From the Notebook

Media Misstep

blogqz01 | 11 January, 2010 18:03

The “right wing” operatives often accuse the media for supporting “left wing” agenda, but as far as I can see, the media also take the curve balls thrown by the “right wing” operatives and run with them.

Take for example the case of White House party crashers. Did someone made mistake in the job? Yes. Is it a national security issue? No. But some “right wing” operatives insisted that it is a national security issue, even national security crisis, and from media reactions, many seemed to agree with them.

I might have developed some resistances towards the talks of “right wing” operatives because many times the arguments presented by them are really about keeping scores and put the other side down, not for the benefit of the country, and not even for ideology reasons. Some “right wing” operatives even openly said that they hope president Obama would fail. So it is no surprise that someone would take a mistake in the first State Dinner of President Obama and make it into a national security crisis.

First of all, the State Dinner is a social event, and like most social event, the environment is not as uptight as official government environment. It will be one thing if someone got into a national security meeting uninvited, but the actual harm for someone to get into a State Dinner is not so severe

It will be different if someone (invited guests or party crashers) sneak in a weapon that could harm the president, other government officials, or guests of the country (in this case, the Prime Minister of India and his officials). Invited or not, everyone went through security check, there was no breach in the party.

I think the most of the blames should be carried by the party crashers (as it should be in similar social events). In most of the social events, the invitations are basically discretionary, and there is no need to specially emphasis that no one that is not invited will get in. It is often up to the guests themselves to obey social rules and pay respects for the hosts not to show up uninvited.

It is true that the State Dinner is not just an ordinary social event. It is true that the President is the leader of this country (and in some sense, the leader of the world). But the President is chosen by the people, and the government is serving the people. Only based on practical reasons that ordinary citizens cannot all be invited into social events hosted by the President, and ordinary citizens will not usually show up uninvited out of respects for the President and the country.

So, although it is a mistake of the people who should check closely to prevent party crashers to get in, and the party crashers should be put into shame for embarrassing the President and the country, but there is no national security issue here.

It is not a national security issue because it occurs often that random and ordinary citizens can get close to the President and government officials in various events. Thus just random people getting close to the President is not a national security issue, the situation is not fundamentally different from campaign events or other similar events.

In short, it will become a national security problem if secret information is leaked to people not authorized, or if the President, high ranking government officials, or guests of the country are in real or potential danger. None of these happened.

Therefore, I believe that in a social event, a few uninvited guests may cause embarrassments for the hosts (for this matter, there is no guarantee that invited guests would be absolute safe, think of Tania West for example), but it is not a security breach, not to mention a national security crisis.

I actually think that it showed a little snobbery on the people who suggest that otherwise harmless people that crash a party (even if a State Dinner) will generate national security crisis. The president and high ranking government officials are not made of materials that exposing to ordinary people alone will cause any damage to them.

So, it became annoying when media attentions on the party crashers sustained for many days. I think it is safe to say that most of the media outlets do not have a stake to see that President Obama fails, but it did reflect a common problem in the media.

Media outlets first and foremost are dealing with the news, and the more attention grabbing is the news, the more successful would be the media outlets providing the news. For attention grabbing, shocking effect with simplicity and intensity is the key. Due to human survival mechanism, people incline to pay close attention to abnormal information, even if the information could be useless after further evaluation.

So, it is not a surprise that media love the party crasher story. It is simply, it is shocking, and unheard of (who did what?), thus many jumped on it without finding real harm. To me, it is a media storm initiated by the “right wing” operatives, and fueled by the media.

Civilizations are built on interpreting and reinterpreting past events. As we contemplating the effects of the events, conclusions are drawn on what should and should not be done. Collectively what appeared in the media often become the reflections of the social scrutiny, so media scrutiny is not a small part of the society.

Actually, the party crasher episode reflected the power of media. The Salahis did not sneak into the White House, they were accompanied by a camera crew. I heard someone said that you can become an expert on anything if you have a camera crew following you. I don’t know if it is true, but the camera crew might have gotten the Salahis into the State Dinner. As people are saying that the State Dinner is no small matter, it is an evidence of the power of media.

While the party crashers are not actual threat to the national security, the failed Christmas Day Bombing is certainly a threat to national security. But the media reaction to this event is also exaggerating.

First, I don’t think it is absolutely wrong for the Homeland Security Secretary to say that the system worked, although there are grounds for improvement. I don’t think it is pure luck that the plot did not succeed. Because the terrorist watch list, the terrorist organizations had to recruit people that can pass check points of the security system, so the skills and abilities of the terrorists that can carry out the plots may not be as high as before, and the amounts of explosives that they can carry without being detected are limited, which require higher skills and generate less success rates, thus the failure of execution in Christmas Day could be the direct results of the preventive measures. In addition, as passengers nearby quickly spot the terrorist, it proves that increasing public awareness also is paid off.

The media reactions seemed to prompt Obama Administrations to implement many measures, some of them I think could be a little over kill. Some say that the Obama administrations began to look more and more like Bush administrations. I think here the saying that you get what you asked for might apply. Politicians are elected to present the people, so they cannot be insensitive to the demands of the people. As the demands of the people are often measured by media reactions, it is no surprise when media overacted, the government might also overreacted.

For example, is it necessary to subject anyone from certain countries to intense scanning and checking? We got to remember, if everyone is on the list, then pretty much no one is on the list. It is not just fairness to the people from these countries, but also the effectiveness and efficiency of the measure. Having to check more people more closely, either there had to be more people and (equipments) to do the job, or people on the job will have to do more. Mostly likely both will happen, so cost will be increased, and quality might be decreased.

There seems to be an easy alternative. The Christmas Day Bombing suspect is on some type of list (or database), and for some reason being on this list (or database) did not provide for him to be checked so that the explosive could be found. How about just subject people on the list (or database) to detailed security check (sniff dogs, packed down, body scanner, anything or everything possible that can help to detect anything possible), but not the general public or people from certain countries?

It seemed that the government (mostly CIA) even had information on most of the September Eleven Attackers, so the information gathering tasks are at least somewhat successful in most part. For the purpose of preventing terrorists to carrying on explosives or other dangers weapons to airplanes or other public places, the focus should be how to use the information gathered, and for this purpose, they can and should choose to error on safer side. Basically speaking, government can announce that anyone can be subject to extensive security checking, but focusing on only people that there are bases for this type of extensive checking. For people that wrongfully end up on the lists, they should be given the right to submit evidence to clear their names.

In a democratic society, the media does not and should not hail on every move of the President and the government. But media scrutiny should first begin with the scrutiny of itself. The internet helped to deliver information faster and faster, so people, especially people in the media tend to quickly make judgment, thus mostly rely on instinct, not reasons based on analysis of the information.

There is a reason for instinct often to be called animal instinct. It often based on physical reaction to external stimulus. As far as the process goes, logic and reasoning often are not part of it. In short, it is reaction without rational thinking. In many personal events, people are more in touch with the environment, and reactions required are closely related to particular instances, instincts are often very useful.

However, social events are different. Societies are built on concepts and reasons. Social structures basically are human made structures that are viewed as useful for intended purposes. Government certainly is an important social structure, so is the media. The usefulness of the government and media is based on its action and reaction in the society so that to achieve most preferable results. This means that neither government, nor media should rely on instinct, but should collect facts from various sources and analyze the facts in order to draw conclusions that can lead to actions.

In the democratic society, media is often viewed as the reflection of the society. But in actuality, media often lead the society. There is a reason for the media to be called media elite. This requires people in the media to take this responsibility seriously and apply thinking and reasoning in their job more.

**Please look for my other posts regarding the modern life, politics and media, about discussions related to issues in this post.