friedman Fades Away

Friday evening on NBC’s Nightly News, Brian Williams reported on the loss of the University of Michigan’s former football coach, Bo Schendechler. This story was on the eve of one of the great college football match-ups, Michigan vs. Ohio State, or as I like to think of it, a weasly looking dog against a prickly thing that falls out of trees.

Meanwhile, one of America’s greatest economists died this past Thursday with hardly a mention. Milton Friedman died this past Thursday with hardly a mention, if not for Public television. Frieman was part of the influencial Chicago School of Economics, and probably one of the greatest minds to stroll through Hyde Park on the Southside of Chicago, next to probably that of prominent American philosopher Allan Bloom who died in 1992.

Friedman was most known for his applied economic theories that helped fuel the free market explosion during the 1950s and 1960s. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1976, one of his great achieements that gained him respect throughout the globe. In many ways, he was one of the authors of the modern free market society that helped pave the way toward Globalization.

In addition to his influence on macro economics, Friedman was, along with former fed. Chairman Alan Greenspan, a follower of Ayn Rand, a popular fiction writer who developed a school of philosophical thought that pegged hard line capitalism with human liberty and freedom.

I would like to see a pole on Sunday of how many Americans knew who won today’s Michigan vs. Ohio State game and compare that with how many Americans actually knew who Milton friedman was.

Georgia Gives Gilbert the Gag

Ok, in some ways that last post was a bit of a rant. I hadn't written anything on this blog for so long, I guess I was catching up. Though the issue of journalists becoming public intellectuals and commentators still makes me weary. I don't doubt that an intellectual can be born out of American schools of journalism. Though I am a bit put on guard when the reporter does more than reporting. Editorial Op. Eds. are one thing, as they clearly state their point by the mere title of the page--that they are not a report but an opinion.

The University of Georgia's independent student newspaper, The Red & Black, ran a story this past Thursday that made the daily news digest for MediaBistro, a leading resource organization for media artists. The article, found HERE uncovered a former Georgetown grad who was prancing around the lecture circuit touting that he was a foreign reporter for WCBS in New York. David Gilbert, who had actually only briefly been contracted to string for WCBS and was never on their payroll, had been traveling the university circuit presenting a propaganda message in favor of armed conflict, taking sides with a hard lined Israeli perspective. According to the Red & Black, journalism students questioned Gilbert's vitae, which was later discovered to be exaggerated.

I wonder if Gilbert had spent his Sunday mornings watching Bob Schafer on CBS and the weekly news round-up, wishing that he was one of leading reporters asked to give his or her views on the crisis in the Middle East. Incidentally, Gilbert’s minimum speaking fee was $1,000.

Good job for David Hazinski and the broadcast students at the Grady College of Journalism, for doing some serious investigative journalism and reporting. I can’t think of the last time I saw a student media group break into the daily news digest.

It has been a week now since the results of the midterm election sent their final shock through the aged and weary Contract With America (TM). It's taken me a week, at least, to try to digest everything that happened on Election tuesday. In a lot of ways, elections are more like the old days, when results took as long as the horse ride to D.C. took from the Frontier. The more advanced the voting process becmes seems to have little inpact on the immediacy of finding out who actually wins.

Unfortunately, my vote was not heard this election. The New York Board of Elections managed to loose my registration not once, but twice. I had voted in the Primary election this past September, only to receive a scolding letter from the board that my ballet was thrown out since I was not registered to vote. I had registered along party line when I signed up for my ID, checking the box on the form along with the organ doner box. I received my organ info. But no voting info. So after the rejection letter, I registered again. But alas, still never heard anything, and thus my vote was not heard. Not that it really matters as my district is probably one of the most blue districts in the Empire State.

I move in two weeks to Bay Ridge, a much more red district. It makes me think how strange our country has become, that we divide it into color charts and maps. what do you do if you're color blind? Vote independent?

The media has played out this one quite well...Not the colors, but the color comentary during and after the election. sometimes I think it's like having me call out NASCAR racing, a blind subway dweller trying to explain who's on first or in first, and who's on the pole, which to me is something you hold onto when the train comes to a quick stop.

The comentary spells out clearly, in the eyes of reporters who didn't do a good job of calling the actual game, saying that the democrats would be lucky to pull off the fifteen seats and probably not get the senate. Shadowing their own imperfect predictions, kind of like weather forcastors, the mainstream media begin to use news that has little weight in the election once the election was over. Reporters, instead of reporting, comment on how America has changed, how certain votes or voting populations were ignored, how certain advertisements were the determining factor in certain races. They make predictions about who will do what, already focusing now on the presidental election of 2008. They predict about how we'll investigate Iraq and bush, and hmeland security.

What I would like to hear is less comentary by the journalists of newspapers and broadcast outlets, and more reporting. watching the nightly news last evening, there was one major international story with a domestic slant, Iraq, and then a fluff story on the auto industry meeting in Washington and a bunch of human interest and health stories. Where has all the news gone? Even if I had voted, I'd be hard pressed to actually learn about what my representative is doing for me and my district. I want political coverage, not speculation. I spent seven years in journalism school, undergrad and graduate combined. I learned how to report, how to gather facts, how to develop an exciting and informative story. commentary is for Plato, not Bernsteen.