New News Out of Africa: Rethinking Media Coverage of Africa

Originally published June 30, 2006 for the Center for American Progress

With better media coverage, the United States and the world would realize that there is more to Africa than death, disease, disaster, and despair. Charlayne Hunter-Gault delivered that message in a discussion Friday at the Center for American Progress.

Hunter-Gault, an award winning journalist currently working for NPR, talked about her new book, New News Out of Africa, with Gayle Smith, senior fellow at the Center. Touching on a wide range of African issues, the event focused on the impact of how Africa is treated in the American media.

“We don’t know enough about Africa,” Smith said, because our current media coverage is reactionary and piecemeal, suffering from the “if it bleeds, it leads” syndrome. As a consequence, the American public has become apathetic to the continent. The perception, according to Hunter-Gault, is that if conditions never change than the issues are not a good investment of time, emotions, and money.

The lack of consistent media attention is obscuring important positive developments in Africa. The most interesting stories, for Hunter-Gault, are not Africa’s problems but the hope and heroism throughout the continent in the face of those problems. “Today there is a second wind of change blowing across Africa,” she said. Pointing to tentative but consistent democratic progress and a growing confidence that Africa can be active in improving itself, Hunter-Gault expressed hope that a more positive image of Africa in the media could emerge.

Hunter-Gault emphasized that understanding the day-to-day stories of Africa means abandoning preconceived notions. Reporters covering Africa should “try to portray people in ways that are recognizable” to Africans. To gain the right perspective, she said, “You have to go there to know there.” With that message, Hunter-Gault’s new book hopes to bring the right kind of media coverage to a dynamically growing continent.

Medicine and the Market: Equity v. Choice

Originally published June 6, 2006 for the Center for American Progress

Improvements in American health care cannot be made without addressing the fundamental assumptions that underpin our ideas about what health means. That conclusion was the product of a spirited panel discussion on the role of market forces in American health care, hosted on Thursday by the Progressive Bioethics Initiative at the Center for American Progress (CAP).

Panelist Daniel Callahan, Director of International Programs for the Hastings Center, led off the discussion by talking about his new book Medicine and the Market: Equity v. Choice, coauthored with Angela Wasunna. Joining him on the panel were Willis Goldbeck, consulting director for Global Public Health Policy and Government Affairs at UCB, and Jeanne Lambrew, Senior Fellow at CAP. Susan Lee, CAP Vice President for Economic Policy, moderated.

Callahan, whose book took a comparative look at different health care systems from around the world, found that the best systems had “universal health care with carefully introduced and carefully tested market practices.” Key to his understanding is moving past the false choice between markets and government involvement. A better way of framing the issue, according to Callahan, is to view market forces as a set of tools to achieve overall social goals. Under that conceptual model, the value of particular market forces can be tested against a higher standard of equitable access to quality health care.

Callahan pointed out that in many European countries, where universal care is held as a fundamental social value, health care systems are clearly effective. He listed lower costs, higher life expectancies, broad popular support, and quality of care at least equal to the U.S. as the advantages of a comprehensive, universal approach to health care.

By contrast, according to Goldbeck, “The U.S. does not have a system of health anything.” Goldbeck characterized the U.S. approach as a “medical care and repair model” that is fragmented and disjointed. Medical care, meaning specific responses to specific conditions, is emphasized at the expense of health, a broader concept incorporating prevention and overall well-being. Shifting the public discourse to that broader concept could facilitate progress on some substantial fundamental health issues facing the country. For example, distinguishing medical necessity from medical enhancement would enable us to draw some lines around what types of treatments the health system should and should not promote.

All panelists observed that America’s market-influenced emphasis on constantly improving medical technology — called the “infinity model” because it assumes no limit to useful medical progress — has raised the costs of health care across the board. While health care has improved as a result of technology, Callahan said, “The greater the improvement, the more we spend.” An increasingly expensive medical industry raises serious questions about equality of access and long-term sustainability. The basic issue is whether advancing high tech medicine is the best way to allocate limited health care resources that might be better spent on prevention or basic treatment.

Settling the questions will not be an easy task, according to Goldbeck. “We don’t know how to define basic health care,” he said, because we expect basic care to include coverage for every medical contingency. The panelists agreed that if the expectations of the health care system are going to change, the fundamental assumptions of health policy must also change. Lambrew, for one, is optimistic about the possibility for a positive shift. Pointing to growing calls for health coverage from businesses and encouraging developments on the state level, she said that the time for universal health care as a meaningful political issue “might be sooner than you think.”

Mexico's Presidential Election Results: What do they mean for the United States?

Originally published June 7, 2006 for the Center for American Progress

The close and contentious results of Mexico’s recent presidential election should help cast a spotlight on the importance of the United States’ relationship with its southern neighbor. The Americas Project at the Center for American Progress convened a panel of experts to discuss its impact and implications for U.S.-Mexico relations.

Jorge Castañeda, former Foreign Minister of Mexico, gave the keynote address that sparked a lively exchange. Panelists included Arturo Valenzuela, Director of the Center for Latin American Studies in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and James R. Jones, Co-Chairman of ManattJones Global Strategies and former Ambassador to Mexico. Joining them were Joy Olson, Executive Director of the Washington Office on Latin America, and Armando Guzmán, Washington bureau chief for TV Azteca. Dan Restrepo, head of The Americas Project at the Center, moderated the exchange.

Castañeda began by addressing the results of the election. “I don’t think there is any doubt,” he said, “nor should there be any doubt, that [Felipe] Calderón won,” an assessment echoed by the other panelists. He pointed to the already twice recounted votes and the strength of Mexico’s electoral system as reasons for considering the election results final. Valenzuela supported that assessment, calling Mexico’s electoral system “one of the best in the world.”

Castañeda used the controversy surrounding the election, particularly the protests of second-place candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to make a case for a fundamental change in Mexico’s political system. The other panelists supported him in his analysis. “The problem,” he said, “is not the size of the mandate. The problem is the nature of the institutions.” He pointed out the inherent tensions in a non-parliamentary system that has three parties, as well as the difficulties of a weak president working with a divisive legislature that has little institutional incentive to cooperate with the executive branch. Castañeda also observed the absence of a run-off system, which would help immensely in building national consensus in the face of such a split election. Most importantly, he emphasized that the outcomes of the official electoral system must be respected because building the rule of law is critical for Mexico’s future.

Overhauling Mexico’s democratic institutions is important, Castañeda said, because without a better governance structure the crucial questions facing the country cannot begin to be answered effectively. Like the others on the panel, he said that poverty is the most pressing issue facing Mexico, but in the current system potential solutions are lost in a swirl of political infighting. “It’s not enough to do it with just good intentions,” Castañeda said. “The country cannot be governed under these circumstances.”

For the short term Castañeda said that, “Calderón’s victory will mean a great deal of continuity with U.S. relations.” For the long term, as the other panelists emphasized, the lessons for the U.S. to take away from the election point to a broader shift in U.S.-Mexican relations.

“The U.S. has vital interests with Mexico,” said Valenzuela, as evidenced by its status as the second largest trade partner and oil supplier. This election was the most recent step in what he called Mexico’s “complex and difficult transition” from a rural economy to an industrial power. Yet despite these forces at work, Valenzuela said, “We don’t think about Mexico strategically.” Rather than a comprehensive framework with Mexican stability and growth as a foundation, the U.S. tends to engage Mexico haphazardly over particular domestic and economic issues.

To that end, the panelists called for U.S. strategic interest in an improved, functional Mexico. Olson pointed out that the election controversy and López Obrador’s strong showing, along with elections in other Latin American countries, illustrate “incredibly divided societies” and the need for “hearing the voices of the people.” Poverty, it was agreed, should be a strategic priority for the U.S. because it is at the root of so many other issues, including immigration, trade, and political stability.

U.S. leadership in regional growth was emphasized by Jones. “Canada and the U.S. have a big obligation,” he said, “to have a serious development fund” that would be tied to needed political reforms. Observing that too many people in Mexico have not seen tangible benefits from free markets and democracy, many of whom voted for López Obrador, he said that “a system of hope has to be built in” if those economic and political institutions are going to succeed.

Political leadership and increased awareness are necessary to remaking U.S.-Mexico relations. Right now, as Guzman observed, “You don’t hear about Mexico at all,” except in regards to immigration issues. As the election reminded us, however, a broader and more comprehensive approach is needed for the U.S. to develop a strong and productive partnership with its neighbor.

Federalism, Democratic Values, and the Federal Marriage Amendment

Originally published June 5, 2006 for the Center for American Progress

This morning the Center for American Progress, in partnership with the Cato Institute, welcomed the perspectives of four legal experts on the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) up for vote in the Senate this week. The panelists were Dale Carpenter, law professor at the University of Minnesota; Louis Michael Seidman, law professor at Georgetown University; Bruce Fein, former Reagan administration legal aid and current Washington Times columnist; and Mark Agrast, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

Carpenter, who recently released a report for the Cato Institute entitled “The Federal Marriage Amendment: Unnecessary, Anti-Federalist, and Anti-Democratic,” focused on the constitutional issues that FMA raises. He criticized FMA as superfluous, given that state legislatures are already addressing the issue from a variety of perspectives and that current legal structures make it unlikely that same sex marriages will be exported from one state to another.

All the panelists generally agreed that the proposed amendment is poorly conceived and inconsistent with core principles of American democracy. FMA would be the only amendment, aside from the repealed 18^th, to limit rather than expand individual rights. Additionally, it threatens federalism by imposing legal interpretations on state legislatures and courts, inhibiting the creativity of states in formulating policy and limiting states’ ability to be responsive to the desires of their citizens. Social policy, and family law in particular, has changed significantly throughout the history of the United States, and the prospect of enshrining a particular policy in the Constitution was greeted with skepticism.

Seidman provided more technical legal analysis of FMA and concluded that the framers of the amendment are either poor lawyers or are proposing the amendment with no intention of it successfully passing. If FMA were to pass, interpretative ambiguities in the language would give federal judges unprecedented power over domestic issues, namely the meaning of “marriage.” Further, it is not clear how FMA would interface with existing law, particularly the Massachusetts court ruling that guarantees all citizens of that state equal access to marriage. These potential problems lead Seidman to conclude that FMA is little more than a political move intended to rally support for the 2006 elections, a sentiment echoed by the other panelists.

The discussion also covered the more fundamental issue of judicial activism, which FMA is purportedly attempting to solve. Fein advocated a more carefully crafted amendment that would curtail judicial activism by specifically leaving the definition of marriage to legislative bodies. Both Seidman and Agrast thought it was important that courts maintain the current system of checks and balances with legislatures because on some issues, particularly regarding minorities, legislative action is not sufficient for necessary change.

While the panel disagreed on particular standards for judicial involvement, all agreed that legislative action is more appropriate than constitutional change or court decision. Since most state legislatures are already actively grappling with the issue of same sex marriage and there is a vigorous public debate, no justification could be seen for FMA except as a way of scoring easy political points.

Five Minutes With: Lawrence Lessig

Originally published July 6, 2006 on Campus Progress with Mark Pike

As the first generation to grow up online, a lot of us take the internet for granted, and too few of us think of the internet itself as a political issue. But powerful forces are teaming up to change the basic structure of the internet, threatening what has become a fundamental institution of modern society. Right now, any kid in a dorm room can set up a website as easily as a Fortune 500 company because access to the information superhighway is neutral. "Net neutrality" is the principle that preserves an open internet that allows for free speech and civic participation, allowing tiny blogs the same access to users as AT&T. In a net neutral system, the network just moves the data you want, you know, like a (super) highway; it doesn't choose what data to provide. But now, internet providers like Comcast and Verizon are spending plenty of money lobbying Congress to destroy net neutrality, as a major overhaul of the Telecommunications Act is being debated on the Hill.

Luckily, people like Lawrence Lessig are fighting back. A former young Republican and smart-guy law professor specializing in internet law at Stanford, Lessig is one of the leading advocates for net neutrality and a staunch supporter of "free culture." Known as the "Elvis of Cyber Law," he drops hip-hop references into his lectures, is up on all the coolest viral videos, and has a profile on Facebook. The author of last year's Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity, Lessig has won numerous awards including Scientific American's Top 50 Visionaries, for arguing "against interpretations of copyright that could stifle innovation and discourse online." (And just to add one more feather in his cap, we'll note that in 1985 Lessig famously smuggled a heart valve device into the Soviet Union in the crotch of his pants to help a Jewish dissident.)

Lessig chatted briefly with Campus Progress over email (naturally) about Facebook, copyrights, and saving the internet.

You recently gave a lecture at the Center for American Progress in the nation's capital (your "least favorite city") about "The Withering of the Net: How DC Pathologies are Undermining the Growth and Wealth of the Net." Currently, it seems that a group of rich old white men are making some important decisions about a technology they don't fully comprehend and didn't grow up with. How can young people, the most plugged-in generation, speak up and influence the outcome of this debate?

If Congress does what it promises to do--kill the mandated neutrality of the internet--then you can count on the most interesting features of the internet being driven out. Young people can help us flood Congress with the demand that they not sell out the internet to the telecom and cable companies.

How do we do this without sounding like a bunch of whiny kids who just want to download the new Beyonce and Jay-Z duet for free?

By showing them the fantastically creative stuff kids are producing and need fast cheap broadband to share.

How can universities, as important contributing architects of the internet, be affected by net neutrality legislation?

Imagine your public library being sold to Barnes and Noble: That's what will happen in neutrality legislation fails. The internet will be shifted to prefer a single, narrow vision of content. The diversity of content it now supports will be narrowed.

Do you think that young people understand what's at stake in the battle for control of the internet? If not, what's it going to take?

Not yet. It is going to take a clearer message to get them to see. Maybe something like this: Look at TV. That's how boring they want the internet to be.

Why does it seem as though a disproportionate number of college students are targeted in lawsuits by the MPAA and RIAA?

Because it is easier to monitor behavior at college. Welcome to the panopticon!

You've been called "The Elvis of Cyber Law." Does that infringe on Mr. Presley's copyrighted image.

You'll have to ask his estate.

What are some of the websites and software that you utilize on a daily basis and what do you love about them?

BoingBoing and joi.ito.com--smart, clear, right (as in correct).

For some reason I've got this gut feeling nobody from today's digital generation will be able to run for office because there's incriminating photos on everybody's Facebook profiles. Do people share too much? Will our collective consciences learn to absolve our collective memories?

Maybe we do share too much, but we'll learn to accommodate.

Finall, will you be our friend on Facebook?

Sure, I've got no standards...

Fuel Prices Go Up Tonight

Originally published March 31, 2006 in The Herald

Terrorism and political instability continue to rock world oil markets, resulting in an increase in the prices of refined petroleum products over the month of March. Residents of Cameroon can expect those price increases to be reflected at the pump, as the price of petrol is predicted to increase by an unspecified amount by midnight today.

The fund for the stabilisation of fuel prices released its analysis of the past month's world petroleum market yesterday. Despite a slight decrease in the price of unrefined crude oil, from $61.44 US a barrel to $60.85 US, the price of refined products such as super petrol and diesel fuels increased. Super increased 3% from $544 US per metric ton to $570.86 US, while diesel fuel increased 2% from $548.95 US per metric ton to $560.36 US. An exception was the price of kerosene, which decreased slightly from $617.98 US per metric ton to $611.75 US.

The increase in the price of refined petrol is expected to have the most noticeable effect on Cameroon. Super currently sells for 563 FCFA per litre and experts expect it to hit 575, while gazole sells for 524 FCFA and petrol sells for 356 FCFA. Prices at the pump are expected to increase in April as the government attempts to keep up with world markets.

The global price increases are a result of increases in the demand for refined petroleum outpacing increases in the supply. Several new factors have recently affected the oil market. A terrorist attack in Saudia Arabia decreased the available supply of remined petrol.

In addition, uncertainty about Iran's possible nuclear weapons programme could jeapordise supplies from the country. Iran holds 10% of the world's proven oil reserves. And in the region, militant attacks in Nigeria have reduced petroleum output from that country by 650,000 barrels a day.

Without substantial new oil supplies, prices will continue to rise as Europe, Japan, the United States, and others continue to consume oil at a high rate, and as demand from growing countries like India and China continues to increase. Experts estimate that world oil supplies may reach their peak within 10 or 20 years.

The Super Bowl As Sociology

Originally published February 2, 2009 on SpliceToday

Last night about 150 million people tuned in to the Super Bowl, and 90 percent of them live in the U.S. or Canada. While this is about five times the viewership of a typical NFL weekend, it still falls woefully short of the billion global viewers the NFL happily implies watch their signature event. The billion figure—actually a measure of potential viewers—appears in the media every year, as if our totally idiosyncratic game played nowhere else in the world is so entrancing as to draw the world’s population away from sleep (the Super Bowl kicks off after midnight in Europe) and approach the ratings of the World Cup final. This is plainly absurd, and yet we seem to enjoy the fiction that our American Exceptionalism cannot be contained merely by our economic dominance or robust democracy, but must also permeate through our sports.

This is especially clear if you imagine what the Super Bowl would look like to a foreigner. They would watch 22 mostly freakishly large men attack each other in regular 15-second increments, a vicious violence arbitrarily constrained by a dense and non-intuitive set of rules. The actual game would be bracketed by pyrotechnics worthy of July 4th, dozens of scantily clad young women dancing on the sidelines, the very best advertising our consumption-based economy can produce, and Bruce Springsteen playing the most contrived tradition in the history of rock at halftime. It would, in short, seem outrageously and insistently American.

Sal Paolantonio’s recent book How Football Explains America gives some context to understand what football is really about in our peculiar culture. It is not simply a history, although he covers football’s major historical developments in an efficient 197 pages. Rather, the book is a cultural argument that highlights those key moments when football was purposefully evolved to become, and marketed as, a symbol of America.

The rules of soccer haven’t changed in decades. Baseball makes a fetish of tradition, agonizing over changes like drug testing and replays that are obviously overdue. But football has never been satisfied with the idea that it is a perfect game. Each year the NFL sits down, as part of the regular offseason schedule, and tweaks the rules to make sure the game stays entertaining. These tweaks have been embedded in football’s DNA from the very start. Paolantonio observes that football has always been in “a constant state of reinventing itself,” striving to be more American and therefore embodying the American ethos in the attempt. His main point is that football explains America because the history of the sport is both a symbolic writing of the national myth and an example of that very myth in action.

In Paolantonio’s story, the most compelling insight is how football developed as a specific symbolic transference of our frontier mythology. The formal rules that differentiated football from the shared ancestry of soccer and rugby can be traced to the 1880s, suggesting a parallel with Frederick Jackson Turner’s famous 1893 observation that the frontier had closed. Early football provided an outlet for acceptable violence, a stage for the heroic individual in the form of the quarterback, and the conquest of rationally apportioned territory as the lines on the field were formalized like the railroad grids and tract homesteads of the settlement west. The cycle of brief, intense action followed by a period of rest and strategizing in the huddle—a further innovation—allowed games to be easily told in narrative form while emphasizing timing and precision as the keys to success. Thus football tried to rationally constrain chaotic action, to turn violent impulses into storylines, and to allow the American male to conquer something other than the wilderness. Football was a game, to be sure, but it was a game self-consciously designed by its founders to create a new field for an American myth made antiquated by reality.

Football has consistently adapted itself to stay at the front lines of American culture. Paolantonio offers many examples of these adaptations throughout the 20th century, including the visionary marriage with television in the 1950s and the shifting emphasis to entertainment and spectacle in the 60s. Of course the most significant argument for football’s special relationship with American mythology is the fact that it has replaced religion as the dominant Sunday ritual. Paolantonio gestures in this direction, but could go further. In a modern society where community and shared identity are found in sports as much as anything else, perhaps the ability of the NFL to generate social solidarity needs to be further explored. Peyton Manning, of all people, provides the most revealing quote in the book. “Fans have an identity with their team and their player and that attachment is something you can feel,” he says. “It’s a sense of belonging—to a team, to a city, to the country, too.”

It is not clear exactly how important football is to a uniquely American type of identity. But How Football Explains America attempts to address that question as a purposeful complement to Franklin Foer’s excellent How Soccer Explains the World. Comparing the two sports is an exercise that quickly approaches cliché: football is regimented, soccer is flowing; football has special rules for players, soccer treats all players the same; football is rational, soccer is creative. What Paolantonio illuminates is that these clichés, to the extent that they reveal something about the difference between America and the rest of the world, are neither meaningless nor arbitrary. Americans made football in our own image, manifesting our destiny in our own unique game.

It is not so much the details of how football embodies a certain spectrum of American values that is striking about How Football Explains America. Most thoughtful observers can already see that. It’s the constant and purposeful tweaking of the sport that is the most American thing about it, the consistent belief that with a dash of forward passing here, or a bit of televised pageantry there, there can be a more perfect American Sport. Football has always tried to be what we need it to be. So this weekend, when we watched the Steelers upend the Cardinals and saw The Boss’ choreographed halftime show, we were more than entertained; we became more American in the process.