Fair Interviews

So last week, Gov. Sarah Palin sat down for her first interview with Charles Gibson of ABC News. By now you’ve heard some of the excerpts and reactions to the interview, and that leads us to asking if the hard hitting questions are only meant for Republicans.

Perhaps it’s due to the fact that the only real strategy Democrats know is to say, “John McCain and George W. Bush are one and the same,” or, “John McCain won’t bring change, Barack Obama will bring change. McSame will bring you four more years of failed Republican policies.” With statements like this perhaps Gibson felt he had to give the Republican VP nominee questions that would help prove nay-Sayers wrong, or did he? Now there’s certainly nothing wrong with Mr. Gibson asking the tuff questions, I mean just look at what he asked Barack Obama almost back in June of this year.

After becoming the presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party:

GIBSON:

• Public moments are not your own. There's a million people pulling you in a million different directions, but when everybody clears out, the staff is gone, you're in your hotel room at night and you're alone -- do you say to yourself: "Son of a gun, I've done this?"
• Should you choose her (Sen. Hillary Clinton), how do you handle Bill Clinton?
• Do you worry that it could turn on race, age and class?
• Is the hardest part of all this behind you or ahead of you?
• I watched closely your countenance last night, your mien, as you stood in that hall. You didn't smile much. Has the joyfulness of this hit home yet? Do you take joy from it?

Now the Serious Questions:

GIBSON:

• On what three issues will this campaign turn to you?
• Will you go to Iraq?

You might also hear commentators refer to another interview by Gibson with Obama, back in late 2007. They’ll point out how he didn’t question the Illinois senator on his experience, but in fairness, it was an interview on Who Is Barack Obama? – a sort of softer side of the candidate. But now, three months after the interview in June, and less then a month since John McCain announced Gov. Palin as his running mate, here is what Charles Gibson asked Gov. Palin.

ABC News: September 11-12, 2008

GIBSON:

• …a question that I asked John McCain about you, and it is really the central question. Can you look the country in the eye and say "I have the experience and I have the ability to be not just vice president, but perhaps president of the United States of America?"
• And you didn't say to yourself, "Am I experienced enough? Am I ready? Do I know enough about international affairs? Do I -- will I feel comfortable enough on the national stage to do this?"
• Have you ever met a foreign head of state?
• Do you believe the United States should try to restore Georgian sovereignty over South Ossetia and Abkhazia?
• Would you favor putting Georgia and Ukraine in NATO?
• So what do you do about a nuclear Iran?
• Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?
• Do we have a right to anticipatory self-defense? Do we have a right to make a preemptive strike again another country if we feel that country might strike us?

So why did Palin get the hard questions? Perhaps it’s because we’re still learning where this former mayor, and almost two-year governor stands on the issues. And if that was to be the case, shouldn’t the same questions be directed on a regular basis to the Democratic nominee for president, the man elected to the senate in 2005, and began running for the presidency unofficially in late 2006? Once again, there is absolutely nothing wrong with asking the hard questions of those who could take there place at the top of America’s government, but let there be fairness in interviews and journalism. We can’t keep asking candidates where they stand on their opponent’s campaign ads. It’s two months until Americans head to the polls; it’s time to get serious and fair. I know I just did a post on this, but sometimes you just have to repeat yourself after these kind of “fair interviews”.

Nothing to Fear

"You Maniacs! You blew it up!"

- George Taylor, Planet of the Apes (1968)

So since Wednesday I've been wondering if anyone else in the world has been feeling a sort of gravitational pull. You know like when you hold two magnets at opposite ends and there’s a good distance between them, but you get that small magnetic force pulling them together. Alright so you’re probably wondering what on earth I’m writing about. Well first off, it’s on earth and it’s a machine known to the public as the “Big Bang” machine, a machine that will explore the tiniest particles and come ever closer to re-enacting the big bang- the theory that a colossal explosion created the universe. And the only thing so people are worried about is whether or not this thing will go off with a big bang, and by this I mean, “Goodbye Planet Earth.”

The $10-billion Large Hadron Collider promises EUROPEAN scientists a closer look at the makeup of matter, filling in gaps in knowledge or possibly reshaping theories. Now that’s all grand and dandy, I along with the rest of the human race are just hoping we don’t become a reshaped theory.

Around a 17-mile tunnel, beams of protons will be fired to test the controlling strength of the world's largest superconducting magnets. While still a good month before beams traveling in opposite directions are brought together in collisions, oh good a slow death, some skeptics fear this contraption could create micro "black holes" and endanger the planet. Thank you skeptics, as if my senior year in High School needed this.

According to Wikipedia, the must trusted source in information (sarcasm), the first high-energy collisions are planned to take place after the LHC is officially unveiled on 21 October 2008. Right because the unofficial unveiling through photos to the public were already well received.

While the LHC looks like something straight out of sci-fi, the only difference is that we don’t have the means to go back in time or save the planet like you’d see in Stargate or Doctor Who. Unfortunately this little adventure could come straight out of The Twilight Zone.

Alright so I’m not being Mr. Positive, I’m sorry but with a story like this I can’t help myself. The truth is that we have nothing to fear because according to the Aztecs, whose place on earth ended a long time ago, the world won’t end until 2012- so four years until Doomsday.

For years scientists have been telling us the fate of the earth and the human race. They're constantly trying to figure out how, but do they even stop to think why any would care to know? And by the way, if there was a risk, like the earth be engulfed into a man made black hole, what gives scientists the right to risk the lives of the human race?

Well whatever you believe, you shouldn’t be worrying about the end of life on the planet. This past week I’ve tried not too- because of what I believe I have nothing to fear.

9/11

We all know where we were seven years ago, and it doesn’t really need to be said why we remember, it just goes without saying. So finding ourselves in this position again, what do we do? Well the only thing any of us can do is remember those who lost someone on that fateful day, and keep them in our prayers hoping they’ve found peace. But as much as we’d like to move on, we just can’t. Anyone who remembers that day will never be able to shake the scene, nor the emotions.

So will tell us that we’re worse off then we were seven years ago- that we’re even more at risk. If that’s true than where are the attacks that mirror what we remember today? So let us continue to never forget, and thank God for every day where we don’t have another tragedy like 9/11.

100th Post: Fair and Balanced?

If you’ve turned your TV on since last Friday, you’ve probably heard these two topics; 1) McCain chooses Sarah Palin as his running mate; and 2) Sarah Palin’s daughter is pregnant. Now to hear or see such topics unfold you’d have to be watching or listening to some sort of program. But the real question being asked in this post is, “what are you hearing?”

In this 100^th post on the Neutral Zone, I can’t think of any better topic than of journalists unfair. As stated in other posts the whole concept for this particular blog was to get people to try and understand the points on both sides. Now of course we have our own views and beliefs and that’s alright, for my point in getting people to hear/read, analyze, and choose. Perhaps the best example would be a political one. Ex: Sometimes people vote for their party because it’s their party, simple as that. Now that’s not always the case, there are Republicans out there who are voting for Barack Obama, there are the Joe Lieberman’s who are voting for McCain. But in an election, and this is probably sounding old, vote not just because it’s your party, but because the candidate you’re for is whom you believe to be the right person for the job- and don’t vote just because you’ve heard a few inspiring speeches. Hear. Analyze. Choose.

Since I’m 18 and can vote this November, I started out late last year trying to find the candidate I would vote for- sadly their no longer running but I’ve made my second choice. My Mom told me not to be persuaded to the party my dad was for, but to be open and learn from both sides, and indeed that it was I did and am still doing to this day.

But it would seem that in today’s world many people are not hearing both sides, or are being led to only favor one side. In my last post I wrote about the “experience debate” involving Gov. Palin. CNN’s Campbell Brown, a democrat, questioned McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds as to whether Palin's supposedly little political experience contradicted McCain's previous emphasis on the importance of such experience – like with Sen. Obama. Bounds said, "Any decision she has made as the commander of the National Guard that’s deployed overseas is more of a decision Barack Obama’s been making as he’s been running for president for the last two years," she responded, "So tell me. Tell me. Give me an example of one of those decisions.”

Now there’s nothing wrong with Campbell Brown’s question, there is however when the same question is not being asked of the other party. Yes many have stated that Gov. Palin has more experience than Sen. Obama, but as far as I can tell Sen. Obama’s experience is hardly being discussed on the major networks - not saying it hasn’t happened somewhere. What I’m talking about is fair journalism. The media might say they aren’t doing such thing, they say their just asking questions being asked by the American people- or something like that. But when you spend so much time on the “possible faults” of one party and not on the other, there’s a problem. The cable news networks (FOX News, MSNBC, CNN) share their thoughts, but NBC, ABC, CBS shouldn’t be. If the media or press are going to inform the American people of the day’s events, they report, they tell both sides, and they are fair - they must prove Bill O’Reilly wrong when he says the media is trying to get Barack Obama elected.

This is just my opinion; you’re free to do whatever you want- the media is free to do whatever they want, its freedom of speech, and its freedom of the press. We all know what persuasive writing is, but I think we’ve reached a problem when we have persuasive UNFAIR journalism. Like I said, we all have our own opinions, but we shouldn’t give one person a hard time for being one way and be easy on someone we like even though they fall under the same category. So I think I’m going to call this 100^th post: Fair and Balanced?