Oh, Mr. Rather

In 2004, Dan Rather got a raw deal. By trusting his producer who her trusted her source, he basically got scape-goated in the "Memogate" scandal. He presented what later turned out to be questionable documents outlining President Bush's lackluster National Guard career. When angry viewers started writing out against the episode, events descended into a mud-slinging circus. The entire situation leaves me angry and very, very frustrated, not only at CBS but at the bloggers and the other media covering and creating the scandal.

As a new journalism student, CBS's sloppiness irritates the hell out of me. In rushing the story they damaged not only their own credibility but that of news media at large. Airing a story before they could collect and defend their facts only gave rabid bloggers fodder for their anti-media biases. Suddenly CBS had an "agenda" and were horrible partisans, if the blog were to be believed. Which brings me to the other group I'm disappointed in and angry at: the bloggers themselves.

“NOTE to old media scum . . . . We are just getting warmed up!”
— “Rrrod,” on FreeRepublic.com

A quote like that doesn't come from someone seriously concerned about the state of news and reporting in America. It comes from an irresponsible mob member who enjoys the smell of blood in the air. This sort of rabid chest-beating is part of a close-minded circle-jerk that leads nowhere. People looking for a conspiracy found it, as they always do. This sort of sensationalism is even more frustrating when you consider the potential of citizen reporters to cover issues the mainstream media can't or won't. Instead of a great forum of freedom, the internet more often resembles a soapbox for any one with an opinion and a set of lungs.

Mainstream media on both ends of the political spectrum have messed up, lied, been unclear and generally mucked up a lot of the political process. No one has a clean record. We can all admit that. Reporters and producers should get raked over the coals when they make such a schoolboy mistake as rushing a story. It's bad reporting. However we should also look at the real reasons those mistakes happen, not rush to point the partisan finger. Media is a business, and like any business it has customers. If they trip over themselves trying to please us, who's really to blame?

Both of us, of course. Us for holding them to a double standard (give us what we want, but don't pander to us), and them for compromising themselves in trying to live up to it.

"Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe." --Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816

The press may be free from the government, but as Memogate showed, it's still a bound servant to market forces and popular influence. It's asking a lot to demand the media be responsive to the people's needs but not swayed by mob mentality, but that's what we need. If accomplishing that were easy, we wouldn't need media professionals.

Beat

I chose business for my beat.

One issue is the trend in environmental marketing, and labeling products "green" and "eco-friendly."
Story 1: What standards are used in advertising related to environmental claims? What companies/industries are promoting their products as eco-friendly? How legitimate are these claims and how do companies back them up?

Story 2: A company profile of organic food/health store detailing their market, their business policies and their history in Boulder.

Story 3: Compare the number and types of "green" businesses (organic food stores, hybrid car sales, etc) in Boulder to other areas of the nation.


Another issue to cover would be construction and housing development in Boulder.
Story 1: What is the housing market and new construction market doing recently, especially in light of the national housing crisis.

Story 2: How are builders incorporating "green" directives into new construction? How do the new laws and ordinances effect building?

Story 3: Report on public building/reconstruction around Boulder, such as schools, hospitals and other public facilities. How is the current economy affecting city/county construction? Who is winning the contracts? How much is it costing the city?

A third issue is employment in Boulder.
Story 1: Trend story on employment in Boulder, what changes have happened in the past decade, how Boulder compares to other cities in the U.S.

Story 2: Are fair employment practices being implemented in Boulder? Have there been or are there currently any conflicts over discrimination? For example the conflict between employees and owners at the Swift meatpacking plant in Greeley over religious observance.

A fourth issue is advertisement.
Story 1: How are local businesses advertising? Online, in print, canvassers? Which businesses or organizations are spending the most on advertisement? The least?

Story 2: Have there been any controversial ads run recently in Boulder? Who was affected and what were the different sides of the issues?

Research Questions

1. Health care spending per capita increased an average of 10% annually from 1960 to 2003. Per person spending in 1960 was $126, and in 2003 it was $4,886. This information was obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, however, spending in 2005 was $2,664 per "consumer unit." More research is needed to understand this discrepancy.

2. Americans spent $1.98 trillion on health care in 2005, according to U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. Americans spent 15% of the US GDP on health care in 2004. Switzerland, the next highest-spending country for which data was available, spent 11.6% of it's GPD on health care in that year. Data for Japan was not available for 2004, but in 2003 they spent 8% of their GDP on health care and enjoyed a greater life expectency for both males and females than the United States. Sources were the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and U.S. National Center for Health Statistics

3. What are the five greatest health care threats to US?
I'm not sure how to tackle this question. Do you mean threats as causes of death? Factors or behaviors contributing to poor health? Or threats to receiving competent, affordable health care?

The five leading causes of death in 2005, according to the Center for Disease Control, were heart disease, cancer, stroke, chronic lower respiratory disease, and accidents (in order from greatest to least). To find out the underlying causes that increase the risk of these deaths, however, more research would be needed, either in contacting the CDC or doing more database research.

4. In 2004 the life expectancy at birth for a U.S. citizen was 77.8 years. Broken down by gender, it was 75.2 years for men and 80.4 for women. This is within the average of other developed nations, with Japan leading by over five years for females and three years for males. The lowest expectancy in the given data was Turkey, with women born in 2004 averaging 73.6 years and men 68.8 years. The sources for this information were the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and U.S. National Center for Health Statistics.

5. At CU the cost of health care is $850 per semester. At West Virginia University annual coverage was $780, and at the University of Hawaii, annual coverage was $1,607. This information was collected directly from the universities' respective websites. I was unable to find a comparison of health plan costs for different colleges, but I could ask a librarian for help locating the information, or try to find government statistics available online or in the library.

Students and Health Care

How do students deal with health care on campus?

As a glasses-wearing, health-conscious female student at CU, health care ranks pretty high on my list of concerns. The more I thought about the topic, the more questions and ideas I had. These are a few of the angles I'd be curious enough to read an article about, so they'd likely be interesting enough to write about.

Angle 1. How do health care quality and options compare at different campuses across the country? Factors to compare would be price of prescriptions, services offered, kinds of outreach programs and practitioner-to-student ratio, among others. The article would be mostly an impact piece, letting students know how their level of care stacks up against that of other students. Sidebar information could include information about Wardenburg Health Center and the services they offer, along with telephone numbers for each department. The story could be more focused, dealing with one aspect of care. The price of birth control, for example, varies widely across the country. This fact alone suggests varying policies toward women's health care and could work as a starting point for a deeper inquiry.

Angle 2. Like most services in Boulder, Wardenburg sees a huge rise in activity at the beginning of the fall semester. One way to get a view of how these students, especially freshman, handle health care and medical choices is to interview doctors and nurses at Wardenburg and paint a composite picture of what the health center does in a day.

Angle 3. Boulder supports a range of holistic and alternative medicines. How popular is alternative medicine among CU students? How do they use alternative medicine? What are the recent trends in this type of care? Interviewing patients and practitioners of alternative medicine would give the piece a human interest angle.

Angle 4. The most fashion-conscious area of student health care is optical care. This story could be approached from a trend/fashion angle and include photos of the latest styles, quotes from students, and advice on choosing a comfortable, attractive pair. Alternatively, the story could address more serious concerns, such as how much people really know about their eyes, what they should look for in an optician, and how to care for their eyes.

Angle 5. New medicines and vaccines are hitting the market regularly, and one of the most exciting is the HPV vaccine available for female students free of charge at CU. This would be an information/impact piece telling people about the vaccine, the disease it protects against, and who should get it. Because it is a relatively new vaccine and protects against a disease known to cause certain forms of cancer, the topic is timely and important.

A Special Interest in Pluralism

"It is convenient most of the time in studying government to talk of these groups as interests."

Arthur Bentley, The Process of Government

In The Process of Government, Arthur Bentley showed the nuts and bolts of politics as more marketplace than battleground. Different groups, not sweeping ideals, compete against each other to gain currency with the public. This effort to demystify politics is a bit like stripping the actor of his make-up. The trappings of politics today - buzzwords like "national interest" and "positive change" - glorify the workings of the government beyond recognition. Soaring rhetoric and appeals to higher powers overlook what really drives our government. As Nicholas Lemann pointed out, Bentley's view of politics fills in the gaps of understanding left by the "official conversation about American politics."

As far back as highschool, I can remember learning about pluralism as a positive force in politics. Pluralism, according to one professor, was one of the great checks of a democratic government. Competing interests prevent (in theory) any one group from running roughshod over all others. I never really made the connection though between interest groups and pluralism. One was greedy self-service, the other a natural product of our nation's history.

The media have been doing the principle of pluralism a disservice of in two ways. By categorizing the population into two simple, color-coded groups, media corporations have created a pair of great bullies, each ready to push the other into the sand. This "with us or against us" mentality sacrifices the finer points of a pluralistic government. Another blow to the pluralistic view of government is the vilification of interests groups. It seems everyone wants their own interests to be transcendently and objectively "right."

Liberty and the News

"The news of the day as it reaches the newspaper office is an incredible medley of fact, propaganda, rumor, suspicion, clues, hopes, and fears, and the task of selecting and ordering that news is one of the truly sacred and priestly offices in a democracy."

- Walter Lippmann, Liberty and the News

Sacred? Priestly? To make such allusions to a higher power, or at least a higher calling, asks journalists to live up to an unachievable standard, and more importantly asks the public to believe that they can. The analogy of the editor to priest implies someone above self-interest and other earthly sins, someone we can trust implicitly, an infallible guide as we hope our preachers and ministers to be. However, if a reporter were truly unbiased, he wouldn't be reporting anything, since to cover a story is to comment on it, even if it is just to say "This story is newsworthy, consider it."

On closer reading, though, Lippmann never mentions "unbiased" or "balanced." He limits his editor-priest to selecting and ordering. In doing so, however, he is giving reporters and editors the awesome power to decide what news reaches us, the public. If they are the priests, then we are the parishioners, and how many of us would doubt the word of a man of the cloth? (Well, quite a few of us perhaps, but we'd probably be very bad parishioners.)

The main inconsistency with this view, however, is that it implies a unidirectional relationship between reader and reporter, with the newsroom delivering the information from on high to a receptive congregation. At the recent environmentalism symposium at CU, I attended the panel "Communicating Climate Change: Is Anybody Listening?" Panel member Peter Dykstra of CNN addressed the challenge of balancing significant news against the popular public demands of viewers who wanted more coverage of Anna Nicole Smith than of the growing climate crisis. Obviously the media corporations have similar customer relation concerns as any other large business. Editors guide, but are also guided by, public sentiment and mood.

While it is comforting to imagine a reporter leading us safely and knowledgeably through the wilderness of information, a better analogy might be something a bit more earthly, the shepherd, perhaps, guiding his flock in the main but also following where they choose to graze.