Fair and Balanced Reporting: Blood in the Streets
Permalink +Wed, Nov 25, 2009, 11:25 am // Tip Johnson
Too many deaths on Haxton WayClick on image for larger view.
Paul de Armond's recent article about Leonard Zeskind's new book, "Blood and Politics," came at an interesting time. Concurrent with his review of that history of White Nationalism, our local newspaper was publishing articles about recent actions of Lummi Nation. One set of articles involved the County contract for the Lummi Island ferry. Another set related to Lummi comments on a permit for the Fairhaven Shipyard. Both have been, and are, the subject of negotiations between the Lummi and either the County or Port respectively.
Both sets of articles received more than the usual number of comments from anonymous bloggers, many of whom were ill-informed and unabashedly racist.
Ill-informed and racist comments suggest a breakdown in civic dialog. They are a sign of ignorance and an indication of insufficient information. It is all too easy to read a newspaper article and leap to conclusions, but it is hazardous at best. It is perhaps increasingly hazardous as newspapers struggle to retain reporters to produce and deliver news to the community.
The information deficit was addressed rather eloquently in a guest editorial that followed the harsh blogospheric fray over Lummi Nation's decision to end their contract with the County for the Lummi Island ferry dock at Gooseberry Point. Henry Cagey, Chairman of the Lummi Indian Business Council, and Richard Jefferson, Director of Lummi Planning and Public Works, teamed up to write a piece that described the Lummi side of the ferry story. Not surprisingly, ill-informed and racist comments have also followed.
It turns out something was missing from the paper's reporting in their original stories: the unacceptable number of deaths that have been occurring on the commuting corridor for the ferry. Ironically, I discovered the key information on the paper's own website. It just hadn't been used.
Reporter Jared Paben has been doing his job. In an archive category titled "Lummi Nation Transportation", Paben has detailed some important background for the ferry contract stories. For unknown reasons, the principal reporter of the stories and the paper's editors were either unaware of Paben's work or decided not to use it. That was a serious error, evidenced by the frenzy of anti-Indian sentiment the articles have stirred up.
Anyone with much active experience in community affairs knows newspaper stories are not to be trusted, that they are just a start, that usually great piles of information are available from public sources to supplement the formation of reasonable opinions.
But here's the rub:
As John Servais points out in his recent posting, discussions between the Lummi and Port have been proceeding in secret. It turns out the County is following suit, also negotiating the ferry issue in secret. That's not only a gigantic impediment for citizens hoping to be well informed, but also a requisite antecedent for the propagation of distrust. Earlier, I discussed the problem as it relates to the Port, in an open letter to a number of relevant officials and agencies. Not a single response was received.
Perhaps it is no surprise officials and agencies are unconcerned about open government, but they, and local citizens, ought to take notice of the fuel it adds to racial tensions right here at home. Our local paper, often a self-proclaimed champion of open government, should also be concerned. Secret government limits their access to adequate information on the issues. A flood of menacing comments, including threats of violence and death, ought to get their attention. That kind of content is a starkly less-than-complimentary feature of their on-line publication.
We've tried addressing the problem of secret government, but it's time the paper joined in. It's time for them to get answers from the officials and agencies that have ignored our requests. There is plenty to be discussed on both of these issues with Lummi Nation, but how do well-intentioned citizens know if they are well informed when the background information is kept secret? When citizens are left to flail about in the dark, it's no surprise that pre-existing, ill-informed sentiments take precedence.
It's clear too many people have died on the road to the ferry. It is not clear what options have been discussed, which ones have been dismissed, whether the parties have negotiated in good faith, in fairness or with reasonable concern. The full extent of these efforts should be known and available. Leaving citizens to rely on their feelings of distrust does an extreme disservice to the body politic.
As the motto of Northwest Citizen goes, "Let's do the Public's business in public". We invite the local paper to join us in this effort.
Comments (3)
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David Camp // Thu, Nov 26, 2009, 4:39 am
Secret government is aided and abetted by a lack of good journalism. Consider how useless the corporate media is in reporting on the doings in DC, serving mostly as propagandists.
You’d hope that we in Whatcom County, blessed as we are with a daily newspaper in the county seat, and several weeklies and monthlies, would be better informed. But the same ideological BS that serves to mask the corruption of the federal government also has its greasy tentacles in our local government. To the detriment of civil discourse and dialogue. And it causes, IMHO, the replacement of frank talk with concealing platitudes and secret deals since there is so much hostility and anger that respect is destroyed.
When you demonize a distant “enemy” it becomes easy to destroy him and think nothing of it. When you demonize your neighbor, this is the start of civil war and the end of civil society.
And consider what venal self-serving interests are fomenting this division of people against themselves. If our green county is to remain a great place to live we need to expose the greedy who would profit at the expense of our quality of life.
Paul de Armond // Thu, Nov 26, 2009, 10:34 am
Two points here: problems of civil discourse and what to do about it.
Conspiracist narrative is the primary mechanism derailing civil discourse and creating polarization. It operates in a couple of ways that smuggle false assumptions into arguments and then the discussion turns from what the facts mean into what the facts are. This is why it is pointless to engage in debunking. As soon as the argument gets derailed by bogus and unexamined assumptions, everything turns into an infantile shouting match of “Is so! Is not!”
Chip Berlet has a very good piece on it, http://www.publiceye.org/conspire/toxic2democracy/index.html
The core narrative usually breaks down into four themes:
Dualism - polarized, black or white, up or down, no possibility of nuance or complexity. It’s an irony deficiency.
Scapegoating - let’s pick on somebody weak and defenseless and make them the problem.
Demonization - the targets are pure evil and not human, really.
Apocalyptic aggression - let’s get them now before they get us all: it’s the end of the world as we know it.
Just look at the comments section in the Herlad to see these mechanisms in action.
The fix: it’s hard work. Research, analysis, educating and organizing.
Research and analysis has to get over the simplifications, false assumptions and smugness created by dualism. Whenever you hear the phrase, “Everybody knows…”, it’s usually a sign that nobody is grasping the details.
As political researcher Dan Junas says, “You don’t have to write a book to be an expert, but it really helps if you read a few.”
The next step would be public outreach. Anybody who wants to can organize a public hearing to examine the facts and put them out in the daylight.
Like Hiram Bullock said in My Man Godfrey (though in a slightly different context): “All it takes is a big room and the right kind of people.”
David Camp // Sun, Nov 29, 2009, 2:35 pm
Paul,
The problem I see is that national media-created social divisions, spread through very sophisticated television agit-prop, are effectively dividing people from themselves at the communal level. I’ve had a copy of Whatcom Watch grabbed from my hand by a fellow who was practically frothing at the mouth - he had no idea of the particulars of the paper, nor did he know me, but he KNEW that this paper and this person were his enemy. Why? He considers himself a member of a “conservative” movement, and its enemies are: “Liberals”, the so-called “liberal media”, environmentalists and hippies and other rodents; and so on.
We need to be honest about what’s going on here: there is an organized authoritarian movement in this country, organized at the highest and lowest levels. They aren’t hiding; their institutions are everywhere: PNAC; the American Enterprise Institute; the so-called “Federalist Society”; Fox News; The WSJ (the thinking man’s Fox News). It’s a coalition of corporate and military interests and their extremely sophisticated propaganda arms. And they own the federal government AND the public airwaves.
You may say that I’ve bought into a conspiracist narrative - well, yes I have. But it’s the real one, not the smokescreens propagated by the mendacious whores who fill the Tee-Vee, serving their predatory and parasitic masters. How many corporations control the TV that comprises over 90% of viewer hours? Three.
And they do a very subtle thing - they exploit people’s legitimate grievances, and misdirect them against people’s own interests, and against their neighbors.
Which is where I started - if people are divided locally, they are easier to control. It’s not a new concept - the Romans used it very effectively for over a thousand years: “divide et impere” (divide and conquer or divide and rule).
But the techniques used now are much more subtle and effective than the Roman’s brute force (although their Imperial religion has real staying power and is part of the current imperialists’ power maintenance techniques). And because the teevee isolates people and breaks community, it’s easier to maintain divisions. Easy to keep people divided when they don’t talk to each other, or gather together communally, but rather each inhabit their own passive box of substitute for real life.
I mean, I’m a child of TV - I have a hard time with an ingrained idea - if it’s not on TV, it doesn’t exist. I had to take cable TV to get a discount on my internet and telephone - and I do watch it from time to time. It’s horrific. Parasitic pablum, a deadly Siren call. I think we should make like Odysseus’ crew: plug our ears with beeswax and stay away. How else can we find the golden fleece of freedom?
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