I know they mean well, but earnest policy types really need to get their heads out of the clouds or out of their policy papers or out of their own rear ends and take a good hard look at the deeply inhospitable media terrain in which they operate.***

On Sunday, Michael Signer published a piece in the WaPo that was picked up by a bunch of bloggers, and which he followed up with a post on Democracy Arsenal. Upshot: the media ought to cover the candidates’ positions on foreign policy more than it does, because foreign policy is very important.

Well, duh. Everyone knows that.

What we don’t know is how to make that happen in a cultural moment and environment in which the news media has taken a sharp turn away from any kind of hard news coverage and when audiences seem to long for a 24/7 diet of sensationalized entertainment.

We no longer have time to argue about whether or not this is what they indeed long for. Even if audiences wanted enlightenment rather than distraction, the train has left the station. Network and cable news organizations no longer talk about offering the news as a public service; they brag about their audience numbers. (And media critics often join in the horse race coverage.)

Media and news executives long ago came to the conclusion that unless there is breaking hard news that threatens to interrupt life for our nation, what we the audience really want in the “news” is reality-based distraction: fluff, drama, conflict, horse-race coverage, consumer news we can use, crisis-management advice, and stirred emotions. (It’s true that if it bleeds it leads, but we don’t want a diet too high in blood and guts.)

On this blog, I have spent two years elaborating the thesis that the most effective way for the “push” visual media (TV networks and cable channels) to reach a vast, diverse population (and electorate) under the current cultural conditions (which coincide with a time in the evolution of media when we’ve changed from a mass audience into a “mass of niches” audience) is through an effective combination of information and entertainment: infotainment. (Soft news works to get across some kind of information to “low-information” voters; the scholar Matthew Baum has written a book about it and continues to do research in this area.)

My suggestion is simple: Go with the flow. Don’t fight the trend against hard news.

Improve the quality and the information density of soft news. 

Whether your goal (like Signer’s) is to keep people informed about the foreign-policy issues that might affect them or your mission is to get more people interested in the wider world beyond their immediate environment (which is my obsession: it drives me crazy that Americans are so ignorant), it is long past time to stop criticizing the media for what it doesn’t do.

It is time to find effective ways to use the media—or to create your own media channels—to get people to pay attention to your cause.

I’m not saying this is the optimum situation. I would certainly love a more seriously informed electorate. Absent that likelihood (throughout history, most people have been ill informed; there’s no reason to believe that our generation is any different—who doesn’t love recess more than school?), it would be much more productive to work with what we have. And make it better for everyone.

——————

*** Here are some questions for Beltway-and-beyond policy wonks: Have any of you—especially those of you who sit in front of a computer monitor all day long—taken a look at TV lately? at what TV calls the “news”?

Have you watched Charlie Gibson or Katie Couric or Brian Williams for a week? Have you caught one of Keith Olbermann’s Special Moments of Stupidity? Have you listened to Bill O’Reilly rant and rave? Have you glimpsed Larry King puffing up Rudy Giuliani one day and Michelle Obama the next? Have you seen the “ladies” on The View go at it over politics? Have you tuned in to Stephen Colbert, Jay Leno, Jon Stewart, Jimmy Kimmel, David Letterman, or Conan O’Brian? to Oprah? Dr. Phil? Judge Judy? Regis and Kelly? Ellen?

I understand that it’s beneath you to watch a lot of this stuff, but this is what you’re competing against when you want to get “foreign-policy matters” in front of the American people.

Rather than cluelessly belabor the obvious, it would behoove you to understand that this is how passive, “low-information” Americans (those who depend on TV for their “news”) learn about “the issues.” This is the stuff people watch, when they’re not watching American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, etc.

Foreign policy matters—unless they are sensational or catastrophic—cannot possibly compete against this stuff. Instead, TV reduces every “issue” to a hysterical “he said, she said” debate and every public figure to a caricature.

That’s reality. We can’t wish it away. What those of us who care about foreign policy issues should do is learn how to operate effectively in this environment.

I’m not suggesting it will be easy. But if Barack Obama can get and hold people’s attention, maybe there’s hope.

Make what you want of the new Pew poll about general election patterns of support for the three remaning candidates. I pass along the info, starting with the headlines:

Obama Has The Lead, But Potential Problems Too

Increasing Optimism About Iraq

You decide:

The three leading presidential candidates have divergent images, which are reflected in the words that voters use to describe Obama, Clinton and McCain. In general, the single words used to describe Obama are very positive, but the word “inexperienced” is used most frequently to describe the Illinois senator.

“Experienced” is the word used most often to describe Clinton, with the words “strong” and untrustworthy” also mentioned frequently. For McCain, the word “old” is used most often as a descriptor, far outnumbering mentions of “honest,” “experienced” and “patriot.”

As I write, Democratic surrogates are droning on in the background on CNN, spinning away on behalf of their candidates.

The stories of the day have Obama “under attack” from Clinton, McCain, and Bush—and he’s deftly fending them off. Or something.

Meanwhile, Clinton had her best month of contributions ever!

Bush whacks Obama!

Q Thank you, Mr. President. I’d like to ask you about another issue that’s kind of come up on the campaign trail, … that we would be better off if we talked to our adversaries, in particular, Iran and Cuba, you know, without preconditions. And as President, you have obviously considered and rejected this approach. And I’m wondering if you can give us a little insight into your thinking about this, and just explain to the American people what is lost by talking with those when we disagree?

THE PRESIDENT: What’s lost by embracing a tyrant who puts his people in prison because of their political beliefs? What’s lost is it will send the wrong message. It will send a discouraging message to those who wonder whether America will continue to work for the freedom of prisoners. It will give great status to those who have suppressed human rights and human dignity.

Baker endorses McCain, who whacks Obama!

Clinton whacks Obama!

Obama does a press avail!

Obama’s surrogate Jamal Simmons dials his candidate’s position on Iraq waaaaaaaay back. But Clinton’s surrogate James Carville makes it plain that Americans aren’t patient enough for a 100-year commitment …

Yadda yadda yadda.

Everybody who’s got a collection (or accumulation) of books has given some thought to how to arrange them. My rules were a little less neurotic but also way less amusing than Matt Selman’s:

RULE #1: THE PRIME DIRECTIVE – It is unacceptable to display any book in a public space of your home if you have not read it. Therefore, to be placed on Matt Selman’s living room bookshelves, a book must have been read cover to cover, every word, by Matt Selman. If you are in the home of Matt Selman and see a book on the living room shelves, you know FOR SURE it has been read by Matt Selman.

RULE #1: COROLLARY A: The living room books ARE NOT the combined book collections of Matt Selman and his wife. (She may have read some of them, but who knows, really.) This is only the collection of Matt Selman.

RULE #1: COROLLARY B: Writing in books on the living room shelves that Matt Selman has NOT read — I) Indexes. II) The ending part of the author’s acknowledgments that is just a list of names. III) Poetry that has been snuck into an otherwise interesting book. IV) Books written by my father that I told him I read. V) The super boring text in art books.

But there’s virtue in accumulating a huge library:

Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his thought-provoking and challenging book, The Black Swan:  The Impact of the Highly Improbable, tells the story of the writer Umberto Eco, who possesses a library of over 30,000 books (mine, by comparison, is a little over 2,000).  He separates his visitors into two categories:  1) Those who, upon seeing his library, exclaim, “Wow!  Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have!  How many of these books have you read?” Taleb explains the next category this way:

And the others—a very small minority—who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool.  Read books are far less valuable than unread ones.  The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allow you to put there.  You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly.  Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books.  Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.

…Note that the Black Swan comes from our misunderstanding of the likelihood of surprises, those unread books, because we take what we know a little too seriously.

More for home library owners here.

And something even more delectable—a reader’s guide to the unwritten—here.

When I see stupid stuff like this from a media outlet that is pretending to provide useful information to its viewers, it drives me up a wall:

 

Common Misunderstandings About Muslims

Are Muslim Women Oppressed? Why Do They Wear the Hijab? Find Out Below

Misconception: Muslim women are oppressed and forced to wear the hijab.

Truth:

Women often see it as empowering because they are not viewed as sexual objects but judged by their character.

The “truth” about the hijab has nothing to do with female empowerment or sexual politics.

Wearing the hijab is a religious custom practiced by some Muslim women.

(AP Photo )

Just as wearing a hair covering is a religious custom practiced by some Jewish women.

Somehow, the New Yorker artist who made the cover pictured below forgot—or didn’t want to—include a religious Jew in the picture. Some discussion here.