Lost in Translation

In the early days of both the cold war and of the computer industry, a popular joke was that the CIA had developed a program for natural language translation between Russian and English and was testing it for its ability to handle idioms. One test was to first have the program translate “Out of sight, out of mind” into Russian, and then have the program translate it back into English.  Developers were appalled when it came back, “Unseen, insane.”  That issue’s been long since corrected.  But sometimes that may be the most accurate translation.

This past week, the newspapers have been filled with what Don Rumsfeld calls the “perfect storm” of criticism of the Obama Administration .  Benghazi hearings featuring accusation of cover ups with all questions being the wrong ones, congressional tantrums about stupid IRS actions made in response to prior congressional requests for closer scrutiny of 501(c)4 applications and activities, outrage over the White House and AG “I didn’t know about it” response to the too wide spread investigation of leaks to the AP, when knowledge on their part of details of a White House leak investigation would have been an outrageous signal of possible White House intrusion into the investigation – all sound and fury, signifying what?  As is often the case, issues like climate change, the impending disaster of the upcoming baby-boomer retirement generation, the success of the American economic stimulus approach versus the EU austerity approach, the infrastructure disaster already on our hands, the 4000 Americans dead from gun killings just since the Newtown killings, etc., etc., are among those not covered.  All these have fallen out of the “media window.”

The media window, for those not familiar with it, can be seen this way.  Take, for example, the front page of your daily newspaper, and draw lines to form rectangles around each article.  Typically, there will be about six or seven of these rectangles on each page of your paper.  The same applies equivalently to the “space” in its allotted time of your TV news reports.  The total of these at any time is the “media window.” At any given time there are only a limited number of these “windows” available, and possession of them is fought for viciously by the various groups struggling either to get their message out or to prevent some rival group from getting their message out.  There are hundreds of these rivals on any given day, and possession of these windows is refereed by the news editors, and publishers, who often have their own axes to grind, or just want to sell newspapers or attract viewers.  Scandals and highly inflammatory language attracts viewers or readers, and drives out quieter but more significant news.

For example, yesterday the Washington Post contained the equivalent of several pages (dozens of windows) about Benghazi, the IRS, the AP investigation and goings on in Syrian politics, while including one short article on a highly significant report about climate change and no mention at all of a significant event regarding the EU economic austerity program.  The climate change item was a just released report in Nature that a multitude of fish species have migrated north toward polar regions over the past few decades; a strong confirming signal about global climate change.  Climatologists use fish migrations as a key indicator of significant climate alterations.  But the average fish will know more about those changes than the average American, thanks to lack of coverage.  The unreported economic item was a report that EU finance and IMF officials were visiting the UK to beg for a reduction by the UK in their austerity program because of the deleterious effect of the program on both Britain and the EU.  That was another major  confirmation of the success of stimulus over austerity approaches to handling recession.

Most political reporting I view with a ho-hum, jaundiced attitude, knowing it to be just the ephemera of daily living, provided more for excitement than for any real significance.  But a few things get me really upset.  At the top of that short list is refusal to deal with issues that will have major effects on the lives of my grandchildren, and other peoples’ grandchildren.  When I read that Boehner or some other politician is stating flat-out that he will not permit the House of Representatives to deal with climate change, I know he will be toward the top of the list of most despised politicians in American history 50 years from now because of his refusal to allow action when it was possible.  But that won’t help my grandchildren then or now.  The same, to a lesser extent, applies to politicians and interest groups standing in the way of a vibrant American economy because they might actually have to help pay for it.  And a major weapon in the arsenal of those resisting change is to distract the American people from real issues by inflammatory reporting that drives out the significant issues from even being reported.  We the people, and our media, allow it, and we will not go down well in history for doing so. In this case, “Out of sight, out of mind” is truly insane.