The importance of true names and true pronouns

This should be a very simple concept.

The soldier once known as Bradley Manning has come out as a trans* woman and would henceforth like to be called Chelsea.

People change their names all the time. Or start going by a nickname. We listen, we learn, we use the new, preferred name. Easy.

For reasons of long-held and very misguided cultural norms and biases, however, when a person comes to terms with being trans* and wishes to be addressed in a way that validates their correct gender identity, a great hew and cry goes up from the masses.

In the Manning case, even many of the major media outlets can't even seem to handle this most basic of requests. FOX News I expected, though it is still sad. When I read a statement from an NPR spokeswoman that "Until Bradley Manning’s desire to have his gender changed actually physically happens, we will be using male-related pronouns to identify him,” however, I was dismayed.

If even this, one of those most stalwartly neutral news outfits in the country, can't get it right? We really are in trouble.

It doesn't matter how you feel about Manning's actions in the Wikileaks case. That's almost an entirely separate issue (though there may be something to the defense's pointing out that the military's attitudes toward trans* people probably didn't help her depression and sense of isolation).

Words matter. They represent our attitudes toward an entire section of the population that is still largely marginalized, dehumanized, abused, and worse.

And this should be simple. It does no one a bit of harm to do a quick mental recalibration and begin referring to someone by their preferred pronouns. And guess what? It does that person a world of good. Why do anything else, then?

New York Magazine was one of the few outlets that not only got it right, but seems to really get it:

"Why is it so hard for people to type an extra s when they write about Manning? We updated our nomenclature for "Snoop Lion" and "the Artist Formerly Known as Prince." "Ali Lohan" and "Lil' Bow Wow" became "Aliana" and "Bow Wow" to reflect personal growth. We accept typographical requests from branded products like iPhone, PowerPoint, and eHarmony — and from branded humans like Ke$ha, A$AP Rocky, and 'N Sync. (The last being unusual even without the asterisk.) The idiosyncrasies of capitalism, apparently, are more compelling than a human's self-professed gender."

What does qualify as a problem, of course, is our society's continued insistence on erasing trans* identities or, worse, causing violence to them.

These are our neighbors, friends, family members, co-workers. There is nothing threatening about their identity. There is something threatening about a culture that still holds such ignorance and disdain for them.

I hope others will join me in calling on outlets like NPR to change their attitudes and policies immediately. This isn't acceptable, and silence is complicity.

How the Steubenville case can shine a light on the darkness of rape culture

Enough.

How is it 2013 and we're still debating whether or not a drunk teenage girl "asked" to be raped, or could have consented to sex in her inebriated state? How is this still up for discussion?

Why are we still devaluing the humanity of men by simply assuming that they can't help themselves when presented with an opportunity to sexually violate someone? Why are we still devaluing the humanity of women by calling them sluts, disbelieving them when they say they've been raped, and placing the "responsibility not to be raped" on their shoulders for any reason at all, let alone what they're wearing or who they're with or where they go?

There's going to be a lot of ink spilled and air time spent discussing the ramifications of the Steubenville rape case. I can only hope that more of it is spent having a serious conversation about the abominable way in which we, as a culture, deal with rape - and far less on how positively awful the whole thing is for the two boys charged with the crime, or the town itself.

Because so far that's been the dominant media narrative. CNN, ABC, NBC, and countless other major media outlets all played into rape culture narrative by placing more emphasis on feeling bad that such "promising students" with "promising football careers" were negatively effected by the eventual guilty verdict. FOX News went so far as to name the victim on air.

In fact, MSNBC was one of the only networks that posted a news piece that dealt with the actual facts of what happened, without making excuses for the perpetrators or casting doubt on the victim and highlighting the fact that she was drunk when the attack occurred (I'm looking at you, USA Today).

There is no excuse for rape. None.

It doesn't matter how drunk someone is - in fact, someone being drunk means they cannot give consent, so if they say you raped them, guess what? You raped them.

That's why consent, and understanding what constitutes consent, is such an important concept - we all need to learn it and love it. That's why we taught it so much back when I was a peer educator for incoming freshmen at my college.

And that's why, when the defense tried to say that the 16-year-old girl had "consented" to the sex - while so drunk she didn't remember what had happened until pictures and video of the incidents showed up on social media - I felt sick to my stomach. And why I was so glad when the guilty verdict was handed down, as a slap in the face to that fucked up line of thinking.

No one "asks" to be raped. And men are not animals that can't be expected to do better.

We, as a society, as human beings, need to step up and create a culture in which this sort of thing would never happen in the first place. Where coaches actually act like the mentor/role model figures that their kids see them as and emphasize/demand decent fucking behavior out of their athletes. Where the media does not impugn the dignity of victims.

Name it, change it. Kill rape culture dead.

TONIGHT: Panel discussion on the state of modern media

TONIGHT at 7 p.m.: Come hang out with me and several distinguished journalists to discuss "The State of the Fourth Estate in American Politics." Relevant, right?

With just two days to go before Election Day, and in the midst of a quickly changing media landscape, I believe that discussions like this are ones we should absolutely be having, and often.

The forum will feature four panelists, including Paul Fanlund, editor of the Capital Times, John Powell, former reporter for Wisconsin Public Radio, Bill Lueders, former News Editor for Isthmus and now at WisconsinWatch.org, and Dane101 editor Emily Mills (that would be me).

As part of this moderated discussion, panelists will comment on the changing role of the electronic and print media in covering political developments and election and address these questions:

• Is the Fourth Estate doing a credible job of political and electoral analysis?

• Has the whole notion of “balance” in reporting gone too far when opposing positions are routinely treated as being equally credible?
    
• Have the major media become too corporatized to be an independent, objective voice?
    
• Are contemporary consumers of political news too wedded to sources that simply reinforce their positions & prejudices?
    
• What, in your estimation, can we expect of the media in the future?

This event is free and open to the public. Anyone concerned about how the media shapes opinion and sets the terms for political dialogue and policy making will find this discussion illuminating. Watch the FUS website for updated information.

The discussion will be held at First Unitarian Society of Madison, 900 University Bay Dr. in the historic Frank Lloyd Wright Meeting House.

Government and media responsibility in the digital age

Once in a while, even in the age of print media decline, a piece of cold, hard reporting can still jump out and grab your attention.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has been running investigative pieces since January about a woman in Wisconsin who has allegedly been scamming the state out of millions of dollars in child care subsidies for the past several years. The work has been so comprehensive, and so damning of how the state has handled the case, that once the paper said it was about to publish this comprehensive article, the woman in question appeared to confess her crimes and the state finally took serious action against her.

It's a frustrating read, but not because of the reporting. Happily, that's proved to be a pretty rock solid example of what good journalism can and should be: in-depth, hard-hitting, dogged, and informative. It's much raking at its finest.

What's frustrating is twofold. First, you have the state appearing to massively bungle what should have been a pretty easy-to-spot and punish case of serious fraud. We're talking about millions of dollars in funding meant to go toward supporting low-income families trying to support their children. Instead, it appears to have ended up funding a 6-bedroom mansion with an indoor swimming pool and basketball court.

Secondly, there's the bad name this woman--Latasha Jackson--is giving to honest child care providers and those in real need of public assistance in Wisconsin. It's this type of case that only lends fuel to the fires of those people who adamantly oppose any kinds of aid programs for the less well heeled among us. They scowl and point and say "See! Welfare Queens sponging off the system!" But there are plenty--too many, frankly--of people who actually need assistance in getting back on their feet.

I want to give great big kudos to the MJS and the reporters who've been working on this story so diligently. They should get much of the credit for finally kicking the state in the pants and getting them to follow up on the matter, hopefully retrieving the money that's been defrauded of tax payers and making sure this woman never gets another dime from the state.

Now we need to make sure the people funding our media realize what a great resource they have in experienced, on-the-ground local reporters, and start finding other ways to save money that don't involve sacking them all.

(h/t The Sconz)

Working out the kinks in digital rights and expectations

All politics is local. All politics is global.

The former has always been true, while the latter has only really come into its own truth with the advent of the internet and our ever-evolving digital age. For instance, in the past week, comments made by former Madison alder Brenda Konkel on her blog were used, out of context and without attribution, by an online newspaper. Said alder then commented on the article via her Facebook and Twitter accounts, and those words were picked up by a blog/online magazine and posted as a screen shot (still following me?).

Charges of impropriety were leveled at pretty much everyone involved for a whole variety of issues, but as I said in my piece on Dane101 yesterday, I think the really interesting issue at hand here is that of our increasingly online lives. How much online exposure is too much? What rights do we maintain in the binary world? What's the reasonable expectation of privacy for individuals using the web? For public officials?

Happily, a fairly in-depth and civil discussion of these issues was the main result of the posts, and many valid critiques and theories have been posited.

I maintain that, while it was improper that the first version of the screen shot included a comment from an unrelated person (it has since been removed), the use of the quote was fair. Konkel made the comment both on Facebook--which admittedly has a few more privacy filters--and on Twitter, which is quite public. Konkel herself has offered some thoughtful responses to this storm in a bottle:

What was cross-posted on Facebook - the same content - was also not that big of a deal to be used publicly, especially because it was political content. I think what surprised me was seeing my subsequent comment posted. Again, probably splitting hairs, but I guess I'll be more judicious in my comments in the future. If I wanted my comments to be more public, I could have just twittered it. Like I said, my twitter has more public comments, on my facebook, you'll see that I painted my toenails purple. I use them differently. Perhaps it was a distinction in my own head, but I thought it was more widely understood. Otherwise, I'm surprised by what some public figures (members of the media included) post on facebook and I'd hate to see all of that fair game for the press.

As you can see, it's a multi-layered debate, but an important one for everyone to be having as more and more news is gotten and purveyed online, and more of us are making our lives open to total strangers through the internet. Because we all need to realize that, if we put it online, someone is going to see it. We need to decide what that means, and how it can or can't be legally used.

I don't pretend to have definitive answers to all of these questions, but I'm glad we're at least really starting to discuss them. I wish the major news organizations would do more of the same, frankly. It behooves us all to figure these things out before bigger, potentially more damaging instances of personal data mining occur in the press.

Meanwhile, there's still that pesky issue of racism brought up by the original posts and articles. Over on the far more inconsistent side of things, Dave Blaska accuses Konkel of resorting to McCarthy-like tactics in her comments about Alder Pham-Remmele that helped kick off this whole thing:

...Brenda Konkel has turned the racism card face up, as the Left is wont to do so promiscuously.

Yes, because "The Right" is so free from prejudice of any kind. The unfortunate thing is that, in the middle of Blaska's name calling, self-aggrandizing screed, there are actually a few decent points to be had--namely, that we all need to do a better job of figuring out when we're just asking people to be more responsible for themselves and their children, and when we're taking that to a classist, racist level by including stereotypes and derogatory sentiments.

Take the comments Pham-Remmele made that are at the center of this debate. Back in October of '07, the Common Council was discussing redevelopment in the Allied Drive neighborhood when, as the Capital Times then reported,

Jaws dropped...As a number of residents of the neighborhood looked on and city cable Channel 12's cameras rolled, Pham-Remmele said that, based on her 30 years' experience as a teacher in the Madison school district, some Allied Drive families made expensive hair braiding a higher priority than their children's lunches.

It's one of those cringe-worthy statements that may have a kernel of truth at its core, but is expressed in such a crass manner that any chance for reasoned, constructive dialogue thereafter goes understandably out the window.

I suspect that the issue with Pham-Remmele has more to do with her inability to express herself properly rather than serious racism. She is often accused of making rambling, incoherent statements at council meetings, and that, combined with her no-nonsense approach to public service, is a recipe for discord.

We owe it to ourselves to have serious discussions about neighborhood safety and quality of life, as well as finding a balance between personal responsibility and community assistance. And yes, racism still exists in this Obama era, whether the Dave Blaska's of the world would like to admit it or not. We've all got our little prejudices, our ignorance of certain people or cultures, our preconceived notions that need straightening out. And so it's good that there are forceful voices out there, like Konkel and like Pham-Remmele, to keep us on our toes. It's up to the rest of us, then, to make sure those forceful voices are countered, when necessary, by equally honest but perhaps more thoughtful and nuanced discussion.

Name calling or coddling aren't going to get any of us anywhere good.

Pigs, press, and pandemics

I really need to switch my morning wake-up call from NPR to one of the pre-set "soothing" waterfall sounds. As it is, lately every day when my alarm goes off, my sleep addled brain can't properly process all of the damn swine flu news without turning it into some bizarre, half-waking dream about The Stand.

I don't do well with disease and pandemics. To this day, I can't watch perfectly good shows like "House" (and that's saying something, because I loves me some Hugh Laurie) because any plot line involving Things That Could Feasibly Happen In Real Life tends to send me into panic attacks. It's not fun.

Still, I do what I think is an admirable job of keeping a lid on my hypochondrism, and maintain a fairly reasonable and realistic idea of how these sorts of things play out.

Which is why I'm getting a little overwhelmed with and pissed off at the current media coverage of the swine flu outbreak.

I understand that it's difficult to find the balance between sensationalism and practicality when it comes to something as potentially dangerous as a new virus. You want to strike a balance between proper preparedness and not getting irrationally freaked out. But there seems to be a lot of misinformation and/or misperception out there at the moment.

A new virus with the potential for pandemic is definitely something to take seriously, but I think it's also important that we keep in mind that regular ol' influenza kills thousands of people in this country each year. So far, swine flu ain't got nothing on that (and let's hope it stays that way). It's also been noted that we have two vaccinations that appear to be effective against the swine flu, and many of the cases in the US have so far been blessedly mild.

So I'm taking a wait-and-see approach to this and trying not to flip out with notions of a Spanish Flu-like outbreak.

That said, I can't help but wonder: Scientists have tracked the epicenter of the outbreak to the town of La Gloria, which is home to a large-scale pig farming operation (run by U.S. pork behemoth Smithfield Foods). Is there a connection between the factory and the virus? Conditions at places like that are notoriously foul, with little emphasis placed on proper animal waste treatment. In fact, that's the case across the border in the US as well.

According to an article over at Grist (worth reading the whole thing, btw):

In a statement issued late Sunday, Smithfield said it had “found no clinical signs or symptoms of the presence of swine influenza in the company’s swine herd or its employees at its joint ventures in Mexico.” The wording is interesting here—“no signs or symptoms,” but no information about actual testing of pigs for flu strains. Could pigs carry a flu virus without being visibly ill? Tara Smith, an epidemiologist at the University of Iowa who has done groundbreaking work around hog confinements and the emergence of the deadly, antibiotic-resistant MRSA staph infection, told me in an interview that one would expect to see at least some sign of sickness in hogs carrying a flu bug. Of course, precisely for biosecurity reasons, CAFO operators rabidly resist visitors. When I toured a CAFO-intense county in Iowa a couple of years ago and approached a massive, reeking hog building, an employee rushed to intercept me, claiming that germs from a single healthy human could wipe out an entire 10,000-hog confinement. Confined hogs, you see, are extremely immune-compromised. One hopes that health authorities have been allowed to inspect the Granjas Carroll facilities.

It’s important to note as well that non-symptomatic pigs can carry flu. Here is a line from the World Health Organization’s recently posted FAQ on swine flu: “The virus is spread among pigs by aerosols, direct and indirect contact, and asymptomatic carrier pigs” (emphasis mine).

The piece goes on to note that residents of La Gloria, including health workers, have noted large swarms of flies congregating on the piles of pig manure--and, according to a study published in the May-June 2008 issue of Public Health Reports, flies can and do sometimes carry the flu virus.

In fact, La Gloria residents were coming down with a "respiratory ailment," with symptoms matching what would later come to be identified as the swine flu, as early as February and it "infected 60 percent of the town’s 1,800 inhabitants."

Certainly these are facts worthy of concern, both in terms of how the situation was and is being handled in Mexico, and--perhaps more importantly--how we're all dealing with the possible connections between industrial scale food animal confinement operations.

A self-described "wackjob environmentalist" friend of mine sent me an email recently raising concerns about how the outbreak is being reported on:

• Extensive infection in healthy adults, 20-40 (most other flus predominantly affect children and the elderly). This implies a high infectiousness/lack of resistance.
• Very short period from infection to illness (2 days is what the CDC is citing).
• Wide spread in a short amount of time, although the evidence suggests that it was present and circulating for over a month before anyone reported on it.
• The international society for infectious diseases didn't get any reports on it until April 24th. (www.promedmail.org ->search the archives). They monitor this kind of thing as a profession.
• Virus is a combination of human, swine and avian flu strains. How exactly did three types of flu from different animal species mix?

I don't know enough about epidemiology to even begin addressing these questions, but they seem entirely worth asking. And one can't help but wonder what the possible health effects are of an industrial-scale industry that crams as many animals into as small a space as possible, doesn't seem to properly treat or deal with the waste produced from such operations, and produces animals with extremely compromised immune systems (the Capital Times has a refreshingly good article dealing with just that in today's paper).

So despite my desire to remain calm and rational, I can't shake the thought: Are we just beginning to reap what we've sown?


EDIT TO ADD: Coming through yet again, The Capital Times published an article detailing the severity, or lack thereof, of the current outbreak of swine flu. Comforting at least. Though it doesn't detract from the argument that industrial farming is incredibly dangerous in terms of the health of the animals and the workers.

And for some lighter fare, check out these stylish face masks for protection against disease.


(photo by Farm Sanctuary on Flickr)

The newspaper is dead, long live the newspaper

Anyone paying an iota of attention to the current media situation knows that things are looking dire. We're talking Fall of the Roman Empire dire. The rebels at the end of "The Empire Strikes Back" dire. Y'know, bad. Major news organizations across the nation are folding, shuttering their offices, laying off workers, slimming down, cutting back, and desperately trying to find ways to keep afloat.

Charge for online content. Employ fewer journalists. Combine operations when a city has more than one newspaper. Shrink the actual size of the paper. And the list goes on.

What few of the major media conglomerates who run many of these operations seem to realize, however, is that the old, profit-driven, mega-consolidated way of doing things is coming to an end. And, I'd say, it's about damn time.

I'm a writer who sometimes moonlights as an actual journalist, so I certainly have a vested interest in finding ways for folks like me to get paid for their work. I think it's important to have a healthy balance (operative word being "healthy" here) between the so-called "citizen journalism" of blogs, etc., and the professional, comprehensive news gathering of honest-to-goodness trained journalists.

Things are fast becoming unbalanced, though, and we need to act very quickly to see that our country, our world, does not lose one of the most vital elements of any democracy: The free press.

Madison's Mayor Dave Cieslewicz yesterday penned a post wherein he called for newspapers to begin charging for online content:

Charge me. Please charge me. Why is it that I should expect to pay for news delivered on paper, but not expect to pay for the same story I read online? It costs something to hire reporters and editors and why shouldn't I, as a consumer of the news, pay for some of that cost?

So first and foremost, charge me. Second, charge me twice. Competition is a good thing. The blending of our two daily newspapers into one is not a healthy thing. When I see a Cap Times byline in the State Journal I wonder what that means. I know who wrote it, but who edited it? And what does it mean for competition between the papers? Are reporters tripping over one another to break a story or are they sleepily cooperating?

His concerns are not misplaced, but his solution, I believe, is. Jesse Russell, writing at Dane101, makes a counter offer and points out Maryland Senator Benjamin Cardin's current proposal to allow newspapers to reorganize under non-profit status. They would then enjoy benefits typically only previously given to educational entities. They could claim circulation revenue and advertising as tax exempt. The caveat, however, would be that those newspapers could not "make political endorsements."

That's where you lose me. John Nichols and Robert McChesney of The Nation have another idea (and it's a fantastic article, so please do give the whole thing a read): Government intervention.

My hackles raised almost immediately upon reading that. Letting the government have any say over how a newspaper runs its operations is a recipe for disaster, 1984 style. But wait! they say, that's not what we mean:

Only government can implement policies and subsidies to provide an institutional framework for quality journalism. We understand that this is a controversial position. When French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently engineered a $765 million bailout of French newspapers, free marketeers rushed to the barricades to declare, "No, no, not in the land of the free press." Conventional wisdom says that the founders intended the press to be entirely independent of the state, to preserve the integrity of the press...

...We are sympathetic to that position. As writers, we have been routinely critical of government--Democratic and Republican--over the past three decades and antagonistic to those in power. Policies that would allow politicians to exercise even the slightest control over the news are, in our view, not only frightening but unacceptable. Fortunately, the rude calculus that says government intervention equals government control is inaccurate and does not reflect our past or present, or what enlightened policies and subsidies could entail.

Our founders never thought that freedom of the press would belong only to those who could afford a press. They would have been horrified at the notion that journalism should be regarded as the private preserve of the Rupert Murdochs and John Malones. The founders would not have entertained, let alone accepted, the current equation that seems to say that if rich people determine there is no good money to be made in the news, then society cannot have news.

They go on to explain that, during the early decades of the country, the Founders worked with government to create and implement "extraordinary postal subsidies for the distribution of newspapers. It also instituted massive newspaper subsidies through printing contracts and the paid publication of government notices, all with the intent of expanding the number and variety of newspapers."

The trick in this scenario, of course, is making sure that the policies and regulation remain "enlightened" - that is, the government provides money and subsidies, with pretty much the only thing it gets in return being a vibrant, independent press. So beyond funding, they lay off--no editorial control, not even a tiny bit of leaning.

Honestly, that may well be what it takes. Or maybe a combination of the non-profit and government subsidy models. Because newspapers should be freely able to editorialize and endorse. That's part of being a free press, after all. But they should also be recognized as a vital part of our society, one worth funding so that they're not run according to what might bring the most profit to their owners.

Newspapers, indeed all news organizations, should be run according to news. And it should be readily available to everyone, regardless of the size of their pocketbook. That's the great thing about the internet, and the sooner everyone recognizes this major, fundamental shift in how things are done, the better off everyone will be. Including our dying newspapers.


(photo by jamesjyu on Flickr)

Journalist shouldn't be a dirty word

I'm an aspiring journalist. You wouldn't necessarily know it if all you read was this blog, seeing as how I use this space primarily for opinion writing, but it's true. So it is that I'm always looking around for reporters that I can look to for inspiration--both people out there doing the hard scrabble investigative journalism that seems so sorely underrepresented in the mainstream media these days, and also those folks just doing the day-to-day work of presenting the facts of any town or city as clearly and thoroughly as possible.

It's an essential job, an integral part of any really democratic society, but very often a somewhat thankless endeavor for those not actively seeking the limelight.

It would seem, sadly, that these journalists are the exceptions to the rule these days, especially when we cast our critical eye on the major networks and news outlets.

A hot tip lead me over to Salon.com and Glen Greenwald's excellent piece regarding the state of modern journalism, specifically Fox News and their complicity in what appears very much to be a major (and sickening) government propaganda stunt. On August 22, an airstrike by U.S. forces operating in Afghanistan killed a large number of unarmed civilians in the city of Azizabad, including women and children, and this has since been well documented by a number of independent sources. The U.S. conducted an initial inquiry into what happened, and came to the conclusion that only "7 to 9" civilians and a lot of insurgent Taliban fighters had been killed, despite what villagers and other reports were saying.

In coming to that conclusion, the government used an "independent journalist" from (who else) Fox News to verify their version of the story. And who was this beacon of journalistic integrity? None other than Oliver "Iran-Contra" North, who has been working for Fox as a correspondent, despite (or perhaps because of) his nefarious past.

Yeah, not entirely the most trusted name in news.

Thankfully, through the hard, on-the-ground work of reporters like Carlotta Gall and documentary video evidence from the scene, enough pressure has been placed on the U.S. government that they are now going back to "reexamine" their original findings. Hopefully, appropriate restitution for this heinous mistake will be made, but no matter what, it will likely do little to ease the minds of those who suffered as a result of the attack, or to restore any sort of credibility to mainstream media in general.

In addition to this specific incident being a blatant example of the sickening consequences of lazy and/or complicit reporting, it also plays into a much larger debate about the duties of journalists and media networks in general.

Greenwald puts it well:

This is what I found so deeply bothersome and inane about this week's hand-wringing over the oh-so-"undignified" spats between various MSNBC personalities during the Convention and the Threat to the Integrity of American Journalism posed by such squabbling, or by the oh-so-inappropriate placement of "blatant liberals" in the sacred anchor chair. There is an entire cable "news" outlet, the highest-rated one in the country, which exists for little reason other than to amplify and certify false government claims -- it's literally nothing more than an outlet for state-issued propaganda -- and our leading news critics and even other "journalists" praise and treat its "news" anchors as legitimate and credible sources of news...

Way beyond Fox, this is the same thing that our media generally (and with some important exceptions) has been doing for years, at least -- mindlessly repeating and confirming false Government claims. That's what makes Carlotta Gall's on-scene actual investigation of the Pentagon's Afghanistan claims so notable -- it's so unusual. From Jessica Lynch's heroic Rambo-like firefight to Pat Tillman's murder by Al Qaeda monsters to pre-war claims of the Iraqi menace to post-war claims of Glorious Progress to current claims of the Grave Russian and Iranian Threats to the concealment and then justification of virtually every act of government radicalism over the last eight years, our media has, by and large, done what Fox News did in the Azizabad case -- offer itself up as an uncritical conduit for state propaganda.

This is one crucial part of the debate that we (as a country, as a planet) should be having with ourselves. It may be impossible for anything with a human source to ever be completely objective, but that's not to say that we couldn't be doing a whole hell of a lot better when it comes to the standards to which we hold our press and our government.

Do we really care more about lipstick and flag pins than you do about our government killing innocent civilians and lying about reasons for going to war? Good God, I sure hope not. And while those weird little stories have their place, the real estate currently being taken up by them is way out of proportion to what they deserve.

Thankfully, there are still a handful of good, dedicated journalists out there who are working hard to get the pieces of truth out there for all the world to see. What we do with what we're given, however, is up to us.

What's the word again?

I don't think I could have made this point any better:


If you haven't caught any of the Daily Show's coverage of the DNC and RNC, you owe it to yourself to hit the backlog. Despite, or perhaps because of, being a "fake news" show, I have to say that it continues to present some of the most biting, on-point, and informative commentary on the state of modern politics and culture that can be found anywhere in this country. There's a reason so many of my generation turn to it.

This isn't to say that if you don't watch it there's something wrong with you. I'm just saying that I think its popularity, at very least, is a thing worth paying attention to in and of itself.

A quick point about Palin

There has been much talk and gossip about McCain's choice of Alaska governor Sarah Palin for his VP running mate. The radio and the blogs are all a'twitter over it, and I suppose rightly so. Joe Biden got a good going over in the press once Obama called on him as a running mate. The furor over Palin, however, has been another sight to behold entirely.

I'm really not interested in any of the more salacious rumors that have been circulating about her and her family, and honestly, I'm a little annoyed that this stuff seems to be dominating the national conversation about her as a politician.

Obama has the right idea here:

"Let me be as clear as possible," Obama said. "I think people's families are off-limits, and people's children are especially off-limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin's performance as governor or her potential performance as a vice president."

Obama said reporters should "back off these kinds of stories" and noted that he was born to an 18-year-old mother.

"How a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn't be the topic of our politics, and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that's off-limits."

And that's really all that needs to be said about it. Certainly, I will admit to feeling a sense of irony that such a staunch, abstinence-only crusader now has to deal with the consequences of that policy in such a personal way, but that's about it.

For me, the important issues about Palin are her actual politics: she stands for just about everything I stand against, and that's more than enough to keep my vote away from her (and her running mate). Isn't that what it ought to come down to, anyway? If you're pro-choice, against drilling in ANWR, pro-reasonable gun control, for comprehensive sex ed, socially liberal, etc., then there's no reason to support the McCain/Palin ticket. If you're all for abstinence-only education, rabidly anti-abortion, pro drilling, socially conservative, then hey--then knock yourself out!

I don't care about her gender, either. Believe me, I'd be tickled to finally get a woman in the White House, but not at any cost. For me, it would be more sexist to blindly support someone simply because they were a woman, instead of actually finding someone qualified and inspirational to get behind for the spot. And the fact that so many folks are all, "Look! McCain chose a woman! How progressive!" is offensive to me as well. Does he think all women (and men, for that matter) are so stupid? I should hope we all pay more attention to a person's individual merits and stated goals/beliefs than to their gender, race, religion, sexuality, etc.

Clearly that's not entirely the case, though, as our current media hubub indicates. And that, frankly, bums me out. Maybe if we the people showed a united front of indifference to this kind of crap, the media and politicians who make a habit of schlepping these wares would finally get the hint and move on to more important matters. It might be worth a shot.

No notes on a scandal

If the media likes a good scandal, then it loves a good sex scandal. More so, it would seem, when that scandal involves prominent politicians. Think back to the veritable media frenzy over President Bill Clinton’s dalliances with an intern, or Sen. Larry Craig’s wide stance in a Minnesota bathroom, Sen. David Vitter’s diaper fetish, or, more recently, Sen. John Edward’s extramarital affair. Why then would Wisconsin media completely drop the ball on a rather well-documented sex scandal involving the chairman of the Brown County Republican party and a minor?

Good question.

Donald Fleischman, said chairman, was charged back in 2007 with two counts of child enticement, two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a child and a single charge of exposing himself to a child. His court date is set for the third day of the upcoming Republican National Convention, September 3. The incidents upon which the charges are based allegedly took place in November of 2006. That leaves a full year between when the police initially intervened and when charges were filed.

Records of the various police visits and the reasons for them were public, but no media outlet picked up on them or the subsequent charges, in open court, until local bloggers began pushing the issue with the help of morning radio host Lee Rayburn.

Let’s take a look at the time-line of events, as provided by the court (view full criminal complaint here):

• Nov 3, 2006 – ACO (minor 1) moves to Ethan House, a home for troubled boys.
• Nov 5, 2006 – ACO and second teen, visit Fleischman’s home at 1121 Goodell St.
• Nov 17, 2006 – Second teen re-visits Fleishman, who offers haven if the boys run away.
• Nov 18, 2006 – ACO goes AWOL from youth home.
• Nov 19, 2006 – Green Bay Police find sixteen-year-old ACO, wearing only a tee shirt and underwear briefs, hiding in the walk-in closet in the upstairs of Fleischman’s home at 1121 Goodell St.
• Nov 22 and 29, 2006 – ACO tests positive for THC, both times. After the second test, ACO visits Fleischman.
• Nov 30, 2006 – ACO runs away to Fleischman’s 1121 Goodell address, which is literally across the street. Fleischman takes ACO to an Appleton motel, where some of the alleged misconduct occurs.
• Nov 31, 2006 –Fleischman takes ACO to a family cabin in Goodman for the weekend.
• Dec 8, 2006 – Green Bay Police officers Reetz & Allen remove the teens from Fleischman’s home.
• Dec 11, 2006 – ACO gives deposition, stating his recollection of the events and allegations against Fleischman
• Sept 7, 2007 – Nine months later, one misdemeanor and four felony charges are filed against Fleischman. These include child enticement, giving drugs to children, and sexual activities with children.
• Sept 28, 2007 – Defense attorney Jeffrey Jazgar enters as counsel. Defense agrees to motions with stipulation that Fleischman move from proximity to the youth home within 90 days.

Despite the court case being open, and details of the various police visits to Fleischman’s home being accessible online, no media outlets reported on the situation during the course of events described above. That began to change in October of ’07, when local blogger goofticket stumbled across court records of the case. According to Daily Page forum poster BobArctor, the following timeline of events then played itself out:

Oct 10, 2007 – 9:59pm, Case is posted on local forum by goofticket. At 9:59 pm, I verified that the information all checks out according to online court and election records. Yes, another Republican officer is being charged with man on boy action. It’s taken as amazing there is no coverage.
Oct 11, 2007 – At 7:20 am, I call in the open line to Lee Rayburn’s show on 92.1 The Mic, our local Air America affiliate. Deliver an on-air rapid-fire bit about the local Republican man-on boy scandal that nobody knows about. At 7:50, Rayburn is referring to it as “alleged scandal” because he can’t find anything online that fast to verify it. Rayburn is doing a promo at the local music palce [sic] that evening. I delivered the hardcopy of court and election watchdog documents. While I’m doing that, forum poster Hawkeye, is emailing the Green Bay Press Gazette, asking why they haven’t covered the story. Forum poster goofticket, has called the Brown Co. Republican Party, who says yes, that Fleischman is the chair of the local party.
Oct 12, 2007 – 7:50 am, Lee Rayburn does several minutes on the story, citing the evidence and hammering the lack of coverage. The Green Bay Press Gazette, gets busy calling the Republican County office during the day, which now says Donald Fleischman has resigned and the know nothinnggg, notthhiinnnggg…
Oct 13, 2007 – The Green bay Press gazette prints the story. Their online post is listed as 9:23 am. The site WisconsinPolitics.com posts a detailed report at 9:36 am. Scribeboy posts it on DailyKos at 10:05 am. The Mic92.1, teases it over the air as a hook for Lee Rayburn’s show, at about 10:20 am.

The WisconsinPolitics.com report can be viewed here.

The Green Bay Press Gazette appears to be one of the only print outlets to have finally picked up the story (archives require paid membership to read articles), though it was a couple weeks after the charges were initially filed.

The initial trial resulted in all charges being dropped, after Fleischman and his attorney requested that the victim appear in court, which he did not (he’d apparently moved to another part of the state and was attending school at the time). The young man, who had been a minor at the time the alleged offenses took place, was then 18 and so Fleischman’s move made his name public.

The charges were re-filed by the Deputy DA, however, in February of this year. Fleischman has since entered a plea of not guilty, a warrant for the appearance in court of the victim has been issued, and a jury trial date of Sept. 3 has been set.

In the midst of all this, the Brown County Republican Party claimed ignorance of the proceedings. “We just learned about this this morning, and to our knowledge he has resigned his position. We don't know any other details," RPW spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski is reported to have said on Friday, October 12, 2007.

It appears as though the party was as in the dark about events as was the media.

Then, on November 29, the Associated Press reported that the state Republican Party had de-certified the county chapter “following its collapse over the resignations of 2 of its leaders and a lack of volunteers. The county's chairman Donald Fleischman resigned in September after he was accused of child enticement.”

Small notes have since appeared in the Green Bay Press Gazette about the case’s proceedings, but it’s noteworthy that nothing was reported prior to the blogger-raised alarm. Also worth noting is that it took a year from when the alleged activities took place before charges were filed. Why was this? For the media, police and court records were public from the get-go. Why did no one pick up on this, a major scandal involving a prominent, local public official? And why did it take so long for charges to be filed at all?

No one is currently making any answers forthcoming, but the whole episode speaks to the larger issues of both legal and journalistic responsibility. Bloggers and radio DJs shouldn’t have to do the jobs of our professional news sources, but I’m sure glad they keep at it anyway. Certainly the economic situation of many media outlets, especially more local ones, is partly to blame as staffing levels are cut and experienced reporters let go. But there seems to have been a steady decline in the overall breadth and depth of news reporting on the more national level as well, with outlets that enjoy far greater revenue and market penetration dropping the ball just as much. With the rise of 24-hour news channels, you’d think we’d be getting coverage of a wider range of topics. Instead, we see the same three stories recycled again and again, and too often they’re on trivial subjects.

Sex scandals shouldn’t be our national news priority, as they tend to be more personal matters than public. But once they involve legitimately illegal factors such as minors, lies, and non-consensual situations, they absolutely deserve public scrutiny and appropriate punishment. Usually, the media’s all over this sort of thing, but in this instance we have to ask: what gives?

(cross-posted from dane101.com)

The media actually follows up

Good on them:

WISC-TV, Wisconsin State Journal, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee filed the suit to ensure local officials comply with several open records requests regarding the Dane County 911 Center and the ongoing controversy after a dispatcher was accused of mishandling a call from the cell phone of 21-year-old Brittany Zimmermann, who was killed in early April.

The suit was filed against the Dane County Public Safety Communications Center and its director, Joe Norwick; Dane County and County Executive spokesman Joshua Wescott; the Madison Police Department and Capt. Carl Gloede of the department's Records and Technology section; and the city of Madison and Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz's spokesman George Twigg.

The suit urges a judge to compel local officials to comply with the requests for information regarding the 911 center as well as the ongoing investigation into Zimmermann's death.

Reporters for the outlets have requested to inspect and copy the audio files of any 911 calls from Zimmermann's home, an un-redacted report of the 911 center's investigation into the alleged Zimmermann call and all documents related to the Zimmermann call and the investigation into the incident produced from the Public Safety Communications Center, Madison police and the mayor's office.

I'll be curious to see the judge's ruling on this, especially since it would be easy for the city to claim that several of the requested items are critical to the investigation, and therefore cannot be fully released. In this case, though, I think it would be in the best interest of the city to release as much of this as possible, if for no other reason than to re-instill some sense of trust in them by the community.