Facing a tough race for his own seat in Congress, Dennis Kucinich is ending his presidential campaign.

This is very unfortunate. I heard Kucinich speak during the 2004 campaign, happily voted for him in the primary, and was appalled to see the way mainstream media refused to acknowledge his candidacy.

In fact, Kucinich and the similarly ignored Ron Paul are the only ones to raise any truly visionary ideas in this campaign (unless you count Huckabee’s idea to rewrite the Constitution as a Christian fundamentalist document–ugh!). Kucinich’s platform included single-payer health care, a dramatic shift toward renewable energy, and many other things we progressives have advocated for years–and which the mainstream media cloaks in invisibility, so candidates with something fresh to bring to the table get no coverage, and people have to hear about them through their own personal networks and brave media outlets like Democracy Now.

I question the ethics of a media empire that decides which candidates we should listen to, sanitizes those remaining, and ducks out on intelligent coverage of real issues. The whole system is deeply broken.

To me, Kucinich was the first person since George McGovern and Shirley Chisolm that I could vote for with a smile and a light heart, as someone who actually represents my views, and I wasn’t old enough to vote for McGovern.

He and Ron Paul have been the only ones willing to speak truth to power. Gravel has good politics but he’s been reaaaaly quiet!

The country is poorer for him being forced out.

Seems to be a day for absurdist stories. First the FBI phone tapping gets shut off for nonpayment, and now this: some print journalists in Colorado want to keep “political activists posing as journalists” out of the legislature. and they’ve actually gotten a really dumb policy enacted.

Translation, as I see it: keep the bloggers and other riff-raff in the indy media out. Just as Kucinich and Paul were kept out of the New Hampshire debates, becuse neither of them follow the party line.

Let’s hope this gets reversed quickly, before it makes a lot of people look stupid.

TV pundit and talk show host Lou Dobbs is a master manipulator. He did an interview with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales of Democracy Now–an arena that he clearly considered hostile territory–and he used every sleazoid right-wing media manipulation technique I’ve ever seen: interrupting, name calling, avoiding the topic with a twisted answer changing the subject, denying he said something until it was proven on tape, claiming to hold a high standard only to be caught out on fact-checking issues, demanding to be allowed to finish the question but not granting his interlocuters the same courtesy…and plenty more. This interview demonstrates a lot of what’s wrong with “punditocracy.” Oh yes, and he cleverly started the interview by focusing on areas that his audience would actually agree with. But most of his hour focused on immigration, and especially on exposing his rather bizarre sources for his politics on that issue.

Fortunately, Goodman and Gonzales were up to the challenge and kept him honest–territory that seems, from listening to the interview, to be terra incognita: unknown.

I particularly liked Juan Gonzales’ response here:

LOU DOBBS: What in the world is your point?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, I’m getting to my point, but give me the time to do it. We have time on this show, unlike—we don’t do soundbites here, alright?

Go to the link and don’t just read the transcript. Listen or watch, and examine this interview through the lens of media manipulation by a right-wing punditocracy that doesn’t want to give air to opposing views, makes up facts when the real ones are inconvenient and resorts to personal attacks when nothing else seems to be working.

Lou Dobbs embodies much that is wrong with contemporary journalism–but Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales, and the entire Democracy Now staff (which does an amazing job digging up news that doesn’t make the mainstream media, five whole hours a week), embody much of what is right.

Finished out my week as a Guest Blogger for the International Association of Online Communicators with another look at the Blogger’s Code of Ethics, specifically the part about disclosure, differentiation.

Also a pleasant a ramble through the question of whether journalistic objectivity actually exists.

Now, if I can just get people to start posting real comments on my own blog…

My guest blog today is on whether the Code of Ethics, and self-regulation among bloggers generally, may help keep regulators out of blogs.

Also, my previous posts on that blog have attracted comments. In my response to one of yesterday’s comments, I brought up the strange saga of the insults hurled at members of the U.S. championship women’s bridge team, who have been accused by other bridge players of treason and sedition for holding a sign at the awards ceremony in Shanghai, declaring that they did not vote for Bush.

Well, it may not be to the liking of some conservative bridge players, but it’s a long way from the definition of treason or sedition. One could actually make more of a case that bush and some of his cronies have committed treason.

Last time I checked, it as enshrined in the Constitution (specifically the First Amendment) that Americans have a right to free speech. Whether or not this was an appropriate forum could be discussed (especially in the context of the self-regulation versus outside regulation question I raised on the IAOC blog), but the right not to be silenced is guaranteed, at least in theory.

Continuing the discussion of the Blogger’s Code of Ethics: an examination of what it means to minimize harm to the people you write about.

Today through Friday, I’m blogging daily on the Blogger’s Code of Ethics at the blog of the International Association of Online Communicators (IAOC).

My first post identifies which of the numerous codes of ethics we’ll be working from, and focuses on the biggest ethics issue I see: disclosure.

Hey, big CEOs with ethics problems–learn a lesson from Oprah Winfrey. Yes, Oprah, the talkshow queen of daytime television.

She started a leadership school for girls, in South Africa. When she discovered that 15 girls accused a female staffer of sexual assault, she first immediately removed the suspect from contact with the children (and then, noting a climate of fear and intimidation still existed, removed all the dorm matrons and replaced the with faculty), quietly initiated an investigation (in conjunction with law enforcement officials), brought in American experts to help, made several visits to the school, provided counseling and support, etc.

As soon as an arrest had been made, she called a press conference, outlined the steps she had taken, conveyed deep, sincere apologies, and outlined preventative measures for the future.

Here’s a piece of her statement:

This has been one of the most
devastating if not the most devastating experience
of my life. But like all such experiences,
there’s always much to be gained and I think
there’s a lot to be learned. And as Mr. Samuel
said, we are moving forward to create a safe, an
open, and a receptive environment for the girls
and I’m also very grateful to their parents and to
their guardians and their caretakers for their
continued trust and their support in me and also
in the school.
What I know is, is that no one, not the
accused, nor any persons can destroy the dream
that I have held and the dream that each girl
11
continues to hold for herself at this school. And
I am prepared to do whatever is necessary to make
sure that the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for
Girls becomes the safe, the nurturing, and
enriched setting that I had envisioned. A place
capable of fostering the full measure of these
girls’ productivity, of their creativity, and of
their humanity. It will become a model for the
world. With each girl who graduates, we will show
that the resilience of the human spirit is
actually stronger than poverty, it’s stronger than
hatred, it’s stronger than violence, it’s stronger
than trauma and loss, and it’s also stronger than
any abuse. No matter what adversity these girls
have endured in their short lives, and let me
assure you, they have endured a lot, their lights
will not be diminished by this experience.

Joan Stewart of PublicityHound.com has a good piece on this.

This would be funny if it weren’t so stupid. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, better known as FEMA, apparently didn’t want to take the chance of facing hard questions about the California fires as they did when they completely messed up the response to Katrina two years ago.

So, the Washington Post reports, the agency set up a press conference with just 15 minutes notice, and invited reporters to listen in by phone (but NOT to ask questions).

Turns out the people asking questions were on staff at FEMA–no wonder they were such soft questions! Did they actually think no one would notice?

Democracy Now reports that even White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, who shills without apparent shame for the Iraq war, for various repressions of domestic civil liberties, and for the Bush Administrations continued defense of megacorporate interests against ordinary folks, couldn’t stomach this one:

REPORTER: On Tuesday, FEMA’s deputy administrator held what was called a news briefing to talk about the California wildfires. And from what we understand, the questions were posed not by reporters, but by staffers, and that distinction was not made known. Is that appropriate?

DANA PERINO: It is not. It is not a practice that we would employ here at the White House or that we — we certainly don’t condone it. We didn’t know about it beforehand. FEMA has issued an apology, saying that they had an error in judgment when they were attempting to try to get out a lot of information to reporters, who were asking for answers to a variety of questions in regards to the wildfires in California. It’s not something I would have condoned, and they, I’m sure, will not do it again.

Oh yes, and DN also notes that these people can’t claim ignorance. They’re a very media-savvy bunch:

DIANE FARSETTA: Right. Well, there were four staff people with FEMA who all had roles in dealing with the media. So I think it’s important to point out that these are not people who are not used to these type of situations. These are people who work at a federal agency that deals with emergency situations, and they work specifically with press. One of them, John Philbin, who’s — or who was, until last week, FEMA’s director of external affairs, he had a quarter-century career so far working in government with media, specifically working on crisis communication — marketing communications, brand management are his areas of expertise, and I think that’s what we really saw was brand management. They couldn’t have known — or they couldn’t not have known that this would reflect very poorly on FEMA if the word got out. And they basically seem to have been assuming that the word would not get out about what they were doing.

And to top it off, Philbin actually got a promotion. I couldn’t make this stuff up.

You’ve just got to wonder what on earth these people were thinking!

One day after Xing’s

My original letter (and the overall context)

Xing’s first response