Whatever…

Don’t ask them to protect us

The Free Flow of Information Act cleared the House late last year, but its future is hardly assured. Although most of the members of the House supported the measure, and although journalists, news organizations, media of all sorts, and even bloggers – who hope to be included under whatever protections may be extended to the press – clamor for what is known as a federal shield law - shame on them - the prospects are murky. For instance, the Bush administration opposes the House-passed version of the federal shield, arguing that it would hamper security efforts by federal law enforcement, by insulating reporters from subpoenas, even in criminal and national security investigations. Plus, the administration argues the proposed law would encourage the use of anonymous sources in news reporting and thus encourage leaks of sensitive government information.

There are state shield laws in more than 30 states, but they differ, naturally, and they do not apply to journalists swept up in federal probes or prosecutions. The federal law would reach into the states.

The law would protect paid journalists engaged in “gathering, preparing, collecting, photographing, recording, writing, editing, reporting, or publishing of news or information that concerns local, national, or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public.” Even the Society of Professional Journalists, which ought to know better and think better of itself and more carefully about the meaning of the First Amendment, praised the House action on the bipartisan shield law. SPJ called it “a victory for a free press and for the American people as much as journalists”, the latter assertion on the grounds that what protects the reporter accrues to the people’s benefit. But, SPJ’s applause is misguided.

I don’t think either assertion is persuasive. It’s not a victory for the press, because the First Amendment, interpreted and applied by the Supreme Court, already offers a broad protection to practitioners of the news business. And, as for the people, let them look out for themselves by demanding sound, aggressive practice of their work from journalists.

After all, the First Amendment’s protection is not circumscribed by political considerations, or susceptible to repeal or amendment. For me, permitting, let alone inviting, legislative action to shield the news business is flawed at the outset, because its advocates apply for succor to one of the chief objects of press scrutiny. It is the 535 members of Congress, plus the assorted agencies that are part of the executive branch, that the Founders had in mind when they erected the First Amendment as a bulwark against political tampering by elected and appointed officials. Attempting to huddle beneath the variable, but always self-involved, and often questionably motivated protections of its very targets strikes this newspaper type as both foolish and fruitless. Don’t ask them to protect us.

Journalists should make their case for non-interference on First Amendment grounds and fight the battle before the Supreme Court, not in the Congress

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Tough

No matter which side you favored, Tisbury’s two-vote rejection of beer and wine is less satisfying, and less instructive to the town’s leaders, than one might have wished. What’s a town official to think? Progressive change or hold the line? Strengthen the business community with tailored incentives and more flexible development rules, or hold the line against business expansion by increasing the tax burden on business while promoting the massive town spending needed to solve the town’s infrastructure deficit?

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Words

Words matter, of course. I can’t remember which of the two Democrat presidential candidates said that, but nevermind. To them, to most, probably all politicians, words matter as leverage, bargaining tools, links, placeholders, self-revelatory prompts, a kiss.

How else might words matter, really matter. To the novelist, or to the genuine historian - as opposed to the politician/historian, the pundit/historian, the celebrity/historian, none of whom is an historian, really, at all - words are not merely tools. They are the facts. They reveal what it is their author wishes to create or describe, and they are that thing. It’s like the painter, whose oils are the symbols of his vision and they are the vision itself. They don’t merely represent what the writer is trying to get across; they are what the writer’s intention is.

Barack Obama has emerged as a man of powerful words. Hillary Clinton, in considered counterpoint, has sometimes disparaged words and offered herself as a woman of action. Actions speak louder, she says loudly. Words are key, he says, contradicting her and quoting some important words written and spoken at defining American historical moments.

Mrs. Clinton’s words don’t stand for her. They are not her conception, the way a novelist’s words are. They are not the things, the ideas themselves, the way the genuine historian’s words are. Her words lever support, sprinkle an inducement here, another there.

Similarly, whatever Mr. Obama believes, the words he has used recently to distance himself from his pastor of two decades seem no more than handy tools, necessary, at the exigent moment and doubtless heartfelt, given the fix he finds himself in, to break his political fall and lever himself back up on top.

Words matter, and everyone is entitled to them, just as everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. But, in political speech, it’s not in his kiss.

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Mass mayhem

Just out of a meeting in which we shared with employees the news about their health insurance coverage, namely that it will cost more but not be any better, I came across a report underwritten by the Pew Center on the States. Entitled “Grading the States”, the report gives Masssachusetts poor marks - worse than the state’s scores in 2005 - for its budget process, the management of its public workforce, the setting of performance goals, and especially for the state’s infrastructure. If it’s comforting to you, only New Hampshire and Rhode Island got worse grades, and New England as a whole, excepting only Connecticut, got lousy marks.

What does this have to do with health insurance? Well, Massachusetts has taken on state mandated health insurance coverage, and the program is turning out to be astonishingly more expensive than was estimated, only partly because more residents have signed up than were expected to do so. Anyhow, the state’s requirements have inspired health insurers to re-rate their benefit plans, and companies such as ours, which offer full-featured coverage to our employees and pay up to 75% of the premium costs, took a 15% whack for the upcoming health insurance year. Of course, the employee share of the premium hike also rises 15%. And, there is no enhancement of the coverage. Pay more, get the same or less, that’s the formula.

So, let’s see, the state is a bad manager of all that it does - according to independent analysis and in comparison to the performances of other states. Nevertheless, in light of this report card on state management, we’ll give the government health care to oversee. That’s Mayflower State decision making, I guess. (By the way, Utah and Washington state, got the best marks in the Pew study.

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Bit of news

A colleague who knows this stuff pointed me to an online news report on WebProNews.com, which tots up the Barack Obama presidential campaign spending on web ads. I am delighted to report that some of that money has come our way. You may have noticed a slew of Obama ads on mvtimes.com.

Barack Obama
(Photo Credit: wikipedia)

“The Obama campaign poured more than $1 million into Google in February,” WebProNews reports, ”compared with only $67,000 by Clinton during February. The $1 million paid to Google was more than six times the campaign’s entire online ad spend for January.”

So, you won’t be surprised that in this corner, it’s yay Obama, step it up Clinton. We’ve even included a photo, just over there, as testimony to our devotion to Senator Obama’s web-saavy ad spending practices.

Of course, if, as is certainly the case, Senator Clinton deserves censure for her niggardliness on the online spending front, we think the Obama campaign could do a  little better as well. After all, the Illinois senator’s campaign brought in $45 million in online donations in February alone.

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Skeptic that I am

This business encourages skepticism. Newspaper folk are skeptical of politicians, as politicians are skeptical of us. Everyday folk are skeptical of politicians and newspaper types. They should be. No argument here. Then there was the 2000 Florida hullabaloo, which raised the skepticism multiplier for all involved - the politicians, the news organizations, the commentators, the lawyers, the judges, the Supreme Court - and saddest of all, for voters in Florida and elsewhere.

In Tisbury, where beer and wine were on the ballot, there will be a recount of the 690-690 draw, and simultaneously a recount of the votes for selectman. Incumbent selectman Tom Pachico lost to challenger Jeff Kristal by just 14 votes. A few hours after the election results were posted late in the evening of election day, April 15, we began to hear suggestions from folk on either side of the beer/wine chasm that something wasn’t right about the tally. It was statistcally impossible, there were ballots uncounted, there were ballots thrown out by the counting machine that should have been counted, and on and on.

For me, and I’ve been following Island elections for more than 30 years, as a job, the inflamed ought to reign in their skepticism. If there is a place in the U.S. where vote counters can be relied upon to count votes fairly, it’s in the six towns here. In Tisbury, Marion Mudge and her counters will sort out the issues, if there are any, and the recounted record will be clean and clear. Not everybody will be happy, but with any luck the losers will be the skeptics.

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Close quarters

The problems associated with changing the oil, and the oil and fuel filters, of a diesel engine in a small boat are countless. But, add the one foot roll from the 15 mph southeast wind, and the afternoon may prove catastrophic. After all, the engine is in the middle of the kitchen, or what passes for the kitchen. Most of its smelly carcass is inaccessible. Equipment and residues include rags, clean and oily, filters (all special purpose), O-rings of various sizes, all determined to find their way into the bilge; a container for filthy fuel, one for clean fuel, another for dirty oil, others for clean oil, wrenches, screw drivers, paper towels, the engine manual - all smelly and infectious. Touch a clean surface with a finger, a rag, an O-ring, a wrench, or anything else, and the clean surface has been perfumed with diesel, whose aroma will last for days. And, to make things worse, all the surfaces available for contamination are food prep surfaces, or sleeping surfaces. If that quart container brimming with old diesel fuel, now balancing on the stove, should spill, we’ll have to throw out the stove.

The killer is, after spending two successful hours doing all the maintenance and avoiding major contamination of the living quarters, feeling pretty good about getting a troublesome job done, and done right, it turns out that putting those diesel and oil contaminated clothes in the washer, along with some shirts that belong to other family members, wasn’t the best idea I’d had all day. What happens on the boat, apparently, doesn’t stay on the boat.

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It is written in the stars

Someone asked why Arlan Wise’s astrology column no longer appears in The Times. The newspaper’s general rule is to add features, so there is something in print or online to interest all the niches, however small, among our variegated readership. Sports, of course, gardening, social notes, honor rolls, birds, writing, and more - someone is interested in one or more of these. We know that lots of our readers are fascinated by astrology and Arlan’s exploration of it. It’s been a feature for two decades.

But change is a constant in the newspaper game. It’s written in the stars, to to speak. We add features, we shift features, we find new enthusiasms among our readers and in the community at large. But, all of what we’d like to offer doesn’t fit in the print paper. The attic is full, sort of. So, we try to add new features on mvtimes.com. This Blog feature is a good example. Sometimes we try to shift venerable, longstanding features from print to online. It’s a matter of refreshing the contents. Just as we have refreshed the paper’s appearance many times over the years, we attempt to refresh its contents. Another example: a while back we added Susan Wilson’s Last Word column to the OpEd Page. It’s been a big hit with readers, although Susan wishes more of her readers would suggest topics for her to write about. A regular columnist shoulders a heavy burden, as the sole conjurer of column ideas. Help is welcome. 

When Susan’s column appears next, in the first week of May, it will be found in the Community section of the paper. We think it will have a comfortable home there and complement the varied pieces of the Community puzzle we try to complete each week.

With Arlan Wise’s column, we were unsuccessful in changing the location of the column while at the same time retaining it as one of our array of features. A News Brief in the April 17 print and online editions of The Times tells readers how to find Arlan, without us. I know her faithful will find the way.

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Blogging

When I began newspapering, in 1972, at the Vineyard Gazette, the news flowed or pottered from the mind of the reporter through a Royal Underwood manual typewriter to yellow paper, from which a Linotype operator in the grungy back shop transformed letters and symbols into lead slugs, which a compositor bound in a page-size steel frame, that the pressman lay on the flat bed of a letter press, and after some earthquake-like shuddering and thundering, ultimately into the hands of a reader. It took a week or so to do it.Now, we blog. If I think of it, I can post it here. If you think of it, you may visit, read it, and reply. It’s the work of an instant, or so.I’m skeptical, naturally, but we’re giving it a try. Over the next few weeks, we’ll invite a wide variety of ordinary humans - Times staffers as well as interesting outsiders - to leave their normal, private lives (and thoughts) behind and blog. Three or four decades ago, none of us was interesting enough to publish our notions on a minute by minute schedule. Now, any of us is. Well, we’ll see. You’ll tell us.

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Chaos

I noticed that Edward Lorenz died the other day. He was a meteorologist. He was not a summer visitor, he did not enjoy quahoging in Antier’s Pond or walking at Squibnocket. He was not a longtime member of the Barnacle Club. He was the guy who originated and helped develop chaos theory. It has nothing to do with the homely tensions among parents and children that all of us experience as chaos. It has a lot to do with things like weather forecasting, and maybe even end of the world, global warming theory.

Lorenz is known for the “butterfly effect.” Read the rest of this entry »

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