COMM 209: Transcript of Obama press conference

As published in The New York Times, a transcript of a press conference held by Senator Barack Obama in response to recent statements by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., as provided by Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign and Federal News Service.

COMM 317: Final exams, 'marketplace of ideas'

The connection between these two concepts is that the marketplace of ideas" will be all over our final exam in Communications 317. Capice? The exam will be a take-home, and I'll have the questions for you next week. In the meantime, here are some links, quotes and reading assignments to get you started.

First, the quotes. Here's the key quote, from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.'s dissenting opinion in Abrams v. United States:

... when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas...that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution.

I copied it from the Wikipedia article on the marketplace metaphor. But it's also in "Make No Law" and other sources.

In class today (Thursday) I'll give you several handouts relating to current political developments. And I'll assign you two articles on the Internet to read for class Tuesday and, of course, your final exam question on the marketplace of ideas. (How much more blatant can I get?) Here are links to the articles:

• Former Vice President Al Gore's remarks at a 2005 media conference in which he said he believes "something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America's fabled 'marketplace of ideas' now functions."
  
• An article by Wat Hopkins of Virginia Tech analyzing use of the "marketplace" metaphor in U.S. Supreme Court decisions. The article is titled "The Supreme Court Defines the Marketplace of Ideas." It's a PDF file, and you'll have to do your own Google search on author and title.

COMM 317: Links to political ads

YouTube and news media blogs have made it possible for us to watch political ads in primary states like Pennsylvania and North Carolina. An added advantage: We're not assaulted by them when we're watching TV. We can link to them when we want to and ignore them when we don't.

(Tangent: What are the implications of this feature of the Internet for advertising in general, which historically has relied on reaching captive audiences?)

A number of ads run by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the run-up to Tuesday's Democratic primary in Pennsylvania are linked to two items posted to the CBS blog "Campaign '08 Horserace." It's not my favorite blog. (That honor goes to "The Swamp" put up by The Chicago Tribune's Washington bureau.) But it's got a lot of recent ads linked to it. We'll watch several of them.

If we have time, we'll listen to an audio clip of New Yorker analysts Hendrik Hertzberg and Ryan Lizza, questioned by editor Dorothy Wickenden, discussing McCarthyism in the Philadelphia debate. It's under the headline "The Campaign TRAIL" on the upper left of The New Yorker's home page. We'll definitely read the article "Bitter Patter" on the Philadelphia debate, which he describes as "a two-hour televised smackdown in Philadelphia between the two remaining Democratic candidate for President, which might have been billed as the Élite Treat v. th Boilermaker Belle." Subtle, it's not. Shrewd and incisive, it is.

COMM 317: 'Street money' and public relations

Politics and public relations are different ball games. And, as the pols in Chicago like to say, "politics ain't beanbag." But politicians are engaged in a form of public relations. And it may be that politics would have a better name if politicians acted more like public relations professionals.

It's worth thinking about, anyway. We'll be exploring the question in COMM 317 between now and the end of the semester.

Here's a story in The Guardian about a time-honored political custom in Pennsylvania known as giving "street money" to precinct captains to disburse as they see fit in getting out the vote. I learned about street money when I went to Penn State, and when I saw this story I decided Barack Obama's goose is cooked in Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary.

You see, Obama isn't paying street money.

As the Guardian's U.S. political correspondent Ewen MacAskill says, street money is "a throwback from the days of old-fashioned Democratic machine politics." It's usually handed out to the precinct captains in small bills. And there's no accounting for it later.

Some questions (and you knew it was going to get around to this, didn't you)?

What are the ethics of this practice?

For politicians? You'll find two different attitudes reflected in the story. Who's right? Who's wrong? What would you do if you had an election to win in Philly?

Would it be ethical for a public relations person working with a political campaign to handle street money? What parts of the Public Relations Society of America's code of ethics would apply?

A related question: Politics is generally held in low regard by Americans. Do practices like street money discredit the profession? Why? Or why not?

Ultimate webpage for random surfers

If you get bored in class and want to surf the World Wide Web, be sure to check out this webpage. It's the ultimate page for surfers and slackers.

COMM 209: Mountaintop mining / READ & DISCUSS

This morning's Washington Post has a feature on mountaintop mining. The issue is one we're familiar with, from last week's presentation by anti-strip mine activists. Read it and analyze it.

How does the lede work? Is it hard or soft? Does it grab a reader's attention? Where is the nut graf (or grafs)? How are quotes used? Where is the highest quote in the story? Is it a good quote -- is it colorful and expressive? How well are quotes distributed throughout the story? How well is the story balanced between pro- and anti-mine spokesmen? What techniques can you identify that keeps a reader interested in the story?

Discuss and post as comments to this post.

COMM 317: New Yorker blogs on campaign coverage

This from George Packer, who writes a political blog for The New Yorker, several weeks ago. Long before the great Philadelphia flag pin debate (this post ran March 24), he headlined a blog post "Stop Shouting." That advice was directed to all of us:

What we are witnessing is a controlled experiment in modern campaigning: eliminate policy differences between two candidates; space out the primary schedule so that it remains empty for seven weeks, thereby creating a political-news vacuum in which the candidates and their supporters continue to give speeches, hold press conferences, or blog nonstop; and subject every word to the scrutiny and amplification of the twenty-four-hour news machine. The predictable result is that two appealing politicians will quickly start to lose their lustre, until, by the time Pennsylvania gets to vote, on April 22nd, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will seem like the smallest, meanest, dirtiest, lowest, most dishonest candidates ever to run for office in the United States. Q.E.D.

Packer's conclusion, which I find hard to disagree with:

Blame it on the media (I do), blame it on the campaigns (them, too), blame it on all of us—on a political culture that requires trivial combat to feel alive (plausible; needs more reflection). But before you decide that there has never been a smaller, meaner, dirtier, lower, more dishonest Presidential campaign, pour yourself a drink and read a history of the 1988 race. Or the one in 1972. Or 1968. Or 1952. Or 1864. Or 1828. And then try to calm down.

It does give a perspective on things.

Bye bye birdie. I should probably be ashamed of myself for paying attention to this story, but Media Matters, a self-proclaimed "progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media," has obtained footage showing that Obama did not make an obscene gesture that had Fox News and MSNBC chirping and twittering at week's end. The screen grab makes it clear he had raised two fingers rather than one as he was talking about his opponent at a rally in North Carolina.

COMM 317: More debate reaction

Reaction to Wednesday's ABC-TV presidential debate has turned into a media "feeding frenzy" (the metaphor comes from the way fish thrash around when you feed them bread crumbs). So I'm not going to link to everything. It's frankly getting repetitious. But I will highlight some of the commentary that throws light in dark corners.

Joe Lauria, a freelance investigative reporter who has contributed to major U.S. and British periodicals, has an especially trenchant analysis of the television industry values and demographics behind the tone of the show. In it he quotes Paddy Chayefsky, a gifted dramatist who wrote for early network TV and later became a critic of the medium and said, "Entertainment divisions have virtually taken over news divisions at the networks." Money graf(s):

It's about ratings. You show advertisers better ratings; you get more money from them. ABC certainly got the ratings: more than ten million viewers. It was the most watched debate of the campaign.

Do you think ABC didn't know who their audience would be? Do you think this wasn't researched well in advance and that the questions fed Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos weren't geared to that audience?

This was not a debate on a Saturday night on MSNBC last summer when the audience would be vastly different: more political junkies with a serious interest in the process and the issues well before the lower-tiered candidates were weeded out.

This was a prime time audience on ABC on a Wednesday night that drew a larger, less sophisticated audience. They may have even been, dare I say it, a bit bitter about politicians.

ABC's market research apparently showed that keeping questions to the level of flag pins and what your pastor thinks would draw and keep an audience tuned in.

Hence, the worst debate ever.

Lauria's blog is definitely worth reading for its persepective on the TV industry. It appeared on The Huffington Post, which hosts a number of liberal bloggers. Also cited on Huffington is that noted social commentator Don Imus, who is quoted as saying Barack Obama is "almost a bigger pussy than [Hillary Clinton] is."

An editorial in The Nation, a liberal opinion magazine, said Obama "Obama made pop cultural history, miming the rapper Jay-Z's iconic hand signal to "brush the dirt" off his shoulders" after the debate. And the gesture was picked up on YouTube.

On Thursday night, YouTuber Bill3948 uploaded a one-minute mash-up of Jay-Z songs, Clinton attacks and Obama's inspired response. The sequence opens with clips of Clinton's cheap shots, accompanied by the Jay-Z ballad "Moment of Clarity," pivots to lowlights from the ABC debate, and then scores Obama's response with the original "Dirt Off Your Shoulder" track. While Obama brushes, graphics of Hillary, Bill and Charlie Gibson fly off his shoulders. Then he shakes off a kitchen sink -- a nod to Clinton's desperate strategy -- as Jay raps about hanging out "in the kitchen with soda." It's a fun, sharp extension of Obama's call to brush off some of the ridiculous attacks ...

Here's a link to the YouTube mashup, "titled Barack Gets that Dirt off His Shoulders."


Lynn Sweet, Washington-based political columnist for The Chicago Sun-Times is probably the best source of news on Obama and his campaign. (She was in the Sun-Times' statehouse bureau in Springfield, by the way, on her way to the big leagues.) She has Mayor Daley's reaction to questioning of Obama's link to William Ayers, a member of a radical anti-war protest group during the 1960s, and more recent background on Ayers and Obama's Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago. Sweet also posted a complete transcript of the debate for those who want to read up on flag pins.

More on Ayers, an Associated Press fact check that analyzes the spin and the facts, is noteworthy because it was written by Chris Wills of the AP's statehouse bureau in Springfield.

COMM 317: Of ABC-TV debate, flag pins and showbiz

ABC-TV, which hosted last night's debate between Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, took more hostile fire in today's papers (well, OK, on today's newspaper websites) than either of the candates. Especially in the first half of the debate, questioning centered on such issues as whether Sen. Barack Obama wears a flag pin and other political "gotcha" games.

The debate, especially ABC's handling of it, raises issues that are important to us in COMM 317. Do political candidates compete in a "marketplace of ideas?" Do news media (ABC included) have a responsibity to help them get their message to the American people? Can the news media bear that responsibility if they aren't objective? If so, how? What responsiblity do the candidates bear? How well did ABC do? How did the candidates do?

By the way, have you noticed how this concept of the marketplace of ideas bridges the two big issues we have covered in COMM 317 -- law and ethics?

Micahel Tomsky, editor of Guardian America (affiliated with the center-left British newspaper The Guardian), said the debate "was a travesty. He ventured an explanation:

I have a hunch that there was massive corporate pressure to produce fireworks. Usually, these debates are on cable television, where viewership is smaller and ad rates lower. Last night's, though, was on network TV, where millions more dollars are at stake. As nearly as I can tell, last night's debate pre-empted Pushing Daisies and Private Practice. I have no idea how these shows usually do, but assuming they typically draw even five or six million viewers, the suits were probably sweating bullets about putting politics on during network primetime. I'd bet that memos went from the entertainment to the news division pressing the point in clear terms.

Four out of five American adults think the country is a train wreck. Allowing for the fact that probably one in five is a committed right-winger, that means virtually every remaining sentient adult in the country is deeply worried about what's happening to America. And in this context we get lapel pins?

Also in The Guardian, blogging columnist (and blogger) Richard Adams links to several left-wing blogs under a head that sums up reaction: "Worst. Debate. Ever." USA Today has links to more reviews on newspaper websites and in the blogosphere.

Will Bunch, a columnist for The Philadelphia Daily News, wrote open letter to the debate moderators. Money graf:

With your performance tonight -- your focus on issues that were at best trivial wastes of valuable airtime and at worst restatements of right-wing falsehoods, punctuated by inane "issue" questions that in no way resembled the real world concerns of American voters -- you disgraced my profession of journalism, and, by association, me and a lot of hard-working colleagues who do still try to ferret out the truth, rather than worry about who can give us the best deal on our capital gains taxes. But it's even worse than that. By so badly botching arguably the most critical debate of such an important election, in a time of both war and economic misery, you disgraced the American voters, and in fact even disgraced democracy itself. Indeed, if I were a citizen of one of those nations where America is seeking to "export democracy," and I had watched the debate, I probably would have said, "no thank you." Because that was no way to promote democracy.

You implied throughout the broadcast that you wanted to reflect the concerns of voters in Pennsylvania. Well, I'm a Pennsylvanian voter, and so are my neighbors and most of my friends and co-workers. You asked virtually nothing that reflected our everyday issues -- trying to fill our gas tanks and save for college at the same time, our crumbling bridges and inadequate mass transit, or the root causes of crime here in Philadelphia. ...

It's worth reading in full. The Daily News endorsed Obama today, and Bunch's political preferences are in full view, but I'm more interested -- as always -- in what he says about journalism as a profession.

Greg Mitchell, who writes a column for Editor & Publisher (the trade magazine for newspaper management types), had a -- politically -- balanced appraisal: "In perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years, ABC News hosts Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous focused mainly on trivial issues as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama faced off in Philadelphia." You'll notice I said "politically" balanced. Might it be significant that E&P has been bashing television news for years?

Andrew Sullivan, a liberal blogger for Atlantic monthly, fired rockets as he live-blogged the debate. (Read live-blogs from bottom to top.) Sullivan wears his opinions on his sleeve, but his take is interesting.

On the other hand, the conservative opinion magazine National Review had a balanced, judicious appraisal suggesting that: (1) the effect of the debate was negligable; and (2) the issues raised, however trivial, were those that will be argued in the November election.

And David Brooks, New York Times op-ed columnist, made much the same point ... quoted here in a roundup of reaction stories on The Times' blog "The Caucus" ... Brooks said, "The journalist’s job is to make politicians uncomfortable, to explore evasions, contradictions and vulnerabilities." And that the moderators did.

Howard Kurtz, who covers the media for The Washington Post, has summaries of coverage, quotes and links on today's website. Tom Shales, who writes for the paper's Style section, shoots rockets at ABC in a column headed "In Pa. Debate, The Clear Loser Is ABC." Shales' sum-up: "To this observer, ABC's coverage seemed slanted against Obama." It's also worth reading, for a journalist's comments on how the TV visuals were put together in an imbalanced and unobjective way, e.g. cutaways to Chelsea Clinton in the audience that weren't balanced by shots of Obama supporters. These things may be inadvertent. (Chelsea is a celeb, and Bruce Springsteen presumably wasn't in the audience. If he had been, surely the cameras would have cut away to him, too.) It's a small point, but these things add up. And they don't project an image of impartiality.

COMM 317: Words of wisdom, questions

"So as grave and learned men may doubt, without any imputation to them; for the most learned doubteth most, and the more ignorant for the most part are the more bold and peremptory." Section 338a. -- Sir Edward Coke, Institutes of the Lawes of England (1628) Sect 338a.

So what does this have to do with anything?

Would Aristotle and Lord Coke (pron. "cook") have enjoyed having a pitcher of beer together?

How about Herr Professor Immanuel Kant? Or jolly old Jeremy Bentha,?

Just askin'.

What would (Aristotle, Kant or Jeremy Bentham) Do?*

COMM 317: More on ethics.

First, this message. It's a story in The New York Times on philosophy students. According to Times staff writer Winnie Hu:

Once scoffed at as a luxury major, philosophy is being embraced at Rutgers and other universities by a new generation of college students who are drawing modern-day lessons from the age-old discipline as they try to make sense of their world, from the morality of the war in Iraq to the latest political scandal. The economic downturn has done little, if anything, to dampen this enthusiasm among students, who say that what they learn in class can translate into practical skills and careers. On many campuses, debate over modern issues like war and technology is emphasized over the study of classic ancient texts.

Hey, if it's in The Times, it's got to be true. Right? (Never mind all those little WMD stories in 2002 and 2003.) I especially liked the part about job skills.

Speaking of "classic ancient texts," I've been looking at Aristotle. Well, not Aristotle himself, but the article on Aristotle in Garth Kemerling's "Philosophy Pages." To Kemmerling, a longtime philosophy teacher with a gift for simple explanations of complicated, longwinded topics, ethics is practical -- it's about how we live life. And the key to it is moderation. Says Kemerling:

Although the analysis may be complicated or awkward in some instances, the general plan of Aristotle's ethical doctrine is clear: avoid extremes of all sorts and seek moderation in all things. Not bad advice, surely. Some version of this general approach dominated Western culture for many centuries.

Kemerling's explanation of German philosopher Immanuel Kant is the best I've seen. He quotes the only thing I've ever read of Kant's that I understood, when he said only two things inspire awe: "der bestirnte Himmel über mir und das moralische Gesetz in mir" ("the starry sky above and the moral law within"). Unfortunately, in ethics we deal with the moral law rather than the stars. But Kemerling brings it down to earth (the law, not the stars). Kant's "categorical imperative" Kemerling quotes as follows: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." And he explains, "That is, each individual agent regards itself as determining, by its decision to act in a certain way, that everyone (including itself) will always act according to the same general rule in the future." This may sound like just so many words, but Kemerling says:

The essence of immorality ... is to make an exception of myself by acting on maxims that I cannot willfully universalize. It is always wrong to act in one way while wishing that everyone else would act otherwise. (The perfect world for a thief would be one in which everyone else always respected private property.) Thus, the purely formal expression of the categorical imperative is shown to yield significant practical application to moral decisions.

Elsewhere, he brings it down to earth a little more: "Thus, the Kantian imperative agrees with the Christian expression of 'The Golden Rule' by demanding that we derive from our own self-interest a generalized concern for all human beings."

British thinker Jeremy Bentham's utlitarian philosophy only gets a brief dictionary entry in Kemerlin'gs Philosophy Pages. But his doctrine of acting for the greatest good of the greatest number is pretty clear. It doesn't need as much explanation.

Washington Post gets 6 Pulitzers

The Washington Post swept the Pulitzer Prize competition this year. Howard Kurtz reports the Post "won six Pulitzer Prizes yesterday, the largest number in the paper's history, for coverage that ranged from an exposé of poor care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center to an examination of Vice President Cheney's behind-the-scenes clout to coverage of the massacre at Virginia Tech." Nice video. Imagine yourself in that picture.

COMM 317: Negative ads?

Stanford University's Political Communication Lab posts video clips of campaign advertisments as they are aired on its "PCL News and Events" page.

When Negative is a Positive: Nasty Politics is Winning Politics, Pat Morrison interviews Shanto Iyenga on California Public Radio (audio 17:32)

The Political Communication Lab is housed within the Institute for Communication Research; the research arm of the Department of Communication at Stanford University.

Claude Hopkins, on a website for commercial advertisers, says, "To attack a rival is never good advertising. Don't point out others' faults. It is not permitted in the best mediums. It is never good policy. The selfish purpose is apparent. It looks unfair, not sporty." It hurts sales and tarnishes the product.

But negative ads work. A study at Notre Dame and the University of Texas-Dallas showed "that, although negative political ads are explicitly disliked, they have a powerful impact on voters’ mindsets that positive ads do not – and the potential to change preference and behavior in ways that benefit the advertiser." They hurt both the sponsor and the target, but the target more than the sponsor.

A scientitic study, "Effectiveness of Negative Political Advertising" by Won Ho Chang, Jae-Jin Park, and Sung Wook Shim in the Web Journal of Mass Communication Research, suggsts that negative advertising hurts both the sponsor and the target --

As expected, negative political advertising was perceived as untruthful, and perceived truthfulness was positively related to favorable attitudes toward the sponsor and negatively related to favorable attitudes toward the target.

Although the perceived truthfulness of negative political advertising was as expected, a minority of the respondents perceived such ads to be true. Overall, negative political advertising produced negative evaluations of both the sponsor and the target.

A bit of history ... in May 2004 the Washington Post analyzed President Bush's re-election campaign and found it overwhelmingly went negative on Democratic Sen. John Kerry:

Three-quarters of the ads aired by Bush's campaign have been attacks on Kerry. Bush so far has aired 49,050 negative ads in the top 100 markets, or 75 percent of his advertising. Kerry has run 13,336 negative ads -- or 27 percent of his total.

COMM 387: Carl Hiaassen, link to your blogs

Post to your blogs ... which you can access through a directory page at the top of the Mackerelwrapper ... your answers to these questions, which I put on the screen in class in 72pt type ...

What makes Carl Hiaassen tick? What are his issues? Does he have 'issues'?

I'll capture -- and link -- some quotes below.

From Diane Stevenson, editor of Kick Ass: Selected Columns of Carl Hiaassen:

Greed and its accompanying corruption, in fact, occupy one side of Hiaasen’s clearly articulated system of right and wrong, while unspoiled wilderness lies on the other. ... Against this backdrop, events play out in Hiaasen’s novels and columns, the moral landscape making almost tangible certain basic and universal values: we should be loyal to our friends, behave with civility and decency, earn our paychecks honestly, experience shame if we steal, preserve the world for our children, and never surrender—either our belief in these values, or to anyone who would violate them for personal gain. As Hiaasen says, “You try to be a good citizen wherever you live. Plant mangroves and don’t piss in the water.” (Kick Ass xv)

Here's a blurb ... taken from the review in Booklist, a magazine for librarians that is pretty evenhanded in its evaluation of books:

For fans of the novels, it's a delight. . . , [b]ut the book is not just for Hiaasen's fans. Readers who have never cracked the covers of his novels can find much here to enjoy: Hiaasen cares deeply about Florida, cheers when something good happens, and gets riled when somebody does something dumb; readers interested in the Sunshine State will learn more from this book than from a stack of travel guides. Reminiscent of the snarky, opinionated newspaper articles of the great Mark Twain, Hiaasen's columns are finely crafted little gems."-- Booklist

And one from Pete Hamill of The New York Daily News, one of what might be called the slash-and-burn school of urban columnists:

"Carl Hiaasen is one of America's finest novelists. His newspaper column is another side of the same talent, examining with a corrosive writer's eye the outrageous carnival of Southern Florida. The inhabitants are all here: thieves, conmen, and hustlers, perfumed swine and oiled mannequins, legal swindlers and patriotic crooks, executioners and lap dancers, and yes, even an occasional hero. This is a splendid collection by a native son whose rage at the despoiling of Florida can only be relieved by dark laughter."--Pete Hamill

And here's one from Hiaassen himself, that might explain why Hamill likes his stuff:

"You just cover a lot of territory and you do it aggressively and you do it fairly and you don’t play favorites and you don’t take any prisoners. It’s the old school of slash-and-burn metropolitan column writing. You just kick ass. That’s what you do. And that’s what they pay you to do."--Carl Hiaasen

It also explains the title.

COMM 317: Bong HiTS for China?

In class yesterday, we mentioned the protests timed to coincide with Olympic torch relay ceremonies worldwide, seen as a way for protesters to reach a built-in audience. This year's appear to be more seriously conceived than the "Bong HiTS 4 Jesus" incident in Juneau, Alaska, we studied earlier this semester. Since China is hosting this year's Olympics, the protests now concern human rights abuses. But the publicity-seeking dynamic is the same.

This story from today's San Francisco Chronicle tells of politicking in city government in advance of the Olympic relay there next week, as the Board of Supervisors (like our city council) released the route to the public. The money graf(s):

People who plan to protest the torch's presence in the city had demanded for weeks to know its route so they could begin organizing the thousands of demonstrators expected when the Olympic symbol is carried through the streets on April 9.

Protesters are expected to gather in large public squares and along the route, which will start at McCovey Cove, run both ways along the Embarcadero and make a short turnaround in the Marina district. The torch lighting ceremony in Greece was disrupted by demonstrators last week, and protests are expected in cities the torch visits around the world.

COMM 317: Political email spam raises questions

A couple of weeks ago, a student sent me one of those political spam email messages that go around attacking the "MSM" (mainstream media), Hillary Clinton and I-forget-who-all-else on the basis of what we'll charitably call very shaky evidence. She thought it would be worth going over in class, and I agreed.

But I promptly lost the message.

That's OK, I thought. There'll be others.

And so there are. So there are.

This kind of stuff, we agreed, raises questions. Lucky you. You get to answer them. Here are a few, to be thinking of as you read further. Most of the political spam I see doesn't appear to be written by professionals. Much of it is anonymous. What is the ethics of that? Non-professional spam artists are not bound by the SPJ code. What ethical standards do apply? What can the "MSM" do to prevent such attacks? Or should the media even try? Do the spammers make any good points? What are their rights under the First Amendment?

Military Losses, 1980 thru 2006
Whatever your politics, however you lean, however you feel about the current
administration, this report should open some eyes.
Military losses, 1980 through 2006 (ttp://www.fas.org/ sgp/crs/natsec/ RL32492.pdf)
As tragic as the loss of any member of the US Armed Forces is, consider the following statistics:

The annual fatalities of military members while actively serving in the armed forces from 1980 through 2006:

1980 .......... 2,392 (Carter Year)
1981 .......... 2,380 (Reagan Year)
1984 .......... 1,999 (Reagan Year)
1988 .......... 1,819 (Reagan Year)
1989 .......... 1,636 (George H W Year)
1990 .......... 1,508 (George H W Year)
1991 .......... 1,787 (George H W Year)
1992 .......... 1,293 (George H W Year)
1993 ......... 1,213 (Clinton Year)
1994 .......... 1,075 (Clinton Year)
1995 .......... 2,465 (Clinton Year)
1996 .......... 2,318 (Clinton Year)
1997 ............ . 817 (Clinton Year)
1998 .......... 2,252 (Clinton Year)
1999 .......... 1,984 (Clinton Year)
2000 ..........1, 983 (Clinton Year)
2001 ............ . 890(George W Year)
2002 .......... 1,007 (George W Year)
2003 .......... 1,410 (George W Year)
2004 .......... 1,887 (George W Year)
2005 ............ . 919 (George W Year)
2006........ ...... 920 (George W Year)
2007........ ....899 (George W Year)

Clinton years (1993-2000): 14,000 deaths
George W years (2001-2006): 7,932 deaths

If you are surprised when you look at these figures, so was I. These figures mean that the loss from the two latest conflicts in the Middle East are LESS than the loss of military personnel during Bill Clinton's presidency; when America wasn't even involved in a war!

And, I was even more shocked when I read that in 1980, during the reign of President (Nobel Peace Prize winner) Jimmy Carter, there were 2,392 US military fatalities! I think that these figures indicate that many members of our Media and our Politicians will pick and choose the information on which they report. Of course we all know that they present only those 'facts' which support their agenda-driven reporting. But why do so many of them march in lock-step to twist the truth? Where do so many of them get their marching-orders for their agenda? Obviously there is one shared agenda, and I believe it is
clear it comes from the most powerful Democratic family of the decade.

Do you want further proof? Consider the latest census, of Americans. It shows the following FACTS about the distribution of American citizens, by Race:
European descent ............ ......... ...... 69.12%
Hispanic ............ ......... ......... ......... . 12.5%
Black ............ ......... ......... ......... ...... 12. 3%
Asian ............ ......... ......... ......... ........ 3.7%
Native American ............ ......... ......... 1.0%
Other ............ ......... ......... ......... ........ 2. 6%

Now... here are the fatalities by Race; over the past three years in Iraqi Freedom:
European descent (white) ............ 74.31%
Hispanic ............ ......... ......... ....... 10.74%
Black ........... ......... ......... ......... ... 9.67%
Asian ............ ........ ......... ......... .... 1.81%
Native American ............ ........ ...... 1.09%
Other ............ ......... ......... ......... .... 0.33%

I was surprised again. . .until it became clear to me that the point here is that our mainstream media continues to spin these figures (for political gain). Nothing more.

It's all about politics and some politicians, are now famous for turning American against American for a vote. (Consider Slick Willy and his comments made about South Carolina, Jesse Jackson, and the 'blacks' voting for the 'black' candidates); or Hillary's stump speech after her Super Tuesday 'victory' stating that the current administration does not 'listen' to anyone and continues the war costing precious American lives. Yes, I might even agree with her, but she should be made to acknowledge her own husband's administration, without having an actual war, sent more soldiers to death during his regime-while also forcing the military to release Osama when we actually had him detained.

I hope that during the time between now and November, that intelligent Americans can decipher the facts from the spin and the spinners from the leaders; those who seek even more power from those that seek justice, the
dividers from the uniters.

Over the next months let's be good listeners (yes, Hillary we are listening) and see and hear who tries to divide our nation; and who wants to unite our nation. Who wants to control how our money is spent and who wants our money
spent the way we would spend it. Who seeks power and who seeks justice? Who spins the facts and who is genuine.

(These statistics are published by Congressional Research Service, and they may be confirmed by anyone at: http://www.fas. org/sgp/crs/ natsec/RL32492. pdf)

The problem with this message? It isn't true. Last week Army Times, a weekly newspaper for military personnel, looked into it. They determined the statistics were faked. They were supposedly taken from a Congressional Research Service report, but the numbers for the Clinton years were higher than the those of the CRS report while from the Bush years were lower. Said the paper:

In reality, according to the CRS report, 7,500 service members died on active duty in the eight years from 1993 through 2000, compared to 8,792 in the six years from 2001 through 2006.

The Pentagon has not yet released data on total active-duty deaths for 2007, but 1,014 service members died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that year, and more than 100 have died in the wars so far in 2008, pushing the known total under Bush to more than 9,900.

Let's keep things in perspective. This is not the first time in all recorded history that government numbers have been cooked for partisan political purposes. That has no doubt been going on as long as there have been governments. (Just look at some of the body counts in the Old Testament, where the Israelites smote and slew 150,000 of their neighbors, and their oxen and their cattle and their man- and maidservants.) But the Internet has made it easier to peddle falsified information.

These political spam messages, like other urban legends, are tracked by http://www.snopes.com/. Urban legends, according to David and Barbara Mikkelson, creators of snopes.com, are "are told as true, local, and recent occurrences, and often contain names of places or entities located within the teller's neighborhood or surrounding region." The Mikkelsons add:

Urban legends are narratives which put our fears and concerns into the form of stories or are tales which we use to confirm the rightness of our world view. As cautionary tales they warn us against engaging in risky behaviors by pointing out what has supposedly happened to others who did what we might be tempted to try. Other legends confirm our belief that it's a big, bad world out there, one awash with crazed killers, lurking terrorists, unscrupulous companies out to make a buck at any cost, and a government that doesn't give a damn.

The key to their popularity, I think, is the way they give a narrative to our "fears and concerns." Most of the upolitical urban legends I see appear to come from right-wing websites, but they're common all across the spectrum.

My advice: When you get political spam, "Google" the message line or heading. And look for snopes.com in the web addresses. The link will take you to a page that reprints the message and determines whether it is true, false or -- well, harder to classsify. When I got the military fatalities spam this morning, I this, and quickly learned it was false.

Snopes also has links to its top 25 legends, including several about Barack Obama. Also one of my favorites, of President George W. Bush holding a digitally manipulated book. My final discussion questions: What are the ethical implications of taking any of this stuff seriously? What are the ethical implications for journalists of having so many amateurs on the Internet peddling bogus information? How should we treat information we get from the web? Do we have a responsibity to knock down rumors? How can we tell rumors from jokes? How can professional journalists take advantage of the free-wheeling, entertaining nature of the internet without losing sight of their professional responsibities? Or is there even a conflict?