im still here.... alone...helpless....tired of wasting space
what's the point.... always fighting.... everythings a battle....
where are smiles.... laughter... feelsafe and free and being able to fly in a world that has good times
so much rich so much power on the bling bling blingy clingy world of evil pretend forced upon our very souls and brainfriend each and every day...
..... yet- in real... most of us have barely enough food.... to nourish even the smallest of dreams....
KEANU REEVES ON PARENTHOOD.... and needing a license to buy a dog..... but not a kid...
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BLOGSPOT:
Hardship single parenting CANADA 2 much unnecessary poverty Canada too often causing family abuse and suicide - MENTAL HEALTH MATTERS CANADA/Stats and figures with links/The best Canada Elections Letter to Canadians EV-A -proving we are smart, educated and savvy -so get back to basics Dear Leaders- #1BRising
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Canada helplines for kids,
students, youth and youngbloods- ur not alone.../Wear pink all of ya be unique
be u- be glorious own u -/The Bully Project/ Bullycides and bullying- DON'T BE
A BYSTANDER/Olympian Clara Huges and the courage to make mental illness
everyday -cus it is/Desiderata/How I taught my kids not to
rape/Classified/drinking-drugging carless parents- stay strong kids- It's
Canada and we love u dearly /M.A.D.D.- u matter /Rehtaeh
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As Margaret Mead once said, today our children are not brought up by parents, they are brought up by the mass media.
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| The More You Subtract, The More You Add Cutting Girls Down to Size WHEN I WAS SIXTEEN, LIKE ALMOST EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD, I FELL wildly in love for the first time. My feelings were so intense that now, decades later, I still dream about him from time to time. He was good for me in every way, but I also began a sinister love affair around the same time, one that nearly consumed me—my love affair with alcohol and cigarettes. As adults in a toxic culture, some of us fall in love with cars or chocolate cake or, more dangerously, drugs. But, just as we are more vulnerable to the glory and heartbreak of romantic love than we will ever be again, at no time are we more vulnerable to the seductive power of advertising and of addiction than we are in adolescence. Adolescents are new and inexperienced consumers—and such prime targets. They are in the process of learning their values and roles and developing their self-concepts. Most teenagers are sensitive to peer pressure and find it difficult to resist or even to question the dominant cultural messages perpetuated and reinforced by the media. Mass communication has made possible a kind of national peer pressure that erodes private and individual values and standards, as well as community values and standards. As Margaret Mead once said, today our children are not brought up by parents, they are brought up by the mass media. Advertisers are aware of their role and do not hesitate to take advantage of the insecurities and anxieties of young people, usually in the guise of offering solutions. A cigarette provides a symbol of independence. A pair of designer jeans or sneakers convey status. The right perfume or beer resolves doubts about femininity or masculinity. All young people are vulnerable to these messages and adolescence is a difficult time for most people, perhaps especially these days. According to the Carnegie Corporation, “Nearly half of all American adolescents are at high or moderate risk of seriously damaging their life chances.” But there is a particular kind of suffering in our culture that afflicts girls. As most of us know so well by now, when a girl enters adolescence, she faces a series of losses—loss of self-confidence, loss of a sense of efficacy and ambition, and the loss of her “voice,” the sense of being a unique and powerful self that she had in childhood. Girls who were active, confident, feisty at the ages of eight and nine and ten often become hesitant, insecure, self-doubting at eleven. Their self-esteem plummets. As Carol Gilligan, Mary Pipher and other social critics and psychologists have pointed out in recent years, adolescent girls in America are afflicted with a range of problems, including low self-esteem, eating disorders, binge drinking, date rape and other dating violence, teen pregnancy, and a rise in cigarette smoking. Teenage women today are engaging in far riskier health behavior in greater numbers than any prior generation. The gap between boys and girls is closing, but this is not always for the best. According to a 1998 status report by a consortium of universities and research centers, girls have closed the gap with boys in math performance and are coming close in science. But they are also now smoking, drinking, and using drugs as often as boys their own age. And, although girls are not nearly as violent as boys, they are committing more crimes than ever before and are far more often physically attacking each other. It is important to understand that these problems go way beyond individual psychological development and pathology. Even girls who are raised in loving homes by supportive parents grow up in a toxic cultural environment, at risk for self-mutilation, eating disorders, and addictions. The culture, both reflected and reinforced by advertising, urges girls to adopt a false self, to bury alive their real selves, to become “feminine,” which means to be nice and kind and sweet, to compete with other girls for the attention of boys, and to value romantic relationships with boys above all else. Girls are put into a terrible double bind. They are supposed to repress their power, their anger, their exuberance and be simply “nice,” although they also eventually must compete with men in the business world and be successful. They must be overtly sexy and attractive but essentially passive and virginal. It is not surprising that most girls experience this time as painful and confusing, especially if they are unconscious of these conflicting demands. Of course, it is impossible to speak accurately of girls as a monolithic group. The socialization that emphasizes passivity and compliance does not apply to many African-American and Jewish girls, who are often encouraged to be assertive and outspoken, and working-class girls are usually not expected to be stars in the business world. Far from protecting these girls from eating disorders and other problems, these differences more often mean that the problems remain hidden or undiagnosed and the girls are even less likely to get help. Eating problems affect girls from African-American, Asian, Native American, Hispanic, and Latino families and from every socioeconomic background. The racism and classism that these girls experience exacerbate their problems. Sexism is by no means the only trauma they face. We’ve learned a lot in recent years about the pressures on girls and the resulting problems. So much that some people think it is time to stop talking about it—maybe to focus on boys or just move on. -It’s important to remember that this discussion of the problems of adolescent girls is very recent. In 1980, not a single chapter in the Handbook on Adolescent Psychology was devoted to girls. As with other fields in psychology, the research was done on boys and assumed to apply to girls as well. The research on girls and the discussion of their issues is long overdue and far from complete. Of course, we must continue to pay attention to the problems of boys, as well. Two books published recently address these problems. In Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, Daniel Kindlon and Michael Thompson examine the “culture of cruelty” that boys live in and the “tyranny of toughness” that oppresses them. In Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood, psychologist William Pollock examines the ways that boys manifest their social and emotional disconnection through anger and violence. -We’ve seen the tragic results of this in the school shootings, all by angry and alienated boys. The truth is that the problems of boys and girls are related, and not only because girls are often the victims of these angry, violent boys and the men they become. The “emotional illiteracy” of men, as Kindlon and Thompson call it, harms boys and girls, men and women. Most of us understand that the cultural environment plays a powerful role in creating these problems. But we still have a lot to learn about the precise nature of this role—and what we can do about it. How can we resist these destructive messages and images? The first step, as always, is to become as conscious of them as possible, to deconstruct them. Although I am very sympathetic to the harm done to boys by our cultural environment, the focus of my work has always been on girls and women. Girls try to make sense of the contradictory expectations of themselves in a culture dominated by advertising. Advertising is one of the most potent messengers in a culture that can be toxic for girls’ self-esteem. Indeed, if we looked only at advertising images, this would be a bleak world for females. Girls are extremely desirable to advertisers because they are new consumers, are beginning to have significant disposable income, and are developing brand loyalty that might last a lifetime. Teenage girls spend over $4 billion annually on cosmetics alone. Seventeen, a magazine aimed at girls about twelve to fifteen, sells these girls to advertisers in an ad that says, “-She’s the one you want. -She’s the one -we’ve got.” The copy continues, “She pursues beauty and fashion at every turn” and concludes with, “-It’s more than a magazine. -It’s her life.” In another similar ad, Seventeen refers to itself as a girl’s “Bible.” Many girls read magazines like this and take the advice seriously. Regardless of the intent of the advertisers, what are the messages that girls are getting? What are they told? Primarily girls are told by advertisers that what is most important about them is their perfume, their clothing, their bodies, their beauty. Their “essence” is their underwear. “He says the first thing he noticed about you is your great personality,” says an ad featuring a very young woman in tight jeans. The copy continues, “He lies.” “If this is your idea of a great catch,” says an ad for a cosmetic kit from a teen magazine featuring a cute boy, “this is your tackle box.” Even very little girls are offered makeup and toys like Special Night Barbie, which shows them how to dress up for a night out. Girls of all ages get the message that they must be flawlessly beautiful and, above all these days, they must be thin. Even more destructively, they get the message that this is possible, that, with enough effort and self-sacrifice, they can achieve this ideal. Thus many girls spend enormous amounts of time and energy attempting to achieve something that is not only trivial but also completely unattainable. The glossy images of flawlessly beautiful and extremely thin women that surround us would not have the impact they do if we did not live in a culture that encourages us to believe we can and should remake our bodies into perfect commodities. These images play into the American belief of transformation and ever-new possibilities, no longer via hard work but via the purchase of the right products. As Anne Becker has pointed out, this belief is by no means universal. People in many other cultures may admire a particular body shape without seeking to emulate it. In the Western world, however, “the anxiety of nonrecognition (‘I -don’t fit in’) faced by the majority of spectators is more often translated into identifications (‘I want to be like that’) and attempts at self-alteration than into rage.” Women are especially vulnerable because our bodies have been objectified and commodified for so long. And young women are the most vulnerable, especially those who have experienced early deprivation, sexual abuse, family violence, or other trauma. Cultivating a thinner body offers some hope of control and success to a young woman with a poor self-image and overwhelming personal problems that have no easy solutions. Although troubled young women are especially vulnerable, these messages affect all girls. A researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston found that the more frequently girls read magazines, the more likely they were to diet and to feel that magazines influence their ideal body shape. Nearly half reported wanting to lose weight because of a magazine picture (but only 29 percent were actually overweight). Studies at Stanford University and the University of Massachusetts found that about 70 percent of college women say they feel worse about their own looks after reading women’s magazines. Another study, this one of 350 young men and women, found that a preoccupation with one’s appearance takes a toll on mental health. Women scored much higher than men on what the researchers called “self-objectification.” This tendency to view one’s body from the outside in—regarding physical attractiveness, sex appeal, measurements, and weight as more central to one’s physical identity than health, strength, energy level, coordination, or fitness—has many harmful effects, including diminished mental performance, increased feelings of shame and anxiety, depression, sexual dysfunction, and the development of eating disorders. These images of women seem to affect men most strikingly by influencing how they judge the real women in their lives. Male college students who viewed just one episode of Charlie’s Angels, the hit television show of the 1970s that featured three beautiful women, were harsher in their evaluations of the attractiveness of potential dates than were males who had not seen the episode. In another study, male college students shown centerfolds from Playboy and Penthouse were more likely to find their own girlfriends less sexually attractive. Adolescent girls are especially vulnerable to the obsession with thinness, for many reasons. One is the ominous peer pressure on young people. Adolescence is a time of such self-consciousness and terror of shame and humiliation. Boys are shamed for being too small, too “weak,” too soft, too sensitive. And girls are shamed for being too sexual, too loud, too boisterous, too big (in any sense of the word), having too hearty an appetite. Many young women have told me that their boyfriends wanted them to lose weight. One said that her boyfriend had threatened to leave her if she -didn’t lose five pounds. “Why -don’t you leave him,” I asked, “and lose 160?” The situation is very different for men. The double standard is reflected in an ad for a low-fat pizza: “He eats a brownie . . . you eat a rice cake. He eats a juicy burger . . . you eat a low fat entree. He eats pizza . . . you eat pizza. Finally, life is fair.” Although some men develop eating problems, the predominant cultural message remains that a hearty appetite and a large size is desirable in a man, but not so in a woman. Indeed, a 1997 television campaign targets ravenous teenage boys by offering Taco Bell as the remedy for hunger (and also linking eating with sex via the slogan “Want some?”). One commercial features a fat guy who loses his composure when he realizes his refrigerator is empty. In another, two quite heavy guys have dozed off in front of a television set and are awakened by hunger pangs, which only Taco Bell can satisfy. It is impossible to imagine this campaign aimed at teenage girls. Normal physiological changes during adolescence result in increased body fat for women. If these normal changes are considered undesirable by the culture (and by parents and peers), this can lead to chronic anxiety and concern about weight control in young women. A ten-year-old girl wrote to New Moon, a feminist magazine for girls, “I was at the beach and was in my bathing suit. I have kind of fat legs, and my uncle told me I had fat legs in front of all my cousins and my cousins’ friends. I was so embarrassed, I went up to my room and shut the door. When I went downstairs again, everyone started teasing me.” Young women are even encouraged to worry about small fluctuations in their weight. “Sometimes what you wear to dinner may depend on what you eat for breakfast,” says an ad for cereal that pictures a slinky black dress. In truth, daily and weekly and monthly fluctuations in weight are perfectly normal. The obsession starts early. Some studies have found that from 40 to 80 percent of fourth-grade girls are dieting. Today at least one-third of twelve- to thirteen-year-old girls are actively trying to lose weight, by dieting, vomiting, using laxatives, or taking diet pills. One survey found that 63 percent of high-school girls were on diets, compared with only 16 percent of men. And a survey in Mas-sachusetts found that the single largest group of high-school students considering or attempting suicide are girls who feel they are overweight. Imagine. Girls made to feel so terrible about themselves that they would rather be dead than fat. This -wouldn’t be happening, of course, if it -weren’t for our last “socially acceptable” prejudice—weightism. Fat children are ostracized and ridiculed from the moment they enter school, and fat adults, women in particular, are subjected to public contempt and scorn. This strikes terror into the hearts of all women, many of whom, unfortunately, identify with the oppressor and become vicious to themselves and each other. No wonder it is hard to find a woman, especially a young woman, in America today who has a truly healthy attitude toward her body and toward food. Just as the disease of alcoholism is the extreme end of a continuum that includes a wide range of alcohol use and abuse, so are bulimia and anorexia the extreme results of an obsession with eating and weight control that grips many young women with serious and potentially very dangerous results. Although eating problems are often thought to result from vanity, the truth is that they, like other addictions and compulsive behavior, usually have deeper roots—not only genetic predisposition and biochemical vulnerabilities, but also childhood sexual abuse. Advertising -doesn’t cause eating problems, of course, any more than it causes alcoholism. Anorexia in particular is a disease with a complicated etiology, and media images probably -don’t play a major role. However, these images certainly contribute to the body-hatred so many young women feel and to some of the resulting eating problems, which range from bulimia to compulsive overeating to simply being obsessed with controlling one’s appetite. Advertising does promote abusive and abnormal attitudes about eating, drinking, and thinness. It thus provides fertile soil for these obsessions to take root in and creates a climate of denial in which these diseases flourish. The influence of the media is strikingly illustrated in a recent study that found a sharp rise in eating disorders among young women in Fiji soon after the introduction of television to the culture. Before television was available, there was little talk of dieting in Fiji. “-You’ve gained weight” was a traditional compliment and “going thin” the sign of a problem. In 1995 television came to the island. Within three years, the number of teenagers at risk for eating disorders more than doubled, 74 percent of the teens in the study said they felt “too big or too fat,” and 62 percent said they had dieted in the past month. Of course, this -doesn’t prove a direct causal link between television and eating disorders. Fiji is a culture in transition in many ways. However, it seems more than coincidental that the Fiji girls who were heavy viewers of television were 50 percent more likely to describe themselves as fat and 30 percent more likely to diet than those girls who watched television less frequently. As Ellen Goodman says, “The big success story of our entertainment industry is our ability to export insecurity: We can make any woman anywhere feel perfectly rotten about her shape.” Being obsessed about one’s weight is made to seem normal and even appealing in ads for unrelated products, such as a scotch ad that features a very thin and pretty young woman looking in a mirror while her boyfriend observes her. The copy, addressed to him, says, “Listen, if you can handle ‘Honey, do I look fat?’ you can handle this.” These two are so intimate that she can share her deepest fears with him—and he can respond by chuckling at her adorable vulnerability and knocking back another scotch. And everyone who sees the ad gets the message that it is perfectly normal for all young women, including thin and attractive ones, to worry about their weight. “Put some weight on,” says a British ad featuring an extremely thin young woman—but the ad is referring to her watch. She is so thin she can wear the watch on her upper arm—and this is supposed to be a good thing. Not all of this is intentional on the part of the advertisers, of course. A great deal of it is based on research and is intended to arouse anxiety and affect women’s self-esteem. But some of it reflects the unconscious attitudes and beliefs of the individual advertisers, as well as what Carl Jung referred to as the “collective unconscious.” Advertisers are members of the culture too and have been as thoroughly conditioned as anyone else. The magazines and the ads deliberately create and intensify anxiety about weight because it is so profitable. On a deeper level, however, they reflect cultural concerns and conflicts about women’s power. Real freedom for women would change the very basis of our male-dominated society. It is not surprising that many men (and women, to be sure) fear this. “The more you subtract, the more you add,” says an ad that ran in several women’s and teen magazines in 1997. Surprisingly, it is an ad for clothing, not for a diet product. Overtly, it is a statement about minimalism in fashion. However, the fact that the girl in the ad is very young and very thin reinforces another message, a message that an adolescent girl constantly gets from advertising and throughout the popular culture, the message that she should diminish herself, she should be less than she is. On the most obvious and familiar level, this refers to her body. However, the loss, the subtraction, the cutting down to size also refers to her sense of her self, her sexuality, her need for authentic connection, and her longing for power and freedom. I certainly -don’t think that the creators of this particular ad had all this in mind. -They’re simply selling expensive clothing in an unoriginal way, by using a very young and very thin woman—and an unfortunate tagline. It -wouldn’t be important at all were there not so many other ads that reinforce this message and did it not coincide with a cultural crisis taking place now for adolescent girls. “We cut Judy down to size,” says an ad for a health club. “Soon, -you’ll both be taking up less space,” says an ad for a collapsible treadmill, referring both to the product and to the young woman exercising on it. The obsession with thinness is most deeply about cutting girls and women down to size. It is only a symbol, albeit a very powerful and destructive one, of tremendous fear of female power. Powerful women are seen by many people (women as well as men) as inherently destructive and dangerous. Some argue that it is men’s awareness of just how powerful women can be that has created the attempts to keep women small. Indeed, thinness as an ideal has always accompanied periods of greater freedom for women—as soon as we got the vote, boyish flapper bodies came into vogue. No wonder there is such pressure on young women today to be thin, to shrink, to be like little girls, not to take up too much space, literally or figuratively. At the same time there is relentless pressure on women to be small, there is also pressure on us to succeed, to achieve, to “have it all.” We can be successful as long as we stay “feminine” (i.e., powerless enough not to be truly threatening). One way to do this is to present an image of fragility, to look like a waif. This demonstrates that one is both in control and still very “feminine.” One of the many double binds tormenting young women today is the need to be both sophisticated and accomplished, yet also delicate and childlike. Again, this applies mostly to middle- to upper-class white women. The changing roles and greater opportunities for women promised by the women’s movement are trivialized, reduced to the private search for the slimmest body. In one commercial, three skinny young women dance and sing about the “taste of freedom.” They are feeling free because they can now eat bread, thanks to a low-calorie version. A commercial for a fast-food chain features a very slim young woman who announces, “I have a license to eat.” The salad bar and lighter fare have given her freedom to eat (as if eating for women were a privilege rather than a need). “Free yourself,” says ad after ad for diet products. You can never be too rich or too thin, girls are told. This mass delusion sells a lot of products. It also causes enormous suffering, involving girls in false quests for power and control, while deflecting attention and energy from that which might really empower them. “A declaration of independence,” proclaims an ad for perfume that features an emaciated model, but in fact the quest for a body as thin as the model’s becomes a prison for many women and girls. The quest for independence can be a problem too if it leads girls to deny the importance of and need for interpersonal relationships. Girls and young women today are encouraged by the culture to achieve a very “masculine” kind of autonomy and independence, one that excludes interdependence, mutuality, and connection with others. Catherine Steiner-Adair suggests that perhaps eating disorders emerge at adolescence because it is at this point that “females experience themselves to be at a crossroads in their lives where they must shift from a relational approach to life to an autonomous one, a shift that can represent an intolerable loss when independence is associated with isolation.” In this sense, she sees eating disorders as political statements, a kind of hunger strike: “Girls with eating disorders have a heightened, albeit confused, grasp of the dangerous imbalance of the culture’s values, which they cannot articulate in the face of the culture’s abject denial of their adolescent intuitive truth, so they tell their story with their bodies.” Most of us know by now about the damage done to girls by the tyranny of the ideal image, weightism, and the obsession with thinness. But girls get other messages too that “cut them down to size” more subtly. In ad after ad girls are urged to be “barely there”—beautiful but silent. Of course, girls are not just influenced by images of other girls. They are even more powerfully attuned to images of women, because they learn from these images what is expected of them, what they are to become. And they see these images again and again in the magazines they read, even those magazines designed for teenagers, and in the commercials they watch. “Make a statement without saying a word,” says an ad for perfume. And indeed this is one of the primary messages of the culture to adolescent girls. “The silence of a look can reveal more than words,” says another perfume ad, this one featuring a woman lying on her back. “More than words can say,” says yet another perfume ad, and a clothing ad says, “Classic is speaking your mind (without saying a word).” An ad for lipstick says, “Watch your mouth, young lady,” while one for nail polish says, “Let your fingers do the talking,” and one for hairspray promises “hair that speaks volumes.” In another ad, a young woman’s turtleneck is pulled over her mouth. And an ad for a movie soundtrack features a chilling image of a young woman with her lips sewn together. It is not only the girls themselves who see these images, of course. Their parents and teachers and doctors see them and they influence their sense of how girls should be. A 1999 study done at the University of Michigan found that, beginning in preschool, girls are told to be quiet much more often than boys. Although boys were much noisier than girls, the girls were told to speak softly or to use a “nicer” voice about three times more often. Girls were encouraged to be quiet, small, and physically constrained. The researcher concluded that one of the consequences of this socialization is that girls grow into women afraid to speak up for themselves or to use their voices to protect themselves from a variety of dangers. A television commercial features a very young woman lying on a bed, giggling, silly. Suddenly a male hand comes forward. His finger touches her lips and she becomes silent, her face blank. Another commercial features a very young woman, shot in black and white but with colored contact lenses. She never speaks but she touches her face and her hair as a female voiceover says, “Your eyes -don’t just see, they also speak. . . . Your eyes can say a lot, but they -don’t have to shout. They can speak softly. Let your eyes be heard . . . without making a sound.” The commercial ends with the young woman putting her finger in her mouth. “Score high on nonverbal skills,” says a clothing ad featuring a young African-American woman, while an ad for mascara tells young women to “make up your own language.” And an Italian ad features a very thin young woman in an elegant coat sitting on a window seat. The copy says, “This woman is silent. This coat talks.” Girls, seeing these images of women, are encouraged to be silent, mysterious, not to talk too much or too loudly. In many different ways, they are told “the more you subtract, the more you add.” In this kind of climate, a Buffalo jeans ad featuring a young woman screaming, “I -don’t have to scream for attention but I do,” can seem like an improvement—until we notice that -she’s really getting attention by unbuttoning her blouse to her navel. This is typical of the mixed messages so many ads and other forms of the media give girls. The young woman seems fierce and powerful, but -she’s really exposed, vulnerable. The January 1998 cover of Seventeen highlights an article, “Do you talk too much?” On the back cover is an ad for Express mascara, which promises “high voltage volume instantly!” As if the way that girls can express themselves and turn up the volume is via their mascara. Is this harmless wordplay, or is it a sophisticated and clever marketing ploy based on research about the silencing of girls, deliberately designed to attract them with the promise of at least some form of self-expression? Advertisers certainly spend a lot of money on psychological research and focus groups. I would expect these groups to reveal, among other things, that teenage girls are angry but reticent. Certainly the cumulative effect of these images and words urging girls to express themselves only through their bodies and through products is serious and harmful. Many ads feature girls and young women in very passive poses, limp, doll-like, sometimes acting like little girls, playing with dolls and wearing bows in their hair. One ad uses a pacifier to sell lipstick and another the image of a baby to sell BabyDoll Blush Highlight. “Lolita seems to be a comeback kid,” says a fashion layout featuring a woman wearing a ridiculous hairstyle and a baby-doll dress, standing with shoulders slumped and feet apart. In women’s and teen magazines it is virtually impossible to tell the fashion layouts from the ads. Indeed, they exist to support each other. As Erving Goffman pointed out in Gender Advertisements, we learn a great deal about the disparate power of males and females simply through the body language and poses of advertising. Women, especially young women, are generally subservient to men in ads, through both size and position. Sometimes it is as blatant as the woman serving as a footrest in the ad for Think Skateboards. Other times, it is more subtle but quite striking (once one becomes aware of it). The double-paged spread for Calvin Klein’s clothing for kids conveys a world of information about the relative power of boys and girls. One of the boys seems to be in the act of speaking, expressing himself, while the girl has her hand over her mouth. Boys are generally shown in ads as active, rambunctious, while girls are more often passive and focused on their appearance. The exception to the rule involves African-American children, male and female, who are often shown in advertising as passive observers of their white playmates. That these stereotypes continue, in spite of all the recent focus on the harm done to girls by enforced passivity, is evident in the most casual glance at parents’ magazines. In the ads in the March 1999 issues of Child and Parents, all of the boys are active and all of the girls are passive. In Child, a boy plays on the jungle gym in one ad, while in another, a girl stands quietly, looking down, holding some flowers. In Parents, a boy rides a bike, full of excitement, while a girl is happy about having put on lipstick. -It’s hard to believe that this is 1999 and not 1959. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Girls are often shown as playful clowns in ads, perpetuating the attitude that girls and women are childish and cannot be taken seriously, whereas even very young men are generally portrayed as secure, powerful, and serious. People in control of their lives stand upright, alert, and ready to meet the world. In contrast, females often appear off-balance, insecure, and weak. Often our body parts are bent, conveying unpreparedness, submissiveness, and appeasement. We exhibit what Goffman terms “licensed withdrawal”—seeming to be psychologically removed, disoriented, defenseless, spaced out. Females touch people and things delicately, we caress, whereas males grip, clench, and grasp. We cover our faces with our hair or our hands, conveying shame or embarrassment. And, no matter what happens, we keep on smiling. “Just smiling the bothers away,” as one ad says. This ad is particularly disturbing because the model is a young African-American woman, a member of a group that has long been encouraged to just keep smiling, no matter what. -She’s even wearing a kerchief, like Aunt Jemima. The cultural fear of angry women is intensified dramatically when the women are African-American. An extreme example of the shaming and trivialization of girls and women is a recent little trend of ads featuring young women sitting on the toilet, such as the shoe ad with popular MTV star Jenny McCarthy (although the ad offended a lot of people, it also boosted sales of Candies shoes by 19 percent). Unfortunately, this phenomenon is not restricted to the United States. An Italian ad for sneakers and a British one for a magazine use the same image. Such pictures are especially humiliating to self-conscious teenagers. Girls and young women are often presented as blank and fragile. Floating in space, adrift in a snowstorm. A Valentino clothing ad perhaps unwittingly illustrates the tragedy of adolescence for girls. It features a very young woman with her head seemingly enclosed in a glass bubble labeled “Love.” Some ads and fashion layouts picture girls as mermaids or underwater as if they were drowning—or lying on the ground as if washed up to shore, such as the Versace makeup ad picturing a young girl caught up in fishing nets, rope, and seashells. An ad for vodka features a woman in the water and the copy, “In a past life I was a mermaid who fell in love with an ancient mariner. I pulled him into the sea to be my husband. I -didn’t know he -couldn’t breathe underwater.” Of course, she -can’t breathe underwater either. Breathe underwater. As girls come of age sexually, the culture gives them impossibly contradictory messages. As the Seventeen ad says, “She wants to be outrageous. And accepted.” Advertising slogans such as “because innocence is sexier than you think,” “Purity, yes. Innocence never,” and “nothing so sensual was ever so innocent” place them in a double bind. “Only something so pure could inspire such unspeakable passion,” declares an ad for Jovan musk that features a white flower. Somehow girls are supposed to be both innocent and seductive, virginal and experienced, all at the same time. As they quickly learn, this is tricky. Females have long been divided into virgins and whores, of course. What is new is that girls are now supposed to embody both within themselves. This is symbolic of the central contradiction of the culture—we must work hard and produce and achieve success and yet, at the same time, we are encouraged to live impulsively, spend a lot of money, and be constantly and immediately gratified. This tension is reflected in our attitudes toward many things, including sex and eating. Girls are promised fulfillment both through being thin and through eating rich foods, just as they are promised fulfillment through being innocent and virginal and through wild and impulsive sex. Young people, boys and girls, are surrounded by messages urging them to be sexually active. Teachers report a steady escalation of sex talk among children, starting in preschool, as our children are prematurely exposed to a barrage of sexual information and misinformation through advertising, television shows, music, and films. “You can learn more about anatomy after school,” says an ad for jeans, which manages to trivialize sex, relationships, and education all in one sentence. The consequences of all this sexual pressure on children are frightening. The average age of first sexual intercourse is about sixteen for girls and fifteen for boys. Far more disturbing is the fact that seven in ten girls who had sex before the age of fourteen and six in ten of those who had sex before the age of fifteen report having sex involuntarily. One of every ten girls under the age of twenty becomes pregnant in the United States each year, more than in any other industrialized country in the world: twice as high as in England and Wales, France and Canada, and nine times as high as in the Netherlands or Japan. And as many as one in six sexually active adolescents has a sexually transmitted disease. Of course, advertising and the media are not solely to blame for these appalling statistics. But they are the leading source of sex education in the nation and they create a climate which encourages a very cavalier attitude toward sex. The typical teenage viewer who watches an average of three to five hours of television a day sees a minimum of two thousand sexual acts per year on television alone. There is also abundant sexual activity, of course, in music videos, books, movies, cartoons, video games, and song lyrics aimed at teenagers, almost all of it portraying sexual behavior as consequence-free and much of it exploiting women’s bodies and glamorizing sexual violence. Magazines targeting girls and young women are filled with ads and articles on how to be beautiful and sexy and appealing to boys—all in service of the advertisers, of course, who sell their wares on almost every page. “How Smart Girls Flirt,” “Sex to Write Home About,” “15 Ways Sex Makes You Prettier,” and “Are You Good in Bed?” are some of the cover stories for a teen magazine called Jane. At the same time, there is rarely any accurate information about sex (the networks still refuse to run condom ads) and certainly never any emphasis on relationships or intimacy (there is hardly time in thirty seconds for the sexual encounter, let alone any development of character!). We have to fight to get sex education into our schools, and the government refuses to fund any program that -doesn’t insist on abstinence as the only choice suitable for young people (how quickly people forget their own adolescence).Young people learn in school and in church that sex can hurt or kill them, but not that it can bring pleasure, joy, and connection. How can they learn to say “Yes!” in a loving and responsible way? It is difficult to do the kind of research that would prove the effects of the media on sexual attitudes and behavior—because of the perceived sensitivity of sex as a topic and because of the difficulty in finding a comparison group. However, the few existing studies consistently point to a relationship between exposure to sexual content and sexual beliefs, attitudes, and behavior. Two studies have found correlations between watching higher doses of “sexy” television and early initiation of sexual intercourse, and studies of adolescents have found that heavy television viewing is predictive of negative attitudes toward virginity. In general, key communication theories and years of research on other kinds of communications effects, such as the effect of violent images, suggest that we are indeed affected by the ubiquitous, graphic, and consequence-free depictions of sexual behavior that surround us in all forms of the mass media. Jane Brown and her colleagues concluded from their years of research that the mass media are important sex educators for American teenagers. Other potential educators, such as parents, schools, and churches, are doing an inadequate job, and even if that were to change dramatically, the media would remain compelling teachers. Brown faults media portrayals for avoiding the “three C’s”—commitment, contraceptives, and consequences—and concludes, “It is little wonder that adolescents find the sexual world a difficult and often confusing place and that they engage in early and unprotected sexual intercourse with multiple partners.” The emphasis for girls and women is always on being desirable, not on experiencing desire. Girls who want to be sexually active instead of simply being the objects of male desire are given only one model to follow, that of exploitive male sexuality. It seems that advertisers -can’t conceive of a kind of power that -isn’t manipulative and exploitive or a way that women can be actively sexual without being like traditional men. Women who are “powerful” in advertising are uncommitted. They treat men like sex objects: “If I want a man to see my bra, I take him home,” says an androgynous young woman. They are elusive and distant: “She is the first woman who refused to take your phone calls,” says one ad. As if it were a good thing to be rude and inconsiderate. Why should any of us, male or female, be interested in someone who -won’t take our phone calls, who either cares so little for us or is so manipulative? Mostly though, girls are not supposed to have sexual agency. They are supposed to be passive, swept away, overpowered. “See where it takes you,” says a perfume ad featuring a couple passionately embracing. “Unleash your fantasies,” says another. “A force of nature.” This contributes to the strange and damaging concept of the “good girl” as the one who is swept away, unprepared for sex, versus the “bad girl” as the one who plans for sex, uses contraception, and is generally responsible. A young woman can manage to have sex and yet in some sense maintain her virginity by being “out of control,” drunk, or deep in denial about the entire experience. No wonder most teenage pregnancies occur when one or both parties is drunk. Alcohol and other mind-altering drugs permit sexual activity at the same time that they allow denial. One is almost literally not there. The next day one has an excuse. I was drunk, I was swept away. I did not choose this experience. In adolescence girls are told that they have to give up much of what they know about relationships and intimacy if they want to attract men. Most tragically, they are told they have to give up each other. The truth is that one of the most powerful antidotes to destructive cultural messages is close and supportive female friendships. But girls are often encouraged by the culture to sacrifice their relationships with each other and to enter into hostile competition for the attention of boys and men. “What the bitch -who’s about to steal your man wears,” says one ad. And many ads feature young women fighting or glaring at each other. Of course, some girls do resist and rebel. Some are encouraged (by someone—a loving parent, a supportive teacher) to see the cultural contradictions clearly and to break free in a healthy and positive way. Others rebel in ways that damage themselves. A young woman seems to have only two choices: She can bury her sexual self, be a “good girl,” give in to what Carol Gilligan terms “the tyranny of nice and kind” (and numb the pain by overeating or starving or cutting herself or drinking heavily). Or she can become a rebel—flaunt her sexuality, seduce inappropriate partners, smoke, drink flamboyantly, use other drugs. Both of these responses are self-destructive, but they begin as an attempt to survive, not to self-destruct. Many girls become women who split themselves in two and do both—have a double life, a secret life—a good girl in public, out of control in private. A feminist in public, involved in an abusive relationship or lost in sadomasochistic fantasies in private. A lawyer by day, a barfly by night. Raiding the refrigerator or drinking themselves into a stupor alone in their kitchens at night, after the children are in bed, the laundry done. Doing well in school, but smoking in order to have a sexier, cooler image. Being sexual only when drunk. There are few healthy alternatives for girls who want to truly rebel against restrictive gender roles and stereotypes. The recent emphasis on girl power has led to some real advances for girls and young women, especially in the arenas of music and sports. But it is as often co-opted and trivialized. The Indigo Girls are good and true, but it is the Spice Girls who rule. Magazines like New Moon, Hues, and Teen Voices offer a real alternative to the glitzy, boy-crazy, appearance--obsessed teen magazines on the newstands, but they have to struggle for funds since they take no advertising. There are some good zines and Websites for girls on the Internet but there are also countless sites that degrade and endanger them. And Barbie continues to rake in two billion dollars a year and will soon have a postal stamp in her honor—while a doll called “Happy to be me,” similar to Barbie but much more realistic and down to earth, was available for a couple of years in the mid-1990s (I bought one for my daughter) and then vanished from sight. Of course, Barbie’s makers have succumbed to pressure somewhat and have remade her with a thicker waist, smaller breasts, and slimmer hips. As a result, according to Anthony Cortese, she has already lost her waitressing job at Hooter’s and her boyfriend Ken has told her that he wants to start seeing other dolls. Girls who want to escape the stereotypes are viewed with glee by advertisers, who rush to offer them, as always, power via products. The emphasis in the ads is always on their sexuality, which is exploited to sell them makeup and clothes and shoes. “Lil’ Kim is wearing lunch box in black,” says a shoe ad featuring a bikini-clad young woman in a platinum wig stepping over a group of nuns—the ultimate bad girl, I guess, but also the ultimate sex object. A demon woman sells a perfume called Hypnotic Poison. A trio of extremely thin African-American women brandish hair appliances and products as if they were weapons—and the brand is 911. A cosmetics company has a line of products called “Bad Gal.” In one ad, eyeliner is shown in cartoon version as a girl, who is holding a dog saying, “grrrr,” surely a reference to “grrrrls,” a symbol these days of “girl power” (as in cybergrrrl.com, the popular Website for girls and young women). Unfortunately, girl power -doesn’t mean much if girls -don’t have the tools to achieve it. Without reproductive freedom and freedom from violence, girl power is nothing but a marketing slogan. So, for all the attention paid to girls in recent years, what girls are offered mostly by the popular culture is a superficial toughness, an “attitude,” exemplified by smoking, drinking, and engaging in casual sex—all behaviors that harm themselves. In 1990 Virginia Slims offered girls a T-shirt that said, “Sugar and spice and everything nice? Get real.” In 1997 Winston used the same theme in an ad featuring a tough young woman shooting pool and saying, “-I’m not all sugar & spice. And neither are my smokes.” As if the alternative to the feminine stereotype was sarcasm and toughness, and as if smoking was somehow an expression of one’s authentic self (“get real”). Of course, the readers and viewers of these ads -don’t take them literally. But we do take them in—another grain of sand in a slowly accumulating and vast sandpile. If we entirely enter the world of ads, imagine them to be real for a moment, we find that the sandpile has completely closed us in, and -there’s only one escape route—buy something. “Get the power,” says an ad featuring a woman showing off her biceps. “The power to clean anything,” the ad continues. “Hey girls, -you’ve got the power of control” says an ad for . . . hairspray. “The possibilities are endless” (clothing). “Never lose control” (hairspray again). “You never had this much control when you were on your own” (hair gel). “Exceptional character” (a watch). “An enlightening experience” (face powder). “Inner strength” (vitamins). “Only Victoria’s Secret could make control so sensual” (girdles). “Stronger longer” (shampoo). Of course, the empowerment, the enlightenment, is as impossible to get through products as is anything else—love, security, romance, passion. On one level, we know this. On another, we keep buying and hoping—and buying. Other ads go further and offer products as a way to rebel, to be a real individual. “Live outside the lines,” says a clothing ad featuring a young woman walking out of a men’s room. This kind of rebellion -isn’t going to rock the world. And, no surprise, the young woman is very thin and conventionally pretty. Another pretty young woman sells a brand of jeans called “Revolt.” “-Don’t just change . . . revolt,” says the copy, but the young woman is passive, slight, her eyes averted. “Think for yourself,” says yet another hollow-cheeked young woman, demonstrating her individuality via an expensive and fashionable sweater. “Be amazing” (cosmetics). “Inside every woman is a star” (clothing). “If -you’re going to create electricity, use it” (watches). “If you let your spirit out, where would it go” (perfume). These women are all perfect examples of conventional “femininity,” as is the young woman in a Halston perfume ad that says, “And when she was bad she wore Halston.” What kind of “bad” is this? “Nude with attitude” feature an African-American woman in a powerful pose, completely undercut by the brevity of her dress and the focus on her long legs. Her “attitude” is nothing to fear—-she’s just another sex object. Good thing, given the fear many people have of powerful African-American women. The British ad “For girls with plenty of balls” is insulting in ways too numerous to count, beginning with the equation of strength and courage and fiery passion with testicles. What this ad offers girls is body lotion. Some ads do feature women who seem really angry and rebellious, but the final message is always the same. “Today, I indulge my dark side,” says an ad featuring a fierce young woman tearing at what seems to be a net. “Got a problem with that?” The slogan is “be extraordinary not ordinary.” The product that promises to free this girl from the net that imprisons her? Black nail polish. Nail polish. Such a trivial solution to such an enormous dilemma. But such triviality and superficiality is common in advertising. How could it be otherwise? The solution to any problem always has to be a product. Change, transformation, is thus inevitably shallow and moronic, rather than meaningful and transcendent. These days, self-improvement seems to have more to do with calories than with character, with abdomens than with absolutes, with nail polish than with ethics. It has not always been so. Joan Jacobs Brumberg describes this vividly in The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls: When girls in the nineteenth century thought about ways to improve themselves, they almost always focused on their internal character and how it was reflected in outward behavior. In 1892, the personal agenda of an adolescent diarist read: “Resolved, not to talk about myself or feelings. To think before speaking. To work seriously. . . . To be dignified. Interest myself more in others.” A century later, in the 1990s, American girls think very differently. In a New Year’s resolution written in 1982, a girl wrote: “I will try to make myself better in every way I possibly can with the help of my budget and baby-sitting money. I will lose weight, get new lenses, already got new haircut, good makeup, new clothes and accessories.” Not that girls -didn’t have plenty of problems in the nineteenth century. But surely by now we should have come much further. This relentless trivialization of a girl’s hopes and dreams, her expectations for herself, cuts to the quick of her soul. Just as she is entering womanhood, eager to spread her wings, to become truly sexually active, empowered, independent—the culture moves in to cut her down to size. Black nail polish -isn’t going to help. But it probably -won’t hurt either. What hurts are some of the other products offered to girls as a way to rebel and to cope—especially our deadliest drugs, alcohol and nicotine. These drugs are cynically and deliberately offered by advertisers to girls as a way to numb the pain of disconnection, to maintain the illusion of some kind of relationship, to be more appealing to men, to be both “liberated” and “feminine,” and, perhaps most tragically, to subvert their rebellious spirits, the very spark within that could, if not co-opted, empower them to change their lives. Jean Kilbourne, Deadly Persuasion by Jean Kilbourne Copyright © 1999 1999 by Jean Kilbourne. From DEADLY PERSUASION by Jean Kilbourne. Reprinted by permission of The Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.. All rights reserved. |
| Copyright © 2016 Advertising Educational Foundation |
http://www.aef.com/industry/news/data/hot_issues/1361/:pf_printable
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Inside your teenager’s scary brain
New research shows incredible cognitive potential—and vulnerability—during adolescence. For parents, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Tamsin McMahon
January 4, 2015
Photo Illustration by Levi Nicholson and Richard Redditt.
When Jensen, then a Harvard neuroscientist and senior neurologist at two Boston hospitals, was transitioning to single motherhood after a divorce, her eldest son, Andrew, left his “cute little coat-and-tie” elementary school and began attending a liberal high school. Almost overnight, his grades fell. His new best friend wore platform shoes and had blue hair—it wasn’t long before Andrew wanted to dye his hair, too. “He just completely morphed in front of my eyes in a three- or four-month period,” says Jensen, who now heads the neurology department at the University of Pennsylvania.
One day her otherwise well-behaved and studious younger son, Will, called to say he had smashed the car trying to squeeze an ill-conceived left turn through oncoming traffic into the high school parking lot.
Other parents might have had more primal reactions. But Jensen spends her days studying how the stages of brain development are associated with age-specific medical conditions—in particular, why some illnesses occur only in infants, while others emerge primarily in children, or older adults. So rather than get angry, she got reading.
The research into the medical mysteries of the teenage brain surprised even Jensen. Conventional wisdom has long held that our brains are largely developed by puberty. However, research in the past 10-15 years has shown that our brains continue to develop in fundamental ways through the teen years and even into the late 20s and 30s. In fact, Jensen argues in her new book, The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults, the teenage years comprise one of the brain’s most critical periods for development—likely every bit as crucial as early childhood. “That seven years in their life is, in a way, as important as their first seven years of life,” Jensen says. “It is probably one of the most important seven-year [periods] in their entire life.”
Emerging brain development science is changing the way we view teen behaviour: why teens can seem so moody and disorganized, why they sometimes make such short-sighted decisions and why many serious mental illnesses begin to emerge in adolescence.
New discoveries are also revealing that teen brains are far more vulnerable than we thought, revelations that are destined to give rise to a new war over how parents, teachers and society should treat teenagers—with more freedom or more rules?
Recent scientific thinking on brain development underscores a fundamental shift, one that is poised to make adolescence, rather than childhood, the latest battleground in the fight to raise a generation of smart, healthy and independent adults.
Photograph by Kourosh Keshiri
Among the most popular misconceptions about brain development is the idea that the most important changes happen in the first three years of life. This “myth of three,” has been the source of intense parental anxiety over the fear that “adults are in a race against time to provide stimulation to their infants before their synapses are lost,” writes Paul Howard-Jones, a professor of neuroscience and education at the University of Bristol in the journal Nature. While parents can breathe a sigh of relief and pack up some of the Baby Einstein toys, an improved understanding of the developing brain carries a growing acknowledgement that teenagers are uniquely susceptible to great risks. Behind the seemingly invincible teenage boy with the booming voice and adult body is a brain that is still incredibly vulnerable to everything from sports-related concussions to mental illness and addiction. New research is uncovering ways in which the activities that so often typify teenage years, such as experimenting with cigarettes and marijuana and alcohol, can lower a teen’s IQ or increase susceptibility to mental illness later on. Chronic stress stemming from family violence, poverty or bullying has also been linked to changes in the teen brain that can raise the risk of mood disorders or learning disabilities. Scientists are only starting to explore those vulnerabilities—and the extent to which they may be permanent.
“The derailment of an adolescent may or may not be reversible and we have to understand it,” Harvard psychobiologist Bertha Madras told a Boston medical research conference last summer [tweet this], asking that a “significant” share of US$4.5 billion in recently announced government funding for brain research be set aside to study teen brain development. Science is only beginning to understand just how crucial the teen years are to the person we ultimately become. “This is an incredible reveal of how much capacity we have that we never really realized we had at this age,” Jensen says. “But also that it has a price.”
At the heart of our understanding of brain development are two basic concepts: grey matter and white matter. Grey matter consists of neurons, the brain cells that form the building blocks of the brain. White matter, axons, are the connections that form between grey matter, helping to move information from one area of the brain to the next.
While grey-matter growth is indeed almost completely finished by the age of six, white matter—the wiring between brain cells—continues to develop well into the 20s. In fact, says Jensen, that wiring is only about 80 per cent complete by the age of 18.
The last area of the brain to be hooked up with white matter is the prefrontal cortex, which controls insight, judgment, self-awareness and empathy—the brain’s so-called “executive” functions.Along with new wiring, the brains of teens and young adults are also undergoing a process called myelination, in which those white-matter connections are being coated in a protective fatty material. Myelin acts as a form of insulation, allowing signals to move faster between brain cells, helping to speed the flow of information in the brain. Since both the wiring to the prefrontal cortex, and the insulation, is incomplete, teens often take longer to access their prefrontal cortexes, meaning they have a harder time making accurate judgments and controlling their impulses. The process of myelination continues into the 30s, giving rise to questions about how old someone must be to be considered to have a fully developed “adult” brain.
At the same time that teens’ brains are laying down connections and insulation, puberty has triggered pituitary glands to release hormones that are acting on the limbic system, the brain’s emotional centre. The combination of heightened emotions and an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex explains why teens are often prone to emotional outbursts, says Jensen, and also why they seek out more emotionally charged situations, from sad movies to dangerous driving.
Hormones also appear to have a different effect in teens than they do in adults. The hormone THP, which is released by the body in response to stress, has a calming effect in adults, but actually seems to have the opposite effect in teens, increasing stress. It’s one reason why teens are prone to anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s also a good reason, Jensen says, why parents and schools should be sensitive to the problem of bullying.
Along with new wiring, insulation and hormones, teen brains are highly sensitive to the release of dopamine, which plays on the areas of the brain that govern pleasure and helps explain why teens seem to take so many risks.
It’s not that they don’t know any better. In fact, reasoning abilities are largely developed by the age of 15 and studies have shown that teens are as accurate as adults when it comes to understanding if an activity is dangerous. Their brains are just more motivated by the rewards of taking a risk than deterred by its dangers. So even if they know something might be bad—speeding, drinking too much, trying new drugs—they get more pleasure from taking the risks anyway.
Central to our understanding of how teens learn is “pruning”—a period when the brain begins to shed some of the grey-matter cells built up in childhood to make room for the growth of white matter. A long period of grey-matter growth in childhood, followed by vigorous pruning in adolescence, has been linked to higher intelligence, Jensen says.
It’s for this reason that Jay Giedd, an expert in child and adolescent brain imaging at the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, describes the teen years as a special period of “use it or lose it” for the brain. Brain cells grown in childhood that continue to get used in adolescence form new connections, while those that go unused wither away. It’s also another reason why parents should be anxious about what happens during the teen years—adolescence now appears to be a period that can make or break a child’s intelligence.
A significant consequence of pruning is that IQ, once thought to be fixed for life after childhood, can in fact change dramatically during the teen years.
Photograph by Kourosh Keshiri
A study published last year of Swedish teenagers linked a drop in IQ between ages 13 and 18 with a higher risk of developing a psychotic disorder, such as schizophrenia, as an adult.
Schizophrenia appeared to be closely related to a drop in verbal IQ, suggesting it may be related to problems in the brain’s development during adolescence. Researchers concluded it was likely caused by genetic factors that affect adolescent brain development, rather than social or environmental causes. (One common theory suggests that schizophrenia is linked to “overpruning” in the teenage brain.)
Just as teens’ brain development appears to make them highly sensitive to learning new skills, science is beginning to reveal just how vulnerable teens are to learning the wrong things.
Learning is a process of repeatedly exposing the brain to something that stimulates the production of dopamine, which strengthens connections in the brain’s reward centre and helps form new memories. Addiction, therefore, is simply a form of “overlearning” by the brain, Jensen says. That process can be controlled by the prefrontal cortex, but since teens are so primed for learning and have less of an ability to access the prefrontal cortex, they’re also more susceptible to addictions.
What’s more, substance abuse can interfere with brain development in ways that can make teens more vulnerable to mental illness or even lower their IQ. Researchers have shown that students with higher levels of cotinine, a byproduct of nicotine, in their bodies perform worse on cognitive tests. Smoking also seems to be related to less-active prefrontal cortexes in teens and appears to damage parts of the brain that produce serotonin, and lower levels of seratonin are linked to depression.
Other studies have linked smoking in teens to alcohol abuse, which itself has a devastating effect on both memory and intelligence. And it turns out smoking pot may be far worse for the teen brain than previously thought. Recent studies have linked regular marijuana use in adolescence to smaller brain volume and more damage to white matter. Smoking daily before the age of 17 has been shown to reduce verbal IQ and increase the risk of depression. This can be a particular problem for teens with ADHD, who researchers have found are far more likely to abuse both cigarettes and marijuana than other teenagers.
For teens who get a thrill from binge drinking and getting high, the consequences may be dire—and possibly, permanent.
Alcohol, for instance, can affect the developing teen brain in myriad negative ways: causing potentially permanent damage to the hippocampus, which helps the brain form long-term memories, a critical aspect of learning. American researchers have also found that teens who started drinking before the age of 15 were four times more likely to become alcoholics later in life than those who held off until age 21.
That research comes with a warning for parents who think that as long as their teenagers drink at home under supervision, they’ll be safe from the temptation to abuse alchol. Studies have found that the more teens drink at home, the more they will drink elsewhere and the higher their chances are of becoming an alcoholic. (It’s one reason Jensen installed a lock on her liquor cabinet).
It’s not just drugs and alcohol that can cause long-lasting damage to the teen brain. Chronic stress is also proving to permanently alter brain development, increasing the size of the amygdala, which governs emotions, and reducing the size of the hippocampus. The end result may be a brain that is hard-wired for anxiety, depression and learning disabilities.
As well, studies of video game addicts have shown their brains develop differently: excessive gaming appears to enlarge areas responsible for memory and visual-spacial skills, but shrink areas of the brain responsible for speech, memory, emotions, and areas responsible for inhibiting impulsive behaviour.
In an era marked by the ideological tug-of-war over how best to raise our teenagers, what’s a parent to do with this new science of the teenage brain? More rules—an approach exemplified by Yale professor Amy Chua’s 2011 Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother? Or in intervening too much, do parents risk raising teens whose brains never learn how to become an adult—an approach typified by the backlash against “helicopter parenting” and movements like “slow parenting” and “free-range kids.”
In Teenage Brain, Jensen puts herself squarely in the camp of the highly involved parent. She encourages parents to proof-read their teen’s homework, help them make lists to prioritize their assignments, watch them as they do schoolwork to see if they’re getting distracted and to not be afraid to “sound like a broken record” in reminding teens over and over again about the dangers that could befall them (something Jensen did so often that her sons nicknamed her “Captain Obvious.”)
She encourages parents to “be your teen’s frontal lobes” and to “try to think for your teenage sons and daughters until their own brains are ready to take over the job.”
Jensen argues that it’s a parent’s job to protect their teens from their own often short-sighted behaviour, while allowing them enough room for “safe failures.”
“Your kid doesn’t see the fact that if they fail all of their classes in 11th grade they won’t be going to the kind of colleges they want to go to, or go to college at all,” she says. “That’s why you’re a parent. That’s why they’re not off living by themselves. There is a point at which I think you have a moral responsibility to intervene.”
In the quagmire of parental advice, it’s no surprise that the counterargument to the neuroscience approach to parenting is robust, and passionate. Psychologist Robert Epstein, author of The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen, believes that adolescent rebellion has little to do with brain development and lots to do with how society treats teenagers. He argues scientists have it backward: teens don’t act out because they have immature brains struggling to navigate an adult world, but because they have adult brains railing against a society that treats them like children.
“Put yourself in their shoes,” says Epstein. “Why they’re stealing your stuff and why their room is a mess is because they have very limited ways in which they can demonstrate their power and their independence and some of them will demonstrate it in destructive and self-destructive ways.”
Epstein has six children, including two teens and two adult children. He began changing his views on teen behaviour when he caught his second-oldest son, Justin, then 14, stealing his truck. Esptein hauled him down to the police station to scare him straight. “But inside my head I realized: Wait a minute, he’s never gotten into an accident, he’s never got a ticket, obviously he knows how to drive,” he says. “Why isn’t he allowed to drive?” He now parents his middle children differently than he did his eldest, leaving most of the decisions, from whether they’re allowed to have dessert, to what courses they should take in school, entirely up to them. “I tell them ‘you decide,’ ” he says, two words he says have completely transformed his relationship with his teenagers. His 16-year-old son now comes home from school and immediately starts doing chores without being asked.
Jensen agrees that the age limits society has placed on adolescents—such as why teens can drive as early as 15, join the military as young as 17, but not vote until 18 and in some provinces not drink until 19–have little to do with brain development science.
Although she prefers to avoid getting into politics, she thinks the trend toward more rules for teen drivers, such as curfews, or bans on cellphone use by teen drivers, but not adults, are heading in the right direction. “We have to understand what they’re developmentally capable of, and gradually introduce things in steps,” she says.
Other research is challenging the notion that teens have a less mature and less connected prefrontal cortex and are therefore inherently more impulsive than adults.
At Temple University, Steinberg has used a car-racing video game to show that when teens are alone they perform as well as adults on tasks involving a tradeoff of risk and reward. But when other teens are in the room watching, adolescents tend to make far riskier decisions. Adults show no difference if other adults watch them, suggesting that teen risk-taking is likely social.
BJ Casey, director of the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology at Cornell University, found that teens could be less impulsive if they were offered rewards. The greater the reward, the longer teens took to make a decision, suggesting that parents trying to control a hot-headed teen might want to offer rewards for good decisions rather than punishing bad ones.
It worked for Jensen. For all of her worries about her own two sons, they survived. Andrew, her eldest, is doing a combined M.D. and Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania—his hair is a lovely natural shade of brown, with not a streak of red in sight. And Will is a business consultant with a degree from Harvard. After his car accident, Jensen bought him a “much bigger, safer, uglier car.” He hasn’t had so much as a fender-bender since. Her children, Jensen says, have started “to occupy the world that we find familiar.”
But her happy ending may not belong to us all. “You look at the high school dropout rates and the people that fall off the curve not because of academic reasons, but because of peer pressure or drugs,” Jensen says. “It’s so sad because this is a time where you can actually make up for your innate weaknesses. We could get so much more out of our teenagers—and who they become later in life, in many cases—if we took a different approach to this window of time.”
http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/inside-your-teenagers-scary-brain/
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This is an unofficial sequel to Dustin’s
previous column about The Horrors of Raising A Baby, which (of course)
movies and television will never teach you. Dustin also educated the world
about The Horrors of Caring for Sick Children and the
unique Horrors of Raising Twins. Courtney and TK have
also joined in with some parenting discussions of their own, and I’ve linked
their pieces below.
My daughter is a newly-minted teenager at
age 13 1/2, but I’ve learned so much already from the experience. I’m not an
expert and, clearly, have many more years of learning to do because each day
presents new challenges and surprises. She’s (obviously) no longer in diapers,
and she can babysit her own cousins, but there are downsides to this age as well.
Here are just a few things I’ve jotted down from the experience thus far:
1. The teenage attitude will materialize
overnight. Did you previously parent a toddler and elementary-aged school kid
who visibly adored you with all their heart? Did they shriek with joy as you
picked them up from school or daycare? They may have proudly introduced you to
their friends like this: “This is my momma. Her name is Kimberly, but I call
her ‘Mommy.’” Those days are over, my friends. You’ll now feel lucky as they
shuffle to your car, toss their backpack into the back seat, and climb into the
“cool” front seat with a big sigh. If you’re even less cool than I am, they
might ask you to park around the corner.
2. Bedtime as you know it is now
backwards. Your child once bounced out of bed at 6:20 am on Saturday. They
demanded to “play.” If you’re still in that stage with your kid, enjoy it.
Relish it. Once they turn 13 years old, you’ll have to pry their asses out of
the bed with a forklift. You can choose not to do so, but then they’ll still be
awake after midnight. Your call.
3. Get used to reading young-adult books
and watching all the movie adaptations. You’ll know the “whos” and “hows” of
the major franchises well before they hit theaters. More on that later.
4. Let’s cut to the chase — periods. If
you’re a mother of a teenage girl, then you’ll soon realize that your periods
are not the only ones you have to worry about. Now you’ve got twice the
hormones raging and twice the maxi-pad budget. If you’re lucky, you’ll sync cycles
and get all the misery out of the way during the same week. Note to single
mothers: You’ll probably want to buy a supply for dad’s house too. As wonderful as most fathers are, most of them
absolutely will not step foot into the “pad aisle” at the grocery store.
Fathers: If you do end up in that very bad aisle, never (ever) choose to save a
few cents on the wingless variety of pads.
5. Two more words on that last issue that
deserve their own list entry without further elaboration: Period stains. One
more word: OxiClean.
6. Raising a teenager comes with the
sudden realization that you’re retroactively paying for everything you did to
your own parents. All of the bad music, horrible clothing, and immature friends
you had? Your kid’s music is even worse. Their friends are even more spoiled
and bratty than yours were. If your kid has any taste at all, then they’ll hate
Justin Bieber as much as you do. Small blessings.
7. It’s not all bad. You no longer have to
limit yourself to watching kiddie movies at the theater. Most teenagers are
mature enough to watch PG-13 movies before age 13. The same goes for super violent, R-rated flicks. You know your kid
and what they can handle.
8. Keeping the fridge well-stocked is
still a problem. Now that your kid can open the refrigerator themselves and fix
their own snacks, you’ll have to find a new place to hide the Thin Mints.
Luckily, there is no shortage of companies willing to pander to you during all of your
shopping trips.
9. The growth spurts of a teenager are
ridiculous. Your “little” kid is shooting up in height, which means that you’ll
never be able to keep them in clothing that fits. There’s a slight possibility
that (as a mother) you’ll enjoy about 5 minutes of wearing the same size as
your daughter. This too shall pass.
10. Boys will happen. Your worst nightmare
will be realized when other people start sharing your opinion that your teenage
daughter is gorgeous. You’ll laugh merrily at the suggestion that your daughter
wants to go on a date. “Maybe in a few years,” you say as you try and erase the
memory of people making out in stairwells during junior high. You’ll also be
preparing to take revenge on the first boy who crushes her heart. That little
bastard.
11. Your daughter’s teenage crushes will
amuse you. Harry Styles IS very cute and ultimately harmless as an object of
affection. You can also rest assured that in two decades, he’ll be the topic of
an E! True Hollywood Story.
12. Edward Cullen is a stupid, cardboard
character, but he isn’t as bad as his critics make him out to be … for one
reason: Because your daughter is crushing on a chivalrous vampire, she’s going
to have a hard time finding a human counterpart that measures up to Stephenie
Meyer’s frustrated creation. A guy who won’t pressure your daughter into the
sack? No problem. You’ll get used to that cardboard standee of Robert Pattinson
in your daughter’s bedroom. He’ll only scare the shit out of you twice before
you remember that he’s not an intruder in your home.
13. If your daughter has vision problems,
then eyeglasses are your secret weapon. If they can keep the boys away from
your daughter for another few years, they’re worth holding onto. Know not give
into the pleas for contact lenses. Remind your daughter that glasses are now
much cuter than they were when you wore the coke-bottle variety.
14. Mood swings can and will happen at any
moment. Sometimes your daughter doesn’t even know why she’s crying. Just be
there for her if she wants to talk, but don’t pry. This may or may not be
related to list item #4.
15. The college years are closer than you
think. Do everything you can — math workbooks, shelling out for test prep (but
be wary of scams geared towards gullible parents of precious snowflakes) — to
give your child a chance at earning scholarships. Start early because there’s a
fair chance that you don’t be able to help them pay for college … especially if
you’re still paying off your own student loans.
16. Memories may be precious to you, but
do your best not to remind your teenager of their baby years. They do not enjoy
hearing about the times that you opened their diaper only to have them poop
across the room. They also do not like hearing about how they loudly counted
“all four cheeks” while standing in a booth at Panera Bread.
17. BUT you may decide that their
embarrassment is worth it if you’re feeling passive-aggressive. Such as when
you’re at a stoplight and “Blurred Lines” starts playing on the radio. Your
teenager will reach for the dial, but you’ll crank up the tune and start
dancing as they wail in humiliation: “Stop. It. Someone might see you!” This
might be fun, but it could backfire in the future. I’ll let you know.
18. Your teenager knows by now that Santa
Claus doesn’t exist, but they’ll still enjoy pretending in the privacy of their
own home. Oblige them.
19. The internet is a terrible place when
it comes to your teenager. Never forget that they are smarter than you at
navigating technology. Do not simply rely upon parental controls to do the job.
Know their Facebook password and check their web history. Are you being
paranoid? Maybe, but the internet is full of James Francos waiting for you to
screw up.
20. Your teenager will lie to you. All the
time. Even if they’re a really good kid, it happens. Mostly, they lie about
little stuff like what they ate for dinner at grandma’s house, but those are
gateway lies. Just assume they’re not going to tell you everything, and figure
out the truth for yourself.
21. Teenagers are incredibly crafty at
getting away with shit. Remember how much crap you used to get away with that
your parents knew about? You may have snuck away to the high-school smoke hole
even when your dad was a teacher at the same school. (Hi, Dad.) You can never
be too vigilant in your observations, but don’t call your kid out on every
little thing. Pick your parental battles.
22. If they’re only 13 like my daughter,
then they’re not driving yet. Thank god.
23. You’ll spend many sleepless nights
wondering if you’ll be able to “do good” in raising your own child. Relax. Your
parents got through it without screwing you up too badly, right? Maybe not.
24. You’ll struggle to strike a balance
between being a hard-ass parent and someone that your daughter will come to
when she has a problem and really needs to talk. Because as painful as some of
those conversations may be, you’ll appreciate the hell of it when she trusts
you with her feelings.
25. Basically, raising a teenager gives
you a shot at reliving your own adolescence x 5. This is both a blessing and a
curse, but embrace every aspect of the experience because — in only a few years
— they’ll be off on their own journey of adulthood. Maybe they’ll even let you
babysit your grandkids someday.
Bedhead lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She can
be found at Celebitchy.
--------
It's not just the hormones ...
Scientists are discovering the real reasons for the hell of
adolescence, writes Vivienne Parry
Thursday 3 March 2005 00.05 GMT Last modified on Friday 22
January 2016 00.12 GMT
Something very strange happens at puberty, when truckloads
of hormones begin arriving by the day. Children who were once sweet, helpful
and good fun to be around turn, almost overnight, into grunting creatures, who
wear nothing but black, lie abed until noon and consume 5,000-calorie snacks
(followed immediately by saying that they are still hungry).
They are spotty, frequently smelly, and grow out of every
item of clothing they have in the space of a few months. Their boredom
threshold plummets and they do not seem able to concentrate on anything for
more than five minutes at a time. You begin to wonder whether your child is a
changeling, swapped with your own by an alien from the Planet MTV while you
weren't looking.
Teenagers are trapped in limbo, neither children nor
adults. An excruciating mix of vulnerability and potential, which by turns
engages, inspires and alienates adults - everything they do has a high
intensity feel about it. We know this because our own adolescent experiences -
our first kiss, the first time we fell in love, the first time we drove a car
alone - still burn brightly 30 or 40 years on.
There is a darker side, too - soaring rates of serious
accident, illicit use of drugs or alcohol, risky sexual behaviours and their
consequences and the first signs of emotional disorders which may be lifelong.
Teenagers seem to be the very embodiment of hormonal mayhem - or are they? The
truth about teenagers and hormones is not what you expect.
Puberty is an extraordinary hormonal event and humans are
lucky in that they only have to go through it once -not the norm in the rest of
the animal kingdom. Most animals do not become sexually active, and then remain
so as we do, but go through the trauma of multiple hormone onslaught every new
breeding season.
Human puberty is also unusual, because unlike all other
animals, there is a gap between the time reproductive hormones first appear and
the prime reproductive age. Boys become fertile at around 13, whilst they are
still puny and unappealing. Girls on the other hand, acquire a womanly shape at
puberty yet are relatively infertile for several years thereafter. It's not as
far out of sync as it appears; the conjunction of top male specimen at around
20 and fully reproductive female at 18, is reflected in the average age of
first birth across all cultures of 19 years of age.
The first hormone event which will lead to puberty is
largely hidden from us. Between the ages of six and eight, the adrenal glands
on top of each kidney start to step up secretion of androgens such as DHEA
(dehydroepiandrosterone), which the body uses as construction material for the
manufacture of other steroids. These androgens prime hair follicles for pubic
hair growth and make the skin greasier. Body odour is also a key feature.
Parents first notice this change at their children's parties, when 20 rampaging
seven-year-olds are noticeably whiffy in a way that they were not when younger.
The next big change involves the reproductive hormones. The
hypothalamus, a part of the brain located roughly behind the eyes, is the grand
vizier of the hormone system in the body and is connected by a stalk to the
pituitary gland, which dangles beneath it. In adult men, and in women of
reproductive age, it is its constant pulses of gonadotrophin-releasing hormone
(GnRH) that tell the pituitary to secrete its hormones, which then act on ovary
and testes to produce eggs and sperm, and also the hormones oestrogen and
testosterone. These have a profound influence on behaviour as well as body
shape, turning a child into a sexual adult. During childhood, there is no
production of GnRH, almost as if a brake had been applied. Only when that brake
is released - and no one is quite sure what the signal for this is - does
puberty start.
In boys, luteinizing hormone (LH) from the pituitary
stimulates production of testosterone by cells in the testes. Simultaneously,
levels of the substances that keep testosterone under lock and key in the
bloodstream (sex hormone binding globulins) decrease, thus making even more
testosterone available - in total, up to 50 times more than was experienced
before puberty. That is some hormone rush.
Once oestrogens and testosterone begin to appear, it is
their impact on body form which provides the most dramatic expression of
adolescence. Oestrogen stimulates growth of the womb and breast but also
determines the shape of the female figure by re-arranging the deposition of
fat. In boys the consequence of testosterone is also to sculpt the body,
increasing lean body mass and shaping features as well as to promote body hair
and beard growth.
Teenagers get a rush from intensity, excitement and
arousal. Loud music, big dippers, horror movies? That's where you'll find
teenagers. In some teens this thrill-seeking and quest for novelty is subtle
and easily managed. In others, the reaction is more severe and can become out
of control. This is reflected in the statistics for teenager deaths, three
quarters of which result from accident or misadventure.
It is tempting - indeed it has always been assumed - that
such behaviours are entirely hormone-driven. After all, aren't teenagers
hormones on wheels? From all that I have said so far, it seems logical. But
links between hormone levels and poor behaviour in teenagers are either weak,
or non-existent.
Nevertheless, if the number one risk factor for homicide is
maleness (as it is) and the second is youth, and given that boys have loads of
testosterone, and girls don't (or certainly not nearly as much), surely this
must put testosterone in the dock as the cause of aggressive adolescent
behaviour?
Actually not. First, there is no consistent relationship
between normal circulating testosterone levels and violence in teenagers. In
fact, there is a rather better correlation between high testosterone levels and
levels of popularity and respect from peers. One hypothesis is that teenage
boys pick up cues from the environment and use them to determine
"normal" behaviour. This is illustrated by recent work from the MRC
unit at the Institute of Psychiatry which shows that it is not testosterone
levels that determine your waywardness as a teenager, but basically, the people
you hang with. Keep the company of bad boys, and you will take your behaviour
cue from them. Hang out with sober sorts and your behaviour will be like
theirs. As we all remember, being split up from your best mate is a peril of
adolescence. "They're a bad influence on you" is the general gist of
parental or teacher wisdom on this one. Oh dear. The ignominy of the Institute
of Psychiatry proving Miss Mansergh, year nine form teacher, right.
Deprivation may be a more important determinant of teenage
violence. The theory - and there is a wealth of literature on this subject - is
that if low-status males are to avoid the road to genetic nothingness (the
words of neuroscientist Steven Pinker), they may have to adopt aggressive,
high-risk strategies. If you've got nothing, you have nothing to lose through
your behaviour. Certainly, in humans, both violence and risk-taking behaviour
show a pronounced social gradient, being least in the highest social classes
and most in the lowest ones. This is surely not what you would expect if
testosterone were the only driver of violence.
Another clue that testosterone is not the whole story here
is that teenage girls, while not as violent, certainly rival boys for downright
bloody-mindedness during their adolescent years. Worse, I can hear some parents
say.
The thing that is really irritating about teenagers (and by
now you will have guessed that I have two teenage boys) is that one moment
their behaviour is that of adults, while the next it is that of a not very
bright three-year-old, or possibly, a retarded chimpanzee. Or an amoeba. The
rapid oscillation between child and adult is one of the hallmarks of the
teenager.
In fact teenage brains are going through a process of
maturation, and it is this maturation which many now believe to be responsible
for much of the behaviour that we classically attribute to hormones. These
changes are independent of hormones and are a function of age.
It has only been discovered very recently that there are
two main features of brain maturation that happen to coincide with puberty.
Previously it was believed that the brain was pretty well set by adolescence
but only in the last couple of years, and to everyone's surprise, it has been
realised that maturation is not completed until late teens or even early 20s.
One feature is that myelin, a sort of fatty insulating material, is added to
axons, the main transmission lines of the nervous system, which has the effect
of speeding up messages. The other feature is a pruning of nerve connections,
the synapses, in the pre-frontal cortex. This is an area of the brain which is
responsible for what is called executive action, which is a shopping list of
the things that teenagers lack - such as goal-setting, priority-setting,
planning, organisation and impulse-inhibition. During childhood, for reasons
that are not clear, a tangle of nerve cells sprout in this brain area, which
lies behind the eyes, but during puberty, these areas of increased synaptic
density are then reduced by about half, presumably to increase efficiency.
These changes in the adolescent brain that occur around the
time of puberty primarily affect motivation and emotion, which manifest
themselves as mood swings, conflict with authority and risk taking. This new
information has altered thinking about the effect of hormones on teenagers,
because it has been realised that what we would call typical adolescent
behaviour is not actually the result of hormones alone. For example, it is not
just testosterone that drives risk taking, but the inability of the immature
brain to assess risk properly that gets them into trouble.
This has particular implications for sexual behaviour.
Female adolescents have, thanks to their hormones, the body shape of a woman.
In male adolescents, testosterone is driving them to think of sex every six
seconds (as little as that?). Meanwhile, their reasoning is temporarily
disabled while their brain sets up the "under reconstruction" sign.
It's a recipe for disaster.
The remodelling of the cortex helps explain another feature
of teenagers: their astonishing level of self-centredeness. For a while, as
their brain is undergoing changes, they find it hard to recognise other's
emotions. If you show teenagers pictures of faces, they will be some 20% less
accurate in gauging the emotions depicted, not recovering this ability until
they are 18 or so. This may be one of the reasons why they seem unable to read
the signs, when treading on thin ice with their behaviour, with no appreciation
of the impact of what they are doing on those around them. Teenagers exist in a
universe of one.
Is there any hormone link to high-risk choices in
teenagers? It is likely not to be testosterone, at least not initially, but the
stress hormone, cortisol which returns us to deprivation. Stress during early
life raises cortisol levels, so increasing behavioural problems (such as
hyperactivity), tending to make children more aggressive, less affiliative and
more likely to perceive others as threatening. Stress in either pregnancy or in
early life permanently resets the stress response of the child, so that there
is an increased reaction to stress - it's called hyperarousal. A stressed
child, for instance, when meeting someone new (even in a familiar environment)
will withdraw and refuse to make eye contact, rather than chat happily. This
increased stress response plays out in reduced life expectancies because
cortisol affects almost every body system. It is also closely linked with
depressive illness in later life.
So testosterone plays a part here only after the fact.
Aggression and stress raise testosterone levels. Aggression and stress also
reinforce each other at the biological level. Animal work reported in the
journal Behavioural Neuroscience recently suggests that there is a fast
feedback loop between stress hormones and the hypothalamus, which allows
aggressive behaviour to escalate.
Another example of how hormones play only a minor role in
the drama of adolescent life is to do with sleep. As every parent knows,
teenagers find it very hard to get out of bed in the morning and to go to bed
at night. Compare and contrast with what they were like as five-year-olds, when
you had trouble keeping them in bed beyond six in the morning. Actually, this
isn't just your teenagers being difficult, for a subtle biological shift in
sleep patterns occurs during puberty, probably to ensure more sleep during
rapid growth. There is an increase in the level of the hormone melatonin, which
is the slave of the body clock, released during hours of darkness and
intimately involved with sleep patterns. The effect of this change is similar
to that of shifting the hapless teen through several time zones on a
transatlantic flight, resulting in their classic school holiday sleeping
pattern of 2am until noon.
Come term-time, the teenage body is in disarray as it is
forced by a 7am wake up call - while still on Planet MTV time - to gather
itself together, even though it thinks it's four in the morning. These
jetlagged teenagers have come around by the end of the week to Parental Time
Zone hours, only to wreck themselves with another bout of 2am to noon sleeping
at the weekend. Many become chronically sleep-deprived, with all the
implications for behaviour that implies - irritability, inability to
concentrate, poor attention span - which is inevitably reflected in their
school performance.
For all their maddening traits, teenagers are still
glorious creatures. Full of promise and potential. The truth about hormones may
help us understand them a little better.
Teenage
myths, so hard to beat
Fried
food gives you spots
Acne is common in both sexes during adolescence. Mums tell
their teens that their spots are the result of eating too much chocolate or
fatty food. Not enough fresh air (as in, you've been in your room too long) is
also proffered as a cause. Actually, it is the fault of your hormones, not your
diet. There is an abnormal response in the skin to normal levels of
testosterone in the blood. This has a profound effect on appearance for some
unlucky people. The response is self-limiting and goes away with time, but
there is no way of predicting how long it will take - it can be a couple of
years or decades.
You
won't grow up to be a six-footer if you don't sleep at night
Adolescence is marked by a huge surge in growth hormone
production. The secretion of growth hormone is carefully timetabled in a
pattern that persists through puberty. Growth hormone is released principally
at night during sleep, short bursts, every one to two hours during the deep
sleep phase. So when your mum says "if you don't go to bed now, you won't
grow up to be big and strong," she's right. If onset of sleep is delayed,
so is onset of growth hormone release. Children who are deprived of sleep are
smaller than they should be.
The surge of GH follows that of increasing levels of GnRH.
The relationship between these two hormones is not a direct one, however, but
an indirect one, involving oestrogen. The idea that a female hormone is driving
growth in boys as well as girls, is counterintuitive at first, but it explains
much about the gender differences in growth. Before the onset of the teenage
growth spurt, boys grow very slightly faster than girls, but a girl's growth
spurt starts about two years before that of boys between 12 and 14. For some
four years, girls are, on average, taller than boys. But by adulthood, men are
on average 14cm taller than women. This difference is almost entirely due to
what happens at puberty - for boys grow on average for two years longer after
puberty. It also helps explain why girls grow earlier and faster than boys -
it's because they have oestrogens which pump up the production of growth
hormone.
The
age of puberty is falling
The age of puberty (or rather first period) was 17 in the
mid 19th century and is now about 12. This is largely due to better nutrition:
a hormone produced by fat, leptin, seems to permit puberty in girls when body
fat reaches a certain percentage of body weight. It is probably not the trigger
for puberty. The sedentary nature of many children may also have contributed to
a lowering in puberty age. Hower, after many decades of fall, it seems to have
stabilised, and indeed, some European countries, including the UK, have seen a
modest rise in the age of girls at their first period.
· Taken from The Truth About Hormones by Vivienne
Parry (Atlantic Books, March 21). To buy for £9.99 including free p&p call
Guardian book service on 0870 836 0875 or go to theguardian.com/bookshop.
-
-------
The adolescent brain: Beyond raging
hormones
The Harvard Health Blog
Originally published in the
Harvard Mental Health Letter, July 2005
In every generation, it seems, the same lament goes forth
from the parents of adolescents: "What's the matter with kids today?"
Why are they so often confused, annoying, demanding, moody, defiant, reckless?
Accidental deaths, homicides, and binge drinking spike in the teenage years.
It's the time of life when psychosis, eating disorders, and addictions are most
likely to take hold. Surveys show that everyday unhappiness also reaches its
peak in late adolescence.
Plenty of explanations for teenage turmoil are available.
Adolescents need to assert their independence and explore their limits, taking
risks, breaking rules, and rebelling against their parents while still relying
on them for support and protection. ("What's the matter with the older
generation?") They have to cope with disconcerting new sexual impulses and
romantic feelings. Cultural change heightens incompatibility between the
generations. Now scientific research is suggesting a new reason for the clashes
between teenagers and their environment. Unsettled moods and unsettling
behavior may be rooted in uneven brain development.
It's not a question of intellectual maturity. Most studies
show that abstract reasoning, memory, and the formal capacity for planning are
fully developed by age 15 or 16. If teenagers are asked hypothetical questions
about risk and reward, they usually give the same answers as adults. But the
emotional state in which they answer questionnaires is not necessarily the one
in which they make important choices. In real life, adolescents, compared to
adults, find it more difficult to interrupt an action under way (stop
speeding); to think before acting (learn how deep the water is before you
dive); and even to choose between safer and riskier alternatives. It is easy
for them to say that they would not get into a car with a drunk driver, but
more difficult to turn down the invitation in practice. Adolescents' judgment
can be overwhelmed by the urge for new experiences, thrill-seeking, and sexual
and aggressive impulses. They sometimes seem driven to seek experiences that
produce strong feelings and sensations.
Resisting social pressure is also more difficult for
teenagers. Much of their troubling behavior, from gang violence to reckless
driving and drinking, occurs in groups and because of group pressure. In a
psychological experiment, adolescents and adults took a driving simulation test
that allowed them to win a reward by running a yellow light and stopping before
they hit a wall. Adolescents, but not adults, were more likely to take extra
chances when friends were watching.
Another revealing psychological experiment is the Iowa
gambling task. Subjects can choose from one of two decks of cards in the hope
of picking a card that provides a reward. The "good" deck contains
many cards that provide some reward; the "bad" one, many cards that
provide nothing and insufficient compensation in the form of a few that hold a
jackpot. The choices of adults correspond fairly well to their tested reasoning
capacity. In adolescence, the correlation is much weaker.
Evidence is appearing that these differences have a
definite basis in brain structure and functioning. Recent research has shown
that human brain circuitry is not mature until the early 20s (some would add,
"if ever"). Among the last connections to be fully established are
the links between the prefrontal cortex, seat of judgment and problem-solving,
and the emotional centers in the limbic system, especially the amygdala. These
links are critical for emotional learning and high-level self-regulation.
Beginning at puberty, the brain is reshaped. Neurons (gray
matter) and synapses (junctions between neurons) proliferate in the cerebral
cortex and are then gradually pruned throughout adolescence. Eventually, more
than 40% of all synapses are eliminated, largely in the frontal lobes.
Meanwhile, the white insulating coat of myelin on the axons that carry signals
between nerve cells continues to accumulate, gradually improving the precision
and efficiency of neuronal communication — a process not completed until the
early 20s. The corpus callosum, which connects the right and left hemispheres
of the brain, consists mostly of this white matter.
Another circuit still under construction in adolescence
links the prefrontal cortex to the midbrain reward system, where addictive
drugs and romantic love exert their powers. Most addictions get their start in
adolescence, and there is evidence that adolescent and adult brains respond
differently to drugs. In both human beings and laboratory rats, studies have
found that adolescents become addicted to nicotine faster and at lower doses.
Functional brain scans also suggest that teenagers and adults process reward
stimuli differently; the adolescents are hypersensitive to the value of novel
experiences.
Hormonal changes are at work, too. The adolescent brain
pours out adrenal stress hormones, sex hormones, and growth hormone, which in
turn influence brain development. The production of testosterone increases 10
times in adolescent boys. Sex hormones act in the limbic system and in the
raphe nucleus, source of the neurotransmitter serotonin, which is important for
the regulation of arousal and mood. The hormonally regulated 24-hour clocks
change their settings during adolescence, keeping high school and college
students awake far into the night and making it difficult to rise for morning
classes.
As long as the brain is still in formation, things can go
wrong in many ways, and some of them involve the onset of psychiatric disorders.
Stress can retard the growth of the hippocampus, which consolidates memories.
According to some theories, the pruning of gray matter or the thickening of the
myelin coat in late adolescence allows the early symptoms of schizophrenia to
emerge.
At least one important social policy conclusion may have
been drawn in part from the neuroscience research on the adolescent brain. In
2005, the Supreme Court, affirming a Missouri high court decision, declared by
a vote of 5–4 that the execution of 16- and 17-year-olds is unconstitutionally
cruel and unusual punishment. The minimum age for capital punishment is now the
same as the minimum age for voting and serving on juries. In writing their
decision, the justices referred to evolving standards of decency, practices in
other countries, the immaturity of adolescents, and their greater potential for
change. They did not specifically mention brain research, but they had the
opportunity to read friend-of-the-court briefs citing this research that were
submitted by the American Bar Association, American Academy of Child and
Adolescent Psychiatry, and American Psychiatric Association, among others.
Some critics, even if they welcome the Supreme Court
decision for other reasons, have complained that this research stereotypes
adolescents and provides a biological rationalization for irresponsible
behavior. Animal experiments have limited value because laboratory animals do
not undergo a lengthy human childhood. And human brain development does not
unfold automatically and uniformly. There is much individual variation that
reflects experience as well as genetic programming. The problems of teenagers
are not all in their brains but have many causes, social and individual,
genetic and environmental. At present and probably for a long time, researchers
will be getting better information on the mental and emotional development of
adolescents from interviews, observations, and behavioral tests than from brain
scans.
But neuroscience research is becoming more sophisticated.
There are already long-term studies in which people undergo frequent periodic
brain scans over the course of their lives. The results are being used to
investigate the effects of behavioral and cognitive therapies on attention
deficit disorder and reading deficiencies in adolescents. Scientists are also
looking at typical adolescent brain development to provide clues to the ways in
which things go wrong. Some day, this research may provide results that will
influence treatments for psychiatric disorders and other problems in
adolescence.
References
Arnsten AFT, et al. "Adolescence: Vulnerable Period
For Stress-Induced Prefrontal Cortical Function?" Annals of the New
York Academy of Sciences (June 2004): Vol. 1021, pp. 143-47.
Casey BJ, et al. "Imaging the Developing Brain: What
Have We Learned about Cognitive Development?" Trends in Cognitive
Sciences (March 2005): Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 104-10.
Giedd JN. "Structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging of
the Adolescent Brain," Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (June
2004): Vol. 1021, pp. 77-85.
Kelley AE, et al. "Risk Taking and Novelty Seeking in
Adolescence," Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (June
2004): Vol. 1021, pp. 27-32.
Masten AM. " Regulatory Processes, Risks, and
Resilience in Adolescent Development," Annals of the New York Academy
of Sciences (June 2004): Vol. 1021, pp. 310-19.
Rosso IM, et al. "Cognitive and Emotional Components
of Frontal Lobe Functioning in Childhood and Adolescence," Annals of
the New York Academy of Sciences (June 2004): Vol. 1021, pp. 355-62.
Sisk CL, et al. "The Neural Basis of Puberty and
Adolescence," Nature Neuroscience (October 2004): Vol. 7, No. 10,
pp. 1040-47.
Spessot AL, et al. "Neuroimaging of Developmental
Psychopathologies: The Importance of Self-Regulatory and Neural Plastic
Processes in Adolescence," Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (June
2004): Vol. 1021, pp. 86-104.
Steinberg L. "Cognitive and Affective Development in
Adolescence," Trends in Cognitive Science (February 2005): Vol. 9,
No. 2, pp. 68-75.
Steinberg L. "Risk-Taking in Adolescence: What
Changes, and Why?" Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (June
2004): Vol. 1021, pp. 51-58.
---------------
Letting Go: When Alienated Parents Give Up
November 20, 2011
When a parent endures parental alienation, various emotions
materialize. Some are angry and others feel helpless. On the other hand, a
number of rejected parents evolve into dedicated empowered advocates, but just
as many are depleted both physically and financially. Some parents may ask,
when do I let go? Clearly, alienated parents (also known as rejected parents)
are grieving parents. In 2002 Dr.
Richard Gardner wrote, “For some alienated parents the continuous
heartache is similar to living death.” Sadly, for many rejected parents, the
sorrow never ends.
Most are familiar with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ Five Stages of Grieving.
First is Denial. Denial is not recognizing reality. As noted by Dr. Gardner
(2002), denying reality is obviously a maladaptive way of dealing with a
situation. In fact, denial is generally considered to be one of the defense
mechanisms, mechanisms that are inappropriate, maladaptive, and pathological.
Obviously, it is hard to deny that one is a rejected parent. However, at times,
it may seem easier to deny that the situation is not real. To deal with the
unreal, some parents may resign. Studies indicate that some rejected parents,
similar to survivors of domestic violence, become passive. (Kopetski, 1998).
Anger is another stage of the grieving process. However,
underlying anger is hurt and a loss of power and a loss of control over a
situation or an event. Unquestionably, alienated parents become angry as their
cases are dismissed and their cause is mocked. Third, is bargaining. As an
example, a bargaining parent may believe if they try hard enough, or say the
right thing, his or her child will suddenly have a change of heart. Fourth is
depression. Self-blame, hopelessness, and despair consumes their thoughts. The
fifth stage, is acceptance. Clearly, rejected parents do not happily accept
their plight, but they may be forced to give up “the fight.” That is, some may
cho0se to loosely let go.
It is vital though, to consider what letting go signifies.
Letting go is not to cut oneself off, it’s the realization that one person
can’t control another. As applied to parental alienation, one cannot force an
ex-spouse to cease his or her hate campaign. Secondly, letting go is not to
deny, but to accept. Acceptance is realizing that some ex-spouses refuse to
co-parent. Some alienating parents intend to turn the child against the other
parent–permantely. They stop at nothing. One study depicts this unfortunate,
but true, reality, “a minority of parents who suffer from personality and
mental disorders may ignore the court and spend their waking hours finding ways
to exhaust the other parent emotionally and financially” ( Jaffe et al. 2010).
Yes; you may realize that you, or a loved one, are in the minority.
Parents may also have to accept that they may be blamed for
the rejection– blamed not only by family and friends, but blamed by society. No
one likes to point fingers these days, after all; it is socially unacceptable.
As noted by Dr.
Richard Warshak (2011), attributing a parent-child problem to both
parents, when one parent is clearly more responsible for destructive behavior,
is a misguided effort to appear balanced and avoid blame.
When to let go? First and foremost; it is personal. Dr.
Warshak’s book, Divorce Poison (2010), notes that the parent may
see no viable option other than to let go of active attempts to overcome the
problem. As a caveat, he notes, “I just urge all alienated parents and
relatives, and all therapists who work with these families, not to wave the
white flag of surrender too soon.” He offers seven suggestions about the
possibility of letting go. One suggestion is when all legal channels to improve
the situation have been exhausted.
Some parents, unfortunately, have discovered the
aforementioned exhaustion. As Dr. Amy Baker reported, “alienating parents did
not respect the court orders, the attorneys were not interested in or able to
force the alienating parent into compliance. Apparently, once the alienating
parent determined that this was the case, noncompliance became the order of the
day.” Rejected parents know all too well, that non compliance works. A second
suggestion by Dr.
Warshak is when, “your ex is so disturbed that a continuing battle
could provoke him or her to violent action against the children or against you
or other members of your family.” Clearly, not all rejected parents have the
funding to continue the battle.
As a conclusion, should you come into contact with a
rejected parent it may be helpful to offer grace for his or her grief. Each and
every rejected parent differs in his or her stage of sorrow. They will also
display unique feelings. Some may feel discouraged, dejected, and depressed.
Or, others may feel angry and outraged. If the parent recently read about
parental alienation, and discovered there is a name to the irrational
rejection; they may feel relieved. Perhaps, they are baffled, broken, and
bewildered. If they have pleaded with the courts for 15 years, they may feel
helpless and guarded. When their families blame them, they may become withdrawn
and detached. Regardless of the stage or feeling(s) that accompany the pain of
parental alienation, rejected parents require empathy, exultation, and esteem.
--------------------------
How to repair the toxic legacy of a
bad mother
A book by a leading psychologist reveals how victims of
mothers who were domineering, angry or just plain cold can turn the pain they
suffered to their advantage
Published: 21:35 GMT, 6 June 2012 | Updated: 21:36 GMT, 6
June 2012
Like it or not, our relationship with our mother will have
a lifelong influence on our personality, behaviour and self-esteem. If we’re
lucky, that legacy will be an overwhelmingly positive one.
But what happens when you are raised by a ‘difficult’
mother? It’s the subject tackled by a new book written by psychologist Dr Terri
Apter.
In Difficult Mothers, the Cambridge academic examines the
different types of problem mother — controlling, angry, hyper-critical,
emotionally unavailable — and explains what can be done to turn her negative
influence into a positive one.
Long-term legacy: How our mother treats us growing up
impacts on our self-esteem (posed by models)
‘For most parents and their children, whatever the
glitches, scuffles and conflicts, the relationship is largely comforting and
supportive,’ she says. ‘But for some, there’s more pain in the mother-child
relationship than comfort and pleasure.
‘My own mother’s violent and unpredictable outbursts can
still affect me today.
‘When I wrote a magazine article on the emotional and
behavioural fallout of being raised by a “difficult” mother last year, I was
amazed by the number of letters and emails I received from both men and women who
wanted to share their experiences.
‘When I researched the phenomenon further, I found that
difficult mothers seemed to fall into distinct patterns of behaviour, each
resulting in its own painful, sometimes lifelong legacy, for the child.
‘But there were positive sides to these traumatic
experiences, too. Once you identify which category your “difficult” mother
falls into, and take time to discover what is really going on in your
relationship with her, you can learn not only to survive it, but how to manage
it, and, in some cases, even turn it to your advantage.’
Here, in an adaptation of her book, Dr Apter identifies
five types of difficult mothers and reveals how each can leave their children
with different, but positive, strengths.
ANGRY MOTHER
As a psychologist, and mother, I am aware that all parents
get angry — usually when we’re tired or stressed, or when we need to warn
children of danger or teach them an important life lesson.
Anger management needed: Constant rage can lead to
long-term stress
Although no child likes it when a parent is angry, a single
outburst does not produce a difficult relationship. It is only when a parent
repeatedly uses anger to close conversations and control family members that it
becomes a problem.
When anger overshadows everything at home, children live in
a constant state of high alert, waiting for emotional explosions. As well as
being psychologically damaging, this type of long-term stress is also toxic to
the young brain.
Flooded with unremitting anxiety, a child’s brain has been
shown to form fewer of the mental circuits needed to regulate emotional states.
The awful irony is that children who most need to acquire the skill to soothe
themselves and control their responses end up being the least well equipped to
do so. If not addressed, these problems can continue into adulthood too.
Many adults say they still panic in the face of their
mother’s anger and grew up feeling they were constantly in the wrong. These
people will often become appeasers — gearing themselves to please and placate
others.
This can be a valuable skill. You may be a diplomat, or the
person everyone wants at a party because you’re so good at smoothing over
awkward situations.
However, don’t let your tendency to please others stunt
your ability to make genuine friendships. It may be time to let people get to
know the real you.
CONTROLLING MOTHER
THIS type of mother will try to take charge of every aspect
of their child’s life — to the extent that she even tells the child what to
see, feel and want.
In a healthy relationship, control is used to shape general
values and set down specific rules; but it is always informed by listening, and
it respects a growing child’s ability to take sensible decisions of its own.
Mum knows best: Children of controlling parents can become
distrustful of their own wants (posed by models)
Instead, day-by-day, a controlling mother implies: ‘I know
who you are, and you don’t’, or ‘I need you to be this, and that is more
important than what you want.’ She sees herself as custodian and controller of
her child’s mind.
Having been told repeatedly that mother knows best,
children of controlling parents can become distrustful of their own wants,
needs and opinions. Even simple independent decisions can fill them with
anxiety. They also learn to lie — to say what the controlling mother wants to
hear — in order to keep her happy.
The upside of this incredibly difficult experience is that
you are likely to have developed a thoughtful personality, having learned to
weigh up your thoughts and opinions before you share them with others.
However, even as an adult, living in your own home and
miles away from your mother, you may still carry the scars of that
relationship. Sharing your experiences and worries with other people will
definitely help you identify how difficult the relationship was and how it has
affected you. It will also help you hone your resistance to its effects.
Going back to basics and identifying what you want and what
you think in all areas of your life will help too. Take time to listen to
yourself, catching sight of what appeals to you, noticing what attracts you and
what feels easy and comfortable.
NARCISSISTIC MOTHER
The definition of a ‘narcissist’ is a person who is totally
self-involved.
A mother with narcissistic tendencies will be largely
unable to show the empathy that is so important to a healthy parent-child
relationship, because she sees every request for attention by her child as
competition.
Ego: A narcissistic mother craves attention and adoration
Tell her you’re tired, for example, and she’ll snap back:
‘Don’t talk to me about feeling tired. I’ve been hard at work all day. You
don’t know what being really tired is.’
In her egotistical way, she also sees her offspring as a
reflection of her; so her children must be outstanding in every aspect of their
being to be ‘worthy’ of her.
It’s a bewildering and volatile situation, as any child of
a narcissistic mother will be under constant pressure to be both subservient to
his or her mother’s ego, yet expected to shine.
A narcissistic mother craves attention and adoration that
comes from her own feelings of low self-worth. But no matter how hard you try
to please her, you will live under a constant cloud of disdain, regardless of
your efforts. Narcissists have fragile relationships with others, too — as
their overblown ego means they often take offence at the smallest imagined
slight and will suddenly cut people out of their lives or punish them in some
way for ‘insulting’ them.
Children in this situation often live with the fear that
their relationship with their mother could break apart at any minute should
they inadvertently offend her.
But some good can come of growing up with a narcissist,
too. You may have learned to be extremely diplomatic, patient and set high
standards for yourself.
On the downside, you probably downplay your achievements
and may even scupper opportunities because you worry about not being perfect
enough.
To get over this, write a list of things that you enjoy and
in which you take pride. It will help you to realise what you have to be proud
of — and that another person’s success does not take away what you have.
ENVIOUS MOTHER
Normally, parents long to see a child happy. But for the
envious mother, a child’s success arouses hostility.
Glowing with good news, a son or daughter expects a
parent’s face to reflect admiration; instead, the envious mother’s jaw freezes,
the corners of her mouth pull down in contempt.
‘Someday you’ll realise you’re not as good as you think you
are,’ she warns. Or perhaps the initial response is cheerful, but later you
notice that ordinary things you do irritate her. ‘Stop making such a racket,’
and, ‘Why do you have to go on and on about it?’
Instead of bolstering a child’s confidence and inspiring a
sense of his or her potential, an envious parent begrudges her child’s
independence and self-pride. She looks at her child and thinks: ‘Why can she
feel joy when I don’t?’ or, ‘Why does she have a chance to be successful when I
have been disappointed?’
Children learn that the good things in their lives somehow
offend, even harm, the person who matters deeply to them, and whom they long to
please.
Parental envy is particularly common when a child hits
adolescence and starts to make their own way in the world. Instead of seeing a
child’s success as a source of pride, and taking delight in a son or daughter
flourishing, an envious mother feels something is being taken away from her.
She believes that she can have a comfortable and secure
bond with her child only if her child’s self-worth is as low as hers.
But the psychological effects of coping with an envious
mother are not all bad — you may have learned how to stave off the envy of
others with charisma, or to look past negative comments. You may even be a high
achiever, driven by your mother’s dissatisfaction.
But if years of trying to please someone in vain has made
it hard to enjoy your achievements, the following thoughts may help bolster
your self-esteem and help you to extricate yourself from the fallout.
First, remember your mother’s start and finish point is
dissatisfaction — nothing will ever change that. Second, there is considerable
scientific evidence to show that pursuing the approval of others leads to
greater unhappiness than pursuing what you yourself value.
EMOTIONALLY UNAVAILABLE MOTHER
Often the result of depression or perhaps a drug or alcohol
dependency, a mother’s emotional unavailability can be incredibly difficult for
a child to deal with and lead to all kinds of upset and confusion.
A mother’s prolonged emotional absence has even been shown
to affect the physical and chemical make-up of a child’s brain.
‘Affective sharing’, or emotional exchanges between mother
and baby, increases brain growth and generates those crucial brain systems that
help us manage our own emotions, organise our thoughts, and plan our lives.
While living with 'difficult' people can help us to become
better at dealing with others, it's all too easy to allow an emotionally
unavailable mother to take over huge amounts of your time and energy
Positive emotional exchanges have been shown to stimulate
the growth of the cortisol receptors in the brain that absorb and buffer stress
hormones. It builds the brain strength we need to bounce back from
disappointment and failure.
Children with depressed, emotionally unavailable mothers
can grow up seeing their role as a comforter and protector. They may feel
guilty for feeling happy and often take on large amounts of responsibility to
make up for her ‘absence’.
As a grown-up, ordinary emotions such as joy and sadness
may strike you as extreme, self-indulgent and even dangerous. You may also have
deep-seated beliefs about the role you should play in close relationships,
believing that other people’s needs are more important than your own, that you
always have to be mature and ‘grown up’, and that you cannot trust people to be
there for you.
While living with ‘difficult’ people can help us to become
better at dealing with others, it’s all too easy to allow an emotionally
unavailable mother to take over huge amounts of your time and energy.
If you accept that you are an adult now, and start to
question some of the ways you behave (perhaps you frequently discount the
importance of your own feelings, feel guilty when others are unhappy and hold
yourself back from growing and gaining confidence), you will realise that a big
step in creating a new story for yourself is to confront and understand the old
one and make room for new experiences.
Adapted from Difficult Mothers by Terri Apter, published by
WW Norton on June 12 at £17.99. © Terri Apter 2012. To order a copy for £15.99
(p&p free), call 0843 382 0000. For advice, you can tweet the author
@TerriApter.
-------------
How to Explain an Absent Father
November 15, 2012 by Mary Beth Sammons
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Just after her son turned one, Nikki N. and her husband
separated and divorced, and her ex "simply vanished and moved to another
state." Now, two years later, Nikki's son has started asking where his dad is.
His questions make this Circle of Moms
member feel sick: "His father has made it clear by his absence he does not
desire to have a relationship with him," she says, adding that she has no
idea how to "properly" handle telling her little boy that his father
chooses not to see him.
Nikki N.'s dilemma is one faced by many moms who are
raising children alone. In some cases the heartbreak is caused by an absent
father who doesn't want to be involved. In others, the mom may have adopted a
child or chosen another pathway to becoming a solo parent. Either way, moms who
are raising their children without the help of a partner tend to be acutely
sensitive to the deep wounds the father's absence can have on the emotional
well-being of their children.
Here, Circle of Moms members offer their thoughts on
how to help your children cope when their father is not involved in their
lives.
1. Tell the Truth
Though many moms' inclination is to protect their children
from whatever will hurt them, it's not a good idea to lie to them or withhold
too much information about their father and why he is not involved in their
lives, say moms like Eugenie N. She advocates delivering the facts in a
sensitive way, being careful not to overshare.
She also warns moms against telling a fateful lie to
protect their kid's feelings: "Whatever you do, please do not say that daddy is dead. Children usually
resent their mom when they get older and the truth comes out, and it usually
does." Instead of pretending the dad doesn't exist, she suggests:
"I would probably explain to them that being a parent
is not an easy job and that some parents are just not ready. As a child gets
older, if the parent is still not around you could give them a little more
detail as to what happened or why he was not there." Sina S. also is a big
believer in telling the truth. "They may not like what
you have to say, but they would probably appreciate it more if you told the
truth."
2. Don't Bash Your Child's Father
It's also important to be positive when you are delivering
the truth to your children, as they are looking to you for reassurances that
they are going to be OK without a dad, and that it's not their fault that they
don't have one, recommend moms like Val K. "Be supportive and do not talk bad about [the dad]," she says.
Ericka B. agrees with this approach and says she was
careful to present a positive spin on their father's absence when she explained
it to her kids:
"I was honest with my daughters when they asked
because I felt that was the best thing for them. Their father and I broke up
for a multitude of reasons, the most important one being that he was an
irresponsible jerk (not that I put it to them that way) but they know that he
was not ready to be a father and therefore I decided it was best to raise them
alone."
Rachel B. also worked on a positive spin for her son:
"Whenever he asks about his dad, I just tell him that his dad wasn't ready to be
in our family yet. I also reassure him that just because he isn't ready now
doesn't mean that he is a bad person." The important thing, she adds, is
to help your child feel that he has what he needs in you, which is "all
that counts."
3. Explain That There Are All Kinds of Families
Some kids get very sensitive about the fact that their dad
doesn't live with them because they feel all the other kids at school or in
their neighborhood have two parents living at home, moms like Carrie M. point
out. That's why it is especially important for moms to point out that there are
all kinds of families, from those with divorced parents to single-parent homes
with adopted children to moms who have chosen to have a child through a sperm
donor or alternative birthing situation, says Carrie M. who adopted her son by
herself.
"He was about three when he asked why we don't
have a dad in our family," she says. "I told him at the time he came
in my life I was in a place in my life where I was an alone mommy. But, I also
told him that God had the perfect man in plan for us and when Mommy and that
man were ready . . . to meet we would. I have my three brothers, four uncles,
and many male cousins in our lives to help guide my son as he grows in his
life."
Some moms like JuLeah W. have made a point to educate their
children on the cultural and situational diversity of families since they were
very young. "From the time my child was very young I read books with her,
watched movies, met people from different cultures and countries, and in
general learned about different families from around the world." She
explained to her child: "Some kids live with their grandparents, some with
foster parents, some with aunts and uncles. Some kids live with one mom or dad, or two moms
or two dads." And she adds: "I don't think of it as a 'missing'
father. That implies the father ought to be there and the kid is missing out on
something."
4. Remind Your Kids That You Love Them
It's also very important for single moms to remind their
children that though a father might not be involved in their daily lives, they
are loved unconditionally by their moms, suggest many Circle of Moms
members. "I know it breaks our hearts that our little ones
will probably grow up in the knowledge that their fathers didn't want them, but
they will also know that their mommies have more than enough love . . . and our
relationship with our kids will be stronger because of it," says Tina H.
5. Expect the Questions to Continue
Moms also need to be patient, as a child's questions will
never entirely go away. Marie B. has endured many nights of tears — both her
own and their children's — trying to cope with the feelings of abandonment that
result from a father who is absent and uninvolved:
"My son went through many nights crying asking if his
dad loves him and why he never comes around. The only thing I could do is talk
to him to try to get him to understand. That's the hard part, because they
sometimes don't," she shares.
Kelli H. offers some reassurances: "Hang in there, my son will be 16 next month and
has never seen h is real father," she says. "The questions are hard
to answer and will break your heart at times, but do stay positive about [your
child's father]." Your kids will eventually "figure out what kind of
man he is," on their own.
---------------
Are some children just born bad?
It used to be thought there was no such thing as wicked
children, only inadequate parents. Try telling that to these despairing
families
Updated: 00:36 GMT, 1 October 2010
There is no such thing as bad children - only bad parents
has long been the mantra of child experts.
The firm belief being that an individual is shaped by
nurture and not pre-decided by nature.
After all, studies have shown us that offspring of the
violent and abusive often turn out to be highly troubled adults themselves. But
what if a child is born into a loving, caring home and still goes off the
rails?
And what if the child's siblings, who have been raised in
that same loving household, have turned out perfectly fine - whose fault is it
then?
Astonishingly, some psychiatrists accept that previous
thinking was flawed and that some children, through no fault of the parents,
are simply bad seeds. In other words: born bad.
Gloria Harding is one mother who is relieved to learn of
this new theory after years of questioning her parenting skills when her once
promising son became a violent, aggressive drug user.
The low point came when Gloria, a retired marketing
consultant, had to take refuge in her own house while Bobby, then 18, screamed
abuse at her as he systematically smashed up the five-bedroom family home in
Walton-on-Thames, Surrey.
He had been brought up with every possible advantage,
including a private education, but Gloria was at her wits' end over her son.
The happy, sweet-natured boy who had shown such early promise had grown into a
teenager who was completely out of control
'I thought I must have been a terrible mother, but the
truth was that Bobby was only ever wanted, loved, praised and encouraged, as
was his sister.'
Gloria lives with her husband Trevor (Bobby's stepfather)
in the £1.5 million house in which Bobby was brought up. Her son, meanwhile, is
27 and living in residential care after a series of violent and distressing
episodes that left Gloria and Trevor unable to have him in the family home.
By comparison, his 31-year-old sister is a loving,
responsible parent. So was Bobby simply a bad seed?
'I became terrified of my own son. I feared for my safety
after he threatened me with a screwdriver'
In a recent article in The New York Times, respected
psychiatrist Dr Richard Friedman admitted that his profession is beginning to
accept that some children are 'toxic'. '
For years, mental health professionals were trained to see
children as mere products of their environment who were intrinsically good
unless influenced otherwise; where there is chronic bad behaviour, there must be
a bad parent behind it,' he says.
'Yet the fact remains that perfectly decent parents can
produce toxic children.'
Certainly, Gloria can't identify any reason why Bobby
should have become so violent.
'He was a lovely child. I sent him to a private prep
school, and that's when our problems began,' she says. 'He became disruptive in
class and struggled to learn. I feel he was dyslexic - but his behaviour
exceeded this relatively straight- forward problem.
'I took him out of private school and put him into a state
school, where they were willing to get a statement of special needs for him -
his private school didn't want to know and I felt isolated, as if it was my
fault. Meanwhile, his sister excelled at the same school.'
Gloria was working full-time and employed a nanny to help
care for her children. She and Bobby's father divorced when he was eight and, a
year later, she married Trevor, who has been a consistent and loving father
figure to Bobby.
Torn apart: Gloria with Bobby aged 19. She became terrified
of him after he become addicted to drugs
'We weren't overly strict with him, and he was brought up
in a very caring home. He had everything, materially, he could ever have
wanted,' says Gloria. 'He rode bikes with his friends, we had lovely holidays,
he was a great skier and scuba diver. Yet he could not settle - there was
something "not right" within him. There was so much anger inside
him.'
At state school he attained six GCSEs, then went to agricultural
college, where he started to experiment with drugs, which only fuelled his
aggressive behaviour. Gloria struggled to cope.
'We had to keep every door in the house locked. He would
punch holes in his bedroom walls, scream and break things,' she says. 'He once
threw all the contents of his bedroom out of the window. I became terrified of
my own son. In the end I called social services and the police because I feared
for my safety after he threatened me with a screwdriver.'
Bobby was professionally assessed and ruled not to be
mentally ill, but a 'drug addict with behavioural problems'.
Events culminated with Bobby stealing his mother's Jaguar
XK8, wrapping it round a tree and cracking his pelvis. Over the next year he
was charged with criminal damage and sent to Feltham Young Offenders Prison in
West London.
Since then he has served sentences in a further three
secure units. 'I will never stop loving him and I will never desert him, but I
fear so much for his future. I am tormented by the thought that maybe it is all
my fault,' says Gloria.
'I believe his cannabis use was a highly destructive
influence. Maybe, somewhere, I did something wrong, but for the life of me I
can't think what.'
'Our twins shouted, swore, kicked and threw things at us.
We were close to the end of our tether'
Leading British child psychologist Dr Pat Spungin says:
'There will always be children who are much more difficult to parent than
others. While I am reluctant to label children bad seeds, I think certain
children are born with much less susceptibility to influence.
'Psychologists recognise that there are temperamental
differences in babies from birth. The nature versus nurture argument will
always be an ongoing one, but I know, from my own work, that there are children
who are born with less empathy and understanding of people and who care much
less about the consequences of their actions and the effects on other people.'
This is something with which Carole Heywood can strongly
identify. Carole, who lives in Guildford, Surrey, is an accountant and mother
of three. For the past seven years, she has been enduring a living hell with
her 19-year-old son, Mark.
Though he'd been a relatively happy and secure child, at 12
he began to rebel. To Carole's bewilderment he started drinking, experimenting
with drugs and skipping school.
'We treated all our three children exactly the same, and I
have rarely a moment's worry with his brother or sister. But Mark became like a
wild thing,' she says.
'He'd previously been a good student but at 13 he was
expelled from school. I could not see where this had come from. He was put into
a unit for excluded children, and at one stage had home tuition.
'Our lives became a living hell because of his unruly
behaviour. All the hopes and dreams I'd had for him - growing up, going to
university, getting married and having children - have all gone.'
In a bid to get him to stay at the unit, Carole would drive
him there herself, but he'd jump out of the car and run off, sometimes
disappearing for days. At home, he smashed windows and doors, and swore at and
threatened his brother and sister.
Double trouble: Doug and Sandra Douglas with twins George
and Nicole, who have made their life hell at times
At 15, he tipped a kettle of boiling water over his sister.
'I yelled at Mark, saying he could have killed her, but he just shrugged. He
didn't give a fig. My son felt like a stranger. I didn't know who he was,' says
Carole.
Mark was arrested for assaulting his sister and taken into
the care of social services. Carole admits it sounds like a plotline from
EastEnders, not something she ever expected to happen in her comfortable,
middle-class home.
'I had to have a panic alarm put into my house, in case my
son turned up and tried to hurt me,' she says. Mark was put onto an anger
management course and given counselling. But still he returned to the house,
stealing the family's DVD player, mobile phones and anything he could sell for
drug money.
'He's facing charges for criminal assault,' says Carole.
'Where has this come from? This isn't a child who has been dragged up. He's had
a secure, comfortable upbringing with two parents who love him.
'Today, I love him, but I don't like him. His behaviour
drove me to a nervous breakdown because I thought I was to blame. Now, though,
I think he is simply toxic and not a good person.
'There is no empathy, no understanding of other people's
suffering and all he ever thinks about is himself. He's often on the phone to
me, about how everything is so unfair and his life is a mess. But he had every
chance and threw it all away.'
Another leading child psychiatrist, Dr Theodore Shapiro,
says: 'The era of "There are no bad children, only bad parents" is
gone. The central pitch of any child psychiatrist now is that the illness is
often in the child. The family response may aggravate it, but not wholly create
it.'
WHO KNEW?
Behavioural problems in boys have doubled in the past 25
years and teenagers who binge-drink are twice as likely to have a criminal
conviction by the time they reach 30
George and Nicole Douglas, ten-year-old twins, were born
with every possible advantage. Their parents, Doug, 55, and Sandra, 49, dote on
them and work hard to give them the best possible life. There is a swimming
pool in the back garden, holidays abroad, endless treats and new clothes - and
yet they have often made their parents' lives hell.
Doug, who is a customer services agent, lives with Sandra,
who works in administration, in Stanwell, Middlesex.
'I can only think that we have given them too much. They
are much better now, but when they were younger we would be covered in
bruises,' he says. 'They shouted, swore, kicked and threw things at us. We were
close to the end of our tether.'
Being twins, Doug feels they ganged up against their
parents. 'We never raised a hand or a voice to our children. Both of us grew up
in poor, but loving households, and we wanted to give our children everything,
materially, we hadn't had,' he says.
Eerily, the twins began speaking their own private
language, terrorising their parents.
'They knew their rights, too,' says Doug. 'If I tried to
tell them off, they said: "I'll call Childline!" We didn't know what
to do.'
Both children were well-behaved out of the home, and, Doug
says, 'positive angels' at school. 'They're bright and good at sport. Things
come easily to them. 'I just sometimes feel I don't know them. I don't know
what they are thinking, ever. They'll be perfect at school, then they come home
and the trouble starts.'
The situation, he says, is getting better and he is trying
to put his foot down more.
'But where does it come from, this anger? Why do they
behave like they do towards us? We have given them everything they could ever
want and I am sure we are good parents.'
Dr Friedman says: 'Not everyone is going to turn out to be
brilliant - any more than everyone will turn out to be nice and loving. 'And
that is not necessarily because of parental failure or an impoverished
environment. It is because everyday character traits, like all human behaviour,
is hard-wired.
Genetic components cannot be moulded entirely by the best
environment, let alone the best psychotherapists.
'For better or worse, parents have limited power to
influence their children. That is why they should not be so fast to take all
the blame - or credit - for everything that their child becomes.'
For parents like Gloria Harding, the removal of this stigma
is a great relief. 'I'm never going to give up on Bobby, he is still my baby,'
she says. 'But I have accepted that his behaviour is not my fault. I've spent
too long agonising as to what I could, or should not, have done.
'Drugs certainly haven't helped, but they are not the full
story. There was something within him that led him to self-destruct. That is
the real tragedy, and an insoluble one.'
For help with children who have cannabis problems, visit
talkingaboutcannabis
-----------------
...BY THE BY... our David Myles.... Canada's Lyle Lovett and Buddy Holly ....also wrapped up in Canada's Flag joins Classified...proving that a brilliant song and brilliant voices... and imagination.....can truly inspire.... DON'T U EVER GIVE UP..
(cried- seen it...and lived it)....
Classified - The Day Doesn't Die
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Boy have I been there.... on both sides of the table.... this simple stunning song and that 'voice'... and that billy currington with the southern soul that only can be born to you.... Georgia's backwoods country boy.... told it like it is.... for all the youngbloods.... who know real and raw... and the truth song.... Billy Currington will always have tarnished angels like him.... for fans..... because we walked.... his talk.... and lived to tell the tale....
Billy Currington- WALK A LITTLE STRAIGHTER DADDY
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TARNISHED ANGELS OF BROKEN YOUTH... are nev-a going to be perfect- but we're better than our parents and caregivers were... and their's before them.... break the chain of abuse- ONE BILLION RISING..
For each an every youngblood.... please know millions and millions of us love and support you.... you are NOT throwaway toys or trashdrops.... each and every one of you is a treasure as individual and as beautiful as a raindrop with the sun sparkling on it so beautifuly it takes our breath away...... each and every one of you are 'would be' artists, musicians, poets, scientists, inventors, spiritual guiders, history and keepers of the written word... so many things... all things... and we love you... admire you.... please don't give up on us.... we need you terribly. Thank you Jimmy Wayne.... and all your friends along the way..... lonliness and hoplessness and despair knows no race, colour, creed or orientiation... it's just a soul stealer..... let's take back our world ... and our beautiful youngbloods.... each and every one...
IT'S NOT WHERE YOU'VE BEEN- IT'S WHERE YOU'RE GOING
Jimmy Wayne.mov (Please help homeless kids and youngbloods- USA 1.7 Million 2010 (much higher/Canada hundreds of thousands and so on)
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Sometimes the only way to be free of the drugs/drunks is to move on..... And unfortunately..... the Christmas season and Graduations r the hardest for so many
"I'm Movin' On" - Rascal Flatts Official Music Video- RASCAL FLATTS
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NEWSWRITING- NEEDS REPEATING...
Oldies, But Goodies…
Here, updated and slightly enhanced, are a few of my posts from the early years of NEWSWRITING. Enjoy!
The horrible story followed the predictable media track. The initial shocking events, newspeople scrambling to figure them out, spotty coverage evolving into a full-blown, wall-to-wall, music-and-graphics-enhanced “special reports.” Anchors flying to the scene. Satellite trucks sprouting on campus like weeds out of control. “Camp OJ” redux. Anyone and everyone remotely connected to the story getting his or her 15 seconds of fame. It all had a very familiar feel. We’ve done this before.
Then Cho’s package arrived at NBC.
Suddenly, on top of all the usual excesses, the media had a piece of grotesque perversion to examine, and to air. But should they air it? And should they air it again? And again? And again?
Yes. And no. No. NO!
Watching Cho’s maniacal rantings reminded me of the twisted “manifesto” offered by the Unabomber years ago. You really didn’t need to watch or read all of it. A few lines, a few seconds, and you had everything. You clearly understand it came from a crazed mind, and no matter how much more of it you ingest, that’s all you’d ever know.
So, once you know it, stop showing it.
It was not wrong to broadcast Cho’s video once, despite concerns about the feelings of bereaved families or the possibility of copycat threats. One can feel sympathy for the victims’ loved ones, but news organizations cannot afford to censor themselves based on that sympathy. If we did, no war, no terrorist act, no earthquake, no story of any consequence involving victims could ever be covered properly. As for the copycats, they’ll be out there either way.
But once the story has been told, enough is enough.
I sincerely hope the responsible news media will put the Cho material away, never to be shown again, certainly never to be used as conventional “file tape” or “wallpaper video.” Like the pictures of the planes hitting the World Trade Center. Store it for historical purposes, and issue the appropriate warnings to your people not to pull it off the shelf. I suspect most news organizations will comply. The tabloids, the infotainers, the talk shows, and now the webheads, the bloggers… they’re another story. Restraint is not their calling card. And that’s a shame. It may be wishful thinking, but one would hope even they pull back a little this time.
One more thing. May God bless the memory of Liviu Librescu, the heroic professor and Holocaust survivor who put his body in the doorway so his students could escape Cho’s bullets and get away through a window.
Think about it. Think about that confrontation. A young, twisted individual mad at the world for the “evil” he imagined… like rich kids who ignored him. A 76-year-old man who saw real evil in his lifetime, and instead of turning evil or violent himself, he sacrificed himself for his fellow man without giving it a second thought. The best, and the worst of humanity, on two sides of one door.
Yeah, I know, his sorry story has nothing to do with Newswriting per se, but it’s my website, so…
As a young intern just starting out at NBC in New York, I was concerned that a 20-something Orthodox Jew wearing a kippah (skullcap) on my head might not be readily accepted. My concerns dissolved on my first day when a gruff baritone voice behind me bellowed, “Your hat’s too small, babe!”
It was Don Imus’s way of saying Hello.
Imus said a terrible, outrageous and inexcusable thing about the Rutgers women’s basketball team. Imus has been saying terrible, outrageous and inexcusable things for 30 years, about everybody, every race, every religion, every orientation, every political affiliation. It’s his shtick. It may even be his real personality. Does that make it OK? No. But anyone who thinks Imus singled out one particular group for extra verbal abuse, is wrong. Which is why I found it surprising that one group took it on themselves to single him out, why it mushroomed into a crusade, and why Imus is no longer on the air.
Granted, I’m prejudiced. I know the guy. I also don’t belong to the group Imus offended, so I can’t fully grasp their outrage. That’s the normal human condition in our still-racist world. We protect our own first, and even if we’re evolved enough to show outrage when another group is hurt, the passion is never the same. So on that basis alone, I’m not objective. Still, shouldn’t the criticism be spread more evenly, and at a level that properly fits the crime?
Imus apologized. He agreed to meet with the Rutgers team. He was suspended. It wasn’t enough for the interests bent on “winning one.” So the advertisers were pressured, and Imus was gone. Meantime Ann Coulter calls a presidential candidate a faggot, smirks her way through an “Oh, grow up” non-apology, a couple of papers pull her column, and she’s back on Fox News a few days later like nothing happened. Makes you think.
Now that some time has passed, and perhaps a bit of the pain and emotion have run their course, I want to say a couple of things about the loss of Tim Russert and how we in the media handled it.
I never met Mr. Russert, though we worked at NBC at roughly the same time, he in Washington and I in New York. I knew him only by reputation and always found him to be a solid, well-informed, hardworking and effective Washington Bureau Chief and Meet The Press moderator. His achievements and successes are well known. He was very good at what he did and he seemed to take great pleasure in his work, always with that smile, that twinkle in his eye. He was beloved among his colleagues and co-workers. His death is a tremendous blow to NBC in both professional and personal terms, which begins to explain what unfolded there, in the hours and days that followed.
The coverage took a familiar and predictable track. Total shock led to saturation reporting which evolved into elaborate tributes, glowing eulogies and memorials, followed by considerable speculation about who should, or could, replace Mr. Russert, until, inevitably, a few isolated voices gingerly began to say things like, “Enough already!” or “Isn’t there any real news going on today??” They meant no disrespect. They were trying to point out, insensitively perhaps, that the media, especially NBC, had perhaps taken advantage of their access to the public airwaves by over-covering one of their own, creating the perception that they were pushing legitimate news off to the side, to the detriment of the viewers. This opinion, I suspect, may have added to the anguish felt by those who knew and admired Mr. Russert and were still grieving for him.
Another, less publicized element of the story is the fact that NBC didn’t report it right away. The network waited about an hour, until it was certain that all members of Russert’s family had been notified. NBC also asked other media organizations to wait, and they complied (Ironically, one didn’t. One of NBC’s Web vendors assumed the news had already become public, so an employee there updated Russert’s bio on Wikipedia even before Tom Brokaw went on the air with the announcement. The employee was disciplined).
So far I haven’t seen or read any criticism of the decision to sit on the story, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it does materialize. Barring bona fide concerns of national security or a massive lawsuit, newspeople don’t like to hold back information and we don’t like it when colleagues do it, either.
So we have two questions to consider:
The answer to both questions is yes.
But that’s not the whole answer.
The rest of the answer is, don’t worry about it.
A few years ago, two young desk assistants where I work were killed in a small plane crash. Their deaths hit us very hard. I still remember how dark and quiet our newsroom got when we heard the news, just a few moments after we’d gone off the air with our 10pm show. People cried. Some of us just stood there. We couldn’t move. We stayed that way for quite a long while. The next morning we began to report the story… just a small plane crash, carrying some young people most of our viewers had never heard of. But those kids were our family. We made it our lead story, not just that day, but day after day, until all the funerals were over. We pushed bigger stories aside. We spent far more time on this personal tragedy of ours than we would normally devote to anything similar where the people involved are not known to us. Make no mistake, we knew what we were doing, and we understood that maybe some viewers might wonder about it. We didn’t care. There would be plenty of time later to go back to “normal” news coverage, but right now, we didn’t feel very normal, and the viewers were just going to have to forgive us.
The people at NBC (and their colleagues throughout the news community) were being human. They’d been hit hard, abruptly, unexpectedly, with the worst possible news. A great friend was snatched away, right in front of them. When that happens to you, it hurts, and you do what you have to do, to deal with the hurt. You’re thinking about people, family, feelings… not “Is this the proper thing to do, journalistically speaking?”
Of course NBC held the story until the family was told. It was the human thing to do, to spare loved ones even more pain. And of course they poured their emotions into hour after hour of coverage. That’s how grieving people express their grief.
We forget sometimes that news organizations are made up of people with feelings. Maybe that’s because we’re so good at detaching ourselves from tragic events in order to report them clearly and fairly. So naturally we get a few crooked glances when the tragedy happens to us, our human side asserts itself, and detached objectivity dissolves away. Fine. Let the critics point it out, let them say, “Aha!” a few times. No big deal. It’s temporary. Our newsroom eventually returned to normal after we lost our two young friends, and NBC quickly pulled itself together as well.
To tell you the truth, it was enlightening to watch NBC during those sad days. We were privileged to see a different, very vulnerable side of some of the industry’s top professionals. It was comforting, in a way, to see that some things matter more than news, and we’re really all the same when it comes to the truly important things.
On November 27, 2006, NBC was the first news organization to declare the 31/2-year-old war in Iraq a “Civil War.” The White House strongly criticized the network for using that term.
Civil War has broken out in Iraq. NBC says so.
The network took a great deal of criticism for deciding to use what apparently is quite a controversial terminology. Most of the finger-pointing, I believe, is undeserved. But maybe not all of it.
It’s ludicrous to accuse NBC, as some on the right have done, of having a “political agenda” or even of being “anti-White House.” Reasonable people understand that a news organization’s agenda is simple: Be absolutely accurate, be absolutely clear, and be absolutely impossible to ignore. This agenda remains in place regardless of who’s in power in Washington. NBC News, like most legitimate news organizations, has a long history of annoying leaders from both parties who never seem to get the fact that what’s news and how it’s defined, isn’t up to them.
Some of the critics, however, come from within the journalism community and are anything but “right wing.” I suspect their main complaint arises from that third part of the news agenda. They believe NBC took this step not only in the interest of accuracy and clarity, but to stand out among its competitors, to grab some attention and perhaps even get some higher ratings, temporarily at least.
NBC will swear it isn’t so, and I hope that’s the case. But the drive to be “first” is part of every news operation, and it very likely played a role here (yes, technically they weren’t “first.” The Los Angeles Times and others have used “Civil War” from time to time, but NBC got there first in the only race it cares about… the TV news ratings race). Also, NBC had to know its decision would create an uproar and plenty of attention. That’s hard to resist, even when your motives are pure.
Then there are the critics who take a semantic tack. They raise up a centuries-old definition of Civil War and make the claim that, in the strictest terms, Iraq isn’t there yet. In other words, until a row of gray-uniformed men point their muskets at a row of blue-uniformed men, it ain’t Civil War. I’m neither semanticist nor historian, so I really can’t say much here, except to point out that definitions evolve with the times, and ultimately, the media, as a reflection of the larger culture, will play the greater role in defining these terms… they won’t be imposed on the public by scholars, or by government entities trying to manage events and perceptions.
Political agendas come from politicians. They call armed militias “insurgents” and “dead-enders.” They call wave after wave of religious and revenge-fueled mass murder “sectarian violence.” When they knew the country couldn’t stomach another war after WWII they called Korea a “police action.” And they never called Vietnam a Civil War, and they’ll never call Iraq a Civil War, because once they do, support at home will evaporate. So Vietnam became the central front in the Cold War, and Iraq is the central front in the War on Terror.
The media’s job is to speak truth to power. NBC is doing its job.
I’ve been struggling with this column for several days. I want to be respectful of Ron Paul and his supporters. But their repeated complaint that the Texas Congressman never stood a chance in the Presidential race solely because he has been ignored, minimized or somehow cheated by the national media must be answered.
There’s no doubt that Mr. Paul has attracted a loyal and vocal following. He has demonstrated a degree of campaign savvy with his YouTube videos and fundraising-via-Web strategy.
But is he a viable candidate for President? Was he ever?
In primary after primary, caucus after caucus, voters emphatically said, “No!”
Nevertheless, after each of those contests, as well as after every debate and every new poll, Paul’s loyalists flooded the phone lines to talk radio shows, to C-SPAN, to the national networks. They bombarded the blogs. The refrain is always the same: “Why aren’t you covering him? Why do you dismiss him? Why are you denying him his chance?” Their implication seems to be that if we in the media did our jobs right, Ron Paul would be running away with the nomination.
No, he wouldn’t.
Remember, this long Presidential campaign began over a year ago with literally dozens of contenders traipsing through the snowy streets of Iowa and New Hampshire for months on end, then standing side-by-side on one crowded debate stage after another. Voters in those states got a good long and up-close look at everybody. They didn’t need the media. They met the candidates in the coffee shops, the hair salons, the American Legion halls. They sat through countless town meetings and asked voluminous questions.
Armed with all that information, Iowa and New Hampshire chose. They didn’t pick Ron Paul. Or Tom Tancredo. Or Duncan Hunter. Or Mike Gravel. Or even Chris Dodd or Joe Biden.
The difference between Paul and the other also-rans? They understood the will of the people and the realities of politics, and they quickly got out. Ron Paul stayed in, blamed the media and continues to do so.
With all due respect, the media didn’t make Ron Paul a fringe candidate. He did. And the voters did.
Having failed at local, retail campaigning in the first two states, Mr. Paul somehow believed he could move ahead into a national campaign as if nothing had happened. But it takes much more than a website and a handful of ideas (I will not pass judgment on Paul’s views or positions, but here again, the voters have already done so) to mount a successful race. It takes proven leadership ability, superior organizational skills, fundraising prowess far beyond a few million dollars, and the capability of appealing to a broad range of voters, not just a small band of hardcore loyalists.
Ron Paul has exhibited none of the above. It doesn’t make him a bad person, or an ineffective Congressman. He may very likely be reelected in his home district. But he’s no national candidate. He will complain that the he was unable to get his message out. But the millions he raised on the Internet is supposed to be spent on doing exactly that: Getting out the message. So why didn’t he?
(I’m tempted to say many of the same things about Dennis Kucinich, who complained not only about the media but also about being excluded from some debates. However, behind Mr. Kucinich’s bluster lies a truly empty candidacy which has already been exposed, beautifully, by LA Weekly reporter Dwayne Booth who labored in near-Roger And Me style to get five minutes with the candidate.)
With all this, there are still those who will accuse the media of playing favorites, building up personalities, and ignoring the “little guys,” effectively dooming their campaigns. Those accusations may or may not have some merit. But the fact is, this year, perhaps more than ever before, it hasn’t made any difference. Because the voters have seen through any alleged media bias and made their own decisions.
Don’t believe me? Wasn’t Rudy Giuliani supposed to be the “national frontrunner?” Wasn’t Mike Huckabee supposed to disappear early? Wasn’t Fred Thompson going to be the savior of the conservatives? Wasn’t John McCain’s campaign supposed to collapse? Wasn’t Hillary Clinton going to cruise to the nomination without breaking a sweat?
To paraphrase a corporate slogan I detest: We reported. You decided.
He was always my favorite.
The cigarette smoke…
The unforgettable laugh..
The HAIR!
Tom Snyder was one-of-a-kind.
An anchorman who seemed too big for the job.
An up-close-and-personal talk show host who always asked the questions we wanted to ask. A conversationalist who at least sounded well-prepared, even when he really wasn’t!
After watching just a few editions of his Tomorrow show in the early ‘70’s, I was hooked. Here was a talk show you could curl up on the couch with, sink into the back-and-forth between Tom and his famous, infamous and often outright weird guests, as if they were right there in the room with you. There was nothing else like it.
Everybody noticed.
In those early years Don Imus was asked about TV personalities. Imus said he hated them all. Except one. “Snyder,” he said.
NBC was so high on Snyder, there were almost daily rumors about him taking over the Nightly News or even The Tonight Show. The network rolled out one magazine show after another to showcase him. Dan Ackroyd did Snyder almost better than Snyder did.
Tom even showed up in the movies, sort of. One memorable scene had a crazed criminal suspect surrendering to police while saying, “Where’s Tom Snyder? I want Tom Snyder!!”
When WNBC brought Snyder to New York to anchor the 6pm hour of NewsCenter4, I was able to watch him twice a day, doing two entirely different things. Tom never seemed as comfortable behind the anchor desk as on his talk show set. For one thing, the smoking had to go. Only it didn’t. Once, as a reporter’s package ended, they cut back to Snyder with the offending cigarette still in his mouth. For a split second he looked terrified. Like a shot, he put down the cigarette, then, realizing it was too late, he smiled broadly, held up the still-smoky butt, looked right in the camera and said, “Hey, why should I deny it?”
Another time he closed the newscast with his favorite Thanksgiving turkey recipe, which basically involved marinating the bird in six different kinds of booze, throwing away the turkey and drinking what was left. “You won’t really have a Thanksgiving dinner,” he said, barely stifling his trademark laugh, “But you really won’t care!” NOW the laugh burst forth, and when it finally died down, Tom invited us to tune in next month… for his Christmas goose recipe!
Tom had that rare quality that jumped right through the TV screen and grabbed you. It almost didn’t matter what he was saying. He was just fun to watch, and I always made a point of getting as much Snyder as I could. It was a shame when his star began to decline. NBC paired him with gossip reporter Rona Barrett on Tomorrow, a disaster. Not long after, when Tomorrow ended, Tom made a classy exit, simply fading to black (he said he wanted to go out the way he came in) with his simple “Good Night Everybody!”
He had some tough years. He made a health club infomercial. Then he got a radio gig, another shot at local news in New York which flopped, then a CNBC show, thrown into a mix of mediocre talkers. Only when he surfaced on the CBS Late Late Show, which David Letterman created for him, did some of the old spark appear to return.
TV hasn’t been the same, or as good, since he retired. And it’s sad that there won’t be another Snyder comeback. Can you imagine what he would have done with a Paris Hilton? Or a Lindsay Lohan? Or a George W. Bush! And who else out there today has the whimsy to invite us to “fire up the Colortini and watch the pictures as they fly through the air?”
He will be missed.
My friend, reporter Christina Gonzalez has returned to work. Limping. Can’t move her shoulder. She may need surgery. Our colleague, photographer Patti Ballaz has a broken wrist. She may never lift a camera again.
On May 1, 2007, Patti, Christina and a bunch of other journalists were pushed, shoved, struck, knocked to the ground and otherwise roughed up by officers of the Los Angeles Police Department.
This incident has made me so angry I’ve had to struggle to find the right words to express my rage responsibly. The incident at MacArthur Park is being investigated half a dozen different ways. There will be personnel changes. There will be lawsuits. There will be reforms. And frankly, I don’t want to get in the way, mess anything up, or say more than the victims themselves have already said.
But the very idea that members of the media landed in the hospital because cops put them there makes my blood boil and turns my stomach.
Yes, police were trying to clear out a group of rowdy protesters who were throwing things at them. And yes, the officers’ superiors have offered up stuff like, “an aberration.” “over the top,“ or, incredibly, the rationalization that the cops lost control because, well, cops lose control easily!
Sorry, not buying it.
In the first place, law enforcers should not be lawbreakers. California law clearly allows journalists to be exactly where they were, and to do exactly what they were doing. None of this “We gave you those press passes and we can take them away” hogwash. No, you can’t.
Second, “losing control” doesn’t begin to explain what happened out there. It doesn’t explain why one journalist got knocked down and heard laughter from the cop who did it. It doesn’t explain why another reporter got shoved to the ground and was immediately told to get up again, by an officer who clearly was making it up at he went along. And it doesn’t explain why officers fired pellets at a crew in a news van. A stationary, parked news van.
Third, where’s all that great LAPD training? Is anyone going to say, with a straight face, that Los Angeles Police officers are incapable of clearing a crowd without breaking a cameraperson’s bones??
You also probably know this is not the first time, which is one reason why the LAPD remains the only police force in the country under the scrutiny of a Federal consent order.
But will things really change now? Can anyone or anything break the disgusting Us Against Them culture so inbred at the LAPD?
Maybe. Because like it or not, fair or unfair, it makes a difference when you attack a journalist.
Had those police batons come down only on protesters’ heads, it would have still been reprehensible, but a day later nobody would be talking about it. But the cops smacked reporters who were doing their jobs, and those reporters’ colleagues got mad and made sure the whole world saw it, again and again. Chief William Bratton, the most media-savvy police chief L.A. has ever had, desperately wants to maintain his almost mythical reputation as America’s Top Cop who brings down crime rates wherever he goes. He also wants to keep his job, now up for renewal. And he knows he blew it. So he just may work extra hard to fix it.
The early signs are encouraging. Bratton demoted two commanders and expressed his own personal outrage. More important, two weeks after the MayDay Melee (we media types have to give everything a catchy name) another protest took place in the same park, there were plenty of police, everything was peaceful, and no one laid a hand on any journalist.
Let’s hope it stays that way. I promise you, we’ll be watching.
Congratulations on your impressive and historic victory. As you prepare to take on the enormous tasks before you, it’s worth taking a moment to consider the role the media will play in your administration.
You’ve emerged from a long, grueling campaign in which whole sections of the press were, at different times, demonized, ridiculed, belittled, held up to mass anger, and, occasionally, kicked off the bus.
You are also succeeding a president and administration that routinely practiced secrecy and deception, while favoring “friendly” media, treating such “friends” as a virtual public relations arm of the White House.
The climate has been unhealthy, but you have the opportunity to change it, just as you promise to change the rancorous political climate in our country.
I hope you’ll take these recommendations to heart:
Play It Straight. A secrecy-obsessed administration is a doomed administration. There can be no better way to begin to unite our country than by keeping its citizens fully informed. Your calls for service and sacrifice will be received enthusiastically only if the public fully understands what you intend to do, and how you intend to do it. We in the media are your vehicle to help you achieve this. It is part of our historic and constitutional mission. A free people must get their information from a free press. Tell us frankly and clearly what your plans are, and we will communicate the message.
Expect And Accept Bumps. Inevitably members of the media will criticize you and your policies. I hope you’ll always remember that reporters who ask tough questions or expose deficiencies are not the enemy. They are doing their job and their patriotic duty. It may be tempting to blame us or accuse us of bias when things go badly. Every president has done it at one time or another. It’s a bad habit too many politicians have cultivated. Break it.
We’re All The Same. Even When We’re Not. Please don’t play media favorites. How embarrassing it was to hear the Secretary of State praise “my Fox guys. I love every one of them!” How ridiculous to learn that the Vice President insisted on viewing only one news network on all the TV’s in his line of sight. How disturbing it was to read reports that journalists from two conservative newspapers were taken off your campaign plane because of “space limitations” while Ebony and Jet kept their seats. In a free society with a free press, no journalist deserves to be frozen out, nor do any of us want to “cozy up” to the government. Tolerance of all is essential, while a healthy, respectful distance is maintained Journalists and politicians are professionals. Let’s keep the relationship professional as well.
None of this will be easy because it goes against the grain. It’s so different from what has become the norm. But if you really do mean to bring about positive change, this is a great place to start.
Good luck, sir.
I am troubled, though not surprised, by some new findings from the people at the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
They’ve calculated that so far, only 15% of all the broadcast stories about the 2008 presidential campaign deal with the candidates’ positions on issues. Barely 1% of the coverage looked at the candidates’ records. 63% of the stories focused on strategy and politics: who’s ahead in the polls, who’s trailing, who’s made a clever move, who’s committed a tactical blunder, and who’s raised the most money.
The horse race.
Perhaps instead of casting ballots, we should put down two dollars on Win, Place or Show.
I know there’s nothing new about this. Americans seem to be fascinated by polls, and news organizations are only too happy to scratch that itch relentlessly and to the near-exclusion of anything serious.
But we’re choosing the most powerful person on the planet. Shouldn’t our choice be an informed one? And shouldn’t we, as broadcasters, take the lead in supplying that information?
So why don’t we?
Three main reasons, I think.
1. Stories with serious information are harder to produce.
2. They’re not sexy.
3. Nobody else does it, so why should we?
In other words, in our glitz-obsessed, ratings-crazed environment, covering presidential candidates the right way takes too much effort and resources, with no assurance of an increase in viewership. So it’s not worth it, and no station wants to be the first to risk trying it.
I also suspect the candidates are totally aware of this, and even count on it. They know they can keep their messages vague and meaningless, and no one will challenge them. The result is an empty campaign and an ignorant electorate. Candidates appear on Oprah or Leno to sell their personalities more than their positions. And they fill their political ads with slogans and nasty personal attacks.
As a result, the typical voter who gets most of his news from television cannot tell you the difference between Candidates A, B or C on health care, taxes, Iraq, Social Security, education, or anything else that matters. She probably can tell you who’s in first place in the horse race.
Perhaps we broadcasters rationalize our dereliction of duty by pointing to all the “new media” alternatives where in-depth information on the campaign is readily available. But I’m not ready to cede our unique mission to a bunch of websites. We still reach more people in more places than any other means of communication. Our audiences depend on us. We need to step up and give them what they need, not just what we think will hold their attention past the quarter hour.
Here are some ideas for doing that. Things that can be implemented right now.
Make The Daily Commitment: This must be the first step. Simply make the decision that your news operation will produce something meaningful about the campaign, at least once a day. It could be as quick and simple as a 30-second explainer, or a more elaborate piece. The important thing is to set the tone and change the atmosphere in your newsroom, and to stick to it.
Create A Franchise: Grab your best reporter and put him or her on the political beat. Then come up with a catchy name (the consultants can help you here) for a regularly-scheduled, heavily promoted piece on candidates issues. Sell the daylights out of it. Tell the viewers why they should care.
Make The Dull, Un-Dull: A story that just lays out a candidate’s health care plan sounds boring. But what if you found people in your community whose lives would be impacted, positively or negatively, by that plan? A politician’s platitudes about Iraq are one thing. Suppose you ran them past parents who have kids serving in the Gulf? Visit a senior center and show them what could happen to Social Security depending on who gets elected. Watch their reactions!
Become A Resource: Stuff your station’s website with information on every candidate. Cross promote like crazy, just as you would for a sweeps piece or a celebrity interview. If your reporter lands an interview with Hillary Clinton and 1:30 of it makes air, send your viewers to the website to watch the other 20 minutes.
Care! A long time ago I learned I couldn’t get viewers excited about a story unless it got me excited first. Nowhere is this more true, or more crucial, than a presidential election. The stakes could not be higher. Choosing the leader of the free world. But the potential for boredom could not be greater. People hate politics. So help them feel differently. Find the aspects that get your juices going, and communicate that enthusiasm to your audience.
I’m very aware that a handful of visionary stations out there already do many of these things, and do them quite well. Whether it’s a “Reality Check” of a candidate’s speech or a personalization of a complex issue, a bunch of good reporters backed by equally good producers and news directors are showing the way for the rest of us. I applaud them, and I hope more of us follow their example.
One more incentive for getting serious about this. Another recent poll shows a steady, across-the-board decline in the public’s opinion of the news media over the last 20 years. All that marketing, promoting, hyping and selling we’ve done… and we’re losing people!
What are you going to do about it?
“There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe…”
“There you go again!”
“Where’s the beef?”
“Let me help you with the difference, Mrs. Ferraro…”
“Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”
“Who am I? Why am I here?”
“Maybe we should ask Barack if he’s comfortable and needs another pillow.’’
Recognize them?
Unfortunately, you probably do. They are the “gotcha” lines that stick in our minds after three decades of Presidential and Vice Presidential debates. For many of us, this is the sum total of our debate knowledge and memory. Cute zingers and stupid gaffes.
Since 1976 when Jimmy Carter debated Gerald Ford under the auspices of the League of Women Voters, televised debates have slowly morphed into video spectacles, where the one-liner matters more than a carefully thought out answer, where catching someone in an awkward moment makes a bigger impression than a candidate’s position on an important issue.
Sometimes we don’t even remember the words, but the non-verbal stuff. The sound cutting out during the first Ford-Carter debate. George H.W. Bush looking at his watch. Al Gore sighing, rolling his eyes, and sneaking up behind George W. Bush, and Bush nodding indifference.
Is this any way to pick a president?
Actually, it began in 1960 with the Kennedy-Nixon TV shows. And I’m choosing my words carefully here. I say “TV shows” rather than “debates.” Don Hewitt produced them to be good television. The overwhelming presence of cameras and lights dominated the proceedings. And while radio listeners heard two candidates discussing substance (and most thought Nixon had won), TV viewers were distracted by Nixon’s pallor (he had the flu), his light-colored jacket blending into the backdrop, and of course, those beads of sweat and those shifting eyes. By contrast, they saw Kennedy in his crisp blue suit, looking tanned, healthy and youthful (in fact there was only five years difference between them, and it turns out Kennedy was a lot sicker than we thought). How many people remember anything substantive said by either man?
This all came back to me, and has been gnawing at me, throughout this year’s presidential campaign, starting with those ridiculous 10-or-12-person debates in the early going, on through to the last of the 21 (21!) Obama-Clinton confrontations. Sure, some of it has been powerful television, a ratings windfall for the cable networks, and fuel for the pundits who endlessly pick it all apart.
But have we truly learned anything?
Has television, by bringing us all these debates, increased our knowledge of the candidates, or just made sure we never see and hear anything more than consultant-crafted soundbites and annoyingly superficial irrelevant nonsense? Are we now better equipped to choose the next leader of the free world because television showed us one candidate complaining about always getting the first question and another candidate squirming under a relentless battery of questions about a preacher, and words like “elitist?”
Let me be clear. I have my preferences, but I have not yet chosen a candidate and would be satisfied, more or less, no matter who gets elected. So this is not simply a defense of Barack Obama when I say it was shameful the way ABC’s anchors wasted nearly half of their Philadelphia debate with trivialities, when we are fighting two wars, our economy is taking a nosedive, much of the world looks at us with contempt, our environment is getting a potentially irreversible beating, our public schools are a disgrace, Social Security is heading for a cliff and our health care system needs intensive care.
A year and a half into the process, I believe the typical voter and viewer still doesn’t really know where the candidates stand on critical issues. And we in the TV business are to blame. We created the showbiz atmosphere, the candidates adapted to it, and the viewers are stuck with it.
So let’s fix it.
Step One: Stop the debates, at least for now. So long as we’re incapable of running a debate that deals in substance, we do a disservice to the public by staging superficial spectacles which mislead voters into thinking they’re watching something important.
Step Two: Copy what works, and ratings be damned. Remember CNN’s “Compassion Forum?” Terrible title. Questionable choice of subject matter. But on several levels, the cable network is onto something. Each candidate got a big chunk of time to talk about one subject, without the other candidate getting in the way. And they didn’t just spout platitudes. They had to respond to pointed questions from experts in the audience… in this case, religious leaders asking about issues of faith. Imagine what could be done with, say, health care, with doctors asking the questions. Or the economy, with questions from small business owners or families facing foreclosure. Or Social Security, with questions from seniors worried about their benefits, and their grandchildren worried about paying for them.
If we commit to forcing the candidates to address serious issues in a serious way, they will adapt again, just as they did when we got careless and pointless. Hey, they’ve got no place else to go!
I don’t expect these forums will grab the kind of ratings racked up by that silly farce in Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre, for example. Nevertheless, millions will watch. And maybe, just maybe, they’ll learn.
I love political conventions. The bigness. The screaming crowds. The over-the-top speeches. Even the balloons and funny hats. I find it all very exciting and, as a newswriter, convention time is one of my favorite seasons.
I’ve been watching conventions on TV since 1968 when I was a kid. I’ve been writing about them for TV since 1984 in my first newsroom job. I’ve seen three of them in person.
I also have the kind of weird memory that holds onto obscure details, like a line from a speech nobody else paid attention to, or a picture most people didn’t notice. Of course, like everyone else, I also cherish the “big” moments which get repeated endlessly and often become anchors in our history.
Watching the Democrats in Denver and the Republicans in St. Paul brought back a lot of those big and small memories, which I’d like to share, going back as far as I’m able to recall. Memory being the imperfect tool that it is, I make no claim to absolute accuracy. If you spot an error, shoot me an email… one more opportunity to reminisce, right?
So here goes…
1968: The Republicans were in Miami and Richard Nixon got the nomination (“It’s All Nixon!” screamed the newspaper headlines). Nixon comes out to give his speech, and does that thing with his arms way up in the air. I’m 12 years old and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen him, or anyone else, do that. Walking around on the podium, waving his arms, again, and again, smiling that broad Nixon smile. Maybe I’m just a cynic, or the product of Democratic parents, but watching this scene on TV I keep thinking, ““his looks so fake!” And how did this guy everybody said was washed up, come out of nowhere and pull this off?
The Democratic debacle in Chicago. Mayor Daley cussing at Senator Ribicoff for referring to the “Gestapo” tactics of the Chicago police. Protestors roughed up by cops but managing to shout, “The whole world is watching!”
For an adolescent still figuring out his loyalties and emotions, there was an overwhelming sense of letdown. Eugene McCarthy had fizzled. Bobby Kennedy was dead. And we get… Humphrey? He’s going to end the Vietnam war he’s helped perpetuate with Lyndon Johnson?
The gear. The networks outfitted their floor reporters with mobile equipment that made them look like men from outer space. Big headphones. Bigger antennas coming out of their ears. Enormous backpacks. Wires everywhere. Poor Edwin Newman looked like a beast of burden buckling under the load. And I’m thinking, “Cool! Looks like fun!” I’m starting to think I’d like to do this. I’m very curious about everything going on inside those network “skyboxes” with their big logos plastered across the top, ringing the upper rim of the convention hall.
1972: Both conventions are in Miami (they must really like that Fontainebleu hotel!)
The Republican gathering is basically a Nixon coronation. But the Democrats can’t seem to do anything without drama. Gravel-voiced Jean Westwood trying, and failing to bring the delegates to order. The Illinois delegation getting kicked out. Network reporters on the floor interviewing Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin (“Last time we were outside protesting. Now we’re inside, man!”) George McGovern’s 3:00 AM speech which no one heard.
But I remember a different McGovern moment, at the hotel, when he’s confronted by rabid antiwar protestors who’ve heard a rumor that McGovern may keep a handful of troops in Vietnam.
The protestors ambush McGovern at his door and demand, demand that he pull out every last soldier. McGovern, tired, haggard, using a megaphone to be heard over the angry mob, promises he will. The mob cheers. McGovern appears to be a prisoner of his own supporters.
1976: Jimmy Carter comes to Madison Square Garden! Barbara Jordan keynotes.
Wow! I lived in New York, and boy did I wish I could get inside. Closest I got was a block away, where all the media trucks were camped out, their cables running through the streets, snaking up the walls of the Garden, going through holes in the walls cut out especially for the occasion.
Republicans in Kansas City fought a battle between President Ford who wanted his first full term, and Ronald Reagan, determined to take it for himself.
Ford’s narrow win only accentuated his weakness as an unelected, uncharismatic president. The crowd is wowed by Reagan’s concession remarks. But then Ford speaks. And Mister Plodder turns into Mister Orator! What a surprise! Sure, not a masterful speech, but no question the best one he’s ever given in his life, and the crowd goes nuts!
1980: Donny and Marie (“We’ve got a winning combination, a winning combination, oh yeah!”) performing for the Republicans at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, on a podium ringed with potted plants (I told you I have a weird memory). Speaker after apocalyptic speaker saying this could be “the last political convention.” (The Soviets were in Afghanistan, Americans were held hostage in Iran… doomsday stuff). No real drama about the nominee, so manufactured drama takes its place: Will Reagan really take Ford as his running mate? Nah. But maybe? Nah. Of course not.
Carter and the Democrats come back to New York and guess who gets inside! Finally! A friend with a well-connected father gets us tickets for the upper row. Amazing view. Terrible sound. Nothing but echo. But I brought along a tiny tape recorder. I still have my echo-chamber cassette recording of Senator Ted Kennedy’s amazing speech.
Every time I watch American Experience on PBS and hear Kennedy’s line, “The hope still lives, and the dream shall never die,” I remember that night.
1984: I’ve begun my news career, so now I get to watch the conventions from our New York newsroom, instead of my New York living room. The Republicans meet in Dallas to re-nominate Reagan. Our studio anchor in New York asks our convention anchor in Texas (off the air but on camera), “So how’s Dallas?” She replies, “It’s 110 degrees and the bars close at 2:00!”
When the Democrats pick Walter Mondale in San Francisco I blow the most important part of my assignment. I can’t find Mondale’s quote on taxes on the tape: “Mister Reagan will raise taxes. And so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.” I resolve to take better notes from now on.
1988: The Democrats dress up the Atlanta convention center in pastels, thinking it’ll look better on TV.They get lambasted by critics for replacing the Red, White and Blue with Salmon, Azure and Eggshell.
Michael Dukakis arrives at the podium to Neil Diamond’s Coming To America. He chokes up when talking about his Greek immigrant father. “He’d be very proud of his son.” He then proclaims, “This election isn’t about ideology. It’s about competence.” Republicans make it about flag-burning and Willie Horton. But only after George Bush promises a “kinder, gentler America,” challenges us to “Read my lips,” and aspires to a “thousand points of light,” providing Saturday Night Live with about ten thousand punchlines.
1992: Bill Clinton brings the convention back to Madison Square Garden, where, for the first time, I’m inside as a member of the media. Our work area, just behind the upper seats, is dominated by a high-strung producer we called (behind his back) Guns ‘N Roses because, 1) He carried a pistol and, 2) He stole flowers from a secretary’s desk to decorate his office. He spent most of the convention screaming at people over the phone. I spent part of my time trying to calm him down, the rest of the time staying away from him. I field-produced quirky, offbeat stories, like a profile of the head chef at the Garden, and the schoolkids covering the convention for a local paper. My favorite image (sorry, looked high and low but couldn’t find a photo) was Senator Bill Bradley at the podium, directly beneath his retired New York Knicks jersey (No. 24) hanging from the rafters.
Houston hosted the Republicans, and their anger. Pat Buchanan invoking a “religious war” in America. Dan Quayle taking on the so-called Hollywood Elite (“And we will not back down!!”). Marilyn Quayle warning us not to “turn away from the values that brought us here.”
1996: Back to Chicago, peaceful this time. President Clinton wants to build a “Bridge to the 21st Century.” Bob Dole’s in San Diego, thinking more about Clinton’s past. He wails, “Where’s the outrage?” Dole is introduced by his wife Elizabeth who walks through the crowd with a handheld mike, delivering a speech that resembles a TV talk show monologue.
2000: George W. Bush promises to be a “compassionate conservative” and says his critics “don’t know my heart.” Al Gore promises to be “my own man.”
I’ve moved to Los Angeles, and so have the Dems, taking over the brand new Staples Center. Like most of the media, I’m in a trailer in the parking lot. But when VP nominee Joe Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew like me, gives his speech, I’m right there on the convention floor, thanks to an understanding boss who got me a pass.
2004: As you probably know, newspeople get to see advance copies of candidates’ speeches. Addressing his hometown crowd in Boston, John Kerry was supposed to open by saying, “I’m John Kerry and I love this country.” But for four days, the Democrats had been playing up Kerry’s military background, hoping, just this once, that the Republicans wouldn’t monopolize the flags and the guns. So instead he salutes and says, “I’m John Kerry and I’m reporting for duty!” The place explodes. The Swift Boaters take notes.
President Bush leads his party into Enemy Territory. Heavily Democratic New York, at the very same Madison Square Garden. Thousands protest outside. They’re mocked by everyone inside. The RNC builds a huge round podium in the center of the floor for Bush’s speech. And that lectern doesn’t really have a cross on it, does it?
2008: Someday, people will write about how the Democrats filled a football stadium and the Republicans plucked a star from Alaska. Me, I just had a blast watching it all. I always do!
Jerry Girard spent 21 years as sports anchor on WPIX-TV in New York City. He died on March 25, 2007, at the age of 74.
When the Mets got into the 1986 World Series, Tom Brokaw anchored from Shea Stadium. When the Red Sox won the 2004 Series, it was the lead story on local newscasts across the country. Whenever a popular pro or college coach is hired or fired, AP runs an URGENT that BEEEEPs newsroom computers from coast to coast. And when a big name player of any sport gets into some kind of legal trouble, you’ll see it on Page One, not just in the sports section.
Yep, we Americans have always loved our sports, and our sports figures. And since newsroom staffs have always had generous helpings of supercharged sports fans, it’s only natural that the Big Game… or the Big Move… or the Big Player’s Big Blunder will get Big Coverage… perhaps even Excessive Coverage, but hey, we may be journalists, but we’re also human, we’re fans, we’re entitled to our occasional excesses, and we usually get our perspective back in balance fairly quickly.
And sometimes we don’t.
Tony La Russa, the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals was recently arrested for drunk driving. Certainly a dumb move on his part, and one would expect some media coverage to jump past the sports pages and bleed into the A block. Especially if it’s a slow news day.
Only it wasn’t.
On that same day, the public schools of St. Louis lost their accreditation. A state takeover loomed, and thousands of children… not to mention their parents, their parents’ property values, the city’s image and most likely its bond rating… would all be negatively impacted. A huge embarrassment and a huge story. Just not sexy.
That night, three St. Louis television stations led their newscasts with La Russa’s indiscretion.
We heard the usual justifications. News directors said yes, the school story was much more important and affected many more people (it’s not clear who is affected by the La Russa story… perhaps his bartender), but the La Russa story was what most viewers were interested in hearing about. Statistics from newspaper websites appear to bear that out. The La Russa story was read ten times more often than the schools story, even on sites where the schools story was the lead.
Look, this is not another bleat from an old-timer who wants to go back to the fictitious good old days when newscasts broadcast only what viewers need to know, as opposed to what they want to know (never happened). Nor is it a plea to turn every local newscast into PBS or C-SPAN.
But newspeople get paid to use judgment. Not just to take polls.
The local media latched onto La Russa the way the rest of us latch onto Paris Hilton. They turned a piece of gossip about an individual’s stupid mistake into World War III, and the real news of the day suffered for it.
Whether or not that’s the current news climate, it is still bad news judgment and wrongheaded priorities.
Ironically, a St. Louis sports guy got it right:
“You’d think the president had been assassinated, the banks had been robbed,” says Kevin Slaten, a sportstalk host on KFNS Radio. “Is it a big story? Absolutely not! We live in an ‘Entertainment Tonight’ society.”
Sanity from the sports department!
Indeed, a perfect segue to a few personal thoughts about a man who personified that kind of levelheadedness. Jerry Girard, who recently passed away.
Jerry did sports at WPIX-TV in New York City. I worked in that newsroom for two years, and I was privileged to watch Jerry work and get to know him.
Jerry was a nice man, quiet and self-effacing, but with a razor sharp wit that could send you falling to the floor laughing with just a couple of words… on or off the air. He knew his sports cold. He approached the job as a fan (for my money the best sportscasters do that) and as a writer (his previous gig before getting his on-camera break). That combination of qualities made him a unique talent, and a star for 21 years in a city that’s famous for unceremoniously casting out less-than-authentic sportscasters.
With all that, Jerry also stayed grounded in reality. He handled sports as it should be handled… as fun and games, not the Apocalypse.
I think Jerry would shake his head in disbelief over the La Russa coverage. He’d probably unleash an appropriately pithy remark that would crack us up, and pull us back to our better selves. He’ll be missed.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has rejected a request by C-SPAN to take control of the House TV cameras.
Since 1979 when the system was installed, those cameras have been under sole control of the Speaker (Tip O’Neill at the time) and the rules have permitted only head-on wide and close-up shots of the proceedings.
C-SPAN, which has carried House and Senate sessions for decades now, wanted the ability to pan the House chamber, take reaction shots, and give a more complete and thorough sense of what’s taking place on the floor. C-SPAN chief Brian Lamb made the same request of the Republican leadership in 1980 and was also turned down.
C-SPAN had clearly hoped that a change in leadership and direction in Congress would translate into a more open atmosphere regarding TV coverage, but apparently this is not the case, and it’s not hard to figure out why.
In a word, power.
No politician who achieves power is apt to give it up voluntarily. Control of the camera is awesome power. The Speaker can make sure the public never sees that angry exchange between two Members off in the corner. Or Republican and Democratic representatives laughing and chatting with each other when a supposedly “bitter” House debate is taking place. In short, the facade is kept in place.
In rare cases, that power of the camera can be wielded in an act of partisan vengeance, as Speaker O’Neill did in 1984, when he wanted to show how Republicans were making Special Orders speeches before an empty chamber. O’Neill violated the very rules he had set up, and ordered the cameras to pan all the vacant seats.
Awesome power. So why should Speaker Pelosi give it up?
Because this is America, the work of the Congress is the people’s business, and the people have a right to see it. All of it. Not just the parts the politicians care to show us.
The argument against C-SPAN’s request warns against TV broadcasters, with their thirst for “drama” and “conflict”, going too far, abusing their new privilege, and hyping the coverage with exaggerated shots, out-of-context moves, and who knows what else. The fear is that the completeness of the record and the dignity of the House will be compromised.
Please.
This is C-SPAN we’re talking about! The guys who salivate at the chance to televise four-hour subcommittee hearings, onerous think-tank presentations, and endless news conferences in their oppressive entirety, with all the “drama” of watching grass grow. Nobody plays it straighter. Or duller, frankly, but in this case, dull is a good thing.
C-SPAN can be relied upon to bring us the House as it really is. C-SPAN is independent, non-partisan, non-profit, and not concerned with ratings or dollars.
I also suspect the public trusts C-SPAN a lot more than any politician of any party.
Speaker Pelosi, I urge you to reconsider. Show us it really is a new day on Capitol Hill.
Gerald Ford, a Republican Congressman from Grand Rapids, Michigan was House Minority Leader when President Richard Nixon chose him in 1973 to replace Vice President Spiro Agnew who had resigned in a bribery scandal. Ford became the 38th President of the United States in 1974 when Nixon resigned as a result of the Watergate scandal. Ford, the first un-elected VP and President, failed to win a term in his own right, losing to Jimmy Carter in 1976. Ford died on December 26, 2006. He was 93.
Please don’t call him the “caretaker” President.
“Caretaker” conjures up an image of some mindless clockwatcher who shuffles through his daily chores and turns out the lights when he leaves.
This website has always been about words used by journalists, and, in my opinion, too many newspeople are playing follow-the-leader and putting the “caretaker” label on President Ford.
Sure, he wasn’t elected. He never even wanted the job. Maybe his administration had less than monumental achievements. But Gerald Ford did achieve something few U.S. Presidents have been able to do.
He took away the hurt.
I’m a lifelong Democrat. I voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976. But I was a fan of Gerald Ford, and I always will be.
Ford took office at the end of almost a decade of painful turmoil in this country that ripped us apart. Vietnam. Watergate. If you’re old enough to remember, you know exactly how it felt. If you’re a little younger, let me tell you. It was excruciating. Watching the daily news reports tracking the destruction and body counts from a war no one supported. Then the slow twisting of the Watergate knife, as the country came to the realization that its chief executive and many of the people around him were criminals besmirching the Presidency. The inexorable closing in, the committees, the Saturday Night Massacre, the Tapes, the Expletives Deleted, the Articles of Impeachment, the uncertainty… would he or won’t he?
And then he was gone. And Gerald Ford took the oath and said, “We’ve got a lot of work to do. Let’s get on with it.”
You could almost hear the nation exhale. The long national nightmare was over!
All of a sudden, Mr. I-Am-Not-A-Crook gave way to the Anti-Crook. The Imperial Presidency dissolved. The Down-To-Earth President was here. The conniving Enemies List compiler was gone, replaced by a man who, in Bob Dole’s words, didn’t have any enemies!
Before he carried out a single Presidential act, people liked Gerald Ford. Not because of anything he’d done. Because of all the things we knew he would not do. That was enough. Decency had returned to the White House. And it felt good.
Sure, he pardoned Nixon, and some folks still can’t forgive him for that. I can. And I give him extra decency points for going up to Capitol Hill, and letting Congress grill him over that pardon. Can you imagine our current White House occupant doing that? Can you imagine the last White House occupant doing that, without a battery of lawyers advising him what “is”, is?
I have other memories. Watching him good-naturedly doing a bit on Saturday Night Live, the show that relentlessly ridiculed him. Or hearing him repeat the one line he maintained, all the years of his life, whenever the question was asked of him: “Betty and I have always been pro-choice.” He knew where his party stood. He didn’t care. The man was fearless and he told the truth. And then there was The Speech. Not the inaugural address everyone remembers. The acceptance speech at the 1976 Republican Convention, after fighting off a challenge by Mr. Charisma, Ronald Reagan. What a pleasant surprise! The guy dismissed as a plodding, flat speaker, coming out on top, and then giving ‘em rhetorical Hell (well, Heck, maybe) and the crowd loving it.
A couple more votes and he would have won in November, too.
He was a moral man who didn’t moralize. He didn’t preach at us, talk down to us, or ignore us. He never got high and mighty, and he stayed the same until the day he died.
And he respected the press.
Much more than a caretaker, Mr. Ford could be better compared to a first responder. The guy who sees you lying there, battered and bleeding, and tells you reassuringly, “Don’t worry. You’re going to be just fine.”
Rest in peace, sir. And thank you.
I work in a TV newsroom in Los Angeles. When our assignment desk gets word of a police pursuit, it’s as if a signal has been given to go into battle mode. The desk orders our helicopter to launch, while as many ground crews as possible scramble to track the pursuit and anticipate where it may end. Each time the pursuit suspect changes course, turns a corner, or circles back, the assignment editors bark out instructions to move the crews accordingly. In the next room, several recording decks begin taping the chase as soon as pictures are available.
We often break into normal programming to cover pursuits live, complete with special graphics, a police expert on the phone, and a general sense of urgency. If the chase happens to begin during a newscast, all previously written stories get thrown out, as coverage is focused on the pursuit, and nothing else.
Once the pursuit concludes, video of its final moments is replayed several times. L.A. stations also do a kind of macho dance with each other. None wants to be the last one to leave the chase, so usually, all of them stay on too long.
While all this goes on, two other things happen. Viewers bombard the assignment desk with phone calls, complaining (newswriters, PA’s and others are frequently pressed into service to handle the phones). And ratings skyrocket.
Obviously, ratings are why stations work so hard and spend so much money to cover chases. Live police pursuits are potentially powerful, even gripping television, played out on turf familiar to most Angelenos… our many miles of freeways. People relate to pursuits. They tune in. They call each other. They log onto special websites devoted to tracking chases and notifying subscribers when they happen. Pursuits get big numbers.
If only they were legitimate news.
With a few rare exceptions, there’s absolutely nothing newsworthy about a typical police pursuit of some yutz who steals a car, or who may be drunk, or who has an expired tag and failed to pull over. Viewers learn nothing and the story does not even remotely affect their lives. But since it’s live, and since it’s action, and since we have the technology, we put it on the air, and let folks watch it the way they watch NASCAR, hoping for a wreck. Meantime all the truly important stories of the day disappear, along with all the hard work (especially by us writers!) that went into them.
Now and then, some brave station managers have dared to set limits on chase coverage, or even banned pursuits entirely. But it never sticks. The ratings are too tempting.
Also, I’m afraid to say, there’s a new generation of producers out there who ignore the “News” part of “Breaking News.” As long as it’s happening right now, that’s good enough for them, whether it’s a chase, a war, or a party at the Playboy mansion.
The LAPD is gradually learning new tactics for cutting pursuits short. That will help somewhat. But the only real way to get pursuits off the air is to use the same weapon that got them on the air:
The ratings.
Station managers examine those numbers in obsessive detail, minute by minute. The moment they see ratings trend downward during chases, they will stop covering them.
So, bottom line, it’s up to all of us viewers. If we keep watching, that’s a guarantee of more of the same in the future.
http://newswriting.com/archives/
After Virginia Tech
On April 16, 2007, Seung-Hui Cho, a senior at Virginia Tech, shot and killed 32 people and wounded 17 others in two separate attacks, approximately two hours apart, before committing suicide. In between the attacks, Cho mailed a package of writings and recordings to NBC News.The horrible story followed the predictable media track. The initial shocking events, newspeople scrambling to figure them out, spotty coverage evolving into a full-blown, wall-to-wall, music-and-graphics-enhanced “special reports.” Anchors flying to the scene. Satellite trucks sprouting on campus like weeds out of control. “Camp OJ” redux. Anyone and everyone remotely connected to the story getting his or her 15 seconds of fame. It all had a very familiar feel. We’ve done this before.
Then Cho’s package arrived at NBC.
Suddenly, on top of all the usual excesses, the media had a piece of grotesque perversion to examine, and to air. But should they air it? And should they air it again? And again? And again?
Yes. And no. No. NO!
Watching Cho’s maniacal rantings reminded me of the twisted “manifesto” offered by the Unabomber years ago. You really didn’t need to watch or read all of it. A few lines, a few seconds, and you had everything. You clearly understand it came from a crazed mind, and no matter how much more of it you ingest, that’s all you’d ever know.
So, once you know it, stop showing it.
It was not wrong to broadcast Cho’s video once, despite concerns about the feelings of bereaved families or the possibility of copycat threats. One can feel sympathy for the victims’ loved ones, but news organizations cannot afford to censor themselves based on that sympathy. If we did, no war, no terrorist act, no earthquake, no story of any consequence involving victims could ever be covered properly. As for the copycats, they’ll be out there either way.
But once the story has been told, enough is enough.
I sincerely hope the responsible news media will put the Cho material away, never to be shown again, certainly never to be used as conventional “file tape” or “wallpaper video.” Like the pictures of the planes hitting the World Trade Center. Store it for historical purposes, and issue the appropriate warnings to your people not to pull it off the shelf. I suspect most news organizations will comply. The tabloids, the infotainers, the talk shows, and now the webheads, the bloggers… they’re another story. Restraint is not their calling card. And that’s a shame. It may be wishful thinking, but one would hope even they pull back a little this time.
One more thing. May God bless the memory of Liviu Librescu, the heroic professor and Holocaust survivor who put his body in the doorway so his students could escape Cho’s bullets and get away through a window.
Think about it. Think about that confrontation. A young, twisted individual mad at the world for the “evil” he imagined… like rich kids who ignored him. A 76-year-old man who saw real evil in his lifetime, and instead of turning evil or violent himself, he sacrificed himself for his fellow man without giving it a second thought. The best, and the worst of humanity, on two sides of one door.
Imus
On his CBS Radio show (simulcast on MSNBC) of April 4, 2007, Don Imus referred to members of the Rutgers University women’s basketball team with phrases universally considered to be racist. After vocal protests from many quarters, Imus apologized and agreed to meet with the Rutgers team. MSNBC suspended Imus, and later fired him. CBS dropped him as well. Imus sued CBS for breach of contract. The case was settled, and by November of that year, Imus returned to the air on Citadel radio stations and RFD-TV.Yeah, I know, his sorry story has nothing to do with Newswriting per se, but it’s my website, so…
As a young intern just starting out at NBC in New York, I was concerned that a 20-something Orthodox Jew wearing a kippah (skullcap) on my head might not be readily accepted. My concerns dissolved on my first day when a gruff baritone voice behind me bellowed, “Your hat’s too small, babe!”
It was Don Imus’s way of saying Hello.
Imus said a terrible, outrageous and inexcusable thing about the Rutgers women’s basketball team. Imus has been saying terrible, outrageous and inexcusable things for 30 years, about everybody, every race, every religion, every orientation, every political affiliation. It’s his shtick. It may even be his real personality. Does that make it OK? No. But anyone who thinks Imus singled out one particular group for extra verbal abuse, is wrong. Which is why I found it surprising that one group took it on themselves to single him out, why it mushroomed into a crusade, and why Imus is no longer on the air.
Granted, I’m prejudiced. I know the guy. I also don’t belong to the group Imus offended, so I can’t fully grasp their outrage. That’s the normal human condition in our still-racist world. We protect our own first, and even if we’re evolved enough to show outrage when another group is hurt, the passion is never the same. So on that basis alone, I’m not objective. Still, shouldn’t the criticism be spread more evenly, and at a level that properly fits the crime?
Imus apologized. He agreed to meet with the Rutgers team. He was suspended. It wasn’t enough for the interests bent on “winning one.” So the advertisers were pressured, and Imus was gone. Meantime Ann Coulter calls a presidential candidate a faggot, smirks her way through an “Oh, grow up” non-apology, a couple of papers pull her column, and she’s back on Fox News a few days later like nothing happened. Makes you think.
When News Hurts
Tim Russert, NBC’s Washington bureau chief and moderator of Meet The Press, died suddenly on June 13, 2008. He was 58.Now that some time has passed, and perhaps a bit of the pain and emotion have run their course, I want to say a couple of things about the loss of Tim Russert and how we in the media handled it.
I never met Mr. Russert, though we worked at NBC at roughly the same time, he in Washington and I in New York. I knew him only by reputation and always found him to be a solid, well-informed, hardworking and effective Washington Bureau Chief and Meet The Press moderator. His achievements and successes are well known. He was very good at what he did and he seemed to take great pleasure in his work, always with that smile, that twinkle in his eye. He was beloved among his colleagues and co-workers. His death is a tremendous blow to NBC in both professional and personal terms, which begins to explain what unfolded there, in the hours and days that followed.
The coverage took a familiar and predictable track. Total shock led to saturation reporting which evolved into elaborate tributes, glowing eulogies and memorials, followed by considerable speculation about who should, or could, replace Mr. Russert, until, inevitably, a few isolated voices gingerly began to say things like, “Enough already!” or “Isn’t there any real news going on today??” They meant no disrespect. They were trying to point out, insensitively perhaps, that the media, especially NBC, had perhaps taken advantage of their access to the public airwaves by over-covering one of their own, creating the perception that they were pushing legitimate news off to the side, to the detriment of the viewers. This opinion, I suspect, may have added to the anguish felt by those who knew and admired Mr. Russert and were still grieving for him.
Another, less publicized element of the story is the fact that NBC didn’t report it right away. The network waited about an hour, until it was certain that all members of Russert’s family had been notified. NBC also asked other media organizations to wait, and they complied (Ironically, one didn’t. One of NBC’s Web vendors assumed the news had already become public, so an employee there updated Russert’s bio on Wikipedia even before Tom Brokaw went on the air with the announcement. The employee was disciplined).
So far I haven’t seen or read any criticism of the decision to sit on the story, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it does materialize. Barring bona fide concerns of national security or a massive lawsuit, newspeople don’t like to hold back information and we don’t like it when colleagues do it, either.
So we have two questions to consider:
- Was NBC wrong to hold the story, even for that short time?
- Once the story did come out, was the coverage over-the-top?
The answer to both questions is yes.
But that’s not the whole answer.
The rest of the answer is, don’t worry about it.
A few years ago, two young desk assistants where I work were killed in a small plane crash. Their deaths hit us very hard. I still remember how dark and quiet our newsroom got when we heard the news, just a few moments after we’d gone off the air with our 10pm show. People cried. Some of us just stood there. We couldn’t move. We stayed that way for quite a long while. The next morning we began to report the story… just a small plane crash, carrying some young people most of our viewers had never heard of. But those kids were our family. We made it our lead story, not just that day, but day after day, until all the funerals were over. We pushed bigger stories aside. We spent far more time on this personal tragedy of ours than we would normally devote to anything similar where the people involved are not known to us. Make no mistake, we knew what we were doing, and we understood that maybe some viewers might wonder about it. We didn’t care. There would be plenty of time later to go back to “normal” news coverage, but right now, we didn’t feel very normal, and the viewers were just going to have to forgive us.
The people at NBC (and their colleagues throughout the news community) were being human. They’d been hit hard, abruptly, unexpectedly, with the worst possible news. A great friend was snatched away, right in front of them. When that happens to you, it hurts, and you do what you have to do, to deal with the hurt. You’re thinking about people, family, feelings… not “Is this the proper thing to do, journalistically speaking?”
Of course NBC held the story until the family was told. It was the human thing to do, to spare loved ones even more pain. And of course they poured their emotions into hour after hour of coverage. That’s how grieving people express their grief.
We forget sometimes that news organizations are made up of people with feelings. Maybe that’s because we’re so good at detaching ourselves from tragic events in order to report them clearly and fairly. So naturally we get a few crooked glances when the tragedy happens to us, our human side asserts itself, and detached objectivity dissolves away. Fine. Let the critics point it out, let them say, “Aha!” a few times. No big deal. It’s temporary. Our newsroom eventually returned to normal after we lost our two young friends, and NBC quickly pulled itself together as well.
To tell you the truth, it was enlightening to watch NBC during those sad days. We were privileged to see a different, very vulnerable side of some of the industry’s top professionals. It was comforting, in a way, to see that some things matter more than news, and we’re really all the same when it comes to the truly important things.
Civil War
On November 27, 2006, NBC was the first news organization to declare the 31/2-year-old war in Iraq a “Civil War.” The White House strongly criticized the network for using that term.
Civil War has broken out in Iraq. NBC says so.
The network took a great deal of criticism for deciding to use what apparently is quite a controversial terminology. Most of the finger-pointing, I believe, is undeserved. But maybe not all of it.
It’s ludicrous to accuse NBC, as some on the right have done, of having a “political agenda” or even of being “anti-White House.” Reasonable people understand that a news organization’s agenda is simple: Be absolutely accurate, be absolutely clear, and be absolutely impossible to ignore. This agenda remains in place regardless of who’s in power in Washington. NBC News, like most legitimate news organizations, has a long history of annoying leaders from both parties who never seem to get the fact that what’s news and how it’s defined, isn’t up to them.
Some of the critics, however, come from within the journalism community and are anything but “right wing.” I suspect their main complaint arises from that third part of the news agenda. They believe NBC took this step not only in the interest of accuracy and clarity, but to stand out among its competitors, to grab some attention and perhaps even get some higher ratings, temporarily at least.
NBC will swear it isn’t so, and I hope that’s the case. But the drive to be “first” is part of every news operation, and it very likely played a role here (yes, technically they weren’t “first.” The Los Angeles Times and others have used “Civil War” from time to time, but NBC got there first in the only race it cares about… the TV news ratings race). Also, NBC had to know its decision would create an uproar and plenty of attention. That’s hard to resist, even when your motives are pure.
Then there are the critics who take a semantic tack. They raise up a centuries-old definition of Civil War and make the claim that, in the strictest terms, Iraq isn’t there yet. In other words, until a row of gray-uniformed men point their muskets at a row of blue-uniformed men, it ain’t Civil War. I’m neither semanticist nor historian, so I really can’t say much here, except to point out that definitions evolve with the times, and ultimately, the media, as a reflection of the larger culture, will play the greater role in defining these terms… they won’t be imposed on the public by scholars, or by government entities trying to manage events and perceptions.
Political agendas come from politicians. They call armed militias “insurgents” and “dead-enders.” They call wave after wave of religious and revenge-fueled mass murder “sectarian violence.” When they knew the country couldn’t stomach another war after WWII they called Korea a “police action.” And they never called Vietnam a Civil War, and they’ll never call Iraq a Civil War, because once they do, support at home will evaporate. So Vietnam became the central front in the Cold War, and Iraq is the central front in the War on Terror.
The media’s job is to speak truth to power. NBC is doing its job.
Is It Our Fault? Are You Kidding?
Texas Congressman Ron Paul and his loyal followers made loads of libertarian noise during the 2008 presidential campaign, but couldn’t convert all that fervor into votes. The Paul camp frequently blamed the media for that. I respectfully disagreed.I’ve been struggling with this column for several days. I want to be respectful of Ron Paul and his supporters. But their repeated complaint that the Texas Congressman never stood a chance in the Presidential race solely because he has been ignored, minimized or somehow cheated by the national media must be answered.
There’s no doubt that Mr. Paul has attracted a loyal and vocal following. He has demonstrated a degree of campaign savvy with his YouTube videos and fundraising-via-Web strategy.
But is he a viable candidate for President? Was he ever?
In primary after primary, caucus after caucus, voters emphatically said, “No!”
Nevertheless, after each of those contests, as well as after every debate and every new poll, Paul’s loyalists flooded the phone lines to talk radio shows, to C-SPAN, to the national networks. They bombarded the blogs. The refrain is always the same: “Why aren’t you covering him? Why do you dismiss him? Why are you denying him his chance?” Their implication seems to be that if we in the media did our jobs right, Ron Paul would be running away with the nomination.
No, he wouldn’t.
Remember, this long Presidential campaign began over a year ago with literally dozens of contenders traipsing through the snowy streets of Iowa and New Hampshire for months on end, then standing side-by-side on one crowded debate stage after another. Voters in those states got a good long and up-close look at everybody. They didn’t need the media. They met the candidates in the coffee shops, the hair salons, the American Legion halls. They sat through countless town meetings and asked voluminous questions.
Armed with all that information, Iowa and New Hampshire chose. They didn’t pick Ron Paul. Or Tom Tancredo. Or Duncan Hunter. Or Mike Gravel. Or even Chris Dodd or Joe Biden.
The difference between Paul and the other also-rans? They understood the will of the people and the realities of politics, and they quickly got out. Ron Paul stayed in, blamed the media and continues to do so.
With all due respect, the media didn’t make Ron Paul a fringe candidate. He did. And the voters did.
Having failed at local, retail campaigning in the first two states, Mr. Paul somehow believed he could move ahead into a national campaign as if nothing had happened. But it takes much more than a website and a handful of ideas (I will not pass judgment on Paul’s views or positions, but here again, the voters have already done so) to mount a successful race. It takes proven leadership ability, superior organizational skills, fundraising prowess far beyond a few million dollars, and the capability of appealing to a broad range of voters, not just a small band of hardcore loyalists.
Ron Paul has exhibited none of the above. It doesn’t make him a bad person, or an ineffective Congressman. He may very likely be reelected in his home district. But he’s no national candidate. He will complain that the he was unable to get his message out. But the millions he raised on the Internet is supposed to be spent on doing exactly that: Getting out the message. So why didn’t he?
(I’m tempted to say many of the same things about Dennis Kucinich, who complained not only about the media but also about being excluded from some debates. However, behind Mr. Kucinich’s bluster lies a truly empty candidacy which has already been exposed, beautifully, by LA Weekly reporter Dwayne Booth who labored in near-Roger And Me style to get five minutes with the candidate.)
With all this, there are still those who will accuse the media of playing favorites, building up personalities, and ignoring the “little guys,” effectively dooming their campaigns. Those accusations may or may not have some merit. But the fact is, this year, perhaps more than ever before, it hasn’t made any difference. Because the voters have seen through any alleged media bias and made their own decisions.
Don’t believe me? Wasn’t Rudy Giuliani supposed to be the “national frontrunner?” Wasn’t Mike Huckabee supposed to disappear early? Wasn’t Fred Thompson going to be the savior of the conservatives? Wasn’t John McCain’s campaign supposed to collapse? Wasn’t Hillary Clinton going to cruise to the nomination without breaking a sweat?
To paraphrase a corporate slogan I detest: We reported. You decided.
Tom Snyder
Longtime TV personality Tom Snyder died on July 29, 2007. He was 71.He was always my favorite.
The cigarette smoke…
The unforgettable laugh..
The HAIR!
Tom Snyder was one-of-a-kind.
An anchorman who seemed too big for the job.
An up-close-and-personal talk show host who always asked the questions we wanted to ask. A conversationalist who at least sounded well-prepared, even when he really wasn’t!
After watching just a few editions of his Tomorrow show in the early ‘70’s, I was hooked. Here was a talk show you could curl up on the couch with, sink into the back-and-forth between Tom and his famous, infamous and often outright weird guests, as if they were right there in the room with you. There was nothing else like it.
Everybody noticed.
In those early years Don Imus was asked about TV personalities. Imus said he hated them all. Except one. “Snyder,” he said.
NBC was so high on Snyder, there were almost daily rumors about him taking over the Nightly News or even The Tonight Show. The network rolled out one magazine show after another to showcase him. Dan Ackroyd did Snyder almost better than Snyder did.
Tom even showed up in the movies, sort of. One memorable scene had a crazed criminal suspect surrendering to police while saying, “Where’s Tom Snyder? I want Tom Snyder!!”
When WNBC brought Snyder to New York to anchor the 6pm hour of NewsCenter4, I was able to watch him twice a day, doing two entirely different things. Tom never seemed as comfortable behind the anchor desk as on his talk show set. For one thing, the smoking had to go. Only it didn’t. Once, as a reporter’s package ended, they cut back to Snyder with the offending cigarette still in his mouth. For a split second he looked terrified. Like a shot, he put down the cigarette, then, realizing it was too late, he smiled broadly, held up the still-smoky butt, looked right in the camera and said, “Hey, why should I deny it?”
Another time he closed the newscast with his favorite Thanksgiving turkey recipe, which basically involved marinating the bird in six different kinds of booze, throwing away the turkey and drinking what was left. “You won’t really have a Thanksgiving dinner,” he said, barely stifling his trademark laugh, “But you really won’t care!” NOW the laugh burst forth, and when it finally died down, Tom invited us to tune in next month… for his Christmas goose recipe!
Tom had that rare quality that jumped right through the TV screen and grabbed you. It almost didn’t matter what he was saying. He was just fun to watch, and I always made a point of getting as much Snyder as I could. It was a shame when his star began to decline. NBC paired him with gossip reporter Rona Barrett on Tomorrow, a disaster. Not long after, when Tomorrow ended, Tom made a classy exit, simply fading to black (he said he wanted to go out the way he came in) with his simple “Good Night Everybody!”
He had some tough years. He made a health club infomercial. Then he got a radio gig, another shot at local news in New York which flopped, then a CNBC show, thrown into a mix of mediocre talkers. Only when he surfaced on the CBS Late Late Show, which David Letterman created for him, did some of the old spark appear to return.
TV hasn’t been the same, or as good, since he retired. And it’s sad that there won’t be another Snyder comeback. Can you imagine what he would have done with a Paris Hilton? Or a Lindsay Lohan? Or a George W. Bush! And who else out there today has the whimsy to invite us to “fire up the Colortini and watch the pictures as they fly through the air?”
He will be missed.
It’s Personal
During a confrontational May Day 2007 rally in Los Angeles, several reporters were injured, it is claimed, through deliberate actions by members of the L.A. Police Department. Several lawsuits were filed and eventually settled. At least two of the injured journalists were personal friends of mine.My friend, reporter Christina Gonzalez has returned to work. Limping. Can’t move her shoulder. She may need surgery. Our colleague, photographer Patti Ballaz has a broken wrist. She may never lift a camera again.
On May 1, 2007, Patti, Christina and a bunch of other journalists were pushed, shoved, struck, knocked to the ground and otherwise roughed up by officers of the Los Angeles Police Department.
This incident has made me so angry I’ve had to struggle to find the right words to express my rage responsibly. The incident at MacArthur Park is being investigated half a dozen different ways. There will be personnel changes. There will be lawsuits. There will be reforms. And frankly, I don’t want to get in the way, mess anything up, or say more than the victims themselves have already said.
But the very idea that members of the media landed in the hospital because cops put them there makes my blood boil and turns my stomach.
Yes, police were trying to clear out a group of rowdy protesters who were throwing things at them. And yes, the officers’ superiors have offered up stuff like, “an aberration.” “over the top,“ or, incredibly, the rationalization that the cops lost control because, well, cops lose control easily!
Sorry, not buying it.
In the first place, law enforcers should not be lawbreakers. California law clearly allows journalists to be exactly where they were, and to do exactly what they were doing. None of this “We gave you those press passes and we can take them away” hogwash. No, you can’t.
Second, “losing control” doesn’t begin to explain what happened out there. It doesn’t explain why one journalist got knocked down and heard laughter from the cop who did it. It doesn’t explain why another reporter got shoved to the ground and was immediately told to get up again, by an officer who clearly was making it up at he went along. And it doesn’t explain why officers fired pellets at a crew in a news van. A stationary, parked news van.
Third, where’s all that great LAPD training? Is anyone going to say, with a straight face, that Los Angeles Police officers are incapable of clearing a crowd without breaking a cameraperson’s bones??
You also probably know this is not the first time, which is one reason why the LAPD remains the only police force in the country under the scrutiny of a Federal consent order.
But will things really change now? Can anyone or anything break the disgusting Us Against Them culture so inbred at the LAPD?
Maybe. Because like it or not, fair or unfair, it makes a difference when you attack a journalist.
Had those police batons come down only on protesters’ heads, it would have still been reprehensible, but a day later nobody would be talking about it. But the cops smacked reporters who were doing their jobs, and those reporters’ colleagues got mad and made sure the whole world saw it, again and again. Chief William Bratton, the most media-savvy police chief L.A. has ever had, desperately wants to maintain his almost mythical reputation as America’s Top Cop who brings down crime rates wherever he goes. He also wants to keep his job, now up for renewal. And he knows he blew it. So he just may work extra hard to fix it.
The early signs are encouraging. Bratton demoted two commanders and expressed his own personal outrage. More important, two weeks after the MayDay Melee (we media types have to give everything a catchy name) another protest took place in the same park, there were plenty of police, everything was peaceful, and no one laid a hand on any journalist.
Let’s hope it stays that way. I promise you, we’ll be watching.
Dear President-Elect Obama
Barack Obama was elected America’s 44th President on November 4, 2008.Congratulations on your impressive and historic victory. As you prepare to take on the enormous tasks before you, it’s worth taking a moment to consider the role the media will play in your administration.
You’ve emerged from a long, grueling campaign in which whole sections of the press were, at different times, demonized, ridiculed, belittled, held up to mass anger, and, occasionally, kicked off the bus.
You are also succeeding a president and administration that routinely practiced secrecy and deception, while favoring “friendly” media, treating such “friends” as a virtual public relations arm of the White House.
The climate has been unhealthy, but you have the opportunity to change it, just as you promise to change the rancorous political climate in our country.
I hope you’ll take these recommendations to heart:
Play It Straight. A secrecy-obsessed administration is a doomed administration. There can be no better way to begin to unite our country than by keeping its citizens fully informed. Your calls for service and sacrifice will be received enthusiastically only if the public fully understands what you intend to do, and how you intend to do it. We in the media are your vehicle to help you achieve this. It is part of our historic and constitutional mission. A free people must get their information from a free press. Tell us frankly and clearly what your plans are, and we will communicate the message.
Expect And Accept Bumps. Inevitably members of the media will criticize you and your policies. I hope you’ll always remember that reporters who ask tough questions or expose deficiencies are not the enemy. They are doing their job and their patriotic duty. It may be tempting to blame us or accuse us of bias when things go badly. Every president has done it at one time or another. It’s a bad habit too many politicians have cultivated. Break it.
We’re All The Same. Even When We’re Not. Please don’t play media favorites. How embarrassing it was to hear the Secretary of State praise “my Fox guys. I love every one of them!” How ridiculous to learn that the Vice President insisted on viewing only one news network on all the TV’s in his line of sight. How disturbing it was to read reports that journalists from two conservative newspapers were taken off your campaign plane because of “space limitations” while Ebony and Jet kept their seats. In a free society with a free press, no journalist deserves to be frozen out, nor do any of us want to “cozy up” to the government. Tolerance of all is essential, while a healthy, respectful distance is maintained Journalists and politicians are professionals. Let’s keep the relationship professional as well.
None of this will be easy because it goes against the grain. It’s so different from what has become the norm. But if you really do mean to bring about positive change, this is a great place to start.
Good luck, sir.
Are We Voting Or Betting?
As the 2008 presidential campaign began, some disturbing statistics confirmed the notion that most voters treat the election more like a horse race than a search for the next leader of the free world.I am troubled, though not surprised, by some new findings from the people at the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
They’ve calculated that so far, only 15% of all the broadcast stories about the 2008 presidential campaign deal with the candidates’ positions on issues. Barely 1% of the coverage looked at the candidates’ records. 63% of the stories focused on strategy and politics: who’s ahead in the polls, who’s trailing, who’s made a clever move, who’s committed a tactical blunder, and who’s raised the most money.
The horse race.
Perhaps instead of casting ballots, we should put down two dollars on Win, Place or Show.
I know there’s nothing new about this. Americans seem to be fascinated by polls, and news organizations are only too happy to scratch that itch relentlessly and to the near-exclusion of anything serious.
But we’re choosing the most powerful person on the planet. Shouldn’t our choice be an informed one? And shouldn’t we, as broadcasters, take the lead in supplying that information?
So why don’t we?
Three main reasons, I think.
1. Stories with serious information are harder to produce.
2. They’re not sexy.
3. Nobody else does it, so why should we?
In other words, in our glitz-obsessed, ratings-crazed environment, covering presidential candidates the right way takes too much effort and resources, with no assurance of an increase in viewership. So it’s not worth it, and no station wants to be the first to risk trying it.
I also suspect the candidates are totally aware of this, and even count on it. They know they can keep their messages vague and meaningless, and no one will challenge them. The result is an empty campaign and an ignorant electorate. Candidates appear on Oprah or Leno to sell their personalities more than their positions. And they fill their political ads with slogans and nasty personal attacks.
As a result, the typical voter who gets most of his news from television cannot tell you the difference between Candidates A, B or C on health care, taxes, Iraq, Social Security, education, or anything else that matters. She probably can tell you who’s in first place in the horse race.
Perhaps we broadcasters rationalize our dereliction of duty by pointing to all the “new media” alternatives where in-depth information on the campaign is readily available. But I’m not ready to cede our unique mission to a bunch of websites. We still reach more people in more places than any other means of communication. Our audiences depend on us. We need to step up and give them what they need, not just what we think will hold their attention past the quarter hour.
Here are some ideas for doing that. Things that can be implemented right now.
Make The Daily Commitment: This must be the first step. Simply make the decision that your news operation will produce something meaningful about the campaign, at least once a day. It could be as quick and simple as a 30-second explainer, or a more elaborate piece. The important thing is to set the tone and change the atmosphere in your newsroom, and to stick to it.
Create A Franchise: Grab your best reporter and put him or her on the political beat. Then come up with a catchy name (the consultants can help you here) for a regularly-scheduled, heavily promoted piece on candidates issues. Sell the daylights out of it. Tell the viewers why they should care.
Make The Dull, Un-Dull: A story that just lays out a candidate’s health care plan sounds boring. But what if you found people in your community whose lives would be impacted, positively or negatively, by that plan? A politician’s platitudes about Iraq are one thing. Suppose you ran them past parents who have kids serving in the Gulf? Visit a senior center and show them what could happen to Social Security depending on who gets elected. Watch their reactions!
Become A Resource: Stuff your station’s website with information on every candidate. Cross promote like crazy, just as you would for a sweeps piece or a celebrity interview. If your reporter lands an interview with Hillary Clinton and 1:30 of it makes air, send your viewers to the website to watch the other 20 minutes.
Care! A long time ago I learned I couldn’t get viewers excited about a story unless it got me excited first. Nowhere is this more true, or more crucial, than a presidential election. The stakes could not be higher. Choosing the leader of the free world. But the potential for boredom could not be greater. People hate politics. So help them feel differently. Find the aspects that get your juices going, and communicate that enthusiasm to your audience.
I’m very aware that a handful of visionary stations out there already do many of these things, and do them quite well. Whether it’s a “Reality Check” of a candidate’s speech or a personalization of a complex issue, a bunch of good reporters backed by equally good producers and news directors are showing the way for the rest of us. I applaud them, and I hope more of us follow their example.
One more incentive for getting serious about this. Another recent poll shows a steady, across-the-board decline in the public’s opinion of the news media over the last 20 years. All that marketing, promoting, hyping and selling we’ve done… and we’re losing people!
What are you going to do about it?
No More Debates. Maybe
When the seemingly non-stop debates of the 2008 primary campaign began to take on a circus atmosphere, culminating in a rally-like back-and-forth at the Kodak (now Dolby) Theater in Los Angeles, many criticized the entire process. I was reminded of previous debate seasons, and the isolated bits of nonsense we tend to remember of them.“There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe…”
“There you go again!”
“Where’s the beef?”
“Let me help you with the difference, Mrs. Ferraro…”
“Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”
“Who am I? Why am I here?”
“Maybe we should ask Barack if he’s comfortable and needs another pillow.’’
Recognize them?
Unfortunately, you probably do. They are the “gotcha” lines that stick in our minds after three decades of Presidential and Vice Presidential debates. For many of us, this is the sum total of our debate knowledge and memory. Cute zingers and stupid gaffes.
Since 1976 when Jimmy Carter debated Gerald Ford under the auspices of the League of Women Voters, televised debates have slowly morphed into video spectacles, where the one-liner matters more than a carefully thought out answer, where catching someone in an awkward moment makes a bigger impression than a candidate’s position on an important issue.
Sometimes we don’t even remember the words, but the non-verbal stuff. The sound cutting out during the first Ford-Carter debate. George H.W. Bush looking at his watch. Al Gore sighing, rolling his eyes, and sneaking up behind George W. Bush, and Bush nodding indifference.
Is this any way to pick a president?
Actually, it began in 1960 with the Kennedy-Nixon TV shows. And I’m choosing my words carefully here. I say “TV shows” rather than “debates.” Don Hewitt produced them to be good television. The overwhelming presence of cameras and lights dominated the proceedings. And while radio listeners heard two candidates discussing substance (and most thought Nixon had won), TV viewers were distracted by Nixon’s pallor (he had the flu), his light-colored jacket blending into the backdrop, and of course, those beads of sweat and those shifting eyes. By contrast, they saw Kennedy in his crisp blue suit, looking tanned, healthy and youthful (in fact there was only five years difference between them, and it turns out Kennedy was a lot sicker than we thought). How many people remember anything substantive said by either man?
This all came back to me, and has been gnawing at me, throughout this year’s presidential campaign, starting with those ridiculous 10-or-12-person debates in the early going, on through to the last of the 21 (21!) Obama-Clinton confrontations. Sure, some of it has been powerful television, a ratings windfall for the cable networks, and fuel for the pundits who endlessly pick it all apart.
But have we truly learned anything?
Has television, by bringing us all these debates, increased our knowledge of the candidates, or just made sure we never see and hear anything more than consultant-crafted soundbites and annoyingly superficial irrelevant nonsense? Are we now better equipped to choose the next leader of the free world because television showed us one candidate complaining about always getting the first question and another candidate squirming under a relentless battery of questions about a preacher, and words like “elitist?”
Let me be clear. I have my preferences, but I have not yet chosen a candidate and would be satisfied, more or less, no matter who gets elected. So this is not simply a defense of Barack Obama when I say it was shameful the way ABC’s anchors wasted nearly half of their Philadelphia debate with trivialities, when we are fighting two wars, our economy is taking a nosedive, much of the world looks at us with contempt, our environment is getting a potentially irreversible beating, our public schools are a disgrace, Social Security is heading for a cliff and our health care system needs intensive care.
A year and a half into the process, I believe the typical voter and viewer still doesn’t really know where the candidates stand on critical issues. And we in the TV business are to blame. We created the showbiz atmosphere, the candidates adapted to it, and the viewers are stuck with it.
So let’s fix it.
Step One: Stop the debates, at least for now. So long as we’re incapable of running a debate that deals in substance, we do a disservice to the public by staging superficial spectacles which mislead voters into thinking they’re watching something important.
Step Two: Copy what works, and ratings be damned. Remember CNN’s “Compassion Forum?” Terrible title. Questionable choice of subject matter. But on several levels, the cable network is onto something. Each candidate got a big chunk of time to talk about one subject, without the other candidate getting in the way. And they didn’t just spout platitudes. They had to respond to pointed questions from experts in the audience… in this case, religious leaders asking about issues of faith. Imagine what could be done with, say, health care, with doctors asking the questions. Or the economy, with questions from small business owners or families facing foreclosure. Or Social Security, with questions from seniors worried about their benefits, and their grandchildren worried about paying for them.
If we commit to forcing the candidates to address serious issues in a serious way, they will adapt again, just as they did when we got careless and pointless. Hey, they’ve got no place else to go!
I don’t expect these forums will grab the kind of ratings racked up by that silly farce in Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre, for example. Nevertheless, millions will watch. And maybe, just maybe, they’ll learn.
UnConventional Memories
The Democrats held their 2008 convention at the Pepsi Center in Denver, but moved to the larger, outdoor Invesco Center – a football stadium – for the final night and the acceptance speech by Barack Obama. It was a spectacle that brought back memories of other noteworthy conventions.I love political conventions. The bigness. The screaming crowds. The over-the-top speeches. Even the balloons and funny hats. I find it all very exciting and, as a newswriter, convention time is one of my favorite seasons.
I’ve been watching conventions on TV since 1968 when I was a kid. I’ve been writing about them for TV since 1984 in my first newsroom job. I’ve seen three of them in person.
I also have the kind of weird memory that holds onto obscure details, like a line from a speech nobody else paid attention to, or a picture most people didn’t notice. Of course, like everyone else, I also cherish the “big” moments which get repeated endlessly and often become anchors in our history.
Watching the Democrats in Denver and the Republicans in St. Paul brought back a lot of those big and small memories, which I’d like to share, going back as far as I’m able to recall. Memory being the imperfect tool that it is, I make no claim to absolute accuracy. If you spot an error, shoot me an email… one more opportunity to reminisce, right?
So here goes…
1968: The Republicans were in Miami and Richard Nixon got the nomination (“It’s All Nixon!” screamed the newspaper headlines). Nixon comes out to give his speech, and does that thing with his arms way up in the air. I’m 12 years old and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen him, or anyone else, do that. Walking around on the podium, waving his arms, again, and again, smiling that broad Nixon smile. Maybe I’m just a cynic, or the product of Democratic parents, but watching this scene on TV I keep thinking, ““his looks so fake!” And how did this guy everybody said was washed up, come out of nowhere and pull this off?
The Democratic debacle in Chicago. Mayor Daley cussing at Senator Ribicoff for referring to the “Gestapo” tactics of the Chicago police. Protestors roughed up by cops but managing to shout, “The whole world is watching!”
For an adolescent still figuring out his loyalties and emotions, there was an overwhelming sense of letdown. Eugene McCarthy had fizzled. Bobby Kennedy was dead. And we get… Humphrey? He’s going to end the Vietnam war he’s helped perpetuate with Lyndon Johnson?
The gear. The networks outfitted their floor reporters with mobile equipment that made them look like men from outer space. Big headphones. Bigger antennas coming out of their ears. Enormous backpacks. Wires everywhere. Poor Edwin Newman looked like a beast of burden buckling under the load. And I’m thinking, “Cool! Looks like fun!” I’m starting to think I’d like to do this. I’m very curious about everything going on inside those network “skyboxes” with their big logos plastered across the top, ringing the upper rim of the convention hall.
1972: Both conventions are in Miami (they must really like that Fontainebleu hotel!)
The Republican gathering is basically a Nixon coronation. But the Democrats can’t seem to do anything without drama. Gravel-voiced Jean Westwood trying, and failing to bring the delegates to order. The Illinois delegation getting kicked out. Network reporters on the floor interviewing Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin (“Last time we were outside protesting. Now we’re inside, man!”) George McGovern’s 3:00 AM speech which no one heard.
But I remember a different McGovern moment, at the hotel, when he’s confronted by rabid antiwar protestors who’ve heard a rumor that McGovern may keep a handful of troops in Vietnam.
The protestors ambush McGovern at his door and demand, demand that he pull out every last soldier. McGovern, tired, haggard, using a megaphone to be heard over the angry mob, promises he will. The mob cheers. McGovern appears to be a prisoner of his own supporters.
1976: Jimmy Carter comes to Madison Square Garden! Barbara Jordan keynotes.
Wow! I lived in New York, and boy did I wish I could get inside. Closest I got was a block away, where all the media trucks were camped out, their cables running through the streets, snaking up the walls of the Garden, going through holes in the walls cut out especially for the occasion.
Republicans in Kansas City fought a battle between President Ford who wanted his first full term, and Ronald Reagan, determined to take it for himself.
Ford’s narrow win only accentuated his weakness as an unelected, uncharismatic president. The crowd is wowed by Reagan’s concession remarks. But then Ford speaks. And Mister Plodder turns into Mister Orator! What a surprise! Sure, not a masterful speech, but no question the best one he’s ever given in his life, and the crowd goes nuts!
1980: Donny and Marie (“We’ve got a winning combination, a winning combination, oh yeah!”) performing for the Republicans at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, on a podium ringed with potted plants (I told you I have a weird memory). Speaker after apocalyptic speaker saying this could be “the last political convention.” (The Soviets were in Afghanistan, Americans were held hostage in Iran… doomsday stuff). No real drama about the nominee, so manufactured drama takes its place: Will Reagan really take Ford as his running mate? Nah. But maybe? Nah. Of course not.
Carter and the Democrats come back to New York and guess who gets inside! Finally! A friend with a well-connected father gets us tickets for the upper row. Amazing view. Terrible sound. Nothing but echo. But I brought along a tiny tape recorder. I still have my echo-chamber cassette recording of Senator Ted Kennedy’s amazing speech.
Every time I watch American Experience on PBS and hear Kennedy’s line, “The hope still lives, and the dream shall never die,” I remember that night.
1984: I’ve begun my news career, so now I get to watch the conventions from our New York newsroom, instead of my New York living room. The Republicans meet in Dallas to re-nominate Reagan. Our studio anchor in New York asks our convention anchor in Texas (off the air but on camera), “So how’s Dallas?” She replies, “It’s 110 degrees and the bars close at 2:00!”
When the Democrats pick Walter Mondale in San Francisco I blow the most important part of my assignment. I can’t find Mondale’s quote on taxes on the tape: “Mister Reagan will raise taxes. And so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.” I resolve to take better notes from now on.
1988: The Democrats dress up the Atlanta convention center in pastels, thinking it’ll look better on TV.They get lambasted by critics for replacing the Red, White and Blue with Salmon, Azure and Eggshell.
Michael Dukakis arrives at the podium to Neil Diamond’s Coming To America. He chokes up when talking about his Greek immigrant father. “He’d be very proud of his son.” He then proclaims, “This election isn’t about ideology. It’s about competence.” Republicans make it about flag-burning and Willie Horton. But only after George Bush promises a “kinder, gentler America,” challenges us to “Read my lips,” and aspires to a “thousand points of light,” providing Saturday Night Live with about ten thousand punchlines.
1992: Bill Clinton brings the convention back to Madison Square Garden, where, for the first time, I’m inside as a member of the media. Our work area, just behind the upper seats, is dominated by a high-strung producer we called (behind his back) Guns ‘N Roses because, 1) He carried a pistol and, 2) He stole flowers from a secretary’s desk to decorate his office. He spent most of the convention screaming at people over the phone. I spent part of my time trying to calm him down, the rest of the time staying away from him. I field-produced quirky, offbeat stories, like a profile of the head chef at the Garden, and the schoolkids covering the convention for a local paper. My favorite image (sorry, looked high and low but couldn’t find a photo) was Senator Bill Bradley at the podium, directly beneath his retired New York Knicks jersey (No. 24) hanging from the rafters.
Houston hosted the Republicans, and their anger. Pat Buchanan invoking a “religious war” in America. Dan Quayle taking on the so-called Hollywood Elite (“And we will not back down!!”). Marilyn Quayle warning us not to “turn away from the values that brought us here.”
1996: Back to Chicago, peaceful this time. President Clinton wants to build a “Bridge to the 21st Century.” Bob Dole’s in San Diego, thinking more about Clinton’s past. He wails, “Where’s the outrage?” Dole is introduced by his wife Elizabeth who walks through the crowd with a handheld mike, delivering a speech that resembles a TV talk show monologue.
2000: George W. Bush promises to be a “compassionate conservative” and says his critics “don’t know my heart.” Al Gore promises to be “my own man.”
I’ve moved to Los Angeles, and so have the Dems, taking over the brand new Staples Center. Like most of the media, I’m in a trailer in the parking lot. But when VP nominee Joe Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew like me, gives his speech, I’m right there on the convention floor, thanks to an understanding boss who got me a pass.
2004: As you probably know, newspeople get to see advance copies of candidates’ speeches. Addressing his hometown crowd in Boston, John Kerry was supposed to open by saying, “I’m John Kerry and I love this country.” But for four days, the Democrats had been playing up Kerry’s military background, hoping, just this once, that the Republicans wouldn’t monopolize the flags and the guns. So instead he salutes and says, “I’m John Kerry and I’m reporting for duty!” The place explodes. The Swift Boaters take notes.
President Bush leads his party into Enemy Territory. Heavily Democratic New York, at the very same Madison Square Garden. Thousands protest outside. They’re mocked by everyone inside. The RNC builds a huge round podium in the center of the floor for Bush’s speech. And that lectern doesn’t really have a cross on it, does it?
2008: Someday, people will write about how the Democrats filled a football stadium and the Republicans plucked a star from Alaska. Me, I just had a blast watching it all. I always do!
What Sports Is. And What It’s Not
In March of 2007, St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa was arrested on a drunken driving charge after police said they found him asleep inside his running sport utility vehicle at a stop light. La Russa pleaded guilty in November of that year. He continued to manage the Cardinals until his retirement following the 2011 season.Jerry Girard spent 21 years as sports anchor on WPIX-TV in New York City. He died on March 25, 2007, at the age of 74.
When the Mets got into the 1986 World Series, Tom Brokaw anchored from Shea Stadium. When the Red Sox won the 2004 Series, it was the lead story on local newscasts across the country. Whenever a popular pro or college coach is hired or fired, AP runs an URGENT that BEEEEPs newsroom computers from coast to coast. And when a big name player of any sport gets into some kind of legal trouble, you’ll see it on Page One, not just in the sports section.
Yep, we Americans have always loved our sports, and our sports figures. And since newsroom staffs have always had generous helpings of supercharged sports fans, it’s only natural that the Big Game… or the Big Move… or the Big Player’s Big Blunder will get Big Coverage… perhaps even Excessive Coverage, but hey, we may be journalists, but we’re also human, we’re fans, we’re entitled to our occasional excesses, and we usually get our perspective back in balance fairly quickly.
And sometimes we don’t.
Tony La Russa, the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals was recently arrested for drunk driving. Certainly a dumb move on his part, and one would expect some media coverage to jump past the sports pages and bleed into the A block. Especially if it’s a slow news day.
Only it wasn’t.
On that same day, the public schools of St. Louis lost their accreditation. A state takeover loomed, and thousands of children… not to mention their parents, their parents’ property values, the city’s image and most likely its bond rating… would all be negatively impacted. A huge embarrassment and a huge story. Just not sexy.
That night, three St. Louis television stations led their newscasts with La Russa’s indiscretion.
We heard the usual justifications. News directors said yes, the school story was much more important and affected many more people (it’s not clear who is affected by the La Russa story… perhaps his bartender), but the La Russa story was what most viewers were interested in hearing about. Statistics from newspaper websites appear to bear that out. The La Russa story was read ten times more often than the schools story, even on sites where the schools story was the lead.
Look, this is not another bleat from an old-timer who wants to go back to the fictitious good old days when newscasts broadcast only what viewers need to know, as opposed to what they want to know (never happened). Nor is it a plea to turn every local newscast into PBS or C-SPAN.
But newspeople get paid to use judgment. Not just to take polls.
The local media latched onto La Russa the way the rest of us latch onto Paris Hilton. They turned a piece of gossip about an individual’s stupid mistake into World War III, and the real news of the day suffered for it.
Whether or not that’s the current news climate, it is still bad news judgment and wrongheaded priorities.
Ironically, a St. Louis sports guy got it right:
“You’d think the president had been assassinated, the banks had been robbed,” says Kevin Slaten, a sportstalk host on KFNS Radio. “Is it a big story? Absolutely not! We live in an ‘Entertainment Tonight’ society.”
Sanity from the sports department!
Indeed, a perfect segue to a few personal thoughts about a man who personified that kind of levelheadedness. Jerry Girard, who recently passed away.
Jerry did sports at WPIX-TV in New York City. I worked in that newsroom for two years, and I was privileged to watch Jerry work and get to know him.
Jerry was a nice man, quiet and self-effacing, but with a razor sharp wit that could send you falling to the floor laughing with just a couple of words… on or off the air. He knew his sports cold. He approached the job as a fan (for my money the best sportscasters do that) and as a writer (his previous gig before getting his on-camera break). That combination of qualities made him a unique talent, and a star for 21 years in a city that’s famous for unceremoniously casting out less-than-authentic sportscasters.
With all that, Jerry also stayed grounded in reality. He handled sports as it should be handled… as fun and games, not the Apocalypse.
I think Jerry would shake his head in disbelief over the La Russa coverage. He’d probably unleash an appropriately pithy remark that would crack us up, and pull us back to our better selves. He’ll be missed.
New House. Old Rules
Democrats gained control of the House and Senate in the November 2006 elections. California representative Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House. C-SPAN has been airing gavel-to-gavel coverage of the House since the network began operations in 1979. The feed is provided by the House and controlled by the Speaker. C-SPAN asked Pelosi to change that policy, and was refused. When Republican John Boehner succeeded Pelosi as Speaker, he also refused to give C-SPAN greater control.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has rejected a request by C-SPAN to take control of the House TV cameras.
Since 1979 when the system was installed, those cameras have been under sole control of the Speaker (Tip O’Neill at the time) and the rules have permitted only head-on wide and close-up shots of the proceedings.
C-SPAN, which has carried House and Senate sessions for decades now, wanted the ability to pan the House chamber, take reaction shots, and give a more complete and thorough sense of what’s taking place on the floor. C-SPAN chief Brian Lamb made the same request of the Republican leadership in 1980 and was also turned down.
C-SPAN had clearly hoped that a change in leadership and direction in Congress would translate into a more open atmosphere regarding TV coverage, but apparently this is not the case, and it’s not hard to figure out why.
In a word, power.
No politician who achieves power is apt to give it up voluntarily. Control of the camera is awesome power. The Speaker can make sure the public never sees that angry exchange between two Members off in the corner. Or Republican and Democratic representatives laughing and chatting with each other when a supposedly “bitter” House debate is taking place. In short, the facade is kept in place.
In rare cases, that power of the camera can be wielded in an act of partisan vengeance, as Speaker O’Neill did in 1984, when he wanted to show how Republicans were making Special Orders speeches before an empty chamber. O’Neill violated the very rules he had set up, and ordered the cameras to pan all the vacant seats.
Awesome power. So why should Speaker Pelosi give it up?
Because this is America, the work of the Congress is the people’s business, and the people have a right to see it. All of it. Not just the parts the politicians care to show us.
The argument against C-SPAN’s request warns against TV broadcasters, with their thirst for “drama” and “conflict”, going too far, abusing their new privilege, and hyping the coverage with exaggerated shots, out-of-context moves, and who knows what else. The fear is that the completeness of the record and the dignity of the House will be compromised.
Please.
This is C-SPAN we’re talking about! The guys who salivate at the chance to televise four-hour subcommittee hearings, onerous think-tank presentations, and endless news conferences in their oppressive entirety, with all the “drama” of watching grass grow. Nobody plays it straighter. Or duller, frankly, but in this case, dull is a good thing.
C-SPAN can be relied upon to bring us the House as it really is. C-SPAN is independent, non-partisan, non-profit, and not concerned with ratings or dollars.
I also suspect the public trusts C-SPAN a lot more than any politician of any party.
Speaker Pelosi, I urge you to reconsider. Show us it really is a new day on Capitol Hill.
Caretaker?
Gerald Ford, a Republican Congressman from Grand Rapids, Michigan was House Minority Leader when President Richard Nixon chose him in 1973 to replace Vice President Spiro Agnew who had resigned in a bribery scandal. Ford became the 38th President of the United States in 1974 when Nixon resigned as a result of the Watergate scandal. Ford, the first un-elected VP and President, failed to win a term in his own right, losing to Jimmy Carter in 1976. Ford died on December 26, 2006. He was 93.
Please don’t call him the “caretaker” President.
“Caretaker” conjures up an image of some mindless clockwatcher who shuffles through his daily chores and turns out the lights when he leaves.
This website has always been about words used by journalists, and, in my opinion, too many newspeople are playing follow-the-leader and putting the “caretaker” label on President Ford.
Sure, he wasn’t elected. He never even wanted the job. Maybe his administration had less than monumental achievements. But Gerald Ford did achieve something few U.S. Presidents have been able to do.
He took away the hurt.
I’m a lifelong Democrat. I voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976. But I was a fan of Gerald Ford, and I always will be.
Ford took office at the end of almost a decade of painful turmoil in this country that ripped us apart. Vietnam. Watergate. If you’re old enough to remember, you know exactly how it felt. If you’re a little younger, let me tell you. It was excruciating. Watching the daily news reports tracking the destruction and body counts from a war no one supported. Then the slow twisting of the Watergate knife, as the country came to the realization that its chief executive and many of the people around him were criminals besmirching the Presidency. The inexorable closing in, the committees, the Saturday Night Massacre, the Tapes, the Expletives Deleted, the Articles of Impeachment, the uncertainty… would he or won’t he?
And then he was gone. And Gerald Ford took the oath and said, “We’ve got a lot of work to do. Let’s get on with it.”
You could almost hear the nation exhale. The long national nightmare was over!
All of a sudden, Mr. I-Am-Not-A-Crook gave way to the Anti-Crook. The Imperial Presidency dissolved. The Down-To-Earth President was here. The conniving Enemies List compiler was gone, replaced by a man who, in Bob Dole’s words, didn’t have any enemies!
Before he carried out a single Presidential act, people liked Gerald Ford. Not because of anything he’d done. Because of all the things we knew he would not do. That was enough. Decency had returned to the White House. And it felt good.
Sure, he pardoned Nixon, and some folks still can’t forgive him for that. I can. And I give him extra decency points for going up to Capitol Hill, and letting Congress grill him over that pardon. Can you imagine our current White House occupant doing that? Can you imagine the last White House occupant doing that, without a battery of lawyers advising him what “is”, is?
I have other memories. Watching him good-naturedly doing a bit on Saturday Night Live, the show that relentlessly ridiculed him. Or hearing him repeat the one line he maintained, all the years of his life, whenever the question was asked of him: “Betty and I have always been pro-choice.” He knew where his party stood. He didn’t care. The man was fearless and he told the truth. And then there was The Speech. Not the inaugural address everyone remembers. The acceptance speech at the 1976 Republican Convention, after fighting off a challenge by Mr. Charisma, Ronald Reagan. What a pleasant surprise! The guy dismissed as a plodding, flat speaker, coming out on top, and then giving ‘em rhetorical Hell (well, Heck, maybe) and the crowd loving it.
A couple more votes and he would have won in November, too.
He was a moral man who didn’t moralize. He didn’t preach at us, talk down to us, or ignore us. He never got high and mighty, and he stayed the same until the day he died.
And he respected the press.
Much more than a caretaker, Mr. Ford could be better compared to a first responder. The guy who sees you lying there, battered and bleeding, and tells you reassuringly, “Don’t worry. You’re going to be just fine.”
Rest in peace, sir. And thank you.
Chasing Cars: L.A.’s Love-Hate Relationship With Police Pursuits
I work in a TV newsroom in Los Angeles. When our assignment desk gets word of a police pursuit, it’s as if a signal has been given to go into battle mode. The desk orders our helicopter to launch, while as many ground crews as possible scramble to track the pursuit and anticipate where it may end. Each time the pursuit suspect changes course, turns a corner, or circles back, the assignment editors bark out instructions to move the crews accordingly. In the next room, several recording decks begin taping the chase as soon as pictures are available.
We often break into normal programming to cover pursuits live, complete with special graphics, a police expert on the phone, and a general sense of urgency. If the chase happens to begin during a newscast, all previously written stories get thrown out, as coverage is focused on the pursuit, and nothing else.
Once the pursuit concludes, video of its final moments is replayed several times. L.A. stations also do a kind of macho dance with each other. None wants to be the last one to leave the chase, so usually, all of them stay on too long.
While all this goes on, two other things happen. Viewers bombard the assignment desk with phone calls, complaining (newswriters, PA’s and others are frequently pressed into service to handle the phones). And ratings skyrocket.
Obviously, ratings are why stations work so hard and spend so much money to cover chases. Live police pursuits are potentially powerful, even gripping television, played out on turf familiar to most Angelenos… our many miles of freeways. People relate to pursuits. They tune in. They call each other. They log onto special websites devoted to tracking chases and notifying subscribers when they happen. Pursuits get big numbers.
If only they were legitimate news.
With a few rare exceptions, there’s absolutely nothing newsworthy about a typical police pursuit of some yutz who steals a car, or who may be drunk, or who has an expired tag and failed to pull over. Viewers learn nothing and the story does not even remotely affect their lives. But since it’s live, and since it’s action, and since we have the technology, we put it on the air, and let folks watch it the way they watch NASCAR, hoping for a wreck. Meantime all the truly important stories of the day disappear, along with all the hard work (especially by us writers!) that went into them.
Now and then, some brave station managers have dared to set limits on chase coverage, or even banned pursuits entirely. But it never sticks. The ratings are too tempting.
Also, I’m afraid to say, there’s a new generation of producers out there who ignore the “News” part of “Breaking News.” As long as it’s happening right now, that’s good enough for them, whether it’s a chase, a war, or a party at the Playboy mansion.
The LAPD is gradually learning new tactics for cutting pursuits short. That will help somewhat. But the only real way to get pursuits off the air is to use the same weapon that got them on the air:
The ratings.
Station managers examine those numbers in obsessive detail, minute by minute. The moment they see ratings trend downward during chases, they will stop covering them.
So, bottom line, it’s up to all of us viewers. If we keep watching, that’s a guarantee of more of the same in the future.
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