I am a reader of many of the liberal opinion magazines, listener of liberal talk and news radio and general partaker of media to keep abreast of current events in the United States. I do not have cable, so my television exposure is limited to the Sunday morning political shows, which are increasingly slanting right. I occasionally tune in to the other side, by dialing up O'Reilly, Hannity, Rush and their ilk, or by picking up a conservative paper. I suscribe to a weekly news magazine that does a fairly balanced job of culling both sides of the major issues by surveying many papers across the nation and around the world.
For this column, I do a fair amount of research, mostly on the internet, which is another medium for obtaining information. I even pay attention to the news headlines that stream into the elevator that I ride up to my day job each day.
I think most Americans pay attention to some form of the news every day, even if it's bite-sized teasers for the evening news, or just scanning the headlines as they pass the news stand on their way to work.
I also like to pay attention to the advertising though. I do this because the balkanization of advertising is as important as anything else in determining the depth, quality and immediacy of the news we are getting, and because I believe the advertising environment plays a significant factor in our subjective judgments on the accompanying news (let's pretend for a moment that entertainment and sporting news aren't actually treated as real news).
Advertisements run the gamut from flogging shady vitamin supplements, weight loss pills, miracle cures, and semi-interesting but unnecessary gadgets, to medical advances, automobiles, mainstream technology, brand-name consumer products, and mass-market entertainment. There's also everybody's quadri-perennial favorite, the paid political ad seen and heard only around election time.
Beyond the product itself, advertising needs to focus on a target audience. An ad will implicitly (if well-conceived) try to motivate a particular sub-group of consumer; whether retail or mail order, young or old, alternative or mainstream, by gender or by race, brand-loyalist or impulse buyer, or the seeker of quality vs the price-conscious shopper.
Most of modern advertising contributes to the financial health of a program or publisher, and all of it, to some degree, provides either an aura of authenticity or a sheen of disreputable intent. How does the media consumer's perception of the included advertising (to the extent that it is perceived) reflect on the quality of the media itself? Can low-brow advertising depress the perceived quality of well-researched, well-written, fact-based reporting or well-informed opinion? Will the presence of ads for "house-hold names" add respectibility? If advertising seeks the largest and most appropriate audience, and media cannot obtain critical mass without advertising, then how does one graduate to the big-time to adopt that veneer of authority? What does one do in a fledgling enterprise?
I recently took three full-page ads from one of my favorite opinion magazines and spent five minutes researching the miracle cures (or the books about same) noted in the articles. It took no more than a quick internet search to find that the individuals touting these miracles (presented as brave innovators being suppressed by authority) had been censured by their peers, debunked by other scientists, restricted by (or in some cases, criminally prosecuted by) government and were promoting cure rates or studies that could not be verified or duplicated.
So why would a reputable magazine accept such an ad? Wouldn't the appearance of such an ad undermine the overall respectability of the magazine's editorial content?
The same is true of radio. Talk radio, from left to right, is a awash in a sea of ads for vitamin supplements, weight loss pills, baldness cures, dubious credit counseling services and medical advertising for non-essential procedures. Can you really take that criticism of foreign policy seriously after listening to a ersatz 70 year old tell you he now has a fuller head of hair than when he was in his 20s?
It's hard to criticize an enterprise that may be fighting for survival, and particularly in this instance, because there has to be a presumption on the part of the publisher or broadcaster that their consumer is smart enough to discern the difference between the advertising and the vehicle. Making that argument is a lot like defending a library inside a brothel--it's bound to suffer a readership decline due to the surroundings despite the fact that readers should be able to ignore them.
There's no easy answer to the advertising conundrum. Advertising supported media provides cheap, broadly accessible information. To the extent that it cheapens the content itself, we may just have to ignore it.
Sunday, March 19, 2006
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Cheney Channels Clinton
It's ironic, really. Vice President Dick Cheney, arguably the most secretive man in the U.S. government (he has had the google satellite map of his home classified), is asserting his right to reveal secrets.
During a recent Fox News interview (transcript from CNN), Cheney asserted that he has the right to declassify information, while refusing to specify whether he had done so. When asked whether he thought the Veep had the right to declassify, he referred to an executive order that permits it. He would cop to having "advocated declassification and participated in declassification decisions", but not to having done so "unilaterally".
The subject came up in a short exchange regarding court filings in the trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's, which suggested that Libby's superiors had authorized him to release classified information. Libby is being prosecuted for perjury and obstruction of justice by Patrick Fitzgerald, the federal prosecutor investigating the Plame leak.
It was an impressive display of Clintonian parsing because he managed to convey three separate false impressions with one technically correct assertion (that the EO permits the Vice President to declassify information). By invoking his power to declassify in response to a question about whether Libby's superiors may have authorized the leak, he implied that he:
1) had the right to selectively declassify Plame's identity;
2) had the right to delegate that privilege to Libby; and
3) may have already done so, rendering Libby's disclosure legal.
It was a very neat bit of misdirection, because Cheney's authority under the EO is irrelevant to Libby's claim. Here's why:
The executive order that Cheney is referring to is Executive Order 12958, implemented by President Clinton in 1995, which was intended to safely and automatically declassify as much government information as possible. It was amended by Executive Order of President Bush in March of 2003 (EO 13292) in order to add anti-terrorism information to the categories of information that are protected from automatic declassification, and to make some procedure changes. (Full text of the amended EO)
While Section 1.3 of the EO does technically grant the VP the authority to classify (and to declassify) information, it is a qualified authority, exercisable only within the context of his executive duties (a distinction not made for the President, by the way). I doubt that the disclosure of a NOC's name, or the information about a classified National Intelligence Briefing to the press can be taken to be a function of the VP's executive duties.
Section 3.1 specifically relates to declassifying authority. It says that information that no longer meets the criteria for classification gets declassified, but information that meets the criteria is presumed to need protection. Protected information could then be declassified only when "the need to protect such information may be outweighed by the public interest in disclosure of the information...[w]hen such questions arise, they shall be referred to the agency head or the senior agency official. That official will determine, as an exercise of discretion, whether the public interest in disclosure outweighs the damage to the national security that might reasonably be expected from disclosure." Section 3.1 also defines "Declassification authority" as "the official who authorized the original classification, if that official is still serving in the same position" or "the originator's current successor in function". Taken together, this means that Plame's identity and the NIE would have to have been classifed by Cheney (or a preceding VP) in the first place in order for him to have discretion in this matter.
Even if you assume that he did, his authority did not extend to Scooter Libby. Section 1.3 also provides for some redelegation of classification authority, but:
1) it is "limited to the minimum required to administer this order";
2) delegators "are responsible for ensuring that designated subordinate officials have a demonstrable and continuing need to exercise this authority"; and
3) "[e]ach delegation of original classification authority shall be in writing and...shall identify the official by name or position title".
Clearly, Libby's need to disclose Plame's identity to the press does not further the effective execution of the EO, so the delegation would not be legal. Had written delegation to Libby existed, surely it would have been provided to head off the trial to begin with.
Finally, it is clear that he had not already declassified the information in question, because then Libby's defense would not be that he was authorized to release classified information. It instead would have been that the information wasn't classified in the first place.
The only question left unanswered now is how long it will take Cheney to get around to classifying this post.
During a recent Fox News interview (transcript from CNN), Cheney asserted that he has the right to declassify information, while refusing to specify whether he had done so. When asked whether he thought the Veep had the right to declassify, he referred to an executive order that permits it. He would cop to having "advocated declassification and participated in declassification decisions", but not to having done so "unilaterally".
The subject came up in a short exchange regarding court filings in the trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's, which suggested that Libby's superiors had authorized him to release classified information. Libby is being prosecuted for perjury and obstruction of justice by Patrick Fitzgerald, the federal prosecutor investigating the Plame leak.
It was an impressive display of Clintonian parsing because he managed to convey three separate false impressions with one technically correct assertion (that the EO permits the Vice President to declassify information). By invoking his power to declassify in response to a question about whether Libby's superiors may have authorized the leak, he implied that he:
1) had the right to selectively declassify Plame's identity;
2) had the right to delegate that privilege to Libby; and
3) may have already done so, rendering Libby's disclosure legal.
It was a very neat bit of misdirection, because Cheney's authority under the EO is irrelevant to Libby's claim. Here's why:
The executive order that Cheney is referring to is Executive Order 12958, implemented by President Clinton in 1995, which was intended to safely and automatically declassify as much government information as possible. It was amended by Executive Order of President Bush in March of 2003 (EO 13292) in order to add anti-terrorism information to the categories of information that are protected from automatic declassification, and to make some procedure changes. (Full text of the amended EO)
While Section 1.3 of the EO does technically grant the VP the authority to classify (and to declassify) information, it is a qualified authority, exercisable only within the context of his executive duties (a distinction not made for the President, by the way). I doubt that the disclosure of a NOC's name, or the information about a classified National Intelligence Briefing to the press can be taken to be a function of the VP's executive duties.
Section 3.1 specifically relates to declassifying authority. It says that information that no longer meets the criteria for classification gets declassified, but information that meets the criteria is presumed to need protection. Protected information could then be declassified only when "the need to protect such information may be outweighed by the public interest in disclosure of the information...[w]hen such questions arise, they shall be referred to the agency head or the senior agency official. That official will determine, as an exercise of discretion, whether the public interest in disclosure outweighs the damage to the national security that might reasonably be expected from disclosure." Section 3.1 also defines "Declassification authority" as "the official who authorized the original classification, if that official is still serving in the same position" or "the originator's current successor in function". Taken together, this means that Plame's identity and the NIE would have to have been classifed by Cheney (or a preceding VP) in the first place in order for him to have discretion in this matter.
Even if you assume that he did, his authority did not extend to Scooter Libby. Section 1.3 also provides for some redelegation of classification authority, but:
1) it is "limited to the minimum required to administer this order";
2) delegators "are responsible for ensuring that designated subordinate officials have a demonstrable and continuing need to exercise this authority"; and
3) "[e]ach delegation of original classification authority shall be in writing and...shall identify the official by name or position title".
Clearly, Libby's need to disclose Plame's identity to the press does not further the effective execution of the EO, so the delegation would not be legal. Had written delegation to Libby existed, surely it would have been provided to head off the trial to begin with.
Finally, it is clear that he had not already declassified the information in question, because then Libby's defense would not be that he was authorized to release classified information. It instead would have been that the information wasn't classified in the first place.
The only question left unanswered now is how long it will take Cheney to get around to classifying this post.
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