Scrutiny

Will the information industry be next at Congress’ doorstep, looking for its own bailout? With the Tribune Company’s declaration of bankruptcy today, the recession of 2008 has again proven adept at revealing those industries whose business models were already top-heavy and unworkable. But, while many will point to a decade–long decline revenues for paper-and-ink news and blame this all on the Internet, I wonder whether the business that failed them was that the entertainment industry, so eager to lash together every entertainment property it can swallow into an advertising megaplex. Isn’t it telling, that Tribune is struggling not just because readers are canceling their newspaper subscriptions for digital feeds — after all, Tribune has an enormous web presence — but because they were unable to sell off the Chicago Cubs in time to make this year’s debt payments?

LA Times report here; CEO Sam Zell’s letter to his employees here.

It was a disconcerting experience to scan the AP headlines this weekend, and amid the terse reports of this political move or that bus accident, was this:

Everything seemingly is spinning out of control

The report is hinged on two polls, by ABC News and AP themselves, where Americans were asked some version of “is the country headed in the right direction?” and only 14% and 17% respectively agreed. But this dismal news of public despair was wrapped in a nearly poetic and deeply distressing tale of everything that’s going wrong in our world. Here’s just a taste:

Is everything spinning out of control? Midwestern levees are bursting. Polar bears are adrift. Gas prices are skyrocketing. Home values are abysmal. Air fares, college tuition and health care border on unaffordable. Wars without end rage in Iraq, Afghanistan and against terrorism.

Horatio Alger, twist in your grave.

The can-do, bootstrap approach embedded in the American psyche is under assault. Eroding it is a dour powerlessness that is chipping away at the country’s sturdy conviction that destiny can be commanded with sheer courage and perseverance.

The report goes on the chronicle the severity of recent natural disasters, exploding food prices and riots, recurrent power outages in major cities, the weak dollar, steroid scandals in baseball, even the TV writers’ strike. The one bit of good news,at least in my eyes, is the observation that such periods of frustration are historically always “followed by a change in the party controlling the White House.” The saga ends with

Why the vulnerability? After all, this is the 21st century, not a more primitive past when little in life was assured. Surely people know how to fix problems now.Maybe. And maybe this is what the 21st century will be about — a great unraveling of some things long taken for granted.

I wonder, among all the apocalyptic signs they note, none is so indicative that all bets are off than the fact that AP feels compelled to drop its terse, neutral reporting style for it.

(Read the full article yourself — just so AP doesn’t blow a gasket at my extensive quoting.)

In the next month or so, I’m going to be attempting to back up a bit in my thinking, to take in the big picture of the issues I’m invested in examining in my scholarship. I’m calling it the Big Think 08. We’ll see if the practical realities of life allow it. But, as I go, I’d like to throw to the blog moments and aspects, in an attempt to partially develop this snapshot.

One issue that has always troubled me is the persistent myth of the liberal media. Many have attempted to address this, so its not exactly a new area of study. But its persistence in the face of this examination is quite amazing, and speaks of something else entirely, the way the press gets played within the contemporary U.S. political context. Glenn Greenwald at Salon has a sharp critique of it today, spurred by a comment made by Scott McLellan, former White House Press Secretary for Bush, in his new autobiography:

“the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.”

Greenwald follows this with a litany of evidence of this deference, from the failings of the New York Times in allowing Judy miller’s reporting to stand, or the press adoration of McCain, or their use of military analysts in their Iraq war coverage that were made available by the DoD. He finishes with:

Press secretaries of all types instinctively view the media as adversaries and typically feel besieged by what they perceive to be the media’s unfair hostility. So if even Scott McClellan recognizes the mythical nature of the “liberal media” cliche and sees political journalists as meek little handmaidens for government propaganda, how much longer can this myth be maintained?