Krugman on why the US public can’t understand what’s going on

Their media aren’t telling them, that’s why. Paul Krugman is one of the smartest people writing in America today and in this NYT column he comes straight to the point:

” Most people … get their news from TV — and there the difference is immense. The coverage of Saturday’s antiwar rallies was a reminder of the extent to which U.S. cable news, in particular, seems to be reporting about a different planet than the one covered by foreign media.

What would someone watching cable news have seen? On Saturday, news anchors on Fox described the demonstrators in New York as “the usual protesters” or “serial protesters.” CNN wasn’t quite so dismissive, but on Sunday morning the headline on the network’s Web site read “Antiwar rallies delight Iraq,” and the accompanying picture showed marchers in Baghdad, not London or New York.

This wasn’t at all the way the rest of the world’s media reported Saturday’s events, but it wasn’t out of character. For months both major U.S. cable news networks have acted as if the decision to invade Iraq has already been made, and have in effect seen it as their job to prepare the American public for the coming war.

So it’s not surprising that the target audience is a bit blurry about the distinction between the Iraqi regime and Al Qaeda. Surveys show that a majority of Americans think that some or all of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Iraqi, while many believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in Sept. 11, a claim even the Bush administration has never made. And since many Americans think that the need for a war against Saddam is obvious, they think that Europeans who won’t go along are cowards.

Europeans, who don’t see the same things on TV, are far more inclined to wonder why Iraq — rather than North Korea, or for that matter Al Qaeda — has become the focus of U.S. policy. That’s why so many of them question American motives, suspecting that it’s all about oil or that the administration is simply picking on a convenient enemy it knows it can defeat. They don’t see opposition to an Iraq war as cowardice; they see it as courage, a matter of standing up to the bullying Bush administration….”

At last: some horse sense in the mainstream US media
(thanks to Karlin Lillington for finding it.)

Tom Friedman has a direct and thoughtful column today, critical of nearly all participants in the argument over Iraq, and very pointed in its criticism of Bush and his administration. But he argues there is a need to take on Saddam. Do read the whole piece, no matter what your perspective is — or you think it should be:

I side with those who believe we need to confront Saddam ? but we have to do it right, with allies and staying power, and the Bush team has bungled that.

The Bush folks are big on attitude, weak on strategy and terrible at diplomacy. I covered the first gulf war, in 1990-91. What I remember most are the seven trips I took with Secretary of State James A. Baker III around the world to watch him build ? face-to-face ? the coalition and public support for that war, before a shot was fired. Going to someone else’s country is a sign you respect his opinion. This Bush team has done no such hands-on spade work. Its members think diplomacy is a phone call…

…It is legitimate for Europeans to oppose such a war, but not simply by sticking a thumb in our eye and their heads in the sand. It’s also legitimate for the Bush folks to focus the world on Saddam, but two years of their gratuitous bullying has made many people deaf to America’s arguments.

[[ t e c h n o c u l t u r e ]]

The mobile phone and you
BBC Online report.

“Mobile phones are used by people to decide how and when they communicate with the rest of the world, say researchers.

The findings are the result of a three-year study into the evolution of consumer mobile behaviour, entitled Me, My Mobile and I, by a team at Lancaster University in the UK.

The report, presented at 3GSM World Congress in Cannes, suggest that mobile devices are increasingly offering people a way to control their relationships, location and self-image.

This idea likely to provoke mixed feelings of fear and excitement in operators determined to exploit the potential of mobiles by offering a wide variety of services…”.

‘Leadership’ takes its toll

Watching the televised reports of the news conferences given yesterday by Blair in London and Dubya in Washington, I was struck by how the strain is showing in the British Prime Minister’s demeanour. He was wide-eyed (and sometimes wild-eyed) and pale; his hair was sticking up; and there were times when he appeared to be stammering, lost for words.

He looked, to be honest, like a guy who was losing it.

Dubya, in contrast, was tanned, smiling and relaxed.

Escapism

I’m on leave this week and this morning was crisp and sunny. So we decided to go to Norfolk for the day. Best decision I’ve made in ages. It was beautiful up there — and mostly deserted, except for the birds. We had lunch in the incomparable Titchwell Manor Hotel and then a long walk in a biting wind on Brancaster beach.

What’s wonderful about that part of the world is its vast and ever-changing skyscape. People are always sneering that Norfolk is flat. They’re wrong. Noel Coward (who first made that joke about the county) has a lot to answer for.

Roger’s Big Day

On Sunday, I devoted my Observer column to Roger Needham, one of the great computer scientists of our time. I spent yesterday at an event organised by the Cambridge Microsoft Lab to celebrate Roger’s 50th year in Cambridge and his 5th as Director of the Lab. Amazing to see some of the great names of the field all gathered in the same room. Chuck Thacker, the man who built the Xerox Alto, was there, for example. Butler Lampson gave a masterful presentation about the impossibility of using software components in any of the hyped and advertised ways. Listening to him, I reflected that what marks out the really great figures in a field is their ability to confess to ignorance: everyone else is too insecure to admit to it. Ross Anderson gave a bravura presentation showing how the entire architecture of banking security is, in fact, built on sand. Which makes one think: what now? Do the banks write off the billions they have invested in their current infrastructure and admit to the problem? Or will they try to rubbish and defame the awkward messenger who brings us these gloomy tidings?

Rick Rashid, the Microsoft VP in charge of research, gave a nice talk at the end, and then it was Roger’s turn. He talked briefly about the importance of theory in computer science. And then he put on a hard hat and said “But at heart I’m still an engineer”. It was a wonderful, moving moment, and he received a standing ovation from an audience which loves and appreciates him.

Why Blair has got into such a mess

The problem is that there are two separate issues/problems: 1. The New Terrorism — based on religious fanaticism and using operatives who are suicidal; and 2. Saddam Hussein and his regime.

On 1, Most people in the West are, I believe, sympathetic to their governments as they struggle to address this very real and novel threat. People who point towards, say, British sang froid in the face of IRA terrorism miss the point, which is that Bin Laden terrorism is radically different. The IRA mostly gave warnings, and their atrocities were committed by people who desired to live to be grandparents even as they denied that privilege to their victims.

But the new threat is so shadowy at present that it’s difficult to mobilise public opinion into taking it as seriously as it should be taken. We have no civic experience of biological or nuclear weapons, dirty or otherwise. Nor have we much experience of suicide bombers. So it’s understandable that governments are having a hard time persuading people that the danger is real and tangible.

Nevertheless, my feeling is that most citizens are willing to go along — to put up with all kinds of intrusive security measures in order to deal with the terrorist threat. But where Blair has blown it is in mixing all this up with Iraq. Again, most people find Saddam repellent — indeed they probably think that the US should have finished him off in 1991 and wonder why he was let off relatively scot-free for over a decade afterwards. But they see the Iraqi problem as quite distinct from the new terrorism problem, and resent the fatuous attempts being made by the Americans and their British satraps to pretend that the two can be conflated.

The Digger wants a war. And so do his editors. Well, well

Their master’s voice. Rupert Murdoch argued strongly for a war with Iraq in an interview this week. Which might explain why his 175 editors around the world are backing it too, writes Roy Greenslade. [Guardian Unlimited]

Karlin Lillington on the decay of CNN

CNN, once a groundbreaking news organisation in its ability to get under a story’s surface, seems to have become one of the worst for bombast and bias. Certainly on September 11 my family soon could not stand the insensitive, hype-packed coverage of that event as covered by CNN and switched to other networks,  and it just seems to continue to disimprove, selling itself out to that dread creature, ‘infotainment’…: CNN transcript is cut a bit short. “On Friday the 14th of February CNN.com presented a “transcript” of Hans Blix’s presentation to the U.N. Security Council concerning the progress of weapons inspections in Iraq. Comparison with other transcripts, notably that presented by the BBC , reveals that a substantial section of the presentation was omitted in the CNN version. The missing text includes descriptions of important instances of Iraqi government cooperation and presents a relatively favourable picture of inspectors’ access to scientists.” [kuro5hin.org] [[ t e c h n o c u l t u r e ]]

Google buys Blogger — and the implications of that

Insightful article by Neil McIntosh on the implications of the Blogger deal –and fears that Google might use its ownership of Blogger to obscure other blogging hosts.