Vast Conspiracy Uncovered!

Media Silence Suspicious,

Government is Mum

Look to your left. Look to your right. Unless you see someone reading this over your shoulder, you are about to become privy to information so undisclosed that even the day before the once-in-a-lifetime Moment, few knew.

And if that Moment has already come to pass and you find yourself still able to read this, you are very fortunate indeed, but no thanks to your government. There was no mention of the Moment on the White House web site. And while the Department of Homeland Security said the threat level overall was “elevated” and even “high” for airlines, not one specific word about the Moment was to be found.

Coincidence?

Hardly.

Conspiracy?

The Obama administration makes a big deal of bipartisan cooperation and working with the media. You didn’t know about the Moment until there was nothing you could do about it. Think that’s just more coincidence? Consider:

n The Republican National Committee website is silent on the Moment, its “news” category showing nothing after July 2. Sure, the zipper issue whether on lips or elsewhere has been big, but not one mention?

n The Democratic National Committee is also silent here. When was the last time you remember Democrats being silent on anything?

n You also didn’t hear about it in The New York Times, or on its website. At least on July 7. True, the Times did say something in 1989, but it hasn’t made a mention since, and who among us will remember that slip 20 years later in what is obviously a long-running silence?

n And you didn’t hear about it from Bill O’Reilly, who often covers things the powers that be wish he wouldn’t. Could this have reached even Bill? A search for the Moment’s unpublished number on his website came up zip.

President Obama was in Russia the day before the Moment. Russia and the rest of Europe won’t feel the Moment’s effects until next month, making those places safe at least for now. Another case of undisclosed location?

In all things of government, you must consider only the facts and not jump to conclusions. A senator tapping his foot in a Minneapolis airport men’s room stall could be just recalling his favorite Lawrence Welk show. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin announcing her resignation and going fishing could just mean the sled dogs won’t go hungry.

Or there could be other meanings. Clarity seldom visits public discourse. But we are going to make an exception here about the Moment.

The Moment will occur for you when it is 12:34:56 in the afternoon of July 8, 2009, or, as it would be written in all numbers in the American form, 12:34:56 07/08/09. The last time this particular straight time/date sequence happened was in 1909, although as the Times noted in 1989, an early-morning observation on June 6 produce the sequence 1:23:45/6/7/89.

Europe, being perversely European, handles day/month notation differently, putting the day before the month, so their experience of the Moment won’t happen until August 7, when it will be 12:34:56 07/08/09.

There you have it. You are One of Those Who Know, even though the mainstream media didn’t prepare you.

Aren’t you glad?

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Giving In To Temptation

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s disclosure that his disappearance over the last few days had more to do with an Argentinean lover than a love of hiking on the Appalachian Trail puts him squarely in a current bipartisan gallery of American politicians with a deer-in-the-headlights moment.

Sanford is a Republican. So is Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, found on the client list of the so-called “DC Madam.” So is Nevada Sen. John Ensign who just said he had an affair with a campaign staffer.

Democrats have New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer patronizing prostitutes and former presidential candidate John Edwards with a campaign videographer.

But what we all have is an ever-growing addiction to Voyeur Journalism. The Sanford story was the hot item on the web and everywhere else Wednesday night, including his teary press conference video.

That Sanford was incommunicado for days after having left his staff with misleading information is a legitimate public question and subject of reporting. That he now says he was in Argentina with a mistress during that time is relevant, but only to the extent that it proves he misled his staff and the people of South Carolina and wasn’t available to perform the duties of his office.

The rest?

The State, the largest newspaper in South Carolina, was on line Wednesday with quotes from e-mails between Sanford and his lover, with promises of the full exchange in Thursday’s edition. If there is a public purpose in publishing the governor’s comment on his lover’s tan lines and other attributes, I’m too stupid to see it.

That’s clearly not a problem for the New York Times, which has the tan lines quote in detail on “The Caucus, The Politics and Government Blog of The Times.”

It isn’t a problem at the Washington Post either – the story on their web site carries the same quote.

So does the online reporting of The Associated Press. So does CNN. USA Today’s web site linked to the e-mails on The State’s web site.

There are probably many, many more stories and links using the quotes. If they have a general theme, it is that Sanford, a conservative who spoke often of family values, gave in to sexual temptation.

Kind of like media outfits that once spoke often of journalism standards giving in to tabloid temptation. But don’t expect them to report that – certain things are beyond the public’s need to know.

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Newspapers And Digital Pixie Dust

 

 

If you think the problem with newspapers isn’t the news as much as the paper, today’s announcement by Amazon of the Kindle DX is encouraging, kind of like hearing that one of your hangmen discovered a previous commitment.

 

Aimed by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos as a better alternative to ink-on-paper newspapers, magazines and maybe textbooks, the pencil-slim tablet slightly smaller than a sheet of typewriter paper boasts a 9.7-inch diagonal black-and-white display and a $489 pricetag. (Two earlier, smaller and cheaper Kindle versions aimed more at books, although they included newspaper content.)

 

The idea behind all Kindles is that you pay a small amount to download what interests you and mechanical production/delivery costs for the information providers largely disappear. Since newspaper production can be 20 percent and more of fixed costs, publishers are tempted to jump into Amazon’s lap with tails at full wag.

 

New York Times Company Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr., there for the Kindle DX unveiling with Bezos, called it "an important milestone in the convergence of print and digital."

 

The publishing industry buzzed with talk of subsidizing Kindle costs in return for multi-year subscriber commitments, taking the mobile phone industry as an example. And other equipment manufacturers hastened to remind that their own digital reader widgets were also in the running.

 

Now let’s insert some of the “balance” so beloved by traditional reporting.

 

Here’s a widget that costs as much as a cheap notebook computer and has lots less functionality. It may sell as well as mobile telephones that only make phone calls, assuming you can still find any for comparison.

 

Newspaper and magazine publishers hope you’ll stop getting news and information for free from the web and start paying for it on this widget. It’s the same strategy employed by smitten young things who move in with their boyfriends while their mothers wail “he won’t buy the cow if he gets the milk for free!”

 

Textbook publishers hope you’ll stop paying outrageous prices for new text books and buy them via Kindle. Already grumbling about used textbook sales, they know deep in their hearts that no student will ever find a way to copy and distribute the information illegally. They know because the entertainment industry told them it never happens with music and videos.

 

Maybe those hopes will come to fruition and maybe the whole idea of a newspaper, magazine or textbook will adapt to the digital age.

 

Or maybe it will develop that publishers as we know them once prospered because they owned the very, very expensive and therefore rare means of production and distribution. Advertisers paid hefty fees to in effect “rent” those production/distribution machines to reach readers, providing almost all the money in the game, grumbling but quite aware that for many markets, it was the only game.

 

The advent of technology supporting personal computing devices and the internet changed all that forever, and sprinkling digital pixie dust on old economic models does not guarantee that they’ll fly, even when Tinkerbelle is Jeff Bezos and Neverland is an Amazon subsidiary.

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When Pigs Report

 

It ain’t as easy as it looks.

 

Those who think the impending death of newspapers means we no longer need journalism tend to think any citizen can get whatever information is needed from the web. And it’s true – you can get all sorts of information from the web with just a few clicks.

 

But whether or not that information is accurate, organized or even needed is something else. Consider the current Swine Flu Festival, being conducted across the web because today is Friday, and except for the occasional disaster, not a lot happens on Fridays.

 

Start with The Drudge Report, the web’s supermarket tabloid on steroids. It’s main story screams “Outbreak” and the kickers over a picture of pigs calmly report:

 

“MEXICO CONFIRMS 16 DEAD; 50 MORE DEATHS BEING PROBED...

Travelers warned of mysterious respiratory illness...

Mexico City launches huge vaccination campaign...

7 hit by strange new swine flu in USA...

Heighten Risk of Pandemic...

Concern in Texas...

Mutated from pigs, transmitted to humans...”

 

Now flu of any sort is nasty stuff. The World Health Organization (WHO), with its customary flair for finely tuned estimates, says flu kills 250,000-500,000 persons annually. So this is really serious and threatening news, right?

 

They think so at AFP (Agence France Press), where around noon they were counting 16 swine flu deaths, with Mexico “probing 50 more.” That must be French conservatism, because 14 hours earlier, CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) had 20 dead and 137 infected.

 

Reuters, the financial information firm with a news hobby, reported in the early afternoon today that “A deadly strain of swine flu never seen before has killed as many as 61 people.” They got to 61 bodies by taking the 16 dead announced by Mexican authorities and tossing in 45 more that “may” have died from the disease.

 

The Associated Press struck a similar tone with “At least 16 people - and possibly dozens more” dead in Mexico from swine flu, noting that WHO was reporting 57 dead, but that it wasn’t sure from what, and dutifully saying far down in the story that only 16 had been confirmed by Mexican authorities as being from swine flu.

 

Bloomberg has been taking the most cautious approach, saying “Disease trackers are asking U.S. hospitals to help follow a new strain of swine flu and are trying to determine whether it’s related to hundreds of illnesses and 57 deaths in Mexico.”

 

And The New York Times handled it in a one-paragraph item citing the WHO figure of 57, and a much longer and more explanatory story on the seven U.S. cases, all of whom have recovered.

 

Now anyone with a web browser and a lot of time can read all this stuff and sort it out, and call the sources with questions, and decide what is fact, what is speculation, and what is some health bureaucrat enjoying his or her time in the media spotlight. But most of us don’t have that kind of time or the required skills.

 

Instead, we depend on folks called journalists. And when the last newspaper has shuffled off to history’s graveyard, we’ll still need journalists to sort things out and report the event, because it ain’t as easy as it looks.

 

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