This week I finally got around to seeing Doug Liman’s new film “Fair Game” which chronicles the Valerie Plame Leak Case. I found it especially relevant in light of the recent scandal involving Wikileaks and the diplomatic cables. Our reading this week talks about the culture of journalism and the security of information and I think both of those things are being brought into question right now.
The first thing people are questioning is whether or not it is unethical for an organization like Wikileaks to expose information deemed “secret” by the US government. Now in the past, during the cold war let’s say, it probably would be unethical considering most secret information was indeed best kept secret i.e nuclear launch codes. But in recent years the designation “secret” has become so bloated that it’s hard to decipher what’s important and what is in fact bureaucratic bullshit. Thousands of government workers are granted the power to classify information “secret” and Millions more have the Clearance to read that information. It has been argued that classifying everything “secret” actually makes information less safe because it makes people cynical towards Government secrecy and therefore less concerned with keeping sensitive information out of the wrong hands. I have to agree with this argument; and circling back to the first question, is what Wikileaks did unethical? No. The way I see it, as long as they don’t expose information that will put others in harm’s way, whatever they want to put out there is fair game.
On the other hand, what Scooter Libby and Karl Rove did was not fair game. By Leaking Plame’s identity they not only endangered her and her family, but they enabled the murders of numerous assets that Plame Came in contact with in the line of duty, including nuclear scientists she was trying to Shepard out of Iraq. Their actions are a reflection of government’s “do as we say, not as we do” mentality and it has to stop.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Now They Tell Us - My Thoughts
What Michael Massing is saying about the modern news media, or at least about its relationship with the government, is that it amounts to nothing more than a cheap condom. Its lies around harmless, is slipped on when needed, and is discarded just as fast. And I have to agree with him.
The New York Times especially lacked the balls to deliver any serious war reporting. They pulled all their punches during the march to war, and then made a pathetic attempt to save their image by printing a tepid letter addressing the fact that they’re really a bunch of pussies but are going to try to ask hard questions in the future.
At least Massing was smart enough to offer solutions to the problems he presented. He suggests that the major imbalance in modern news media is a lack of alternative perspectives. He suggests having more reporters on staff that can speak Arabic so that they can get a perspective from the Iraqi side of the conflict to counter the narrow view of the war presented by the American armed forces. This, I agree, would have made American coverage of the war much more informative and more on par with coverage from foreign news outlets.
What I found most intriguing in the book, though, was not Massing’s analysis of the media failure leading up to the war, but his description of the Arabic news channel Al-Jazeera and how it was established. Apparently back during the cold war the Arab world was divided into two relatively easy to understand groups, the secular left and the religious right. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, somehow the secular left disappeared and religious extremists began to take their place. It’s quite strange. But now the Emir of Qatar is trying to use the money his country has amassed from its natural gas reserves to try and create a secular democracy, and one of the steps that was taken to help foster that democracy was the establishment of an all Arab news network. That’s how Al-Jazeera was born. Now, even though Al-Jazeera has been described as “the Arab fox news” it is still a strong alternative voice in the news media. It had people on the ground in Iraq from the beginning and was one of the only places to get an Iraqi point of view concerning the conflict. Also, its employees are composed of both religious and secular Arabs, which gives me hope that secularism can still somehow remain relevant in the region despite overwhelming pressure from extremists.
The New York Times especially lacked the balls to deliver any serious war reporting. They pulled all their punches during the march to war, and then made a pathetic attempt to save their image by printing a tepid letter addressing the fact that they’re really a bunch of pussies but are going to try to ask hard questions in the future.
At least Massing was smart enough to offer solutions to the problems he presented. He suggests that the major imbalance in modern news media is a lack of alternative perspectives. He suggests having more reporters on staff that can speak Arabic so that they can get a perspective from the Iraqi side of the conflict to counter the narrow view of the war presented by the American armed forces. This, I agree, would have made American coverage of the war much more informative and more on par with coverage from foreign news outlets.
What I found most intriguing in the book, though, was not Massing’s analysis of the media failure leading up to the war, but his description of the Arabic news channel Al-Jazeera and how it was established. Apparently back during the cold war the Arab world was divided into two relatively easy to understand groups, the secular left and the religious right. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, somehow the secular left disappeared and religious extremists began to take their place. It’s quite strange. But now the Emir of Qatar is trying to use the money his country has amassed from its natural gas reserves to try and create a secular democracy, and one of the steps that was taken to help foster that democracy was the establishment of an all Arab news network. That’s how Al-Jazeera was born. Now, even though Al-Jazeera has been described as “the Arab fox news” it is still a strong alternative voice in the news media. It had people on the ground in Iraq from the beginning and was one of the only places to get an Iraqi point of view concerning the conflict. Also, its employees are composed of both religious and secular Arabs, which gives me hope that secularism can still somehow remain relevant in the region despite overwhelming pressure from extremists.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
The Consumer Map
Things change. That’s undeniable. But why do they Change? Because of natural forces? Or is change propelled by the ulterior motives of certain individuals. The answer is of course both. But what I’m most interested in is which has more effect then the other.
Over the past two hundred years, society has gone from an economy where local communities produce their own goods and operate independently to an economy where consumers have all their goods produced outside their community and are hopelessly dependent on a single global network of goods and services. Did it get this way as a natural progression of society’s growth? Or did it arise from the natural greed inherent in the capitalist system? Once again, both.
Advertisers have been accused of creating needs that the consumer never knew they had. Numerous holidays now exist only to encourage people to buys goods they would never normally buy. But do people accept this climate of frivolousness because they’ve been conditioned to? Or does the human mind naturally lean toward more numerous and diverse options? This one i think has an actual answer.
I don’t think people are stupid enough to buy something because Google or any other advertiser tells them too. Advertising has pretty much taken over our society, but people still ultimately buy things because the want to, not because their told to. Which makes the whole monster of advertising kind of pointless, right? Well, not exactly. People know what they want, but they usually don’t know where to get it. That’s where advertising ultimately makes its mark. Each advertisement is like a traffic sign pointing in a different direction. No direction is wrong. But if you only have one sign telling you where to go, you’re going to go there for lack of a better option.
If everybody could advertise at an equal rate we’d have a much more balanced consumer map. But that’s not how the system works, is it? The map is dominated by the major players, and when a smaller name breaks through its usually because of some unusual strength. That's how capitalism works unfortunately. A few players grow larger and eat up all the rest. And i can't see it changing anytime soon. In the meantime, all we can do is look a little closer and try and find the names that have slipped through the cracks.
Over the past two hundred years, society has gone from an economy where local communities produce their own goods and operate independently to an economy where consumers have all their goods produced outside their community and are hopelessly dependent on a single global network of goods and services. Did it get this way as a natural progression of society’s growth? Or did it arise from the natural greed inherent in the capitalist system? Once again, both.
Advertisers have been accused of creating needs that the consumer never knew they had. Numerous holidays now exist only to encourage people to buys goods they would never normally buy. But do people accept this climate of frivolousness because they’ve been conditioned to? Or does the human mind naturally lean toward more numerous and diverse options? This one i think has an actual answer.
I don’t think people are stupid enough to buy something because Google or any other advertiser tells them too. Advertising has pretty much taken over our society, but people still ultimately buy things because the want to, not because their told to. Which makes the whole monster of advertising kind of pointless, right? Well, not exactly. People know what they want, but they usually don’t know where to get it. That’s where advertising ultimately makes its mark. Each advertisement is like a traffic sign pointing in a different direction. No direction is wrong. But if you only have one sign telling you where to go, you’re going to go there for lack of a better option.
If everybody could advertise at an equal rate we’d have a much more balanced consumer map. But that’s not how the system works, is it? The map is dominated by the major players, and when a smaller name breaks through its usually because of some unusual strength. That's how capitalism works unfortunately. A few players grow larger and eat up all the rest. And i can't see it changing anytime soon. In the meantime, all we can do is look a little closer and try and find the names that have slipped through the cracks.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Papers and Rags
Back in Boston we have three major papers, The Globe, the Herald, and the Phoenix. The Globe is what we call "the paper", the outlet considered the most prestigious and objective. Then there’s the Herald which we call "the Rag" because it’s articles are mostly reactionary rubbish and story’s recycled from the AP wire. The Phoenix, the independent paper with no cover charge, is the only paper we refer to by name. Most of its staff writers have communist tendencies, but it’s the only place off the net where you can find a movie review that isn’t studio purchased garbage.
This hierarchy seems to be the norm in most major American cities; a paper, a rag, and an independent. Each appeal to a different sector, but they all print the big stories. Their differences lie with the opinions. The Paper is usually slightly liberal, and the rag recognizably conservative, at least in blue states. People choose the one that reinforces their own views and ignore the other.
This hierarchy has also defined the structure of internet news, but with even starker contrast. There are extremely liberal sites and extremely conservative sites with very little ground left in the middle. You used to be able to rely of newspapers for an objective view point, but they’re dying out fast because no one reads them anymore. But why is that? Is it because people simply hate the feeling of newsprint in their hands, or is it because people aren’t looking for an objective viewpoint anymore? It’s a scary trend. One that I hope gets reversed in the near future.
This hierarchy seems to be the norm in most major American cities; a paper, a rag, and an independent. Each appeal to a different sector, but they all print the big stories. Their differences lie with the opinions. The Paper is usually slightly liberal, and the rag recognizably conservative, at least in blue states. People choose the one that reinforces their own views and ignore the other.
This hierarchy has also defined the structure of internet news, but with even starker contrast. There are extremely liberal sites and extremely conservative sites with very little ground left in the middle. You used to be able to rely of newspapers for an objective view point, but they’re dying out fast because no one reads them anymore. But why is that? Is it because people simply hate the feeling of newsprint in their hands, or is it because people aren’t looking for an objective viewpoint anymore? It’s a scary trend. One that I hope gets reversed in the near future.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
I Am in Hardware Hell
Let me explain... this Friday i woke up and my PC was dead. or at least blind. The motor was still chugging but the screen was black. So, "dead video card" i thought, "ill just go down to best buy and get a new one". So I pick up a new Mid-range card, bring it back, pop it in, and it works. For a while at least. The next morning i wake up and the thing is deader than it was the previous morning. It wont even boot up. So I call up a friend who's fluent with PC hardware and he says that my Power supply has probably died. So, Once again, Down to best buy, bring back a new power supply and install it.
Nothing. It's now officially a paper weight.
It feels almost as if a relative has died. I feel totally displaced over here on the couch, bent over typing on my Macbook. The PC nook I've established is very comfortable. Perfect chair, perfect desk height, monitor tilted just so. I spend hours there, surfing the web, writing scripts,gaming. Its like my home within my home. An extension of myself.
Needless to say, this will not stand. ITS UPGRADE TIME. As soon as possible I'm going out and buying a new PC with a processor twice the speed of my 2-year old machine. and with the new graphics card and power supply my computing power will be greater than ever. You'll see. The Nook won't even know that i was gone.
Nothing. It's now officially a paper weight.
It feels almost as if a relative has died. I feel totally displaced over here on the couch, bent over typing on my Macbook. The PC nook I've established is very comfortable. Perfect chair, perfect desk height, monitor tilted just so. I spend hours there, surfing the web, writing scripts,gaming. Its like my home within my home. An extension of myself.
Needless to say, this will not stand. ITS UPGRADE TIME. As soon as possible I'm going out and buying a new PC with a processor twice the speed of my 2-year old machine. and with the new graphics card and power supply my computing power will be greater than ever. You'll see. The Nook won't even know that i was gone.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Communism 2.0: Governments + Corporations = Better world, Right?
Yesterday I went to see the documentary “Inside Job” which illustrates how the financial sector made hundreds of billions of dollars by making bets against their own investments which were designed to fail. How were they able to pull off the greatest robbery in human history if full view of the public? Well, first they got their executives appointed to government positions and had them burn the regulations put in place after the great depression to protect the public from unstable and predatory financial practices. Then they consolidated into groups so large that their failure would threaten the economic stability of the world. After that it was open season to make whatever risky bets they wanted. Then, when the floor fell out of the market, the banks turned to Uncle Sam and said, “If we go down, everyone goes down.” At which point congress easily coughed up a trillion dollars that the bankers got to keep, no questions asked.
My point is that government deregulation imposed by corporate interests almost always makes things worse. In the reading, I can see this happened in the radio industry a while ago. When the telecommunications act was passed in 1996, it pretty much eliminated all regulations on radio station ownership, and what we got was a white wash of homogenized crap on the airwaves. Corporations only look out for themselves, and when they don’t have to follow any rules they will attempt, and often succeed, at taking over the whole system. Once this happens we are often left with inferior products because the companies see no need to improve or innovate in the face on zero competition. It basically amounts to a form of corporate communism, and suffers from the same shortfalls that the Soviet Union suffered during its short tenure in human history. Deregulation is un-American because it ends up crushing competition under the guise of encouraging it, but since corporate cronies are still allowed to serve in government positions I can’t see the deregulation bandwagon rolling to a stop anytime soon.
My point is that government deregulation imposed by corporate interests almost always makes things worse. In the reading, I can see this happened in the radio industry a while ago. When the telecommunications act was passed in 1996, it pretty much eliminated all regulations on radio station ownership, and what we got was a white wash of homogenized crap on the airwaves. Corporations only look out for themselves, and when they don’t have to follow any rules they will attempt, and often succeed, at taking over the whole system. Once this happens we are often left with inferior products because the companies see no need to improve or innovate in the face on zero competition. It basically amounts to a form of corporate communism, and suffers from the same shortfalls that the Soviet Union suffered during its short tenure in human history. Deregulation is un-American because it ends up crushing competition under the guise of encouraging it, but since corporate cronies are still allowed to serve in government positions I can’t see the deregulation bandwagon rolling to a stop anytime soon.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Who needs Don Draper when we've got Facebook?
I guess the thing I have against the internet, or one of the things I have against it, is that it isn’t a fair game, at least from an advertising standpoint.
This weekend I saw the new Fincher movie “The Social Network”. A good movie; I’d recommend it. Fincher has a way of making the story of a few nerds inventing a non-porn website seem so exciting. But that is beside the point. The thing that really struck me was one statistic stated during the closing shot of the movie. Facebook, a website designed simply to allow people to share their personal bullshit is worth 25 billion dollars. How the hell did that happen?
But then the simple answer hits like a brick to the happy-sack. Of course! This is the tool advertisers have been waiting for since the invention of advertising. Information advertisers used have to procure through weeks or months of market research is now willingly given up by the consumer, for free, in one centralized location. Age, Profession, Interests, Sexual orientation; it’s all there. Now all advertisers have to do is farm the Facebook servers and they suddenly have relatively precise market coverage. Before Facebook came along advertising was like doing surgery with a police baton. Now they’ve gone and invented the scalpel.
The problem I have with this model is that I don’t want advertisers to have to much information. Otherwise the ads get a little to close for comfort. Because surgical advertising isn’t just confined to Facebook, and not everything I look up on the internet is something I want a major corporation, or the general public for that matter, to know about. But there isn’t any real way to opt out of this surgical advertising model unless you sever all personal involvement on the Net. And that’s pretty hard to do these days because many people only communicate electronically.
Integrate or isolate, those are the choices. Kind of harsh but as our electronic world grows and fundamentally alters our physical world for better and for worse we are left with new, and sometimes frightening, choices to make. The times they are a changing. That’s for damn sure.
PS. Carl- I'm going to be late to class on Monday. For more Explanation, check the e-mail on the syllabus. I sent you a message a couple of days ago but still haven't gotten a response.
This weekend I saw the new Fincher movie “The Social Network”. A good movie; I’d recommend it. Fincher has a way of making the story of a few nerds inventing a non-porn website seem so exciting. But that is beside the point. The thing that really struck me was one statistic stated during the closing shot of the movie. Facebook, a website designed simply to allow people to share their personal bullshit is worth 25 billion dollars. How the hell did that happen?
But then the simple answer hits like a brick to the happy-sack. Of course! This is the tool advertisers have been waiting for since the invention of advertising. Information advertisers used have to procure through weeks or months of market research is now willingly given up by the consumer, for free, in one centralized location. Age, Profession, Interests, Sexual orientation; it’s all there. Now all advertisers have to do is farm the Facebook servers and they suddenly have relatively precise market coverage. Before Facebook came along advertising was like doing surgery with a police baton. Now they’ve gone and invented the scalpel.
The problem I have with this model is that I don’t want advertisers to have to much information. Otherwise the ads get a little to close for comfort. Because surgical advertising isn’t just confined to Facebook, and not everything I look up on the internet is something I want a major corporation, or the general public for that matter, to know about. But there isn’t any real way to opt out of this surgical advertising model unless you sever all personal involvement on the Net. And that’s pretty hard to do these days because many people only communicate electronically.
Integrate or isolate, those are the choices. Kind of harsh but as our electronic world grows and fundamentally alters our physical world for better and for worse we are left with new, and sometimes frightening, choices to make. The times they are a changing. That’s for damn sure.
PS. Carl- I'm going to be late to class on Monday. For more Explanation, check the e-mail on the syllabus. I sent you a message a couple of days ago but still haven't gotten a response.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Art and Commerce Combine: Oh Joy!
I’d like to comment on two particular issues brought up in the reading; Media convergence and the merger of art and commerce. Now that all types of media are available to all demographics, the tendency of producers is to dilute entertainment and information as much as they can to avoid offending anyone and therefore increase their circulation. But while this can lead to higher short term profits, their products have no staying power and therefore never pass into the long lasting realm of “art”.
I think this is a major problem facing our society because our culture is becoming disposable. Everyday brings a new viral video, political “Battle”, or television guest star while the ones that came before nose dive into oblivion. And this is no accident. It has a design. Everyone in a position of power wants the masses to have a microscopic attention span so that they can fuck up and no one will notice. And the business moguls like it because they can produce the same low grade swill over and over and still reap obscene profits.
Somehow I think the “revolution” in Reganomics has finally warped this country to the point where we can’t even produce relevant art anymore, at least not on a massive level. Almost every movie that I’ve liked in the last decade has been labeled an “independent” film, and the ones that weren’t slapped with that label were either Oscar grabs or foreign films. And they all comprise only about ten percent of the total market. That means nine out of every ten films made now I will either only watch once or never watch at all. And that disturbs me because I’m trying to make a career in filmmaking and I’m going to the movies less and less.
Media today is designed to be a hit and run experience. Come in, take the money and run; and under no circumstance leave any evidence you were ever there.
I think this is a major problem facing our society because our culture is becoming disposable. Everyday brings a new viral video, political “Battle”, or television guest star while the ones that came before nose dive into oblivion. And this is no accident. It has a design. Everyone in a position of power wants the masses to have a microscopic attention span so that they can fuck up and no one will notice. And the business moguls like it because they can produce the same low grade swill over and over and still reap obscene profits.
Somehow I think the “revolution” in Reganomics has finally warped this country to the point where we can’t even produce relevant art anymore, at least not on a massive level. Almost every movie that I’ve liked in the last decade has been labeled an “independent” film, and the ones that weren’t slapped with that label were either Oscar grabs or foreign films. And they all comprise only about ten percent of the total market. That means nine out of every ten films made now I will either only watch once or never watch at all. And that disturbs me because I’m trying to make a career in filmmaking and I’m going to the movies less and less.
Media today is designed to be a hit and run experience. Come in, take the money and run; and under no circumstance leave any evidence you were ever there.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
And so it begins...
This week I was asked to read “Media Unlimited” by Todd Gitlin and all I can say is I tried. I really tried. But this book is so goddamn dry that I just couldn’t absorb it in any meaningful capacity. I got about thirty pages in before I had to stop and literally say to myself “God this book is dense”. Then I thought, “It must just have a slow start. I’ll go deeper and find the good stuff”. So I opened to the middle and started skimming. But still, nothing.
This book is like a trash bag filled with facts and statistics packed so tightly that is just becomes one big ball of garbage. It reads more like a research paper than a book, so I turned to the last page to figure who this Todd Gitlin guy really is. And then I understood. This guy is a professional lecturer. And on top of that, he’s a professor at Columbia University. So I’m guessing that he really loves the sound of his own voice. He probably spends all day looking this stuff up just so he can regurgitate it in dense streams of information like this. And to top it all off, his cultural reference are all stuck in 2002. He mentions The Sopranos and Eminem as if they’re timeless cultural events.
To Sum up, I have nothing against college professors, but professional windbags like this are the reason students would sometimes rather surf the net than listen in class.
This book is like a trash bag filled with facts and statistics packed so tightly that is just becomes one big ball of garbage. It reads more like a research paper than a book, so I turned to the last page to figure who this Todd Gitlin guy really is. And then I understood. This guy is a professional lecturer. And on top of that, he’s a professor at Columbia University. So I’m guessing that he really loves the sound of his own voice. He probably spends all day looking this stuff up just so he can regurgitate it in dense streams of information like this. And to top it all off, his cultural reference are all stuck in 2002. He mentions The Sopranos and Eminem as if they’re timeless cultural events.
To Sum up, I have nothing against college professors, but professional windbags like this are the reason students would sometimes rather surf the net than listen in class.
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