Pick the Perp

Ever wonder whether you'd be good at picking the guilty party out of a line up? Here's your chance. Pick the Perp is a website that tests your ability to ID the correct criminal. You have a one in five chance and I'm willing to be that you'll come away with a .200 batting average.

Glad this day came

I'm not trying to sound heartless, but I'm a little bit glad that Michael Jackson is dead. For the last 15 or so years he's been a near joke because of his antics and strange behavior. Tonight is the first time in a long time where I've seen honest reflection on his talents as a performer. In some ways I'd wished it had happened 15 years ago.

I distinctly remember riding the bus to school in 3rd grade when Thriller came out and the 5th graders playing the album on the bus to school in the morning. I also remember seeing the video for Billie Jean (at a friends house of course since my parents weren't up on the cable technology at that point). Then in 1986 I remember the excitement for the release of the album Bad and finally getting to watch the videos at my own house (my parents finally got with the times).

I've never considered myself a Michael Jackson fan per se. I like a lot of his songs and the man was a tremendous performer. I've only owned a copy of the album Thriller once, and that I got from Goodwill. It's a shame that his life turned into such a freak-show. I can't imagine how I would handle life if I'd been put in the public eye at a young age and if I'd had the talent he had. It's certainly a world where it's hard to stay grounded. It's sad that it took his death for the media to remember he was just another person.

In the end, maybe it's a good day. I don't see a lot of people crying, mostly folks remembering the days when Michael was larger than life and the focus was on his music and not his eccentricities. Unfortunately it might be the best thing to happen to his kids, if they aren't too screwed up already.

All in all, it's a good time to remember Michael Jackson's past and the joy his music brought, then move on. North Korea still wants to test some missiles and protesters are still fighting in Iran. As nice as Michael Jackson's music is, it's meaningless if we ignore the bigger picture.

Why do People Hate America?

Why do people hate America?  That's the question Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies try to answer in their book by that name.  This is by no means and easy question, unless you are George W Bush and think that people simply hate us for our freedom.  I don't expect that there aren't people who do hate us for our freedom, but I doubt that number is very big.

The book is not ground-breaking by any means.  I've heard many of the arguments before, in fact the book Banana contained plenty of reasons though it wasn't the purpose of the book.  The basic reasons deal with US intervention in global politics through CIA assassinations, wars, and other events to manipulate markets.  There's also the ever present American culture that has infiltrated almost every corner of the world via Mc Donald's and Jerry Bruckheimer/Michael Bay films.  Together these two things build resentment for the US outside the country.  The citizens of other countries feel the cards are stacked against them politically and economically.  This political/economical war is put into action by a variety of ways.  Some of the most prominent are sanctions and war/assassination.

American culture pervades the world.  I haven't been outside the US, but I am aware I can find a McDonald's pretty much everywhere.  On top of that, there's our media that is exported.  This comes in the form of film and television.  Television is important to note, because all of the production costs are made in the sales to the US/Canadian markets, everything else is pure profit.  This allows the companies to sell American shows at a low rate undercutting the local programming.  Local shows have a more difficult time competing for airtime and ad revenue.  The locals slowly become americanized.

In the political/economic war that exists out the, the locals have virtually no control over what happens.  That's a tragedy, because in that state we all become pawns for other people.  When it comes to media and fast-food, I think it's a different story.  People become surrounded by a culture that is not their own and they begin to lose connection to the culture they were brought up in.  I think the first issue is certainly a no-brainer.  The second is a little more complicated.  Granted that people can't completely control the economic fortunes of their country and viewing shows from our country might be cheaper.  The simple fact is that nobody has really forced many of these nations to accept the Film/TV and fast-food and people can still vote with their dollars.  The exceptions would be places like Jamaica where our food is so subsidized that it's cheaper to import food from the US than to buy the local food.  The problem is that it weakens the local economy.

Overall I thought the book was interesting and not a waste of time.  I can't believe this is the best book on the subject.  I found that 211 pages is way too short to tackle the weighty issues that it attempts.  I found the facts lacking.  The authors share plenty of historical facts about our intervention in other nation's affairs.  I think that some statistics to support the claims about hatred regarding American media and the like would have been helpful.  I'd also like to see some data on the opinions held in the nations.  Without that data, the books amounts to what I call folk-wisdom.  I don't have the means to verify all the fact either, but it appears they got it wrong when it comes to Mohammed Modaddeq.  In the book the authors state he was killed by the CIA in the 1950's, but the man didn't die until 1967 at the age of 84.  I hope that the other facts are not as inaccurate, but this does affect some of the credibility of the authors somewhat.

Another issue I had with the book was that it used the TV show Alias and the famed wester Shane to serve as analogies for America.  The analogies may be fitting, but I've never seen a minute of Alias and I haven't seen Shane since I was ten (and I don't think I ever saw the whole movie either).  In a book of this nature and with the lofty goals, I'd rather have the facts and not toy with stupid TV shows and Films to advance the plot of the book.  I only think it's appropriate when the show directly correlates with the books mission.  I understood what the connection was supposed to be, but the execution was poor and provided insufficient meat.

The book does outline many of the issues well.  It fails to really present a better solution.  While identifying problems is important in working toward a solution, the book is barren when it comes to solutions.  I think it's even barren when it comes to the causes.  The authors the historical events well, but fail to provide the context very well.  On top of that, they fail to even attempt to offer any deeper insight into the "Whys".  I'd like to see more theories and analysis of why the US did something or acts a certain way in given situations.  With that there are no practical solutions either.  Granted the book is meant to be about why people hate us, but I think an alternative and a realistic way to get would be helpful and make the book more worthwhile.

Honestly, who's going to read this book besides me?  Nobody, at least not the people who should.  The title is not approachable and would likely turn off the folks who need to read it, or something like it.  I agree with the general premise that we in the US are responsible for much of the hostility we face from people of other nations.  I don't think this is the best book on the topic.  I don't know what else is out there, but I have to believe there's a better book that this one.

Don't Believe It

If you've ever wondered how lies become news, then you should read Don't Believe It by Alexandra Kitty.  As a freelance journalist, Kitty has written for many publications including Elle,QUill, and Critical Review.   She is also a co-author, with Robert Greenwald, of the book Outfoxed about Rupert Murdoch and his war on journalism.

In Don't Believe It, Kitty shares her insights on how to deconstruct the news.  This becomes even more important with the 24-hour news cycle and the massive amount of information through the myriad of technologies.  There was an age when the news could be trusted more, not necessarily because the reporters were more honest, but that they had the time to fact check and wait on a story.  In the current news cycle that's almost impossible, unless you don't mind getting scooped.  This is not some thing that is likely to change, so it is more important for news consumers to arm themselves with the skills to analyze news.

For the first part of the book, Kitty spends much of the time discussing relatively meaningless instances of bad reporting or outright lying.  There's the example of Greg Packer who managed to make his way into man-on-the-street reports.  He'd developed a hobby of getting in the news and had been quoted quite extensively.  He was discovered by Ann Coulter of all people.   Other cases involved things misquotes of famous people, often it was in an obituary and the source wasn't verified.  Relatively harmless in general.  I do think Kitty spends a little too much time on these particular issues, but they do easily illustrate the process that happens.

She moves on to the bigger fish for most of the book.  These include the Jayson Blaire's and Steven Glass' of the world along with the Susan Smith's of the world.  In some instances the people were innocently trying to cover something up, but the thing got blown out of proportion.  There was kid you accidentally hung his dog at the park, so he told his parents some bullies killed the dog.  He didn't want to get into trouble.  Once folks got wind of the story, there was a lot of outpouring of sympathy.  There's also the lady in Canada who was addicted to pills, but couldn't get a prescription, so she went to the police with a sob story about getting robbed and losing her precious meds.  This story blew up and people started sending her money for her kids college and so forth.

The issues become even more important when we get to the issue of war and WMDs in Iraq.  The whole world was sold a story and the news agencies didn't do enough to verify the veracity of the data.  Some of it was due to the lingering shock from 9/11 and the fear of appearing unpatriotic.  Few asked why are we going into Iraq if they have WMDs?  Why weren't they used on US troops during the invasion?  Oh yeah, there weren't any there.  By the time we got that figured out, we were knee deep.  It's the issues like these that really matter and makes it important to be vigilant in reading the news with a skeptical eye.

With each chapter, Kitty provides some tips on spotting news that's exaggerated or completely false.  The key is looking at the logic and content of a story.  When a reporter uses a lot of color and description, but is short on the facts, that's a red flag.  Either the author hasn't done the homework or things are made up.  The facts should fit together logically and have specificity.  In a story about the first gulf war, somebody volunteering in a Kuwaiti hospital told how the Iraqi soldiers came in and removed babies from incubators and stole them.  The witness left out important facts like were the babies thrown on the floor or gently set on the floor?  If the babies were gently set on the floor, why would the soldiers be so careful?  These missing facts should have been a red flag, because any normal witness would have noticed that act and made sure to describe it.

In another example of logical flaws happened in the murder of a man's wife.  While out on the town a man and his wife were shot.  The pregnant wife was shot in the head, while the man suffered a less serious wound in the abdomen.  The police reasoned that the shooter mistook the husband for a cop and wanted revenge or something.  But what is wrong with this picture?  Why would a gunman make sure his shot was dead on for a pregnant woman virtually ensuring she's incapacitated while leaving the man able to fight back.  A typical gunman would take out the more dangerous person first, in this case the husband, then worry about the pregnant wife.  As it turned out, the husband set the whole thing up to get rid of his wife.

In most cases, if the story sounds outrageous, it likely is.  Use occam's razor to parse the news.  Remove the emotional elements from every story, those are useless.  It's all about the facts.  We can't all be experts in every field, but we should be able to figure out when things don't seem right.  When that is the case, look it up or at least take the fact with a grain of salt until it pans out.

This was a terrific book.  I haven't read much about how to parse the news, but I found this book to be quite good.  I think Don't Believe It should be required reading, along with The Media Monopoly, for all students.  It's especially important for journalism and political students, but anybody who consumes news should read a book like this one.