Campaign Finance Limits -- Killed

The U.S. Supreme Court just overturned a law that keeps corporations from using money to pay for campaign ads.  NYTimes story here.  Pdf of decision here.

Why connect this to a blog about political knowledge and what people know?

As I've discussed a length, as people flee news in a preference for more entertaining fare, it becomes more difficult to inform them of the issues of the day, or those in a political campaign.  Advertising, therefore, becomes even more important in "informing" voters, and now with this decision, corporations can flood the airwaves with advertising to swing elections.  A more misinformed voter is certain to emerge.  The Supreme Court's take may be legally correct here, but the outcome is not going to be as pretty as one might hope.

Flacks and Flak and Journalism

I love The Atlantic.  I get an actual hard copy in the mail every month -- ya know, the kind with ink on paper.  Brief piece out on what'll happen to journalists fleeing a dying biz, often into PR, and whether this a good thing.

Blogging as "Intellectual Contribution"

Just for the hell of it, I mentioned my writing of this blog on my annual report to my department head and dean of stuff I accomplished in 2009.  I listed What People Know under intellectual contributions.  False advertising?  Oh yeah, you bet.  Then again, last year under my plans for the year I listed my resolve to exercise more, which tells you how seriously I take these kinds of bureaucratic tasks.  On a more positive note, I did get to list a manuscript I just had accepted at the Journal of Media & Religion (with only minor revision).  More on this later.

Skimmers and Scanners

Further evidence people skim and scan the news?  According to this E&P piece, new research shows that an increasing number of people visit news aggregators like Google News and 44 percent rely just on that bit of info and don't visit the actual source of the news -- usually a newspaper-based site.

Most of this is a business issue between those who produce the news and those who do little more than point to it, but from a what people know perspective it is further evidence that we simply do not process the news as deeply as we once did.  This can have profound effects on political knowledge and a deeper understanding of local, national, and world events.  Or you can take this away -- it's all part of our shift from knowing, to knowing how to find stuff.  Two different takes, but neither are promising when it comes to social and political judgments.

Veggie Tales

Like 4 million or so other suckers, I tuned in to Iron Chef a couple of weeks ago when four chefs went at it using veggies from the White House garden.

Except, they didn't actually use those veggies.

According to this story, the Iron Chef folks used stunt veggies and misled the audience.  What we thought were radishes and stuff pulled from Michelle Obama's garden were instead probably pulled from the produce aisle of the nearby Kroger.

Throughout the show the chefs talked about how great the veggies were from the WH garden.  Yeah, maybe, but for some reason they had to mislead us throughout the commercials for the competition and the program itself.  I feel like I've been used with a really big squash.

Below, their own Youtube bit:

Haiti

When it comes to what people know about the disaster in Haiti, you have to hope they're not getting their info from crazies like Rush "Don't Help The Suffering" Limbaugh and Pat "Everyone but me is the Anti-Christ" Robertson.  An article in the LATimes discusses how CNN has nine journalists on the scene while that cutting-edge "talk about news but don't actually report any" Fox News has a single guy.

Census Mail -- Sorta

In my mail yesterday was a white envelope with black letters on the right side that said

DO NOT DESTROY
OFFICIAL DOCUMENT

Holy crap?  What official document?  Through a piece of cheap clear plastic I can read:

Census Document Registered To:


Mr. Barry Hollander
blah blah address blah

Holy crap?  The Census has already started?  Yeah, it's 2010, but no way they're far enough long to be sending me mail.

Look harder:

SPECIAL NOTICE: You have been selected to represent Republican voters in Georgia's 10th Congressional District.  Enclosed Please find documents registered in your name.

And larger:

DELIVER EXCLUSIVELY TO Mr. Barry Hollander

In other words, a Republican survey because, yes, I occasionally vote Republican so I'm on their list.  The survey asks how often I vote, what party I prefer, my age, and "from what media source do you regularly receive your political news?"  Bunch of choices here, but how they're grouped is fascinating.

• NBC/CBS/ABC are grouped together.  Okay, I can buy that.  The differences are subtle, but it's a perfectly good way to collapse your data.
  
• But CNN/MSNBC together?  That's just dumb, unless of course you believe on the part of CNN that a lack of a conservative bias equals a liberal bias.  The two are very unlike.
• Fox News.  Gets it's own special category.  Gee, wonder why?
• And a bunch of online stuff, like Facebook/MySpace (never mind how different they are), and Twitter, and Internet Blogs (as opposed to non-Internet blogs?).  
• And of course there are magazines and radio and other stuff, but NOT talk radio.  Interesting.

The rest of the survey is straightforward political stuff and the wording is not so skewed as to make the results unreliable.  But best of all, at the end, it asks for money.  Unmarked bills are acceptable, best I can tell, as long as they are between $25 and $500.

Plus I have to certify that the answers are my own.  Oh, please.