Reporters Without Borders: U.S. Ties with Bosnia for Press Freedoms

Ah, capitalism, freedom...uh, not always.

Reporters Sans Frontières has their list of countries who have the most and least free presses.   The U.S.  does fairly poorly, though better than last year.  I'm so glad we're now in a tie for 36th with Bosnia.


"The United States rose twelve places to 36th position. The release of Al-Jazeera cameraman Sami Al-Haj after six years in the Guantanamo Bay military base contributed to this improvement. Although the absence of a federal “shield law” means the confidentiality of sources is still threatened by federal courts, the number of journalists being subpoenaed or forced to reveal their sources has declined in recent months and none has been sent to prison. But the August 2007 murder of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey in Oakland, California, is still unpunished a year later. The way the investigation into his murder has become enmeshed in local conflicts of interest and the lack of federal judicial intervention also help to explain why the United States did not get a higher ranking. Account was also taken of the many arrests of journalists during the Democratic and Republican conventions."
 

Sarkozy Judged Harshly..

Le Monde has a new poll out that shows Sarkozy's popularity flagging. I don't see this as anything surprising. Sarkozy's cozy relationship with the press brought him into power on his law-and-order populist campaign. Now that the people are seing what he is actually like, they begin to have second thoughts. That will sound familiar to most Americans.

Un an après l'élection de Nicolas Sarkozy, les Français portent un regard critique sur son bilan. L'action du président et de son gouvernement n'a pas permis d'améliorer la situation de la France et des Français, estiment 79 % des personnes interrogées par l'Ifop pour le Journal du Dimanche. Ils n'étaient encore que 59 % à le penser en novembre 2007.

Selon ce sondage publié dimanche 20 avril, 49% des Français estiment même que l'action du chef de l'Etat et du gouvernement n'a "pas du tout" amélioré la situation. Même chez les sympathisants de l'UMP, l'action du gouvernement n'obtient pas plus de 50 % d'approbation.

Une certaine impatience se lit également dans ce sondage, puisque parmi les réponses suggérées à la question posée - " Un an après l'élection de Nicolas Sarkozy, diriez-vous que l'action du président et de son gouvernement a permis d'améliorer la situation de la France et des Français ?" -, aucun sondé (ou trop peu pour être comptabilisé) n'a répondu qu'il était "trop tôt pour juger".

Par ailleurs, la cote de popularité de Nicolas Sarkozy a encore fléchi, pour atteindre son niveau le plus bas depuis son élection en mai 2007. Elle se situe désormais à 36% (- 1 point), loin derrière celle du premier ministre, François Fillon, 52% (- 6 points).

I don't think Sarkozy will be remembered fondly by the French, but that has nothing to do with his power. The thing to remember is this: the press will continue to fluff him up for he is one of them, a creature of sound bites and photo-ops. That said, at least in France oppositional politics function in their dysfunctionality, that is, they allow for some stasis comparatively.

If You Don't Read Greg Mitchell...

You should. Editor and Publisher has been a mainstay of my blog reads and rss feeds for the last 4-5 years. I can only say "You haven't read the news until you've read about the newsroom." The public (which booed Charlie Gibson after the debate--betcha won't see that on teevee), knows better, but only some of the time thanks to Greg Mitchell, Media Matters and the inimitable, groundbreaking Daily Howler.

Here's Greg Mitchell on last night's debate:

NEW YORK In perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years, ABC News hosts Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous focused mainly on trivial issues as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama faced off in Philadelphia.

Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the health care and mortgage crises, the overall state of the economy and dozens of other pressing issues had to wait for their few moments in the sun as Obama was pressed to explain his recent "bitter" gaffe and relationship with Rev. Wright (seemingly a dead issue) and not wearing a flag pin while Clinton had to answer again for her Bosnia trip exaggerations.

Then it was back to Obama to defend his slim association with a former '60s radical -- a question that came out of rightwing talk radio and Sean Hannity on TV, but delivered by former Bill Clinton aide Stephanopolous. This approach led to a claim that Clinton's husband pardoned two other '60s radicals. And so on.

More time was spent on all of this than segments on getting out of Iraq and keeping people from losing their homes and other key issues. Gibson only got excited when he complained about anyone daring to raise taxes on his capital gains.

Yet neither candidate had the courage to ask the moderators to turn to those far more important issues. But some in the crowd did -- booing Gibson near the end.

Yet David Brooks' review at The New York Times concluded: "I thought the questions were excellent." He gave ABC an "A."

But Tom Shales of The Washington Post had an opposite view: "Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, turned in shoddy, despicable performances."

Calitics has a nice round up:

"The debate is over, and I feel like I need a shower. [...] The crowd here is starting to boo Gibson. Like, a lot. Hilarious and well-deserved."
-Chris Bowers

"No Charlie. It hasn't been a "fascinating debate." It's been genuinely awful."
-Josh Marshall

"What matters to this network is money, and that is where we need to go. Starting tomorrow, my spare time, meager as it is, will be dedicated to revealing the advertisers of this network, for the purpose of organized boycotts."
-Dartagnan (top Recommended Diary on Dailykos)

"Light'Em Up
Complain about this atrocity.
Main ABC switchboard: 212-456-7777
...complain here."
-Atrios

"My friend Dan McQuade calls this the lowest moment in American history -- I think he's giving it too much credit, frankly."
-Will Bunch

"George and Charlie were just rumor-mongering right wingers. Charlie thought it was "fascinating." Wrong. It was just very pathetic and disturbing. If you ever question the sad state of affairs in the American political dialogue, tonight's debate was Exhibit A."
-Joe Sudbay

"This debate was just horrible. Too much time wasted on useless nonsense. From a media perspective, I am not sure why Stephanopoulos was in the mix at all. He didn't add much, and if anything, his history with the Clintons had the potential to take something away. I thought Gibson was especially rough on Obama, and I think ABC did not do themselves any good with this debate. If I weren't liveblogging, I would have switched to AI."
-Jacki Schechner

"This is the most disgraceful and dispiriting debate of all time."
-BooMan

"In perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate this year, ABC News hosts Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous focused mainly on trivial issues as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama faced off in Philadelphia."
-Editor and Publisher

"Reflecting what seemed to be the main consensus of the night - that ABC botched this debate, big time - Charlie Gibson tells the crowd there will be one more, superfluous commercial break of the night and is subsequently jeered. "OH..." he declares, hands raised in defense. "The crowd is turning on me, the crowd is turning on me.""
-Huffington Post

Crawford, TX: How Born Agains Interpret the Resurrection

Here are a few thoughts for Easter and what it portends:

Braving Cindy Sheehan and other heretics, George Bush crawled into his tomb at Crawford this week. Next week he will re-emerge, purified, God-like in the press. He will be a new man, ready to confront the final years of his presidency:

Bush's getaway in central Texas is just about everything Washington is not. There may be no better way to explain why he loves it so much. Life is remarkably different here for a president struggling through his second term. He can slip out of sight for days, as he has since he arrived Wednesday. The White House press corps is still around, ready to cover the most innocuous visit to the coffee shop, but there haven't been any. Bush is tucked away in his home away from home. And it's a long way from his black-gated compound on Pennsylvania Avenue. "Sometimes, you just have to be by yourself," said Bill Johnson, owner of the Yellow Rose souvenir shop at the one-light crossroads in Crawford. "You've got to get out of the rat race, get some peace and quiet. He can just go and sit by the lake and hear the owls." Nature couldn't have come through more for Bush this week. He showed up to springtime breezes and entire pastures covered with bluebonnets in bloom. On Saturday, a rare April snow sneaked up on Crawford, giving the place an even more tranquil feel. Even in the summer, when the heat is scorching, Bush wants to be outside. After morning security briefings, he spends hours riding his bike, chopping cedar, clearing brush and chatting with family — all in privacy. The visits add up. Bush has spent part or all of 409 days of his presidency on the 1,600-acre ranch, according to CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller, who keeps meticulous records of Bush's travel... ("On the Ranch, Bush has perfect escape")

Bush's villégiature at Crawford always signals rebirth and restoration, and, as the AP implies, it is meant to bring comfort to the American people ("entire pastures covered with bluebonnets in bloom. On Saturday, a rare April snow sneaked up on Crawford, giving the place an even more tranquil feel"). The rural setting is portrayed as a temple, as a retreat, as a monastery (albeit a monastery made for non-reflective behaviour) in which the elements seem to welcome the President and harmonize with his spirit. Indeed, "Nature couldn't have come through more," as the AP stenographer, Ben Feller, writes.

Of course, the harmony is only a fleeting reflection of surface movement. Note the contradiction that nature welcomed Bush, but that he spends all summer cutting it down. It is alternately Bush's cathedral and his punching bag. Nature: ineffably pretty, and totally at Bush's mercy.

Such articles must reassure the masses. Bush, master of the territory, developer of the land, overcomer of weeds (read: Democrats), is always busy cutting nature down, yet always welcomed by nature's bounty.

All this seems like a contradiction, but it is actually a paradox, a dialectic of modernity in which incessant gestures of control hide our dependance on natural resources.

Mark Slouka lines out why this is such a vital image in our repertory of thoughts about who we are. In this wonderful Harper's article he writes:

Leisure is permissible, we understand, because it costs money; idleness is not, because it doesn't. Leisure is focused; whatever thinking it requires is absorbed by a certain task: sinking that putt, making that cast, watching that flat-screen TV. Idleness is unconstrained, anarchic. Leisure-particularly if it involves some kind of high-priced technology-is as American as a Fourth of July barbecue. Idleness, on the other hand, has a bad attitude. It doesn't shave; it's not a member of the team; it doesn't play well with others. It thinks too much, as my high school coach used to say. So it has to be ostracized. [...]

[In June of 1913], Marinetti explained that Futurism was about the "acceleration of life to today's swift pace." It was about the "dread of the old and the known ... of quiet living." The new age, he wrote, would require the "negation of distances and nostalgic solitudes." It would "ridicule ... the 'holy green silence' and the ineffable landscape." It would be, instead, an age enamored of "the passion, art, and idealism of Business." This shift from slowness to speed, from the solitary individual to the crowd excited by work, would in turn force other adjustments. The worship of speed and business would require a new patriotism, "a heroic idealization of the commercial, industrial, and artistic solidarity of a people"; it would require "a modification in the idea of war," in order to make it "the necessary and bloody test of a people's force." As if this weren't enough, as if the parallel were not yet sufficiently clear, there was this: The new man, Marinetti wrote...would communicate by "brutalty destroying the syntax of his speech. He wastes no time in building sentences. Punctuation and the right adjectives will mean nothing to him. He will despise subtleties and nuances of language." All of his thinking, moreover, would be marked by a "dread of slowness, pettiness, analysis, and detailed explanations. Love of speed, abbreviation, and the summary, 'Quick, give me the whole thing in two words!'" (Mark Slouka, in Harper's: http://harpers.org/archive/2004/11/0080280)

Man, as epitomized as George W. Bush, is reborn as pure individualism, pure action, pure machine. "Solidarity," is not communal, but a technical force of individuals acting in concert, in rythm, like the gears of a motor. The logical undergirding of the AP article says it all: nature may be pretty, but ultimately it should be subjugated by Man, and Man, as Slouka writes, is more and more a machine. As opposed to idleness, leisure and retreat are no longer walks in the wilderness, they are times to reconsolidate power and reaffirm dominion while embracing what George Bush would call human destiny, freedom, patriotism, war and a "business-friendly environment." Crawford is not a temple of nature, but a temple for Bush, for exploitation of the land. It is not the king's place to praise nature, but nature's place to praise the king. Such is the state of things in a simplistic born-again world.

And so George Bush will be reborn again, given the benefit of the doubt, a fresh start for springtime.

Meanwhile, what would Jesus do? Maybe nothing. Maybe he would be idle and sit and contemplate the wilderness.

Yet, as Bush well knows, this truth is hidden deep within the syntax, within the language (of nature, of speech) that he works so diligently to break down, clearing the brush, as it were.*

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*Read Slouka's article. He makes the point much more elegantly than I.