Just how ignorant is our press?

[dsc]

Meanwhile, the Coalition Provisional Authority, which we ran, has lost 8.8 billion dollars. By lost, I mean it’s totally unaccounted for. Not only has Congress not "looked into" this $8.8 billion and who might have it now, but it seems that some members are completely unaware that this staggering sum, which was supposed to go toward rebuilding Iraq, is missing. The Sunday morning after the White House Correspondents dinner, I ran into Senator George Allen at a brunch thrown by John McLaughlin and his wife. Allen had never heard of the missing $8.8 billion, or at least that's what he told me. And he's on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Stunned, I went up to Susan Page of USA Today and her husband Carl Lubsdorf of the Dallas Morning News, two veteran Washington political reporters, and told them about Allen’s ignorance of this huge scandal, which has no doubt contributed to hatred for America and the deaths of our troops. There’s less electricity in Iraq now than there was before we invaded Iraq.

Turns out that Page and Lubsdorf had also never heard of the unaccounted-for $8.8 billion. For a moment I thought that maybe I had been imagining things.

Then I spotted my friend Norm Ornstein, scholar from the American Enterprise Institute. "Would you believe it if Norm Ornstein told you about the $8.8 billion?" I asked Susan and Carl.

end of quote

I can't quote more than four paragraphs but suffice it to say that Ornstein agreed with Frankin on the $8.8 billion.

I can't help but relate this to my job. I teach math and this semester I was teaching a course that I had never taken, for which the book stank, and for which I had no teacher's edition nor any kind of timeline and no teacher who had taught the course before since it was brand new. Yet, I managed to a) cover all but one objective, b) answer my students questions correctly when they were asked, and c) make sure I knew what the heck I was talking about and was giving correct information to them. This wasn't easy but it was my job. I spent hours on the internet finding data for them to analize and model and to find reasonable questions for homework and tests. I worked problems out myself to make sure the numbers worked. In short I did basic research. I couldn't come to school not knowing how to do the problems I was expecting my students to do.

This is rank incompetence plain and simple. I knew about the missing money (I admit I couldn't have told you an amount without prompting but I knew money was missing) and that isn't my job. It is their job. Just like I did research to do my job competently these people need to be researching to do their job competently (and I bet they have better research resources than I do). No wonder the American people have no clue. Like a math teacher who never saw a number in his life, our press corps apparently is utterly ignorant of the issues they discuss.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/al-franken/what-in-godas-name-is-g_1221.html

[jarnocan]

1. 8.8bil??? no big deal?

very interesting and alarming. No wonder regular people just don't 'GET IT' there is so much- that is so wrong- and it's like no one even focuses on anything. they just shrug that shoulders and give you the very dull look, like so?

[Tinoire]

2. Need you ask

Regardless of whether you needed to ask or not, this is indeed shocking.

;)

[dsc]

5. I just am slack jawed

Can you imagine an engineer who didn't know what the bridge he was designing was made of? Or an English teacher who had no idea who wrote Hamlet?

[Tinoire]

6. I agree with you but I've become so cynical

that I think the only news that would shock me anymore is that Bush resigned of his own good-will.

The state of affairs is too depressing for words. What can we do except keep trying to make a difference? I refuse to give up but I'm really not sure why when I read articles like the one you posted.

[dsc]

7. I honestly don't know what to do

The level of ignorance is simply astounding.

[bridgit]

3. the so-called '4th estate' is all about cush...

and access imo. they are paid 'by the inch' in too many case' clearly. don't tow the party line :shrug: bush's dad & ties shut you down = you get no access & people say rude things to your face when your present & behind your back @ dc cocktail parties when you're not.

time was...you'd be shot on the commons for speaking your mind after your press had been destroyed before the eyes of your horrified wife, children & colleagues. there's no more stomach for that. and the level of pertinent; the absence really, of news-worthy-news is the present day result...sad to report.

the expense of all that blood & treasure to preserve ignorance. there's a story.

[Old_Fart]

4. They know what the hell they are doing

They are being paid to spread a bunch of lies and propaganda and the right wingers are eating it up like its a free lobster dinner from the latest fake Hallelujah Church meeting.

[Q]

8. It's not about ignorance...

...it's about collusion, complicity and corruption. Those feigning ignorance know what's going on...but it's easier and more profitable to keep quiet.

Like the Democrats who voted for the Iraq resolution. Most if not all of them KNEW that Bush was lying at worst and exaggerating at best about a need to attack Iraq. But it was better for their careers and the bank accounts of their corporate sponsors to go along for the ride.

This is what happens when greed and corruption are allowed to prosper.

[Clark2008]

9. The first question I need to ask is if Page or Lubsdorf covers either

Iraq or the Congress on a regular basis? I don't generally keep up with bylines unless its someone I already know or they've either done a particularly outstanding or lousy job.

For your arugement to work, these reporters would need to be charged with covering some body responsible for the money.

I used to be a reporter and I couldn't tell you the budget of one of the cities I did not cover, but, since I covered the police departements in each of the cities, I could tell you what portion of the general fund went to the police department. I wasn't dumb, but I had so many things related to MY beat going on in my head, that I simply didn't retain things on other reporters' beats.

I will agree that informed people ought to be aware of the missing money because it should be a bigger story, but it's not necessarily these reporters' particular job - unless they cover that sort of thing. It's not rank incompetence so much as a failure on the media, as a whole, to report over and over and over again the more important issues.

[dsc]

12. One is the political reporter for USA Today

and the other is the Washington Correspondent for the Dallas News. I think it is safe to say they cover Congress.

[radfringe]

10. there is no "press" anymore, just transcribers

it's extremely difficult to see what's going on when you have your head up your butt -- in this position the only thing you can do is to a self-administered colon-rectal exam

it's not surprising that reporters don't know what is really going on -- they just sit there, take dictations or cut/paste scripted press releases from the white house

[bklyncowgirl]

11. One Fact Two Facts Red Facts Blue Facts

After the election some survey or other showed that people believed in certain things and simply brushed aside information that contradicted these beliefs. For example, many people believed (and probably still believe) that Saddam Hussein really did have stockpiles of weapons regardless of the evidence (wait for Bush to trot out--he moved them to Syria or Iran--as a pretext for invading one or both of those countries).

My guess is that for most people this 8 billion dollars in "lost" reconstruction funds just gets filed under "Shit happens in wartime."

If they're part of the corporate world view--and prominent mainstream journalists for the most part would have to be--this is probably the sort of inconvenient information that clashes with their world view and is better left ignored.

Yes, everyone should know about this. It is a giant scandal. But one wouldn't want to dig too deeply, you know, there are some pretty big corporations working in Iraq and one wouldn't want to defame the good name of these patriotic companies, would one?