Kasie Hunt should replace Chuck Todd, now.

I'm totally serious.

Hunt, whose first MSNBC show Kasie DC just wrapped up, and whose second Way Too Early just started, is a good, effective, reporter, and doesn't come across as a partisan chihuahua on crack like Chuck Todd does on television election nights, or as a completely unhinged biased partisan as he does on Meet the Press, not that Todd lets her get very many words in edgewise (which, I'll note, brings an effective slight sneer from Hunt, which she's really good at).

NBC.  Send Todd to a well deserved rest. Given Hunt Meet the Press.

The Punitivie Expedition: U.S. complete its withdrawal from Mexico. February 5, 1917.

The smile on the soldier to the left's face was likely quite genuine.  The 6th and the 16th Infantry crossing back into the United States.

U.S forces complete their withdrawal from Mexico.  The Punitive Expedition was over, although the official end would come two days later, on February 7.

And it happened, in terms of military withdrawals, in record time.  The US had been deep into Mexico just a week prior.  Now, it was out.

Note, there were big headlines going in, coming out was still on the front page, but not nearly as big in the headlines. 

Was it a success?

Not in terms of its expressed aims.  Pancho Villa remained not only at large, but resurgent. Commanding a handful of men the prior year when he raided Columbus New Mexico in a reprisal for Woodrow Wilson granting Constitutionalist troops transit across southern Texas to attack him, he now had many more men and had resumed being an effective commander in the field.  His forces had resumed combat in Chihuahua with some success and it was far from certain that the Constitutionalist, who ratified the new Mexican Constitution on this very day, would defeat him, let alone defeat him and Emiliano Zapata who was fighting in the south.

Nor was it a success in terms of our relationship with Mexico, although that was strained beforehand.

American relations with Mexico had been very poor throughout the Mexican Revolution, in no small part because the United States had failed to reign in its diplomatic representation in Mexico after Modero had taken power, which helped lead to his being overthrown in a  coup by Huerta.  Modero would have been a seemingly natural ally to the United States but American representation in Mexico City failed to appreciate that and actually felt the opposite way, which was assessed to be the case by the Mexican military.  That helped lead to Modero's overthrow and death, and in turn that helped lead to the ongoing Mexican Revolution and American intervention in Mexico, although the naive Modero was complicit in his own demise in that he left the defeated professional Mexican army, including its officer crops,  intact.  Modero hadn't won the allegiance of the Mexican federal army, he'd defeated, with the likes of men like the radical Carranza, the populist Villa and the agrarian Zapata, amongst many others.

Those men wouldn't stand by and allow Gen. Huerta to impose a military dictatorship on Mexico, but that doesn't mean that they agreed with one another on the future course of Mexico either. And, ironically, in spite of being complicit in Modero's overthrow, the Untied States wasn't keen on Huerta either and took action to prevent his being supplied as he fought against his numerous opponents. That did not engender love for the United States amongst all of them, however.

The blundering that got rolling early on continued under Wilson who favored Carranza, after the defeat of Huerta and rebellion of Villa and Zapata, even though Carranza never liked the United States.  Granting railroad transit across Texas so that Constitutionalist forces could attack Villa was a huge and odd mistake that lead directly to the raid at Columbus.  Committing American forces to Mexico was perhaps then inevitable, but no Mexican leader could be seen to be supporting an American presence in Mexico and Carranza genuinely disliked the US.  Villa, who had lived in the US, ironically likely did not have any strong dislike for us, but he did dislike Wilson's role in nearly leading to his defeat and his odd and mercurial personality did not cause him to recoil from being responsible for the death of foreigners.  At any rate, American intervention in Mexico in pursuit of Villa nearly lead to a war between the Constitutionalist and the United States even though the Constitutionalist had not been able to fully defeat Villa and Zapata and were then engaged in war against them.  After war nearly broke out, it was only avoided by the United States ceasing to advance further into Mexico and cooler heads on both sides avoiding outright hostilities against one another.

Mexican American relations would be forever changed and stressed.  The United States regarded Mexico as a potential adversary as late as early World War Two, and not without good reasons as the Mexican government was heavily leftist and not democratic. The new radical Mexican governments took to oppressing sections of the Mexican population and they, and we use the plural advisedly, flirted with the extreme left periodically.  It was not by accident that when Stalin's assassins tracked Trotsky down, they found him in Mexico.

Those facts would lead to ongoing war in Mexico for years as various Mexican movements attempted to overthrow the Mexican government, all without success.

Which is not to say that the central players in Mexico had happy ends themselves.

Zapata was assassinated by the Mexican government, still under arms and having never surrendered, in 1919, bringing to a close his agrarian movement until modern times, when Zapataistas revived in Mexico on his old domain. 

 Zapata in 1915

Flag of the Zapatista Army of Liberation, a Mexican movement inspired by the legacy of Emiliano Zapata.

Carranza, whom we have dealt with at length, was overthrown by Alvaro Obregon, his most successful general, in 1920.

 Alvaro Obregon.

Obregon had served Carranza well, after having missed the initial stages of the revolution, but he grew into a political adversary starting in the very period we're discussing.  Carranza never favored the radical turn the Mexican Constitution took in 1917, favoring instead a preservation of the 1857 constitution.  Obregon was a full radical.  After that, he went into retirement, but in 1920 he through his considerable weight behind a revolution against Carranza, which succeeded.  In May 1920 Carranza himself died in an ambush, a victim of ongoing Mexican revolution.

Obregon then lead the country for a while and then stepped down upon the election of Plutarco Elías Calles.  However, during Obregon's administration the Mexican government, which had already become hostile to religion with the 1917 Constitution, adopted on this same day (see earlier post) started to become more repressive of the Catholic Church.  Calles would accelerate this which would lead to the Cristero War, which the Mexican government put down.  After that, Obregon ran for the presidency of Mexico again, in 1928, but was assassinated very soon after taking office by José de León, a Mexican who had sympathies toward the Cristeros.

Villa as he's commonly remembered.

Villa, upon whom our story has been focused, remained in rebellion until Carranza was assassinated.  Following that, he was able to negotiate peace with the Mexican government.  He then went into retirement on a hacienda that was provided to him in Chihuahua and was even allowed to retain a small private army made up of his loyalist.  This would ultimatley not save him, however, as he was assassinated in 1923 in Parral.  The assault on Villa was obviously well planned and its never been proven who did it but suspicion is strong that the act at least had the tacit approval of the Mexican government as Villa was making sounds of running for the presidency.

The revolution consumed itself even while becoming "institutionalized"     The victors may have called themselves "constitutionalist", but in practice power often changed hands with those hands being bloody.  By any objective standard, the Mexican Revolution itself would become a failure.  Ironically, perhaps, the American support of Carranza, which had never been appreciated by Carranza, was a small aid in bringing to power a force that would have little respect for democracy.  Mexico would not overcome this for decades.

With the U.S. Army came hundreds of refugees.  Some, like the residents of Colonia Dublan, had strong roots in the United States and feared living under Villa's forces for good reasons.  Many, however, were Mexicans who feared the fate of Chihuahua under a resurgent Villa.  Again, ironically, the United States would be reforming its immigration laws on this very day, creating real border controls on the southern border for the very first time.

Mexican refugees crossing into the United States in 1915.

That border itself would be hostile to a degree at least until the 1940s.  During World War One the United States was compelled to guard the border militarily; stationing cavalry regiments all along the border.  Pershing had wanted American cavalry in France to serve in the AEF, which shipping restrictions prevented, but that did not mean that the cavalry was idle during the Great War.  A shortage of available manpower along the border during the same period required Texas to deploy its State Guard, a militia separate and apart from the Federalized National Guard, made up of men who were ineligible to serve in World War One due to age, situation or ailments.  The Army would continue to patrol the border to some extent all the way into the 1940s.  Indeed, the border situation would see some violence all the way through the Great War and after, with occasional U.S. small interventions lasting all the way through the teens and into the early 1920s.

1917 vintage recruiting poster aimed at border service.

All of which is not to say that there were not some small, but significant, successes associated with the Punitive Expedition.  For one thing, crossing into Mexico in 1916 was likely simply inevitable. The raid on Columbus could not be ignored.  Irrespective of Carranza's refusal to sanction it, moreover, the United States, which had a very small military establishment, had shown that it could rapidly mobilize an effective field force any time it wanted to.  It was not that Mexico was a military threat to the United States, but Mexican forces that may have thought the US could be ignored no longer thought that.  Mexico was not an unarmed nation by any means and the United States during peacetime relied upon an Army made up of a small professional corps and a large amateur militia.  It had shown that its system was sufficient such that it was able to rapidly mobilize both.

The expedition itself, moreover, was the first large assembly of American arms since the Spanish American War. The mobilization had shown what, and who, worked well and what, and who, did not.  While it can't really be regarded as a "success" per se, this would prove to be hugely important almost immediately in 1917 as it became obvious the United States was headed toward entering the enormous First World War.  An entire series of weapons were experimented with, many of which were new. The National Guard had been mobilized and much of it remained under arms.  The Punitive Expedition into Mexico likely shortened American mobilization in 1917 by months and lead to it being clear that John J. Pershing could command the American Expeditionary Force that would come into existence.

So how have we done reporting on the Punitive Expedition in "real time", and in general?  Let us know. We're only somewhat satisfied with our effort, which of course was an effort to learn as well.  There were a lot of things we wanted to report on and missed. Some we may still, and some we likely won't.

As this entire blog is a sort of research platform for a book, we may continue to do a little real time as well, but most likely not like we were.  We aren't, for example, going to report on the US in World War One the way we have on the Punitive Expedition, as that's more or less outside of our focus.  But we will a little, and of course we'll continue to focus on this era, at least until we get our book written. . . which is taking forever.

The Punitive Expedtion. Casper Daily Press for April 3, 1916

The Punitive Expedition: Sunday State Leader. April 2, 1916

The Raid On Columbus: The Wyoming Tribune, March 10, 1916

Cheyenne's newspaper.  Probably an evening edition.

The Raid on Columbus New Mexico: The news hit.

Most towns and cities in 1916 were served by a morning and an evening newspaper, or a paper that published a morning and evening edition.  Therefore, most Americans would have started learning of the Villista raid around 5:00 p.m. or so as the evening newspapers were delivered or started being offered for sale.

Here's the evening edition of the Casper Daily Press, a paper that was in circulation in Casper Wyoming in 1916 and which is the predecessor of one of the current papers.

Inaccurate headlines, and the NCHS Swimming Pool

As anyone who occasionally reads this blog already knows, a bond issue that would have funded a new pool at NCHS failed by 400 votes earlier this year, even though other tax issues passed in the general election.  Hindsight is always 20/20, but it seems pretty clear that if the pool bond issue had been in the general election, it would have passed.  People just don't get out for special elections unless motivated, and the bond issue election came up at a time when Tea Party elements in the state appeared to be ascendant, but prior to their dramatic decline in the general election.  It seems reasonable to deduce that the actual population would have supported the bond issue.

Now we have to live with the consequences of that, which for now seemingly means no pool at NCHS in spite of having a massive new structure under construction which could house it.  The paper this morning, in one of its series of end of the year articles, briefly gave me hope as it featured a photograph of the inside of the now demolished pool in an article that stated early on that the district was saving money to pay for what the bond would have paid for.

That's accurate to a small extent, but that small extent concerns equipment for the new facility focusing on trades and sciences the district is building, not for the pools.  That is sort of, badly, cleared up late in the article, but not enough, I'm quite sure, to cure the confusion that the article creates.  The Tribune gets a D here on this one.

But still, why not get the pool built?  Yes, the money isn't there, but the huge structure is, and without trying to do something now, it'll never happen. We have a newly elected school board, and they should address this.  The last board backed the pools, and this one would seem to.  Let's try to get it built somehow.

Bias and Ignorance In The News Media

 Newspaper boy.

Newspaper reporters don't like it if you accuse them of being biased in reporting.  And, frankly, based on my limited experience with them, it certainly would not be true that they're universally biased, as some believe.  They have a pretty tough task really, which is to get a story out quickly, often on something they are really basically ignorant of, and based on extremely limited research. The better of them correct and adjust as they move along. Others don't bother.  Those inclinations are true of everyone, and I've likewise seen lawyers who go into a case with one set of views and keep it in spite of the evidence as it develops. So, a claim of global bias would not really be true.

 A WPA play, celebrating newspapers in some fashion.

But it is true that on some stories, historically, the news media has taken a position based on its views and stuck with it, issuing its stories accordingly.  The U.S. went through a horrible period of "yellow journalism" in the early 20th Century, which nationally saw its reflection in what amounted to campaigning for the Spanish American War, one of those contests we whipped ourselves into a frenzy about and got into without really thinking it through.  The newsmedia also did that a bit with the second Gulf War. When the conventional war yielded to a second guerrilla was, a lot of the same journals acted as if they'd always been against a war in Iraq in the first place.

Here locally, you can really see competing sides staking out their positions in regards to the Johnson County War, as the patrons of one side or another duked it out in the press.  Papers of that era, once again, often didn't try to make any bones that they were biased.

Even now, however, they can be, sometimes in subtle ways.  Other times, however, reporting is bad due to flat out ignorance, and occasionally in an inexcusable fashion.

I had the occasion recently to be involved in a long lasting legal matter in which I don't think the press was biased, but it never did quite get the story accurately.  Just ignorance at work, but that ignorance really basically played to the opposing side of the controversy.  The first reporter, however, was really a hard worker and worked to improve the reporting each time, and her stories became more and more accurate with each one, and more fair.  We did appreciate that.  When she was replaced with a second reporter, that new reporter seemed to put in minimum effort on things and the accuracy fell.  A third reporter, however, was once again a hard worker.

Still, of interest, one local journal ran the controversy as a big story several times. Another did only a little, and always in a much reduced manner.  Interesting.  Something about the story appealed to one journal, and not the other.

 Newspaper correspondents in the early wire days.

More recently a subtle bias has been in the Tribune in the regards to the story on the Court's recent decision on same gender marriage.  Now, the Tribune was frank on its view, and if I recall correctly it earlier had done an editorial on the topic urging the legislature to change the law to allow it. But of course the legislature did not, and it's probably safe to say that the majority of Wyomingites continue to hold their traditional view, which might be best described as "leave me alone, I'll leave you alone, but don't ask me to approve".  That's the traditional view in this state on quite a few things as the state has a strong libertarian streak.  The Tribune, on the other hand, has been mildly in favor of the law here being changed, although it isn't as if it's been a real cheerleader on the topic or anything.

Anyhow, as I guess I follow how the press follows things, it's been interesting to observe as on this topic the Press clearly has a view.  It shows in the terms they use, which again are to some degree probably just short hand. The term "marriage equality' shows up quite a bit in its recent reporting. And it shows in how they've continued to focus on the decision after it, having run two front page articles on the same gender couples that were the plaintiffs in the Federal suit.  It's interesting in that the general context of the articles has to do with Wyoming "achieving" "equality".  This really omits quite a bit of analysis, however, either intentionally or simply by omission.

Chief amongst the omission is the way that the story essentially has "Wyoming" doing something, when in fact the state hasn't.  The law remains the same, but rather the Court has ruled that where the law provides that a marriage is a civil contract between a man or a woman, it cannot be read that way any longer.  The omission here is most evident in those instances in which the press has declared Wyoming's "ban" on same gender marriages has been lifted.  In actuality, the state never had a ban on anything.  It simply defined a marriage as being male and female in nature, as was the universal understanding up until quite recently.

That's quite a press omission, really, as it isn't as the state has said "you shall not" so much as the Federal court has said "you will not longer apply the law as written".  I'm not arguing the case here, I'm just noting that the press's reporting here is actually off the mark.

And because this was a court decision, at a time in which a lot of lawyers still expect this to go to the U.S. Supreme Court (the Federal District of Peurto Rico just handed down a decision going the opposite way and really castigating other Federal courts for judicial legislation), the degree to which the current decision is really the final one is highly questionable. So the reporting here is a bit anemic universally. All the current Federal decisions may really serve to do is to tee the issue up for the U.S. Supreme Court and utterly nobody has any clue how that Court would rule.  Given the text of the Puerto Rico decision, the Supreme Court might actually have a very difficult time not overruling the existing Circuit Court decisions as if it did not do that, or massively and creatively limit their holding, they'll do a lot of damage in other areas.

The press has also pretty much ignored the implications for those who this puts into a moral box here, and those people do have legitimate concerns.  Last week the government of the City of Houston went after some ministers who had opposed changing the law there, and there's been examples in Canada and the U.S. having to resign their positions, and business people in California, where the law is considerably different than our own, getting into legal trouble.  The Tribune hasn't, so far, interviewed anyone who feels that the change in the reading of the law presents a societal or moral crisis, or that it isn't the basic equivalent of the progress of the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Indeed, one thing that the Press has missed everywhere is that the history of court decision of this type long term is pretty much the opposite of what they tend to believe, with the big exception being the string of Civil Rights cases that came though during the 1950s to 1970s.  Those decisions were accepted by the country over time as a whole, but otherwise the record is considerably different.  The decisions do not tend to be final and the segment of the population that feels it lost feels that it was cheated at the ballot box. And the Courts generally tend to be surprisingly willing to reverse themselves decades later.

Court battles over Roe v. Wade are a good example, as the side that lost never accepted the loss, and over a long period of time it has been largely successful in reversing the court of public opinion.  The decision itself is now generally regarded as legally anemic by those who are willing to discuss it honestly, and there's general expectation that it will either be reversed or modified at some point in the future.  Court battles over gun control are the same way, with the losing side in the Holder decision generally acting as if the Court did not rule at all and refusing to accept it. So such views are common on the right and the left.  For that reason, those who are presently celebrating in various states are really celebrating based on a false premise, that being that everyone accepts a court ruling, and that the Supreme Court will not overrule the decisions, now or in the future.

None of which is to say that a newspaper wouldn't interview the plaintiffs and run stories on them. Any good paper would.  Its rather simply an observation on how the reporting takes a certain view, omits other views, and makes quite a set of assumptions that probably aren't supported by history or analysis.  And the approach tells a lot.  The Tribune ran two stories after the local Federal Court's decision portraying the plaintiffs in that action in a heroic light.  The Journal, on the other hand, featured one pro couple and one that was against redefining the definition on marriage, without really commenting on the issue one way or another itself.  A much different approach.

 Newspaper correspondents in the 1940s scrambling for Federal crop reports.

Sometimes, however, news reporting isn't only biased, its darned near dumb.  Here's a recent example:

Well, this is something.

Not deterred by a Catholic synod's recent watering down of his views on the gay community and divorce, Pope Francis on Monday continued to please those who most appreciate his frequent breaks from traditional Catholic teachings, telling the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that he agrees with, well...science.

 No, that isn't something. That's not even news.

The Big Bang theory was developed by a Jesuit Priest, Monseigneur Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître.  A competent reporter ought to know that not only is this not news, not surprising, its just a total non event.  The Catholics have always been on board with the Big Bang theory. They came up with it.  D'uh.  But at least one of the major networks made the same amazingly stupid comment on the nightly news.Indeed, just a little research (even hitting this august site) would have revealed the following:

Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître

Lemaître was a physicists who was the first person to propose an expansion of the universe, the first to propose the "Big Bang" and he was also the first person to what is now known as Hubble's Law. The brilliant physicists was also a Belgian Catholic priest.

Category:  Catholic Priest.  Physicist. Scientist.  Mathematician. 

For that matter, Catholics have always been on board with evolution too, and some have credited Catholic scientist who preceded Darwin as prior proponents of a version of the theory or laying the ground work for it, with Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck and Georges Mendel being noted as being in this category.  A competent reporter might not be expected to know that, but a minimum amount of research would have at least revealed that evolution and Catholicism are not antithetical.  That reporters aren't picking that shows that they deserve the dope slap.

It also reveals bias in the reporting, however.  This bias is of the type once noted by G. K. Chesterton, the famous English writer, who was a Catholic, when he was asked about evolution while on a tour of the United States, and he replied, in a cutting witty way, that the questioner has apparently confused him for an American Protestant rather than the European Catholic he was.  I do not say this to in anyway discredit American Protestants (or anyone else) but to note what was apparent to Chesterton, comments of that type assume that all Christian religions have the same view on these topics, when in fact Catholics don't hold as doctrine any "young earth" theory or strict creationism theory. That people do is fine, but making comments of this type is a little like Jimmy Carter's famous comment about the Israelis and Palestinians that their problems would go away if "they just acted like good Christians".  I.e, that isn't what they are.  He undoubtedly did know that.  Here, the press really is truly inexcusably ignorant.

News reporting on firearms topics also tends to be the same way.  Generally, press reporting shows a complete lack of understanding on anything in this area and almost all of the details concerning it are inaccurately reported.  Interestingly, I've found one instance of the same expert being cited for two fairly surprising countervailing positions, which he probably really did take, but it also shows, I suppose, that even when they go to clear up their ignorance, they can get sucked into further error.

Well, all in all I don't really mean to totally dump on the press here. As noted, they have to write quickly, which does mean writing in ignorance. And we have seen the massive decline in the reporting as a viable industry in the U.S. At one time many mid sized newspapers actually sent reporters overseas for important stories, and television stations did too.  Newspapers also had reporters that specialized in the news of certain types, rather than just business, sports and other news.  All that has been a victim of economics, and it seems unlikely the day will be reversed.  So, while we have a 24 hour news cycle, a lot of that news is inaccurate.