The Power of Words

Yesterday I served as lay leader for the Friday evening Sabbath services at Congregation Adas Emuno in Leonia, New Jersey, and I thought it would be worthwhile to share  the words of my sermon with you here on Blog Time Passing, especially since the subject of language and communication is one that is near and dear to my heart.

The Power of Words

In Jewish tradition, we call the sermon part of the service the D'Var Torah, which means word of Torah, which is based on the weekly Torah reading. And this week's Torah portion, Parsha Vayechi, is the last one from the Book of Genesis, and the theme that I want to draw from it has to do with the power of words.

But first, I want to mention that last Sunday (December 7th), I was a substitute teacher for our religious school's 6th and 7th grade Judaica classes, which was an absolute delight. And the lesson I taught was a special one on the power of words and the ethics of language. This included the basic moral teachings about the importance of honesty in most situations, and the various admonitions in Jewish tradition against gossip. You may recall, for example, the traditional version of our silent prayer, which begins, "May God keep my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking guile." The language is derived from the Psalms.

And to underscore the power of words, I pointed out that in Genesis, God begins the creation of the world with words, by saying Let there be light. He speaks Creation into existence, as the text says, "And God said, Let there be light, and there was light."

A little later in Genesis, after creating Adam, the Torah says that God had him give names to all of the animals, and it says that whatever Adam called them, that became their name. I should add that I had to explain that what the Torah meant by Adam giving them names was not names like Fred or Sam or Linda, but names like cow, and chicken, and whale. But the point is that giving names to all of the animals was the way in which Adam established dominion over them, and his role as caretaker of God's Creation.

The fact that names have power is also reflected in the one name that do not pronounce in the Torah and our prayerbooks, the Yod Hay Vov Hay that is not supposed to be said out loud, which is why we substitute adonai instead.

The power of names is also seen in the renaming of Abraham and Sarah, who were originally called Abram and Sarai, their new names symbolizing their new roles as patriarch and matriarch. It can also be seen in the second name given to Jacob after he wrestles with the angel, his new name being Israel. In this, we see a motif common to many traditional cultures, the use of an eponym to personify an entire group of people. It is a way of telling the story, and history, of a people by using a single individual as a symbol to represent the entire nation.

In this way, the descendants of the line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob become known as the Children of Israel, one people, but they also are represented as a group of tribes. Jacob had twelve sons, symbolizing the twelve tribes of Israel. In order of birth, the twelve sons were Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin. Each one represented one tribe in the ancient land of Israel, with the exception of Joseph. Instead of a tribe of Joseph, there were two tribes whose names are represented by Joseph's two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim.

In this week Torah portion, Jacob is on his deathbed, and before he dies, he blesses his grandchildren, Ephraim and Manasseh. The Torah refers to Jacob by his other name, Israel, and says that he stretched out his hands and put them on the heads of the two sons, and blessed them, saying:

"God, before Whom my fathers, Abraham and Isaac, walked, God Who sustained me as long as I am alive, until this day, may the angel who redeemed me from all harm bless the youths, and may they be called by my name and the name of my fathers, Abraham and Isaac, and may they multiply abundantly like fish, in the midst of the land."

In this way, he indicates that his grandchildren and their descendants will be known by the name of Israel, as well as being identified as descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Torah portion goes on to say,

So he blessed them on that day, saying, "With you, Israel will bless, saying, 'May God make you like Ephraim and like Manasseh.' "

And this becomes the traditional Jewish blessing over children: May God make you like Ephraim and like Manasseh.

We can recall here the power of language, to bless, and also to curse, and more generally, to heal and to harm.

In this week's parsha, after blessing Joseph's children, Jacob then calls for all of his sons, and provides a final prophecy, saying,

Gather and I will tell you what will happen to you at the end of days. Gather and listen, sons of Jacob, and listen to Israel, your father.

He then says that Reuben, the first born, and Simeon and Levi, the next two, will not give rise to the dominant tribe of the twelve, but rather that it shall be the fourth son, Judah, saying:

Judah, [as for] you, your brothers will acknowledge you. Your hand will be at the nape of your enemies, [and] your father's sons will prostrate themselves to you. A cub [and] a grown lion is Judah. From the prey, my son, you withdrew. He crouched, rested like a lion, and like a lion, who will rouse him? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the student of the law from between his feet, until Shiloh comes, and to him will be a gathering of peoples.

Jacob goes on to speak about his other sons, but I want to focus on this passage because, while the twelve tribes are united for the better part of a century under the reign of King David and King Solomon, they then split into two separate kingdoms, the northern kingdom of Israel, and the southern kingdom of Judah, which took its name from the tribe of Judah.

When the Assyrians invade and destroy the northern kingdom of Israel, ten of the twelve tribes disappear, leaving only Judah and Levi, the Levites being a priestly tribe with no permanent home. The people of the northern kingdom become known as the ten lost tribes, although some possible remnants of some of them have surfaced in recent years, but in the past some people went searching for ten lost tribes. For example, when the New World was discovered by European explorers, and they first encountered the native Americans, some thought they might be the ten lost tribes. But back in the ancient world, the people who were left behind in the northern kingdom, and others who settled there after the Assyrian invasion, became known as Samaritans. The phrase good Samaritan comes from the New Testament, and the Samaritans are still around today, in very small numbers, practicing a religion similar to Judaism.

The southern kingdom of Judah survived for a while longer, until the Babylonian conquest and captivity, but the Babylonians did not destroy the people of Judah, and later, when the Persian Empire conquered Babylon, the Emperor Cyrus allowed the people of Judah to return, and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, and this is described in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Later still, when the Romans conquered Judah, they referred to the kingdom in Latin as Judea. So, it is from Judah and Judea, or Yehuda in Hebrew, that we get the name Jews, and the word Judaism.

Jacob describes his son Judah as a lion, and the lion was the symbol of the tribe of Judah, and of King David, who came from the tribe of Judah, and David's son Solomon. The Ethiopians believed that their royal line was descended from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and used the Lion of Judah as the symbol of their kingdom, appearing on their flag, until 1974, when the last king, Haile Selassie, was deposed, although he is still venerated within the Rastafari movement or religion.

Jacob uses the phrase, until Shiloh comes, and the meaning of those words is a bit of mystery. Some interpret the name Shiloh as a variation on the Hebrew word shaluach, which means messenger, and take it as a reference to the Messiah, which of course means different things to Jews and to Christians, while the Moslems interpret it as a reference to the prophet Mohammad.

Shiloh is also the name of a city, in the land allotted to the tribe of Ephraim, and that is where the Ark of the Covenant was placed after the Children of Israel return to the promised land following the exodus, which made it the religious capital of Israel before King David conquered Jerusalem and King Solomon built the Temple there. Instead of the phrase until Shiloh comes, the JPS translation of Genesis renders the passage, as long as men come to Shiloh.

Shiloh was located in what is now the West Bank, and this brings to mind the fact that there can be conflicts over names, and that some of those conflicts are more than scholarly disputes over the meaning of ancient biblical texts. This includes conflicts between Jews and Arabs over place names in the Middle East. The West Bank, which is now partially under the governance of the Palestinian Authority, has also been referred to as Judea and Samaria by religious and conservative groups opposed to relinquishing control of the territory, as it does correspond to the ancient land of Israel. The coastal region that Israel occupies today was, during the biblical area, the home of the Canaanites, otherwise known as the Philistines.

The name Philistine is a variation on Palestine, another name for the land of Canaan that is used over 250 times in the Bible. The various peoples in the Bible referred to as Philistines and Canaanites, like the ten lost tribes, no longer exist. But after the Romans destroyed the second Temple, sacked Jerusalem, and dispersed our people, they merged the provinces of Judea and Galilee and renamed it Syria Palestina. In the 20th century, the British Empire created the Mandate of Palestine after the First World War, and before the creation of the State of Israel, Jewish inhabitants and Zionist settlers were often referred to as Palestinians. Some argue that the Arab inhabitants of this area never called themselves Palestinians until the sixties, but that claim is not universally accepted.

There are conflicts over names because words have power. And whoever has the power to name things can exert a certain amount of control over those things, just as Adam did in naming all of the animals. The lesson that we can take from the Torah, and from all of human history, is the importance of using our words, and the necessity of using them with care.

Three of the Ten Commandments teach this lesson. The prohibition against graven images can be understood as a commandment to do what parents tell their children to do, to use your words, to communicate with language. The commandment not to take God's name in vain tells us to show respect for the sacred, and the commandment not to bear false witness tells us to show respect for others. And what this requires of us is to be aware, to be mindful of our use of language. It is all to easy to speak without thinking, and what our tradition teaches us is to think, first and foremost, to think before speaking, to be mindful of what we say.

Abraham Lincoln said, "better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt." And President Obama asked us to observe a moment of silence tomorrow (Saturday, December 14th) morning at 9:30 AM in memory of the children and teachers who were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Silence is the counterpart of words, and without silence, we would be left speechless. Without some degree of silence, language degenerates into noise.

I think that the same advice we give children about crossing the street can be applied to our use of words: Stop. Look. And Listen. Listening, above all, requires us to be silent, and attend to what others have to say. To listen shows respect for others' words, and for others as persons, and without listening there can be no understanding.

Stop, look, and listen, to each other, and to ourselves, to the still small voice within. Listen to ourselves, and consider the power of our words, think about how others may react to our words, what they might feel when they hear what we might want to say. To be sensitive to the effect that our words have on others. To be ethical in our use of language. And to recognize the value of silence, and to be mindful of the words of our silent prayer: May God keep my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking guile. Amen. And Shabbat shalom.

A Hairy Situation for TV News

So, we're heading into one of the worst times of year for news gatherers, the ten days or so encompassing Christmas and New Year's. The only other time of year that's equally slow for journalists are the dog days of August.

And this past August, a rather hairy situation arose across the pond in Great Britain, involving a TV news personality—and they are personalities, after all, whether they are qualified as journalists or not as well, or else we wouldn't be having this discussion.

The story was covered by Palash Ghosh of the International Business Times, and it went by the name of, Jeremy Paxman’s Beard: Why Are Television News Presenters Almost Always Clean Shaven?  It was posted back on August 13th, and yeah, I'm quoted in it, why else would I be bringing it up here, after all?

Here's how it begins:

Jeremy Paxman, one of the most well-known and controversial of Britain’s television news presenters, has made some news of his own -- he appeared on the air wearing a mustache and beard. The 63-year-old, who has hosted ”Newsnight” since 1990, explained on the air that he grew the beard while on summer holiday and didn’t feel like shaving it off when he returned to work.

Paxman's unexpectedly hairy appearance on Monday night on BBC2 sparked a tidal wave of commentary (mostly cheeky) on Twitter as well as by other members of U.K. media. Lauren Laverne, a BBC music DJ, liked the beard, calling it “Fawkesian,” an apparent reference to Guy Fawkes, the early 17th-century man who tried to blow up the House of Lords and assassinate King James I. Kevin O’Sullivan, the TV critic for the Sunday Mirror, beamed: “Facial hair becomes him [Paxman].”

So, this is a story that did not get much coverage, facial or otherwise, over here in the United States. The reference to Guy Fawkes may summon up images of V for Vendetta, from the graphic novel and film adaptation, and the Guy Fawkes mask that the title character wore:

As for whether this was a fair comparison with Jeremy Paxman, I'll let you be the judge:

Personally, I can't help but see a resemblance to a more clean shaven and less nonfictional newscaster:

But hey, that's just me. Of course, this might make for an interesting plot point for the next season of the HBO series, The Newsroom, with Will McAvoy, the character played by Jeff Daniels, depicted above, growing a beard; his producer and paramour MacKenzie McHale, being British, saying she loves the new look; and Jane Fonda, who isn't given much of a workout playing broadcast CEO Leonia Lansing, demanding that he shave it off. Sam Waterson's character, news division president Charlie Skinner, can say that he doesn't think a beard looks good on a news anchor, but that he will nevertheless defend McAvoy's right to refrain from removing his whiskers.

But I digress, so back to the article:

Others were less than thrilled by the follicles. Paxman’s BBC colleague Emily Maitlis sarcastically tweeted: "Right that's it, I'm working on a mustache for Thursday's Newsnight." Jenny Éclair, the comedienne and actress best known for her role in “Grumpy Old Women” television series, commented: "I like Paxman's beard. Looks like he might ride a Harley [Davidson motorcycle] come the weekend."

Ian Rankin, the Scots crime novelist, quipped: "It is 1973 and I'm really digging the new album by Paxman's Beard." A presenter on Channel 4, the decidedly dark-haired Kirstie Allsopp commented: “Paxo [Paxman] with a beard is like me going blonde; there are just some things that are not meant to be.”

Similarly, according to the Daily Mail, broadcaster and journalist Danny Baker boldly declared: “I really do not think Jeremy Paxman should be granted a beard. It's corrupt. Disney had it right. Hey BBC: no news beards.” Baker added: “Do you think a single person in the news room had the balls to say 'Hey Jeremy. The beard. You look f__king ridiculous.” Perhaps the best comment came from political blogger Guido Fawkes, who joked: “Paxo looks like he’s making one of those ‘hostage pleads for release’ videos.”

It does seem that some of these folks are piling it on a bit thick, doesn't it? But the Brits are known for their sharp put-downs. And what does Mr. Paxman have to say about all this (it wouldn't be peace, man, now would it?)?

Paxman himself conceded that his hirsute appearance is highly unusual for BBC television. "Unless you're lucky enough to be Uncle Albert on ‘Only Fools and Horses [a popular British sitcom];’ [Greek rock singer] Demis Roussos or [convicted terrorist] Abu Hamza, the BBC is generally as pogonophobic [fearful of beards] as the late-lamented Albanian dictator, Enver Hoxha," he said.

For now, Paxman seems enamored with his new look, despite the jokes and criticism. "I have grown a beard for the last few summers, and suddenly wondered whether I really needed to shave it off to present Newsnight," he said, according to BBC. "I may keep it or I may shave it off, but I think I'll make my own decision."

BBC’s stance on its star’s new look is unclear. A source told the Guardian: “Yes, he has grown a beard. It's fair to say there will be no action as a result of this.” Interestingly, last year, Paxman derided the Liberal Democrats party by noting that the “beard quotient seems to be down” at their annual conference.

But Paxman has found very strong support from a British organization called The Beard Liberation Front, which campaigns for the right of men to wear beards in the workplace. The group said that Paxman has made “broadcasting history”. “It had previously been thought that the BBC had an informal beard ban on news anchors,” BLF said in a statement. “Paxman’s beard is a blow against pogonophobia in public life.”

Pogonophobia? The Beard Liberation Front? Is this for real? Well, there do have a Wikipedia entry, if you can believe it, and here's the first paragraph:

The Beard Liberation Front (BLF) is a British interest group which campaigns in support of beards and opposes discrimination against those who wear them. It was founded in 1995 by socialist historian Keith Flett who continues to organise and represent the organisation. Apart from its numerous campaigns in support of beards and against discrimination in the workplace and discrimination against those who wear beards as part of their religion, it currently hosts the annual Beard of the Year award.

Beard of the Year Award?  Errr, hmmm, ahem, ahhh..

(hint, hint)

So is this all a big put-on?  Well, here's what the Wikipedia entry continues to relate:

On the face of it, the campaign is semi-humorous, with its outwardly frivolous aims, its occasionally outlandish claims of discrimination and conspiracy and its founder, who is also the spokesman for the Campaign for Real Conkers. However, the organisation has drawn attention to more serious issues, having spoken out against, among other incidents, the suspension of a fireman for refusing to shave off his goatee and the banning of beards among ExxonMobil oil workers (in both cases employers claimed that beards interfered with breathing apparatus). Flett believes that an issue of "real discrimination" exists against men with beards. Although he admits that a beard, unlike race and gender, is a matter of choice, he has claimed that beardism is associated with more serious forms of discrimination:

Beardism? Well, I suppose I'm lucky to be in a profession, academia, where beardism is simply not considered politically correct. If anything, there may be some bias against the clean shaven look. Perhaps that's why Al Gore grew a beard after losing the 2000 presidential election and going off to teach at Columbia University's Journalism School:

Now c'mon, mine is better, don't you think? Anyway, enough about the Brits, let's turn to American TV news, shall we, as the article continues on:

In the United States, leading television news anchors are typically clean shaven, although it in unclear if this is dictated by station policy or not. The CBS Evening News, perhaps the most dominant of all American news broadcast programs, has had five major male anchors over the past 60 years, Douglas Edwards, Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Bob Schieffer and Scott Pelley -- all were clean shaven, aside from Cronkite who sported a neatly-trimmed mustache. (However, Ed Bradley, an African-American news presenter who sometimes anchored the CBS Evening news and later became a member of the “60 Minutes” team, usually sported a moustache and beard.)

Walter Cronkite

Ed Bradley

On NBC News, going back to 1949, all male anchors, including the latest two, Brian Williams and Tom Brokaw, had no whiskers at all. On the ABC Evening News, only one anchor, Max Robinson, the first African-American network anchor, wore a conservative mustache, in the late 1970s. Among cable news presenters, Wolf Blitzer of CNN has a neatly-trimmed grey mustache and beard, while Geraldo Rivera, now at Fox News, has always worn his trademark thick mustache, but no beard. In the 1990s, another African-American anchor on CNN, Bernard Shaw, did sport a trimmed mustache.

Max Robinson

Wolf Blitzer

Geraldo Rivera

Bernard Shaw

But these are rare exceptions – as with politicians and corporate executives, facial hair seems to be a big no-no.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for, as I descend from the hairy heavens to impart my wisdom upon the world on this weighty matter (you do detect the note of sarcasm in my tone, don't you?):

Dr. Lance A. Strate, professor of Communication and Media Studies and associate chair for Graduate Studies at Fordham University in New York, told IB Times that television newscasters have been referred to not only as “talking heads,” but also as talking “hair-dos,” due to the fact that their appearance is carefully prepared for broadcast, from the application of hair spray and make-up, to the choice of clothing. “Credibility on television is all about the look and sound of the newscaster, as opposed to their credentials or the content of the reports they read off of a teleprompter,” he said. “While there still are individuals devoted to serious journalism involved in TV news, the needs of the camera come first, and dictate what will follow.”

This means that newscasters tend to be attractive, but not so very attractive as to undercut the serious image that they are trying to portray, Strate added. “The best look is not too distracting, the kind of look that is almost transparent, a look that viewers can relate to and identify with,” he noted. “For male newscasters, this means that they typically are not bald or overweight (unless relegated to some specialty niche like weather or commentary). They don't have long hair because that conveys an image of being outside of the mainstream, rebellious, independently minded, etc.”

Beards have a similar connotation, often associated with “intellectuals” and “artistic” types, while mustaches are more mainstream in being associated with a masculine look, but less common today than in Walter Cronkite's time, so we're more likely to see them on sports reporters than news anchors.

The main problem, he explained, is that on television anything that calls attention to itself, be it facial hair, long hair, a bad toupee, hair dyed an odd color, even hair that's unruly, will attract the viewer's attention, distracting and detracting from the intended message. “Broadcasters, being in the business of attracting the largest possible audiences and selling access to those audiences to advertisers, naturally prefer the least objectionable content, the result being a fairly homogenous set of types presenting the news on TV, which includes men with deep pitched voices, and Asian women whose stereotype of seriousness and intellectual achievement are consistent with the image TV news organizations want to convey,” Strate concluded.

And so, there is a serious point to be pulled out of all this silliness about facial hair, but I have to admit that it was not easy responding to the query about this issue without turning it into one big joke. So if I managed to avoid that trap, I guess you could say that it was a close shave...

Can We Survive Entertainment?

Here's my last guest post for the Hannah Arendt Center's blog, dated August 12th, which you can read over there by clicking here, or read over here by, well, reading on...

"The state of affairs, which indeed is equaled nowhere else in the world, can properly be called mass culture; its promoters are neither the masses nor their entertainers, but are those who try to entertain the masses with what once was an authentic object of culture, or to persuade them that Hamlet can be as entertaining as My Fair Lady, and educational as well. The danger of mass education is precisely that it may become very entertaining indeed; there are many great authors of the past who have survived centuries of oblivion and neglect, but it is still an open question whether they will be able to survive an entertaining version of what they have to say. "

-Hannah Arendt, "Mass Culture and Mass Media"

I recently completed work on a book entitled Amazing Ourselves to Death: Neil Postman's Brave New World Revisited, to be published by Peter Lang. And as the title implies, the book takes up the arguments made by Postman in his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, published nearly three decades ago, and considers them in light of the contemporary media environment, and the kind of culture that it has given rise to.  I bring this up because the passage from Hannah Arendt's essay, "Mass Culture and Mass Media," is a quote that I first read in Amusing Ourselves to Death.  Interestingly, Postman used it not in his chapter on education, but in one focusing on religion, one that placed particular emphasis on the phenomenon of televangelism that exploded into prominence back in the eighties.  To put the quote into the context that Postman had earlier placed it in, he prefaced the passage with the following:

There is a final argument that whatever criticisms may be made of televised religion, there remains the inescapable fact that it attracts viewers by the millions. This would appear to be the meaning of the statements, quoted earlier by Billy Graham and Pat Robertson, that there is a need for it among the multitude. To which the best reply I know was made by Hannah Arendt, who, in reflecting on the products of mass culture, wrote:

And this is where Arendt's quote appears, after which Postman provides the following commentary:

If we substitute the word "religion" for Hamlet, and the phrase "great religious traditions" for "great authors of the past," this question may stand as the decisive critique of televised religion. There is no doubt, in other words, that religion can be made entertaining. The question is, by doing so, do we destroy it as an "authentic object of culture"? And does the popularity of a religion that employs the full resources of vaudeville drive more traditional religious conceptions into manic and trivial displays?

In returning to Postman's critique of the age of television, I decided to use this same quote in my own book, noting how Postman had used it earlier, but this time placing it in a chapter on education.  In particular, I brought it up following a brief discussion of the latest fad in higher education, massive open online courses, abbreviated as MOOCs.



A MOOC can contain as many as 100,000 students, which raises the question of, in what sense is a MOOC a course, and in what sense is the instructor actually teaching?  It is perhaps revealing that the acronym MOOC is a new variation on other terms associated with new media, such as MMO, which stands for massive multiplayer online (used to describe certain types of games), and the more specific MMORPG, which stands for massive multiplayer online role-playing game.  These terms are in turn derived from older ones such as MUD, multi-user dungeon, and MUSH, multi-user shared hallucination, and also MOO, multi-user dungeon, object oriented.  In other words, the primary connotation is with gaming, not education.  Holding this genealogy aside, it is clear that offering MOOCs is presently seen as a means to lend prestige to universities, and they may well be a means to bring education to masses of people who could not otherwise afford a college course, and also to individuals who are not interested in pursuing traditional forms of education, but then again, there is nothing new about the phenomenon of the autodidact, which was made possible by the spread of literacy and easy availability of books. There is no question that much can be learned from reading books, or listening to lectures via iTunes, or watching presentations on YouTube, but is that what we mean by education? By teaching?

Regarding Arendt's comments on the dangers of mass education, we might look to the preferences of the most affluent members of our society? What do people with the means to afford any type of education available tend to choose for their children, and for themselves? The answer, of course, is traditional classrooms with very favorable teacher-student ratios, if not private, one-on-one tutoring (the same is true for children with special needs, such as autism).  There should be no question as to what constitutes the best form of education, and it may be that we do not have the resources to provide it, but still we can ask whether money should be spent on equipping classrooms with the latest in educational technology, when the same limited resources could be used to hire more teachers?  It is a question of judgment, of the ability to decide on priorities based on objective assessment, rather than automatically jumping on the new technology bandwagon time and time again.

The broader question that concerns both Arendt and Postman is whether serious discourse, be it educational, religious, or political, can survive the imperative to make everything as entertaining as possible.  For Arendt, this was a feature of mass media and their content, mass culture. Postman argues that of the mass media, print media retains a measure of seriousness, insofar as the written word is a relatively abstract form of communication, one that provides some degree of objective distance from its subject matter, and that requires relatively coherent forms of organization. Television, on the other hand, is an image-centered medium that places a premium on attracting and keeping audiences, not to mention the fact that of all the mass media, it is the most massive.  The bias of the television medium is towards showing, rather than telling, towards displaying exciting visuals, and therefore towards entertaining content.  Of course, it's possible to run counter to the medium's bias, in which case you get something like C-SPAN, whose audience is miniscule.



The expansion of television via cable and satellite has given us better quality entertainment, via the original series appearing on HBO, Showtime, Starz, and AMC, but the same is not true about the quality of journalism.  Cable news on CNN, MSNBC, and FOX does not provide much in the way of in-depth reporting or thoughtful analysis. Rather, what we get is confrontation and conflict, which of course is dramatic, and above all entertaining, but contributes little to the democratic political process.  Consider that at the time of the founding of the American republic, the freedom to express opinions via speech and press was associated with the free marketplace of ideas, that is, with the understanding that different views can be subject to relatively objective evaluation, different descriptions can be examined in order to determine which one best matches with reality, different proposals can be analyzed in order to determine which one might be the best course of action.  The exchange of opinions was intended to open up discussion, and eventually lead to some form of resolution. Today, as can be seen best on cable news networks, when pundits express opinions, it's to close down dialogue, the priority being to score points, to have the last word if possible, and at minimum to get across a carefully prepared message, rather than to listen to what the other person has to say, and find common ground.  And this is reflected in Congress, as our elected representatives are unwilling to talk to each other, work with each other, negotiate settlements, and actually be productive as legislators.

Once upon a time, the CBS network news anchor Walter Cronkite was dubbed "the most trusted man in American." And while his version of the news conformed to the biases of the television medium, still he tried to engage in serious journalism as much as he was able to within those constraints. Today, we would be hard put to identify anyone as our most trusted source of information, certainly none of the network news anchors would qualify, but if anyone deserves the title, at least for a large segment of American society, it would be Jon Stewart of The Daily Show.  And while there is something to be said for the kind of critique that he and his compatriot Stephen Colbert provide, what they provide us with, after all, are comedy programs, and at best we can say that they do not pretend to be providing anything other than entertainment.  But we are left with the question, when so many Americans get their news from late night comedians, does that mean that journalism has become a joke?

Cable television has also given us specialized educational programming via the National Geographic Channel, the History Channel, and the Discovery Channel, and while this has provided an avenue for the dissemination of documentaries, audiences are especially drawn to programs such as Dog Whisperer with Cesar Milan, Moonshiners, Ancient Aliens, UFO Files, and The Nostradamus Effect.  On the Animal Planet channel, two specials entitled Mermaids: The Body Found and Mermaids: The New Evidence, broadcast in 2012 and 2013 respectively, gave the cable outlet its highest ratings in its seventeen-year history. These fake documentaries were assumed to be real by many viewers, prompting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to issue a statement stating that mermaids do not actually exist.  And it is almost to easy to mention that The Learning Channel, aka TLC, has achieved its highest ratings by turning to reality programs, such as Toddlers & Tiaras, and its notorious spin-off, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.



Many more examples come to mind, but it is also worth asking whether Facebook status updates and tweets on Twitter provide any kind of alternative to serious, reasoned discourse?  In the foreword to Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman wrote, "As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists 'failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.'"  Does the constant barrage of stimuli that we receive today via new media, and the electronic media in general, make it easier or harder for us to think, and to think about thinking, as Arendt would have us do? Huxley's final words in Brave New World Revisited are worth recalling:

Meanwhile, there is still some freedom left in the world. Many young people, it is true, do not seem to value freedom.  But some of us still believe that, without freedom, human beings cannot become fully human and that freedom is therefore supremely valuable. Perhaps the forces that now menace freedom are too strong to be resisted for very long. It is still our duty to do whatever we can to resist them. (1958, pp. 122-123)

It's not that distractions and entertainment are inherently evil, or enslaving, but what Huxley, Postman, and Arendt all argue for is the need for placing limits on our amusements, maintaining a separation between contexts, based on what content is most appropriate. Or as was so famously expressed in Ecclesiastes: "To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven." The problem is that now the time is always 24/7/365, and the boundaries between contexts dissolve within the electronic media environment.  Without a context, there is no balance, the key ecological value that relates to the survival, and sustainability of any given culture.  For Postman, whose emphasis was on the prospects for democratic culture, we have become a culture dangerously out of balance.  For Arendt, in "Mass Culture and Mass Media," the emphasis was somewhat different, but the conclusion quite similar, as can be seen in her final comments:

An object is cultural to the extent that it can endure; this durability is the very opposite of its functionality, which is the quality which makes it disappear again from the phenomenal world by being used and used up. The "thingness" of an object appears in its shape and appearance, the proper criterion of which is beauty. If we wanted to judge an object by its use value alone, and not also by its appearance… we would first have to pluck out our eyes. Thus, the functionalization of the world which occurs in both society and mass society deprives the world of culture as well as beauty.  Culture can be safe only with those who love the world for its own sake, who know that without the beauty of man-made, worldly things which we call works of art, without the radiant glory in which potential imperishability is made manifest to the world and in the world, all human life would be futile and no greatness could endure.

Our constant stream of technological innovation continues to contribute to the functionalization of the world, and the dominance of what Jacques Ellul called "la technique," the drive toward efficiency as the only value that can be effectively invoked in the kind of society that Postman termed a technopoly, a society in which culture is completed dominated by this technological imperative.  The futility of human life that Arendt warns us about is masked by our never-ending parade of distractions and amusements; the substitution of the trivial for greatness is disguised by the quality and quantity of our entertainment.  We experience the extremes of the hyperrational and the hyperreal, both of which focus our attention on the ephemeral, rather than the eternal that Arendt upholds.  She argues for the importance of loving the world for its own sake, which requires us to be truly ecological in our orientation, balanced in our approach, clear and true in our minds and our hearts.  Is there any question that this is what is desperately needed today? Is there any question that this is what seems to elude us time and time again, as all of our innovations carry us further and further away from the human lifeworld?


Thanks, as always, to Bridget Hollenback of Bard College's Hannah Arendt Center for her blogemeister work over there, and providing the illustrations that I have borrowed for this repost.

I BiT Newsweek

So, I know it's been a while again, but in my last two posts, Boston Globe Sox and The Amazon Post, I shared articles in which I was quoted on the purchases of two major newspapers this past summer. 

As the third part of this series, here is a television news report from the program Biz Asia America, described as "a daily global business news program aims to combine reporting of economic and financial issues in North and South America with those from China and the Asian region" that is shown on CCTV, which stands for China Central Television. This report was broadcast back in early August, and uploaded to YouTube soon after on August 9th.

The piece is about IBT Media buying Newsweek, which once upon a time was Time magazine's main competition in the popular weekly news magazine market. Here's the write-up from YouTube:

CCTV America correspondent Nick Harper reports: IBT buys the Newsweek and re-tool the print media to make money online. IBT person talks about the two companies will complement each other.

My quote is a very short one that comes close to the end of the segment, at 2 minutes, 45 seconds in, in case you just want to fast forward. But here is the report in its entirety:





I'll just add to this that the sales of Newsweek, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe are just the tip of the iceberg, in my opinion. We'll be seeing more of this sort of consumption of print media as publishing becomes a mostly electronic endeavor, with print reserved for special occasions.

As for IBT, in this moment it stands for I BiT Newsweek, and they may not have bit off more than they can chew, but it may have given the digital news company a bit of indigestion later, or maybe they just got hungry again an hour or so later...

The Amazon Post

Related to my previous post, Boston Globe Sox, I was also quoted in an August 6th article in the E-Commerce Times entitled, Mr. Bezos Goes to Washington, on the purchase of the Washington Post by Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. The piece, by Erika Morphy, begins with the following teaser in large type:

Jeff Bezos has done something that could prove to have far greater influence than being elected to Congress. He has bought The Washington Post. "This will enable him to manage the communication of the inevitable regulation and restrictions Congress will place on digital copyrights, online taxation practices, antitrust, etc.," noted KD+E's Erik Dochtermann. And that's just for starters.

The article then begins in earnest:

News that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is acquiring The Washington Post, one of the top newspapers in the United States, shook the publishing world on Monday. Bezos is buying the paper for US$250 million in cash, a transaction that will include affiliated publications. Bezos is making the acquisition as an individual -- the Post is not to be part of Amazon's vast array of products and services.

Much is being said about this sale epitomizing the demise of print journalism's golden era. The Washington Post has carved an indelible mark in U.S. history, with its fight to publish the Pentagon Papers and its reporting on Watergate -- events that occurred decades ago but still resonate.

Today, though, the Post is being picked up for a song by a digital entrepreneur, a turn of events that is astounding to many, even though the newspaper industry has been struggling for a number of years -- in large part due to the encroachment of online media and the Internet. There is no reason to assume that a paper like The Washington Post could remain immune to these trends.

Time for me to chime in with my two pence of pensé (not that I get even one cent out of it):

"The age of the daily newspaper is coming to an end, and print news organizations have been scrambling for some time now to make the transition to the Web, with very mixed results," noted Lance Strate, professor of communication and media studies at Fordham.

Because this is a purchase made by Bezos the individual -- not Amazon -- it may not shed much light on the future of print journalism. However, it can be expected that there will be some synergies along the way. Certainly the acquisition speaks volumes about how dominant tech money has become in the U.S. economy, but there are only hints of what the deal could mean for digital content, journalism and e-commerce in general.

And as I have done so before, here's the full text of what I provided via e-mail to Erika, so you can get more of my take on the matter, along with the context of my quote, not to mention a sense of how reporters abstract quotes out of larger commentary:

Marshall McLuhan said that print is dead back in the sixties, and most people scoffed at the remark, but he was simply observing the direction in which we were headed, and in this as in many other things, he proved to be correct.

While there will always be a market for high end books, as art objects as much as reading material, it's the cheap, throwaway print media, the pulp fiction and nonfiction, that is being replaced by the even cheaper and more ephemeral medium of electronic text. The age of the daily newspaper is coming to an end, and print news organizations have been scrambling for some time now to make the transition to the web, with very mixed results.

As news reporting continues to go digital, what newspapers have to offer is their organizations, which continue to be downgraded due to the evaporation of profits, and their brand. And there are a few brands that stand out nationally and internationally, such as The New York TImes, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. With a relatively strong news organization still in place, and one of the best brands in the business, the Washington Post is a worthwhile purchase for Amazon. This provides Amazon with a new form of content to go with their Kindle ereaders and tablets, one that is renewed on a regular basis. In the long run, content is king in the world of media, as the hardware is sold only on occasion, but the software is purchased, or accessed in the case of advertising media, continually.

Bezos started out in print, as a bookseller, and has a special attachment to the medium, and periodical sales are exactly what Amazon needs to supplement books sales as they try to establish themselves as the pre-eminent purveyor of the written word, in contrast to Apple's domination of recorded music, and as they both fight it out over video sales. There may also be a sense of noblesse oblige on the part of Bezos, in trying to preserve a remnant of the print media that Amazon helped to undermine, and maybe even a bit of guilt.

Now, back to the article, and a new section entitled "Bezos' Long Runway":

For starters, Bezos does not need the paper to turn a profit -- at least, not immediately -- which will give him more room to experiment, noted Rich Hanley, associate professor of journalism and graduate journalism director at Quinnipiac University.

"He may see it as a platform for his other personal ambitions that may include revolutionizing the way news is gathered, assembled and delivered," Hanley told the E-Commerce Times.

"He will certainly bring the same blend of curiosity and analysis to solving the crisis of journalism as he did when he selected books as the ideal product for launching an online store," he predicted. "The Internet is, after all, nothing more than interfaces connected to databases, which is the foundation of Bezos' original insight as applied to online commerce."

Bezos probably will experiment with smart reporting through the Kindle Publishing platform, suggested N. Venkat Venkatraman, a business professor at Boston University, which is located in a city that also saw its flagship paper trade recently.

"I see it as an opportunistic buy for him -- one that may have a longer-term connection to Amazon, but in the short term, it is about Bezos," he told the E-Commerce Times.

The last part of the article comes after the heading "Influencing Politics":

The acquisition is also an example of how tech executives are increasingly seeking to influence the power center that is official Washington -- a role that in previous years they disregarded as unimportant.

Bezos now has control of the most powerful medium in D.C. in terms of governmental influence, Erik Dochtermann, CEO of media agency KD+E, told the E-Commerce Times.

"This will enable him to manage the communication of the inevitable regulation and restrictions Congress will place on digital copyrights, online taxation practices, antitrust, etc.," he noted.

It is a move straight out of the Murdoch playbook, Dochtermann said. "How he chooses to wield this new power will likely take years to reveal itself."

I find it hard to imagine Bezos as the next Murdoch, and I suspect owning the newspaper may be more of a hobby for him, rather than a significant financial move. Or maybe it will be a creative outlet. After all, McLuhan did suggest that when a medium becomes obsolesced, it often is transformed from a mode of communication into an art form. While the electronic media turn journalism into entertainment, as Neil Postman noted in Amusing Ourselves to Death, print media are transforming the news into a type of artistic expression, giving new meaning to Ezra Pound's remark that the artist is the antenna of the race.

Boston Globe Sox

I know it's been a while, I apologize for being a bad blogger lately, it's not that I haven't been writing, it's just been that a bunch of other writing commitments have kept me occupied. I'll fill you in on some of that later on, but for now let me start to play catch up.

So, back in August, August 6 to be specific, I was quoted in the International Business Times, in an article entitled Red Sox Owner Buys Boston Globe Newspaper: Five Things You Should Know, written by Palash Ghosh.

Here's how the piece begins:

John W. Henry, the private equity billionaire businessman and principal owner of The Boston Red Sox baseball club, has agreed to purchase the Boston Globe newspaper (as well as the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and some other assets) for $70 million.

Here are some things you should know about this deal:

And this is where the five things you should know come up.  Number one:

*John Henry Bought In Very, Very Cheap

Henry purchased the venerable 141-year-old newspaper (which has won 21 Pulitzer Prizes) at a bargain basement price. Twenty years ago, the New York Times Co. (NYSE: NYT) bought the Globe from the Taylor family for whopping $1.1 billion (or about $1.78 billion in 2013 dollars). That amounts to a 96 percent discount. Lou Ureneck, a Boston University journalism professor, told Reuters that Henry paid more for his second baseman (Dustin Pedroia who recently signed a contract extension valued at a minimum of $100 million) than he did for the Globe.

And number two (no pun intended here):

*The Globe Is In Deep Trouble

Like most newspapers, the Globe is facing serious issues -- overall revenues are declining by 7 percent annually, while revenues from print advertising plunged by 10 percent every year. “Newspapers are bleeding, losing much of their advertising revenue,” Dr. Lance Strate, Professor of Communication and Media Studies and Associate Chair for Graduate Studies at Fordham University, told IB Times. “At this point, the most valuable thing about the Globe is its distinctive brand, more so that the publication itself. Every newspaper is struggling in making the transition to the internet.”

Strate suggested that he’s not even sure the Globe is worth $70 million price tag, but added that Boston is more of a print-oriented city than most. “The Globe does have a distinctive image that most newspapers lack, so I think it may turn out to be a good deal for Henry,” he added.

And yes, there was my two cents about the seventy million dollars, quite the bargain, don't you think? Well, let's hear from someone else on thing number three:

*This Deal Raises Some Serious Conflicts of Interest

John Henry’s acquisition of the region’s biggest paper could raise some serious issues with conflicts of interest and journalistic integrity. If the boss of the newspaper owns the baseball team that its sportswriters are supposed to cover, will they be forced to limit their criticism of the team, its players, its coaches and, particularly, its front office? Keep in mind, Henry also owns a majority share in local sports television network, New England Sports Network, which broadcasts Red Sox games.

Bob Ryan, the Globe’s most well known sports columnist, told the New York Times: “This was the last circumstance anyone would want. It’s nothing anyone would wish. It’s scary, to say the least, for all involved.” The Globe’s sports editor Joe Sullivan similarly groused: “We don’t know what the new situation is going to be in terms of hierarchy, but I would hope to be able to continue to cover the Red Sox the way we always have.” Sullivan conceded that the mere appearance of conflicts of interest will be hard to deal with. “It will be there, hanging in the air,” he said.

The Globe's most prominent baseball voice, Dan Shaughnessy, finds himself in a particularly uncomfortable position since he had criticized Henry in his columns over the years. “There’s an inherent conflict of interest which no one can do anything about,” Shaughnessy said. “All we can hope for is that everyone is allowed to do his job professionally and that we are able to keep our independence.”

And back to me to straighten things out (no pun intended here either) for number four:

*But This Has Happened Before

Indeed, The Globe’s former parent, New York Times Co., once held as much as an 18 percent stake in the parent corporation of the Red Sox club, which it finally sold off in 2012 after ten years of ownership. Other pro sports clubs in Atlanta, Chicago and Los Angeles and elseshere have owned shares in local newspaper as well, so the Globe-Red Sox deal is hardly unprecedented. Indeed, between 1964 and 1972, the most storied franchise in all of baseball (and Red Sox rival), the New York Yankees, were owned by the CBS television network. Similarly, the Chicago Cubs baseball club was once owned by the Tribune Company.

Strate noted that television stations used to cover the games independently, with sportscasters who were calling the games employed by the station, not the team itself. “Now they tend to be employed by the team, and this changes the nature of the coverage significantly,” he said, “What once was sports journalism becomes sports public relations instead.”

And one more thing, which makes for thing number five:

*Boston Globe Has Strong Brand, Reputation

Strate also said that in the past, news organizations have had sufficient journalistic integrity to be able to report objectively despite being owned by the same individuals or companies. “Whether that is still the case, given the overall decline in professional journalism remains to be seen, but the Boston Globe, like many major newspapers, has a solid tradition of professionalism to fall back on,” he said. Nowadays blogs and social media outlets will call out any appearance of conflict of interest, another motivation for keeping to the straight and narrow.”

Nice to be given the last word here. And one thing I'd add to this report is that one of the main attractions of the Boston Globe is its sports coverage, both in paper form, and especially online, which makes the paper an especially attractive addition for a professional sports organization.

And finally, I just want to say that, speaking as a Mets fan, please note that I did not make any reference to 1986 and Bill Buckner in this discussion relating to Red Sox baseball. Really, I would never stoop so low as to remind my Bostonian friends of such a painful moment in their sports history, no matter how much pleasure the memory brings me...

Dialogue M for Media Ecology

So, my friend Corey Anton is a big time YouTuber, with over 600 videos on his channel!  And recently, we decided to record a Skype dialogue, which he then posted to YouTube:





The video is over an hour long, starting out to be a discussion of what we mean by media ecology, but soon wandering all over the place. Whether it's worth watching in its entirety or in part I leave up to you, but I can just hear Neil Postman saying, Lance, don't you have better things to do with your time? 

And even if having an intellectual conversation with a colleague isn't a bad way to spend an hour of my time, listening to it may not be the best use of your own time. I guess you'll have to decide for yourself. I should add that time is a topic that comes up, and we also bring up whether the video has any value towards the end of the dialogue.

If you look at it over on YouTube, you'll see a whole bunch of comments.  I like Mike Plugh's remark that if nothing else, it gives you a sense of media ecology as a language in its own right, about how to talk media ecology, and do so fluently.  ¿Habla ecología de los medios?

My Walter Ong Award

As I mentioned in my previous post, At MEA 2013, I received the Media Ecology Association's 2013 Walter J. Ong Award for Career Achievement in Scholarship at this year's MEA convention hosted by Grand Valley State University, in Grand Rapids, Michigan last month.  And in case you were curious, and you probably weren't, but just in case you were curious as to what it looks like, I decided to have it scanned, so I could share it here on Blog Time Passing with my vast readership:

And indeed, I am very grateful for the honor, and more importantly the friendship of my fellow media ecologists! 

By the way, if you want to see another cool award I received once upon a time, circa 2002, take a look at his post from 2007: My Day!

My MEA Keynote (If Not A Then E)

So, as I mentioned in my previous post, At MEA 2013, I gave a keynote address at the 14th Annual Convention of the Media Ecology Association, hosted by Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, June 20-23, 2013. My talk was on Thursday evening, June 20, and as it turns out, my friends at Grand Valley, the MEA convention coordinators Corey Anton and Valerie Peterson, had all of the featured presentations videotaped, so I was able to upload a copy to my YouTube channel (all of them can also be found on the MEA's channel).

My talk begins with some extended opening remarks, including my dedication of the address to my old undergraduate professor, Jack Barwind, who passed away just recently. Jack introduced me to much of what I later came to know under the heading of media ecology, including general semantics and systems theory.

Once I get into the address itself, the focus shifts to the PowerPoint presentation, thankfully I would think, because how long can you just look at my talking head?  But once it's over, it's back to me for the Q&A.






Anyway, this is a live presentation, complete with interruption from a Skype alert from Valerie Peterson's mom, as I was using her computer for the presentation.  So it's a bit on the rough side. 

At some point in the not too distant future, and hopefully with a little help from my friends, I would like to create a polished, direct to video version of "If Not A Then E" to put out there. But for now, I suppose that this will do.