#OccupyWallStreet Bleeds and Leads

by Nathan Schneider

A bit after 10 p.m. on Saturday night in occupied Liberty Plaza, there was a celebration around the media tables. Photocopied facsimiles of Sunday’s New York Daily News were being passed around and photographed. After having held the plaza with hundreds of protesters at any given time for a week, and having kept the blocks surrounding the Stock Exchange barricaded by police all the while, the protest was finally getting serious news coverage.

“The Daily News!” I heard someone say on the plaza. “It’s because this is a sustained occupation.”

Exclaimed one of those doing media relations, “We’ve already won!”

Just a few hours earlier, it seemed certain that a full-on police dispersal would come that night. Contingency plans were being discussed by the protesters’ General Assembly. But now the Daily News cover and the presence of TV vans seemed like guardian angels, ensuring that they’d make it until morning.

So what occasioned the media’s sudden interest? To what do these protesters, who purport to represent “the 99 percent” of Americans disenfranchised by a corrupt corporate and political elite, owe these headlines?

Police violence, of course.

Marking the one-week anniversary of the beginning of the occupation, a large march was planned for noon on Saturday. Several hundred marchers paraded around the plaza to their favorite chant, “All Day, All Week! Occupy Wall Street!” They then headed down to the Wall Street area, where police arrested several of them, including filmmaker Marisa Holmes. From there, the march continued up to Union Square, two and a half miles north. It arrived there, then turned south again toward Liberty Plaza. Around 3 p.m., near Fifth Avenue and 12th Street, the police attacked. Unrolling plastic orange barriers, they isolated a crowd of marchers, along with the reporters following them, and began mass arrests for blocking traffic. This was a brutal process. Caught on cameras were scenes of one protester being dragged by her hair, others being slammed into the pavement, and a group of women, netted and helpless, being downed by pepper spray. In total, police say they arrested 80 people. With not enough room for them in vans, many were taken away in regular city buses. The march thereafter dispersed, and those who weren’t arrested made their way back to Liberty Plaza.

In an article that recounts as many gory details as will fit, the Daily News devotes only two short paragraphs to what the protest is actually about and what protesters have been doing all this time: “attempting to draw attention to what they believe is a dysfunctional economic system that unfairly benefits corporations and the mega-rich.” True, but too little. The real story for the Daily News, it seems, is not this unusual kind of protest, or the political situation which it opposes, but the chance to have the word “busted” on the cover next to the cleavage of a woman crying out in pain.

ABC’s Channel 7 Eyewitness News, despite being one of the day’s most zealously-persistent outlets, ran a doubly fallacious headline Sunday morning: “Occupy Wall Street Protest Gets Violent Overnight.” For one thing, the protest itself did not get violent. Protesters attacked nobody. They threw no stones, they carried no weapons. The police got violent. Secondly, the arrests and violence did not happen “overnight” but during the day—an error the article repeats several times. This seems especially odd since the Channel 7 reporter and cameraman were witnesses to what did happen during the night, which their article confusingly splices in with an account of the day’s arrests: a mainly silent, completely peaceful vigil march on the sidewalk to Police Plaza to ask after the protesters arrested that afternoon—with locked arms and peace signs held high—accompanied the whole time by officers carrying orange nets, followed menacingly by empty police vans, and barricaded several times from reaching their destination.

While protesters were stopped at a barricade at Canal and Elizabeth Streets, Channel 7 reporter Darla Miles showed the picture of a protester with his face covered in blood on her Blackberry to help persuade the police to give an update on him. (She was careful to keep it away from the cameras of those who might be able to help publicize it: “Channel 7 News property!”) But  they were gone by the time the protesters finally made it near Police Plaza, calling out in unison, “Our Brothers! And Sisters! You Are Not Forgotten!” as well as the phone number of the National Lawyers Guild, eliciting some chuckles from the police.

Soberer outlets missed the point as well. What the Associated Press and Reuters saw was something along the lines of a typical one-day march-in-the-streets protest, only mysteriously happening over more than a single day. They barely mention the sustained occupation of Liberty Plaza, much less what has been happening there and why. The New York Times’s Ginia Bellafante at least took the time to visit the plaza, though she doesn’t seem to have stayed long enough to notice its main activity, the General Assembly. There, she would have found that the protesters’ purpose is anything but “impossible to decipher”; they’re busy taking part in a purposely-leaderless, consensus-based process based on people, not money, right in the capital of American corruption.

None of these articles captures what is distinctive about this occupation, or how it works, or what the protesters are doing for most of the day, or the courage they have shown in the face of the brutality. These are common oversights in press coverage of nonviolent resistance movements, but that doesn’t mean there’s any excuse.

The thing is, there are tremendous things happening in and around Liberty Plaza, stories in which these mainly-young protesters are anything but passive recipients of police abuse. I’ve already written about the arrests of protesters like Jason Ahmadi and Justin Wedes, who were also portrayed as victims in the media, but who in fact were arrested on their own terms, for simple, peaceful acts of resistance. One could also speak of the stories of how those arrested on Saturday kept each other’s spirits high by singing and chanting together and trying to woo the police while they were being taken away in plastic cuffs. Watch, for instance, between 1:25 to 3:15 on this clip from the occupation’s 24-hour livestream:

There’s a story, too, in the wake of every arrest or other shocking incident, when the protesters’ habitual response is not despair (at least for long), but dialogue: a meeting. It’s a story I still haven’t seen in mainstream reports, yet it goes straight to the heart of what the protest is about.

I also think of things that happened before major news outlets were paying much attention, at times when the watchful crowds were away. At about 9:15 p.m. on Sunday the 18th, for instance, came one of the first police incursions into the plaza, during a General Assembly meeting. I have yet to see it recounted anywhere. The officers ordered, through protesters reporting to the Assembly, that all signs be taken down. There was a fractious reaction at first. Some thought it a reasonable request and wanted to comply. Others refused on principle, not wanting to be taking orders from the police. People made speeches on either side. There were defiant chants of “Occupy Wall Street!” Some took it upon themselves to remove signs, and others tried to stop them, such as by shouting. There were whispers that undercover cops were sowing divisions—though it hardly seemed like the protesters needed any help with that. Just when unity was needed, it wasn’t there. Officers started taking down posters themselves while protesters chanted, “Shame!”

The focal point of it all became a spot in the middle of the eastern edge of the plaza, along Broadway. Several protesters—men and women, young and older—decided to sit down there in front of a Socialist Workers Party poster (whose affiliation has since been stripped from it) that says, “A JOB IS A RIGHT! CAPITALISM DOESN’T WORK.” Others tried to get them to move, but they wouldn’t. The police didn’t move them either. Their willingness to sacrifice, it seems, solved the problem. There were no gory arrests. The sign remained as long as they did, police and fellow protesters withdrew, and the meeting continued.

Events like these are messy, and they’re far from entirely flattering, but they’re human. Properly told, they have the makings of a good story. Reporting accurately and critically on police violence is of course essential—Colin Moynihan of The New York Times has done so extremely well on the paper’s City Room blog—but that is only a small part of the story of what’s going on here. We in the press need to think more highly of our readers, as well as of our own ability to report on stories that don’t depend simply on the shock value of violence, or on cheap-shot ridicule, or on stifling formulas. For many Americans, nonviolent direct actions like this occupation are the best hope for having a political voice, and they deserve to be taken seriously as such.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

Nathan Schneider is an editor of Waging Nonviolence. He writes about religion, reason, and violence for publications including The Nation, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Commonweal, Religion Dispatches, AlterNet, and others. He is also an editor at Killing the Buddha. Visit his website at TheRowBoat.com.

Gaming American Democracy:John Dean

Gaming American Democracy:How New Republican Techniques Seek to Change the Political System Itself

©iStockphoto.com/imagestock

This is the first in a series of columns by Mr. Dean, which will examine the new techniques being employed by Republicans to alter the political landscape. – Ed.

Conservative operatives with almost unlimited money (provided by wealthy supporters) have been very busy, over the past few years, changing American political processes and, thus, the way politics and government are undertaken, to favor Republicans policies and candidates. So far, they have been remarkably successful and they may even be able to change the political playing field in time for the 2012 presidential election, tilting the landscape to favor a GOP candidate.  There is only one problem with what they are doing, which is the way they are doing it.

Most Americans, unfortunately, are unaware of these activities.

Voters and the Media Are Largely Ignoring the Return of Nixonian Politics, on Steroids

While the so-called Tea Party’s antics always attract public and media attention, the heavy lifting in the effort to change our political processes is being accomplished mostly behind closed doors, through the efforts of experienced conservative GOP operatives.  These men and women have been quietly and steadily going after what they want:  control of the political processes, which they can then translate into greater political power.

To reach their goals, conservative leaders are blatantly gaming the system.  They are going where they have never ventured before, and conducting politics in a way that has never been seen before in America, by exploiting constitutional gaps, working in the crannies and crevices of our system, and proceeding both openly and privately to empower themselves in a manner that would never succeed at the ballot box if it were fully understood.

The story about these activities has been largely ignored, or at most incidentally reported, by the mainstream news media.  While some of this activity is merely hard-nosed, real-world politics at its ugliest, other undertakings are conspicuously abusive, and, indeed, reminiscent of what I saw when inside the Nixon White House.

Watergate ended most of this kind of political activity, at least for a while, but now it has returned with a vengeance.  It’s Nixonian no-holds-barred-style politics, on steroids. For this reason, in this, and periodic subsequent columns, I plan to set forth reports of the remarkable, often unseemly, and at times illegal assault that conservatives have launched to alter our political practices and procedures to favor conservative candidates, policies and programs.

With this first column, I hope to provide an overview and introduction to this subject.  Later columns will examine the details.  So stay tuned.

FYI: I have previously worked out my research and thinking for three New York Times best-selling books in my columns.  Whether this current effort will become a book, I do not know, because publishers are never sure about these types of stories—a fact that I believe encourages this type of behavior.  So I will proceed a step at a time.  Nonetheless, I enjoy writing on topics about which I have strong feelings when others are ignoring the matter, and that is the situation here.

The Reasons This Attempt to Profoundly Transform Our Political System Is Receiving Only Incidental News Coverage

This story—the story of the attempted transformation of our political system itself—has been mostly ignored for two reasons.  First, because it deals with political and governmental process.   It is conventional wisdom among news people (in both print and television journalism), as well as among many mainstream book publishers, that the American public does not care to be told about so-called “process issues.”  This is apparently true, notwithstanding the fact that the political party that controls the processes can control the policy and government.

Authors who have written about process issues tell me that not only have they had difficulty getting published, but if they do, readers are, in fact, hard to come by.  Because I know the importance of process, and its overriding influence on politics and government, I am very interested in these matters, so I do not understand the general disinterest that authors face when they seek to write about these vital topics.

There is a second reason for the disinterest, too—and an even more troubling one.  Today’s mainstream news organizations are largely controlled by major corporations, which are profit-driven like never before.  Most members of corporate management lean toward Republican views, and while top corporate executives typically give their news editors and producers great leeway, news organizations do not go out of their way to annoy their corporate bosses.  The big money that is involved in reshaping America’s political processes has been, and will continue to be, a wonderful source of revenue for these organizations.  News organizations need advertisers, and they love all the disingenuous advertisements that this political undertaking is generating.

Given these attitudes and institutional realities, the mainstream news media could care less about the impact, meaning, and means involved in changing the political processes to favor conservatives.  (Ironically, Watergate, too, was initially a non-story with the national press, and it continued on that way for almost ten months after the arrests of burglars in the Democratic National Committee—because much of the story involved process, at first, and also because news organizations did not want to annoy a mean-spirited sitting president.)

I can think of no better place to start telling the story of how America’s political processes are being co-opted and transformed, than with the Tea Party, which is the tip of the conservative iceberg that is now floating through our political waters.

The Tea Party Facade

I addressed the Tea Party movement in an earlier column, reporting that there is little that is new about the Party’s players, a collection of existing conservative groups who have long resided at the radical fringe of the Republican Party.  They are the authoritarian followers, plus a few of their leaders, who can, together, accurately be described by their personalities and political dispositions as authoritarian conservatives.  (Not all conservatives are authoritarians, but virtually all authoritarians are conservatives.)

The Tea Party is more a rebranding, than a genuinely new movement.  When you study the poll numbers, it is clear that only a small number of conservatives consider themselves part of the Tea Party movement.  These fringe groups have always been fringe groups, but they form the activist base of the GOP.  According to Gallup, 41 percent of Americans consider themselves conservatives; 36 percent, moderates; and 21 percent, liberals. Yet a contemporaneous New York Times poll shows that only 20 percent of Americans have a favorable view of the Tea Party, while 40 percent have an unfavorable view.  And, more tellingly, only 18 percent of Americans identify themselves as Tea Party supporters, with only 4 percent of Americans having ever attended a Tea Party meeting or given money to the Tea Party.

In light of its small numbers, what accounts for the Tea Party’s prominence?  It is the result of the handful of always-camera-ready political figures and candidates who claim allegiance with the movement.  These include Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Rand and Ron Paul, Christine O’Donnell, and Sharon Angle—to name a few.

CNN (oddly and inexplicably) recently chose to partner with the Tea Party Express to present a CNN/Tea Party Presidential Debate, a decision that gave the Tea Party added publicity and credibility.  (I was surprised to find CNN so hard-up for a debate partner.)  Former Republican leader of the House of Representatives Dick Armey has been active with the movement through Freedom Works, which appears well funded.  But there is no Tea Party per se, only a disjointed movement that has served, and continues to serve, as a nice façade—deflecting and diverting public attention while true leaders, and the major players in the conservative movement, have plotted and executed their efforts to change the political landscape.

The real story here is not the Tea Party; rather, it is the actions of conservative Republican mayors, governors, state legislators, members of the U.S. Congress, former federal officials (from mid-level and high-level posts) now working on behalf of conservative causes, and of conservative lobbyists and lawyers, both in Washington and scattered around the country.  These people surely find the Tea Party useful as a distraction from what they are trying to do.

The New Conservative Power Game

Contemporary GOP heavies, the men, and a few women, who understand how the game can be played, appreciate that our democracy is fragile, and that it operates largely on the good will of everyone, which makes it easily susceptible to abuse.  As conservative operatives have undertaken nationwide efforts to adjust and change the political processes to their advantage, they have taken advantage of the good will of others, disregarding the regular order and the assumptions of regularity that have long prevailed in America’s politics and governance.  This approach caught opponents flatfooted, totally off-guard.

Interestingly, as best I can tell, these disruptive moves and changes are, in only a few instances, centralized and highly coordinated.  More often, these efforts are simplysua sponte—a case of like minds thinking alike, or noticing what other others are doing.  To the best of my knowledge, this is not a conspiratorial undertaking, nor the work of a closed and well-connected network.  Yet these people do appear to keep others who are interested well informed.

For me, understanding what had been going on has been like assembling a jigsaw puzzle without a picture.  So far, I have found no mastermind or master plan, but there is no question that those who are part of this loose coalition are working like beavers, and pursuing any opportunity that arises.  Some of the techniques are old, while others are very new.  What has become conspicuous from this inquiry, so far, is that conservatives are now operating with new political norms, and at levels that were once considered extreme, but are now standard operating procedure.  This does not bode well for our system.

Some Examples of How Extreme Tactics Are Being Adopted by Republicans as Merely Standard Operating Procedure

A few examples from my growing catalogue should make the point:

Conservatives are now demanding and enforcing absolute GOP party discipline, and trying to impose it at all levels of government, tolerating no exceptions. They are willing to shut down any and all government operations if that is needed to serve their interest and get their way.  They recognize no comity or courtesy in any cross-party situations that are not to their advantage.  They have made civility the exception, rather than the rule.  They will lie and mislead to accomplish what is necessary and conservative “thinkers” have abandoned intellectual honesty for the cause.  They are hell-bent on changing as many processes of government as possible to always favor Republican rule, whether they are in the minority or majority.  They are changing the rules by which we elect officials to favor the election and selection of conservative Republicans.  They are making it more difficult for anyone who is not a Republican to vote. They are blatantly engaging in extreme obstructionism to damage any non-Republican incumbent office-holder’s ability to perform in office. They operate behind closed doors whenever possible and always when in power. To accomplish their goals, they are raising and injecting literally countless billions—I repeat, billions—of dollars into manipulating local, state, and national legislative actions and elections to their advantage.  Finally, they have—almost inconspicuously—altered every branch and level of government as they have proceeded.

No one has seriously challenged these efforts, but surely others can see the activities I have noticed, and the pattern they reveal.  Democrats, it appears, have decided to look the other way, and only when public outrage has erupted—as happened in Wisconsin, when Governor Scott Walker’s efforts to change the process became conspicuous—has there been any effort to prevent them from operating outside traditional conventional constitutional boundaries.  So they continue, and in some areas, they are becoming increasingly aggressive.

As I report on such developments in this series of columns, I will share my thoughts about possible countermeasures.  But for many of these actions, there is no easy fix, because those who perpetrate them are exploiting the flaws, and working in the underbelly, of our system.

A Closing Thought:  Federalist No. 10’s Solution Is Not Applicable Here

When you delve into any radical conservative activity, you quickly become drenched in all their constitutional rhetoric, for it is endless.  The GOP’s radical fringe worships our Constitution—or what they believe our Constitution says, which has little to do with reality.  Thus, in tracking their new power plays, I found myself thinking about James Madison’s warning in Federalist No. 10, a warning that contemporary conservatives ignore.  Madison, it will be recalled, addressed what conservatives are now doing when he discussed the threat that factions pose to our constitutional system.

Madison described a faction as “a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion or of interests, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interest of the community.” Madison found factions to be incapable of self-restraint, and pointed out that, for them, “neither moral nor religious motives can be relied on as an adequate control.”  He believed that the danger from factions was very real, since they foster “the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished.”

Madison concluded that it was inevitable that factions could not be eliminated, because America could only 

do so at the expense of freedom itself.  Rather, he believed that the effects of factions would be controlled by the very nature of a representative system, where interests are delegated to representatives, and those representatives then deliberate away from local concerns.  When there are a sufficient number of representatives, who cover a large and growing country, Madison felt, these representatives would be thinking of the greater good.  And, that emphasis on the greater good—the good of the whole nation—would check factional thinking.  Madison’s thinking, however, did not contemplate the arrival of political parties, nor did he conceive of a party’s becoming so tightly controlled that it could operate to serve only a narrow self-interest, rather than the public interest.  In short, we do not have an institutional check, deriving from the Constitution or any other source, on today’s activities.

Nor do I have answers yet, but I am looking.  Actually, I am still gathering facts, and will be doing so for months to come.  If you have thoughts or information about the matters that I have broadly described here, I hope you will share them.  Please tweet me.  Based upon the thoughts and information of a few who are very concerned, we might clarify this matter for all.

John W. Dean, a Justia columnist, is a former counsel to the president.

US Uncut Exposes Rush Limbaugh with One Simple Question

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/?akid=7519.187755.owKoql&id=660961&rd=1&t=1

Sometimes It’s Easy: US Uncut Exposes Rush Limbaugh with One Simple Question

 Carl Gibson, one of the founders of US Uncut, just steamrolled the drugged one. It was a thing of beauty. Rush would take a punch, hit the canvass, struggle to his feet, only to be flattened again. Eventually, as is always the case when right wing talkers find their asses handed to them, Ruash cheated. He spoke over Gibson, cut him off, spewed a slew of irrelevant right wing talking points, hung up on him, and then spent the next 10 minutes flailing desperately in an effort to make his audience forget what Carl’s question was.

So… What was the question? Well, a bit of background is in order first. Did you know that 47% of American households pay no income taxes? Let me tell you, every listener to right wing talk radio has heard that tired old talking point hundreds of times. It’s the ear bug of right wing talk that establishes the foundation of their resentment politics. After all, somebody has to be paying for all those welfare checks, right?

I probably don’t have to mention it to this crowd, but it is true, of course, that Limbaugh and his lieutenants (and the cultists that tune in faithfully every day) ignore the fact that everyone that works pays payroll taxes to the feds (about 12% of every dollar they earn)… They don’t mention the federal tax on gasoline… Or state, local and sales taxes. The truth is that nobody escapes the tax man, and that many of the folks that pay no federal income taxes nevertheless lose a higher percentage of their earnings to taxes than the super-rich do.

So yeah, virtually every day, Limbaugh tells his listeners that they are paying income taxes so that leech scum underclass of America can be coddled by the nanny state. So Carl called and politely as can be, asked:

Carl:  “…several multi-billion dollar corporations paid their CEOs more than they pay the government in taxes. Now I know how you feel about folks, I mean individuals who don’t pay their taxes, but I want to know how you feel about corporations that don’t pay taxes. Do you have the same antagonism for them?”

Rush: “How do I feel about how he felt about corporations that don’t pay income taxes?”

Carl:  “No, corporations.”

Rush:  “No, you said you know how I feel about individuals that don’t pay taxes… How do I feel about that?”

Carl:  “Well, I’ve heard you refer to the 47% of Americans that don’t pay taxes.”

Rush:  “Well, that’s… uh… they’re not illegally avoiding taxes, they don’t have to pay taxes because they’ve been exempted. Their votes are being purchased.”

Carl:  “Well, they have to pay a third of their income in sales and property and payroll and excise taxes too… but..” 

Rush:  “Look, the only major corporation I know not paying US taxes is General Electric.” 

Carl:  “GE, EBAY, Verizon, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Bank of America, Citibank, I mean I can go on…”

Rush:  “Are you trying to tell me that every one of those corporations pay zero US taxes?”

Carl:  “Zero US taxes Rush. Sometimes they get money back from the federal government.”

And on, and on, and on and on… 

Eventually, Rush came back from his break to inform his listeners that ExxonMobil paidbillions in taxes!  It was just the caller's clever use of a technicality that allowed for him to make his claim.  It turns out that United States corporations can deduct the taxes they pay to other governments from their US tax bill.  

Are you kidding me?

Rush thinks it's OK for us to cut Social Security and Medicare while ExxonMobil pays nothing in taxes because they are sending money to other countries instead?  From there, Limbaugh just became a caricature of himself.  The plain fact is this:  Limbaugh had no good answer for Carl's question.  Limbaugh refused to say why he takes umbrage at the poor not paying federal income taxes while multi-billion dollar corporations that are enjoying record profits either pay no taxes, or even get refunds from the federal government.  

Listen for yourself (and you should - there's a lot of good stuff I left out):

By Mike Stark | Sourced from DailyKos 

Design Fetish; Website Propoganda Poster (Nice job!)

Monday, August 15, 2011

http://design-fetish.blogspot.com/2011/08/website-propaganda-posters.html

Website Propaganda Posters

There’s a war on the web, and netizens are divided into three camps – Facebook, Google and Twitter.

Here's a glimpse of what their propaganda posters could look like!
Get them here.

[via]

In Defense of U.K. Journalists

http://www.inthesetimes.com/mobile/article/in_defense_of_uk_media/

By Susan J. Douglas

I write from London, where throughout July those of us who deplore Rupert Murdoch's Death Star empire were able to gorge ourselves on journalistic éclairs nearly every morning. Given the utterly dispiriting political situation in the United States, the hacking scandal has been a source of revengeful delight. News International executives and the top two men at Scotland Yard forced to resign; former editors arrested; the original whistleblower, News of the World show biz reporter Sean Hoare, tragically found dead (with the police insisting the circumstances were not suspicious); Rupert and James Murdoch compelled to testify before Parliament.

And best of all, the comedian "Jonnie Marbles" attacking Murdoch with a pie plate full of shaving cream, and Wendi Deng, Murdoch's wife, deflecting Marbles with a fierce right smack, prompting pretty much the entire British press to label her a "ninja" the next day. You can't make this stuff up.

In the wake of all this, much has been made of the reprehensible, morally bankrupt practices employed by Murdoch papers--and they are hardly alone--to get a story and keep it alive. And indeed, any Yank visiting Britain has been appalled to see papers like The Sun, with its daily display of bare-breasted, hugely endowed women, pass themselves off as newspapers.

But what's so interesting about Britain is its bipolar news culture: It has the very worst and also the very best of what journalism has to offer.

If you are a news junkie, here's what your day in England could be like. You wake up to The Guardian, whose Nick Davies is a fierce crusader against the corrupt and powerful (he should probably be knighted for his relentless, multi-year, often thankless investigation into the phone-hacking scandal). It is Davies who stuck with the hacking story, often in the face of indifference or hostility, and put all the pieces together for readers so they could understand the much bigger picture about the intertwined corruptions of the tabloid press, the police and politicians. He is accompanied by other intrepid reporters and keenly astute, witty analysts of politics, the economy and culture who happily provide unapologetic, often left-leaning bon bons to go with the éclairs. The Guardian's website actually prints editorials by, gasp, Amy Goodman!

At 6 p.m., you can watch Al Jazeera in English as part of regular cable service. Its coverage of the world, if at times brief and telegraphic, is astounding in its scope. Of course they focus on the Middle East, showing footage and reporting stories we never see or hear in the United States. But when I saw a story they featured on religious shifts occurring in Bolivia, I realized that I had probably never, ever seen images of or stories about La Paz on any American news program. It's in our own damn hemisphere, but it might as well be on Jupiter. One night Al Jazeera offered a half-hour analysis of the stand-off on raising the debt ceiling, including the crude political calculations of the Republicans (i.e., seeking to ensure that Obama is a one-term president), which I wish most Americans would see.

At 7 p.m., you can have the pleasure of watching Jon Snow, the anchor of the Channel 4 nightly news, whose elegantly written summaries of the day's events are matched by his direct, probing interviews with politicians and other newsmakers. No screaming heads yelling at each other or fluff stories about male-pattern baldness and the benefits of walking here: It's a full show of actual national and international hard news. Snow doesn't pander or suck up to his interview subjects, nor does he seem afraid to actually ask them tough questions, you know, like journalists are supposed to do. And get this: He won an award for "Best Factual Contribution to Television." Imagine such an award in the United States!

So while it has been no end of fun to watch Murdoch, his son, certain former employees and his papers get pilloried, over here one is also reminded that having a thriving print and broadcast news culture is not the impossible dream. I don't mean to suggest that this array of print, cable and broadcast news is perfect. It's just so, so much better than what we Americans get, and it's the very, very least we deserve.
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