Donors who focus on how much money they spend and not on how many people they serve, nor the benefits of their service, are contributing to corruption in Malawi, according to a report by Susan Marmion under the aegis of Global Integrity. Christine Gorman comments on the report at the Global Health Report Blog.

Marmion reports three-quarters of the government’s income is from foreign aid. Donor money isn’t tracked and this, coupled with outright corruption, has led to abuse of funds, failed programs in education and health and contributes to the continuing disbelief in the integrity of the systems that should be seen as helping lift people from poverty.

Unfortunately, the problem isn’t limited to Malawi. It’s been documented in many countries with developing economies across the world. Gorman, who is currently in Malawi on a Nieman fellowship, is looking at health care in Malawi. She cites the investigative research of Global Integrity which works with journalists to document integrity issues in the use of donor aid.

In her most recent post she also links to an important article by Andrew Meldrum in The Lancet about the deteriorating health care system in Zimbabwe. Meldrum’s report offers a cautionary point. When Zimbabwe is able to begin recovering from its current disastrous state of political degeneration merely throwing dollars into health delivery could do more harm than good. After reading his report, and having been there and seen the conditions health professionals labor under, it is tempting to want to get as much money in as fast as possible to help the ailing system get back. But merely opening the spigot won’t be enough and it could do unintended harm.

After all Zimbabweans have been through, that would compound tragedy upon tragedy.

Those who have an interest in Africa, and in Malawi and Zimbabwe in particular, will find these reports very informative reading.

In crisis management damage control is a matter of knowing when to hold ‘em, when to fold ‘em, when to walk away and when to run. Don Schlitz’s lyrics in the song popularized by Kenny Rogers clarify the process perfectly. This post is a follow-up to one I wrote recently on Frank Rich’s description of “analog arrogance in a digital age.”

Having made a mistake or committed a misdeed that has been exposed, how does an individual or corporation limit the damage, manage the crisis it brings and start to repair reputation? Crisis manager Eric Dezenhall in his book Damage Control says, fix it. Explain your actions, apologize and make amends. This is what it means to be a responsible company, and public accountability is essential.

Dezenhall is noted for his in-your-face recommendations so this conciliatory approach carries extra weight with me.

He also says it’s best to act while the controversy is in its infancy. Making concessions and talking with the aggrieved early on works best, before antagonism grows and attitudes harden.

When the accusation comes from a sympathetic member of a core constituency–employee, consumer, shareholder, community member or another who is essential to the work of the corporation–Dezenhall says, deal with it. They can do the most short-term and long-term harm. This is the time to fold ‘em, I think. He writes, “Don’t eat your own.” (p. 158)

He says a key challenge is to make concessions early enough to have real impact because the escalation of a crisis “does not rise at a steady 45-degree angle. It can accelerate suddenly, and often unpredictably.” (p. 159)

This recalls the handing of the recent controversy about sermons of Barack Obama’s pastor. Regardless of your opinion about them, Jeremiah Wright’s sermons on YouTube overtook the Obama campaign like wildfire. Wright’s fiery preaching was not unknown but once the YouTube spark ignited dry tinder, the wildfire exploded.

I’ve witnessed plenty of prairie wildfires growing up in the Great Plains. When a little grassfire touches a dry red cedar the tree literally explodes into a ball of flame. This creates its own wind, lifting up burning shards that carry the fire to other trees and grasslands. I’ve seen fires jump four-lane superhighways in seconds.

Barack Obama not only did the right thing, he did it supremely well. Remarkably, he wrested control of the crisis. The crisis that threatened to undo him was contained, but even his deftness, honesty and skill did not leave him unscathed.

In a bit of descriptive inelegance Dezenhall says, “In a category five crapstorm, make no mistake about it: The crisis is controlling you.” (p. 47) I prefer my analogy to Dezenhall’s, but the point’s the same.

Obama risked damage within his own constituency as well as in the wider audience. The folks who care most are also most outraged when things go south. If they feel betrayed and their outrage takes over there is no more powerful emotion, Dezenhall says.

Obama took a direct hit but he did not “eat his own.” Instead, he took a risk and talked about race and its importance to all of us and in doing so mitigated further risk. Further, he did not attempt to spin his audience. Dezenhall says you can’t spin an audience that doesn’t want to be spun and angry supporters don’t want spin. My own observation is they want truth, and if they feel they’re being handled, they want blood.

If it comes to this point, it’s time to run because you’re no longer in position to explain, apologize or ameliorate. You’d best duck and get out of the room because the roof is about to come down on your head. So, if possible it’s clearly better to fix things before they devolve to this point.

It comes down to this: you need to know when to hold ‘em, when to fold ‘em, when to walk away, or when to run.

Among the diseases of poverty it seems to me TB gets the least attention. I don’t know if I’m accurate in this assessment, but it seems to me it’s not as widely covered as HIV/AIDS or malaria.

But one person is infected every second and drug resistance is growing. A more resistant strain of TB has caused concern among physicians globally. A few yeas ago I spoke with a doctor in New York who advised me to keep my chronically ill son away from crowds, such as during rush hours on the subway, because a resistant strain was circulating in Manhattan.

TB is a pernicious diseases because it starts a a low grade infection and develops over time. According to Families USA “TB is moving around the world—on planes, trains, buses—and in the air we breathe. There are almost 9 million new cases of TB each year; about 500,000 of these cases are resistant to the best TB drugs available to fight them.”

Unlike many diseases of poverty TB isn’t geographically contained. It can happen anywhere. It is airborne and moves from person to person.

March 24 was World TB Day and FamiliesUSA created the Whack TB game that provides information and links to information and action. Play the game and learn more about how to fight this disease.

Frank Rich has come up with a gem of a descriptive phrase. He wrote on Sunday that Hillary Clinton’s account of her Bosnia landing reveals the “political perils of 20th century analog arrogance in the digital age.”

What a phrase. I’ve been thinking about it all week. It describes reality in our time. Rich’s point–among other things–is that narrating your way out of a falsehood, or a mis-statement, is much more difficult, if not impossible, in the digital age.

Why? Because words can’t counter images. Mrs. Clinton was shown on the tarmac in Bosnia walking upright, not with her head down under threat of sniper fire as she had stated. She wasn’t ducking for cover, she was strolling and smiling. The footage showed up on You Tube. Her explanations seemed to add to the perception that she was misrepresenting the truth.

For a couple of days she tried to sustain the narrative. But as it became clear she couldn’t combat what we saw, she recanted. Even her recant seemed clumsy, however, as she depicted her earlier claims as “mis-statement.” Her words were not reassuring, they were desperate. So it goes in a digital culture.

Rich refers to images but his point is much broader.

“A bottom-up media culture is challenging any candidates control of a message,” he writes.

In an analog world words reined supreme. Things could be explained away and sometimes lies could be sustained because stories could be contained. Then the world changed.

Digital technology put the ability to share information broadly into the hands of nearly everyone–at least in most of the world. More people are empowered to send more information without restraint than ever before. The gatekeepers don’t control the story anymore. And neither do the fabricators.

Explanations of wrong-doing are more likely to meet suspicion and challenge if enough people want to challenge them. And refutation is much more likely to get lost in the same media chatter that takes allegation to the world.

Those pols who think they can tell falsehoods or behave inappropriately without being caught live in a world of analog arrogance that doesn’t recognize this change. And as Eliot Spitzer realized, it can be a fatal miscalculation. His claim that his traffic with prostitutes was a “private matter” was myopic.

There are two issues here, probably many more. The first is tactical. It centers on the idea that you can cover up misbehavior or explain it away. Bad tactic. Not to mention ethically and morally unacceptable.

Once a story is out in the ether it’s too late to wrest control. Scandalous stories have a life of their own. And this is fed not just by images, it’s also fed by the instantaneous reach of email. With the push of a button gossip is global today.

If it’s in a blog, search engines pick it up and make keyword associations and the damage is done, probably irreparably. From the moment of the first allegation, “Spitzer” became associated with “prostitution” and “scandal.” (Try a Google search on Spitzer and see what you get.)

And this will remain until someone finds a way to get it out of the system, which is nearly impossible with a big story and isn’t easy with small fry if it’s repeated and quoted widely.

The second issue: Why do people–smart, powerful, public people–engage in behavior that puts them at risk? Why is it often sexual behavior? And why do men, in particular, risk careers and families for sexual behaviors that are often contrary to their own personal values?

Social psychologist Martin Monto talked about this with Michelle Norris on NPR following the Spitzer revelation. He speaks of the disconnect between the actual risk involved in such behavior and the person’s recognition of the risk. Enter analog arrogance.

I suspect inappropriate behavior becomes internalized as it is repeated over time. It is also rationalized and becomes routine, if not an entitlement. How many commentators rationalized Spitzer’s behavior as an outgrowth of the intensity of his always-on public persona? Under this intense pressure, goes this line of reasoning, cavorting with prostitutes was a release.

When boundaries fall in this way, it’s inevitable mistakes will be made and the behavior exposed. I talked with one person who believes this blind arrogance may be so internalized among big-time public figures that it takes national humiliation to bring them to recognition. Bill Clinton. Eliot Spitzer.

Which leads to another question: How could associates close to this behavior not know about it? My guess is that a culture of denial evolves into a support system that enables it, not because people believe this is for the best but because they don’t know how to cope with it short of blowing the whistle. And blowing the whistle on powerful people is not exactly a career advancing strategy.

This is corrosive and toxic. It implicates others who wish not to be implicated and it sows seeds for its own destruction. In the digital age it seems inevitable that these “private matters” will implode like a star that throws off mass as its core burns away. Crises such as this throw off the innocent and the complicit in an eruption that burns all involved.

When the story is spun out we’re more cynical about the integrity of our leaders, our institutions and our public morality. The quality of our civic life is damaged because we are less trusting, we disinvest our best and highest passions and if we engage we do so cautiously and with reserve. And perhaps some of us, no matter how distant from the imploding core, feel sullied.

Analog arrogance in a digital world is a costly, hurtful malady.

Something interesting happens when people see the new laptop we just got from One Laptop Per Child. They want to play with it! The design invites them to pick it up and explore. Before they know it, they are engaged with the attractive little laptop. It’s inviting.

We took advantage of the promotion OLPC had before Christmas in which they encouraged donors to buy a laptop to be given to a child somewhere and the donor could also buy one for himself. So we did. And it arrived this week.

When my associate took it out of the box I immediately started to play with it. It is compact, well-built, colorful, unique. It immediately identified our wireless network and in a few moments I was surfing the web.

I took it home and showed it to my wife who played with it for several minutes–much longer than I did I might add–and pronounced the kids at her school would love it.

I took it back to the office and left it in a common area and also showed it around. One of our senior staff people sat down at a table and found features that I hadn’t yet discovered.

I went to a meeting and upon returning noticed that the little green and white package was gone from the table. I asked about it and learned our IT director had come and taken it to his desk. I laughed and went to see him, just to get his opinion.

I found him and our web director hunched over it. He smiled and said he had to get one for his daughter. He had discovered the webcam, which I had not yet found. He pronounced it a feature-packed, cute laptop.

Granted, we’re a technology-oriented company, so we would be interested in this small wonder. But I think the machine itself is unique enough in design and features to make it a magnet to anyone with the slightest interest in new technology.

Around our shop, at least, one laptop per child is a hit. As I left his desk I met my assistant who was carrying to him an order form and a promotional brochure.

The richer you are, the better your chance for good health and a longer life. New research by the Department of Health and Human Services reported in the New York Times, documents that life expectancy is directly related to income. Those with rising income experience longer life span. Health disparity mirrors income disparity.

On the face of it, this isn’t surprising. Those who have access to health care are more likely to benefit from preventive care, early detection and treatment. Some commentators say those with higher income are also likely to have access to information that isn’t available to those with less access to the Internet and other sources of health information. The poor also eat less healthy foods and are more likely to smoke.

The report should be a reminder of the need to expand health care coverage for all. It should also provide data to support extending health care for poor children which President Bush has vetoed because he believes the proposed State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) legislation would lead to socialized medicine. It’s now clear that lack of health care is deadly for the poor.

And it should remind us how our resources are being utilized right now. The Right Rev. Peter Price, Bishop of Bath and Wells, Church of England, writes in the God’s Politics blog that $1 trillion (Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, estimates the total cost of the war will be $3 trillion) could pay for health care for 530 million children.

In his column on Sunday Nicholas Kristoff puts it succinctly, the Iraq war is burning money at the rate of $5,000 per minute, money that could be put to life-enhancing use.

Kristoff asks us to imagine how that money could be put to use otherwise and one of the alternatives he suggests is “underwriting a global drive to slash maternal mortality, eradicate malaria and de-worm every child in Africa.”

Doubtless it could be done at a fraction of the cost of this war.

One of the advantages of cell technology is its capability to improve quality of life in places where landline technology doesn’t exist. Digital technology makes it possible to leapfrog over the more cumbersome landline infrastructure.

The technology has great value in locales that are off-the-grid. Bishop Joao Machado of Mozambique tells the story of massive flooding in his country a few years ago. Many people in the pathway of the floodwaters lost their lives for lack of a warning system. The bishop says community radio stations and simple handcrank radios could have saved many lives.

Cellphone technology has advanced in Africa with similar benefit. Jonathan Marks at Critical Distance weblog reports on the value of extending cell coverage on Lake Victoria.

Marks says the new service will make it possible for 200,000 fishermen to have the opportunity to use cellphones if they get into trouble on the lake. Marks says 5,000 deaths a year occur now.

Besides this obvious advantage, Marks says the new technology with bring economic and social development to lakeside villages that are not well-served right now.

He makes an interesting proposal. Couple cellphone technology with FM radio and it would be possible to provide fishing families with market information as well as weather warnings. Add to this the capability of cellphones for SMS text messaging and the technology becomes both life-enhancing and life-saving.

When producing audio lead with your best quote, writes Journalist Christine Gorman in a brief overview of a workshop on audio she attended recently as a Nieman Fellow in Journalism.

Radio was (is) my first love in the media. It’s a medium that encourages imagination on the part of the producer and listener. It gets my creative juices flowing.

When produced well, good audio is as involving as a good book. It’s about experiencing a story by placing you in it. But the medium can’t carry the same information as print. It doesn’t work well to quantify the story or present comparative data, for example. That’s best left to tables and charts that can be viewed.

Working with a good sound person is an experience all its own. I’ve watched sound engineers go through painful contortions to get the right sound for the audio track of a film. I waited in the waning light of a long, long day in sub-Saharan Africa while a sound engineer tried to capture the buzzing tiny wings of an insect. I wanted to eat and sleep. He wanted bzzzzz. I waited, and it was worth it when we got to post-production.

And I’ve been frustrated at meticulous calls to “do it one more time” because some imperceptible (to my ears) errant sound crept into an interview. Later, when I heard the takes, I was so grateful the sound person was so particular.

Getting the right sound is such a precise skill, perhaps even a delicate skill because it requires an ability to know what sound cut works to set a mood, make an impression, or draw you into the story without referring overtly to itself.

I haven’t produced audio for a number of years, primarily because the nature of my work changed from producer to administrator. But I’ve often wondered what it would be like to host a radio talk show today, or to produce audio for the Internet, which I’ve only experimented with.

With podcasting as accessible as your keyboard the only limits today are your imagination and the company you keep, I suppose. (I know that’s an old, old line but it’s still true.)

At any rate, Christine got my juices flowing, as you can tell. She provides a good brief overview of the workshop and she lists a couple of “how-to” websites. If you’re interested in audio storytelling, it’s worth a hop over to the Global Health Report Blog.

This is the fourth in a series of posts on differences between Jewish and Christian traditions focusing on attitudes toward the Bible, learning and dialogue.

But an insidious, destructive strain of anti-institutionalism coupled with an individualized theology that insists on its own rightness is present, and it’s doing harm. Division has torn at the Episcopal Church. Southern Baptists are another conflicted communion.What is present in mainline denominations is disdain for institutions coupled with an ideology of individualism that finds expression in divisive issues the most notable being human sexuality. Pressing claims of doctrinal correctness, critics have undermined or sought to take control of the institutions that help carry out some forms of ministry as in the Episcopal Church and Southern Baptist Convention.

While some regard it as faithfulness, Hedges points out that the insistence on rightness of belief makes it easier to exclude those who don’t believe “correctly” and it leads to an insularity that opens the way for manipulation by leaders bent on advancing particular agendas.

I believe it also reduces vision because it focuses attention inward rather than outward. Survey after survey of attitudes toward churches reveals those who have negative views speak of churches run by cliques, as unhospitable to new persons and more concerned with institutional preservation than with problems people face in daily life. Whether these criticisms are accurate matters less than the perception these seekers have of religious communities. They paint a picture of self-absorbed, inhospitable, insular groups unconcerned with the everyday matters that affect faith and offer assistance toward a spiritually fulfilling life.

And so I end where this series began, but with questions. If I were seeking to understand faith more fully would I go to a community that openly accepted my questions, doubts and all, and engaged in a dialogue with me about them and affirmed that my quest is acceptable faithfulness? Or would I go to a community riven with division, one that excludes some people and holds absolute positions on key issues of faith that I am required to accept or be condemned as unfaithful?

Those who claim the decline of mainline denominations results from disaffection with liberal leaders, ineffective clergy or lack of doctrinal faithfulness find easy answers for complex problems that are far from the simple clarity they claim. Membership statistics are, at best, inexact and at worst incomplete and inconsistent. They don’t prove or disprove much beyond the haphazard way most denominations keep such records.

But the claim that lack of orthodox belief is a cause for decline presents an interesting question. Why is the Southern Baptist Convention, a denomination that has been most aggressive replacing moderates with hardline conservative leaders, in decline at a pace even greater than some mainline communions? According to research by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Roman Catholicism, which has seen a clear return to traditional dogma under Pope Benedict, is in greater decline in the United States than any mainline communion. And, more troubling, the Pew survey finds the number of unaffiliated persons has doubled.

Rabbi Funnye says he was drawn to a community that willingly asked the questions more than it proferred the answers. Dana Jennings writes he was attracted to the diaogue, a dialogue that spans centuries, yet remains current.

The conclusion I take from this review is that there are those in the Western world beleagured by materialistic individualism for whom the search for meaning is more attractive when conducted in an accepting, inquiring community open to questioning, even doubt. The search is seen as a natural outgrowth of faith and it is conducted with integrity by honoring both tradition and on-going dialogue that allows for new interpretations.

They are not seeking fixed answers so much as they seek guides along the way as they explore. Interestingly, when it was experiencing its greatest growth, the Methodist movement created “learning societies” in which inquirers sought greater understanding and came to a deeper appreciation of scripture. Perhaps the journey of faith is not about finding the right answers but probing ever more deeply to ask the right questions.

Perhaps faith is a journey not a destination, and there is richness in discovery. I wonder if that’s how we could understand Jesus’ statement, “I have come that they might have life and have it abundantly?” (John 10:10)

This is the third in a series of posts on differences between Jewish and Christian traditions focusing in particular on attitudes toward the Bible, learning and dialogue.

The views Christians and Jews have about community affect how sacred text is studied and how it shapes faith. Levine says God has given the Torah to Israel, the community, and it is the role of the community to interpret it. In this way Israel honors both the Scripture and God. Faithfulness demands engagement, questioning and on-going dialogue.

In contrast, among some Christians–not all, but a vocal minority–the Bible is viewed as the absolute, unchanging, inerrant word of God. Faithfulness involves holding fast to unchanging principles. Those preaching this view have been in the ascendancy in public media exposure recent years. They have shaped how Christian faith is perceived among those unfamiliar with more moderate faith groups.This approach creates a different kind of community than the learning community Levine characterizes. In the latter instance, it is one which leads to a view of the world as hostile and a stance that faith is a bulwark against this hostility. Viewed from this perspective, the Bible must be defended from those ideas that challenge its inerrancy rather than to engage and challenge it as a way toward more complete understanding.

Similarly, the community must defend itself against all manner of threats. Questioning and dissent are viewed as unfaithfulness. Mix this with labels such as liberal or conservative and left or right, and the debate becomes more than a little unsavory. It starts to characterize people and their faithfulness, or insufficient faith. It is the soil in which division is sown and purges develop. It’s my way or the highway.

At its worst this leads to facism. For an excellent discussion of Christian facism see Chris Hedges’, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. Hedges says Christian fascists are a minority but regardless the number, fascism must be watched and refuted.

The most unsettling result of the methodology of individualistic faith is its distortion of the biblical principle of justice. Justice in the Christian right’s definition is a legal system based on “Christian principles” which they alone have defined. As Hedges notes this results in a legal system designed to protect “Bible believing Christians.” It no longer revolves around universal human rights.

One need only recall the Judicial War on Faith Conference following the Terry Schiavo episode and the national telecast a couple of years ago in which some high level right wing politicians equated U.S. judges to the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan to see how this perverted definition of justice finds expression. Writer Max Blumenthal explained how key values of a democratic society get re-defined when framed in this narrow view of the world.