Leslie Griffith

Man in the Mirror - How death becomes us

 

Michael Jackson is dead. Now we love him?

Farrah Fawcett’s dead. Now we love her? And, finally, in death, a death bed proposal!

Death just brings out the best in us all! Aren’t we special?

And, if one is terminally ill and at death’s door…that’s really sweet. People look up from their Palm Pilots and stop Twittering, or tweeting, or whatever it is they are doing…if only for a moment. In the final hours, perhaps one even gets to communicate with their loved ones by spoken word! Holy trifecta! It’s almost worth dying for!

Perhaps it is easy to get worked up about all this celebri-tainment. But, this fascination with other people’s train wrecks has got to stop distracting us from connecting to each other. Think about it people. If we “social network” with actual conversations and exchange ideas, perhaps we can create a government afraid of the people instead of the other way around. As we spiral into a third world country…how exactly do we tweet our way out of that?  

News producers…can you hear me?

I had the misfortune of traveling cross country over the weekend. That meant waiting for hours in airports with nothing to do but watch our corporate-owned mass media spin out of control over Jackson’s death and, like a carnival freak show, work the public into an absolute manic frenzy.    

CNN news, once an internationally-recognized source of information, has devolved into Entertainment Tonight  periodically juxtaposed with feeble efforts to convince us otherwise. How does that work? So glad you asked. It works like this: Hours upon hours of talking about M.J’s tragic life interspersed with promotional video showing a correspondent with a Hijab on her head. Note to reader: Hijab is not the same as jib-jab.

Here’s the real news flash: CNN is no longer serious news. No matter how many reporters wear an Islamic head-dress.

Our brains are being hijacked and our memories are shorter than the lifespan of a Med fly. The mass media is Anna Nicole Smithing us into a coma. And here’s another news flash for ya’: The mass media loves death because it’s cheap. Let me be more specific. It cost little or nothing to send reporters to Los Angeles and stand outside a dead celebrity’s home.

But, putting boots on the ground reporters in places where U.S. bombs are killing civilians? To cover a drone-strike that leaves behind dead Afghani children? No one wants to see that. We like celebrity death. We ignore all those other deaths. Not to mention the “cost-ineffective” expense of sending unbiased correspondents (Dahr Jamail proves that’s not always an oxymoron) to places like Afghanistan and Iraq .

No way Jose! Instead, America ’s mass media shows the world what it thinks the American people care about most…Michael Jackson’s “Dirty Laundry.”

“We can do the innuendo.

We can dance and sing.

When it’s said and done we haven’t told you a thing.

We all know that crap is King

Give us dirty laundry!”

From the scathing words of Don Henley to the sweet innocent words of Michael Jackson’s hit song, Man in the Mirror:

“If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change!”

In Jackson ’s honor, let’s look into the mirror of our national psyche and make a change by turning off the television, putting down our micro-blogging devices and actually speak to one another out loud and face to face. Perhaps then a word could lead to a desire to listen, then listening could lead to open hearts, then open hearts could lead to….well, dare I say it …perhaps a kind word or even a hug.

One good honest caress is more powerful than all the oxycontin in Michael Jackson’s body…and that simple act certainly would have done him a world of good.

Will the Real Melissa Huckaby Please Stand Up?

The woman on the left is from Manteca, California. That’s very near Tracy, California where the woman on the right, also named Melissa Huckaby, was arrested in the maddeningly hard-to-believe rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl.

Both are single moms, and both around the same age.  One key difference is that the Melissa on the left, although publicly accused of the same crime as the Melissa on the right, is the victim of mistaken identity.

Herein lies a multi-layered problem in journalism, one that could have led to a rush to judgment. But the person writing this now has watched this metastasizing and malignant metamorphosis first hand and learned--- never rush to judgment in the rush to air.

Melissa Huckaby on the left was mistakenly identified as the suspect by a local Bay Area television station. An employee in a television newsroom got the name of the suspect and then, apparently, found a picture of a woman with the same name living close to where the killing took place. Proximity her only crime, the Melissa Huckaby on the left used the social networking site—MySpace. Her picture was found there, then put on the air.

The falsely identified woman’s MySpace account is now closed, and she and her family no doubt wonder if or when they can walk Manteca streets safely again.

What the free and likely disillusioned Melissa Huckaby learned in this cruelest of ways is when journalists don’t do their jobs well, lives get broken and innocents harmed. What she likely does not understand is how endemic this problem is in newsrooms across the country, where life altering mistakes happen every day—mistakes that often damage much more than reputations. Some “mistakes” have the power to bring democracy to its knees, leaving citizens without access to diligently checked, thoroughly vetted information from various sources—so they can decide for themselves what to believe.

Hoisted on its own petard, mass-produced corporate media is an animal in a trap willing to chew through its own flesh to survive. But survival is at great expense. Corporate greed, with sales people essentially in charge of newsrooms and the profit motive directing the news, has crippled the Fourth Estate.  Still, citizens limp on—looking for nuggets of truth on-line, in a television news story or the local paper. They often find journalism is collateral damage. Those who dare to practice it in corporate media conduits are often labeled “resistant to change”—the death knell.

Over the last ten years, massive lay-offs damaged journalism’s most important collateral—the people who believe in getting the story straight.

Fact checkers were often the first to go—or the first to quit in protest as newscasts across the country multiplied like gerbils.

“All news all the time” is the new motto of television news: “Quantity over quality.”  Helicopter shots of traffic jams replace reporters with years of experience, and reporters once given time and encouragement to walk the beat with “boots on the ground” in an effort to find truth are now forced to do so many other jobs, it’s humanly impossible not to makes mistakes when compromises are demanded.

Those who stayed for the pension and the health insurance and the paycheck are filled with cold acquiescence. Marching, marching, marching—in conforming stupors. The spirit of a good reporter, the spirit of a revolutionary who questions both the corporate media itself and the government it’s beholden to, are mostly just shadows of their former selves. The owners of most corporate media are too far lost to understand by quelling the spirit of the town criers, they are destroying themselves in a perversely fascinating lemmings-off–a-cliff sort of way.

The internet now makes it possible to ruin a person’s life in seconds, not just locally but across the country.  Newspapers, web sites,  MySpace, Facebook and a myriad of other conduits have the potential of posting the same inaccurate information in the wink of an eye—or a “Poke” in it.

If those attempting to find reliable information are tempted to scream, “That damn so and so media corporation is so irresponsible I’ll never watch, or read or listen to it again!” Good, that’s certainly a start, but misinformation and out and out lies are so pervasive now, it’s not that simple.

About the same time Melissa Huckaby was misidentified in local media, the national media was called on the carpet for a headline that was pejorative, provocative and either a lie or a mistake.  Unfortunately, mistakes are not exclusive to television. Information is now so loose and people have such short, easily forgotten spurts of outrage, the mistakes flow down an ever-widening, ever-darker memory hole. The Fourth Estate in some cases has become a trash compactor, crushing stories into smaller blocks of garbage.

Recently the following conversation took place with a trusted reporter who not too long ago was allowed to help the citizens she serves put stories into perspective with some degree of context and sense of proportion. Now her corporate media company tells her viewers are too stupid to understand hard issues. Now she is told to tell her stories in 20 seconds and write twice as many stories to fill the never-ending newscasts.

My question: “How do you do that? My fingers would have whiplash!”

My friend paused, issued a sarcastic nose snort and said, “I write the story the way I used to, explaining all sides—then I take out the facts.”

To quote a lovely, young, bright, promising television producer who quit in protest over the inability to do her job, “I thought I was going to work for Chez Panisse and I ended up at McDonalds.”

No nutrition, just filler…and sometimes they can’t even get that right. Just ask the Melissa Huckaby on the left.

22 May 09: Leslie writing on this issue caught the attentsion of the Columbia Journalism Review

Deliverance from the Fox in the Hen House

SFGate  and The Huffington Post

The verge of bankruptcy brought me to California . Spurred by a boom and bust cycle in western Colorado, packing up the kids and the trailer and moving further West was the only way to survive.

Looking back now, dueling banjos play the tune from “Deliverance” in my head, providing levity—for a brief moment. But the parallels between then and now are no laughing matter.

Time: Western Colorado , early 1980s.

Political situation: Arab oil embargo, President Jimmy Carter initiated the Synfuels Corporation—a publicly-funded investment bank designed to free Americans of dependence on Middle East oil.

Plan: Pump 88 Billion dollars of tax payer’s money into Synfuels to encourage domestic fuel production. In Colorado, it was oil shale—a sedimentary rock that can be heated to release hydrocarbons that can be distilled into synthetic oil. 

Problem:  Heads of major oil companies flooded into Grand Junction with joy abundant, an implausible plan, and both hands held out.  Trusting those in the oil industry to find alternative forms of domestic fuel was not a good idea. Jimmy Carter trusted the fox to guard the to    hen house.

Thus, the oil shale industry was born, bringing tens of thousands of people and hundreds of businesses to western Colorado . By golly, it was a boom! Towns with names such as Rangeley and Rifle were born—prosperity for all! Reporters were silent.

But this is where the Rorschach test pattern, which looked like a picture of progress and hope at first, began morphing into demonic ink blots painting a long-term picture of despair. We reporters had not put the pixels together…yet.

Ronald Reagan got elected proclaiming big government the problem, not the solution, and some key government subsidies were, according to Mr. Reagan, part of that problem. By 1986, the Synfuels program was terminated and the flow of money stopped.

But it was too late. Mountains were bombed and giant grain mill-sized distilleries were filled with shale rocks containing precious fossil fuel.

I witnessed it all as a very green cub reporter. Just 24 years-old when the Synfuels program was peaking, I found myself gazing up at the skyscraping retort with breathless awe other reporters/cheerleaders openly shared.  

We hoped it would work.  People in Grand Junction were happy and buying lots of everything, including advertising on radio and television.

The retorts roared and shook from the intense heat “experts” assured us would easily seduce the fuel from the shale. What came out you ask? Well to be proper, it was the sound of deflating tires. To be Colorado Crude, it sounded like a wet fart.

Those who speculated on the rapid boom, those who built the buildings and homes and businesses supporting tens of thousands of newcomers to western Colorado went suddenly, and shockingly, bust.

One acquaintance, who built a high-rise to house oil company executives, took the elevator to the top of his boom-time building and threw himself off.  A temporary millionaire; he died a pauper.  Does this sound familiar?  At this point, the boom was in the rear-view mirror and the only things in demand were a U-Haul trailer and an on-ramp to Interstate 80. The housing market collapsed, jobs evaporated, and my girls and I hit the road—arriving in the Bay Area which , thankfully, was BOOMING.

Lesson learned: Had reporters done some research and reporting, we might not have lifted our pom-poms with so much enthusiasm when the oil companies came to call. We did not have Google’s library at our fingertips, and Grand Junction ’s Mesa County library did not have books explaining the particulars of oil shale. Oil shale was never a promising source of crude and it was used mostly at that time by backwards Eastern European countries with dictators—places Like Romania—where, if one was lucky enough to have a fire place, the shale rocks were used like coal.

If only I had known then what I know now…that corporate greed is insatiable and when coupled with a little collusion from the government, the little guys paying taxes get a good butt kicking.

Today, those working to get Wall Street out of trouble are the same people who used to run it.  They cannot conceive of any plan other than shoring up an already broken—corrupt—inadequate—unpatriotic—“every man for himself” system.

Putting Wall Street “experts” in charge of changing Wall Street is much like putting oil company CEOs in charge of finding alternatives to fossil fuels. Is the fox loose in the hen house again?

Concerned and cautious of those who criticize without offering potential solutions, here are two from a gal who’s seen one too many booms turn into boondoggles.

Most Americans work for corporations. Most corporations require employees to invest their retirement money in the stock market. That should stop. (I hear you gasping!) It’s the employee’s money; let them do what they want to with it. We now know—even giants fall.

On the housing front, empower average, regular workers, the real worker-bees of this top-heavy management world. Challenge the workers of this country to put their rage and sense of impotence aside and help. How, you ask? Here’s one plan.

Why not give those willing to buy repossessed homes at bargain basement prices a one-time pass on capital gains taxes? Construction workers now drawing unemployment checks could do their magic on fixer-uppers and, without paying capital gains, they might be able to sell them and make a few bucks. It’s a lot like the formula the “go to guys” who started this mess are using.

Finally, here’s my most defining boom and bust cycle lesson. The size of the government has doubled since 1995 and the number of investigative journalists watching over that government has – well let’s just say – dwindled. That’s a formula for more greed and corruption.

Warnings need special delivery from reporters before the tsunami hits and the strumming of the banjos delivers us to despondency. Reporters cannot be government and corporate mouthpieces. 

As I write this, down the block from my home sit two repossessed homes. A wonderful, older couple—both former hippies—built the homes with their own hands. Strangled by mortgage payments they could not make, they threw the keys on the banker’s desk, packed up the U-haul, hugged the neighbor’s goodbye, and pulled out the driveway looking for the nearest freeway on-ramp. Waving goodbye, I heard the banjo play.

Painfully Ironic P.S: There is talk of reviving the oil shale industry.

Cheney’s Toys

Published on The Huffington Post, Salon.com, USAToday.com,SFgate,com,Alternet.com--April 6th, 2009

How many times did former vice president Dick Cheney whisper undermining, surreptitious words into the ears of Israeli and high-ranking Pentagon officials? Every day? Once a week? Several seditious rumors a month?

Those who listened are simply Cheney’s Toys. Sadly, Dick does not understand his play date is done and his tinker toys need putting away. In the words of Shakespeare, “Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look.”

This week Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh reported some sobering news. Now that the clock has run out on Bush/Cheney, the former vice president has, according to Hersh, not only called Israeli officials and told them “not to trust Mr. Obama because he was pro-Palestinian and not ready for the major leagues,” but Hersh went on to report that Cheney/Bush “Stay behinds,” loyal senior officials in the Pentagon, National Security Agency and even inside the White House, are still reporting back to Cheney. Those of us who regard Hersh as one of the greatest journalists of our generation tend to believe him.

Sleep deprived and soaked in worry after stomaching that gaseous news, a startling look at an often-ignored declassified military document leads one to consider how back-room whispers can stir up funnel clouds capable of causing long-term hurricanes.

Past is prologue. Shakespeare wrote it and it is carved in stone on the National Archives Building. Many secrets are buried in the piles of paper held in that building, but one document gives a clue to just how far those who proclaim love of country, but seem to prefer love of power, will go to destabilize it in the name of a poisonous “patriotic” ideology. Although seemingly unrelated to JFK’s murder, a plan for attacking Cuba called Operation Northwoods was declassified by the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board in 1997. It remained clouded in obscurity until James Bamford wrote about it his book on the National Security Agency titled “Body of Secrets” back in 2001. Even so, it has remained unknown to most, another victim of the mainstream media’s memory hole.

Written in May of 1962, a month after the Bay of Pigs fiasco; five months before the Cuban missile crisis; and a year before President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated; the Northwoods document illustrates in horrifying language that Kennedy, like Obama, had “hold over’s” and “loyalists”  willing to risk millions of American lives to further their own agenda.

Despite a legion of Soviet Missiles pointed toward America, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, guided by Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer and goaded by Curtis “Bombs Away” LeMay, were itching to kill themselves some Communists—even after Kennedy made it clear he did not want a war with Cuba. Scorning the wishes of the President and the restrictions of the US constitution, the Joint Chiefs contrived and plotted a way to stir one up. Duplicitous whispers no doubt echoed through the halls of power then, too. Mr. Cheney cannot keep his telescopic gun scopes from covertly targeting Iran, just as The Joint Chiefs’ fixation on Cuba led them to concoct a chaos-inducing secret plan to undermine their President, as the follow memo proves:

 

 

How far were the Joint Chiefs of 1962 willing to go? 

      

• "It is possible to create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has shot down a chartered civil airliner enroute (sic) from the United States to Jamaica, Guatemala, Pamama or Venzuela.
• “We could blow up a US ship in Guantanamo bay and blame Cuba.”
• “We could develop a communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even Washington.”

For the complete Joint chiefs/Cassius collage see: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf

We all remember how plotting and conniving against a democratically-elected president ended in November of 1963. And we have heard the comparisons between the young, vibrant JFK and this new President. May the parallels end there. Past cannot be Prologue.

“Forever and Forever farewell Cassius.”

One Lone Bureau in Mumbai and an Actual reporter

Published in The Huffington Post December 1st, 2008

CNN made two scrupulous decisions before the tragedy in Mumbai. Both illustrating to the nation and the world the capacity of television news to be more than, as Edward R. Murrow put it, “Wires and a Box.”  If the other handful of networks owning America’s major conduits of information take notice, perhaps television journalism will not remain an oxymoron and the people’s trust in television journalists can be restored.

CNN proved ready for this tragedy by inherently understanding a bureau in India could become a strategically important move and possible open a window for the rest of us to peek through.  No other television news corporation had a bureau and a reporter there.

How did CNN figure that out?  With Pakistan to the northwest, generally considered to be one of the most dangerous places on the planet, Afghanistan next to Pakistan and Iran and Iraq next door, it did not take remarkable sagacity, but it did take money, and that’s why there were no other American television network bureaus there.  Stockholders these days often consider education excess.

Sectarian and political violence surround India, but until Thanksgiving Day, India was considered relatively safe. Relative being the operative word in that sentence.

The second thing CNN did right came in the form of a scrappy, brilliant, formidable reporter manning the lone bureau in India.  Sara Sidner barely flinched when explosions erupted and drunk and angry mobs surrounded her. She lives in India; she knew her stuff.  But then, Sara Sidner always had “Game” and a “Send me in coach” attitude.

Sara Sidner sat in the same chair as I for many years. She worked as an anchor on weekends and a reporter on week days.  Local news did not fight for her to stay. She had no contract keeping her from walking away-- so she did. She’s a rarity in television news today. She did not cover herself in airbrush makeup and flap her eye lashes or purse her dimples for the cameras. She wanted to be a reporter.

Few local corporate television executives notice Sara Sidner qualities these days, so she did what big fish in small ponds do. They either shrink or swim away and grow.

The pond Sara left was crowded with beauty queens toting beauty pageant sashes as resumes. Objectification to reach a goal is not Sara’s style.   Instead she chose the unknown. She chose to walk away from the comforts of home toward potential terror. She has a reporters heart and mind and if she could be cloned, American’s would be better informed and democracy safer. She chose to immerse herself in Indian culture while surrounded by countries with itchy- trigger- fingers, twisted loyalties and sectarian and political killing fields.

Following  the massacres in Mumbai one former intelligence member told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, that the “human intelligence networks” have collapsed---that there is complete reliance on “technological intelligence gathering. ” The same former intelligence officer said, “That contributed to the intelligence failure that perhaps could have stopped the “Thanksgiving day bedlam.”

Reporters based in foreign countries once helped fill that “intelligence void.” And anyone who has ever sent an e-mail to a friend, who misinterpreted the message, knows technology cannot replace human nuance. The lump in my throat melted when I saw Sara reporting from Mumbai. I knew her ability to gather information and relate it to others, and I also know America cannot avoid another 9/11 without understanding these conflicts.  People love Sara and sense her sincerity, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she did not come up with some answers as to whom the culprits were and the points they were trying to make.

 One personal note: When the contradictions of television news got too much for me, Sara Sidner sent flowers to my home and pleaded with me to return to television broadcasting. She indicated current destructive trends would change and reporters would be allowed to become public servants again. With those gestures, she considered my friendship more important than climbing the ladder to the anchor chair that in local and national news turns reporters into actors and creates myopic minds promoting corporate cronyism and corporate agendas. She was not looking for a camera close up, she was looking to be the real thing.

Bullying-Buffed-Up-Times

Dear friends, in my job as a journalist,particularly when reporting on events in other countries,at times it was necessary to use photographers or editors from other stations. During those times, we often did live shots for CNN and numerous other television stations across the country and the world. I reported from Moscow for instance during the Cold War. Those interviews were used by networks around the world. Since I worked for an Independent station then, we gave our stories to any network requesting them.

Any reference to editors or photographers should not automatically be assumed to be associated with any particular media corporation.

A journalist learns picking questions carefully is one of the most important tenants of the job.

On this particular day, the object of my inquiry was the biggest, meanest, mood-altered, high maintenance-millionaire- bully around. What motivates a man like that? And why--during the nightmare of the last 8 years-- did such specimens seem to procreate like a nasty virus in a Petri dish?

We had worked together for years, but having never asked me a question about my life or my family, resignation set in, and I kept my distance.

He began to symbolize a certain segment of men today, many running mass conduits of information (television networks) and what he valued and how he lost his way seems socially relevant today.

Who he was, and why his penultimate included being "BIG," I considered to be theoretically crucial information. Why the hours-long workouts? Why the steroids? Why take a substance that makes your looks and performance a lie, and causes cancer? Why work unrelentingly for the muscles making the outside appear formidable, but the content of the character angry and mean, and the content of the trousers unable to stand up and look around?

So, after confessing my own flop- sweat- fear- on dreaded election nights while figuring voting percentages and numbers of precincts at warp speeds live on the air, perhaps quid pro quo could occur. My curiosity, more powerful than my ability to keep quiet, propelled me forward with a well chosen question hoping it would tell me who he was and how he got that way. Turned out, I already knew.

"What is it YOU fear?" I asked without looking up from my paper work as not to alarm him and create suspicion.

He did not twitch a huge muscle.

"I fear being small."

Bulked up to not only beat the band, but beat UP the band, his honesty gave me a Shakespearean look at his values and the values of many running our steroid nation.

"You mean you fear feeling insignificant?"

"No, I mean I fear being a little man. Little men get pushed around."

After 22 years of observing him, it was the first time I felt his pain.

Bulked up to keep the demons away, he was just another little boy in the playground making sure no one hurt him by hurting anyone else. He could not truly measure up, so he beat others up, especially those who saw through the bully-beef-cake image.

In pursuit of false power and literal self-inflation, he hid behind his stature pushing everyone else and everything else out of the way. But in the dark when no one is looking and character is truly measured, he likely came up short, if he came up at all. He, like his country, reflected a false image of health and security.

The news room monitors told his story over and over in various degrees of separation: from the stock market bullies betting on America's failure, to the mass media's - bipartisanship, to government agencies protecting corporate profiteers while ignoring its duty to American citizens, to a president who ignores laws, compassion and intellect.

Pump the iron, make the threats, be the boom-box without the logic.

I have a dream. Perhaps his noisy, misbehaving days are over. Perhaps the country is tired of his kind. Perhaps the bullies big-bad-self indulgent days are numbered and the muscles that make the man will be sapient in nature--turning the boom box down and resolving conflicts the bullies created.

Life is sweet today

First published in The Huffington Post

Life is  Sweet today. The California sunshine is bright and full and there's an easy,  warm breeze helping to relax the lump in my throat.

After 25 years of  reporting--surprises are rare, but my pride in my country today put some life  back into my step and took the hitch out of my get-along.

She did all that---that fresh-real-woman at the Democratic convention--Michelle  Obama.

"Did you see her?" My daughter called to ask.

"No  babe--been working hard on the book--it's almost finished!"

"Mom, dad  said watching her made him cry." (Her dad is a psychologist from the deep  south.)

"I'll watch her online right now." And thus the unplugging of tear ducts began.

It's hard not to get sentimental. My editor says it's  a sappy form of communication--my tendency toward it is rarely effective in writing.

Keeping that in mind, I will only say this:  Racial  hatred here and around the world has consumed me with anger. After 25 years  of reporting on it, my eyes needed a doctor.       

As a young girl  growing up in the south, police were called when a neighbor saw black friends  swimming in my family's backyard pool.

The quarterback of the football  team at my high school in Texas was thrown in jail and beaten to a pulp after he was found at Lookout Point in Tomball, Texas with a white  girl.

There are still hanging trees in antebellum front-yard  courthouses in the south with proud plaques explaining what those trees were  used for.

Sins committed on those southern branches against those  hanged there usually far outweighed any perceived crime--the real culprit was  Melanin levels.

In my lifetime, it seemed unimaginable that a strong,  intelligent, loving, articulate African American woman would be standing on  the stage of the Democratic convention---giving a speech that could help heal  a country bruised and battered and divided. It covered me with hope.

It also made me wonder if the plaques from the old hangin' trees could  be taken down in her honor.