You Scratch My Media, I’ll Scratch Yours: Yin-Yanging in the Digital/Cable Age

Posted on May 21, 2016 by gretchenwing

“So should I join Facebook?” The Mate mused a few weeks ago.

I was startled. “You?! Why?”

Him: Well, you do seem awfully caught up on things like babies and hospitalizations and retirements and stuff. I always have to find out from you what all our friends are going through.

Me: Exactly! You find out from me! So what would you need to join for? It’s perfectly obvious to me that Facebook would drive you mad with its stupid advertising, not to mention all its bells and whistles which even I can barely keep up with. You think I want to listen to you grousing about that?

[That last part was unspoken, you understand.]

Him: Yeah, guess you’re right. You can keep doing my Facebooking for me.

Which, it occurred to me the other day, is only fair, because The Mate does my Lamestream Media-ing for me. I can’t abide TV news in this day and age–sorry, my heart will always belong to Walter Cronkite. When Al-Jazeera America was on, I watched that pretty happily, mostly because they were so shunned by U.S. advertisers that most of their ads were for their own programming. But CNN? MSNBC? Faux “News”? No, no, and NO. Too much snark. Too much slant–even when it’s a direction I agree with, I don’t like feeling the bias. And WAY too much focus on stupid stuff, like Donald Trump rallies, than on real stuff, like what the hell is going on in Venezuela anyway?

(Orig. photo courtesy Wikimedia)

But I do appreciate knowing what’s going on. NPR only covers so much, and I only have the radio on occasionally, like when I’m making dinner or driving to town during the hours of Morning Edition or All Things Considered. [Given my 4 a.m.-1 p.m. work hours, that doesn’t happen very often.]

Enter The Mate. He watches CNN and MSNBC daily, during his morning and afternoon workouts. (Also a lot of ESPN, which can sometimes get pretty political in itself.) Thus…

Me: [arriving home from work mid-afternoon] Hey, babe, how’s the world been going today?

Him: Well, the House and Senate passed Zika virus funding bills, but they don’t match up, so they’re going to conference. And Puerto Rico’s still broke. And there was a big plane crash in Egypt. And…

Me: [thinking about all the advertising, snark and slant I didn’t have to expose myself to]: Ahhhh….

So here’s to Media Buddies. A whole new definition of marriage. 🙂

O Walter Cronkite, Where Art Thou? The Demise of Al Jazeera America

Posted on January 22, 2016 by gretchenwing

When it comes to mass media, The Mate and I are the kiss of death. If we love it, chances are it’s not commercially viable, and it goes away.

Case Study #1: Summer Olympics, Barcelona, 1992. TBS ran something called “Triplecast,” meaning three different channels simultaneously broadcasting three different sports venues. So instead of being hijacked into watching prime-time, after-the-fact gymnastics performances while waiting for that one after-the-fact swim race that’s been hyped all week but won’t be on till 11 p.m., we could watch the competitions we were interested in, LIVE. We track & field junkies were in heaven–but a very sparsely populated heaven, apparently. TBS lost a ton of money, which is why you’ve never heard of Triplecast.

Case Study #2: Cutter’s Way. The best movie no one we know has ever heard of, ever. Go watch it. Bring a handkerchief.

Case Study #3: My So-Called Life. You may have heard of this one. Still–audiences were too small to make it viable, apparently. It died after a single season.

And now…Case Study #4, to me the saddest of all. Our beloved Al-Jazeera America TV news station is going dark after not quite two years on the air. Although The Mate and I love its sober, non-flashy approach to news, its coverage of topics other networks never touch, and its perspective (more on that in a moment), we are, once again, in the minority. It seems AJAM has a viewership of only 20,000-40,000–NATIONALLY. No, I did not accidentally drop a zero. The other networks beat that by more than a multiple of ten.

The saddest irony? We heard this news first from CNN. According to the CNNMoney story by Tom Kludt and Brian Stelter,

The channel’s end appears to have been prompted by the plunging price of oil, which dropped below $30 a barrel on Tuesday for the first time in 12 years. That’s significant because Al Jazeera America is owned by Al Jazeera Media Group, which in turn is owned by the government of Qatar.

A source at the company’s headquarters in Doha said that Al Jazeera was planning on making cuts all over — perhaps up to one thousand jobs — due to the falling oil prices.

“Al Jazeera Media Network had to cut, and instead of making it across the board or anywhere else, they decided to chop Al Jazeera America,” the source said.

Al Jazeera.com’s take on their TV station’s demise is, typically, a little different. They focus on the company’s desire to compete in the global digital media market–no mention of falling oil prices.

So, Gretchen–you might be wondering now–if you heard this story first on CNN, and if CNN gave you a background that AJAM did not discuss, WHY is this a superior news channel?

Easy. It’s because the shoe’s been on the other foot 99 times out of 100 in the past two years. Al Jazeera, as mentioned above, is run from Qatar. They are “foreigners,” and (mostly) Muslims. Therefore, their perspective turns our mainstream media’s xenophobia and anti-Muslim bias on its head. I cannot tell you how refreshing, and indeed how necessary, that breath of perspective is during these heated times. I never heard this story about Muslim Americans raising money to repair black churches from any other news source.

Yes, those news channels which share my political bias irritate me less than those which don’t. But only a little. I despise snarky news, even when the snark fits my own political profile. I grew up with Walter Cronkite, people. I miss Uncle Walter more than I can say. I’ve never seen AJAM use snark, even in its editorial pieces.

Also–perhaps ironically, given Quatar’s wealth–we count on AJAM to broadcast stories about the poor and minorities. Such stories are generally missing from the mainstream channels. Just one example: in the hype about the most recent snowstorm threatening the east coast, AJ’s Joshua Eaton focuses on its effect on poor people trying to get to work:

For Boston resident Barbara Fisher, the snow has been more than just an inconvenience. Problems with public transit caused the 25-year-old mother of two to lose hours at her job at Dunkin’ Donuts. Added to the extra child care she had to pay because schools were closed, that has put a real strain on her budget.

“It’s very expensive. I can’t wait for it to go,” Fisher said of the snow. “It’s terrible, because you be trying to do your best, and there’s something that’s always going to stop [you].”

Another example: Jennifer Eaton’s recent story entitled, “How Black Lives Matter Saved Higher Education.”

Ah, if only those AJAM execs had thought about the effect their Arabic name would have on American audiences! If only Al Jazeera did not sound, to American ears, so much like Al Quaeda! (Which is like saying The Church sounds like The Devil because they both start with “the.” Al Jazeera means “The Peninsula”–as in the Arabian Peninsula, where Quatar is.)

Could xenophobia possibly have anything to do with AJAM’s failure to thrive? Hmmm…that’s a toughie.

Save us, Uncle Walter!

Luckily for me, and for Americans if they’d start listening to me 🙂 , Al Jazeera will still exist online, where I will continue to visit to learn stories that I won’t hear from my fellow Americans. But when our TV’s on? I’ll be watching The Daily Show. At least they’re honest about being a pretend news show.

America’s National Parks: Big, Beautiful, and…Downright Un-American: Ever Wonder Why?

Posted on August 24, 2015 by gretchenwing

Hey, I’m back. Just spent a wonderful four days wandering with my besties from high school through Olympic National Park–which should be called Olympic National Parks, it contains so many different ecozones. From the giant cedars and spruces of the rain forest to the wild waves and fantastical drift logs of the Pacific beaches, from the azure shores of Crescent Lake to the glint of Blue Glacier shining across to Hurricane Ridge–all in four days!–we luxuriated in accessible diversity and diverse accessibility.

And I noticed something I’ve noticed many times before in national parks. We met lots of people–people of all colors speaking Dutch and Chinese and Hindi and English. Except the English speakers were not exactly ALL colors. We met very, very, very few Black folks. And that reminded me of this article I’d recently read on Al Jazeera America.com about just this topic.

According to the article, my perceptions are sadly borne out by statistics:

According to a 2009 survey by the University of Wyoming and the National Park Service (NPS), whites accounted for 78 percent of the national parks’ visitors from 2008 to 2009; Hispanics, 9 percent; African-Americans, 7 percent; and Asian-Americans, 3 percent.

When compared with their share of the U.S. population, white park visitors are overrepresented by 14 percentage points, whereas African-Americans were underrepresented by 6 percentage points. Whites are overrepresented not only as visitors but also as park employees. According to a 2013 report by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, 80 percent of NPS employees were white. And the National Park Foundation’s 22-member board, whose mission is to support the NPS through fundraising, has only four minorities.

The article goes on to emphasize that this issue isn’t simply one of Black folks not being particularly drawn to natural beauty. Ironically, the National Park Service itself appears to be contributing to African Americans’ feelings of unwelcome in our parks:

Last month we learned firsthand about the racist mistreatment of African-American park visitors during a scholarly event at Yosemite National Park in California. By inviting a diverse group of women to the park, we inadvertently carried out a study of racial profiling by park gate agents.

As part of our event, eight female academics — four of them white or Hispanic and four African-American — drove into the park. The organizers told participants not to pay the entrance fee and to inform gate agents that their fees were waived because they were visiting the research station.

The white and Hispanic drivers gave the agents the information as directed and were welcomed and waved through. The four African-American scholars entered the park at different times and entrances and gave the same information. In all four cases, the African-American professors were extensively questioned, made to fill out a superfluous form, which required extra and unnecessary effort and a check-in with the research center staff, and reluctantly let into the park.

One of the black professors was questioned about her college degrees, the title of her research project and her university affiliation and was asked to provide a faculty ID. The agents appeared incapable of imagining that a black woman could hold a Ph.D. and visit a research station for a scholarly event. (The Yosemite National Park Service has since opened an investigation into the incidents.)

I’m glad to see that Yosemite is investigating this incident. I hope the whole issue gets more attention. My recent re-affirmation of a lifelong love affair with our national parks reminds me: these parks belong to ALL of us. But until ALL of us go there, they won’t be truly national.

Care to weigh in with your own experience? I’d love to hear.

When Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction-Writing: Iowa Writers’ Workshop as CIA Baby?

Posted on December 17, 2014 by gretchenwing

When you get involved in fiction writing, you hear “Iowa” a lot. It’s shorthand for the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, operating since 1936 under the auspices of the University of Iowa. It’s also a flagship of American creativity. And, according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, it was also erected as a bulwark against Communism, and partially funded by the CIA.

Iowa, a weapon of the Cold War?! That bastion of individualism? The first program in the US to promote advanced degrees in creative writing, to amplify the voices of writers expressing themselves freely, independently, even iconoclastically? Oh…wait. I think I get it.

It was a shock to me at first, I must admit, when I read this sentence in an article in Al Jazeera America about the CIA sending hip-hop artists to Cuba to further American ideals: “It was also a CIA front group, known as the Farfield Foundation, that provided seed money for what would become the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.” I had to investigate.

Turns out that quote comes from Professor Eric Bennett, assistant professor of English at Providence College. [The article adds that Dr. Bennett’s “book on creative writing and the Cold War, Workshops of Empire, is forthcoming from the University of Iowa Press. This essay is adapted from MFA vs. NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction, edited by Chad Harbach and published this month by Faber  and Faber.”–just in case you want to track him down.]

Here’s the part of Dr. Bennett’s article I found most striking:

But it’s also an accepted part of the story that creative-writing programs arose spontaneously: Creative writing was an idea whose time had come. Writers wanted jobs, and students wanted fun classes. In the 1960s, with Soviet satellites orbiting, American baby boomers matriculating, and federal dollars flooding into higher education, colleges and universities marveled at Iowa’s success and followed its lead. To judge by the bellwether, creative-writing programs worked. Iowa looked great: Famous writers taught there, graduated from there, gave readings there, and drank, philandered, and enriched themselves and others there.

Yet what drew writers to Iowa was not the innate splendor of a spontaneously good idea. What drew writers to Iowa is what draws writers anywhere: money and hype, which tend to be less spontaneous than ideas.

So where did the money and the hype come from?

Much of the answer lies in the remarkable career of Paul Engle, the workshop’s second director, a do-it-yourself Cold Warrior whose accomplishments remain mostly covered in archival dust. For two decades after World War II, Iowa prospered on donations from conservative businessmen persuaded by Engle that the program fortified democratic values at home and abroad: It fought Communism. The workshop thrived on checks from places like the Rockefeller Foundation, which gave Iowa $40,000 between 1953 and 1956—good money at the time. As the years went by, it also attracted support from the Asia Foundation (another channel for CIA money) and the State Department.

After reading the whole article, I can’t say that I’m “shocked, shocked!” at the ideas Dr. Bennett expresses. The writing is not muck-raking; it’s a deeply personal statement about the impact of political ideas on a creative movement, and the more I think about it, the less surprised I am that such impact should have been so deliberately built. The Cold War was, after all, by definition, a war of ideas. Why should creative writing be held above the fray?

The only bit that leaves a bad taste in my mouth is Iowa’s own disingenuity when presenting its own history. Here’s what their website has to say on the subject:

One of the first students to receive an M.A. in creative writing was the poet Paul Engle, who assumed the directorship of the Workshop in 1941. During the 24 years of his directorship, the Workhsop gained a national reputation as the premier program of its kind. During World War II enrollment was no more than a dozen students, but after the war it grew, attaining in a few years a strength of over a hundred students, and dividing into the fiction and poetry sections which exist today.

Yep–same Paul Engle whom Dr. Bennett knew personally, and describes as “a do-it-yourself Cold Warrior.” The Iowa website seems to be opting for the storyline of spontaneously-arising program for artists. Given what Dr. Bennett has detailed, that origin story appears to be–perhaps appropriately–fiction.

No problems with those origins–but I would like to see Iowa be a little more open about them.

Do you agree? Are you “shocked, shocked”? Or is this old news to you?