What do we get with corporate-backed politicians?

Recently, I’ve had an old Tennessee Ernie Ford song rattlin’ round in my head:

You load 16 tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store.

I think that pretty well describes working America – a country I often feel like the masters of the universe in Washington D.C. (and our state capital) have forgotten.

And then I live through periods like this first week in June and I have to wonder, “Do working Americans recognize themselves in Ford’s song?”

Of course I am referring to Wisconsin’s recall election, in which voters retained a governor who made it his mission to break state public employees’ unions.

Never mind these unions had already conceded to pay a larger share of benefit costs and to limit pay increases. Walker’s goal was not to ease Wisconsin taxpayers’ burden, but to do away with collective bargaining and worker protections for public employees, and thus for all workers.

Walker’s efforts were bankrolled by a handful of multi-billionaire business owners, led by the Koch brothers.

And they outspent Democrats by a ratio of 7-1 to retain Walker.

Their funds allowed saturation advertising and publicity designed to question the democratic nature of a recall election petitioned for by hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin voters.

Yet by the time the election rolled around, voters suddenly felt recalls should only be held in the case of criminal wrongdoing.

John Nichols outlines events in “Framed: How Redefining Direct Democracy as Anti-Democratic Won Wisconsin.” http://www.thenation.com/blog/168335/framed-how-redefining-direct-democracy-anti-democratic-won-wisconsin?rel=emailNation#

I’ve never been a big believer in advertising, but I’m disappointed to say it worked this time. Walker’s corporate funders managed to manipulate voters into keeping their man in office.

Why? Because big business profits when workers can’t organize. It is no coincidence that since President Reagan broken the air traffic controllers’ union, workers’ wages in this country have stagnated.

And it’s ironic for those Wisconsin voters who cast their vote for the principle that recalls be held only for criminal wrongdoing. They may get it yet because investigations of Walker continue.

But what capped a strange confluence of events was the death of Ray Bradbury the same week. Bradbury was the author of Fahrenheit 451. This prophetic science fiction novel tells the story of a future in which firemen no longer put out fires. Instead, they start them – to burn books.

In this futuristic America, people sit enthralled to their interactive television screens, now three full living room walls.

Meanwhile, the government sends firemen to destroy books and historic documents that would encourage free thinking.

But, one day the book’s main character opens a book perched on the pile for the next bonfire. And it changes his life.

He begins to read and discovers radical texts like the Bible and our founding documents, and he finally questions what he is doing.

He sees his wife mesmerized in front of her TV screen and walks away from his old life.

I keep wondering when we will. Americans must wake up to the fact that government is our responsibility.

Until then, the company store owned by the Koch brothers and their colleagues will continue to buy our government and own our souls.

As they did in Wisconsin and are already doing in the general election, they are flooding the airwaves with ads and appearances by paid representatives for their candidates (chiefly Republican) who will blindly push through policies to benefit them.

So unplug the TV and radio. And before it’s too late, start reading and asking questions. It’s our job, and if we don’t do it, that sixteen tons will never get any lighter.

What matters more: Objectivity or transparency?

I write a lot about the media because I have some insight from my public relations experience.

And as an artist I’ve studied perception. So I’ll tell you what I recently told a group of pastors during a workshop on social advocacy: it is not “objectivity” that’s important. Honesty and transparency are.

Objectivity is an impossibility. Why? Because everyone has a perspective. And no matter how carefully you work, it affects what you produce.

Consider a still life set up in a drawing studio. Students come in and take their places around the still life. Yet with one still life, 20 students produce 20 different drawings – all true from their perspective, although not equally well done or accurate.

So with news and information, transparency or honesty about an outlet’s perspective is what’s important. Unfortunately, most broadcast media try to lay claim to the ideals of “objectivity” and “balance.”

Additionally, in an age when most media are profit-driven and owned by corporate conglomerates, newsrooms have cut researchers and reporters. So the remaining overworked staff often uses pre-packaged stories, photos and news videos delivered to them via the newswires and public relations people like me. And because they all use the same sources, you get the same stories from the same perspective repeated on all the channels.

It’s an echo chamber.

In this environment, advertisers also play an unhealthy role in determining program content. Owners don’t want to deliver content critical of the advertiser. Take for instance, Sunday morning news programs. First let’s look at ownership.

FOX News is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, an international conglomerate that also includes The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal, among others. (FYI, News Corporation is under investigation for illegal news-gathering tactics and bribery in Great Britain.)

NBC is owned by General Electric, hence all the energy company commercials during Meet the Press.

ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company.

CBS formerly owned by Viacom, is now owned by CBS Corporation.

And with regard to providing balance or a variety of viewpoints, a recent study by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (a non-profit organization challenging media bias and censorship since 1986) examined the content of ABC’s This Week, CBS’ Face the Nation, NBC’s Meet the Press and FOX News Sunday. To quote study author Peter Hart, “Evaluating the guest lists for the eight months from June 2011 through February 2012, FAIR found a distinct conservative skew in both one-on-one interview segments and roundtable discussions.”

Other findings from the study included:

“In the eight-month study period, partisan-affiliated one-on-one interviews were 70 percent Republican—166 guests to Democrats’ 70.”

Guests were overwhelmingly male and homogenously white.

In roundtable discussions, Republicans and/or conservatives made 282 appearances to 164 by Democrats and progressives.

“Middle-of-the-road Beltway journalists made 201 appearances in roundtables, which serves to buttress the argument that corporate media’s idea of a debate is conservative ideologues matched by centrist-oriented journalists.”

Only 29 percent of roundtable guests were women, and only 15 percent were minorities. Read about the study here: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4514 So if these are your major news sources, you’re only getting one perspective. Consider yourself lucky this local paper you’re reading works to provide a variety.

Is your news really news?

Do you assume your news sources present unbiased facts and information? Do you trustfully consume this news without ever questioning where it came from and who decided what to include and what to leave out?

If so, you’re probably being manipulated.

According to Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), a non-profit organization challenging media bias and censorship since 1986: “But mainstream media are increasingly cozy with the economic and political powers they should be watchdogging. Mergers in the news industry have accelerated, further limiting the spectrum of viewpoints that have access to mass media. With U.S. media outlets overwhelmingly owned by for-profit conglomerates and supported by corporate advertisers, independent journalism is compromised.”

But I don’t just take FAIR’s word for it. I’m speaking from my experience as a public relations practitioner. I help shape news by sending out news releases and contacting media to use them as news stories. And at the end of April I saw the poster-child for how the public relations industry shapes broadcast news.

One of my favorite Omaha news programs ran a story complete with video footage and interviews of a UNL coed who’d been robbed. She and friends had been enjoying a few beers, Pabst Blue Ribbon to be specific, when they were threatened by a thief with what they thought was a knife. After swiping the beer, he ran off only to be apprehended later. The news coverage continued with a PBR representative swooping in to save the day by delivering a new supply of their product to the student – all on camera. The PR person in me says, “Kudos to this PR guy for taking advantage of the situation and leveraging it into a free commercial.”

But the news consumer in me was screaming at the TV – “You call that news? Where is the coverage of the Unicameral, Omaha City Council or, God forbid, our Congress? Where is the editorial judgment?”

This two-minute story summed up for me the current state of our mainstream media. Instead of reporting from our centers of government and researching legislation affecting our common life, they pulled the easy-to-cover press release from the fax machine or e-mail. If you’re going to drive to Lincoln to do a story, why not cover the Unicameral?

It’s been so long since we’ve seen relevant, transparent reporting, based on research, facts and interviews, from our mainstream sources, most of us don’t recognize it anymore. We simply regurgitate whatever is presented, no questions asked. How can people vote responsibly when they don’t know who their representatives are and what legislation they passed?

And I’m serious. When people ask me which party controls each house of Congress, as happened recently, I get worried. I wonder how many people know their state level representatives. Without real information, voters will continue to make choices via fact-free campaign advertising and stump speeches – emotional reactions that will likely do nothing to actually help their situation.

So demand better. Tell media to report on relevant issues like government policies; ask for interviews, research and facts, including sources. And probably not for the last time, I’m telling you – quit reading and forwarding those chain e-mails. My PR colleagues have been creating those for clients, too.

What about that deficit?

I’ve heard a lot about the deficit and our national debt the last five years. And I’m tired of people trotting out the canard about how irresponsible we’d be if we “ran our household budget like the government budget.” Even President Obama has made this terrible comparison. It’s apples to oranges, to use another cliché.

First and foremost, do we get to print money and set interest rates? I think not. Yet our government can do these things to respond to economic conditions.

Second, how many of us can make it through life without acquiring debt to pay for an education, automobile or house? I congratulate you if you have the resources to simply write a check. But for most of us, this type of debt is reasonable and manageable if we are employed and sensible with our dollars.

But government debt is a completely different beast because government controls monetary policy and government spending is actually independent of government debt. Counterintuitive, isn’t it?

Next, look at history. Deficits simply reflect current economic activity. Because our economy is depressed, our deficit is larger. When economic activity increases, we’ll see the deficit drop.

How to increase economic activity? Well, employing people would help, but we’ve not seen our “job creators” pony up money to expand and hire. Instead, they’re hoarding their money or investing elsewhere.

History shows that in situations like the present, government spending to support people via employment and social programs helps get the economy going. Of course in the 30s, direct employment programs were also effective. And for all you folks who believe World War II, and not FDR’s social programs, ended the Depression, I’d note the war created government spending -- just on the war effort.

Right now Europe is tumbling into a double-dip recession because in their single-minded focus on debt, they have cut spending to the bone. Austerity rules, and it’s creating instability, not growth.

America, particularly our Congress, needs to take note. To keep our economy moving, government is the only entity large enough to take appropriate action.

And as Robert Greenstein of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities notes, stabilizing our economy involves other factors, most notably rising health care costs. “In the long run, the single largest contribution to deficit reduction will need to come from slowing the rate of growth of health care costs throughout the U.S. health care system, in the public and private sectors alike. A slower rate of health care cost growth will produce substantial budgetary savings in areas ranging from Medicare and Medicaid to the tax exclusion for employer-based health coverage,” he writes.

So the whole thing is complicated and simple sound-bite solutions like a balanced budget amendment or cutting social programs or cutting taxes won’t work.

Develop a better understanding of government debt and the deficit by reading -- instead of listening to TV talking heads.

Start with “Deficit Dogma Debunked” by Marshall Auerback at: http://www.salon.com/2012/04/19/deficit_dogma_debunked/. Then dig deeper with Greenstein’s article, “A Framework for Deficit Reduction: Principles and Cautions” at: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3435.

What's changed since 2008?

As a 2008 volunteer, I get mailings from Obama for America.

Last week, the mailing envelope was a 12x18-inch poster headlined: CHANGE IS.
Beneath that was a black and white portrait of President Obama. And under the photo was a list of eleven accomplishments. They included:

Equal Pay for Equal Work

Saving the U.S. auto industry

Credit card reform

Hate Crimes Prevention Act

Affordable Care Act

Student loan reform

Wall Street reform

Middle-class tax cuts

Repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

Raising fuel efficiency standards

Ending the war in Iraq

Since I track the president’s record, I’d add the destruction of Al-Quaida and its leader Osama Bin Laden.

Overall, the list just hits the highlights.

How many items were you aware of? How many of these items have made a difference in your life? I’d venture a guess that most of us have seen benefits from almost all of them, whether we’ll admit it or not.

Unfortunately, our mainstream corporate media has failed to cover the actual policies this administration has championed – mainly because they do not overwhelmingly benefit corporate media owners’ interests. Citizen ignorance is their friend.

Why? If you do not understand the Affordable Care Act, maybe you won’t support it – even though it allows your college graduate to stay on your insurance plan while he or she searches for a job.

If you’re ignorant, you won’t support it even though now your insurer can’t cut you off when you hit a certain dollar amount spent to cover your pre-existing condition. Ignorance will allow you to oppose it despite the fact your premiums would have increased more drastically had ACA not been passed.

The fact is that with a higher number of U.S. citizens insured, many of them healthy young people, ACA is already bending the cost curve down. But even with ACA, we’re barely making a dent in rising healthcare costs. We could more effectively control costs and care for people with either a single payer system (like Medicare) or socialized medicine (like the Veteran’s Administration), both of which could be expanded.

Yet, as journalist Chris Hedges points out in a recent column on healthcare, “. . . as long as corporations determine policy, as long as they can use their money to determine who gets elected and what legislation gets passed, we remain hostages.”

Plenty of people I’ve met are also unaware President Obama cut middle class taxes during the worst of the recession. Media didn’t report it that way; instead they reported he wants to “raise taxes,” even though he only wants to raise tax rates on wealthy individuals and large multinational corporations. He’s also decreased the deficit and cut more government spending than his predecessor.

This president has a long list of accomplishments, but listening to media reports you’d think we have seen no change. Where is this “liberal media bias” I hear about?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again -- the first step to deciding who to vote for is to do your homework. Quit voting on emotion, turn off the TV and radio, and read. And know who pays for your sources. Otherwise you’re just a cog in the corporate machine, and nothing will change.

Because change is not just up to the president; it comes down to us.

Do we fear the wrong things?

Do we fear the wrong things?

The killing of Trayvon Martin, an African American youth on an errand to buy candy for his little brother in Sanford, Florida, opens up many questions, mostly about what we fear. And does our fear make us vulnerable to other dangers?

I ask because Martin’s death spotlights Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law, which allows anyone who feels threatened to use deadly force. In other words, fear rules. Some version of this law has been passed in 16 states and debated in even more.

Yet I wonder if it’s in the public interest to have an armed populace. Are we safer? And if a family member is killed, you may watch helplessly, just like Martin’s family, as this law allows the killer to walk free without charges or even an investigation.

In addition, the law is based on model legislation, called the Castle Doctrine Act and developed by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC is a secretive corporate-financed organization (Think Koch brothers, Exxon Mobil, and not coincidentally, the National Rifle Association.) that writes corporate-friendly legislation and pushes it through state legislatures nationwide.

The Center for Media and Democracy has done extensive research to expose the work of this influential organization. You can view their work at: http://alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed (Check their list of ALEC politicians for your federal and state representatives.)

Are groups like ALEC using our fears to manipulate us? Fear, or any strong emotion, causes humans to stop thinking and react irrationally. When that happens, we are easily led . . . or misled.

For example, do you fear the government? But in America, aren’t we, ultimately, the government? Don’t we elect and monitor our representatives? Or have we abandoned the process and let corporate and special interests take over without a fight?

Which leads me to ask who really benefits from the Stand Your Ground Law and these other corporate-written model bills? Are they being written as part of some corporate business plan to increase market share and corner public contracts?

For example, will the Stand Your Ground Law help gun dealers and manufacturers sell more guns? Another irony of the Trayvon Martin case is the kerfuffle by Geraldo Rivera over Martin’s hoodie. If, as Rivera claims, only crooks and thugs wear hoodies, why does the NRAstore.com sell a Concealed Carry Hooded Sweatshirt? Check it out for yourself at: http://www.nrastore.com/nrastore/ProductDetail.aspx?c=11&p=CO+635&ct=e

Instead of fearing the young black man or the non-English speaker or the stranger in our community, maybe we should be paying closer attention to the legislation being passed as law in state capitals. Perhaps we should be reading the bills our representatives are debating and demanding our newspapers, TV and radio stations report on the substance of said bills. Maybe we should be looking at where our elected officials get their campaign contributions.

Instead of parking in front of our TV sets, maybe we should be meeting on our front porches and talking. Instead of watching The Bachelor and YouTube videos, maybe we should be reading books, especially history, and daily newspapers or news sites. And we should definitely be asking lots of questions.

Instead of running into our separate corners in fear, we should be meeting and sharing information. Because as the saying goes, “United we stand, divided we fall.”

Are we a civil society?

Recent news events have me pondering this question. Feb. 27 brought us a school shooting in Chardon, Ohio. Immediately, questions about bullying arose.

In our search to explain the death of three students and the arrest of another, we cast a wide net. Were there signs the killer was violent? Was he bullied? Did the school address bullying?

Within the next week, we witnessed Rush Limbaugh’s vitriolic attack on a relatively powerless individual, Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke, who testified before a congressional delegation about contraception as healthcare.

Fluke simply shared stories of real women whose inability to get contraception was risking their health, livelihoods and life.

Enter Limbaugh whose coverage of Fluke’s testimony descended into the realm of schoolyard bullying. Although Fluke had not referenced contraception as birth control, Limbaugh proceeded to call her a slut and implied female Georgetown students wanted birth control only for promiscuous sex.

Throw into this news mix the sudden death of Andrew Breitbart, a right-wing Internet media mogul who built his career enthusiastically tearing down organizations and people with whom he disagreed. For example, he selectively edited video footage of U.S. Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod, speaking about her effort to overcome her own biases when working with white farmers.

Breitbart’s misleading video clips destroyed Sherrod’s career, leading to her early retirement and to a lawsuit against him. But for Breitbart, any means justified his endsand anyone could be collateral damage, including himself. Breitbart’s Internet vitriol and public tantrums are his legacy.

As expected, Breitbart’s sudden death at 43 prompted responses from all sides. Rolling Stones’ Matt Taibbi, who shared Breitbart’s love of inflammatory language, but uses it in service of the liberal perspective, wrote a blog post the title of which I won’t repeat here. However, in Taibbi’s own distinct voice, he paid tribute to Breibart’s relentlessness. Yet Taibbi, and his family, were bullied with threatening phone calls, e-mails, texts and posts.

So in an update to his original article, Taibbi responded to Breitbart’s fans: “But I guess no homage is complete without a celebration of the whole man, and the whole man in this case was not just a guy who once said, ‘It’s all about a good laugh,’ but also someone who liked to publish peoples’ personal information on the internet, hack into private web sites, tell lies in an attempt to get his enemies fired, and incite readers to threats against his targets and their families, including death threats.”

Add to this news mix tales of NFL managers paying players to hurt opposing teams’ key players and our consumption of reality TV shows that promote name-calling, back-biting and humiliation, and I don’t think kids bullying should be any surprise. Instead, I wonder how we can be surprised about it at all.

If we want schools to be safe places, we can’t expect educators to carry the burden alone. We need to ask what behavior the rest of us (parents, grandparents, neighbors) model, too. Do we speak respectfully to and about those with whom we disagree? Are we civil?

And maybe we need to turn off the TV and radio, limit Internet use, and talk through our disagreements. Because last week made it obvious to me our media makes a mockery of civil discourse, and I’m ready to pull the plug.