Morning Fog

Polls Apart

Yesterday I noticed a lengthy opinion piece in the Washington Post by Patrick Caddell and Douglas Schoen entitled "If Democrats Ignore Health Care Polls, Midterms Will Be Costly."  I thought the piece was a day late and a dollar short, in the sense that its main thread of argument (people will vote against health care and against Democrats in November) was already old hat - political prognosticators have been saying that for months.

One aspect, however, stood out enough that I meant to write a post about it:  The authors' claim that "a solid majority of Americans opposes the massive health-reform plan."  That, it seemed to me, was simply untrue.  Here were two pollsters, one whose curriculum vitae suggests a pro-Democratic tilt, and one who's worked for more Republicans than Democrats, both ignoring the results of countless polls taken over the past year showing that by a wide margin, Americans support most of the reforms in the Democratic-generated plan.  This needed to be rebutted.

Luckily, someone beat me to it.  Today, Joel Benenson, the chief pollster for the Obama camp,took up that very point in "Most Americans Want Health Care Reform".  Benenson also added some evidence I would not have known, i.e. that in follow-up questions in the same poll Caddell and Schoen were referring to, a large percentage of respondents made clear that they disliked the current plan only because it did not go far enough. 

It's no surprise that polls, like statistics generally, of which they are a subset, can tell any story you want them to, depending on emphasis and omission.  It's a bit more of a surprise to see serious pollsters out in public trying to use their data to sway opinion, rather than inform it.  To ignore the many earlier polls indicating support for health care reform, and to fail to describe the caveats introduced by the second-tier questions (after all, such questions are there for a reason) suggests a willful effort on Caddell & Schoen's part to affect how people think.   (Of course Benenson too was politically motivated in responding to them, but how could he not have?)

I think the truth is that neither of them really knows with any degree of certainty how this issue will color people's voting in November.  Each has ahold of a different part of the elephant.  That's why personally, I'd prefer to see the actual poll questions and answers than read the ramblings of pollsters masquerading as shapers of opinion. 

Crisis In Childbirth Death?

ABC News reports, with considerable excitability, a California study documenting increased rates of death, almost triple what it was ten years ago, among women who have recently given birth.  Two reporters got to the point of nearly screaming -- "unacceptable!" -- " how can this happen in America?." 

Still, I guess they should be given credit for at least admitting that the "trend" is probably statistically insignificant.  It reflects 95 deaths out of 2 million or more deliveries.  The trend, it is explained, may be explained by two factors, an increase in obesity of expectant mothers, and an increase in Caesarean sections.  Both increase risks, but the former cause was mentioned only to be dropped; while the reporting focused on C-sections.  (No way we would want to make overweight patients feel responsible for their own problem, now is there?)

I'm no doctor, but it seems to me there is probably another good explanation, too:  More women having more babies late in life, when risks are higher; possibly even more women taking risks of the kind we see on TV - any risk acceptable (or ignorable) in hopes of bringing that baby into the world. 

Either way, another "big news" story is born, as long as you can pick the facts you want to emphasize.. 

Why Buy Wind Turbines In China?

ABC TV reported yesterday that a lot of the economic activity funded by new federal money for "green power" has actually gone to China and certain other foreign countries, creating new jobs there rather than in the U.S.  In particular, an upsurge in demand for wind turbines is being met in large part by non-U.S. producers.

What did surprise me was the way ABC reported the situation, especially in the video version featuring reporter Jonathan Karl and news anchor Diane Sawyer.  Because they basically stopped there, gnashing and wailing (and ol' Diane perpetually looks as if she's about to burst out crying) - gosh, new jobs in China, isn't that just awful?

I'm quite sure the report as given is true, but I'm not at all surprised by it.  The part ABC missed was that it's predictable, and that it probably couldn't have been prevented by anything in the legislation passed last year.  (Incidentally, legislation specifying "buy-American" is rare anyway because it runs against our international trade obligations.)  The real problem is long-term and multifaceted: 

For decades, economic policies (both private capital and to a lesser extent government)  have encouraged sending manufacturing jobs offshore so Americans could do cleaner work (like opening nail salons and flogging dubious investment instruments). 

A combination of forces has operated, also over decades, to shackle attempts to broaden our energy sources beyond fossil fuels. 

Finally, companies focused too narrowly on the short term have often been unwilling to invest in newer technologies if they could not see a very large and immediately developing market -- for example, that's why Applied Materials effectively sidetracked its solar energy division -- so I think we'll find that at the moment, there's nobody in the U.S. ready to produce turbines except on a relatively small scale.  (Those small U.S. producers, as was reported also in the ABC segment, are getting some orders, so some American workers are being hired or rehired.) 

So we've made our own bed, and we've lain in it so long it won't be easy to get out of it.  In the long term, federal support for the growth of this market may help American firms to jump in and compete for it.  Meanwhile... well, most people are familiar with the response notorious bank robber Willy Sutton gave when he was caught and some reporter asked why he robbed banks:  "Because that's where the money is."  Why buy wind turbines in China?  In large part, because that's where they build them.   

Charles Gibson - Anchor Or Albatross

So, Charlie Gibson retires from anchoring the ABC World News after a relatively short stint in the driver's seat.  Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post's media watcher, provides interesting background, specifically that Gibson realized he doesn't have the star power needed to keep viewers coming back to the show.  

That seems honest on Gibson's part.  He seems a relatively colorless figurehead, and unfortunately for him, when he tries to look serious he looks just grumpy.  Also, I'd like to know where he buys his ties - let's find that unimaginative haberdashery and burn it down!  I also got the impression from Kurtz's piece that Gibson is just tired - tired of the schedule, and tired of fighting to keep network news from becoming just another form of entertainment.  Certainly, in that fight, he had few allies and his own network, owned by cartoon king Disney, was not among them.  

On the other hand, it's difficult to imagine that Gibson or anyone else thinks his former Good Morning America partner, Diane Sawyer, has any more "buzz" than he does.  Of course, there may be an initial spurt of interest, as there was with Couric, but it's unlikely to last; and Sawyer's hard news credentials in my view leave a lot to be desired - I've heard her ask some incredibly inane questions on those occasions when she was sent off to do "news," as in a trip to Korea a year or so ago.

Network news has a problem.  I can imagine a model for a personality-driven news show (which seems to be what under-40s want these days) in which the personality also has enough authority to deliver less one-sided reportage than the non-traditional media are currently offering.  Sawyer isn't the one to pull it off, though.

Informational Filtering

I'm short on time lately but a recent piece by Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker, entitled The Things People Say, is an excellent read detailing how the internet helps insure that kook ideas gain currency over reality.  It explains a good deal about our recent health care debate, and also the persistence of such inanities as the so-called "birther" phonomenon.

  

Media Circus, Hoh Hum

Talk about "Much Ado About Nothing!"  The minor case of one Matthew Hoh's resignation from the Foreign Service over our war in Afghanistan (or Foreign Circus, as it is often dubbed by those who know it from the inside) is the kind of molehill our media (and admittedly, politicians too) enjoy blowing into something "significant."  It's not.

First, it's worth noting that Mr. Hoh had joined the Foreign Service "earlier this year."  Should we think that whatever policy views he managed to formulate in his few short months' experience are worth more than a passing glance?

Some will point out that Hoh had a more successful and somewhat longer career as a U.S. Marine, where he attained the rank of captain and had combat experience in Iraq.  Fine.  Certainly, a lot of the kinds of peacekeeping work the Marines and Army have taken on in these recent conflicts is germane; and people with Hoh's background will be needed as these basically civilian functions are transferred from the military to civilian agencies. 

But there are drawbacks to that experience, also.  Hoh wouldn't be the first military man to move into the civilian world to discover that there are some deep differences in the "institutional culture" of how things are done, how decisions are made.  Moreover, Hoh's experience was in Iraq, not Afghanistan, and few would argue they're the same; so how, in the space of a few short months, did he become "the senior civilian in Zabul Province?"  Afghanistan isn't Vietnam either, of course, but an equivalent position in Vietnam would have been held by the civilian equivalent of a one- or two-star general - four or five grades above Hoh's military rank, and about 20 years more than his total work experience.  It's hard not to conclude that those who appointed him to the job may have been too hasty.

Finally, look at what Hoh actually says about his reason for resigning:  "I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan."  So, it's not about policy, it's about him.  As a foreign affairs professional, you get to have a hand in formulating policy, weighing pros and cons, arguing for your preferred course of action but (as in the military) once those who are charged with the political authority do make a decision, your mission is to execute it, not to second-guess it. There have been occasional resignations of junior officers from time to time, and in every case I can recall, there's been this prima donna element. 

From one perspective, perhaps it's good that if you really can't "understand" a policy, you should resign rather than trying to implement it.  But the fact is that our entire civil and foreign government service is built on the concept of nonpartisanship, i.e., that government officials (except at the very highest appointive levels) carry out legal policy decisions regardless of whether they agree with them politically.  Thankfully for the continuity and effectiveness of our foreign policy, the attitude that each employee should decide for himself whether to resign or to carry on with a course of action determined by wiser heads (as one hopes and assumes they are) has not caught on widely.  [Oh - except in Congress, where it's become the fashion to hold up or even reject the appointments of Foreign Service officials to senior slots because they may have implemented the orders of your political opponents.] 

None of this is to impugn Mr. Hoh's sincerity, or his motivation.  Nor do I mean to suggest that his opinions about our nation's approach to Afghanistan are wrong.  They're not news, but they may be right.  In fact, we are in the midst of a policy review/reformulation right now, and many people are expressing views like his.  Perhaps new decisions will bring a strategy for Afghanistan that is more in line with Hoh's, but patience doesn't appear to be one of his virtues, and he's eager to move on to the next chapter in his life.  If will be interesting to see what that is, and whether it may be in politics. 

A Monk And A Bell

I found this odd little impressionistic piece, "The Mad Monk Has Left the Belfry...," by one Ashley Halsey, in the Washington Post this morning. 

The basic premise is imaginative and slightly charming (that an erratic bell-ringing schedule on a local church is the work of a drunk monk); the story provides a little bit of local lore (the historic church is in Annapolis); but it doesn't seem to lead anywhere.  We don't really learn what the real problem was, or why we might care.  The only "news" in the item, which we receive indirectly, is that the church has a new bell-ringing system. 

There's also the not infrquently encountered problem of a journalist's shaky command of English.  If the drunk monk were in the "bowels" of the church, he would have some difficulty ringing the bells; and no matter where he was, he'd have even more trouble trying to make them "peel."

This would be a great little entry on a personal-impressions sort of blog, or a tween's entry in a writing contest...it just seemed a little frothy and unfinished to appear in the Post, even on a no-news Monday.  Is this the future of print journalism? 

Tumult In Town Hall Meetings

The most interesting development over the couple of days I've been offline is the rather uncivil dialogue that has developed over health care during Congresspeople's "town hall meetings" in their home districts.  No doubt you assiduous readers have seen all the written and video reports, so there's no need for me to repeat all that. 

Everyone's big question seems to be, gee,"what's causing it?"  The answer to that question is, I think, pretty obvious, but many writers and commentators shy away from stating it - which may make you think that they're either blind or dumb, but this is one of those cases where the modern "journalist" succumbs to a false sense of "balanced" reporting, providing both sides of a story that has only one.  Under this approach, if a group of reality-deniers wants to push a claim that the world is flat, the balanced reporter treats that assertion seriously, interviews those who profess to believe it, tries to find the pros and cons of it, and maybe even finds a quack scientist who will support it.  It's the same now with the disruptive tactics of those who oppose changes to health insurance. 

The clear truth is that the problem can only have arisen largely, if not entirely, by orchestration of the Republican party and/or its zealous right-wing bedfellow blogs and websites.  Why do I suppose this?  We might reflect that nearly all the screamers just coincidentally look like the very stereotype of Republicans, a role perfected by John McCain during his campaign last year - old, white, and angry.  Or, we might consider that anyone with serious concerns about the proposed legislation would want to ask questions and hear them answered, rather than engage in a shouting match. 

But we don't have to suppose at all.  It's been reported for several days that arch-conservatives have specifically urged the shout-down as an approach their followers should adopt. Today's New York Times carries a summary of these efforts, in particular those of one Robert MacGuffie, with such advice as "become a part of the mob," "yell," and "stand up and shout."

The Republican Party, bereft of constructive ideas throughout the health care debate, has chosen instead to pretend that "it ain't broke," to falsely represent proposed changes, and to stir fear and misgivings about them.  The kind of tumult we are now seeing is only the next step in that continuum.   Unfortunately it's a destructive continuum.  As anti-health-care Republican activists and their followers insist on their "democratic right" to prevent democratic debate, resort to calling their Congressmen Nazis and drawing Hitler moustaches on Obama posters, it is apparently lost on them that the shout-down tactic they are using was exactly the way Hitler began his rise to power. 

And equally unfortunately, as Gail Collins points out in the same issue of the NY Times, it seems to be working to a degree.  If Democratic legislators cancel town meetings, hide behind an answering machine, or resort to taking only preapproved questions, they're allowing the little guy with the brush moustache to win the day.

Blogs And Original Reporting: Symbiosis or Fatal Parasitism?

Not so long ago, I mentioned on this blog an article I had read in the Washington Post about an intergenerational "coach." 

Now the writer of that article, Ian Shapira, has written a follow-up column, called The Death of Journalism, with a lot of good, thoughtful points about the relationship between bloggers and the traditional print/online media.  As the title suggests, he blames blogs for stealing the stories of traditional journalists without doing the considerable work that goes into them, and without giving credit.  And he's got a point, really.  It appears to me from what Shapira relates that the blog "Gawker," in using his story extensively with next-to-no credit, acted unethically and pushed the envelope toward plagiarism.  I'm not personally familiar with Gawker but I know there are lots of blogs out there that do in effect try to compete with the traditional media, seeking to pass along news and facts, mostly from non-original sources, mainly with the goal of drawing eyeballs to a site and (of course) pumping up advertising revenues. 

In drawing on Shapira's article myself, I hope I didn't commit the same breaches of ethics.  I generally seek to provide a link to an interesting article, and let my readers read it for themselves.  Morning Fog is largely a blog of opinion.  What I read in the morning paper or see elsewhere is not itself usually the core of a post, but a springboard to related ideas.  I see my musings as more like editorials than news items -- akin to chatting with colleagues at the office about something you read or saw in the paper or on the web. 

Of course all writers share a desire to reach the widest possible audience. One thing that both types of blogs (the eyeball-snatchers and the more personal ones) have in common is that they can in fact benefit the writer and publisher of original material by amplifying the audience.  A lot of my readers, for example, might never see or read Shapira's original piece if I hadn't called their attention to it.  In that limited sense, blogs may be good for "real journalism," but only if proper credit is given.

Shapira is justifiably outraged at unethical use of his material.  If the audience for Gawker-style blogs continues to grow, he may be correct about the ultimate effect on original-source journalism.  But it's not clear that the trend will continue.  Blogs may already have peaked in popularity; they may have become yesterday's fad, being replaced by a variety of other shorter-format, more instantaneous media.  Few blogs are known to be profitable, and at the end of the day, without profitability, I believe many of them are likely to disappear, especially if newspapers like the Washington Post learn to market their own offerings in the same way.

In the meantime, however, bloggers should keep in mind basic principles of writing etiquette and copyright law as they post.  I'm not optimistic that they WILL -- a lot of the infractions are committed by the same group or generation that sees no problem in downloading music free from the internet -- but they SHOULD.  The "should" part has always been a problem for writers. 

Traffic Headaches

The Texas Transportation Institute has issued the 2009 installment of its annual traffic report, officially known as the Urban Mobility Report . 

Again, our mass media serve us poorly (or are they just giving us what we really want?) by magnifying life's little annoyances into major problems, emphasizing how much traffic has supposedly worsened, just as when gas prices are rising, we get those daily reports of the "oh my god gas went up another penny today" variety. 

I've always found the media reports like those appearing in major newspapers across the country today a little suspect, especially the part they love to play up about "wasted time" and the costs in productivity.  So I went to check out the methodology to see what's behind these numbers.

"Wasted time" and "Delay"  --  How can they decide what time is wasted?  Delayed compared to what?  The statistics compare the time a trip would take on a completely unobstructed road to the time it takes at rush hour.  For statistical reasons we can see why they do that, but it means that all that chatter about the average driver in Metropolis, USA spending 60 extra hours per year behind the wheel is meaningless garbage.  "Rush hour" is by definition the time when everyone is going to or from work; the TTI study measures only this period.  But most of us don't have the option of being on the road at different times of day; to get to or from work, we know we're going to be in traffic, and that congestion is always a part of the equation.  Want to know how much time is "wasted?"  Perhaps it could be defined as the difference between the shortest time for a rush-hour trip, and the longest, averaged over a year.  It would be far less than the numbers that come out of the study.

People often take the UMR data as an indication of the health of the transportation network.  That sounds legit, as far as it goes. but the TTI statistics include what they call "incidents," meaning accidents, construction, and similar blockages. These are of course a part of urban life but they are unpredictable and not a part of the tranportation system.  Even a system that otherwise produces that ideal unobstructed trip will fall victim to accidents that can block up the flow for hours.  Thus for a statistic that would meaningfully reflect what failings of the system inflict on an average driver, these exogenous "incidents" shouldn't be counted as part of the "delays."

"Productivity" -- The UMR calculates a total productivity "loss" based on an average per-hour value of a person's time ($15.47) and a per-hour figure for delay of a commercial vehicle.  The commercial vehicle figure seems fair, but isn't it wrong to assume the hours a driver spends sitting in a car would otherwise be productive time?  If John Q. Public's commute were suddenly halved, from 90 minutes to 45, would he get to his job 45 minutes early?  No, he would adjust his departure time, and spend the extra 45 minutes at home.   Not productive, and not a productivity loss.

The TTI has been doing these reports for decades.  They're a scientific product, aimed at providing data for specialists in transportation and perhaps a yardstick for urban planners.  I'm sure they're useful for those purposes.  The statistics in the UMR aren't really intended for a layman who won't bother to understand them, but put them in the hands of the pop media, and they can become distorted into nonsense.

The best lesson to take away from this year's UMR (the "real story," if any of you media types are reading) is that nationwide, traffic has decreased as a result (probably) of the downturn in the economy.  This provides proof that given incentives of cost, people and businesses can and will reduce their trips.  They're not cutting out anything essential, but perhaps combining trips and avoiding the unnecessary.  And if we can do it when the economy is in the tank, why couldn't we do it even when the economy is growing?  That will have far more lasting effect in reducing traffic than building more roads (which has been proven only leads to temporary improvement).