The trend is all too clear in recent Presidential approval rating polls. Whichever series of polls you look at, the downward decline of President Bush’s approval rating, from its skyrocketing 90% is more than obvious.
I would like to think that this decline can be likened to a person gradually coming out of a cave. He or she may have forgotten what the real world looks like because of the lengthy time in the darkness, but, as he or she incrementally embraces the light he or she is reminded of the real world. I think that the American people are slowly realizing the nature of the wild goose chase that we have been on, all in the name of ending terrorism, since September 11th and are changing their feelings toward their fearless leader because of it.
The 9/11 piece we read adds to understanding why President Bush’s approval rating reached such heights; post 9/11 fears gave Bush a carte-blanche to pursue his goals with full public support.
However, I would like to look at the approval rating of Bush as it is now and how it is being viewed and used by the media.
President Bush’s approval rating seems to be popping up everywhere in the news and on blogs alike. We are currently in the throes of the 2006 Midterm elections. Historically, presidents have played significant roles in helping those in his party attain reelection. What is interesting in our current situation is the concern over President Bush’s ability to assist fellow Republicans when his approval rating is so low. It is almost like President Bush, himself, is running for reelection, as he travels across America trying to mobilize support for his party.
I similarly find it interesting that due to the President's low popularity with the people (in my opinion)the elections have turned into whether or not the candidates blindly supported Bush in the past few years or not. How one voted on the Iraq war, or on the Patriot Act seem to be a common thread throughout political ads. Republicans are deeply concerned about their own positions because of the negative view toward President Bush. As they should be.

This week in my Constitutional Law class we have been covering the First Amendment, particularly the Religious Freedom clauses, so as I scrolled down the list of survey reports of the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, one jumped out at me. “Many Americans Uneasy with Mix of Religion and Politics,” the title read. This survey was released August 24, 2006. With the Constitution in mind and the importance of religious freedoms and the separation between Church and State ranking high on my list of priorities I was very surprised by the findings of this survey. The leading statistic for the survey was, “69% Say Liberals Too Secular, 49% Say Conservatives Too Assertive.” I read through the entire report to find that the United States of America is even more religious than I previously believed, with many thinking that religion and Bible should play a more prominent role.
The survey was done by telephone, which with my list of 20 questions to ask in order to evaluate a poll, I know can sometimes lead to errors. It was conducted between July 6th and 19th and interviewed 2,003 individuals 18 and older. When reading through the questions, one thing that particularly impressed me was the attempt for unbiased and neutral language. I was even more impressed when I read that for some questions that had options, the questioners were instructed to change the order of the options, another attempt to assure a valid poll. I appreciate the simplicity of the questions. It is clear that no one is trying to manipulate or trick the participants into saying something that they don’t believe. Additionally impressive is the amount of questions. The questions were divided into four groups: religion and public life, religion and politics, religion and science, and religious beliefs. In all, 81 questions were asked. The depth and breadth of the questions provides a complete picture of the findings.
The methodology of the poll seemed fairly standard procedure. They have systems for how they choose the phone number to dial and they commit to trying to reach a number at least ten times. It is clear that they strive for representativeness. The one problem I see in the methodology, with the help from my 20 tips, was that there was weighting involved. While I do not wholly understand the weighting concept, I see the ability it has to produce errors.
Though there was no conclusions section in this study, it is clear that the findings of this study suggest that religion plays a dominant role in the lives of most American citizens. The findings that the survey report itself highlights are, that “Fewer now say GOP friendly to religion,” “Dems still face big ‘God Problem,” “Poverty, Iraq top pulpit topics,” “Religious views shape Mideast sympathies.” While on a personal level I have difficulty with the findings of this survey, on a practical level it seems that this poll was carried out properly and would pass the 20 questions, easily.

When I was in seventh grade my teacher used to always tell us, “don’t say in three what you could easily say in one.” The importance of speaking and writing clearly and succinctly is impressed upon children only to be abandoned in adulthood, when one thinks that complex and wordy sentences are better.
In his essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell decries the state of the English language at the time. People write with such an air of pretentiousness, with no interest in actual meanings. He discusses how destructive this is to society and how corrupting it is to thought.
While reading his essay, I could not help but relate his ideas to my own life. The idea that words and labels are overused, with no fear of the consequences is quite pronounced in my world.
Today, the Jewish people are a divisive group. Just like Orwell claims that different words are improperly used and lead to meaningless and corrupt thought, this rings true among the Jewish people. We throw around terms like religious, frum, shomer Shabbat, ultra Orthodox, right wing, left wing, fanatical, to name a few. We do not even think about what these words mean anymore. The worst part of it all is that these words turn into labels and perpetuate the division and crystallize it.
But beyond relating to Orwell in the abovementioned way, I also agree that language does not develop naturally (hmm, just like McChesney claims about media) and can be changed and set on a different path.
So it seems that we can save the English language, political thought, Jewish divisiveness and the sorry state of the media.

Is There a Difference Between the Mainstream Media and New Media?

Though many assume that Al Gore invented the Internet, in truth several individuals collaborated over many years to create the Internet that we have today. Since its inception, the Internet has played a unique and truly indefinable role in American life. In her book, Leighley asserts that like MSM the effects of the Internet on people, particularly concerning political thought are incalculable. It cannot be determined.
Along with the inability to see its political effects, the Internet shares some qualities with MSM. Most significantly, the hyper-commercialism that ravages MSM also rears its ugly head on the Internet. Rarely can one find a webpage, news outlet and search engine alike that does not have an ad embedded somewhere on the page. Additionally, the big conglomerates that dominate MSM maintain quite a presence on the Internet, as well. Every newspaper, television show, news outlet, and radio station has a webpage.
But, there are distinct differences which make the Internet drastically different than MSM. McChesney writes in Chapter 6, “For those outside the mainstream of political debate, the Internet has proven to be a remedy to their isolation, offering access to alternative and dissident media worldwide.” The Internet opens a whole new world of political debate to those excluded from the debate held in MSM. Additionally, the Internet contains a plethora of news. As McChesney and Leighley both note, the product of the corporate conglomerates of MSM is anything but diverse. The media reflect the opinions of the owners. While these media have websites as well and are a dominant presence on the web, the presence of independent news outlets, blogs and other news related websites mitigate this.
Another significant difference, though I would assert that it can be very negative sometimes, is the lack of restriction on the Internet. Anyone with Internet service can find as much evil on the web as good. Could you ever imagine turning on your television and seeing child pornography? Could you see turning on the radio and hearing step by step guidelines on how to be anorexic and hide it? Could you imagine opening the newspaper and learning how to make a bomb?
A last difference lies in the power of the Internet to connect people. Though de Tocqueville asserts that newspapers create a fraternity among people, the relationships created through the Internet are much more tangible.
Thus, though there are some similarities between the Internet and MSM, I believe that the Internet is a totally different species of animal. This difference lies in its lack of regulation and structure as well as its ability to bring people together in a more realistic way.
But, as stated in Chapter 6 of McChesney, what the future holds for the Internet is anyone’s guess. Will the standards and practices of MSM seep into the world of the Internet? Will the Internet take the path of all other media before and begin in a world of competitive enterprise and end with concentrated oligopolies? Or will for once, as McChesney only dreams will we, meaning the public included, sit down and figure out what to do with this thing called the Internet?
Hopefully, the good team will win this time.

With the idea of the press and the government as co-conspirators sitting in the back of my mind (as reinforced by Leighley and McChesney) it is tough to look at the news sources as the information providers they claim to be.
As I have been following the current “North Korea: Nuclear Tension” as CNN calls it, I have seen something lacking. With all the discussion of UN sanctions and outspoken disapproval from different heads of State concerning North Korean actions, it mistakenly seems like we, the United States or the United Nations have any control over the situation.
I recently was watching the Daily Show with John Stewart when he ran a hilarious series of clips of different UN and US diplomats and officials expressing their disapproval with the North Korean nuclear test. The humor of the clips lay in that all these officials could do was express their disapproval in a limited number of words. Whether the officials were “disappointed,” “angered,” or “distressed,” and “demanded,” “encouraged,” or “desired” for North Korea to desist, at the end of it all, all they had were their words. John Stewart, after the clip commented that the tone of all these individuals was no different than a parent to a child, like there is nothing more they can do except express their parental disappointment.
The mainstream news sources, for whatever reason, appear to be presenting this “tension” as just another news story, not as the terrifyingly dangerous crisis that it really may be. I find the lack of a tone of crisis to be almost dishonest. While I understand the desire to not want to terrify the American public, I see the value in being truthful about American power. President Bush’s mounting forces, surrounding Afghanistan, Iraq, and even Iran, have no power in this situation. It seems like once again, the media are covering the situation from the perspective of the current administration as opposed to asking the probing questions and getting the real story.
Information providers? I think not!

It is so easy to hear about the negative aspects of the media. The media does not keep us informed citizens. The media misleads us. The media is a profit-seeking industry with nothing but their bottom line in mind. The media represents only the elite point of view. Leighley and McChesney illustrate well, all of these attacks on the media.
But every once in a while the media seizes the moment and saves the day. Occasionally, the little people are given a voice, too.
For the past several months Federal officials in Pennsylvania have been searching Harrisburg for the right place to build the new Federal Courthouse. The are looking for at least two and a half acres on which to build and eight to fourteen story building with room for the required fifty to one hundred foot security setbacks.
Architecture firms and business interests submitted proposals and one was chosen. The winning proposal was to demolish apartments called Cumberland Court, which sit a few blocks away from downtown Harrisburg.
All was then fine and dandy. Plans were drawn and dates were set.
But then, the Patriot News, Harrisburg, PA’s local paper, decided to run a series on people that live in the Cumberland Court apartment complex. The sadness and fear of these low-income residents was clearly depicted in the pages. Soon, new facts were public. Most of those living in these apartments are single mothers. Those living in these apartments had developed a sense of family-like closeness.
Soon public opinion was mobilized. How could anyone want to uproot all of these people? There must be another area available for the Courthouse!
And on October 7, the front page headline declared “Courthouse site search back on.”
What the observers of this sequence of events are left to ask is why. Why were these stories told? Based on our readings I might suggest that this was a great human-interest story. Poor people being ripped out of their homes, single mothers with young children, aged retirees… you cannot get much more dramatic than that image. Yet, maybe the journalists did it because they saw an injustice and they saw how they could help.
I do not know what happened or what was the motivation, but I see the result and a newfound respect for my hometown paper.

The shooting in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania of ten children, fatally wounding five has shocked Pennsylvania and the nation. One aspect of the effect of this tragedy that is slowly beginning to be discussed is how equally shocked the Amish community has been in terms of the media. For anyone who has visited the “Amish Country” in Pennsylvania it is easy to imagine how caught aback they must be at the presence of helicopters in the sky or news cameras in their faces.
I think that this terrible tragedy and its aftermath also raise an interesting question. How far is too far, when it comes to media coverage? While the media agreed to give the community a certain amount of privacy when it came to the funerals, their effect is still felt so strongly by a community who try to detach themselves from the world of modern technology. While this event definitely merits news coverage, where does the line blur between appropriate news coverage and exploitation of the human-interest story of the minute?
As morbid as it is to say, this tragic story is a perfect human-interest story. Almost every day since this tragedy occurred, my local newspaper has carried relevant stories on every relevant issue, from reporting on the tragedy, to background pieces on the Amish and their traditions, to how to profile a potential killer.
I just do not know how far is too far. But what I do know is that the media have gone to far.
For religious reasons, that many do not understand (and don’t have to) the Amish avoid technology and photography, in particular.
It is hard to think that the 30 second spot on the evening news or the small picture in the newspaper is worth the compromise of their beliefs and the intrusion into their private world.

A Brief Post... As I did some work in my house today, I decided to have FOX News on in the background (something I never do) in order to see how they were covering the Foley scandal. Boy, did I luck out!
I barely had to watch an hour before I caught a glimpse of something that previously was unknown to me.... Who knew that Foley was really a Democrat from the state of Florida? Not I.
But, nevertheless, those were the words digitally imposed on an image of Representative Foley as the story was briefly discussed.
Good old Fox News- getting the story right once again!

I think that sometimes we, of the technology age, take for granted how much the world has changed in such a short time. I had one of those realizations today.
One of the benefits of being at home is the ability to share in the “no talk-just read time” in the morning with my parents. This sacred time is for reading the selection of newspapers that arrive at our doorstep. One person gets the New York Times, one gets The Wall Street Journal, and one gets our local paper, The Patriot News. Part of the ritual is to share pieces of information from one’s respective paper, or to share one’s thoughts on a particular issue. A lot of today’s discussion revolved around Representative Mark Foley and his recent downfall. Foley’s recent admission of his homosexually combined with his admission of inappropriate communications with a male page even made it to the AOL Homepage!
My realization, as mentioned above, came as a result of discussing the Foley scandal with my parents. “Instant messages, emails, cybersex,” my father said, “I do not think I even knew what those things were ten years ago.” It was weird to consider that that statement was probably true. The Internet and the World Wide Web have opened up a whole new world to us. But besides for availing us with new opportunities to fulfill our civic duty of being informed citizens, which Leighley states, we do not even really do, our eyes have also been opened to the world of Internet scandal, filled with child pornography, inappropriate IM conversations, and the like.
It is fascinating, every once in a while, to take a step back and look at the effect of the Internet on politics. Ten years ago could Rep. Foley even have imagined that his downfall would come from conversations that he had on his computer.
I once read on a friend’s Facebook profile, another sign of the times, the humorous and telling quote, that social scientists speculate that in twenty years a candidate for President will lose because of something he or she posted on Facebook, twenty years earlier.
Just a media related thought…