Letter 2 America for August 23, 2013

Dear America,

Even though Diane Sawyer thinks that reports on young girls who escape being mauled by bears and Prince William and his wife changing their own child's diapers are of paramount import, there are things happening in the world that are of broader interest, such as the insurrection that ousted Mohammed Morsi in Egypt and the counter-insurrection that ensued.  Over a thousand people have been killed in that reaction to Morsi's removal from office, and it is important because its outcome may determine the near term history of our ally Israel as well as the durability of the Muslim Jihad movement all over the Middle East.  Thus far, the United States has acted with respect for Egyptian self-determinism and with restraint, though the old soldiers in congress like Senator John McCain keep agitating for sanctions against the military interim regime...interim we hope.  But even if the Egyptians work everything out themselves tomorrow, the lack of in-depth coverage of the tumult there is a disservice to the American people, who have to vote for the people who will make our policies in such situations in the future, and there is much to say that light-weights like Sawyer don't seem too concerned about.  (Peter Jennings must be spinning in his grave.  Even Charlie Gibson's tenure looks good by comparison to what ABC news has become under Diane Sawyer.)

Central to all of Middle Eastern politics is a principle that we in The West don't understand.  In Europe and The Americas, government is secular and religion is free.  We can worship as we like...or not...but government has nothing to say about it, but in the Middle East, the opposite is true.  Religion in the Muslim world, and in the Jewish state of Israel too for that matter, is an integral part of daily living, and it influences politics not just indirectly as it does here through PAC's and the use by clergy of the Bully Pulpit so to speak, but directly even to the extent that religious principles are integrated into national constitutions.  It is most important for us to recognize that just as we cannot fathom a society ruled by religious sentiment, that two billion or so people who live in North Africa, southern Europe and Asia who subscribe to Semitic faiths are just as perplexed by the dichotomization of how we live and how we worship.  And if you think about it, there is at least some sense in which their skepticism about the validity of such a bifurcation of morality and law is understandable.  We hearken to one set of principles on Saturday and Sunday mornings and another the rest of the time.  People go to church and extol abstention of one kind or another and then abandon abstemiousness when they put the game on television and open a beer before retiring for the night with cohabiting significant others to whom they are not married.  We attend churches that abhor birth control and then we practice it anyway because the law says we can.  And frankly, despite the hypocrisy of it all, I think it should be thus--even hypocrisy should be an individual choice.  But in Muslim countries, a substantial portion of the populace--enough in the case of Egypt to democratically elect a fundamentalist who doesn't believe that such a dichotomy is either moral or workable--does not subscribe to the notion that we can lead both secular and pious lives, while the remainder of those societies wants the secular right and the right, not the obligation, to lead deistic lives as they see fit.  The consequence of that schism is what we are seeing not just in Egypt, but also in Iran and Iraq...and Turkey lately as well.  In fact, we joined in a peacekeeping action in Bosnia because Muslims and Christians couldn't live together after eight hundred years of strife between them starting with The Crusades, that war demonstrating the centrality of religion in eastern culture, even in the Balkans.  And we have to support Israel, even when that country does things in violation of international law like settle conquered territory, because the Muslim and Palestinian population of the region cannot tolerate the existence of a Jewish state and the Jews of Israel insist that it remain religiously monolithic in terms of its governance.  Yet, even with all this experience regarding a way of life that is different from our own, we still think we can insist on Middle Eastern governance that cleaves to our western idea of secular society.  That's where Diane Sawyer, and others similarly situated, come in...or at least should come in.

The news media are the primary continuing-education institution of the vast American electorate.  They inform us for the rest of our lives after we cease to attend schools and have history and philosophy pushed at us.  We are a free society...predominantly secular despite the sanctimony of some politicians and broadcasters...and the news media are free to do as they like and say what they like as long as they don't tell outright lies, though sometimes they do and nothing seems to happen in consequence.  But the license to broadcast of every major electronic media outlet on either radio or television carries with it a duty to perform public service by both law (the Communications Act of 1934) and regulation (See the Federal Register for the FCC).    Thus,  when ABC's news' priorities allocate five minutes to Prince William's infant son's "nappies" but only fifteen seconds to the Sequester-inspired, sharp curtailment of the Head Start program with only a few seconds to the proposition that "some say there are alternatives" without even mentioning who or what they are respectively, that should be at least potentially a breach of that duty to serve the public.  And it is of consequence such is not the case because people vote on the basis of what they believe, and what they believe is based on what they hear...not just from each other, but from the news media as well.

My wife was a fan of Diane Sawyer's when she ascended to the position of leadership at ABC News, but she sees the vapidity of ABC's coverage of news under Sawyer's stewardship.  My guess is that we will soon be eating dinner with someone else reporting the news to us--CBS, for example, runs two to three times the amount of hard news coverage that ABC does and its viewership is up 7%--joining the hundreds of thousands who have given up on ABC and NBC as sources of current events coverage and have come to rely on other broadcasters.  I for one advocate Public Broadcasting, for even though Sean Hannity thinks it is liberally biased, it seems to me that when they say something on PBS, it is more likely to be important--more likely to be true as well--than if it is said on Fox or ABC, which used to be different but now are just different shades of gray.  In fact, while ABC reported on the girl who survived the bear attack...twice in the same day mind you...PBS gave full coverage to the Head Start issue with interviews of informed people with opposing viewpoints on the subject, as did NPR.  But maybe that's not so important.  After all, on NPR and PBS, we didn't hear anything about the bear.

Your friend,

Mike