WHAT QUESTIONS WILL BE ASKED?

SPIN MACHINE READY

REPORTING FROM IRAQ

Today is D Day — Presidential debate day, the first of three with 50 million expected to watch. It will deal with national security, Iraq and the “war on terror.” And the debate is already underway, as BBC explains:

“Lawyers for George W Bush and John Kerry have taken weeks to hammer out a 32-page document laying out the ground rules for the upcoming US presidential election debates.

“Intense negotiations have been going on until the last moment. But the TV networks that will show the debates and the journalists who are set to moderate them are baulking at the rules. The Commission on Presidential Debates has said that it cannot force the networks to abide by the agreement.

“Two of the moderators, Charles Gibson of ABC and Bob Schieffer of CBS, have refused to sign the agreement.

THE PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW

What questions will be asked? Will the journalists be tepid and overly deferential or come our swinging? Will the candidates be posturing on who is toughest to pander to so-called “security moms.” Will there be a “Wide Gulf or Splitting Hairs” asks the NY Times. And what of these so-called “security moms. Alternet carries areport from Anna Greenberg dispelling the myth of the security mom.

www.alternet.org/election04/20036/

Yesterday MediaChannel.org, Common Cause and Media for Democracy today hand delivered more than 7,000 voter questions to the moderators of the three upcoming presidential debates. I watched as thousands of emails were put on letterhead and printed out on our creaky printer. Why was this done?

“We are concerned that the campaigns are trying to control the debates to the exclusion of the public, and that the media moderators are going along with this deceit” Timothy Karr, executive director of MediaChannel.org said.

Americans from all 50 states asked debate moderators Jim Lehrer of PBS, Charles Gibson of ABC and Bob Schieffer of CBS to pose the public’s questions directly to President Bush and Senator Kerry during the upcoming debates.

“More attention should be paid to addressing the many difficult questions this country faces now, rather than to details like the height of the chairs that the candidates will sit on,” said Common Cause President Chellie Pingree.”

www.mediachannel.org/views/dissector/affalert261.shtml

SPIN MACHINE READY TO ROLL

CNN Reported last night that ” . . . the spin machines for both campaigns are working overtime, claiming that their man has an advantage going into the face-off.” A FAIR media advisory notes: “”Who ‘wins’ the presidential debate on Thursday may well depend on how well media do their job on Friday.

“In past debates, post-debate commentary has frequently focused on the candidates’ style, body language and other cosmetic issues. The L.A. Times (9/29/04) suggested that these seemingly unimportant details can swing a campaign: “Who could have predicted that in 1992 the camera would catch an apparently unengaged President George H.W. Bush checking his watch during a debate with Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton? (Bush lost the election.) That in 2000, Gore would be remembered for inappropriately grimacing and sighing during his first debate with Bush? (Gore lost.)”

“Of course, if one were told that the media would play tape of these moments over and over again, than it would be relatively easy to predict that these would be the moments that voters remember. Something that isn’t widely remembered is the fact that initial post-debate polls showed Gore winning that debate in the minds of voters (Daily Howler, 9/28/04); it was only after media commentary focused obsessively on Gore’s reaction shots that the perception was created that his performance was a disaster.”

www.fair.org/press-releases/debate-fact-checking.html

Talking Points Memo.com reports: “A success: MSNBC has decided to pull the plug on the Frank Luntz focus group they had planned to run as part of their presidential debate coverage . . . Luntz is not only a partisan pollster — like, say, Stan Greenberg or Celinda Lake on the Dem side — but a strategist and message massager who continues to work actively for GOP candidates and organizations.)

“As recently as yesterday, I’ve now learned, he was slated to be part of the show. But according to a late report in Roll Call, MSNBC has decided to pull the plug on this extremely ill-advised plan.”

www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_09_26.php#003529

FOX RUNNING THE POOL

“The camera angles may seem like a small point, but campaigns know they offer potential embarrassing moments. Cameras caught President Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, checking his watch during one debate and Al Gore sighing during answers given by George W. Bush during a 2000 debate.

“As part of a pool for all the networks, Fox News Channel is operating the cameras at Thursday’s debate, scheduled for the University of Miami campus.

“We’re providing all the networks’ coverage and we’re not going to follow directions from outside sources,” said Paul Schur, Fox News Channel spokesman.

“Fox is expected to provide each network with feeds from several different cameras, giving them each discretion on which shots to air.”

http://tinyurl.com/6rgpz

IRAQ IS THE ISSUE

Iraq is likely to be one of the issues that the candidates will war over. A new polls shows that young people are getting turned off. James Zogby writes:

“Most political pundits believe that the final month of the 2004 presidential campaign will center around the war in Iraq. If so, then young men are likely to cast a vote of ‘no confidence’ in George W. Bush. These are the findings of a new Zogby/Williams Identity poll conducted by Zogby Interactive from September 3 through September 7, 2004.

“A survey of young men reveals that 60 percent disagree with the statement that George W. Bush made the right decision to go war with Iraq. The survey was conducted online among 850 males between the ages of eighteen and thirty years old. Strong opposition to the war among the nation’s young men has created a crisis of confidence in the president’s leadership: 59 percent believe President Bush misled the American people from the beginning about the need to go to war with Iraq.

www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=871

BIDEN SAYS: EXPAND US PROPAGANDA IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Al Jazeera reports:

“A US senator has called for an expansion in American radio and television broadcasts around the Muslim world to repair the country’s ‘image problem’. Senator Joe Biden on Wednesday said such broadcasts would help correct “a bastardisation of US views by Aljazeera and many other Arab networks”.

“It’s hardly a secret that we have more than an image problem overseas. The fact of the matter is there are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world who seem not to understand our motives and our intentions,” Biden, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said. (NOTE: It may be that those folks in the Middle East DO understand “our motives and our intentions.”)

http://tinyurl.com/6al3k

REPORTING THE WAR

Writing from Iraq Farnaz Fassihi, a Middle East correspondent, Wall Street Journal writes about the problems journalists have reporting the conflict:

“Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this job: a chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet new people in far away lands, discover their ways and tell stories that could make a difference.

“Little by little, day-by-day, being based in Iraq has defied all those reasons. I am house bound. I leave when I have a very good reason to and a scheduled interview. I avoid going to people’s homes and never walk in the streets. I can’t go grocery shopping any more, can’t eat in restaurants, can’t strike a conversation with strangers, can’t look for stories, can’t drive in any thing but a full armored car, can’t go to scenes of breaking news stories, can’t be stuck in traffic, can’t speak English outside, can’t take a road trip, can’t say I’m an American, can’t linger at checkpoints, can’t be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling. And can’t and can’t . . .

“There has been one too many close calls, including a car bomb so near our house that it blew out all the windows. So now my most pressing concern every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay alive and make sure our Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad I am a security personnel first, a reporter second . . .

“Iraqis like to call this mess ‘the situation.’ When asked ‘how are thing?’ they reply: ‘the situation is very bad.”

HELL IN HAITI– PT 2

From a report by Laura Flanders:

“So far, the US Embassy in Haiti says it has dispersed just $50,000. Under pressure, USAID has now announced they’re pledging $1.9 million for relief supplies and services. But heck, the government of Venezuela immediately offered $1 million to Haiti; the European Union $1.8 million. USAID has a two person team in country. 140 Uruguayan soldiers left this weekend to reinforce about 600 U.N. peacekeepers.”

www.commondreams.org/views04/0928-10.htm

YOUR LETTERS

Volker writes in a Canadian voice: “dig ur dissektions, danny — they make me feel less alone in my own ‘reed’-ing between the lines . . . thanx”

Anita Nowell writes to report: “Great News. The Newspaper in Crawford, Texas ran an editorial today the headline was KERRY WILL RESTORE AMERICAN DIGNITY. Even his hometown paper has moved over to the Kerry camp. That seems to me a very important fact.

Lynne Glasner adds:” I’d never heard of this publication before, perhaps you’re familiar with it- in case it’s not on your radar, check this out too:
www.iconoclast-texas.com/News/s07.htm

BIAS?

Marion Millin cheers,

“Finally! Liberal Bias in the Media!”

“I live and Sacramento and my daily paper is the SF Chronicle. (Have you seen the Bee? Nuff said). The front page headline (on paper) of this story is “IF THERE’S A FLIP FLOPPER IT APPEARS TO BE BUSH.”

http://tinyurl.com/5edln

“The SF Chron editorial cartoonist, Tom Meyer, is brilliant — a consummate artist, subtle observer, rippin’ sense of humor. Recent work has absolutely skewered our currently insane shared reality, simultaneously eliciting pained recognition and audible laughter. When the Big Lie rules, the artist reveals to the eye what the ego denies.

“Thanks for everything. BTW, your clarity, lucidity and level revelation of the obvious (to all but the blinkered) is what had the neo-rightists spinning in circles. Keep it up.”

FATAL COMPROMISE

Our friend Da’ud X Mohammed of the Oregon Coast News Signal writes about a “fatal compromise”:

“Your “David Broder is speaking out (on the ‘free press’)” story got my attention. Broder has always been a bit too conservative for my blood. Sidney has always been a personal hero so I’m not capping on him here.

“In fact I agree with him in this instance that, “The true problem is that reporters are not aggressive enough . . . ” defined as “charging hard at a story that the government or a private power center doesn’t want revealed.”

“As for the William Safire quote, “The right of Americans, through our free press, to penetrate the workings of government is under attack”. Under attack? What planet is this guy living on. That battle done came and went. We lost. The Iraq war is the proof of that.

“David Broder said, “We need to be asking why this collapse has taken place.

“My suspicion is that it stems from a widespread loss of confidence in both the values of journalism and the economic viability of the news business.”

“The WHY of the collapse is simple. We get the kind of government or press or freedom we are willing to fight for. There has been no “fight” in this country since they warned the rest of us to meddle in the affairs of the CIA or the Military Industrial Complex is death. See President Kennedy.

“The ‘value of journalism’ argument is a throw-away to divert our attention from his second point; that the “economic viability of the news business” begs a parliamentary system (that works) or an “American” BBC. The UK and Europe are being served ok. The problem (here) is about the “government or a private power” problem (here).

“Broder and Safire are in a state of denial, and Schanberg, who brought us the “government or a private power” quote won’t admit the news media we ever knew no longer exists, and in its place the American people have succumbed to a corporate media that serves the interests of the Military Industrial Complexers and the Bush White House war machine.

“There was no journalist around to report the demise of our free press.

No news producer was willing to run with the story from the moment “government or a private power” had ability enough to silence all criticism. A writer can say all day, but if his stuff doesn’t get past the editor’s desk, what diff? . . . ”

Jody Lentz:

” Seen this from Harper’s. Really puts the “terrordome” obsession in perspective:
www.harpers.org/ARunOnTerror.html

“I’m not a New Yorker, so I don’t have the visceral memory of those - like you - whose hometown was attacked, but I think we have enough cognitive distance now to put “the war on terror” in its proper place.”

BTW, mazel tov on the WMD distribution deal — here’s hoping it makes it out here to the hinterlands. Also hoping that it gets out AFTER the election, when the public can focus on the *real* problem: lame, concentrated, corporate media!

IN THE MEDIA NOTES:

Dave Marsh writes:

“Starting Sunday October 10 from 10 AM to Noon (Eastern), the Talk Central Channel of Sirius Satellite Radio Network will present a new program, Kick Out the Jams! With Dave Marsh.

“The show will be based at the intersection of music and politics. I plan to tell stories, rant and foment, as usual, besides interviewing music figures and others, and receiving calls from listeners. I’ll also play a record here and there (maybe even a countdown of the 1001 singles book). I hope the show will be a lot like an over-the-air version of Rock & Rap Confidential.

“I plan to be myself–despising Bush, disdaining Democrats, fighting the war, looking for things that sound like freedom, attacking injustice (ranging from the demolition of the Tennessee public health care system to the exclusion of Lynyrd Skynyrd from the R&R Hall of Fame), and delighting, always, in the music and what it brings to our lives . . . . ”

“Ideas welcome. Except maybe for, “Don’t do this, you idiot.”

GOD AND GOVERNMENT

Veteran producer Al Perlmutter alerts us to a new documentary airing soon on public TV stations. Watch for it. It is called

“God in Government, a one-hour documentary that explores the complex relationship between religion & politics in the contemporary world. With the United States as the focal point, and Iran, Israel and India as object lessons, the film asks fundamental questions: What are the consequences when religion and politics become intertwined? What are the fault lines along which tensions and conflicts occur? And what is the appropriate relationship between ‘church’ and state in a modern society?

“As Iran struggles with its theocracy, as Israelis remain divided over the role of the ultra-Orthodox in their daily life, and as India deals with decades of conflict fueled by religion, so too is America facing its own identify crisis over the relationship of church and state. “

Perlmutter’s productions are usually first rate.

A PLAY ON POLITICS5

Eva Dolan writes:

“This is the website for the show I am producing in Saratoga Spring. It’s also being done this weekend in NYC. I think you and the author have friends in common. He is Arthur Sainer, former Drama Critic for the Village Voice:
www.thepeopleimpeachthebushes.us

QUOTE OF THE DAY. Historian Howard Zinn on Znet:

“There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people’s thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.”

I will be watching the spectacle tonight and will share my comments. Yours are always welcome. Please watch with a critical eye. I am Danny Schechter your News Dissector and I approve this message. Write Dissector@mediachannel.org

And, oh yes, happy birthday to my brother Bill, and late Uncle George who were both born on this date years apart.