publishing
9 September 2006 | 
In late 2005 and early 2006, researchers with the Institute for Public Policy Research “analysed more than 600 articles from the UK press, as well as over 90 TV, radio and press ads, news clips and websites to find out how the media, government and green groups are communicating climate change.” They identified 10 different types of argument, that “offer different ways of thinking and talking and act as different versions of what can be considered ‘common sense.’”
The breakdown is interesting and useful, though I’m skeptical of their conclusions about the most persuasive message (given that they did not test the messages with actual audiences.) Media consensus is not the same as public opinion. See the summary of their findings or the full publication (512 Kb PDF). (via)
Domestic Policy
Another item I missed while out, on May 24, President Bush appointed Karl Zinsmeister as his chief domestic policy advisor (replacing Claude Allen who resigned in February when caught stealing from Target.) Judging from the appointment, the domestic agenda seems more about propaganda than poverty.
His qualifications? Zinsmeister was editor of The American Enterprise, the magazine of the American Enterprise Institute, a neo-conservative think tank whose stated mission is to support the “foundations of freedom — limited government, private enterprise, vital cultural and political institutions, and a strong foreign policy and national defense.” Among the organization’s funders are both Microsoft and the Scaife family.
Also on his resume, in 2003, Zinsmeister was embedded as a military reporter with the 82nd Airborne in Iraq. His Iraq experience is chronicled in Combat Zone: True Tales of GI’s in Iraq, which Zinsmeister wrote for Marvel Comics. [source] The comic excludes accounts of torture and detainee abuse by the 82nd Airborne later documented by Human Rights Watch.
Further qualifying him, is Zinsmeister’s 2002 essay When Art Becomes Inhuman, a critique of modern art, liberals, and, of course, Manhattan. [source]. His rant against abstraction is an ironic reversal from the days when the CIA helped promote abstract expressionism at the expense of social realism to keep the Commies at bay. Nowadays, with abstraction duly en-framed in the canon of modern art, it makes easy fodder for the ‘liberals are elitist snobs’ line of right-wing populists.
Among his accusations, is one about lefty directors of musical theater who “believe audiences should absorb ideological messages in the theater, not beautiful songs.” This is of course coming from his own ideological screed. But it’s also a further note of just how ideological the apparent ‘invisibility’ and ‘neutrality’ of beauty really is.
’Til You Drop
Now on newsstands across NYC is the cover of this week’s Time Out New York, an events and listings rag. The camouflage shopping bag is intended to evoke martial metaphors: tactical tips for your bargain hunting strategy inside.
But it struck me as quite an elegant, visual link between War and The Market!
