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(Photo by Robin Holland)
In this week’s JOURNAL, Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Ron Walters discussed how race has affected the presidential election process and the media’s coverage thereof.
Jamieson said:
“I heard a commentator say, when Senator Obama announced, that he’s running to be 'the first black president'... He’s running to be our president, the president of all of us. And to some extent to say that he’s running to be 'the first black president,' I knew what the commentator meant, but I thought that is problematic for that candidacy.”
We invite you to discuss in the space below.
This week on the JOURNAL, Bill Moyers spoke with a couple unusually impacted by this year’s bruising battle for the Democratic nomination – law professors Christopher Edley, Jr. and Maria Echaveste, who are advising Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton, respectively.
What do you think? Have political stances and conflicts affected your personal relationships?
We invite you to discuss in the space below.
This week, the JOURNAL followed the California Nurses Association (CNA), a union calling for change in America’s health care system. CNA Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro said:
“There shouldn’t be a double standard. There should be an excellence in care that applies to all people. We, as the public, pay for Dick Cheney’s care. Why is the government not providing the same type of care to all Americans?"
There are fundamental disagreements about federal action to try and create a national system for universal health care, including the basic question of whether such a system is even feasible.
We invite you to discuss in the space below.
Authors Victor Navasky and Christopher Cerf were on THE JOURNAL this week to discuss their new book, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! OR HOW WE WON THE WAR IN IRAQ. The latest from Cerf and Navasky’s satirical “Institute of Expertology,” which previously published THE EXPERTS SPEAK: THE DEFINITIVE COMPENDIUM OF AUTHORITATIVE MISINFORMATION, the book is an in-depth examination of five years of expert commentary on Iraq.
Regarding experts, Navasky said:
“The format of journalism is that you quote someone on one side, and then you quote someone on the other, and you pick experts. And the theory [is] that if you get two people who, as we found out in THE EXPERTS SPEAK, are experts who are wrong, that somehow you’re gonna get the truth out of that.”
What do you think?
We invite you to discuss in the space below.
(Photos by Robin Holland)
 In her conversation with Bill Moyers on this week’s JOURNAL, Kathleen Hall Jamieson discussed the media's influence on ‘outsider’ candidates like Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich:
"Those two have provided a clear alternative in the debates and expanded the range of discourse within each political party. Alternative parties don’t get to have debates. They don’t get that kind of television coverage. We don’t have any way to have those ideas percolate back into the mainstream. We don’t have any way for the public to see that those are legitimate and viable options and as a result, potentially, to rally behind them. And so, when those voices are marginalized, where people are taken out of the debate, that’s problematic for the process.”
 Dennis Kucinich agrees. Having been rejected from THE DES MOINES REGISTER debate before the Iowa caucuses and now the ABC News debate before New Hampshire, Kucinich tells Moyers:
"How can you have a debate if you don’t have a voice that challenges all the others? Right now every other Democrat on that stage will be for keeping our troops in Iraq through at least 2013. Every other Democrat on the stage will be there to keep a for-profit healthcare system going with all of these Americans who don’t have coverage. Everyone else on the stage will be there for the continuation of NAFTA and the WTO. I mean, my position on the American political scene is to show people there’s a whole different direction that America can take here at home and in the world. And the Democratic Party in narrowing the choices and the media in trying to block the point of view that I represent is really doing a disservice to the American people.”
What do you think?
Do you agree that media and its political coverage has too great an influence on the elections?
Does mainstream media effectively serve the public interest in elections and create informed voters? If not, what are ways in which it can improve?
Do you think we have too many or too few debates? Are we including enough participants in the debates?
Take our poll and then discuss by commenting below.
One important aspect of the complicated issue of net neutrality relates to whether stricter regulations on Internet providers could have an adverse effect on developing new web innovation. Read this opinion below:
Mr. and Ms. Consumer are starting to demand a lot from their Internet. They want on-demand movies. Voice-over-Internet telephone service. Streaming live video. And, very soon no doubt, a lot of data-rich services that we haven't even heard of yet. Those sorts of services will require Internet providers - like, yes, the telecoms and the cable firms - to invest enormously in expanding the pathways for that coming flood of data. If we want movies (and we do) and if we want streaming video (and we do), then someone must pay for the huge infrastructure improvements necessary to deliver those innovative services into our offices and homes. Government-enforced "net neutrality" would stifle that innovation. It would temper the consumer-driven imperative to make the Internet work faster and better."
- "'Net Neutrality' Would Stifle Innovation," editorial, ARIZONA REPUBLIC, June 26, 2006
But Jeff Chester of THE NATION disagrees:
"According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the deepest pockets--corporations, special-interest groups and major advertisers--would get preferred treatment. Content from these providers would have first priority on our computer and television screens, while information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out...If we permit the Internet to become a medium designed primarily to serve the interests of marketing and personal consumption, rather than global civic-related communications, we will face the political consequences for decades to come. Unless we push back, the "brandwashing" of America will permeate not only our information infrastructure but global society and culture as well."
- "The End of the Internet?," Jeff Chester, THE NATION
Learn more about net neutrality here.
What do you think? Answer our poll question then debate the topic below:
 Constitutional scholar, Bruce Fein states:
“Most important thing for the American people to know is that the great genius of the founding fathers, their revolutionary idea, with the chief mission of the state is to make you and them free to pursue their ambitions and faculties. Not to build empires, not to aggrandize government. That's the mission of the state, to make them free, chart their own destiny. And the burden is on the government to try to understand why that freedom has to be curtailed for a security purpose or otherwise.”
Photo: Robin Holland
Answer our poll question, then debate the topic below.
Answer our poll question, then debate the topic below.
Answer our poll question, then debate the topic below.
Answer our poll question, then debate the topic below.
Answer our poll question, then debate the topic below.
Answer our poll question, then debate the topic below.
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A Companion Blog to Bill Moyers Journal
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