Frontiers. There are those who do, but not many.

I taught for many years at both Columbia University and NYU, and over the course of time, I watched as the level of basic education that my students came in with dropped and dropped and dropped. They were not stupid. Far from it, they were just uneducated – increasingly so. And interestingly, they didn’t care.  Most did not know the difference between Martin Luther and Martin Luther King, and if they had to find out, they could always go to the web and Google it.

What we eroded was a basic foundation of fundamental knowledge, which by now, I think, is pretty much gone.

And the price we pay is that we have created a society without the ability to process information through any kind of historical wisdom.

So when Glenn Beck goes to the Lincoln Memorial and proclaims that he is the true heir to the Civil Rights Movement; when he and his Tea Party follower proclaim that the President is the racist here; when he fundamentally rewrites the history of this country to suit his own ends, one would think that an educated nation would laugh him off the stage.

But they don’t.

They don’t because we no longer have an educated nation that can process what he says through a lens of intelligence.

We have a nation of people who get their information superficially, and lacking in any kind of grounding of basic education, can be easily swayed by demagoguery of the worst kind.

For two generations we have ignored the infrastructure of this country.

Our bridges rust out and collapse.

That makes news.

Well our schools are rusted out and collapsing. And when the education of our nation rots and collapses, its is a whole lot more serious than when a bridge collapses, or deciding which shoes to buy.

What is happening today at the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Dr. King’s I Have A Dream Speech is nothing short of pornography. Public pornography based on a collection of lies.

But we have a public that has lost the ability to discern the truth for itself.

This is how it starts.

And if you know anything about history, you already know how it finishes.

But alas, most people don’t even know that.

But they will. Sadly.

via rosenblumtv.com

I quote Michael Rosenblum in full today. For he touches on the peril that confronts America today.

Can America get its Mojo back?

In Jane Jacobs great book Dark Age Ahead - she makes the point that the signifier for a great states's decline is growing xenophobia. Leading to a retreat into a fortress culture. This is what happened to China and what happened to the Muslim world. Both were many steps ahead of Europe but bothy retreated into themselves.

In the "fortress" thinking is not allowed or welcome. As Michael notes - many do not care that they know nothing. There is a pride in ignorance.

Such a society will look to the simple and to demagogues. Such a society will set up the the preconditions of "Collapse" - a structural inability to respond to challenges.

Don't we see signs of this inability today? As I see it we do.

This is why I am passionate in my support for public TV and radio's efforts to expand their role from providing good content to providing a safe place where the community can have a discourse about issues that are important to them.

At KETC in St Louis this effort began with creating such a safe place to help each other cope with the mortgage crisis. Now we are trying to find a way of facilitating the kind of discourse that will enable America to have a better approach to Immigration - an issue that will surely determine America's future as much as any other.

WGTE in Toledo will be doing the same soon on local agriculture.

My hope is that such an approach - of having a local in depth discourse on challenging topics such as who is an American? How we get our food? Jobs and the economy? Health? Education? Is our only chance of breaking out of the polarization of our politices and the over influence of the corporate will.

I don't see any other opportunity? Do you?

Posted via email from Rob's posterous

News #Fail CBC on the F35 #fail on defence

How the mainstream news fails us - they don't do their work. They stay on the surface. This is what makes the news part of the problem that we all face today - that we have no idea what is really going on!

The CBC report that a Canadian F18 fighter tracked a Russian fly by and escorted them out of Canadian airspace. Seems an innocuous story doesn't it?. But then the story moves onto the question of the F35 replacement - basically making the point that we need this new plane. The entire piece is lifted from a press release.

My problem is not that the story is lifted from the press release - laziness is only a small sin!

No it is that the CBC has missed all along the real story of the F35. The real story that has been building for years. That will blow up "suddenly" causing all to ask "What happened" That will mean that the public will have been hoodwinked into paying billions for something that does not work. 

For the real story is that it is an utter failure as a fighter! The real story is that this is no secret - it has been central to the procurement debate for several years!

It performs much worse than all the planes that it is meant to replace.

Here is a snip from Winslow Wheeler - THE expert on procurement (More on who he is and his POV here)

Even sadder than Lockheed's desperate grasp for reasons to do nothing to fix the self-dismembering F-35 program is the fact that the future of Western combat aviation relies on it. The 2,456 models of it on order for the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps will ultimately replace almost all tactical aircraft now in our inventory, except for the F-22, for which production beyond 187 aircraft was cancelled this past summer. Major allies, including Britain and much of the rest of Western Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, and Israel have all made commitments to buy the aircraft. Sales to many others (there's a long list) are postulated, and those who do not intend to buy the F-35 will probably copy it to the extent their treasuries, government bureaucracies, and technological development permit.

Unfortunately, the F-35 is unaffordable, and it is a technological kluge that will be less effective than airplanes it replaces. It will undo our air forces and our allies', not help them.

The problems with the F-35 are not limited to its cost.

As a fighter, the F-35 depends on a technological fantasy. Having failed to develop in the 1950s, the 1960s, and the 1970s an effective (and reliable) radar-based technology to shoot down enemy (not friendly) aircraft "beyond visual range," the Air Force is trying yet again with the F-35, like the F-22 before it. Both have the added development of "stealth" (less detectability against some radars at some angles), but that new "high tech" feature and the long range radar have imposed design penalties that compromised the aircraft with not just high cost but also weight, drag, complexity, and vulnerabilities. The few times this technology has been tried in real air combat in the past decade, it has been successful less than half the time, and that has been against incompetent and/or primitively equipped pilots from Iraq and Serbia.

If the latest iteration of "beyond visual range" turns out to be yet another chimera, the F-35 will have to operate as a close-in dogfighter, but in that regime it is a dog. If one accepts every aerodynamic promise DOD currently makes for it, the F-35 will be overweight and underpowered. At 49,500 pounds in air-to-air take-off weight with an engine rated at 42,000 pounds of thrust, it will be a significant step backward in thrust-to-weight and acceleration for a new fighter. In fact, at that weight and with just 460 square feet of wing area for the Air Force and Marine Corps versions, the F-35's small wings will be loaded with 108 pounds for every square foot, one third worse than the F-16A. (Wings that are large relative to weight are crucial for maneuvering and surviving in combat.) The F-35 is, in fact, considerably less maneuverable than the appallingly vulnerable F-105 "Lead Sled," a fighter that proved helpless in dogfights against MiGs over North Vietnam. (A chilling note: most of the Air Force's fleet of F-105s was lost in four years of bombing; one hundred pilots were lost in just six months.)

Nor is the F-35 a first class bomber for all that cost: in its stealthy mode it carries only a 4,000 pound payload, one third the 12,000 pounds carried by the "Lead Sled."

As a "close air support" ground-attack aircraft to help US troops engaged in combat, the F-35 is too fast to identify the targets it is shooting at; too delicate and flammable to withstand ground fire, and too short-legged to loiter usefully over embattled US ground units for sustained periods. It is a giant step backward from the current A-10. 

The real story is at the heart of the problem facing the US and its allies in equipment replacement. The new kit costs too much and does not work.

So here is Canada signing on to a vast expense for kit that will not do the job - better we have asked to reopen the F18 line - after all the Russians are not building anything new.

The CBC and all the Canadian media are more than lazy here. The Canadian public knows nothing about the failure of the F35 and the deal has been done. Billions of precious dollars have been committed to a dud. We know nothing!

Who at the CBC has any idea about defence and what is going on? It's not a small topic. Who talks also about what is really going on in Afghanistan? I don't mean the usual ramp ceremonies, killings and corruption stories - I mean is nation building a legitimate strategy? 

Billions have been spent and more to come. 151 of our sons and daughter have been killed so far. But who at the CBC can go deep on this? 

We need a news service that can go beneath the surface. 

My bet is that the response will be costs. The CBC does not have the budget. That is rubbish.If I can read Winslow Wheeler then so can they. If I can read people like Steven Pressfield on Afghanistan - so can they. The expertise on any topic is out there. You just need the culture to go there.

The CBC is not alone here - where is the reporting in any other Canadian mainstream media organization? 

Don't you find it annoying that they go on and on about the value of their organizations and almost never get beyond a press release or the obvious?

The Media - Want trust & traction - Get a tribe or offer a Spicy Soup

Terry Heaton wrote a cool post about this slide:

Trust in the media is shrinking rapidly. Something is not working and it is getting worse just as the issues that confront us all need to be reported better.

Terry of course asked the big question of Why? Why is trust in the media falling? He thinks that Jay Rosen's concern about the "Voice from Nowhere" is part of this and adds a strong additional argument that a media source that only has one point of view - its own - feels more and more like a shill. Who trusts a shill?

I would like to add a bit more to both Jay and Terry's arguments. I think that if we go deeper into how culture shapes us and how Tribal culture is we can see more clearly how to react to this situation.

I have been looking at the issue of Cultural Cognition - or the filters that we use to make meaning of the world. Dan Kahan's thesis is that most Americans fit into a set of cultural tribes that determine how they process information. Walter Russell Mead also thinks a great deal about this form of filtering by culture and has defined a set of easy to understand labels to capture the biases of the larger groupings.

Let's jump to the real world of the media to illustrate what this cultural filter means in practice.

In spite of the overall decline in the trust in the media - there are some paradoxes

• NPR is surging - with huge increases in listeners - they say it is because of the demand for sound news - NPR is highly trusted but.....
• Fox is surging too and it too is highly trusted
• CNN is sinking and is not trusted

Why is NPR and Fox rising in numbers and trust while most of the media is falling?

I think that the answer is that both play to the cultural bias of two very important cultural tribes in America

• Fox to the Jacksonians
• NPR to the Jeffersonians
• Rachel Maddow plays to the more liberal wing of the Jeffersonians. Rush Limbaugh to the more extreme wing of the Jacksonians.

If you play to no tribe such as I think is the case for CNN - you get no traction. If you are the voice from nowhere - you will not have people attach strongly to you. 

Dan Kahan's research shows how the cultural fit works.

First of all - The Tribes exist - they can only see what is going on through their filters. They are waiting to attach or to attack what fits or does not fit. If you think that people are not tribal and are not culturally filtered then you miss it all.

Second - no matter what the content! They can sense if the messenger is one of them. No matter what he or she says - the cultural fit of the messenger is the starting point of acceptance or rejection. So at the extreme ends - Rachel is the ideal messenger as is Limbaugh. If you offer no cultural fit for the messenger, then you have missed it all. No one is neutral. Neutral has no power.

Thirdly - how the issue is Framed increases the attachment or the rejection. The lead, the POV, the context all mean that the content - that can be the same in the 2 camps is perceived and reacted to entirely differently. So how you frame is another pivotal issue. You must frame with a tribe in mind.

But suppose you want to bring the tribes closer together? What could you do if you choose not to either Fox or NPR?

• You can tune into several tribes - Terry is going there and I know that Jay is too - Have a big pond with fish that all like swimming in it. Dan Kahan's research has shown that you can get the tribes closer by mixing the messengers up - have messengers that are tuned into a tribe tell the other story
• Create a rich and spice soup with lots of different chunks - in the good old days PBS had William F Buckley as well as Bill Moyers - mix it up but have strong cultural positions and messengers. 
• The closing of gap comes from the mix

The choice is porridge or curry.

If you want to know more about Dan Kahan's thinking here is a neat video series

Is Evil real ?- Is Mainstream Media - its Agent?

Does "Evil" exist? Debatable. But for sure, "Evil Behaviour" exists. And what could be more Evil than manipulating people's fears? 

There is a lot of that going around now - and regretfully the mainstream media helps these people have power to build a platform based on these fears.

They do this in the name of a good idea 'Balance". But how do you balance truth and lies? "Truth or Lies? That is a bit strong Rob?" Well.... The proof is in the pudding. What do many people believe to be true today and how did this happen? Do they believe the truth or lies?

Here is Robert Reich's perspective:

Many Americans (and politicians who the polls) don’t want a mosque at Manhattan’s Ground Zero.

An increasing percent believe the President is a Muslim.

Most Americans approve of Arizona’s new law allowing police to stop anyone who looks Hispanic and demand proof of citizenship.

Most would deny citizenship to children born in the United States to parents who are here illegally.

Where is all this coming from?  

It’s called fear. When people are deeply anxious about holding on to their homes, their jobs, and their savings, they look for someone to blame. And all too often they find it in “the other” – in people who look or act differently, who come from foreign lands, who have what seem to be strange religions, who cross our borders illegally.

Americans who feel economically insecure may even become paranoid, believing, say, that the President of the United States is secretly one of “them.”

Economic fear is the handmaiden of intolerance. It’s used by demagogues who redirect the fear and anger toward people and groups who aren’t really to blame but are easy scapegoats.

The mainstream media is being manipulated by these people in the name of "Balance". The outcome is that Ignorance is winning over Truth. I am seeing that the best of intentions are creating the worst of outcomes. 

The lies and the fallacies are winning. The "Simple" is crushing the "complex". There is no room for the Complex in Mainstream Media - so the "Simple" and Wrong gets the play.

Why is this happening? Is it just the poor economy? I think it is because the world has become more complex as it has become more connected. Most people can only cope with the simple or the complicated. They have to know the answers. But with Complex situations the answers cannot be known in advance.

Are we then stuck? Stuck in a social world that is complex but in a society that cannot cope with complexity? Is our media simply a product of a simple world that has simple issues?

Richard Gayle.

Many things in the world are changing very rapidly. Heuristics and rules of thumb that used to work – simplifications once true because they were in alignment with the real world – no longer provide a useful function. So people use confirmation bias and other rational fallacies to prop up something – anything – that can explain things in a way that gives them comfort.

A changing world is extremely uncomfortable. Toffler wrote about this in Future Shock, one of the great books of the 70s. This shock, like culture shock, leaves many people disconnected and stressed. So, it is natural for people to seek the comfort of just-so stories that can support their replica of the real world

What seems to be happening, though, is that the media, instead of promoting understanding and stifling ignorance, is actually facilitating it. The MSM just does not want to puncture any bubbles supporting Cargo Cult Worlds.

The MSM is actively working then to prevent us from finding solutions. It does not want to inform people of the underlying principles needed to solve many of our problems.

Thus, a lot of the people know that TARP happened after Obama took office. That Social Security cards tell you which bank owns you.That humans were created in their present form 10,000 years ago. That germs do not cause disease. That Cordoba is a purely a symbol of Islamic conquest. That Einstein’s theories of relativity are disproved by Jesus’ action-at-a-distance. That a bike share program is going to lead to increased abortions. That vaccines do more harm than good. That humans are apparently alive and at work on Mars. That climate scientists are wrong about the warming of the world. That Phoenix is the kidnapping capital of the world. These are just from the last 2 weeks.

There actually are people of all political persuasions that want to promote understanding, that value ideas over ideology, that are willing to admit that the world is often more complex than we would like.

But these people seem to have smaller and smaller soapboxes in the public arena. And the MSM does everything it can to make them disappear.

If we hope to overcome our problems we have to work for greater understanding and work to overturn Cargo Cult Worlds. Otherwise, we will see a continuing disconnect from reality with an increasing inability to understand the principles underlying our real world problems

Is the media Evil? No I think they are prisoners of a dangerous idea - that all ideas are worthy and that all points of view demand support.

So what about those that exploit our fears? Are they evil? What motivates them? What is the outcome of their work?

I leave you with the story of their ancestor, Father Coughlin. It was he who worked so hard to incite anti semitism in America in the 1930's that meant that America closed its doors before the holocaust. It was he that used the then new media power of radio to capture a large audience of "believers".

How would we apply the ideals of "Balance" to him? What was the price of him not being called out? Was this America's finest hour? I think most can agree that what he did was evil. So how will history judge us?

So what to do? Our media is not designed to cope with complexity. Nothing makes a complex situation worse than by trying to cope with it using the rules for simple.

So the real future, as I see it, for media is not the use of Facebook etc Is not going online etc But is finding out how best to offer up a platform for engaging in complexity. In creating a space where the process that can offer solutions to complex issues, discovery, can take place.

The Cynefin framework is a great place to start

 

The Cynefin framework has five domains. The first four domains are:

• Simple, in which the relationship between cause and effect is obvious to all, the approach is to Sense - Categorise - Respond and we can apply best practice.
• Complicated, in which the relationship between cause and effect requires analysis or some other form of investigation and/or the application of expert knowledge, the approach is to Sense - Analyze - Respond and we can apply goodpractice.
• Complex, in which the relationship between cause and effect can only be perceived in retrospect, but not in advance, the approach is to Probe - Sense - Respond and we can sense emergent practice.
• Chaotic, in which there is no relationship between cause and effect at systems level, the approach is to Act - Sense - Respond and we can discover novel practice.

The fifth domain is Disorder, which is the state of not knowing what type of causality exists, in which state people will revert to their own comfort zone in making a decision.

More later.

Immigration - Why are so many people SO ANGRY!

I have been immersed in the issue of Immigration as part of my work for KETC. I am using a wonderful tool called Darwin - more on this later - to observe the full debate. I spend hours every day looking at a very wide range of formal and informal posts and at thousands of comments.

I am overwhelmed by much of the anger I have found. It hurts me to read it. Not just because I have another point of view but feeling this rage every day is emotionally wearing.

At first my reaction was anger too! "How can they be so stupid as to see things in this way?" was my first reaction.

But I had an aha the other day as I was listening to a program about reconciliation in Rwanda. The big point is that I picked up is that this anger is NOT stupid. It is rooted in something that is very real for those that feel it. The piece made the point that I was being stupid by thinking others as stupid and that I would do better to have some compassion and think more about WHY they were so angry.

So why the anger? I don't claim to have THE answer and I look forward to hearing from you about why you think this is so. But here are my thoughts as they are for now.

The stated reasons are that illegal immigrants are "Illegal" they are law breakers. That they are taking jobs - lowering wages - that they are driving crime - that they are consuming tax resources etc.

But I wonder is that really the source of the anger? After all I don't see this fuss about crime generally. I don't see a big fuss against all the employers who have shuttered workplaces and exported jobs abroad. I don't see the fuss about how technology has driven jobs away and lowered wages. 

Is this all about the economy? In good times are we all "UP"? Certainly we have seen a shift in Arizona that used to be pro immigrant in the good times.

I think that these may just be surface issues that are easy to talk about. But do they drive this level of anger?

What do people kill each other over? What issue really drives us crazy with anger and fear?

Is it not when we feel our identity is threatened? 

Take religion - the worst wars and the worst acts have been committed when people are divided by different beliefs. 

Look at mariages and families what drives violence there? Issues of power, control which are of course all about identity - who is in charge - can lead to abuse and even to murder.

Take civil wars which are always the most brutal of all conflicts - they are always about an idea of identity - States Rights versus the Nation - royalists versus parliament - The Citizen versus the Tsar - the Balkans! Ireland!

This is the level of anger that I am finding every day all over the web. This is the emotion that politicians are feeding off. This is why I am so fearful for this anger carries enormous power with it that cannot be reasned with. You can't argue a case with someone who is overwhelmed by their feelings. Nor can you tell people that cannot or should not feel how they do.

In most cases once the anger has been ignited, the fire has to burn as it did in Rwanda. 800,000 died in 100 days in Rwanda. Remember that 600,000 Americans died in the Civil War - the first Total war of all time. In most cases Reconciliation can only take place after oceans of blood have been spilled.

So finding the source of the anger - giving it a place - exploring it BEFORE it drives a conflagration is surely a matter of urgency?

What then is the identity in America that is under siege? Whose identity is most threatened? What are the forces in play? Who is fanning the flames? Why?

In Rwanda the answers to who and why are now clear - it was the media - one station in particular.

What can realistically be done to reduce the anger and the tension

I have my own ideas but I am interested in yours first.

The Path to Success as an immigrant? Putting the PUBLIC into public TV

via explorehomeland.org

Here is a film made by Grace Holdinghaus, a graduate of our community film making class - The nineAcademy - she went into the community to ask her question and this is what she found.

As important as her film is on its own - the larger issue for me is that KETC is helping the public learn how to be film makers and is offering the also a space on it's website to have their films seen and shared.

Putting the Public into Public TV

Posted via email from Rob's posterous

Immigration and the Media - A new way ahead at KETC - What about you?

via explorehomeland.org

This is from our "beta" site at KETC where we are getting ready for a real launch of our work on Immigration next week.

This short clip says a lot about what we are trying to do. The main focus of this clip is a conversation about how the media is handling Immigration. As you will see, the people at the dinner table are not impressed!

They remind us that Immigration has become not only a "Hot" issue but is also very polarizing. How the media handles issues like this is seen by them as being a major part of the problem

They fear that if the media does not change this practice that we will never get to the place we need to to deal with this issue or in fact with any complex issue.

So what to do? KETC is not a traditional news organization but it is a public TV station in St Louis. What are some of the things that we hope to do over the next months?

Firstly it is to create spaces where real conversation can take place.

This clip shows a tiny aspect of this intention. In this case we had been involved in a conversation on Linkedin about immigration that had surprised us with how civic the tone was. There were people with many different and strongly held views - but they were polite and respectful. So we asked some of them if they would like to continue the conversation over a dinner that we would host and film.

This is the first clip of what will be many and what we hope will become a series where particular topics will be raised. Here you see what they think of the media today - not much!

We will be doing much more of this - making it safe for people to have a conversation - both on film and online.

We are also helping the public have their voice. Until now the public's voice is very filtered. We are creating a space where people can talk directly to people.

To help pull this off, we have set up a school to teach the public in St Louis how to make their own films. We can all point and shoot video today - but telling a good story and editing well is hard. Every week we are training new classes of the public in how to tell a story on Video.

So we are we are putting the "Public" into the Production of Public TV.

You will see a lot of films made by people just like you about immigration. We are using the web and this space to offer the public their own voice.

We are also putting the public in the driver's seat in how we conceive of a traditional show as well.

Traditionally TV producers think deep thoughts and then go out and find the stories that they hope the public will like. We have reversed this process as well. Over the last 8 months, we have gone out into the immigrant and refugee communities in St Louis and asked them what was going on. We have talked to more than 300 groups and to more than 1,000 people.

Before this we knew as little as most people do about immigration. Now we know a lot. You will meet many of these people on our site. You will discover them as we did - no longer as labels but as people. Not as "the other" but as flesh and blood people like you.

Based on all of this interaction - we are also making a 4 hour documentary about immigration. Months of engagement in the community has given this work the kind of roots that are unusual.

Starting soon we will share with you - long before the work is finished - parts of the stories, people in the stories, issues raised by the stories - so that we can use your feedback and interaction with you to refine our work further.

Finally we will share with you what we have learned from this work. Even if we are partly successful, we hope that we may help others go further.

I wish I could say to you that this has been easy or even fun. It has been the hardest and most painful work that I and many involved have been through.

Why? Because it is all about Culture. We have had to give up all our expertise and become novices. Novices who have no master to make it all safe. For this path has not been travelled before. I now know how Columbus' crew must have felt before they hit landfall.

As I said KETC is not a news organization. Nor are we a social media organization. We all know the words about how to use social media and how to have conversations. But it is another thing to act upon them. All our norms about who were are and how we do things have been challenged. We have all felt stupid and we have all experienced personal failure and stress.

But we have hope now - we can see that we are making progress. We are not there yet but we can hear the birds and smell the shore.

Our hope is to establish in our actions, the new habits for how a TV station can serve the community in which it lives. In effect to open the doors to the public and have the public come into the station that after all is theirs.

Our hope is to show that public TV can create a place where Americans can talk about hard things and find a way forward together.

We launch formally next week. We have not got all of this worked out yet. So we start with only a landfall. This is only the beginning. In 4 months, much will have changed from where we are are. In fact we find that every week that goes by is different.

If you are interested in immigration. If you are interested in how to get the public into public media. Then please join us and please help us by well "helping us" - please get involved.

We need your views of how we can make what we do better. We need you to work with us to make Public TV - Public. We are not smart enough on our own to do this.

There is a lot at stake - if we can use a new model that promotes a true discourse - then some good may come out of the immigration debate. Isn't that important?

If we can find a way to blend in as a station with our local community, then we might have found the connection that we need to take public TV to a new level of relevancy. Isn't this the holy grail of the new media?

If we can help cope with a complex problem like immigration then we might also know how to help with other complex issues such as energy, food, the war, our education system, health and the economy. Isn't this the way forward for the nation?

Someone has to start somewhere. Why not us and you?

Posted via email from Rob's posterous

Hot? We are melting!

via sites.asiasociety.org

David Breashears goes to the spot near Everest where Mallory took a picture of the main glacier - see what is there now!

I find the push back about global warming so weird - the evidence is before our eyes and in our lives. I don't think it matters much if we did this or not. What matters is what are we going to do to cope with the results?

What about food production? Power consumption? How we design buildings? Where we live?

These are practical issues that we can identify and adjust too - bit so long as we are caught in this "debate' we do nothing.

Again I blame how the media works - this stupid idea of "balance" give credence to many things that are just wrong. But the custom of journalism today is always to report the "other" side. The result? Polarization on nearly every complex issue that confronts us today.

What if we turned the clock back a bit. Was there a moral equivalency that should have been given to say Governor Wallace and those that fought against desegregation? How about Hitler?

Some things are true and some things are wrong. We tend to know the difference. Pretending otherwise gives credence to lies that can damage us.

The world is warming alarmingly so. The so called "other side" represents about 2% of science and those who choose to ignore their own eyes.

"Have you heard about the “growing number” of eminent scientists who reject the theory that man-made greenhouse gases are increasing the earth’s temperature? It’s one of those factoids that, for years, has been casually dropped into the opening paragraphs of conservative manifestos against climate-change treaties and legislation. A web site maintained by the office of a U.S. Senator has for years instructed us that a “growing number of scientists” are becoming climate-change “skeptics.” This year, the chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation gave a speech praising the “growing number of distinguished scientists [who are] challenging the conventional wisdom with alternative theories and peer reviewed research.” In this newspaper, a columnist recently described the “growing skepticism about the theory of man-made climate change.” Surely, the conventional wisdom is on the cusp of being overthrown entirely: Another colleague proclaimed that we are approaching “the church of global warming’s Galileo moment.”

Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/07/15/bad-science-global-warming-den...

This is what we are up against - this is what prevents us from acting in our best interests.

Posted via email from Rob's posterous

Lara Logan, You Suck - Matt Taibbi Calls her

But when I read this diatribe from Logan, I felt like I'd known Hastings my whole life. Because brother, I have been there, when some would-be "reputable" journalist who's just been severely ass-whipped by a relative no-name freelancer on an enormous story fights back by going on television and, without any evidence at all, accusing the guy who beat him of cheating. That's happened to me so often, I've come to expect it. If there's a lower form of life on the planet earth than a "reputable" journalist protecting his territory, I haven't seen it.

As to this whole "unspoken agreement" business: the reason Lara Logan thinks this is because she's like pretty much every other "reputable" journalist in this country, in that she suffers from a profound confusion about who she's supposed to be working for. I know this from my years covering presidential campaigns, where the same dynamic applies. Hey, assholes: you do not work for the people you're covering! Jesus, is this concept that fucking hard? On the campaign trail, I watch reporters nod solemnly as they hear about the hundreds of millions of dollars candidates X and Y and Z collect from the likes of Citigroup and Raytheon and Archer Daniels Midland, and it blows my mind that they never seem to connect the dots and grasp where all that money is going. The answer, you idiots, is that it's buying advertising! People like George Bush, John McCain, Barack Obama, and General McChrystal for that matter, they can afford to buy their own P.R. — and they do, in ways both honest and dishonest, visible and invisible.

They don't need your help, and you're giving it to them anyway, because you just want to be part of the club so so badly. Disgustingly, that's really what it comes down to. Most of these reporters just want to be inside the ropeline so badly, they want to be able to say they had that beer with Hillary Clinton in a bowling alley in Scranton or whatever, that it colors their whole worldview. God forbid some important person think you're not playing for the right team!

Meanwhile, the people who don't have the resources to find out the truth and get it out in front of the public's eyes, your readers/viewers, you're supposed to be working for them — and they're not getting your help. What the hell are we doing in Afghanistan? Is it worth all the bloodshed and the hatred? Who are the people running this thing, what is their agenda, and is that agenda the same thing we voted for? By the severely unlikely virtue of a drunken accident we get a tiny glimpse of an answer to some of these vital questions, but instead of cheering this as a great break for our profession, a waytago moment, one so-called reputable journalist after another lines up to protest the leak and attack the reporter for doing his job. God, do you all suck!
 

via rollingstone.com

Maybe the larger story that is emerging from the McChrystal affair is the issue of why "traditional journalism" keeps missing the key stories.

The emerging answer is that Trad J is in bed with their sources and or with those that pay the bills.

This is why it is organizations such as Rolling Stone that that got not only this story but also the financial story right when the Trad organizations have missed them. It is why Michael Yon is on his own in Afghanistan. It is why - we the public - are confused about many issues that we don't have to be confused about.

No wonder fewer and fewer people read, view or trust them.

Posted via email from Rob's posterous

Michael Yon’s criticism of McChrystal deemed prophetic - True Courage

Rolling Stone’s advance of an article with controversial remarks by Gen. Stanley McChrystal about President Barack Obama’s prosecution of the war will be on the screen for days to come. Apparently the general opened up to a freelancer and held little back when it came to deriding vice-president Joe Biden and ambassador to Afghanistan Karl W. Eikenberry. Eikenberry retired from the US Army as a Lieutenant Colonel.

But war correspondent Michael Yon had begun to ask questions about the leadership in Afghanistan weeks ago.

The Washington Post said McChrystal “is quoted in an upcoming profile in Rolling Stone magazine as saying that Karl W. Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador to Kabul, had ‘betrayed’ him by sending a diplomatic cable to Washington last fall dismissing Karzai as ‘not an adequate strategic partner.’ The cable came as McChrystal was recommending that President Obama increase U.S. forces and ties with the Afghan government.”

Long before Rolling Stone published the story, war correspondent Michael Yon had also levied criticism at McChrystal. Yon came under fire from some milbloggers for his dispatches, and at least one military blog came close to character assassination because of what Yon wrote about McChrystal.

via theusreport.com

So where was the mainstream media? Yon has been pounding away at great personal cost for ages. The big break comes in Rolling Stone. It's sad, no pathetic that the mainstream have not been covering the war.

For many who rely on the mainstream, this will be a surprise - a gross failure of journalism in fact.

Yon, if you don't know, is entirely on his own and is funded by contributions to his site. An ex Green Beret, he has spent longer in action, as an embed, than probably any western soldier of his generation. Many thought him unhinged as he pounded away at the command issues. He was onto General Menard's failings early too.

Why? Because he cares about the troops on the ground and understands them as no other. He just cannot tolerate moral and professional incompetence in those that have the power of life and death over them.

His reward - banishment and massive attacks on his character.

It's one thing to be brave in action - adrenalin and your buddies help - it is another kind of courage when you take on the "Man" alone and without friends and support.

Now the President has to have the courage and do the right thing too.

Posted via web from Rob's posterous