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Beverly Kirk Blog

Monday October 26, 2009 at 4:05 pm

White House FOX Tale

category: Politics

COMMENTARY

For two weeks, my favorite non-story, story has been the on-going feud between the White House and FOX News. It's a favorite because it's the proverbial watercooler story that gets everybody talking. Sadly, it also diverts our attention from the bigger, more pressing and serious stories (Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, the joblessness problem, our lack of preparedness for a pandemic of any kind -- i.e., those long lines for the swine flu vaccine) that really need our attention. Interestly, those stories always have a way of jarringly putting themselves back on the front page. This weekend's suicide bombings in Baghdad and the deadly helicopter crashes in Afghanistan have, at least for the moment, knocked the White House - FOX News feud out of the news.

Usually, a White House only picks a media fight when it wants to remove the spotlight from something it has done that has gone terribly wrong or wants to turn attention away from something embarrassing. The Obama White House doesn't have either of the situations in play, so it begs the question, "why fight with FOX"? One reason may be that it's tired of the Glenn Beck tirades. It's understandable that the White House might not want to deal with a network that actively promotes a host who accuses the President of having issues with white culture and of being a racist? It's an absurd charge given that President Obama is half white and was raised by his white mother and grandparents. In spite of Beck, this White House must deal with FOX, even if it views it with suspicion. Why? The U.S. is an example for the rest of the world. It can't tell the despots of the world that they must tolerate dissent (even if it's biased, wrong, unfair, or made up), if it won't do so itself. It's much more important to set that example than it is to try to freeze out or punish a network the administration thinks is out to get it.

The Obama administration isn't the first to feud with the media. There was no love lost between the Bush administration and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow. The Bush administration, toward the end, didn't send its people to appear on MSNBC's air. Former spokesperson Dana Perino admitted as much during an appearance earlier this month on the FOX and Friends morning show. It was wrong of the Bush administration to behave that way then, and it's wrong of the Obama administration to do so now.

There is an old saying in Washington, "keep your friends close and your enemies closer." I don't know who said it, but in this town, it's always the right move. President Obama should go right into the lions' den and directly confront FOX on the issues where he believes the network is either biased or wrong. It's very easy for talk show hosts to say things when they're unchallenged by the people they're talking about, but it's a little more difficult to make nasty or hateful allegations directly to the person's face, especially when that person is the President.

As for FOX News and all the other cable networks, it's time for them to decide what they want to be. Do they want to be news networks, or talk radio on TV? Either is good. Just make a choice. It's difficult to straddle the line. It's fine to have the kind of programs hosted by Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Joy Behar, Jane Velez-Mitchell, and all the rest, but let's all stop pretending these folks are journalists doing news-type programs because they're part of a "news network on cable". And, let's realize that when these shows run alongside other "real" news programming, even if they're contained to different parts of the day, people of all stripes will question the ENTIRE network's perspective. It won't matter that the news shows are perfectly fair, balanced, and objective. If cable networks want to be talk radio on TV, go all in and do it. But, don't throw in some "news shows", blur the line and still expect to be treated like a news network.

posted by Beverly Kirk

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Monday October 05, 2009 at 10:32 am

The Fall of the Berlin Wall 20 Years Later

category: International Issues

On November 9, 2009, Germany will mark 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the start of the process that would reunify the country. Remarkably, not that much remains of the physical Wall that divided East and West Berlin literally and West Germany and NATO from the old Soviet Bloc figuratively. On a bus tour, the guide specifically pointed out the sections still standing, noting that ironically there is now an aggressive effort to “save” these parts of the Wall for history’s sake… so that no one would forget that it actually stood and divided the city. She showed us old pictures illustrating what the areas around the Wall used to look like since today much of it is home to businesses, restaurants and lots of people moving freely about. Potsdamer Platz, not far from the old Checkpoint Charlie, is a vibrant commercial center where there was, at least on the day I visited, a huge ad on the side of a building touting the goods at well known department store, H&M. In many areas of the city, all that remains to indicate where the Wall once stood is a double row of stones that line the path the Wall once took.

But, what about the melding of minds and people, two decades after those incredible pictures of people climbing and tearing down that Wall? The tour guide said Germans often reference time by what happened before or after “wende”, which translated means “the turning” or the change from two countries to back to one. A recurring theme heard from various quarters indicate that while the country is whole again, divisions remain. The West remains more prosperous than the East where unemployment is often dramatically higher. In the Saxony region home to Dresden and Freiburg, the overall unemployment rate is 16 percent. And as high as it seems, it’s one of the lowest unemployment rates in the former East. (In Berlin, it’s 18 percent according to the tour guide.) The German government has poured money into the former East, and officials there say still more is needed. However, the eastern areas are getting less and less funding every year and by 2019, payments from the central government to help build the former East up to the standards of the West will end per the reunification agreement. There are bright spots in terms of industry in the former East. I mentioned the Solar World facility and Volkwagen’s Transparent Factory in my previous blog, plus there are biotech and IT firms located in the region employing thousands of people.

One of the government officials our group spoke with here believes it may take another 20 years to solve completely the problems of East-West integration. And while economic integration is one challenge, the social divide is another but in a completely different manner. A full 65 percent of Germans in the West have never ventured into the former East according to officials here. It also appears many people from the East, especially the women, moved West post “wende” and never looked back,. Officials here lament the loss of population. They expect that by 2020, the population of the former East could be down to some three million because of out migration. The people who are left are often older and lack the educational advantages of those raised in the West, or are young males who stayed behind as young women migrated West. There are concerns about extremism among those young males, but the nationalist NPD party is getting far less than 5 percent support (the amount needed for a seat in Parliament) from voters nationally now, even though it does enjoy some support in parts of the former East. Also worrisome for at least one official who spoke with our group: the lack of large numbers of young families with young children in the former East, which is key to building vibrant communities.

One area where there seems to be no split is in the realm of political integration. There is a well-functioning public sector in the former East just as there is in the West. We met several people who had grown up in the West but now hold political positions in the former East and vice versa. While there may be some political parties that have more support in one region or another, it appears that the major parties compete well in both the former East and the West. I saw signs for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU party and the newly defeated Social Democrats (SPD) in just about equal amounts whether we were in Dresden, Freiburg, Frankfort, or Berlin. Officials here say there is also no split among young Germans who primarily know about the country’s former division via history books, which means there’s a good chance the concerns about East-West integration will eventually be a thing of the past… just like the Wall itself.

posted by Beverly Kirk

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Wednesday September 23, 2009 at 12:16 pm

Thoughts from Across the Pond

category: International Issues

COMMENTARY

This blog post is a bit politics and a bit travelogue. I’m in Germany this week as part of a journalist study tour sponsored by the Atlantik-Bruecke, a non-partisan think tank based in Berlin. There are 16 of us from news outlets across the U.S., and this week we’re examining U.S. - German relations 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and taking a closer look at politics ahead of this Sunday’s elections. We’re actually scheduled to visit the election parties of the major political parties as the votes come in Sunday night.

After meeting with various community and business leaders in four cities (Freiburg, Dresden, Frankfurt and Hamburg) over the past four days, the consensus seems to be that an election producing a major change in the German government would be a surprise. Chancellor Angela Merkel is expected to remain in the job even though recent polling shows the race tightening a bit. The unanswered question is what kind of governing coalition she’ll have to work with. Will it be one that will keep her government just as it has been, or one that will let her move more toward her own party’s center-right positions? Either way, no one here expects any changes in the German government’s foreign policy so far as it concerns the Obama Administration.

The most fascinating conversations to this point have centered on a couple of areas… green technology and energy, and the financial market collapse, who’s responsible for it and the future outlook. First, the Germans look to be moving forward in developing green technology and energy leading to green jobs. We visited the Solar World facility near the city of Freiburg in the former East German state of Saxony. The company produces solar panels to be fitted onto private homes to produce electricity. (Interestingly, Solar World has three production sites in the U.S., in California, Oregon and Washington State). The plant in Freiburg was built using government subsidies governed by the European Commission. Solar World officials insist those subsidy dollars have now, some two decades later, been repaid and then some… although there’s no way for me to independently verify that claim. According to company leaders, the project was done to spur investment and to deal with unemployment in the former communist East after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The result, jobs - green jobs at that - were created that help produce the solar power that now provides one percent of Germany’s electricity. Company leaders say they expect to add jobs over the next couple of years. Plus, there are windmills in just about every field producing some 8 to 10 percent of the country’s power… a figure that’s expected to grow. The company’s COO said he understands it’s not as simple in the U.S. to do this kind of solar project as it is in Germany, but he did openly wonder why more effort isn’t made since the U.S. gets nearly twice the amount of sunshine Germany does and could produce more solar power.

It’s also worth noting that we visited the Frankfurt Auto Show where both BMW and Mercedes were touting new hybrid versions of some of their top models. Volkswagen has built an environmentally friendly plant in the heart of the city of Dresden that produces the Phaeton, a luxury model not currently sold in the U.S. The building is called the Transparent Factory because it’s made mostly of glass. Steps were taken to keep the groundwater at the site balanced. Plus, 350 trees were planted around it and sodium vapor lamps installed so that the insects in the botanical garden next door wouldn’t be disturbed, according to company literature.

The other incredibly interesting conversations have focused on the financial market collapse and the efforts to help the financial system recover. It’s clear that more than a few here place the blame for the collapse squarely on the shoulders of the U.S. and its mortgage industry in particular, citing specifically the risky sub-prime loans that put people into houses with 100 percent financing… something they maintain could not happen in either Germany or continental Europe. In Frankfurt, Germany’s financial center, we met with top corporate leaders who believe progress has been made and that there are improvements in the economy, but they add that it’s going to take time, perhaps a lot of time, for the global economy to recover completely from last year’s collapse. Most thought the governmental financial interventions and stimulus efforts to prevent a total crash were very necessary but believe one of the biggest issues to be confronted will be how and when to stop the government help. One leader made a point, I thought was particularly compelling. He said he is not against what he termed “intelligent regulation” of the financial industry because he said complete “self-regulation” doesn’t work. The question I was left with was (and still is), what and who would define “intelligent regulation”? Could the world’s financial powers agree on a definition? This particular leader, who is a member of the management board of one of Germany's largest financial institutions, pointed out that these same powers have struggled and failed for more than a decade to settle on a global trade agreement (the Doha Round), so he says no one should be surprised that a solution for the difficult issues in the financial/banking industry won’t happen overnight.

These are just a few of my impressions. I’ll share more food for thought (and debate) later as well as some pictures.

posted by Beverly Kirk

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