BOB GARFIELD: From WNYC in New York this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Tuesday, Fox News and the Congressional Black Caucus Institute staged the first of two debates with the Democratic presidential candidates before a responsive crowd on the campus of Morgan State University in Baltimore. It was a long and yet lively exchange. The candidates bobbed and weaved, jabbed and occasionally ducked behind their mikes under the mostly focused and persistent questioning of the journalists. Here's Ed Gordon, contributing editor of Savoy magazine, shooting the same question to Bob Graham he'd just posed to another candidate. [APPLAUSE]
ED GORDON: Mr. Graham, let me ask you the same question that I tried with Senator Kerry; see perhaps if you will give me a little bit more straightforward answer, [OH'S!] and that is whether or not-- I, I don't mean that in any disrespect, because he can't know the - specifically - but in your heart do you believe that the president intentionally misled the American people?
BOB GRAHAM: Yes. I have been a member-- [LAUGHTER/APPLAUSE]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Chris Suellentrop is deputy Washington bureau chief for Slate.com. He wrote about this unusual collaboration of Fox News and the Congressional Black Caucus and what came of it. Chris, welcome to the show.
CHRIS SUELLENTROP: Thanks for having me on.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So the first line in your article was: "Can Fox News broadcast every Democratic presidential debate?" And I have to say -- I watched the debate and I thought it was fabulous! So I agree with you.
CHRIS SUELLENTROP: It was amazing, wasn't it? I mean the questions were great. It moved quickly. They kind of lost control at the end when they did sort of a let's-ask-every-candidate-the-same-question -- but up until that point I just thought it was great, and I thought the ding-ding bell to demonstrate that a candidate had finished his time was sort of a great addition. The bell would ding and you'd know that John Kerry or whoever had spoken 30 seconds past their time without having a moderator saying -"Excuse me, sir -- sir, you've passed your time." It just seemed to me that it would be that kind of simple but really great addition to a broadcast.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Apparently Fox News chief Roger Ailes jumped at the chance of televising these debates. Do you think it's because he wants the network to take a larger role or he wants to bring new people -- perhaps Democrats into the Fox fold, or what?
CHRIS SUELLENTROP: I would think if you're a cable news channel you would want to broadcast these debates -- I mean these are news junkies that watch these channels. There is the conspiracy theory that Fox wants to broadcast the debate so that they can package their anti-Democratic propaganda around the debate. I don't know if that's true, but there are lots of people on the internet who think that.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Now Fox, as we have pointed out a couple of times on this show, tends to skew to the right, but do you think the debate was more Democratic, say, than most Fox-watchers have usually had occasion to stomach?
CHRIS SUELLENTROP: Absolutely. I don't think it was a right wing debate; I don't think they were right wing questions. In fact, one of the things I was thinking about while I was watching it was--imagine the political differences between the people inside the debate hall and the people watching at home. [LAUGHTER] I just thought there couldn't be a wider gap between the Fox News television audience and the people inside that debate hall.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: The National Black Caucus and Fox make strange bedfellows.
CHRIS SUELLENTROP: That's right. There was a - probably a lot--a lot of booing at home while the cheering was going on in the hall.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So do you think Fox has set a new paradigm for how debates should be conducted?
CHRIS SUELLENTROP:I don't know that it's a new paradigm but it's a better paradigm than the ones that Jim Lehrer hosted four years ago. There was a lot of criticism of Jim Lehrer's moderating of the Gore-Bush debates, and I think--
BROOKE GLADSTONE: It was too moderate, I think the view was.
CHRIS SUELLENTROP:[LAUGHS] Yes! I, and I think rightly so! I mean the debate should be more than just serving up talking points from the candidates. I mean you get that every day on the campaign trail; you get that on C-Span; you get that in a hundred different places. The debate should be a little tougher than that, and it should be a way to sort of see the candidates think on their feet.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Much of the press speculation before this debate, as with the others, was that there'd be some kind of violence inflicted on frontrunner Howard Dean, or at least it seemed that the a lot of the candidate-watchers hoped there would be; and then the next day there seemed to be a sort of disappointment among commentators when it didn't happen!
CHRIS SUELLENTROP: Well yeah. We like to see blood. The entire debate, both in Albuquerque and in Baltimore, wasn't about Joe Lieberman attacking Howard Dean, but that was the most interesting, exciting and "sexy" thing that happened, and so that was the thing that most people wrote about and that becomes the story of the debate.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So as you look at the press commentary following the debate, what do you think they missed?
CHRIS SUELLENTROP:You know, candidates like Dennis Kucinich or Bob Graham might have good nights and good performances, but because they're lagging in the polls, they're not deemed worthy of coverage -- they don't get coverage! To some extent I think that's reasonable, but it's also unfortunate for them.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: What was your favorite moment?
CHRIS SUELLENTROP: Well my favorite moment was Howard Dean's line about, about Trent Lott. [CLIP FROM DEBATE PLAYS]
HOWARD DEAN:Well if the percent of minorities that's in your state has anything to do with how you can connect with African-American voters, then Trent Lott'd be Martin Luther King. [LAUGHTER]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: You know what my favorite moment was?
CHRIS SUELLENTROP: What's that?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Al Sharpton's favorite song. [CLIP FROM DEBATE PLAYS]
AL SHARPTON: My favorite song is James Brown's song on, on the Republican Party--: Talkin' Loud - Sayin' Nothing. [LAUGHTER/APPLAUSE]
CHRIS SUELLENTROP:Well Al Sharpton was great. I missed him in Albuquerque. I don't want Al Sharpton to be a candidate, but I have a proposal that Al Sharpton should be allowed to participate in every debate -- Republican - Democratic -presidential - just as -- not comic relief, but sort of an entertaining interlude, just as-- and, and also just to keep everybody honest. [LAUGHTER]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Thank you very much.
CHRIS SUELLENTROP: Thank you. [MUSIC]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Chris Suellentrop is the deputy Washington editor of Slate. [JAMES BROWN'S TALKIN' LOUD AND SAYIN' NOTHING]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: If you watch Spanish-language TV, you've probably tuned into a station owned by Univision. With about a hundred stations and affiliates to its name, Univision's programming reaches about 80 percent of the Latinos living in this country. Compare that to the biggest English language media owner, Viacom, which reaches about 40 percent of the national audience. And now it looks like the Spanish language media Goliath is about to get even bigger.
BOB GARFIELD:This week, FCC officials said they would give the green light to a 3 billion dollar merger between Univision and Hispanic Broadcasting Corporation -- the nation's biggest Spanish language radio network. The approval came over the protests of critics who say the deal essentially hijacks the Spanish language media market. But Univision says there's no such thing as a separate Spanish language market because most Latino viewers channel hop between Spanish and English stations. Earlier this year, political scientist Louis DeSipio conducted a study for the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute that suggests the truth lies somewhere in between. Louis, welcome to the show.
LOUIS DeSIPIO: My pleasure.
BOB GARFIELD: So you looked at bilingual viewers in a few different cities and you tried to draw conclusions about what Latinos as a universe are watching. What did you find out?
LOUIS DeSIPIO: Well the first thing we found is that Latinos are using both English and Spanish language television and using them pretty regularly. And we found that what distinguishes their viewing is the programming content. Bilingual Latino viewers, for example, are quite likely to be watching their news in Spanish. Entertainment programming, on the other hand, is very frequently watched in English, and the viewers include Latinos that don't have very extensive English language skills. So clearly they're sort of overcoming some barriers in order to watch English language entertainment programming. Sports is overwhelmingly watched in Spanish. Soap operas are probably the most popular programming choice, and those are watched in Spanish.
BOB GARFIELD:What in the news particularly is missing from English language broadcasts that bilingual viewers are able to find in the Spanish news broadcasts?
LOUIS DeSIPIO: Spanish language news programs cover the Latino community more and probably better. They also cover Latin America more, and these are topics that are of interest to Latinos generally and acculturated Latinos as well.
BOB GARFIELD:Let's get back to the proposed merger between Univision and the Hispanic Broadcasting Corporation. It would seem that, that this study answers one of the central questions that has been fueling the controversy over the deal -- Univision's contention that there really isn't such thing as a separate Latino market because Latinos watch stations all over the dial!
LOUIS DeSIPIO: You're absolutely right. I think our data absolutely confirm that.
BOB GARFIELD: But these Spanish stations clearly are targeting Latinos - I mean it's not like they're producing programming for non-Spanish speakers, so the concentration issue isn't entirely immaterial, is it?
LOUIS DeSIPIO: No. You know where I think it's particularly an issue is in the news programming. I mean that one area that we've identified as being particularly important to acculturated Latinos in the United States. The news programming, particularly on television, is overwhelmingly coming out of Univision and its affiliates and I think there is the risk, potentially, down the road that if Univision chose to have a particular political perspective, that would be seen at least by the overwhelming majority of Latinos. That said, they have the choice of getting alternative views if they don't agree with what they're seeing on a Univision affiliate.
BOB GARFIELD:Opponents of the merger have made a lot of the substantial support that executives at both Univision and the Hispanic Broadcasting Corporation have given to the Republican Party historically, and more recently to President Bush's re-election campaign. Is there not a legitimate fear that the programming on a combined network would come off as overtly pro-Republican or pro-administration or in any event, not unbiased?
LOUIS DeSIPIO: Univision as a corporation has certainly contributed to the Republicans and to President Bush, but they've also been very supportive of issues of concern in Latino communities, for instance opposition to Proposition 187 in California -- the 1994 ballot initiative around services for undocumented immigrants. So I think they're smart capitalists at some level. They understand that there are broad community concerns that they probably can't counter.
BOB GARFIELD:Is it possible that the critical mass created by this merger will actually allow someone to invest in original programming produced in the United States that hitherto had not been produced because simply nobody could afford it?
LOUIS DeSIPIO: There's that potential, but I don't think Univision or Telemundo for that matter have really shown a great interest in producing original programming. Where this comes through in some of our survey work is in terms of children's programming. Parents continually complain over a series of surveys over the last few years that there simply isn't Spanish language programming targeted at their children. The long term consequence of that is, is really deleterious for the Spanish broadcasters, cause they're not producing sort of the next generation of an audience for adult programming.
BOB GARFIELD: If Spanish broadcasters to this point have not cultivated younger viewers, is that necessarily a bad thing?
LOUIS DeSIPIO:Well I think in this case the kids are just watching English language TV in Latino households, so I don't, I don't think the lack of programming has kept them away from the power of television.
BOB GARFIELD: Pity. Well, Louis [LAUGHS] - thank you so much.
LOUIS DeSIPIO: [LAUGHS] My pleasure.
BOB GARFIELD:Louis DeSipio is a professor of political science at the University of California at Irvine and author of the report Channel Surfing in English and Spanish. [MUSIC]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Coming up, the pitfalls of single factor analysis and how Chile's media mogul helped foment a coup.
BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media from NPR. BOB GARFIELD: We are back with On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. This week marked not only the second anniversary of the terrorist attacks on our shores but also 30th anniversary of the coup that brought a military dictator to power in Chile. The Nixon administration, already embroiled in proxy battles with the Soviet Union around the world, decided it couldn't countenance the newly-elected socialist government of Salvador Allende in Chile, so the CIA helped engineer his ouster in favor of a military junta led by General Augusto Pinochet. Peter Kornbluh is a senior analyst at the National Security Archive. In this month's Columbia Journalism Review he documents how Nixon and Kissinger empowered Chile's leading media mogul, Augustin Edwards, to lead the charge against Allende. Now a group of editors, human rights lawyers and journalism students are accusing Edwards of violating the Code of Ethics of the Academy of Chilean Journalists and are fighting at the very least to have him expelled from the Press Guild. Peter, welcome to the show.
PETER KORNBLUH: It's a pleasure to be here.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: First of all, who is Augustin Edwards?
PETER KORNBLUH: Augustin Edwards is really the Rupert Murdoch of Chile. He controlled in 1970 the vast majority of Chilean media. His main newspaper, El Mercurio, was the largest newspaper in Chile at the time, routinely compared to the New York Times here. He was also at that point considered Chile's richest man and a key player in government circles and in international circles as well.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:So Allende's just been elected, despite the opposition of El Mercurio, and Edwards contacts the Nixon administration. So what happens then?
PETER KORNBLUH: The first thing Edwards did is he went to Ambassador Edward Korry to say to him are you going to move militarily against Allende? What are you going to do? And Korry basically told him that the United States wasn't going to move militarily to block Allende from taking office, and since that answer wasn't satisfactory, Edwards flew to Washington, met with his close friend, Don Kendall, the CEO of the Pepsi Company, and said you have to tell the president that, you know, Chile is going to hell and the Communists are taking over, and this is bad for the United States. And Kendal actually went to the White House, told Nixon that Edwards was in town and what he was saying, and Nixon immediately ordered Henry Kissinger and the CIA director, Richard Helms, to meet with Edwards and find out what he was saying.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:So ultimately the U.S. government passed to Edwards nearly 2 million bucks, which is worth considerably more on the black market, and how was that money used?
PETER KORNBLUH: What this money purchased was really El Mercurio being able to become a bullhorn --not only for a free press -- beyond that - it went into the arena of violating Chile's Constitution, calling for the military to take power and supporting that military once it did take power, I might add.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:And this obviously goes beyond anti-Allende articles and editorials. But when you say "bullhorn" -- did the paper identify places that ought to be attacked? Did the paper call for the assassination of people? Where is the line crossed between exercising a vigorous opposition and becoming seditious?
PETER KORNBLUH: Well that is a very important question, but, but here-- you had the owner of the newspaper already having told U.S. officials that he favored military action to stop Allende, and you had editorials declaring that Allende's government was illegitimate and essentially inciting people to rise up against it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: You quote from a CIA paper that credits El Mercurio with making the military takeover possible. Is that what you think?
PETER KORNBLUH:El Mercurio was the centerpiece of the CIA's largest covert action in Chile between 1970 and 1973 -- what was called "The Propaganda Project." And the CIA's own internal memoranda state that this project set the stage for the coup of September 11th, 1973.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:But you, Peter Kornbluh, know a huge amount about the opposition to Allende at the time. You have a vast array of documents. How crucial do you think El Mercurio was?
PETER KORNBLUH: I think El Mercurio was pivotal. You have to imagine what it would be like in our own country if the New York Times decided to take up a significant strident and eventually even violent opposition to our government. We have a, a country where we have many, many newspapers, but imagine if the New York Times was one of only three or four papers in the country and was beyond a doubt the leading and most read newspaper. You can imagine the, the influence that it might play.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Now there's a battle to bring ethics charges against Edwards. The courts back then didn't find him guilty of libel or sedition. Is this a largely symbolic act now?
PETER KORNBLUH: This is not just about what El Mercurio published. In fact it's not about what El Mercurio published, because Chileans-- believe that whatever he published, he had the right to publish. The ethics charges that they're investigating against him are predicated upon his contacts with the Central Intelligence Agency -- the fact that he discussed with the CIA director a military option in Chile and received money from the Central Intelligence Agency.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:In Rwanda, media chiefs who called for the roundup and murder of individuals are being prosecuted for real. Do you think that could ever happen in Chile? Should it?
PETER KORNBLUH: Well I think that for the moment this really isn't about a courtroom verdict. It's about a verdict of history. And Chileans themselves have not really had access to this information, and obviously now with the declassification of U.S. documents that shed light on the activities of individuals like Augustin Edwards, I think there will be a verdict of history at least that is important for everybody to know.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Thank you very much.
PETER KORNBLUH: You're more than welcome.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Peter Kornbluh's article for the Columbia Journalism Review was excerpted from his new book -- The Pinochet File -- a declassified dossier on atrocity and accountability. BOB GARFIELD: During its brief life, the Allende government undertook a great experiment to create a rapid communications network to regulate Chile's transition from a capitalist to a socialist system. To this end, the government employed an eccentric British cyberneticist named Stafford Beer who designed Project Cybersyn --a system of telex machines linking factories around the country to a central mainframe computer in Santiago. Eden Miller is a PhD candidate from MIT who has spent the last two years in Chile excavating this lost piece of communications history. She says that Beer's vision of an electronic communications network for Chile's budding socialist economy prefigures the internet and took its model from biology.
EDEN MILLER: And Stafford Beer's biological model emphasized decentralized control, and I can give a, a pretty easy example of how this works in biology. If you think about day to day breathing, your lungs take care of all the work, but if you want to go swimming, for example, your brain can jump in and it can control the rate of respiration. So the idea was that the factories connected to the system would behave like the lungs -- they would maintain their autonomy on a day to day basis, but if there was a problem, then the government, like the cortex of the brain, could jump in and intervene and solve the problem.
BOB GARFIELD: Now you've made the comparison between Beer's electronic nervous system and the internet. Why is--
EDEN MILLER: Right.
BOB GARFIELD: -- that a valid comparison?
EDEN MILLER:It's a network of communication that involved a computer. It was also a system designed to provide rapid data transmission. And it was also designed to enable a dynamic form of decision-making which is one of the benefits that we have of the internet today.
BOB GARFIELD:And did it work? Did-- Project Cybersyn allow the government brain in Santiago to know what was happening on the factory floors?
EDEN MILLER: [LAUGHS] You know it did, but not as you would expect it to. One of the most valuable outcomes of the system was during the truck drivers' strike of October 1972. About 50,000 vehicles blocked the streets of Santiago, not allowing food deliveries to pass -- it could have brought the country to a standstill and terminated the Allende government much earlier than September 11th of 1973. But using this telex network the government was able to coordinate the 200 trucks that were loyal to the government and was able to coordinate what they were carrying, what roads were open, etc, etc -- and they were able to survive.
BOB GARFIELD: Now a year after that strike, the coup did occur. What then happened to Project Cybersyn?
EDEN MILLER:It stopped the day of the military coup. The military -- several members were fascinated by the system. There was a-- operations room that was modeled after a war room from World War II. So the military knew the system had something to do with control, but they weren't sure what. So they interrogated several members of the team, and at the end of the day it was just too complicated for them to understand, so they destroyed the control room.
BOB GARFIELD:It seems like we're looking at Project Cybersyn and saying well that's a very forward-looking technology employed by a progressive government to harness the power of communication, but tilting it just a slightly different way-- isn't it a little bit creepy that the Allende government was centralizing information and couldn't that have been used, had the Allende regime not been overthrown for sinister means somewhere down the line?
EDEN MILLER: [LAUGHS] You sound like you're a member of the rightist press in Chile. [LAUGHS] There were several articles that were published during this time period both in Chile and in England, looking at it from this more sinister side -- fear of a Big Brother or some means of controlling the workers. My opinion is that the system was very forward-looking. It couldn't have been that sinister Big Brother type of system because the data that was being communicated from the factories -- each factory only sent maybe 5 to 7 indexes of data every day, so things like raw materials, transportation, absentee levels from workers but not which workers were absent. That was the type of information the government was receiving, and at that level it would have been impossible to have a Big Brother type of control. But with different technology, the same type of layout -- I can see how it could be read the other way.
BOB GARFIELD: Well, Eden Miller - thank you very much.
EDEN MILLER: Sure! Thank you.
BOB GARFIELD: Eden Miller is a doctoral candidate in the history of technology at MIT. [MUSIC]
BOB GARFIELD: This is the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. [AMBIENT SOUND] Amid the hustle and bustle on Wednesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 87 points, or just under one percent of its value. Why? CNBC seemed to know. [PROGRAM MUSIC]
MAN: Welcome back. A busy news day. The market's moving a little bit lower today...word of a new tape from Osama bin Laden causing the markets to sort of fall off the table there.
BOB GARFIELD:Got that? Over a period of 6 and a half hours, millions of investors traded billions of shares of stock because of word of a new tape from Osama bin Laden. The day before both the Dow and the Nasdaq were down because, according to the Associated Press, of a disappointing revenue outlook for Nokia and investor profit-taking. The day before that, according to USAToday.com, the Dow was up 83 points due to optimism about the economy. Really?!
RAY GOLDBACHER: That's as reasonable as anything.
BOB GARFIELD: Ray Goldbacher is the money editor at USAToday.com.
RAY GOLDBACHER: You know every day 3 billion shares change hands. Who knows why? I mean the best you can do is try to take the temperature of the predominant trend. Analysts and journalists find ways to explain the market no matter what it does -- or try.
BOB GARFIELD:They do try. Every trading day, reporters at the Associated Press, Bloomberg, Reuters, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and a dozen other news organizations are expected to distill millions of discrete financial decisions and divine a single motivating factor! Some days it's a Commerce Department report on business inventories. Sometimes it's a jump in IBM's earnings. Sometimes it's the mysterious "technical factors" or dropping oil prices or terrorism jitters or investor optimism or the magical, all-encompassing "profit-taking." Dan Gross covers Wall Street for Slate.com.
DAN GROSS: Of course there's profit-taking every single minute of every single day. It's a very convenient shorthand for-- "Oh, well gee --we don't know why the Dow went down 70 points."
BOB GARFIELD: But, Gross says, his colleagues do know how to find someone to float a theory.
DAN GROSS:You have a number of sources -- guys you know you can call for a quote -- and the guys on the other end have a limited number of things that they will say. It was down on profit-taking, up on optimism, concern about profits -- you know, there are a set number of factors that everybody will say.
BOB GARFIELD:One source often turned to for the daily analysis is Hugh Johnson, chairman of asset management for the investment banking house First Albany Corporation. With his more than three decades of market experience, Johnson carefully considers corporate fundamentals, external news events, trading patterns known as technicals, the push and pull of other markets such as commodities, bonds and currency trading, and his long-cultivated instinct for the psychology of the trading floor. And then-- he guesses.
HUGH JOHNSON: It's a real giant leap of faith to say this is what's been on the minds of investors and made them make decisions, cause you obviously don't survey every investor. But you get a sense that the markets tend to respond or react to new in a fairly -- fairly predictable way. Having done this for a while, it's probably a pretty good guess that these events do in -somehow - some manner - affect investors.
BOB GARFIELD:Or-- you know -- not. [BAR AMBIENCE] We are in the Irish Punt Saloon, a favorite hangout for brokers and traders, shortly after the closing bell on a sultry summer afternoon. We approach a young Wall Streeter named Anthony Piocosta (ph).
BOB GARFIELD: I need your expert analysis. Nasdaq was down 21 points today - a little over 1 percent -why?
ANTHONY PIOCOSTA:Oh, there's a few reasons actually. One of the reasons was that Cisco came out with earnings and their expectations were as great as said to be, and Cisco is pretty much one of the largest of the Nasdaq composites, so it pulls down the average very easily.
BOB GARFIELD: Quick followup question. Are you sure?
ANTHONY PIOCOSTA: Am I sure? Positive.
BOB GARFIELD: Then we collar his pal, Dieter Uber (ph). The Nasdaq was down about 1 percent today. Why?
DIETER UBER:The Nasdaq's down now because technicals are taking over - there's - it's like 16-5, 16-90 we're sitting at. Once it broke that level, now technicals on the Nasdaq are actually taking over, and the traders will just fight to sell, because they're up.
BOB GARFIELD: You sure about that?
DIETER UBER: Yes. As for the Nasdaq being down today, it's because of technicals.
BOB GARFIELD:Then finally we turned to their colleague, Kieren Lockhern (ph), who crunches the same numbers on Nasdaq's dip and draws an entirely different and stunning conclusion.
KIEREN LOCKHERN: It's probably just overheated. You know? Numbers have come out; there's nothing to take us up any further. Now people eventually look at the profits that they have and realize--either take 'em or-- got off the pot.
BOB GARFIELD: So a little bit of profit-taking.
KIEREN LOCKHERN: Yeah. Sure.
BOB GARFIELD:Ah. Profit taking. But if single factor analysis sometimes seems silly or worse, at least one Wall Street watcher staunchly defends the practice. He is David Wilson, managing editor for global stock markets at Bloomberg News, the organization that revolutionized financial journalism with up-to-the-second reports delivered to your desktop. Wilson insists that trading days do follow miniature trends and themes with certain critical events assuming disproportionate influence.
DAVID WILSON: There are days when it's pretty straightforward - you, you get a figure - you know it might be a company earnings, it might be an economic report -- and that really does set the tone for the day! And, and you see it even before trading begins, because you're looking at what's happening overseas with the futures markets, with U.S. stocks traded there, and it may be that whatever the theme is at 8:30 in the morning carries all the way through the day.
BOB GARFIELD:Hence, on Wednesday, according to Bloomberg as well as CNBC, what really mattered was the latest video from Osama bin Laden. Or-- you know -- not.
LOU DOBBS: I'm very suspicious of anybody who looks at a market monolithically.
BOB GARFIELD: Lou Dobbs of CNN's nightly Lou Dobbs Tonight is among the most influential and respected financial journalists in the world. He rolls his eyes at the simplistic art of the Wall Street Market Wrap, but he also acknowledges his occasional complicity because of the time constraints of broadcast television, and, he says, the demands of the audience.
LOU DOBBS: There's not enough space in newspapers, there's not enough time on television or radio to give the explanation as it's deserved, and frankly the audience wouldn't want it anyway in most cases -- the broader audience. Because it is complex, and it takes far too much time. So we revert to traditional shorthand that while wrong is-- expedient.
BOB GARFIELD: What if the press covered Congress the way it covers the Street?
LOU DOBBS: They do. [LAUGHS]
BOB GARFIELD:Well-- [LAUGHS] not really. Although you can certainly say this: this week the House and the Senate blocked a proposed new Labor Department rule that would have limited overtime pay for millions of workers -- on concerns about -- profit taking.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Coming up, a loving look at the once and future VOA. Also -- when is it okay to break the law in pursuit of a story?
BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media from NPR. BOB GARFIELD: We're back with On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. This week ABC News announced that it had found a gaping hole in the Homeland Security Department's defense system. Reporter Brian Ross packed 15 pounds of depleted uranium into a teak trunk along with other furniture and shipped it from Jakarta, Indonesia all the way home.
BRIAN ROSS: Within minutes it was on the 110 Freeway, moving through the heart of downtown Los Angeles. And Homeland Security officials did not learn what happened until hours later, after our truck driver whom we told we were from ABC News became nervous and authorities were notified. The government reaction has been to investigate -- ABC News! Agents were dispatched at midnight to our Los Angeles Bureau where they demanded the material and threatened to file criminal charges against ABC personnel.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:While depleted uranium can't be used to make weapons and is actually legal to ship, the Homeland Security Department maintains that ABC broke the law in not disclosing the contents of the trunk accurately. ABC responded that it's highly unlikely terrorists would fill out a form saying they're shipping uranium and that that was the point of the test. Dennis Murphy is a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security. Welcome to the show.
DENNIS MURPHY: Oh, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: ABC also breached port security last year when it shipped I guess a similar batch of uranium to the Staten Island, New York port.
DENNIS MURPHY: Correct.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Obviously the intention of ABC News is to show that there are some important holes in our security that need to be closed!
DENNIS MURPHY: If, if the hole to be closed is to prevent depleted uranium from coming into the United States, then I would agree with you, but the hole we're trying to close is to prevent real nuclear material from coming into the United States.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:So you would dispute the nuclear physicists with the National Resources Defense Council quoted by ABC who said that if federal inspectors couldn't detect that depleted uranium, then they can't detect the real thing.
DENNIS MURPHY: I would definitely disagree with that. The items we use are calibrated to pick up real material. Now they're not perfect, but they are designed to pick up the real thing --they're not designed to pick up inert --relatively inert -- material. This is a very unscientific experiment. There is no science to this test.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Well then let's say, Mr. Murphy, that this was for argument's sake a valid test - a test that would hold up on your lights scientifically. Would you then regard this exercise as valid and important as ABC regards it evidently?
DENNIS MURPHY: There are hundreds and hundreds of news outlets. If every journalist decided Hm! I think I'll test the system too -- we would spend an enormous amount of valuable Homeland Security resources doing nothing but chasing ghosts, trying to find out if these tests are or are not a real media or, or someone posing as the media.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Mr. Murphy, there are plenty of reports running through Congress and in the media that suggest that the Homeland Security Department is terrifically underfunded, that they can't conduct all the exercises they need to, to find the holes in the system, and I think that it is generally regarded as the role of the press to hold our government agencies accountable when other accountability fails or is underfunded.
DENNIS MURPHY: Well, I, I agree with you one hundred percent that the media has a valuable role to play in holding the government to account. But number one rule is - don't violate the law to do it! I mean I think that if they're going to do this, then they should have gone out and done scientific analysis; they should have gone out and reported it as a true investigative work rather than just perpetrate a hoax to say Gotcha.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Let me toss out a case -- a famous case -- in which a news organization broke the law -- in fact it was ABC and it's the Food Lion Supermarket chain. ABC reporters posed as employees, lied on their application forms and secretly taped what was going on inside the areas of the market that the public couldn't see. And there you saw them doctoring chicken, mixing old hamburger with new hamburger and generally engaging in unsanitary practices that threaten the health of the public. Now obviously these supermarkets undergo regular inspections, by the government; at least they're supposed to. ABC broke the law; was originally hit with 5 and a half million dollar damages -- punitive and otherwise --which was ultimately reduced to two dollars. The appeals court determined that if a reporter breaks certain laws in pursuit of a story that protects the public, then perhaps that can be excused.
DENNIS MURPHY: You're isolating one case and saying Hm, Maybe it's okay; maybe it's not. Maybe these laws are okay to break. But who is the judge of that? And which other reporters are out there trying to determine -- Hm. Which law should I break now to-- to tell my story?
BROOKE GLADSTONE:I guess what I'm suggesting is that if it was deemed okay to protect the people from, say, tainted meat -- aren't the stakes even higher in this case?
DENNIS MURPHY: Well, but I, I also don't think that terrorists are going to pose as meat inspectors or-- as meat employees to carry out a terrorist attack.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:But they might try to ship dangerous substances from, say, Jakarta to New York! Don't you want to know if our systems to catch that don't work?
DENNIS MURPHY: Well, and, and we - we, we are gearing our systems to find the real thing, and my point about the validity of the test that caused us to spend resources to determine is this a real news organization, is this real material or not -- you know - that was hundreds of hours of manpower that was devoted to that! And to me, I think that's a waste of our resources. We should spend those resources trying to pursue terrorists and criminals --not reporters.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well I want to thank you very much for talking to me.
DENNIS MURPHY: I appreciate the opportunity.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Dennis Murphy is a spokesman for the Homeland Security Department. [MUSIC]
BOB GARFIELD: We have time for a few letters this week. The first comes from Tim Casey who wrote in to make a case for why the media deregulation that we've been reporting about on the program doesn't really matter. Tim writes: "While I'm grateful that you're keeping the spotlight on the giant corporations gobbling up more and more media outlets, I laugh every time I hear how important these outlets are. I have not used my television for watching broadcasts of any kind -- cable, satellite or network -- for ten years."
BROOKE GLADSTONE:He goes on to suggest: "If we all get together and ignore the crap that the corporations are trying to shove down our throats, we would have so much more time to spend on the things that are important -- the things that corporate media would rather have us ignore."
BOB GARFIELD:I modestly report that we received a flood of positive mail about my re-run piece last week on freedom of expression and the Patriot Act. But Dave Luce from St. Louis, Missouri wrote to say that it was, quote, "sloppy yellow journalism at its finest." He writes: "That your show is on the air and pronouncing such inanities is evidence of just how vibrant the First Amendment remains and reminds me that in the marketplace of ideas as in most marketplaces, there's more junk than gold."
BROOKE GLADSTONE:And here's a letter about my interview with Lionel Chetwynd, the writer and producer of Showtime's docudrama DC 9/11. Floyd Romoyer writes "Gladstone was concerned about the movie's accuracy and Chetwynd's connection with the Republican Party. While Gladstone's questions are valid, I have to point out that the Showtime movie is a one time thing on a premium cable network with a limited audience. I don't know if Gladstone has an equal concern with the TV show West Wing -- it's a network show that's watched weekly by a much bigger viewership. The Showtime movie is pro-Republican while the West Wing is pro-Democrat. Just to be fair, Gladstone should interview the producers of West Wing in the same critical and judgmental tone of voice that she used with Chetwynd. What's happened to journalistic objectivity in On the Media?" Well Floyd, I've only watched the West Wing once but-- I thought it was fiction! Anyway, who ever said we were objective? Bob? Are we objective?
BOB GARFIELD:[LAUGHS] No, Brooke. We're not. Anyway, I just want to hear your critical and judgmental tone of voice again, and maybe this will inspire it. Jon Gautier from Brooklyn wrote with an important question, one we get a lot. "Why does Garfield, when he is doing the credits at the end of the show always say: 'edited by-- Brooke' in this slow, exaggerated way? Is this some private chops-busting between Bob and Brooke? If so, why does Brooke not retaliate, or is she just the more grown up of the two?"
BROOKE GLADSTONE: No comment, Jon.
BOB GARFIELD: (She's the more grown up of the two.)
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Keep those letters coming at onthemedia@wnyc.org, and don't forget to tell us where you live and how to pronounce your name. [MUSIC]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Based in Washington, DC, the Voice of America reaches an audience of 94 million worldwide. It broadcasts on short wave, AM and FM radio as well as satellite television and the internet. The reason you've never found it on your dial is because Section 501 of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 prohibits VOA from being broadcast here in the homeland. How come? Because it's the government's channel. The government funds the effort that creates over 1,000 hours of weekly programming. Nevertheless, since its first broadcast, just after America entered World War II in 1942, it has promised to be truthful. Here's a piece of a very early broadcast. [CLIP FROM VOICE OF AMERICA] [MAN SPEAKING IN GERMAN]
ANNOUNCER:This is a voice speaking from America. Daily at this time we shall speak to you about America and the war. The news may be good or bad. We shall tell you the truth.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Alan Heil spent a lifetime with Voice of America, acting as foreign correspondent, chief of news and current affairs and deputy director of programs. He tells the organization's story in his book Voice of America: A History. He agrees that it was created as an arm of propaganda--
ALAN HEIL: But you had at the very beginning among the pioneers, those who believed that the best policy was to tell the truth. I can remember the story of General Stillwell for example who said "The Japanese gave us a hell of a beating in Burma." Now that became a matter of some contention, as you might imagine between the policymakers in Washington and those broadcasting the news from the Voice of America then in New York, but the VOA staff held its own. And later we learned, following World War II from some of the Japanese who were interrogated about their listening experiences, that that made them really believe the Voice of America. True, it was founded as a propaganda organization to counter Axis propaganda, particularly in Germany but also in Japan. But even in the early going there were editors who stood behind the contract with the listeners to give them an honest accounting of the day's events.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:You quote President Lyndon Johnson saying "I know I can't affect the broadcast companies. I know they won't listen to me. I know they won't help me, but goddamnit, I have my own radio, and I've got to make that work!" And he was referring to the VOA and its coverage of Vietnam. Wouldn't you admit that sometimes the VOA has a problem reconciling its dual roles as both a government agency and an impartial news source?
ALAN HEIL: Well John Chancellor said that the Voice is at the crossroads of journalism and diplomacy. I think, however, it's increasingly clear and particularly in the 21st Century and in the post-9/11 period that there is no substitute for a full and fair disclosure of events. I think that there is a hunger for the straight story.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: How many languages is the VOA broadcast in?
ALAN HEIL: It's broadcast now in 54 languages.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And do you count Special English among them?
ALAN HEIL:Not really. Special English being a variant of Standard English was designed back in 1959 to aid comprehension of those listeners for whom English was a second language.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: It was an English that was composed of a 1500 word vocabulary.
ALAN HEIL: Quite correct and slowly delivered, and also--the idea was, in the main, one thought per one sentence.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And what could you convey to the world in Special English?
ALAN HEIL: Oh, you would be remarkably surprised. If I may, I'd like to read from page 279 of the book.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Please!
ALAN HEIL: The absolutely marvelous poem sent to us by A.V.B. Mannon of Tamil Nadu in India, and he called it An Ode to Special English. HAIL THEE, SPECIAL ENGLISH! THOU ART A VIRGIN MAIDEN-- UNCORRUPTED, SIMPLE, EASY. YE RANG A FAMILIAR TONE TO ONE AND ALL, LEARNED AND WISE AS MUCH TO THE UNINITIATED. SIMPLE IS BEAUTIFUL. NO FRILLS, NO TWISTS NOR PRETENSIONS. YE WIND YOUR WAY TO THE HEART TO STRIKE A FAMILIAR CHORD. IT'S NEITHER THE KING'S NOR THE QUEEN'S, BUT THAT OF VERY COMMON FOLK. IT IS A SYMPHONY IN PROSE. LONG LIVE SPECIAL ENGLISH.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:[LAUGHS] You know it, it reminds me of one of VOA's greatest contributions to world culture isn't in language at all but in music! I think that the most famous and, and certainly most beloved voice of the Voice of America is probably that of Willis Conover!
ALAN HEIL: Absolutely. [BIG BAND MUSIC] He once made a visit to Moscow, got out into the great packed hall in the center of the city and all he said was the standard introduction to his signature program--: [CLIP OF WILLIS CONOVER]
WILLIS CONOVER: Time for jazz -- Willis Conover in Washington with the Voice of America Jazz Hour. -- and the hall burst into applause -- this is at the height of the Cold War -- and there was a standing ovation that lasted for several minutes.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Let's talk about the VOA in China during Tiananmen Square.
ALAN HEIL:There's a fascinating story about one of the Chinese correspondents, Betty Tseu who all she needed to do was to identify herself at the edge of this square of one million people, and suddenly the people would part like the waves of the Red Sea and usher her right up into the center on the platform where the pro-democracy demonstrators were holding forth during those very, very critical months leading up to June 3rd, 1989. The Voice was then jammed by the Chinese government-- [CLIP OF VOICE OF AMERICA]
ANNOUNCER: This is the Voice of America. The following program is in Chinese. [MUSIC]
ALAN HEIL:-- and then anyone listening to it can see the critical impact of jamming, on blocking information from the Chinese people. [WOMAN SPEAKING IN CHINESE] [STATIC-Y SOUND INTERFERENCE OVER] I think even the Chinese themselves conceded before that martial law was imposed on that day in May of 1989 that the Voice probably had 60 million listeners. It was I think clear that its impact was historic in 1989.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:One last question Mr. Heil. We have the BBC, we have CNN everywhere - we've got the internet reaching into corners where even CNN can't reach -- why do we need the VOA?
ALAN HEIL: I would have to go and quote David Burke who was the first chairman of the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors who said that CNN can be seen in hotel lobbies and industrialized society. It cannot be seen in refugee camps. The U.S. simply has to have a voice, I believe, and that's a voice that reflects us. It's not a voice that's an official radio as much as it is one that reflects America -- an American optic as a West African editor once put it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Alan Heil, thank you very much.
ALAN HEIL: Thank you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Alan Heil is the author of Voice of America: A History. [THEME MUSIC]
BOB GARFIELD:That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Katya Rogers, Janeen Price, Megan Ryan and Tony Field; engineered by Dylan Keefe and Rob Christiansen, and edited-- by Brooke. We had help from Dave Goldberg. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Arun Rath is our senior producer and Dean Cappello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the program and get free transcripts at onthemedia.org and e-mail us at onthemedia@wnyc.org. This is On the Media from NPR. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. [MUSIC TAG]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Tuesday, Fox News and the Congressional Black Caucus Institute staged the first of two debates with the Democratic presidential candidates before a responsive crowd on the campus of Morgan State University in Baltimore. It was a long and yet lively exchange. The candidates bobbed and weaved, jabbed and occasionally ducked behind their mikes under the mostly focused and persistent questioning of the journalists. Here's Ed Gordon, contributing editor of Savoy magazine, shooting the same question to Bob Graham he'd just posed to another candidate. [APPLAUSE]
ED GORDON: Mr. Graham, let me ask you the same question that I tried with Senator Kerry; see perhaps if you will give me a little bit more straightforward answer, [OH'S!] and that is whether or not-- I, I don't mean that in any disrespect, because he can't know the - specifically - but in your heart do you believe that the president intentionally misled the American people?
BOB GRAHAM: Yes. I have been a member-- [LAUGHTER/APPLAUSE]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Chris Suellentrop is deputy Washington bureau chief for Slate.com. He wrote about this unusual collaboration of Fox News and the Congressional Black Caucus and what came of it. Chris, welcome to the show.
CHRIS SUELLENTROP: Thanks for having me on.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So the first line in your article was: "Can Fox News broadcast every Democratic presidential debate?" And I have to say -- I watched the debate and I thought it was fabulous! So I agree with you.
CHRIS SUELLENTROP: It was amazing, wasn't it? I mean the questions were great. It moved quickly. They kind of lost control at the end when they did sort of a let's-ask-every-candidate-the-same-question -- but up until that point I just thought it was great, and I thought the ding-ding bell to demonstrate that a candidate had finished his time was sort of a great addition. The bell would ding and you'd know that John Kerry or whoever had spoken 30 seconds past their time without having a moderator saying -"Excuse me, sir -- sir, you've passed your time." It just seemed to me that it would be that kind of simple but really great addition to a broadcast.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Apparently Fox News chief Roger Ailes jumped at the chance of televising these debates. Do you think it's because he wants the network to take a larger role or he wants to bring new people -- perhaps Democrats into the Fox fold, or what?
CHRIS SUELLENTROP: I would think if you're a cable news channel you would want to broadcast these debates -- I mean these are news junkies that watch these channels. There is the conspiracy theory that Fox wants to broadcast the debate so that they can package their anti-Democratic propaganda around the debate. I don't know if that's true, but there are lots of people on the internet who think that.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Now Fox, as we have pointed out a couple of times on this show, tends to skew to the right, but do you think the debate was more Democratic, say, than most Fox-watchers have usually had occasion to stomach?
CHRIS SUELLENTROP: Absolutely. I don't think it was a right wing debate; I don't think they were right wing questions. In fact, one of the things I was thinking about while I was watching it was--imagine the political differences between the people inside the debate hall and the people watching at home. [LAUGHTER] I just thought there couldn't be a wider gap between the Fox News television audience and the people inside that debate hall.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: The National Black Caucus and Fox make strange bedfellows.
CHRIS SUELLENTROP: That's right. There was a - probably a lot--a lot of booing at home while the cheering was going on in the hall.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So do you think Fox has set a new paradigm for how debates should be conducted?
CHRIS SUELLENTROP:I don't know that it's a new paradigm but it's a better paradigm than the ones that Jim Lehrer hosted four years ago. There was a lot of criticism of Jim Lehrer's moderating of the Gore-Bush debates, and I think--
BROOKE GLADSTONE: It was too moderate, I think the view was.
CHRIS SUELLENTROP:[LAUGHS] Yes! I, and I think rightly so! I mean the debate should be more than just serving up talking points from the candidates. I mean you get that every day on the campaign trail; you get that on C-Span; you get that in a hundred different places. The debate should be a little tougher than that, and it should be a way to sort of see the candidates think on their feet.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Much of the press speculation before this debate, as with the others, was that there'd be some kind of violence inflicted on frontrunner Howard Dean, or at least it seemed that the a lot of the candidate-watchers hoped there would be; and then the next day there seemed to be a sort of disappointment among commentators when it didn't happen!
CHRIS SUELLENTROP: Well yeah. We like to see blood. The entire debate, both in Albuquerque and in Baltimore, wasn't about Joe Lieberman attacking Howard Dean, but that was the most interesting, exciting and "sexy" thing that happened, and so that was the thing that most people wrote about and that becomes the story of the debate.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: So as you look at the press commentary following the debate, what do you think they missed?
CHRIS SUELLENTROP:You know, candidates like Dennis Kucinich or Bob Graham might have good nights and good performances, but because they're lagging in the polls, they're not deemed worthy of coverage -- they don't get coverage! To some extent I think that's reasonable, but it's also unfortunate for them.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: What was your favorite moment?
CHRIS SUELLENTROP: Well my favorite moment was Howard Dean's line about, about Trent Lott. [CLIP FROM DEBATE PLAYS]
HOWARD DEAN:Well if the percent of minorities that's in your state has anything to do with how you can connect with African-American voters, then Trent Lott'd be Martin Luther King. [LAUGHTER]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: You know what my favorite moment was?
CHRIS SUELLENTROP: What's that?
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Al Sharpton's favorite song. [CLIP FROM DEBATE PLAYS]
AL SHARPTON: My favorite song is James Brown's song on, on the Republican Party--: Talkin' Loud - Sayin' Nothing. [LAUGHTER/APPLAUSE]
CHRIS SUELLENTROP:Well Al Sharpton was great. I missed him in Albuquerque. I don't want Al Sharpton to be a candidate, but I have a proposal that Al Sharpton should be allowed to participate in every debate -- Republican - Democratic -presidential - just as -- not comic relief, but sort of an entertaining interlude, just as-- and, and also just to keep everybody honest. [LAUGHTER]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Thank you very much.
CHRIS SUELLENTROP: Thank you. [MUSIC]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Chris Suellentrop is the deputy Washington editor of Slate. [JAMES BROWN'S TALKIN' LOUD AND SAYIN' NOTHING]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: If you watch Spanish-language TV, you've probably tuned into a station owned by Univision. With about a hundred stations and affiliates to its name, Univision's programming reaches about 80 percent of the Latinos living in this country. Compare that to the biggest English language media owner, Viacom, which reaches about 40 percent of the national audience. And now it looks like the Spanish language media Goliath is about to get even bigger.
BOB GARFIELD:This week, FCC officials said they would give the green light to a 3 billion dollar merger between Univision and Hispanic Broadcasting Corporation -- the nation's biggest Spanish language radio network. The approval came over the protests of critics who say the deal essentially hijacks the Spanish language media market. But Univision says there's no such thing as a separate Spanish language market because most Latino viewers channel hop between Spanish and English stations. Earlier this year, political scientist Louis DeSipio conducted a study for the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute that suggests the truth lies somewhere in between. Louis, welcome to the show.
LOUIS DeSIPIO: My pleasure.
BOB GARFIELD: So you looked at bilingual viewers in a few different cities and you tried to draw conclusions about what Latinos as a universe are watching. What did you find out?
LOUIS DeSIPIO: Well the first thing we found is that Latinos are using both English and Spanish language television and using them pretty regularly. And we found that what distinguishes their viewing is the programming content. Bilingual Latino viewers, for example, are quite likely to be watching their news in Spanish. Entertainment programming, on the other hand, is very frequently watched in English, and the viewers include Latinos that don't have very extensive English language skills. So clearly they're sort of overcoming some barriers in order to watch English language entertainment programming. Sports is overwhelmingly watched in Spanish. Soap operas are probably the most popular programming choice, and those are watched in Spanish.
BOB GARFIELD:What in the news particularly is missing from English language broadcasts that bilingual viewers are able to find in the Spanish news broadcasts?
LOUIS DeSIPIO: Spanish language news programs cover the Latino community more and probably better. They also cover Latin America more, and these are topics that are of interest to Latinos generally and acculturated Latinos as well.
BOB GARFIELD:Let's get back to the proposed merger between Univision and the Hispanic Broadcasting Corporation. It would seem that, that this study answers one of the central questions that has been fueling the controversy over the deal -- Univision's contention that there really isn't such thing as a separate Latino market because Latinos watch stations all over the dial!
LOUIS DeSIPIO: You're absolutely right. I think our data absolutely confirm that.
BOB GARFIELD: But these Spanish stations clearly are targeting Latinos - I mean it's not like they're producing programming for non-Spanish speakers, so the concentration issue isn't entirely immaterial, is it?
LOUIS DeSIPIO: No. You know where I think it's particularly an issue is in the news programming. I mean that one area that we've identified as being particularly important to acculturated Latinos in the United States. The news programming, particularly on television, is overwhelmingly coming out of Univision and its affiliates and I think there is the risk, potentially, down the road that if Univision chose to have a particular political perspective, that would be seen at least by the overwhelming majority of Latinos. That said, they have the choice of getting alternative views if they don't agree with what they're seeing on a Univision affiliate.
BOB GARFIELD:Opponents of the merger have made a lot of the substantial support that executives at both Univision and the Hispanic Broadcasting Corporation have given to the Republican Party historically, and more recently to President Bush's re-election campaign. Is there not a legitimate fear that the programming on a combined network would come off as overtly pro-Republican or pro-administration or in any event, not unbiased?
LOUIS DeSIPIO: Univision as a corporation has certainly contributed to the Republicans and to President Bush, but they've also been very supportive of issues of concern in Latino communities, for instance opposition to Proposition 187 in California -- the 1994 ballot initiative around services for undocumented immigrants. So I think they're smart capitalists at some level. They understand that there are broad community concerns that they probably can't counter.
BOB GARFIELD:Is it possible that the critical mass created by this merger will actually allow someone to invest in original programming produced in the United States that hitherto had not been produced because simply nobody could afford it?
LOUIS DeSIPIO: There's that potential, but I don't think Univision or Telemundo for that matter have really shown a great interest in producing original programming. Where this comes through in some of our survey work is in terms of children's programming. Parents continually complain over a series of surveys over the last few years that there simply isn't Spanish language programming targeted at their children. The long term consequence of that is, is really deleterious for the Spanish broadcasters, cause they're not producing sort of the next generation of an audience for adult programming.
BOB GARFIELD: If Spanish broadcasters to this point have not cultivated younger viewers, is that necessarily a bad thing?
LOUIS DeSIPIO:Well I think in this case the kids are just watching English language TV in Latino households, so I don't, I don't think the lack of programming has kept them away from the power of television.
BOB GARFIELD: Pity. Well, Louis [LAUGHS] - thank you so much.
LOUIS DeSIPIO: [LAUGHS] My pleasure.
BOB GARFIELD:Louis DeSipio is a professor of political science at the University of California at Irvine and author of the report Channel Surfing in English and Spanish. [MUSIC]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Coming up, the pitfalls of single factor analysis and how Chile's media mogul helped foment a coup.
BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media from NPR. BOB GARFIELD: We are back with On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. This week marked not only the second anniversary of the terrorist attacks on our shores but also 30th anniversary of the coup that brought a military dictator to power in Chile. The Nixon administration, already embroiled in proxy battles with the Soviet Union around the world, decided it couldn't countenance the newly-elected socialist government of Salvador Allende in Chile, so the CIA helped engineer his ouster in favor of a military junta led by General Augusto Pinochet. Peter Kornbluh is a senior analyst at the National Security Archive. In this month's Columbia Journalism Review he documents how Nixon and Kissinger empowered Chile's leading media mogul, Augustin Edwards, to lead the charge against Allende. Now a group of editors, human rights lawyers and journalism students are accusing Edwards of violating the Code of Ethics of the Academy of Chilean Journalists and are fighting at the very least to have him expelled from the Press Guild. Peter, welcome to the show.
PETER KORNBLUH: It's a pleasure to be here.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: First of all, who is Augustin Edwards?
PETER KORNBLUH: Augustin Edwards is really the Rupert Murdoch of Chile. He controlled in 1970 the vast majority of Chilean media. His main newspaper, El Mercurio, was the largest newspaper in Chile at the time, routinely compared to the New York Times here. He was also at that point considered Chile's richest man and a key player in government circles and in international circles as well.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:So Allende's just been elected, despite the opposition of El Mercurio, and Edwards contacts the Nixon administration. So what happens then?
PETER KORNBLUH: The first thing Edwards did is he went to Ambassador Edward Korry to say to him are you going to move militarily against Allende? What are you going to do? And Korry basically told him that the United States wasn't going to move militarily to block Allende from taking office, and since that answer wasn't satisfactory, Edwards flew to Washington, met with his close friend, Don Kendall, the CEO of the Pepsi Company, and said you have to tell the president that, you know, Chile is going to hell and the Communists are taking over, and this is bad for the United States. And Kendal actually went to the White House, told Nixon that Edwards was in town and what he was saying, and Nixon immediately ordered Henry Kissinger and the CIA director, Richard Helms, to meet with Edwards and find out what he was saying.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:So ultimately the U.S. government passed to Edwards nearly 2 million bucks, which is worth considerably more on the black market, and how was that money used?
PETER KORNBLUH: What this money purchased was really El Mercurio being able to become a bullhorn --not only for a free press -- beyond that - it went into the arena of violating Chile's Constitution, calling for the military to take power and supporting that military once it did take power, I might add.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:And this obviously goes beyond anti-Allende articles and editorials. But when you say "bullhorn" -- did the paper identify places that ought to be attacked? Did the paper call for the assassination of people? Where is the line crossed between exercising a vigorous opposition and becoming seditious?
PETER KORNBLUH: Well that is a very important question, but, but here-- you had the owner of the newspaper already having told U.S. officials that he favored military action to stop Allende, and you had editorials declaring that Allende's government was illegitimate and essentially inciting people to rise up against it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: You quote from a CIA paper that credits El Mercurio with making the military takeover possible. Is that what you think?
PETER KORNBLUH:El Mercurio was the centerpiece of the CIA's largest covert action in Chile between 1970 and 1973 -- what was called "The Propaganda Project." And the CIA's own internal memoranda state that this project set the stage for the coup of September 11th, 1973.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:But you, Peter Kornbluh, know a huge amount about the opposition to Allende at the time. You have a vast array of documents. How crucial do you think El Mercurio was?
PETER KORNBLUH: I think El Mercurio was pivotal. You have to imagine what it would be like in our own country if the New York Times decided to take up a significant strident and eventually even violent opposition to our government. We have a, a country where we have many, many newspapers, but imagine if the New York Times was one of only three or four papers in the country and was beyond a doubt the leading and most read newspaper. You can imagine the, the influence that it might play.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Now there's a battle to bring ethics charges against Edwards. The courts back then didn't find him guilty of libel or sedition. Is this a largely symbolic act now?
PETER KORNBLUH: This is not just about what El Mercurio published. In fact it's not about what El Mercurio published, because Chileans-- believe that whatever he published, he had the right to publish. The ethics charges that they're investigating against him are predicated upon his contacts with the Central Intelligence Agency -- the fact that he discussed with the CIA director a military option in Chile and received money from the Central Intelligence Agency.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:In Rwanda, media chiefs who called for the roundup and murder of individuals are being prosecuted for real. Do you think that could ever happen in Chile? Should it?
PETER KORNBLUH: Well I think that for the moment this really isn't about a courtroom verdict. It's about a verdict of history. And Chileans themselves have not really had access to this information, and obviously now with the declassification of U.S. documents that shed light on the activities of individuals like Augustin Edwards, I think there will be a verdict of history at least that is important for everybody to know.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Thank you very much.
PETER KORNBLUH: You're more than welcome.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Peter Kornbluh's article for the Columbia Journalism Review was excerpted from his new book -- The Pinochet File -- a declassified dossier on atrocity and accountability. BOB GARFIELD: During its brief life, the Allende government undertook a great experiment to create a rapid communications network to regulate Chile's transition from a capitalist to a socialist system. To this end, the government employed an eccentric British cyberneticist named Stafford Beer who designed Project Cybersyn --a system of telex machines linking factories around the country to a central mainframe computer in Santiago. Eden Miller is a PhD candidate from MIT who has spent the last two years in Chile excavating this lost piece of communications history. She says that Beer's vision of an electronic communications network for Chile's budding socialist economy prefigures the internet and took its model from biology.
EDEN MILLER: And Stafford Beer's biological model emphasized decentralized control, and I can give a, a pretty easy example of how this works in biology. If you think about day to day breathing, your lungs take care of all the work, but if you want to go swimming, for example, your brain can jump in and it can control the rate of respiration. So the idea was that the factories connected to the system would behave like the lungs -- they would maintain their autonomy on a day to day basis, but if there was a problem, then the government, like the cortex of the brain, could jump in and intervene and solve the problem.
BOB GARFIELD: Now you've made the comparison between Beer's electronic nervous system and the internet. Why is--
EDEN MILLER: Right.
BOB GARFIELD: -- that a valid comparison?
EDEN MILLER:It's a network of communication that involved a computer. It was also a system designed to provide rapid data transmission. And it was also designed to enable a dynamic form of decision-making which is one of the benefits that we have of the internet today.
BOB GARFIELD:And did it work? Did-- Project Cybersyn allow the government brain in Santiago to know what was happening on the factory floors?
EDEN MILLER: [LAUGHS] You know it did, but not as you would expect it to. One of the most valuable outcomes of the system was during the truck drivers' strike of October 1972. About 50,000 vehicles blocked the streets of Santiago, not allowing food deliveries to pass -- it could have brought the country to a standstill and terminated the Allende government much earlier than September 11th of 1973. But using this telex network the government was able to coordinate the 200 trucks that were loyal to the government and was able to coordinate what they were carrying, what roads were open, etc, etc -- and they were able to survive.
BOB GARFIELD: Now a year after that strike, the coup did occur. What then happened to Project Cybersyn?
EDEN MILLER:It stopped the day of the military coup. The military -- several members were fascinated by the system. There was a-- operations room that was modeled after a war room from World War II. So the military knew the system had something to do with control, but they weren't sure what. So they interrogated several members of the team, and at the end of the day it was just too complicated for them to understand, so they destroyed the control room.
BOB GARFIELD:It seems like we're looking at Project Cybersyn and saying well that's a very forward-looking technology employed by a progressive government to harness the power of communication, but tilting it just a slightly different way-- isn't it a little bit creepy that the Allende government was centralizing information and couldn't that have been used, had the Allende regime not been overthrown for sinister means somewhere down the line?
EDEN MILLER: [LAUGHS] You sound like you're a member of the rightist press in Chile. [LAUGHS] There were several articles that were published during this time period both in Chile and in England, looking at it from this more sinister side -- fear of a Big Brother or some means of controlling the workers. My opinion is that the system was very forward-looking. It couldn't have been that sinister Big Brother type of system because the data that was being communicated from the factories -- each factory only sent maybe 5 to 7 indexes of data every day, so things like raw materials, transportation, absentee levels from workers but not which workers were absent. That was the type of information the government was receiving, and at that level it would have been impossible to have a Big Brother type of control. But with different technology, the same type of layout -- I can see how it could be read the other way.
BOB GARFIELD: Well, Eden Miller - thank you very much.
EDEN MILLER: Sure! Thank you.
BOB GARFIELD: Eden Miller is a doctoral candidate in the history of technology at MIT. [MUSIC]
BOB GARFIELD: This is the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. [AMBIENT SOUND] Amid the hustle and bustle on Wednesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 87 points, or just under one percent of its value. Why? CNBC seemed to know. [PROGRAM MUSIC]
MAN: Welcome back. A busy news day. The market's moving a little bit lower today...word of a new tape from Osama bin Laden causing the markets to sort of fall off the table there.
BOB GARFIELD:Got that? Over a period of 6 and a half hours, millions of investors traded billions of shares of stock because of word of a new tape from Osama bin Laden. The day before both the Dow and the Nasdaq were down because, according to the Associated Press, of a disappointing revenue outlook for Nokia and investor profit-taking. The day before that, according to USAToday.com, the Dow was up 83 points due to optimism about the economy. Really?!
RAY GOLDBACHER: That's as reasonable as anything.
BOB GARFIELD: Ray Goldbacher is the money editor at USAToday.com.
RAY GOLDBACHER: You know every day 3 billion shares change hands. Who knows why? I mean the best you can do is try to take the temperature of the predominant trend. Analysts and journalists find ways to explain the market no matter what it does -- or try.
BOB GARFIELD:They do try. Every trading day, reporters at the Associated Press, Bloomberg, Reuters, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and a dozen other news organizations are expected to distill millions of discrete financial decisions and divine a single motivating factor! Some days it's a Commerce Department report on business inventories. Sometimes it's a jump in IBM's earnings. Sometimes it's the mysterious "technical factors" or dropping oil prices or terrorism jitters or investor optimism or the magical, all-encompassing "profit-taking." Dan Gross covers Wall Street for Slate.com.
DAN GROSS: Of course there's profit-taking every single minute of every single day. It's a very convenient shorthand for-- "Oh, well gee --we don't know why the Dow went down 70 points."
BOB GARFIELD: But, Gross says, his colleagues do know how to find someone to float a theory.
DAN GROSS:You have a number of sources -- guys you know you can call for a quote -- and the guys on the other end have a limited number of things that they will say. It was down on profit-taking, up on optimism, concern about profits -- you know, there are a set number of factors that everybody will say.
BOB GARFIELD:One source often turned to for the daily analysis is Hugh Johnson, chairman of asset management for the investment banking house First Albany Corporation. With his more than three decades of market experience, Johnson carefully considers corporate fundamentals, external news events, trading patterns known as technicals, the push and pull of other markets such as commodities, bonds and currency trading, and his long-cultivated instinct for the psychology of the trading floor. And then-- he guesses.
HUGH JOHNSON: It's a real giant leap of faith to say this is what's been on the minds of investors and made them make decisions, cause you obviously don't survey every investor. But you get a sense that the markets tend to respond or react to new in a fairly -- fairly predictable way. Having done this for a while, it's probably a pretty good guess that these events do in -somehow - some manner - affect investors.
BOB GARFIELD:Or-- you know -- not. [BAR AMBIENCE] We are in the Irish Punt Saloon, a favorite hangout for brokers and traders, shortly after the closing bell on a sultry summer afternoon. We approach a young Wall Streeter named Anthony Piocosta (ph).
BOB GARFIELD: I need your expert analysis. Nasdaq was down 21 points today - a little over 1 percent -why?
ANTHONY PIOCOSTA:Oh, there's a few reasons actually. One of the reasons was that Cisco came out with earnings and their expectations were as great as said to be, and Cisco is pretty much one of the largest of the Nasdaq composites, so it pulls down the average very easily.
BOB GARFIELD: Quick followup question. Are you sure?
ANTHONY PIOCOSTA: Am I sure? Positive.
BOB GARFIELD: Then we collar his pal, Dieter Uber (ph). The Nasdaq was down about 1 percent today. Why?
DIETER UBER:The Nasdaq's down now because technicals are taking over - there's - it's like 16-5, 16-90 we're sitting at. Once it broke that level, now technicals on the Nasdaq are actually taking over, and the traders will just fight to sell, because they're up.
BOB GARFIELD: You sure about that?
DIETER UBER: Yes. As for the Nasdaq being down today, it's because of technicals.
BOB GARFIELD:Then finally we turned to their colleague, Kieren Lockhern (ph), who crunches the same numbers on Nasdaq's dip and draws an entirely different and stunning conclusion.
KIEREN LOCKHERN: It's probably just overheated. You know? Numbers have come out; there's nothing to take us up any further. Now people eventually look at the profits that they have and realize--either take 'em or-- got off the pot.
BOB GARFIELD: So a little bit of profit-taking.
KIEREN LOCKHERN: Yeah. Sure.
BOB GARFIELD:Ah. Profit taking. But if single factor analysis sometimes seems silly or worse, at least one Wall Street watcher staunchly defends the practice. He is David Wilson, managing editor for global stock markets at Bloomberg News, the organization that revolutionized financial journalism with up-to-the-second reports delivered to your desktop. Wilson insists that trading days do follow miniature trends and themes with certain critical events assuming disproportionate influence.
DAVID WILSON: There are days when it's pretty straightforward - you, you get a figure - you know it might be a company earnings, it might be an economic report -- and that really does set the tone for the day! And, and you see it even before trading begins, because you're looking at what's happening overseas with the futures markets, with U.S. stocks traded there, and it may be that whatever the theme is at 8:30 in the morning carries all the way through the day.
BOB GARFIELD:Hence, on Wednesday, according to Bloomberg as well as CNBC, what really mattered was the latest video from Osama bin Laden. Or-- you know -- not.
LOU DOBBS: I'm very suspicious of anybody who looks at a market monolithically.
BOB GARFIELD: Lou Dobbs of CNN's nightly Lou Dobbs Tonight is among the most influential and respected financial journalists in the world. He rolls his eyes at the simplistic art of the Wall Street Market Wrap, but he also acknowledges his occasional complicity because of the time constraints of broadcast television, and, he says, the demands of the audience.
LOU DOBBS: There's not enough space in newspapers, there's not enough time on television or radio to give the explanation as it's deserved, and frankly the audience wouldn't want it anyway in most cases -- the broader audience. Because it is complex, and it takes far too much time. So we revert to traditional shorthand that while wrong is-- expedient.
BOB GARFIELD: What if the press covered Congress the way it covers the Street?
LOU DOBBS: They do. [LAUGHS]
BOB GARFIELD:Well-- [LAUGHS] not really. Although you can certainly say this: this week the House and the Senate blocked a proposed new Labor Department rule that would have limited overtime pay for millions of workers -- on concerns about -- profit taking.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Coming up, a loving look at the once and future VOA. Also -- when is it okay to break the law in pursuit of a story?
BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media from NPR. BOB GARFIELD: We're back with On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. This week ABC News announced that it had found a gaping hole in the Homeland Security Department's defense system. Reporter Brian Ross packed 15 pounds of depleted uranium into a teak trunk along with other furniture and shipped it from Jakarta, Indonesia all the way home.
BRIAN ROSS: Within minutes it was on the 110 Freeway, moving through the heart of downtown Los Angeles. And Homeland Security officials did not learn what happened until hours later, after our truck driver whom we told we were from ABC News became nervous and authorities were notified. The government reaction has been to investigate -- ABC News! Agents were dispatched at midnight to our Los Angeles Bureau where they demanded the material and threatened to file criminal charges against ABC personnel.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:While depleted uranium can't be used to make weapons and is actually legal to ship, the Homeland Security Department maintains that ABC broke the law in not disclosing the contents of the trunk accurately. ABC responded that it's highly unlikely terrorists would fill out a form saying they're shipping uranium and that that was the point of the test. Dennis Murphy is a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security. Welcome to the show.
DENNIS MURPHY: Oh, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: ABC also breached port security last year when it shipped I guess a similar batch of uranium to the Staten Island, New York port.
DENNIS MURPHY: Correct.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Obviously the intention of ABC News is to show that there are some important holes in our security that need to be closed!
DENNIS MURPHY: If, if the hole to be closed is to prevent depleted uranium from coming into the United States, then I would agree with you, but the hole we're trying to close is to prevent real nuclear material from coming into the United States.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:So you would dispute the nuclear physicists with the National Resources Defense Council quoted by ABC who said that if federal inspectors couldn't detect that depleted uranium, then they can't detect the real thing.
DENNIS MURPHY: I would definitely disagree with that. The items we use are calibrated to pick up real material. Now they're not perfect, but they are designed to pick up the real thing --they're not designed to pick up inert --relatively inert -- material. This is a very unscientific experiment. There is no science to this test.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Well then let's say, Mr. Murphy, that this was for argument's sake a valid test - a test that would hold up on your lights scientifically. Would you then regard this exercise as valid and important as ABC regards it evidently?
DENNIS MURPHY: There are hundreds and hundreds of news outlets. If every journalist decided Hm! I think I'll test the system too -- we would spend an enormous amount of valuable Homeland Security resources doing nothing but chasing ghosts, trying to find out if these tests are or are not a real media or, or someone posing as the media.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Mr. Murphy, there are plenty of reports running through Congress and in the media that suggest that the Homeland Security Department is terrifically underfunded, that they can't conduct all the exercises they need to, to find the holes in the system, and I think that it is generally regarded as the role of the press to hold our government agencies accountable when other accountability fails or is underfunded.
DENNIS MURPHY: Well, I, I agree with you one hundred percent that the media has a valuable role to play in holding the government to account. But number one rule is - don't violate the law to do it! I mean I think that if they're going to do this, then they should have gone out and done scientific analysis; they should have gone out and reported it as a true investigative work rather than just perpetrate a hoax to say Gotcha.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Let me toss out a case -- a famous case -- in which a news organization broke the law -- in fact it was ABC and it's the Food Lion Supermarket chain. ABC reporters posed as employees, lied on their application forms and secretly taped what was going on inside the areas of the market that the public couldn't see. And there you saw them doctoring chicken, mixing old hamburger with new hamburger and generally engaging in unsanitary practices that threaten the health of the public. Now obviously these supermarkets undergo regular inspections, by the government; at least they're supposed to. ABC broke the law; was originally hit with 5 and a half million dollar damages -- punitive and otherwise --which was ultimately reduced to two dollars. The appeals court determined that if a reporter breaks certain laws in pursuit of a story that protects the public, then perhaps that can be excused.
DENNIS MURPHY: You're isolating one case and saying Hm, Maybe it's okay; maybe it's not. Maybe these laws are okay to break. But who is the judge of that? And which other reporters are out there trying to determine -- Hm. Which law should I break now to-- to tell my story?
BROOKE GLADSTONE:I guess what I'm suggesting is that if it was deemed okay to protect the people from, say, tainted meat -- aren't the stakes even higher in this case?
DENNIS MURPHY: Well, but I, I also don't think that terrorists are going to pose as meat inspectors or-- as meat employees to carry out a terrorist attack.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:But they might try to ship dangerous substances from, say, Jakarta to New York! Don't you want to know if our systems to catch that don't work?
DENNIS MURPHY: Well, and, and we - we, we are gearing our systems to find the real thing, and my point about the validity of the test that caused us to spend resources to determine is this a real news organization, is this real material or not -- you know - that was hundreds of hours of manpower that was devoted to that! And to me, I think that's a waste of our resources. We should spend those resources trying to pursue terrorists and criminals --not reporters.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well I want to thank you very much for talking to me.
DENNIS MURPHY: I appreciate the opportunity.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Dennis Murphy is a spokesman for the Homeland Security Department. [MUSIC]
BOB GARFIELD: We have time for a few letters this week. The first comes from Tim Casey who wrote in to make a case for why the media deregulation that we've been reporting about on the program doesn't really matter. Tim writes: "While I'm grateful that you're keeping the spotlight on the giant corporations gobbling up more and more media outlets, I laugh every time I hear how important these outlets are. I have not used my television for watching broadcasts of any kind -- cable, satellite or network -- for ten years."
BROOKE GLADSTONE:He goes on to suggest: "If we all get together and ignore the crap that the corporations are trying to shove down our throats, we would have so much more time to spend on the things that are important -- the things that corporate media would rather have us ignore."
BOB GARFIELD:I modestly report that we received a flood of positive mail about my re-run piece last week on freedom of expression and the Patriot Act. But Dave Luce from St. Louis, Missouri wrote to say that it was, quote, "sloppy yellow journalism at its finest." He writes: "That your show is on the air and pronouncing such inanities is evidence of just how vibrant the First Amendment remains and reminds me that in the marketplace of ideas as in most marketplaces, there's more junk than gold."
BROOKE GLADSTONE:And here's a letter about my interview with Lionel Chetwynd, the writer and producer of Showtime's docudrama DC 9/11. Floyd Romoyer writes "Gladstone was concerned about the movie's accuracy and Chetwynd's connection with the Republican Party. While Gladstone's questions are valid, I have to point out that the Showtime movie is a one time thing on a premium cable network with a limited audience. I don't know if Gladstone has an equal concern with the TV show West Wing -- it's a network show that's watched weekly by a much bigger viewership. The Showtime movie is pro-Republican while the West Wing is pro-Democrat. Just to be fair, Gladstone should interview the producers of West Wing in the same critical and judgmental tone of voice that she used with Chetwynd. What's happened to journalistic objectivity in On the Media?" Well Floyd, I've only watched the West Wing once but-- I thought it was fiction! Anyway, who ever said we were objective? Bob? Are we objective?
BOB GARFIELD:[LAUGHS] No, Brooke. We're not. Anyway, I just want to hear your critical and judgmental tone of voice again, and maybe this will inspire it. Jon Gautier from Brooklyn wrote with an important question, one we get a lot. "Why does Garfield, when he is doing the credits at the end of the show always say: 'edited by-- Brooke' in this slow, exaggerated way? Is this some private chops-busting between Bob and Brooke? If so, why does Brooke not retaliate, or is she just the more grown up of the two?"
BROOKE GLADSTONE: No comment, Jon.
BOB GARFIELD: (She's the more grown up of the two.)
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Keep those letters coming at onthemedia@wnyc.org, and don't forget to tell us where you live and how to pronounce your name. [MUSIC]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Based in Washington, DC, the Voice of America reaches an audience of 94 million worldwide. It broadcasts on short wave, AM and FM radio as well as satellite television and the internet. The reason you've never found it on your dial is because Section 501 of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 prohibits VOA from being broadcast here in the homeland. How come? Because it's the government's channel. The government funds the effort that creates over 1,000 hours of weekly programming. Nevertheless, since its first broadcast, just after America entered World War II in 1942, it has promised to be truthful. Here's a piece of a very early broadcast. [CLIP FROM VOICE OF AMERICA] [MAN SPEAKING IN GERMAN]
ANNOUNCER:This is a voice speaking from America. Daily at this time we shall speak to you about America and the war. The news may be good or bad. We shall tell you the truth.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Alan Heil spent a lifetime with Voice of America, acting as foreign correspondent, chief of news and current affairs and deputy director of programs. He tells the organization's story in his book Voice of America: A History. He agrees that it was created as an arm of propaganda--
ALAN HEIL: But you had at the very beginning among the pioneers, those who believed that the best policy was to tell the truth. I can remember the story of General Stillwell for example who said "The Japanese gave us a hell of a beating in Burma." Now that became a matter of some contention, as you might imagine between the policymakers in Washington and those broadcasting the news from the Voice of America then in New York, but the VOA staff held its own. And later we learned, following World War II from some of the Japanese who were interrogated about their listening experiences, that that made them really believe the Voice of America. True, it was founded as a propaganda organization to counter Axis propaganda, particularly in Germany but also in Japan. But even in the early going there were editors who stood behind the contract with the listeners to give them an honest accounting of the day's events.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:You quote President Lyndon Johnson saying "I know I can't affect the broadcast companies. I know they won't listen to me. I know they won't help me, but goddamnit, I have my own radio, and I've got to make that work!" And he was referring to the VOA and its coverage of Vietnam. Wouldn't you admit that sometimes the VOA has a problem reconciling its dual roles as both a government agency and an impartial news source?
ALAN HEIL: Well John Chancellor said that the Voice is at the crossroads of journalism and diplomacy. I think, however, it's increasingly clear and particularly in the 21st Century and in the post-9/11 period that there is no substitute for a full and fair disclosure of events. I think that there is a hunger for the straight story.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: How many languages is the VOA broadcast in?
ALAN HEIL: It's broadcast now in 54 languages.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And do you count Special English among them?
ALAN HEIL:Not really. Special English being a variant of Standard English was designed back in 1959 to aid comprehension of those listeners for whom English was a second language.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: It was an English that was composed of a 1500 word vocabulary.
ALAN HEIL: Quite correct and slowly delivered, and also--the idea was, in the main, one thought per one sentence.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And what could you convey to the world in Special English?
ALAN HEIL: Oh, you would be remarkably surprised. If I may, I'd like to read from page 279 of the book.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Please!
ALAN HEIL: The absolutely marvelous poem sent to us by A.V.B. Mannon of Tamil Nadu in India, and he called it An Ode to Special English. HAIL THEE, SPECIAL ENGLISH! THOU ART A VIRGIN MAIDEN-- UNCORRUPTED, SIMPLE, EASY. YE RANG A FAMILIAR TONE TO ONE AND ALL, LEARNED AND WISE AS MUCH TO THE UNINITIATED. SIMPLE IS BEAUTIFUL. NO FRILLS, NO TWISTS NOR PRETENSIONS. YE WIND YOUR WAY TO THE HEART TO STRIKE A FAMILIAR CHORD. IT'S NEITHER THE KING'S NOR THE QUEEN'S, BUT THAT OF VERY COMMON FOLK. IT IS A SYMPHONY IN PROSE. LONG LIVE SPECIAL ENGLISH.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:[LAUGHS] You know it, it reminds me of one of VOA's greatest contributions to world culture isn't in language at all but in music! I think that the most famous and, and certainly most beloved voice of the Voice of America is probably that of Willis Conover!
ALAN HEIL: Absolutely. [BIG BAND MUSIC] He once made a visit to Moscow, got out into the great packed hall in the center of the city and all he said was the standard introduction to his signature program--: [CLIP OF WILLIS CONOVER]
WILLIS CONOVER: Time for jazz -- Willis Conover in Washington with the Voice of America Jazz Hour. -- and the hall burst into applause -- this is at the height of the Cold War -- and there was a standing ovation that lasted for several minutes.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Let's talk about the VOA in China during Tiananmen Square.
ALAN HEIL:There's a fascinating story about one of the Chinese correspondents, Betty Tseu who all she needed to do was to identify herself at the edge of this square of one million people, and suddenly the people would part like the waves of the Red Sea and usher her right up into the center on the platform where the pro-democracy demonstrators were holding forth during those very, very critical months leading up to June 3rd, 1989. The Voice was then jammed by the Chinese government-- [CLIP OF VOICE OF AMERICA]
ANNOUNCER: This is the Voice of America. The following program is in Chinese. [MUSIC]
ALAN HEIL:-- and then anyone listening to it can see the critical impact of jamming, on blocking information from the Chinese people. [WOMAN SPEAKING IN CHINESE] [STATIC-Y SOUND INTERFERENCE OVER] I think even the Chinese themselves conceded before that martial law was imposed on that day in May of 1989 that the Voice probably had 60 million listeners. It was I think clear that its impact was historic in 1989.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:One last question Mr. Heil. We have the BBC, we have CNN everywhere - we've got the internet reaching into corners where even CNN can't reach -- why do we need the VOA?
ALAN HEIL: I would have to go and quote David Burke who was the first chairman of the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors who said that CNN can be seen in hotel lobbies and industrialized society. It cannot be seen in refugee camps. The U.S. simply has to have a voice, I believe, and that's a voice that reflects us. It's not a voice that's an official radio as much as it is one that reflects America -- an American optic as a West African editor once put it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Alan Heil, thank you very much.
ALAN HEIL: Thank you.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Alan Heil is the author of Voice of America: A History. [THEME MUSIC]
BOB GARFIELD:That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Katya Rogers, Janeen Price, Megan Ryan and Tony Field; engineered by Dylan Keefe and Rob Christiansen, and edited-- by Brooke. We had help from Dave Goldberg. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Arun Rath is our senior producer and Dean Cappello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the program and get free transcripts at onthemedia.org and e-mail us at onthemedia@wnyc.org. This is On the Media from NPR. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. [MUSIC TAG]
- Back to story:
- September 12, 2003
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A Week of Scandals, Catholic Whistleblowers, and More
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Conservative Bloggers Vindicated, Advice for Leakers, and More
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The Mayor of Toronto Would Prefer Not to Discuss Whether He Smokes Crack
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An 11-year-old and his 3D printer
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Catholic Whistleblowers
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Who’s gonna pay for this stuff?
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OTM Staff Picks, Volume 52
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Qapla!
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Brooke Gladstone + Cyndi Lauper
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The Three-Headed Scandal Monster
