I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: WILD FLAG-Live at the Black Cat, October 20, 2011 (2011).

It’s interesting to compare this show by Wild Flag with their SXSW show.  This set is longer, but they retain the same raw energy and intensity.  It also sounds as though the tour has been rough on Carrie’s voice, which sounds a bit strained and hoarse (even when she talks!).

They play most of their debut album, but they also throw in a couple of new songs and even a few covers.  Perhaps the most fascinating part is the 15 minute (!) version of “Racehorse.”  There’s a lengthy noodling section as well as a cool part where Carrie goes a little crazy asking about money.

Janet Weiss is absolutely amazing here too.  And the keyboards, definitely complement everything well, but they are always the most notable flubs, and there’s the same one as in the SXSW show (not as bad, but noticeable).

Without a doubt the most interesting thing is the hearing that Mary Timony gives guitar lessons in Washington DC.  She lives there and evidently earns extra cash by doing guitar lessons.  Wow.  How cool would that be?

Check out the show here.

[READ: January 15, 2012] The Influencing Machine

Brooke Gladstone is one of two reporters who works on NPR’s On the Media.  On the Media is an awesome show which dissects things that happen in the world and examines the way the media portrays the events.  They work pretty hard to see who is reporting bias, who is exposing bias and how things are getting out to the average media consumer.  It’s worth anyone’s time to read (it doesn’t take very long).  And it’s also fun and enjoyable.  As anyone who has heard the ending of On the Media: “and edited [dramatic pause] by Brooke” knows, there’s always a smirking grin attached to the program.

When I heard that this book came out I was pretty excited to read it.  And then I promptly forgot all about it.  Lucky for me, my wife can take a hint, and she got it for me for Christmas.

The first surprise of the book is that it is written as a graphic novel–illustrations by Josh Neufeld (who has drawn for Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor).  The funny thing about the illustrations is that I have no idea what Brooke Gladstone looks like (which I rather prefer about my NPR announcers), but I really like the cartoony style of her avatar (which reminds me of Elaine from Seinfeld and which inspired me to draw a kind of similar version on my drawing site.

On to the book.

This book works as a primer for understanding media ownership, media consolidation and media power.  The opening few chapters are going to be nothing new for anyone who has read Chomsky or Vidal on the media.  But since most people haven’t, it’s a wonderful way into some of these thorny issues of who tells us what and why.

What I found especially enlightening is that she goes into historical contexts that extend way beyond the current state of the media.  But she also progresses into the current climate of the internet and blogs and massive media consolidation.  (I more or less stopped reading Chomsky on the media in the 90s, so this new input was enlightening).

Her introduction not only sets up the book, it asks questions of us as readers and consumers that we should be asking, if we’re not already.

We hunger for objectivity, but increasingly swallow “news” like Jell-O shots in ad hoc cyber-saloons….  But we don’t really get agitated until we encounter the other guys’ media.  Those guys are consuming lies.  They are getting juiced up.  Their media diet is making them stupid.
What if our media choices are making us stupid?  What if they’re shortening our attention span, exciting our lusts, eroding our values, hobbling our judgment?
I’ve been reporting on the media for some 25 years….  The concentration of media ownership, the blurring of news and opinion, the yawning news hole (there’s teeth in there) created by the 24-hour news cycles…scarifying local coverage…shriveled foreign coverage…liberal bias…conservative bias…celebrities…scandal…echo chamber…arrogance…slitism…bloggers with no standards.

That sets the scene, but her concluding comments may surprise you.  When speculating about whether the media will censor itself because of the government, she concludes:

The American media are not afraid of the government.  They are afraid of their audience and advertisers.  The media do not control you.  They pander to you.

Brooke opens with ancient history–how Roman emperors dealt with news and they way it was written (often rather forcefully).  It’s not until American courts set standards for libel that a free press really exists without fear of threat.  Of course America is not always a paragon of free speech.  Woodrow Wilson signed the Espionage Act of 1917 which outlawed any speech that could “harm the war effort.”  Brooke walks us through the high and lowlights of American censorship through Vietnam to 9/11.

This censorship is done in the guise of keeping us safe.  Brooke asks us, are you safer not knowing the truth about why we invaded Iraq?  According to the Center for Public Integrity, the White House made 935 false statements about Iraq in the two years following the 9/11 attacks.   The scene of the toppling of the Saddam statue and how it was staged by the military was not only revelatory it was shocking to me (they used tight camera angles to make it look like a much bigger crowd).

Another unrelated but interesting statistic is that despite the mentality that if it bleeds it leads…that people only want sensational news, The Project for Excellence in Journalism found that “serious policy stories–if done well–were just as likely to hold viewers as car crashes.  Maybe even more so.”

You get the idea of what kind of book this is from these excerpts.  It’s a worthwhile book to read for anyone who tries to stay current.  If you believe the media is wrong, you are correct, but not always intentionally.  And with the internet reporting is easily challenged, if you’re willing to do the work.

What about bias?  She looks at this issue thoroughly and comes up with an interesting graph about presidential coverage on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening news since Reagan.  They found that during the first seven months of their tenure, the three networks’ coverage was: Reagan: 37% positive; Clinton 34% positive; George W. Bush: 37% positive; Barack Obama 35% positive (Obama on Fox: 27% positive).  Not a lot of liberal bias there.  She says that rather than liberal or conservative, we should look for other types of bias: Commercial bias, bad news bias, status quo bias, access bias, visual bias and narrative bias (this last one is why science stories are always changing what is “good for you”–because it’s much easier for the media to tell a story–chocolate makes you thin–than to investigate and report on the complex data without having a “conclusion.”

Brooke moves through all of these issues, spending a lot of time on “war bias” and attempts at “objectivity” as well as how technology changes the way we perceive things.

I love this quote from Douglas Adams:

Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.  Anything that’s invented between when you’re 15 and 35 is new and exciting and revolutionary.  Anything invented after you’re 35 is against the natural order of things.

This quote leads to her final section–what to do about the media…Don’t Panic.

Her final word is that now with technology at our fingertips we can influence the media.  It’s a powerful and happy thought.  But one that will require a lot of work.  It would be a lot easier if we were all cartoons, I’m sure.