February 11, 2105--Built On Lies

The problem at NBC is not that Brian Williams is a lier.

He admits now that he sexed up a 2003 report about a foreign-correspondant-trip of his to war-ravaged Iraq--that his helicopter was hit by incoming enemy fire. And there may be evidence that he did a version of the same thing while reporting about Hurricane Katrina from New Orleans (he claimed then that he saw bodies floating by his hotel though there was apparently no significant flooding where his hotel was located); and, who knows, he may have stretched things in a similar self-aggrandizing way during the other assignment that put him on the map, reporting knee-deep in water from South Asia about the tsunami of 2004.

The problem is that the real lie is that he and his anchor colleagues are no longer reporters and that the shows they star in are not about the news. They are exhorbitantly-paid news readers. Reading the script like the actors they are and blow-dried to attract viewers, especially those from coveted demographic groups, all to keep sponsors happy and buying commercials.

All the anchors, with rather thin journalistic backgrounds, but telegenic, Brian Williams, extra-youthful David Muir at ABC, Scott Pelley at CBS, Anderson Cooper at CNN, Megyn Kelly of Fox, and who knows who at MSNBC, all are more in the entertainment business than the news business. Thus their favorite things are to report on events that will garner the highest ratings--natural disasters (hurricanes, blizzards, and tsunamis), terrorist activities (if there is video of beheadings to accompany their reports), and plane crashes. How many hours and days and weeks did CNN devote to the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight 307?

Now in paroxysms of schadenfreude, TV colleagues, print journalists, and people calling in to talk shows are asking for William's head. (Not literally of course. But who know.) And as of last night they at least had a taste of blood--NBC suspended him without pay for six months.

Some rue the "fact" that he isn't Tom Brokaw or, even more distressing by comparison, "the most trusted man in America," Walter Cronkite, both of whom presided over TV news when it was still news, not profit centers. Neither Tom nor old Walter, I have been reading in the blogs, ever would have participated in such unprofessional behavior. What is not noted is that Cronkite and Brokaw did not live and work in a world so pervaded by social networks and Internet sites where hyper-scrutiny of anyone famous' missteps go viral and thus magnified beyond proportion.

I cannot claim for certain that Tom and Walter were on the full up-and-up. Can anyone?

When Roone Arledge, who headed ABC's remarkably successful sports operation was asked to also take on responsibility for the network's news division, it was with the assumption that he would turn what had been the Tiffany Network's unprofitable news division into a profit center. He managed to do so by softening up the reporting, getting the hard news out of the way in the first few minutes and then turning to the up-close-and-personal stuff that had been his signature in ABC's Olympics coverage.

The rest is history. Now even NBC's fading Today Show and widely-watched CBS's 60 Minutes make hundreds of millions and are those networks' most profitable shows. And Brian Williams spends more time on the Tonight Show and Saturday Night Live than he does in Syria.

But this TV news environment also contributes to the success of so-called "fake-news," with entertainment and fun unabashedly at the heart of Jon Stewart's Daily Show and the Colbert Report. More young people who even bother to watch TV get their "news" there than on the three networks and cable news outlets. And often that news is real news.

Meanwhile, desperate, isn't it the Today Show that is now raising a puppy on the set?

April 24, 2014--The Clinton Grandchild

Last week, at a public event attended by her mother, Chelsea Clinton announced that she is with child. As it played out in the press, she might well have said she is with grandchild.

A member of the media in the room where Chelsea shared the good news asked if it's expected birth date was politically timed.

Chelsea pretending she did not understand, smiled and shrugged. But then added that she looks forward to her daughter or son growing up "in a world with so many strong female leaders."

It was obvious what her smile and wink suggested. At her side, mom glowed.

The fact that that question was raised was telling, as is my snarky tone.

What should have been about a blessed event (there I go again) at the moment of the announcement and subsequently was treated as a political calculation. From the relatively-gossip-free New York Times to Rush Limbaugh to just about everyone on Fox News it was smirkingly assumed that it was yet another example of the Clinton's doing everything they could to advance their personal agenda. In this case, Chelsea arranging the timing of her pregnancy to help Hillary secure the nomination and then, with a grandchild on her hip, be elected president.

Shades of Sarah Palin moving about the country with special-needs grandchild Trig (for trigger--get it) schlepped along to help shape her aw-shucks, soccer-mom image.

And with Hillary still lacking the likeability factor (remember Obama during the 2008 campaign with  shrug of his own saying she was "likable enough") what better way to humanize her?

With politics becoming fully political theater and a form of mass entertainment--who doesn't wish Herman (Ducky-Ducky) Cain will run again next year--it is not beyond reason that timing the birth of a child-grandchild could be as stage managed as adhering to talking points and TV ads produced by friendly PAC groups. With appearances on the Tonight Show, the Daily Show, Colbert Report, and SNL essential.

November 8, 2013--Billions & Billions & Billions

Periodically, something from the world of science jars things into sharp perspective. For example, recent findings about Earth-like planets that could support life--very much including intelligent life--and apocalyptic implications about the just-discovered Higgs boson.

The Kepler spacecraft, launched into orbit in 2009 has as its primary mission calculating how many sun-like stars there are in our galaxy that have Earth-like planets: Eta-Earths.

Extrapolating from what Kepler finds to the entire universe, using the so-called Drake Equation (which is employed to estimate how many Eta-Earths in the Milky Way might contain intelligent civilizations), astronomers have been calculating just how likely it is to find various forms of life there and throughout the rest of the Universe.

Cornell University astronomer Carl Sagan back in 1980, through books such as Cosmos and a popular TV show, "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage," brought to non-scientists an enthusiasm for the possibility of life on other planets--SETI (Search for Extra-Terestrial Intelligence).

He famously began each show by talking about "the billions and billions and billions of stars" in our galaxy and claimed that "the total number of stars in the Universe is larger than the grains of sand on all  the beaches of planet Earth."

Though fascinated by Sagan's claims, many were equally amused by the breathless way in which he presented his ideas, including many times on the "Tonight Show" and on "Saturday Night Life" where he appeared as a guest and at other times as a target of parody.

As it turns out Sagan's speculations were on the mark.

According to recently announced findings based on images captured by the Kepler telescope, it appears that there are indeed billions and billions and billions of Eta-Earths in our galaxy and countless billions more in the 100 billion or so other galaxies in the Universe.

In our galaxy alone--the Milky Way--the current estimate is that there are 40 billion habitable Earth-size planets. Again, using the Drake Equation, many millions of them likely include intelligent life.

If this is not enough to make your head spin and fire your imagination, there is also significant news on the sub-atomic front. Specifically about the Higgs boson.

Physicist Peter Higgs a month ago was awarded a Nobel Prize for his theoretical work about a major source of energy that permeates space, confers mass on elementary sub-atomic particles, and gives forces such as gravity their distinctive features--the eponymous Higgs boson.

Until observed and identified earlier this year at the CERN particle accelerator in Europe the Higgs was an important but theoretical construct. But now actual Higgs bosons have been observed just where they were theorized to be.

There is general excitement all around. Higgs' work and that of the physicists at CERN is as important as any set of findings in at least 50 years.

But as with so much that is exciting and promising there is also a potential downside--in the case of the Higgs, a downside of literally cosmic proportions.

According to a report in the New York Times, the new boson could have "a fatal disease."

Some theorists, reviewing the history and future of the Higgs boson (with an emphasis on "future"), say that--

Taken at face value, the result [of these reviews] implies that eventually, (in 10-to-the-hundredth-power years) an unlucky quantum fluctuation will produce a bubble of a different vacuum, which will then expand at the speed of light, destroying everything. 

The idea is that the Higgs field could someday twitch and drop to a lower energy state, like water freezing into ice, thereby obliterating the workings of reality as we know it. Naturally, we would have no warning. Just blink and it's over.

Though 10-to-the-hundredth-power years is a very long time--very, very, very--this blink-and-it's-over business is a little depressing.