Witnessing some real journalism

It's no secret that I'm no fan of much of what passes as mainstream journalism. I’m on record numerous times as being critical of the mainstream media. Much of my criticism stems from the reluctance of many journalists and reporters to get at the core of issues and ask tough questions, particularly of politicians. Too often, a journalist, for whatever reason, refuses to force the interviewee to actually answer the questions being posed about a particular issue.

This morning, Carol Costello, CNN’s Daybreak early morning anchor, really put the heat on Patrick Mahoney, the Director of the Christian Defense Coalition regarding the Terri Schiavo case. While I’m no fan of CNN, I often watch the morning show with Costello several times per week, as she is certainly more pleasant to look at and less grating than the morning hacks at our local affiliates. She's also on in the early AM when I get up for my first cup of coffee and there isn't much else on other than infomercials and other blather.

I don’t consider Costello a hard-hitting investigative journalist—she’s there to provide a pleasant face in the morning, a bit of humor and to basically read the stories to her audience, although, she did get her start as an investigative reporter, prior to her CNN gig. I don’t say this to denigrate Costello, just to indicate that I know the score concerning corporate media. From time to time, I’ve seen Costello revert to her journalistic roots and actually conduct a legitimate interview with a guest. At those times, I think she's at her best and would like to see her bosses give her more opportunities to practice real journalism. This morning, Costello ratcheted it up several notches in my estimation, with one of the best segments on the Schiavo case I’ve seen and her willingness to stand her ground and ask some tough questions of one of the instigators of the circus taking place outside of Schiavo’s hospice room in Pinellas Park, Florida.

Several times during this morning’s interview segment, Costello’s voice displayed her disgust with some of Mahoney’s right-wing rhetoric. During the interview, Costello is heard several times saying, “Come on….”, as she challenged some point, refusing to allow Mahoney to blow his sanctimonious smoke up her viewer’s asses. She even said on one occasion, “I have a great deal of respect for my audience, so I’m not going to let you insult their intelligence.”

This is the type of scrutiny that the media needs to focus on the radical right in this situation and the other ones that are sure to come up. This group has been emboldened with the election of President Bush and his cavalcade of conservatives. They are displaying an arrogance that comes from their newfound political power and influence. It’s time that progressives and others stop them in their tracks before they insert themselves in all areas of our lives that have heretofore been considered private matters.

I commend Ms. Costello and the folks at CNN for cutting through some of the fog and focusing a laser light on exactly what the issue is surrounding the Schiavo debacle in Florida. We could certainly use some more of this type of reporting, as our country slowly moves towards theocracy with little mainstream coverage of that fact.

Microbicide funding protects women

Yesterday evening, while preparing dinner, I heard an interesting segment on NPR. The segment on microbicides, caught my attention and made me give closer scrutiny to the subject of the piece, which I knew very little about.

Microbicides are products, such as a gels or a creams, that could be applied topically to genital mucosal surfaces to prevent or significantly reduce the transmission of HIV and other disease-causing organisms during sexual intercourse. The safe and effective use of microbicides will help women substantially reduce their vulnerability to HIV infection during sexual intercourse.

Why did this interest me? I am aware of the pandemic of AIDS on the continent of sub-Saharan Africa, where 60 percent of those infected are women. The use of microbicides would empower women in these regions, as well as other areas of the world, in protecting themselves during sexual activity, which can make them particularly vulnerable when they rely upon the use of condoms and other so-called protectants.

What was brought out during the segment on public radio, was the failure of the free market (failure? How could this be? The market is infallible!) to bring about development of these products by drug companies, as there is no profit motive to do so. As a result, the vulnerability of women continues to cause them to run greater risks of infection, even if they are monogamous in their sexual practices.

Currently, there is a bill in the pipeline (co-sponsored by Maine’s senior senator, Olympia Snowe) to increase funding for microbicides, which make up a mere two percent of all spending for AIDS across all the institutes of health in the U.S. This is the third go-round for this type of legislation, so hopefully this will lead to increased spending and a push towards some type of legislation which will mandate drug companies doing something that isn’t driven entirely by the free market profit mechanism.

The media's glaring spotlight and objective truth

Like many cases that finally end up under the glare of the media spotlight, the issues surrounding the Terry Schiavo case are quite clear and the average layperson can sort through them without a terrible amount of difficulty.

What muddies the waters and makes the case the convoluted mess it’s become, is the media’s usual ignorance of the facts, and the need to turn this into an emotional case, fraught with drama and intrigue.

As many people are now realizing, it is a wise person who has taken the time to put their wishes down on paper in the form of a living will. Unfortunately, Ms. Schiavo and her husband, Michael, didn’t have this. As a result, despite better judgment and the opinions of trained medical personnel, the case has been turned into a circus.

It is my opinion that Ms. Schiavo’s condition no longer meets the criteria that one would qualify as a life of quality. To be kept alive by fluids and other nutrients pumped in through a hole in my stomach is not the way I’d want to live. Yet, her parents continue to insist that she’s communicative, even though she has no measurable brain function. My heart goes out to them, as I can only imagine how as a parent, it must feel to have a child in that state.

While I can empathize with the parents, I have little use for the members of Congress and other religious operatives who are seizing this opportunity, to further a right-wing agenda, couching it in the language of preservation of life. There are not many pleasant words I would entertain directing their way, so I’ll refrain.

Here is an excellent site that deals with many of the legal issues of the case. There are a number of good links on the site to articles in local papers, as well as other pertinent legal information regarding the case. For anyone interested in making preparations for a living will, this site offers simple instructions on how to do it.

My hope is that this case, if it does nothing more, will focus attention once again on the need to address end-of-life issues, particularly the issue of being able to die with some sense of dignity. The death-with-dignity movement has lost some momentum and the Schiavo case might give them an opportunity to refocus the debate and make others aware of these issues, before the emotions and complications that can occur when a loved one is terminally ill and legal issues come into play.

Profit-driven hucksters

Ashley Smith made headlines, by cooking pancakes and reading to Brian Nichols, who had taken her hostage. Nichols, a fugitive, abducted Smith outside of her apartment in Atlanta. Of interest to me was Smith's text for her read-out-loud session, which has garnered her and the book's author, Rick Warren, a boatload of publicity--not that Warren needs any.

The Xian pastor and author, is another in a long line of hucksters for Jesus, who reduce Xianity down to a system of dos-and-don'ts, or a formula for living. Warren, part of the whole megachurch phenomenom, worships at the alter of mammon quite comfortably, which seems to be common for many who practice his profit-driven brand of spirituality.

Warren's The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth am I Here For?, has shot up Amazon's list of bestsellers. The book, successful from a numbers perspective, has received an even bigger bump from Smith's use of the book to quiet Nichols and soothe him during the time he held her hostage.

What I find most interesting about the entire event, is how conservatives have once again seized the incident and are now using it, as well as Smith, to strengthen their family values crusade.

While I think Smith showed tremendous bravery and exhibited calm during a potentially deadly situation, to assign divine intent and significance cheapens the entire incident.

It seems to me that too many Xians want to see God's hand in every incident, yet in reality, one could also ask "where was God?" in many other situations of death and carnage; Florida has the case of the abduction and murder of a nine-year-old girl who had been missing for two weeks. Her picture is seen on handbills all over the area and the local news stations have had her picture and stories about her disappearance on every broadcast. A longtime sex offender with numerous convictions just came forward and confessed to her murder. Obviously, God provided no happy ending in this case.

Florida (and much of the south) seems to live in a dreamworld that attributes divine purpose to many events. It's a land of Bibles and Baptist Churches, a place of pro-life sentiments and Republican family values. It's also a place of strip malls, overdevelopment and a dwindling population of many native species, from the Manatee to the Florida Panther. It's easy enough to see that the driving force behind most of the culture of development and real estate speculation is greed and the quest for the almighty dollar, rather than living a life in the "center of God's purpose." Walking the sands of Clearwater Beach, I could observe how the large hotels and now, the condominiums, are driving the Mom and Pop operations off the beach. Despite the glitz and glamour of some of the ritzy beachfront properties, homeless men and women still sleep on the beaches and panhandle for change.

While the sunshine and warmer temperatures are attractive, there is an ugliness about Florida that's hard for me to put my finger on. The hypocrisy that I have written about on many occasions over the past year, seems to be present in abundance here; a place where the practice of one's faith begins on Sunday morning and ends when most walk out of church an hour later, set to go back to the pursuit of profit with an even greater gusto.

If God is present in Florida, I haven't seen much of his hand, unless of course, God favors condo development and environmental despoilment, of which the Tampa Bay area has an abundance of.

When life is nothing more than a political football

I don't know what it's like elsewhere, but in here in the Tampa
Bay region of Florida, you can't turn on the radio or television, without hearing about the Terri Schiavo case.

The decision on Friday by a Florida judge, allowing the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube, set off a firestorm in the quiet Sunshine State community of Pinellas Park. The fallout from this case has sent tremors bounding outward, as politicians, particularly of the conservative, pro-life stripe, have seized this as an opportunity to grandstand and play to the religious-right peanut gallery, eagerly watching from the sidelines. Terri Schiavo has become this group's patron saint and poster child, of all things most holy as it relates to their position.

Interestingly, Pinellas Park is only a few miles away from where I am staying and I have seen firsthand some of the truly warped and religiously-rabid types this case is attracting. Yesterday, while driving eastward on SR-60, a flatbed truck decorated with flags and pro-life slogans passed me, headed towards Clearwater, with a caravan of honking and shouting pro-lifers trailing behind.

Each evening, the nightly news broadcast is filled with the pictures of protestors praying, crying, shouting and generally carrying on in a fashion that I can only characterise as loony. I'm at a loss to know why this poor woman, who's been in a vegetative state for the past 15 years, has become a lighting-rod for the right's moonbat brigade. Their refusal to allow her to die with a shred of human dignity has been snatched from her, all in the name of their perverted interpretation of religion.

What's most frightening to me, in addition to the revelation of how warped and twisted a segment of the U.S. population apparently is, seeing the U.S. Congress issue subpoenas to Schiavo's husband and her caregivers. As this morning's St. Petersburg Times editorial stated, "What should be a somber private moment has again turned into a national circus, and congressional Republicans are largely responsible. They know nothing about Schiavo's severe brain damage, her wishes to avoid feeding tubes or years of reviews by medical experts and the courts. Yet House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, told the world Schiavo does not want to die. These are dangerous men who will say anything to sway the public and pander to conservative groups who have made this a crusade."

Dangerous men indeed! I fear for our nation when men (and women) like these, wedded only to their narrow ideology, are in charge of our affairs and crafting legislation that affects all of us.