Perils of Principles for Politicians

One of the more dramatic political stories this month was the news that David Davis, a Member of Parliament, resigned in protest over plans to extend detention of terrorist suspects up to 42 days. Whether or not you agree with the disputed legislation or the form of disagreement there's something refreshing about a politician who is willing to step down as a statement of principle. I am aware of a few other British government officials who had taken similar steps; Robin Cook resigned as leader of the House of Commons in March 2003 and a few months later Clare Short resigned from Tony Blair's cabinet over the Iraq war. Although not exactly a model politician, you could possible include George Galloway in the list of MPs willing to take a stand since his openly anti-war rhetoric led to expulsion from his own party. 

I was curious to contrast the resignations from Parliament with resignations from the US House and Senate. A quick Google search tells a very different story between American and British politicians.

• Senator Trent Lott resigned in 2007 over racially insensitive comments made at the birthday of a fellow Senator.
• Speaker of the House Tom Delay resigned in 2006 after being indicted on a charge of conspiracy.
• Representative Mark Foley resigned in 2006 after his raunchy IMs to teenage boys were uncovered.
• Senator Larry Craig submitted a resignation in 2007 after being arrested for lewd conduct in a Minneapolis airport bathroom.

It is unfair to judge a country's politicians by the resignation of a few, but it's hard to deny there is a pretty clear pattern here. Members of the US Congress have a tendency to fall afoul of societal norms and principles and lose their position as a result, while British politicians are keen to uphold a principle at the expense of their position.

Peeking out from under the news bubble

Before travelling to a new country, I like to set a Google alert on the name of the country to get a sense of its big news stories. I've written before about how shockingly little information appears on the web about some countries, but I've finally found some evidence about why this happens. Alisa Miller, head of Public Radio International, gave a great talk at TED 2007 on the subject of news coverage. The image below sums up the essence of her presentation by showing the number of seconds of American network and cable news coverage devoted to each country. Beyond the graphics she also highlighted some depressing stats like the fact that coverage of Russia, China, and India (over 1/3 of the world's population) produced just one percent of the news coverage. More embarassingly, the death of Anna Nicole Smith recieved more coverage than any foreign country except Iraq. 

While it would be easy to blame this on a "dumbed down" audience, Miller rightly highlights that national celebrity stories are a lot cheaper to cover especially as foreign bureaus are eliminated and entire continents (Africa and South America) are left with no network presence. I had assumed that online coverage might be more robust but Miller noted that the 14,000+ stories on Google News homepage only covered 24 unique stories. 

I'm optimisitic that online tools will eventually find a way to present better coverage about what's going on in the world. A company like Silobreaker has made some good efforts to elevate a broader set of news and add more context through visualisations. I supect that meta-analysis of a service like FriendFeed could yield a personalised, but not narrow, news service. I can't object to people wanting lots of news about Anna Nicole Smith but if the existing news services can't produce a more diverse picture then I hope some new companies will.

And the Dakotas fend off kitsch country music from the South…

I was a tad disappointed to discover that I missed the annual rehashing of European alliances through gratuitous key changes and gaudy costumes, better known to some as Eurovision. I was totally uninitiated to this spectacle until I moved to the UK, but I have come to enjoy the absurdity of the event as long as it's consumed along with a generous sprinkling of kind words from Terry Wogan. Despite missing the live show I was happy to discover some quality kitsch entries from this year featuring robot dancing for a live chicken (thanks Bosnia & Herzegovina!), feathered men singing falsetto (thanks Azerbaijan!), and dancing pirates (thanks Latvia!).

One entertaining aspect is the fierce alliances (and enmities) that appear between countries during the voting. Turkey and Armenia are usually loathe to honor each other while Scandinavian and Balkan countries are almost always reciprocal in their vote sharing and Cyprus and Greece have awarded each other the highest number of points in every year of the competition. This has made me wonder what an AmericaVision Song Contest would look like. Would there be bastions of country music voting in the south and would the Dakotas always vote for each other? Would California or New York be punished like Britain for producing a majority of real bands? And if Ukraine can muster a tin-foil wrapped drag queen what boundaries would be pushed by Americans? Who knows if the US will ever pull this off but I would definitely like to see it - especially if Terry Wogan is commenting.