Fighting On With Mindfulness

“According to this screening from the health center,” I said to my roommate, “I am not only at risk of an eating disorder, but I show traits of depression, anxiety and suicide.” Even though USC health center’s online self-assessment screenings don't give actual diagnoses, I honestly wasn’t that surprised at my result. I’ve dealt with most of these issues since I was in middle school. My roommate’s reply, however, surprised me. “Well yeah, but everyone struggles with that these days.” It wasn’t that I was surprised that college students struggle with their mental health like I do. Earlier this year USA Today put together a brief look on college mental health, reporting that nearly half of college students have had feelings of hopelessness and cited an assessment from the American College Health Association that most students who struggle with mental health do not seek treatment. With more mental health articles and anecdotes circulating our feeds, as well as places like USC that provide resources, departments and even events centered on mental well-being, it seems that awareness of the issue is removing the stigma of struggling with mental health. But what surprised me that night was how my roommate’s bluntness. If I didn’t already know that my roommate genuinely cares about me, I would have said they were rudely dismissive. To that end, is it possible that in raising awareness of mental health on college campuses we are also normalizing it to the point where people will become dismissive on the issue? It seems counterproductive that for all the articles and Youtube videos that work to normalize mental illness among American adults, there is a possibility that this might backfire and make people have a “meh, what can you do?” approach to the issue. And to the mainstream’s credit, the only time I’ve ever felt this type of dismissiveness was with my roommate...and Internet commenters denying that mental illness in this country is even a real issue at all. With one in five American adults struggling with mental illness in a given year, we as a country can’t afford to be dismissive of those people if we genuinely care about the well-being of all who live here. That might be easy for me to say as a person who has spent much of her college career getting a handle on her mental health, but helping people with mental health issues and placing more research on this topic are worthy endeavors. The point isn’t to coddle, but rather to help people learn how to get through their day-to-day despite also handling life’s lowest moments. Normalizing mental health in to the point of dismissiveness would, in the end, just undermine the work of those trying to remove its stigma.

Bring Honor To Us All

With many of my Asian American friends excited over the live-action Mulan movie, I've thought lately of the risk Mulan took for the sake of her elderly father. While I didn't save China this semester, my family has taken up much of my time and energy this semester.

In general, I feel like all cultures place family love/loyalty pretty high in terms of values. From a rural Filipino perspective, I sometimes feel like it is all that consumes our culture. Even though my mom is a single parent and we are from a low socio-economic class, she fights for my grandmother to stay in States, where she can take care of her and get the medicine she needs. My mom will also do everything in her power to send clothes, food and money to our relatives in the Philippines.

“They are family,” she would lecture me growing up, “You have to take care of family.”

But for all the ways the value of family has been pounded into me, I already placed myself along with her perceptions of bratty American children in the sense that I was constantly talking back to her when I was younger. But as the years go by, one of my mom’s fears is that I would I would put her in a senior home, which she thinks is one of the worst things Americans can to do their relatives.

According to the Institute on Aging, the number of people aged 65+ will peak in 2030, by composing about 20% of the American population, and the older a person becomes in the United States, the more likely they will be to live alone. U.S. News' Rachel Koning Beals addressed in 2012 whether senior citizens should live with their families, the number of multigenerational homes (grandparents, parents, kids, some extended family), but as more Baby Boomers reach the age of retirement, the issue hasn't gone away over the past four years.

One of Beals' most interesting points is that no matter how welcoming younger generations might be to older generations, some homes are not equipped to deal with certain needs of elderly people. For instance, tiny details such as the height of a toilet or bathub or the amount of space can vastly effect how well an elderly person can live day to day. Also, even though this makes me feel guilty to mention, there's a financial burden on the "middle generation" who has to attend to the elderly as well as the younger generations who cannot support themselves financially.

I've kept some of these thoughts in mind when my grandmother’s health took to dangerous lows this semester. Part of me began to think that being in a senior home might be best for my grandmother. It's difficult for her to get into a car, so she doesn't always go with us to visit family friends. My mom and I are both busy with responsibilities and my grandmother is often alone during the day. This semester I took time from classes and even my internship to do my part in helping my family and helping my grandmother with her needs, but (I feel guilty for saying this) I’m not going to be able to do this forever.

And what happens when my mom is in this position when she's my grandmother's age? I'm not a superwoman like my mom; I doubt my abilities to balance being a parent, employee, community member and caregiver.

And yet, as Judith Graham wrote for the New York Times, loneliness comes with age. It seems to me that in this country at least, we easily write off the elderly like Carl Fredricksen from Pixar's "Up." Seeing how much family is ingrained in Filipino culture, the idea of my grandmother and my mother developing a sense of anti-socialness and disconnect in this country makes me really sad.

In the end for me, repeated messages are too strong. My grandmother and my mother have sacrificed much in their lives, and they deserve to feel loved in their final years. I have faith that I'm at least smart enough to figure out the balancing thing when I'm older. I am far from being the ideal Filipino child, but in honoring the lives of two women who have made me who I am, I know my choice.

Family first.

No Safe Spaces For Echo Chambers

“So the election,” my openly conservative professor remarked during class, “Did all of your friends go to their safe spaces and participate in their protests? They’re totally wasting their time, by the way. Thank God USC isn’t like one of those schools, I can’t stand it.”

I had to take a few deep breaths.

My community involvement often places me in touch with ethnic and activist communities,  and so I hear the word “safe space” get thrown around a lot, usually when addressing topics that could be “triggering” to certain people. The base idea of having a safe space is for someone to be able to voice their opinions, find comfort and support and rest from triggering environments that could take a toll on a person’s mental health.

As a women of color who is a friend to members of various marginalized groups, I absolutely believe that safe spaces ought to exist. They are places where people find support they wouldn’t find anywhere else, support might be vital to a person’s well-being. At the same time, my views on safe spaces come with an asterisk.

And that asterisk is that for the sake of having open discussions across the political spectrum, the protection of safe spaces cannot be taken too far. Last year student reporter Tim Tai at the University of Missouri was harrassed by protesters who were calling for the resignation of now former President Timothy M. Wolfe. To them, having a member of the press record photographs of where they set their base camps was a violation of their safe space, since to them “it’s typically white media who don’t understand the importance of respecting black spaces." 

But the fact that the reporter was also a person of color didn't matter as activists yelled and physically pushed him in his attempt to do his job.

Just a few months before the incident, President Obama already put his two cents on college safe spaces:

I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view. I think you should be able to — anybody who comes to speak to you and you disagree with, you should have an argument with ‘em. But you shouldn’t silence them by saying, "You can’t come because I'm too sensitive to hear what you have to say." That’s not the way we learn either.

I'm inclined to disagree that the true point of safe spaces is to coddle people, but I do agree with Obama in the sense that people need to learn from each other through debate and open conversation. But perhaps that one extreme incident at Mizzou was a taste of the political polizarization and close-mindedness often seen in this election. Zealous people who take safe spaces to the extreme are dangerous because they encourage an environment that causes people to be rooted in their opinions. In the end, they will not bother to listen to differing opinions.

As author and Youtuber John Green said in a video after the election results, "I'm sorry that we've let our echo chambers become so sealed off that it is as unfathomable to me why someone would support Donald Trump for president as it is for many Trump supporters why I would support Hillary Clinton."

As members of marginalized groups reach out to their safe spaces in light of Trump’s presidency to mourn and to figure out how to cope with the future it is important that people don’t get too preoccupied with only people who reaffirm their viewpoints.

In order to prevent Trump’s administration and the upcoming Congress from setting the country back 50 years, people NEED to be able to talk to people with other viewpoints and be willing to acknowledge one’s biases and even flaws in their own arguments. As I scrolled through my feeds post-election, my heart hurt for people whom I felt have more to fear from a Trump presidency than I do right now. At the same time, I also felt fear reading posts from friends who refuse to have any association with a Trump supporter “because you clearly have no regard for my well-being and for the issues I stand for.”

There is a time and place for support, but it’s important to remember that echo chambers go both ways. The election reavealed that the country is politically polarized enough. Safe spaces should not be a safe space for close-mindedness.

On Being A Health Nut

One of my newest toys is a $140 Fitbit. As an active person, I’m pretty in love with the fact that I can use my fitbit to help me keep accountable for my workouts, since I usually get a little lazy towards the end. Yet the cheapskate in me is still asking, “You already walk 10,000 steps a day AND you workout six days a week. Did you really have to buy this?”

My parents voiced aloud something similar: “You’re already thin. Why do you want to lose weight?”

But me buying the Fitbit wasn't about losing pounds. It was part of me trying to be healthy in a healthy way.

Over on the Lil Policy Bunny Blog, she made herself open as she addressed her past eating disorder as part of a larger conversation about how easy it can be for body parts-such as cleavage-can be desirable and not desirable like fashion trends. I mentioned on her post that while I never had an eating disorder, I was dangerously close to having one.

One cannot live in Los Angeles and be active on social media channels without getting at least a little caught up in the ideal of a healthy lifestyle. There are god knows how many diets out there and god knows how many fitness articles/blogs/gurus that give conflicting advice. And it really doesn’t help when I feel like most of my classmates can just pay their student debt with part-time modeling gigs.

These tiny aspects of my surroundings were built into my subconscious on the day I couldn’t get through a high-intensity Zumba class despite the fact that my 60-year-old mother didn’t even need a break. After that day I obsessed over my diet, exercised to the point where I was doing damage to my body, and had a strong sense of failure if my weight wasn’t going down a few ounces every day.

My goal was to be healthy and to be as physically fit as possible...but I mistook that in order to reach my healthiest state of being, I needed to be thin.

But healthy is actually NOT always the equivalent of thin. Time addressed this about two years ago and used an example of a 19-year-old woman who was 5’3 and 117 pounds. While this kind of physique would be viewed as healthy by many people, the woman was actually diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes when she was 16. And, as the article went on to discuss, people who are naturally thin can still be obese.

People like this have what Italian researchers from the University of Tor Vergata termed Normal Weight Obesity Syndrome. While BMI is the most-used indicator of health, it does not indicate how much lean muscle mass a person has; much like a person’s weight, BMI doesn’t tell the whole story.

I know I’ve leaned on Youtube way too much for my blogs, but I can’t resist slipping this video in where Buzzfeed staff learned something interesting about how different BMI can look:

So just like how media’s portrayal of beauty needs to stop valuing skinniness, media’s portrayal of healthiness needs to send a message, especially to women, that being skinny is NOT the same as being healthy.

As more conversations on body positivity and anecdotes of survivors of eating disorders become even more accessible via workshops and the Internet, hopefully future generations will be able to subscribe to better views on physical health. I’m just happy that as I use my Fitbit for my workouts, I’m finally focusing on my physical abilities as my main indicator of my health rather than a number on a scale.

Eulogy For The 2016 Election Coverage

As the country erupts in Internet flame wars (and sometimes actual flames on a pinata), people wait in dread as the day to Donald Trump’s inauguration counts down. But as mainstream news organizations use new storytelling techniques to cover the aftermath of the election--such as using Facebook Live to stream protest rallies and marches--this writer cannot help but mourn the election results for another reason.

Trump’s election indicates that the mainstream media lost much of its sway over the public.

Many of the major outlets endorsed Clinton which may have been proof to Trump supporters that the mainstream was inherently against their candidate, which doesn’t help when nearly every other headline mentions something about Trump and his supporters to the point where the public is desensitized. In this regard, the best aspect of the Internet is also its most crippling fault, that thing being the wealth of information available. 

It’s in a society’s best interest, after all, to have a marketplace of ideas. By encouraging a mass exchange of different information, opinion and arguments, the best ideas can shine through to guide decision-making that ranges from whom to put on the school board to whether the country should take military action. 

But as the country becomes more politically polarized, yet politically desensitized, the media and commentators struggled between objectively informing the country as per journalistic duty but also emphasizing the dangers of a Trump administration. Seeing how much effort the media put towards running negative headlines about Trump from the mid-primaries onward, it’s frightening how little impact it now seems to have had over those who voted for Trump.

At the same time, it can be difficult to persuade a person to overcome certain judgments and fears, to the point where one’s logic and reasoning is more often used to confirm biases rather than actively looking for evidence contradicting a person’s initial beliefs. A person, therefore, can claim to have spent hours researching and reading information on the Internet, but it’s not any good if the person is only receiving information from one source, or from a few sources that politically lean a certain way.

The danger of the Internet is that in the modern marketplace of ideas, social media feeds and selective Google searches make it easier for a person to receive information that leans one way or another. We are living in an era where a person’s media literacy is great if they receive news from a liberal outlet and a conservative outlet, let alone actively trying to critically and objectively analyze the messages of either one. This era of weakened trust in mainstream outlets and in poor media literacy is troubling considering that Balkan teenagers can run pro-Trump websites full of inaccurate or misleading information that nevertheless generates hundreds of thousands of engagements on social media.

As the country protests and braces itself for a Trump presidency, so too should mainstream media. Not only has the election highlighted the people’s distrust, but also shown that a polarized electorate is steadfast to sources that align with their own biases, regardless of reliability. The fourth estate is meant to be an institution that stands between politicians and the greater interest of the public. But as we watch live-streams of protests around the country, however, we witness what happens when the fourth estate fails to engage the majority of the electorate.

Less Than One: Quick Thoughts on Finding Love in L.A.

It's Halloween and almost everyone and their mother are carving pumpkins, creating last-minute costumes and, for college students, finding one way or another to get drunk at a bar or a house party. Let's be real; at this point of the election season, there isn't much left to shock or scare many people anymore, save for the results of election day. But there's been something that's been on my mind lately and I think I'm ready to talk about it: Love. Specifically, romantic love.

Normal people might say this post would be more suited for Valentine's Day, but this is actually a fitting time for me. The world of dating and relationships is one of the things I fear the most. 

There are many personal reasons why it's difficult for me to commit I've been having self-reflections for a number of personal reasons, but the most interesting one was an email. I was part of a group that sat in on a TV screening as part of a fundraiser, and that same company took my information and sent a casting call for singles in Los Angeles:

"Are you single and over the dating scene in Los Angeles? Are you tired of spending all of your time messaging on dating apps when you could be meeting someone face to face? 

Do you sometimes wish you could find out right away if you and another person have true physical chemistry?

Step outside of the box and be a part of an exhilarating dating experience!"

Let the record show that I'm so terrible at dating that I actually considered applying. And that's the thing: why did I consider applying? I don't need to date a person. I can barely cook chicken without drying it out, I'm currently searching for job options after I graduate from USC and I already have more than enough family and chosen family who love me despite my issues.

But it seems to me the part of the reason why I considered it is the same reason why millions watch episodes of inebriated young adults on Bachelor or why anyone gets a Tinder or shares articles from The New York Times' "Modern Love" series.

We are all in the pursuit of love. And unless we're in satisfying relationships already, we're all on the struggle bus.

I'm not saying that trying to find a partner is all that consumes my life, or that singles who are perfectly fine with being single are actually lonely. But we've all been at the point where we realized that love is more complicated than finding mutual attraction (and even then, getting to that point can be complicated, too.)

There are all sorts of reasons listed on the Internet as to why dating among people in my generation sucks. New means of communication--dating apps, social media platforms and instant messaging included--is usually listed as a big reason. This topic was even explored in a Buzzfeed video:

Everyone has read some form or another of why dating sucks for people of my generation, but it turns out that but turns out that dating in Los Angeles in general can actually suck, too. L.A. dating coach Damona Hoffman attributes part of it to the personality of people who live in the city, where "it’s nearly impossible to determine if someone likes you or if they are more into your money and connections." (A quote that, incidentally, reminded me of a friend whose Tinder date turned into a mentoring session in the accounting field.)

I suppose this makes sense in some part. Los Angeles is a place where people come to live out their dreams, and trying to make your dreams a reality in a city with a high cost of living is a lot of work without throwing hookup and dating culture into the mix. Add that with modern fear of looking too desperate, clingy or "creepy," and I'm personally on the verge of giving up hope.

According to this website, there are about 4,435 people who are "perfect" for me in Los Angeles. And in Pasadena, which is closer to my hometown, there are 175 people. The website doesn't exactly account for things such as whether those people are gay or if they prefer to date people who graduated from Ivy Leagues, but it's still interesting to think about; there's no such thing as a real soul mate because there are multiple people out there who would be "perfect."

Except, in actual relationships nothing is perfect. The kind of marriages that last 60 years and get talked about in the news all give advice along the lines of how having a great relationship is about being able to constantly work at it. Relationships must grow along with the people in them, or so I've heard, and people must work around or through each other's differences. I guess my issue and the issue with all of my friends is that we're too individualistic and conflicting in terms of our deal breakers. Can't be a Trump Republican, can't have too much control over the relationship but has to plan all the dates, can't be too nice but also can't be an asshole...

Perhaps this is just a Twenties thing and I'll feel differently about dating when I'm older. But, for now, where I am in my life, it's just one complicated thing that I really would rather not deal with.

The John Oliver Effect

(Democracy Chronicals/Creative Commons)

One of my guilty pleasures is curling up with my laptop or phone and binge watching episodes of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver. There is something about him that I instantly like; maybe it's the British accent or his glasses. It looks like I'm not alone in liking him, either. Even though the show is only two years old, 4.6 million people tuned in to watch his show every week in 2015, according to an HBO press release. The show's Youtube channel alone has 4,185,191 subscribers with 902,822,519 million views.

And maybe that's the beauty of it. When it comes to late-night talk show hosts, interviews with celebrities, comedy bits and performances are just as important to the shows as the host's own commentary and content--both satirical and serious--on social issues and current events. News satire shows such as The Daily News Show with Jon Stewart  and The Colbert Report had already popularized the genre before HBO started airing Oliver’s show each Sunday, but Oliver--who was a writer and occaisional stand-in host for Stewart--has gained some celebrity in his own right based on the content of his shows.

“Comedians mock our cultural and political institutions on TV all the time.” Victor Luckerson wrote in an article for TIME, “But it’s not every day that a comic’s jokes crash a government website or directly inspire legislators to push for new laws.”

The typical Last Week Tonight episode goes as follows. Oliver recaps the week, laced with snarky jokes and humor (example). Then Oliver delves into the main part of the show that focuses on a particular issue such as the death penalty, the legitimacy of scientific studies and doping. Although the topics Oliver focuses on are sometimes grim and controversial, Oliver still manages to bring sketches, jokes and analogies that tastefully lighten the mood and dispels negative emotion through laughter.

One example of this was in Oliver’s opening moments of a segment on abortion, in which he addressed Americans who were against abortion under all circumstances, “Frankly, you are excused from watching the rest of this, but do rejoin us at 11:29 because once I’m done talking about this we’ll all be watching a video featuring a bucket of sloths and I promise you it is almost violently delightful.”

During the segment Oliver ran soundbites and referenced stories about the difficulties of state abortion laws, many of which were meant to invoke a sense of sadness or anger as a way to persuade viewers on paying attention to abortion policy issues going on in the country. Yet, not only did Oliver mock politicians for their policies, he delivered on his promise at the end of the show by showing the sloth video and showing a real sloth in the studio.

Humor has always been used to give social commentary (“Never speak disrespectfully of society, Algernon,” Lady Augusta Blackwell chided in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, “Only people who cannot get into it do that”). The humorous appeals Oliver makes to offset the tension or heavy emotion in his segments might be a bit ridiculous, but that just makes Oliver seem that more appealing. He’s able to appear like he knows the issues and his sense of humor lightens the mood and makes audiences more open to what he has to say.

With that in mind, having such a command over his audience has led to what Luckerson called “The John Oliver Effect.” This effect was felt when the FCC website servers crashed after Oliver urged them to engage with the regulatory body regarding net neutrality. About two days after Oliver criticized Miss America Organization assertion that it is the largest provder of scholarships for women, one of the organizations John Oliver mentioned, the Society of Women Engineers, received $25,000 in donations. When Oliver established his own church to exploit how easy it is for televagelists to take money from people, he received $70,000 from “church-member” contributions that he ultimately donated to Doctors Without Borders. Luckerson also attributes Oliver’s segment on civil forefeiture as the reason why Attorney General Eric Holder would enact limitations on the law.

Even though Oliver’s show is news satire, the reach and impact of some of his shows--such as where he roasted Trump and “Donald Drumpf” became a popular search term--is the kind that many journalists aspire to have. Many of the segments on his show are well-researched, as well; according to NPR he has four researchers on his team with journalism backgrounds.

But as Oliver said himself in that same piece, he has a firm opinion on whether his work can actually be considered journalism:

No. There's a pretty simple answer to that. No, it is not. No, we are a comedy show so everything we do is in pursuit of comedy. ... It's confusing to me somehow the fact that this is often the line of questioning. ... It almost makes me feel like, when people say: "This is journalism," it almost makes me feel like: Am I a terrible comedian? ... Is it like looking at a sculptor and saying: "Well it's not art, so are you trying to build a wall? What exactly are you working on here?"

As a journalism major, I don’t consider his work as journalism in the traditional sense, where many of his presentations, it can be argued, are skewed with a liberal bias. I do, however, know that what journalism looks like changes all the time (in the old days, for instance, a journalist would write “this reporter” when referencing himself or herself, but today it’s acceptable to use “I” and “me”). Perhaps Oliver's brand of comedy will become an acceptable way of receiving the news, especially now that newspapers are undergoing massive changes...and much for the worse.

But while his work isn’t traditional journalism, it seems to me that Oliver’s show puts a slightly higher emphasis on “news” in “news satire” than some of his contemporaries. Instead of merely reacting to the week’s news cycle, Oliver delves into issues and hosts a show that gives at least the impression of being extremely well-researched. And regardless of Oliver’s intentions, the result of mixing an in-depth look at journalism with humor makes people more open to taking in the information and reacting to it--which they are, to the tune of millions each week.

Perhaps I should take a class on how to be a comedian. “The Carreon Effect” has a nice ring to it.

Some Post-Debate Season Thoughts

I wrote last week of potential for people to hold on to biases even in the face of logic, and while I’m still sure there are women who will continue to vote for Trump, allow me to submit that Clinton has stood out as a better candidate for president in comparison. In each debate, there was a moment when Trump seemed angry and on edge.

For those whose rider is decently in control of their elephant (reasoning able to overcome one’s biases rather than search for ways to validate it), they would have to admit that this last debate wasn’t the performance needed to get his campaign out of the dumps, one notable reason:

Wallace: But, sir, there is a tradition in this country, in fact, one of the prides of this country is the peaceful transition of power and no matter how hard fought a campaign is that at the end of the campaign, that the loser concedes to the winner. Not saying you're necessarily going to be the loser or the winner, but that the loser concedes to the winner and the country comes together in part for the good of the country. Are you saying you're not prepared now to commit to that principle?
Trump: What I’m saying is that I will tell you at the time. I'll keep you in suspense, okay?

And Trump kept voters in suspense for a day before announcing that he won't accept the results. But casting that tidbit aside, the fact that he refused to honor the results if he didn't win isn't something that should surprise people. He did the exact same thing when he refused to say that he wouldn't run as a third party candidate if he lost the primaries. But as the moderator said, one of the most important aspects of this country is continuing its stability through a peaceful transition of power. Trump's refusal to adhere to that transition on national television made him seem petty.

As for Clinton’s performances during the debates, I don’t entirely buy this Huffington Post headline that suggested #IamaNastyWoman became a call of solidarity for Hillary. Yes, to many women that moment might have made Clinton seem relatable. But given the virality of hashtags, participation usually means that people were inclined to support her or bash Trump in the first place. Clinton’s poll rise seems more about the actions of her opponent than of Clinton herself--not only did he cause the two hashtags of the previous debate, but also made himself appear defensive for the past few weeks.

Vox’s Ezra Klein, who is one of their chief writers covering the election, says that Clinton’s success in the debates was largely due to her ability to exploit and attack Trump based on his weaknesses and knock him off-balance:

Klein made a valid point about Clinton’s preparation to set the Alicia Machado trap. That much is evidenced by the press tour and the way Clinton drives much of her attacks on Trump about how he treats women. At the same time, however, I wouldn’t give Clinton’s debate performance all the credit for her rise in the polls.

From his meltdown on Twitter following the first debate and onwards from that moment, Trump had been reeling to widen the poll gap between him and Clinton. And once left off-balance, it was hard to get back to his numbers before the debates. When he used the women’s panel before the second debate, for instance, it was a sign that he was desperate to improve his image, so much so that he didn’t seem to have spent a lot of time to prepare for the debate.

By the time of the third debate Trump had, perhaps, acknowledged defeat in his own way. Once spinning the narrative of Crooked Hillary wasn’t giving him the campaign punch he needed, Trump began to sell another narrative--the election is rigged. In this narrative, the establishment GOP and Dems are out to get him for exposing issues within their own parties. Crooked Hillary is actually terrible to women, but her supporters will resort to ballot stuffing. The media doesn’t like him because he calls things as he sees them without regard for political correctness. Trump doesn’t like playing by anyone’s rules, and he’ll suffer for it because everyone is against him.

In this regard, I will concur with President Obama:

I will give this to Trump, though; at least he is actually comprehending that there’s a possibility for him to lose the election. It’s a tiny step up from how he used to act in the primaries. While I think Clinton appeared more composed in her answers in the debates, I’m not quite sure if I lean towards her because of how she performed during the debates...or because of how much better her performance looked in comparison to Trump in light of the past month.

At least one thing is certain: whether you’re a Nasty Woman or a Bad Hombre, people on the fence are turning from Trump as his campaign takes a nosedive, and Clinton is poised to take their votes.

Haidt, Trump Supporters and the Big Elephant

Early this morning I read this headline from a Washington Post newsletter: "Republican politicians fall back in line behind Trump after defecting"

My immediate reaction was to spit out my cereal.

As a person who believes in treating others with respect and dignity, I was mad (but not surprised) when I saw the video of Trump's crude statements on Friday. In this way I felt truly sorry for the GOP. I do not doubt for a minute that there are GOP and Democrat politicians who have said something just as crude once or twice (at least).  Yet in this year's race the Donald is the big elephant in the room, and it seems that the establishment GOP is sacrificing its face to longtime Republicans and progressives of the world by standing behind him (not that progressives tend to have a favorable view of the GOP in the first place anyway).

As the weekend went on I began to have hope--perhaps NOW people will see the light and look for other candidates to vote for besides Trump. That hope grew as--one by one--the big wigs of the GOP distanced themselves from trump.

The presidential debate gave me a little bit more hope; surely the American public would be weirded out by Trump lurking behind Clinton, which is strange considering he says that he isn't what all the columnists have pegged him out to be.

And yet. No.

If anyone is wondering why people still would support Trump, I would point them in the direction of The Righteous Mind: Why People are Divided By Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt, who looks at moral psychology in relation to politics.

One of the big ideas in the book is that the human mind can be likened to an elephant being controlled by a rider. The elephant represents our biases, tendencies, and intuitions. The rider is our logic and rationale.

To summarize his view, the mind's elephant is something that can be controlled, but it's also very hard to do (hence the elephant metaphor). Even when you try to use your logic and reasoning, he says, the rider will often go the way of the elephant. Confirmation bias is an example of this, because with the power of Google you can always find a study or an article that supports your point of view (and you can find a study or an article that contradicts what you find).

It's too simple to say that Trump's supporters want him to be president because their biases align with his proposed policies; that much is obvious. But let's take a look at one demographic: women voters. One would think that all women, at least, would defect from Trump after this weekend, right?

Nate Silver's map says otherwise:

I have a liberal-leaning elephant, so I was happy to see that women are forecasted to overall vote against Trump in the election, but what about those red states? Surely the mothers, daughters and wives in those states would feel indignant about Trump's comments, especially since women voters are liberal and vote democrat, right?

Turns out there's something else at work.

Before this semester I believed that all women were Democrats; I live in California, and the first openly Republican woman I ever met was my AP Government teacher from my senior year of high school (and even then, she grew up in Arizona) But after looking up some statistics I realized that it isn't the case. It seems that white women voters are a major group to appeal to; they consistently have the highest voter registration and voter turnout rates.

White women voters also vote Republican, and have voted for the Republican candidate in the presidential election for the past decades.

And based on Nate Silver's map, it seems that for women voters in conservative states (who are probably mostly white), it would take more than a lewd video filmed a decade ago for their elephants to be swayed towards Hillary Clinton's camp.

Since my elephant is only slightly more in control than my rider, my first impulse is to feel outraged that women would still want to vote Trump after literally everything  he said about women. But perhaps there's something more. By applying Haidt's so-called Moral Foundations Theory provides some explanations why some people might support Trump so strongly, but that will probably be a post for another day.

Until then, I invite readers to check out the Moral Foundations Theory website and think on this:

• There people who fear the notion of domestic terrorism more than they care about lewd comments made about married women who let Trump near them 10 years ago.
• There are people who care more about others who try to restrain their speech than they want to consider people's feelings on a controversial topic.
• There are people who are willing to listen to people who agree with them more than they want to listen to the mainstream that seems to distort the truth more and more each day.

If the above triggered your elephant against me in any way, good. Let's have more conversations on this. When it comes to thinking about who Trump's supporters are and why they support him, I don't think falling into old tropes (such as the uneducated go to Trump and the university graduates go to Hillary) is going to cut it for this race. 

There's something more at work here where the possibilities range from xenophobia to religious values; despite not being the biggest fan of the GOP I don't think the majority of its voters are utterly stupid. They know that Trump isn't the best candidate in the world. But what is it about Trump that moves their elephants towards him? Is it just that these voters hate Hillary that much? Or is there more than that?

Rodrigo Duterte: Case Study in News Coverage of Non-Western Countries

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has been perhaps one of the more controversial figures in international news. When he stepped onto the scene early this year, news outlets such as Washington Post and NBC News likened Duterte to the Donald Trump of Asia. What many outlets failed to report--and what many Filipinos criticize them for-- is why Duterte is so popular in the first place, and how a man who called the leader of the free world a son of a whore can be beloved in the Philippines. In this way, tracking coverage of Duterte can be used as a case study in how media fails to properly report on news in non-Western countries. Without completely discrediting the works of reporters who do attempt good journalism (and there are many), Western bias, pressures of modern journalism and limitations of non-Western media outlets are big contributors to incomplete reporting.

It is not a secret that the former mayor of Davao--a prominent city in the Southern Philippines--has a controversial mouth. During his term as mayor, he once expressed deep anger at escaped criminals who raped and killed a New Zealand missionary: “I was angry because she was raped, that’s one thing. But she was so beautiful, the mayor should have been first. What a waste.”

When confronted over these statements during his campaign earlier this year, Duterte replied, as quoted by Philippine news outlet Rappler, “No, it was not a joke, I said it in a narrative I was just talking plain sense narrative..”

This statement was deplorable to many people, especially to those outside of the Philippines. Duterte seemed, at least to Last Week Tonight host John Oliver, even worse than Trump.

“If you are feeling depressed about the current state of [America’s] election,” said Oliver in a segment that highlighted Duterte’s crude remarks and aggression, “let me give you some perspective from the Philippines.”

But writers from mainstream outlets agreed, too.

“While their politics may be different, this unpredictable new leader, and the timing of his rise, should worry the world much more than Trump ever could,” academic Tom Smith wrote for the Guardian.

And yet, this is where cultures clash. Because although people might scratch their heads as to why the Philippines would want to have a president who rules with a strict hand, much of mainstream coverage didn’t emphasize is the nuances of why  Filipinos like Duterte so much (with one exception being Time).

“I don’t think he actually meant that,” my 35-year-old cousin told me when I asked her about Duterte’s rape comments when I visited her in the Philippines, “It is more important what he does as president, and that he makes the country safe.”

“He is standing up against countries who want to control the Philippines,” her sister added.

In a nutshell, the world is only barely comprehending the drug culture and crime in the Philippines when Filipinos have been living through it for years. Duterte, to them, represents a break from politicians who are part of the few elite political families that have controlled the politics of the Philippines for decades. Between his track record of reducing crime in Davao and his tough demeanor, Duterte was seen by Filipinos as a way to see the country improve. Even though more than 3,000 people have died as part of Duterte’s war on drugs, according to CBS News, the tough-talker from Mindanao currently enjoys a 76% approval rating. The reasons why Duterte enjoys this sort of popularity are merely hinted at or added as an afterthought on the bottom of articles, such as in the CBS piece.

But this tilt in media coverage is also part of the failings of modern journalism, one failing being the pressure for viral content. According to the Pew Research Center weekday circulation in newspapers fell 7% between 2010 and 2016. Advertising dropped 8% between 2014 and 2015, the greatest since 2009 according to Pew. While the report noted that there is growth in digital ads revenue, it has not made up for the decline in print.

“For the five [publicly traded] companies that broke out digital vs. non-digital ad revenue for 2014-2015, non-digital ad revenue declined 9.9%, while digital’s decline was less steep (-1.7%). (The remaining companies did not provide a digital/non-digital breakdown in their SEC filings.)”

In addition to the decline of viewership in newspaper outlets, it seems that advertising culture has also changed over the years. With new technology and increasing accessibility to the internet, brands and products are able to have their own websites and social media accounts. It would make more sense for brands such as Dove or Coca-Cola to create their own marketing campaigns via Twitter or Facebook accounts than place an ad in a newspaper; the Internet has made it easier for brands to reach potentially interested consumers rather than using news outlets.

This puts an increasing pressure for outlets to increase viewership and continue deals with their advertisers. While the business side and news side of news outlets puts pressure on editors and reporters to produce content that is quick to get online and is projected to go reach a lot of people. While well-reported content is still a priority and can go viral in their own right, it is easier and more cost-efficient to capitalize on a hot topic in a consumable format (Buzzfeed listicles, for instance) to get as many views and clicks as possible in a small time frame. This has been exemplified by billionaire Sam Zell, who owns Tronc, inc., which runs Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribute and Orlando Sentinel.

“My attitude on journalism is very simple. I want to make enough money so I can afford you,” Zell said to a reporter at Orlando Sentinel, “...You need to in effect help me by being a journalist that focuses on what our readers want.”

In the case of Duterte, he has much fodder for viral content. With his often-crude way of speaking, his strongly aggressive manner, disregard for mainstream press and his heavy-handed mayorship of Davao City, it was too easy for media to label Duterte as the “Donald Trump of the Philippines.” Having such headlines and framing stories on the Philippines elections with that angle is good for viewership. These stories took a subject people are familiar with and feel strongly about and implied that there is another person in the world with as much of an infamous public image as the Donald. Stories with those angles and ones focusing on Duterte’s sayings, mannerisms and aggressiveness invoke sentiments such as anger, shock and disgust. They also further appeal to those biased against Trump by emphasizing the similarities between the two men, especially as their labels of “outsider politicians.”

As anyone with a particularly opinioned friend can attest, events and news stories that invoke strong, negative emotions drive people to take to social media as a conduit for their thoughts, taking form as long Facebook statuses/posts, a long, angry series of tweets or a rant video on Youtube, just to name a few. In this way media outlets that liken Duterte to Trump for the sake of generating interest and engagement are perfect examples of what Youtube educator CPG Grey would call “spreading thought germs.” CPG Grey goes into details about this in the video below.

As Grey says, sometimes angry thoughts don’t last too long (in this case when surrounding people agree). But it seems that particularly angry thoughts do not always lead people to conduct their own personal research to find other content with an opposing view or framing. Though Grey mentions that angry thought germs can die, the original impression consumers had with the content will still be in the back of their heads. So, again, the nuances of Duterte as his own candidate who is popular among Filipino citizens is lost as most people who read western media have an image of Duterte on the same level of Trump. Spreading so-called thought germs is good for virality, which is good for the business side of media outlets. The catch in terms of producing a better-informed society, however, is spreading thought germs from informational stories that give a whole picture of a person, event or issue. With headlines and stories that fail to give such a holistic view, people are unable to accomplish that, which perpetuates opinions based on incomplete information, which might lead to a misunderstanding of a subject.

Yet in fairness to reporters, international stories can be better reported if allowed the time and the resources. News editors and publishers, as the gate keepers of news, determine which stories are worthy to pursue, and to bring back an earlier point, the business side of media outlets urge for viral content made in a cost-efficient (i.e. short) amount of time. In a Neiman Lab post, Ken Doctor discussed the consideration of pricing news stories, that a single investigative piece (California Watch’s “On Shaky Ground”) that took 20-months to produce cost half a million dollars. Doctor quoted Deseret Media CEO Clark Gilbert’s belief that it’s important to know the pricing of a story, whether it’s staff-written or freelanced.

“It doesn’t mean I’m not willing to pay for content,” Gilbert said in Doctor’s post,“I’m paying a boatload for stories that are a commitment to my audience.”

The implication of Gilbert’s words is clear: while news editors may see the value of going in-depth about certain issues, the focus is on content that would directly affect the outlet’s audience as opposed to issues that would make them more informed, but aren’t necessarily as popular. With this in mind, reporters these days are tasked with researching information on the subject, finding subjects/experts willing give a short commentary and writing a piece that is expected to have at least half a million reactions on Facebook alone. That isn’t to say long, in-depth reporting on certain issues doesn’t exist; many people like reading long content if the subject matter is interesting. But such stories are expensive and might not be viewed by many. For these reasons, many reporters might potentially have quotes that might present an incomplete view of a subject due to limited time to contact/find good sources for interviews. Some facts that would add to a person’s view might be missing because of time constraints in conducting good research.

The institution of mainstream media operates on a 24-hour news cycle where the pressure to create much-viewed content at a low cost. Yet there is one other problem in international reporting other than the limitations of mainstream outlets and the potential Westernized bias of both the reporter and the news consumer-- local media outlets in the countries where the subject at hand takes place in might experience its own limitations as well. Outlets in other countries, for instance, do report on timely news. There is often, however, some limitations in the reporting from local outlets. Despite occurring in the same place as where a subject is, a local news outlet would not have quite the same audience reach to the rest of the world as, say, CNN.

Language barriers and even more limited resources prevent outlets in some countries from offering in-house translations of articles or even having a good website to publish its stories on. In addition to that, the countries that are the subject of international news might have major restrictions on the media, whether through having only state-controlled outlets or controlling reporters through imprisonment or threats of physical violence. This affects the trustworthiness of local outlets in non-Western countries in which the truth is altered to show a country in a more favorable light. With these factors combined, local reporters in non-Western countries are limited in regards to reporting on the issues occurring in their own respective country, both in terms of free speech and in getting worldwide visibility.

In the case of the Philippines media covering Duterte’s election, the above points are somewhat applicable because major broadcast outlets in the Philippines have a small worldwide reach through various Filipino communities living abroad and the country is considered dangerous for local reporters by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Yet a big limitation of non-Western media that was exemplified by the Philippines was lack of staff. In a Subselfie post that looked critically on Philippine media coverage of the election, CNN Philippines producer JM Nualla noted that some major Philippine media outlets took pains to eliminate conflicts of interest in their coverage, making reporters disclose their relationship to the presidential candidates and identifying potential areas of conflict. Those who were actively involved in the campaigns took a leave of absence, according to Nualla. With downsized staff, however, there was even more pressure on reporters covering the election, some even making major errors such as a social media producer posting a personal opinion of Duterte on the official Facebook page of the news outlet rather than his/her personal account.

Nualla also added, “Journalists complained of being too exhausted from covering all of Duterte’s campaign events that they could not cover his midnight sorties because they had deadlines to meet for news stories of the day.”

If there’s anything to gather from looking at coverage of Duterte, particularly in his election, it’s that covering international news can be tricky; cultural nuances can be lost even with reporters’ best intentions. But according to this list compiled by data blogger Nate Silver, some of the most influential news outlets on Google News and Google Blogs are Western-based outlets, such as The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. Considering that Google is so widely used, there is a huge potential for Western-centric bias even when people are looking up world news. This is problematic because having a Western-centric mindset might prevent both the audience and reporters from thinking of certain cultures complexly, such as why local Filipinos are willing to overlook Duterte’s more crude remarks for the hope that they can finally feel safe. Coverage of the Philippine elections by the country’s major news outlets has shown that many non-Western countries can be limited in their own resources and skills to report the news. With that in mind, Western media needs to be diligent in how it reports the news from non-Western countries. To do otherwise will perpetuate an incomplete picture of world issues.