Category: Media

And so #Trumpcare is born…let’s be sure and call it that

~ jlpagano

“Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated”

Of course the President was referring to the “royal nobody” when he made that incredible statement!

What say we at least agree with him, since we all know it to be true.  My knowledge of a healthcare system is even more limited than his.

However, that does not mean I can’t have an opinion on the general aims of a health service.  And mine is that it our government should do all it can to ensure that it is accessible to all citizens.

When it comes to the nitty gritty of the new plan, I’m happy to let sources like Time magazine break  it down for me, like in this article titled “5 Things to Know Now About the GOP’s Obamacare Replacement Plan” :

The bill drastically cuts tax credits for the oldest and poorest Americans, while giving the upper class a major tax break. It also rolls back the Medicaid expansion and nixes the individual mandate, which requires everyone to buy health insurance. Crucially, it has not been scored by the Congressional Budget Office, so overall impacts are tough to gauge at this early point.

But even before we delve too deeply into all of that, can we make sure one thing happens.  We need to stop referring to this as an “Obamacare replacement”.

Both Donald Trump personally and the Republicans generally have done nothing but attack The Affordable Care Act since its inception.  In fact, they were responsible for some of the tweaks to the original legislation that brought about it’s current flaws.

Now, after six years of whinging and moaning and calling it a ‘disaster’, they have to be given ownership of this new plan.  And I don’t even think the GOP Congressfolk will have too many problems with my suggestion of a new name : #Trumpcare.

(note – I’m not saying I’m the first to think of it, I’m merely suggesting we all start using it!)

Let me be clear…I WANT it to work!!!  The only thing is…my definition of “work” doesn’t mean sustained or increased profits for insurance and pharmaceutical companies, rather it means, like I said previously, affordable care for as many citizens as possible.

But as we assess whether or not it will work, let us at least be sure to call it something that signifies who now owns it.

 

 

If you want actual appraisal of media coverage, ignore the President and go to FAIR.org

~ jlpagano

The President is very good at accusing those around him of doing exactly what he does, with “blaming the media for deliberate inaccuracy” a perfect example.

Nobody is suggesting the mainstream media is perfect, but if you want to see it properly scrutinized, I wouldn’t rely on the White House, past or present.

Instead you want a website like FAIR.org, this stands for Fairness & Aiccuracy In Reporting, which is dedicated to holding the fourth estate to task, not only on what it reports, but also what it tends to leave out.

Today we came across a great example of what they do in this article titled Shotgun Pointed at Black Children Trivialized as ‘Confederate Flag Incident’.  The story itself is worth a read and the wide variation in reporting is astonishing, but for this article we’d like to focus on the overall theme explored by this text :

how a story is framed is as important—if not more so—than the content of an article. Sixty percent of Americans don’t read past the headline and 60 percent of Americans share articles on social media without reading them. How a story is teed up to the reader is an essential element in how our media shape our understanding of the news.

That above passage could very well serve as a mission statement for this First Person Plural site going forward.  JLP

#IANWAE

 

Barry Cowen’s smugness re: #Right2Water campaign does not hold water

~ jlpagano

“Oh look at me!!! I’ve made the #Right2Water campaign look foolish!!!”, to paraphrase Fianna Fáil TD and brother of Bertie’s successor, Barry Cowen during the past week.

At an Oireachteas hearing (aka Joint Committee on Future Funding of Domestic Water Services Debate), Cowen asked representatives of the movement if they were in favour of a charge for excessive use of water, to which he was replied in the positive.

Deputy Barry Cowen: I ask the witnesses to answer the following. If this committee was in a position to agree a process by which people who use excessive amounts, in the opinion of this committee, were charged, is Right2Water happy with that?

Mr. Steve Fitzpatrick: Yes.

This led Cowen to go on twitter as though he had somehow convinced a vegetarian to enter a Big Mac eating competition.

After Paul Murphy TD of AAA-PBP accused Cowen of “selective quoting”, The Journal decided to do one of its “fact-check” articles, which in essence served to back up the very picture Cowan was trying to paint, ie one that only pro-Establishment readers would appreciate.

Let’s back up this particular truck, shall we.

First we need to make a clear distinction between what regulating water is meant to do, and what instead our government actually did.

Of COURSE we should be regulating water usage.  It is an important resources and should not be wasted.  But before we do so, we need to identify who is wasting it the most and target the regulation at them.  This clearly brings the private sector in the firing line way before domestic users, but this State has never been led by a Government that would acknowledge this.

Instead, the Fine Gael-led government (yes, I know, with Labour also in tow) sought to establish a revenue stream (pun fully intended) for a new corporate cash-cow known as Irish Water, and began charging the general public long before there was any opportunity to gauge which houses were using excessive amounts of water.

And on top of the specifics of the #Right2Water movement, the main reason it earned itself such incredible public support wasn’t just because of the water issue itself, but also because it was the straw that broke the Irish camel’s back after successive years of austerity following the banking crisis which happened under Bertie Ahern’s, and ultimately Brian Cowen’s, watch.

Even without the most recent poll numbers, when Fianna Fáil party leader and former Minster under Bertie, Micheal Martin eventually has the balls to bring down this current Government and call an election, seeing how the wider voting Irish public sees only two possible parties for leadership, he will be Taoiseach.

Would it be crazy to assume that his government would quickly seek to establish water charges exactly as Fine Gael had done, using the above selective testimony as some kind of justification?  With Cowan as the Minster responsible, no less?  JLP

#IANWAE

“All Presidents complain about the press” : Interesting New Yorker article from 2004

~ jlpagano

Barring the press because you don’t like what they write is an act of cowardice. The current President of the US is a coward.

The above is what I posted on my personal Facebook account as soon as I heard that Trump had barred the NY Times, CNN & the BBC from a press briefing.   I was pretty angry.  But then I remembered that even President Obama had issues with the press at times, so I did a bit of research, and I came across this article in the New Yorker from 2004.

It comprises an interview with writer Ken Auletta on the relationship between then-President George W Bush and the media – remember, this was the era of “weapons of mass destruction” and the neo-cons’ determination to invade Iraq.

DANIEL CAPPELLO: All Presidents complain about the press. How is the Bush White House different?

KEN AULETTA: In two ways. They are more disciplined. They reject an assumption embraced by most reporters: that we are neutral and represent the public interest. Rather, they see the press as just another special interest. The discipline flows down from President Bush, who runs the White House like a C.E.O. and demands loyalty. This is a cohesive White House staff, dominated by people whose first loyalty is to Team Bush. When Bush leaves the White House, most of his aides will probably return to Texas. They are not Washington careerists, and thus they have less need to puff themselves up with the Washington press corps. In fact—and this leads to the second difference—from Bush on down, talking to the press off the record is generally frowned upon and equated with leaking, which is a deadly sin in the Bush White House (unless it is a leak manufactured to advance the President’s agenda).

So clearly a fractious relationship with the press is far from a novelty, but you can’t deny that Trump has brought it to a whole new level.

 

The Anatomy of a #Liveline Segment : #TescoStrike

~ jlpagano

Usually it is against my better judgement to listen to Joe Duffy’s Liveline, especially when it covers issues I really care about.  For a show that no doubt would insist that it is “fair and balanced”, it is generally anything but.

Yet as I pointed out in an earlier article, just because we consider sections of the media to be “corporate-controlled”, this does not mean we should always refrain from listening to them, as they are every bit as much “players in the game” as any politician or other major public figure whose behaviour we wish to examine.

To this end I’d like to introduce what will be an occasionally-recurring series here on FPP : “The Anatomy of a Liveline Segment” where we will critique his coverage of a particular item in the news.  For this first instalment, we finally get to mention the ongoing strike at Tesco.

First, some background.  Joan Collins TD explained things from the workers’ perspective in the Dáil :

“Tesco is one of the few employers in the retail sector that still has thousands of decent jobs, where workers can earn enough to live. And now this is under attack.

It has those jobs because workers organised – research shows in the retail sector that those in unions earn around 30% more than those who are not.

That is why Tesco is looking to break the union, so that it can make big profits off the back of cheaper labour and join the race to the bottom in retail.”

Of course the giant retail chain were to have their own say, pouring doubt over the union’s claims and deferring to an old chestnut which the Government uses as a cop out to avoid direct involvement in industrial disputes :

“It is surprising that Mandate are balloting for industrial action in a small number of stores. Most unusually the union is rejecting a Labour Court Recommendation which it had sought and sets out a clear and generous resolution.”

When it comes to the Labour Court, while it’s proclamation is known as a “recommendation”, when it comes to how it is used in the “court of public opinion”, more often than not it is portrayed as an ultimatum akin to “like it or lump it”.

So let’s see how Joe handled Tuesday’s segment.  He was off that day and in his stead was Damian O’Reilly, but this doesn’t absolve Duffy of responsibility for the content…his name is regularly repeated throughout the show whether he is there or not.

Here is how the segment progressed (click here to listen in full) :

  • First we are introduced to Des, who is described as a “well-known, well-respected businessman”.  He owns a butcher’s shop located beside Tesco Greystones and claims his business is adversely affected by the picketing union workers.  He says that on Friday and Saturday over the weekend his taking were down between “70 and 80 percent”.  Damien then mentions another business owner from the same complex who was “too upset to come on air”.
  • Eventually over 4 minutes into the segment we get to hear from a representative of the workers, namely Keith Pollard, an Industrial Officer with Mandate Trade Union.  His first point is that their fight is not with shop owners like Des, and that the strikers’ intention is to picket the front of the Tesco itself, not the wider shopping complex, yet the company management will not allow it so they must go outside.
  • Despite the fact that Pollard has offered an explanation, O’Reilly repeatedly asks him why the workers aren’t doing more to avoid affecting the small businesses.  For me, given that they can’t picket indoors, this effectively means Damien is asking him to call off the dispute altogether?  Also, throughout the segment, O’Reilly’s number to describe the effect on Des’ business jumps from 70 to 80 to even 90 percent.
  • This exchange goes back and forth through the first half of the overall segment.  Des is worried for his business, Keith say the workers would move if they could, Damien makes it looks as though the workers are somehow being unreasonable. Nobody seems able to move forward from this position and they waste a lot of time repeating themselves.
  • What about Tesco?  Damien tries to absolve himself in the early stages –  “We’ve invited them on, they’re more than welcome to come on.”  Sixteen minutes into the segment, he reads out a statement from them (“in fairness”, as he puts it) – basically they claim that the workers were asked to move outside in the interest of the “safety and comfort of customers”.
  • We are joined suddenly by “Graham Nolan” (I can only assume he is a “random member of the public”), who also makes it out as though it is only up to the strikers to resolve the issue.  “Why don’t they have it clearly written on their placards that they are just picketing Tesco?” he asks (paraphrase)
  • Then they take a break.  When they come back, Des, Keith and Graham are gone.  Now we have three new callers.
  • First up is Barry, another random caller.  He is sympathetic to the picketers and claims they are friendly and that the onus is on Tesco not the workers.  Damien replies “You have a good point but the problem is in this instance….” before repeating the point about the (probably well over 100% by now) drop in takings for the small businesses.
  • Next we have Theresa, who is actually a picketer.  She makes an excellent point that perhaps it’s not them stopping anyone from entering the shops, maybe instead it’s the shoppers’ own conscience.
  • Finally we have Paula Hannon, an elderly lady (apparently) who claims she was somehow prevented from entering the centre.  “A terrible experience”, “they were walking, blocking me”, and she was subject to “intimidation”.  Personally, I believe she felt intimidated, though I’m not altogether sure that was anywhere near the intention of the picketers as she suggests.
  • Then O’Reilly reads another statement from Tesco, which miraculously supports Paula’s claims of intimidation.

This post has gone way longer than it probably should, but I will finish with a few thoughts.

If the show’s intention really was to be “fair and balanced”, it wouldn’t have focused solely on the collateral effect on local business.  No decent person wants to see anybody lose out in situations like this, but what about the workers?  Are they not also collateral victims?

There are two sides in every industrial dispute.  Tesco initiated this situation by proposing to exchange an existing agreement.  The workers did not agree, yet Tesco still claim they will press ahead, now using a “Labour Court Recommendation” as some kind of endorsement.  It is still up to the workers to accept, which they clearly haven’t.  Now they should be talking to each other, and any effect on the wider community, be it business owners or shoppers, is a direct consequence of this failure to meet.

As far as I am concerned, if they refuse to send a representative onto the programme, Tesco shouldn’t be allowed to have statements read out.  Remember – the segment was divided in two, so their rep wouldn’t have to go up directly against the union one.  By providing statements to be read unchallenged they are showing themselves to be cowards in my view.

While this segment of the programme did allow representatives on both sides of the issue to have their say, it has to be said that the general tone of the presentation was extremely weighted in favour of Tesco.   Not that this was much of a surprise, but we feel it’s important to call them out on it whenever possible.

You can expect more “Anatomy of a Liveline Segment” posts in the future.  Probably need at least a week to recover from this one though! JLP

Is the NY Times really “failing” as Trump keeps claiming? Someone thought to ask

~ jlpagano

On this weekend’s Best of the Left podcast the theme is “Corporate media’s fight for legitimacy in the age of Trump“.

The contrast between the Donald Trump who gave a solo press conference on Thursday and the Donald Trump who spoke to 9,000 of his own supporters in a Floridian airplane hangar  on Saturday is quite revealing.

Everyone has their comfort zones and there is no doubt that the President is far more suited to the latter of the two settings outlined above.  However, the way he handles his discomfort with the media is quite startling.  He brands CNN “Very Fake News”, and the NY Times gets tagged with the moniker “failing” whenever he mentions them.

BBC World Service’s The Inquiry program asked the NYT Executive Editor Dean Baquet how a newspaper covers a powerful public figure who repeatedly treats them with such contempt…

“You cover him aggressively, you cover him fairly, you cover him accurately, and if he beats you up in the ‘court of Twitter’, you don’t respond unless he says something that’s factually inaccurate.”

As the overall title of the BOTL episode suggests, the media is far from an innocent victim in the wider political context; in fact it could be said that Trump’s march to the White House is in many ways down to all the free coverage he received.

Putting it most bluntly is Farron Cousins of The Ring of Fire…

“Turn it off.  There is no reason to ever tune in to corporate-controlled media.  MSNBC, Fox News, CNN…shut it off, and never turn back.”

We like Ring of Fire here at FPP but on this we couldn’t disagree more.

Of course the corporate-controlled media pays more attention to its advertizers than any Progressive worth their salt would like, but we still feel it’s important to keep tabs on what they are saying.  So we say don’t switch them off, just make sure when you do watch, you’re switched on to where they’re coming from, so you can keep tabs on what is being fed into the bloodsteam of the media-hungry masses.  JLP

 

 

 

A Week of President Trump : Feb 10-16, 2017

~ jlpagano

awopt-logo

Week 4

We’d like to thank the President for summarizing his own 4th week for us and saving us a lot of time.  It’s pretty much all here…

We did have a go at summarizing the speech…

“Thank you for coming. Alexander Acosta is my new Labor pick. He’s a great guy. No, he’s not here. You media are all dishonest. But that’s fine. I think you’re good people. I’m glad you’re here. It’s great. But you’re still dishonest. Look at all I’ve done. It’s everything I’ve said I’d do. And I’m going to redo all the things I have done that have failed because of circuits. I know what circuits are. I inherited a mess!!! Obamacare disaster. Now I’m going to mention my daughter Ivanka to show how much I love women. That’s not creepy at all. I won my election almost as well as Reagan did his. But the dishonest media won’t report that. You’ll say I’m angry. I’m perfectly calm. The failing New York Times!!! Now ask me a question. Yes, I’m pointing at you, NPR, not Breitbart for once. Flynn? Great guy. Wonderful guy. Nobody has ever appointed a guy greater than him. But he had to resign. He made the VP look bad. Russia? FAKE NEWS! Look, you media are dishonest. But I’m calm. Next? Yeah, maybe the Reagan thing was wrong, I was given that information. See how calm I am? Nobody is calmer than me. What’s that? Anti-semitism? Already covered that when I said I won the Electoral College. Not 207, not 220, not even 270. 306! I love this job. And the people love me. I’m going to Florida on Saturday to remind myself how much the people love me. God bless America.”

Perhaps I’m paraphrasing.

He did leave out a few things…meeting the leaders of Japan, Canada & Israel, treating guests at Mar-a-Lago to some nuclear chit-chat over North Korea, his Labor pick being forced to withdraw…but the press conference stole the show.

Click here for last week’s post

Interesting “alternative fact” in NY Times article on #MauriceMcCabe crisis

~ jlpagano

Last night we were treated to a classic example of the fantasy world in which our Irish national parliament exists.

There was a debate in the Dáil over a Sinn Fein motion of no confidence in the government, of which the highlight was a remarkable bit of attempted political chicanery by former minister under Bertie Ahern and current Fianna Fáil leader Micheal Martin.

Somehow he managed to (1) berate Sinn Féin for having brought the motion in the first place and (2) attack the government for their (admittedly shocking) handling of the Maurice McCabe situation, before his party proceeded to abstain from the vote altogether, effectively helping Kenny’s government survive.

Just in case you are a little bit behind the curve on what has happened with McCabe, the New York Times offers a brief refresher course with this article posted yesterday.  And as part of it, there is a glaring error that demands immediate correction.  Or IS IT an error?

Both Mr. Kenny’s party, Fine Gael, and its coalition partner, Fianna Fail, had little appetite for fresh elections that could unsettle their fragile government.

Earlier in the article, a sentence which would make Gerry Adams very happy…

There were heated exchanges between Mr. Kenny and Gerry Adams, the leader of the opposition Sinn Fein party.

Naturally the Civil War duopoly would object to this depiction, as last year they somehow managed to cobble together a government with sticky plaster in an attempt to keep Fianna Fail on the opposition benches at the expense of Adams & his posse.

I’m no fan of Sinn Féin, but I’m not so sure this article has gotten anything wrong.  It’s more like that kid in the story who points out the Emperor has no clothes.

First and foremost, the McCabe family, and anyone else brave enough to come forward and call out corruption among their superiors for that matter, deserves to have their shocking treatment dealt with fairly and publicly, not just for their sake, but also for anyone who might wish to do similar in the future.

Next there is the matter of Martin, Simon Coveney and Leo Varadkar – the three men best poised to bring down Enda Kenny.  If this government must stay in place going forward, it needs some semblence of stability, and statements from each of them are the only way to bring that.

By saying nothing, they are demonstrating that they don’t want to deal with what the Taoiseach has on his plate right now (this whistleblower crisis, #RepealThe8th and #Right2Water to name just three), thus showing themselves to be cowards.  JLP

 

 

Republicans plan to get congressional dirty work done while media distracted by Trump soundbite-fest

~ jlpagano

When your goal is to keep an eye on the mainstream media, naturally it’s not all about scrutinising what they actually report.  It is also very important to pay mind to the stuff they leave out of their broadcasts and publications.

Rachel Maddow and Politico are among the few to have latched on to what seems to be a very clear and distinct plan by Mitch McConnell and his fellow Congressional Republicans to minimise the amount of resistance the Democrats can manage against the many changes they want to make under the upcoming Trump administration.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s conference has scheduled six Cabinet-level confirmations hearings for next Wednesday, Jan. 11, the same day the chamber will likely slog through an all-night vote-a-rama on a budget and the president-elect will give his first press conference in six months.

When John Stewart hosted The Daily Show he brilliantly depicted the way the mainstream media can be so easily distracted by using the dog in the Disney movie “Up!”.  The pet had a fancy device attached which meant he could talk but when he was in the middle of talking to you he’d suddenly look away and say…

squirrel

…and what better way to deflect attention from the rake of confirmation hearing for Trump’s Cabinet of Deplorables than to have the man himself say words out loud?

I’ll let Ms Maddow explain as only she can…

#IANWAE

Trump’s tabloid of choice is hardly surprising but still worrying to say the least

~ jlpagano

cruz-jfk

Of all the incredible stuff said by Donald Trump throughout his campaign, large chunks of it were lost in memory as we tried to focus on his most recent offerings.

This one definitely fell through the cracks but is very much gaining significance now.

I’ve always said, ‘Why didn’t the National Enquirer get the Pulitzer Prize for Edwards, and OJ Simpson, and all of these things?’

Yes, he actually said that (out loud, not in a tweet for once), about a publication that literally prints whatever it wants.  And going by the trends shown by its headline articles, like the one above that attacked Ted Cruz, arguably Trump’s biggest rival for the Republican nomination, what it wants more than anything is to show the President Elect in as good a light as possible.

Steve Benen of MaddowBlog examines in more detail :

Its current cover, for example, tells readers President Obama has “ignited” a national security crisis, but Americans shouldn’t worry – because Donald Trump will “fix” the problem.

He discounts the intelligence presented to him by the country’s leading federally-funded agencies yet he’s willing to trust a tabloid available at supermarket counters for just over a dollar.  Not a good sign.

#IANWAE