There It Is . org

Even when faced with new facts and insights, most voters don’t change their minds about their favorite candidates. A neurologist explains how they might.

Sept. 22, 2008 | Salon.com

by Robert Burton

“Let’s make sure that there is certainty during uncertain times” — George W. Bush, 2008

Last week, I jokingly asked a health club acquaintance whether he would change his mind about his choice for president if presented with sufficient facts that contradicted his present beliefs. He responded with utter confidence. “Absolutely not,” he said. “No new facts will change my mind because I know that these facts are correct.”

I was floored. In his brief rebuttal, he blindly demonstrated overconfidence in his own ideas and the inability to consider how new facts might alter a presently cherished opinion. Worse, he seemed unaware of how irrational his response might appear to others. It’s clear, I thought, that carefully constructed arguments and presentation of irrefutable evidence will not change this man’s mind.

In the current presidential election, a major percentage of voters are already committed to “their candidate”; new arguments and evidence fall on deaf ears. And yet, if we, as a country, truly want change, we must be open-minded, flexible and willing to revise our opinions when new evidence warrants it. Most important, we must be able to recognize and acknowledge when we are wrong.

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Study found local ownership means more local news

15 September 2006 | FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting)

A 2004 Federal Communications Commission study that showed locally owned television stations provide more local news than others was ordered destroyed by FCC officials, and only came to light this week when a copy was leaked to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D.-Calif.).

Three years ago, then-FCC chair Michael Powell launched a proceeding on the effects of local ownership on television news as part of his drive to further deregulate media and allow for even greater consolidation. But the report commissioned under Powell turned out to undermine his argument that consolidation has no ill effects on local news, and, according to former FCC lawyer Adam Candeub, senior managers ordered “every last piece” of the study destroyed (AP, 9/14/06). On September 12, Senator Boxer, armed with the leaked report, questioned current FCC Chair Kevin Martin about it at his renomination hearing.

According to the report, locally owned stations in fact deliver nearly six minutes more of total news and almost five-and-a-half more minutes of local news in a 30-minute newscast than stations with non-local owners. This adds up to 33 more hours of local news a year–a remarkable figure, and a damning one for big media’s allies in the FCC, who are required to protect the public interest and to promote localism.

As the Prometheus Radio Project noted (9/15/06):

Former FCC Chairman Michael Powell…made many high-sounding pronouncements about the need for media policy to be rooted in empirical evidence. Powell also attempted to separate out the issue of media consolidation from localism, claiming that most of the millions of comments to the Commission stemmed from a concern about local content, not a concern about concentration of ownership into fewer hands.

Martin, who succeeded Powell in 2005 as chair, voted in 2003 for ownership rules that would have dramatically raised ownership caps. The rules were sharply contested by media activists and others, and a federal appeals court struck them down in 2004. Martin told Boxer he hadn’t been aware of the report and has promised to keep “an open mind” on media consolidation as the FCC embarks once again on a review of its media ownership rules (Daily Variety, 9/13/06). The FCC has since posted the full report on its website.

Powell likewise denied any knowledge of the report or responsibility for its suppression (AP, 9/15/06).

Boxer has called on the FCC’s inspector general to conduct a formal, independent investigation into the suppression of the study. As the FCC revisits its ownership rules once again, transparency and a true commitment to the public interest are vital.

ACTION: Contact the FCC and encourage the Inspector General to conduct an investigation into the suppression of the media ownership report.

CONTACT: FCC, Office of the Inspector General, hotline@fcc.gov, Phone: (202) 418-0470

You can also file a comment with the FCC at
http://www.stopbigmedia.com/coverup.php

25 July 2006 | AlterNet

by Robert Sherrill

George Bush and Dick Cheney may get your vote as the worst, the dumbest, the most venal, and the most dangerous bunglers in foreign affairs in U.S. history. But this book will show you that their equals have appeared before. Author Stephen Kinzer’s Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq (Times Books, 2006) is an infuriating recitation of our government’s military bullying over the past 110 years — a century of interventions around the world that resulted in the overthrow of 14 governments — in Hawaii, Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Vietnam, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Chile, Iran, Grenada, Afghanistan, and … Iraq.
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19 July 2006 | FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting)

On July 16, CBS Face the Nation host (and CBS Evening News anchor) Bob Schieffer dedicated the entire Sunday morning news show to the Middle East conflict. In his closing editorial, he adapted a well-known fable in an attempt to explain the causes of the current conflict—or rather, the lack of causes:

Finally today, when the war broke out in the Middle East, the first thing I thought about was the old story of the frog and the scorpion who were trying to cross a river there. The scorpion couldn’t swim, the frog was lost. So the scorpion proposed a deal, ‘Give me a ride on your back, and I’ll show you the way.’ The frog agreed, and the trip went fine until they got to the middle of the river, and then suddenly the scorpion just stung the frog. As they were sinking, the frog asked, in his dying breath, ‘Why would you do that?’ To which the scorpion replied, ‘Because this is the Middle East.’

Lest there be any doubt about who is the frog and who is the scorpion in that parable, Schieffer went on to spell it out:

It is worth noting that the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip did not kidnap that Israeli soldier and provoke all of this because the Israelis were invading Gaza. No, all this happened in the wake of the Israeli withdrawal, which was what the Palestinians supposedly wanted. But this is the Middle East. Why would fundamentalists in Gaza and Lebanon choose to provoke this war at this time? There is no real answer except this is the Middle East.

Schieffer was echoing the media’s conventional wisdom in portraying the Palestinian raid that captured the Israeli soldier as an inexplicable provocation. The New York Times, in a June 29 editorial headlined “Hamas Provokes a Fight,” declared that “the responsibility for this latest escalation rests squarely with Hamas,” adding that “an Israeli military response was inevitable.”
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