Category: Grave

Buried within the larger reports of Al Gore’s efforts to spearhead a campaign to introduce a “liberal” alternative to mainstream and conservative cable news outlets is this overlooked aspect of the current plan:
“Gore is keeping quiet about it, but he heads a group that plans to pay a reported $70 million to buy Newsworld International (NWI), a cable news network that’s currently in fewer than 20 million homes.”
I don’t claim to be well-versed in the mechanics of establishing new cable networks and contractually arranging for their effective distribution, but replacing a network like NWI with this “liberal alternative” to other networks seems a bit narrowminded and foolhardy, to say the least.
I can geekily admit to really, sincerely loving NWI — its motley assortment of news from Canada, Germany, the U.K., and Russia consistently proves to be a truly useful alternative to the nationalist (and often naive) perspective of much of the U.S.-based newsmedia. Where else can one see televised footage of U.S.-built Israeli Caterpillar D-9 bulldozers plowing through Palestinian homes, or uncensored broadcasts of the latest Osama bin Laden audio or videotapes? Where else can one see President Bush speak in all his soundbite-devoid, flub-worthy glory? And where else can television viewers get “man on the street” perspectives on international policy from citizens in Ottawa and Berlin?
As such, it would seem to be a less-than-ideal solution to remove this network from the airwaves merely to replace it with an “entertaining” platform for Al Franken or Bill Maher to put forth nightly punchlines about Bush’s numerous lies.
Can’t we have them both? And maybe we can give up the style network or even, if necessary, C-SPAN 3 (I’m not kidding, there are in fact three C-SPANs).

After yesterday’s latest attack on American forces in Iraq, where a rocket was fired upon the al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad and killed one U.S. occupier (I mean, officer), defense department officials were expressing frustration on Sunday at the increased bravado demonstrated by the strike. The hotel, where U.S. Deputy Defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz was residing during his current visit to Iraq, had been serving as a makeshift American base of operations and was believed to be safe from such provocation by virtue of being ensconced in protective concrete barricades. By striking at such a seemingly secure building, the insurgents have more or less shattered any myth of security for Americans trying to restore order to the embattled nation.
Also of note was the well-nigh un-ironic adoption of last week’s phrase du jour by sympathetic military analysts.
“Placed in the context of insurgent attacks on U.S. forces that are increasing in frequency and effectiveness, this particular operation — notable both for its daring and for what it says about the enemy’s intelligence capabilities — that, yes, it really does promise to be a long, hard slog,” said retired Army Col. Andrew Bacevich, a Persian Gulf War tank commander who is a professor of international relations at Boston University.

Great news! Conflicts in the Middle East are over, the economy has recovered, and nothing bad happened anywhere in the world today! Yippeeeeee!
How do I know this? The New York Times devoted half of the below-the-fold frontpage to New Yorkers and their dogs.
Listen, Bill, I have a dog, okay, and even I don’t care about this story. Save this stuff for the City section on Sunday and find something, you know, newsworthy to slap on the front of the paper.
Incidentally, many New Yorkers use the Times to pick up their dogs’ shit, so I guess this makes some sense.

Eric “What Liberal Media?” Alterman‘s favorite whipping boy, Howard “I was on K Street!” Kurtz at the Washington Post, writes today about a movement that is underway to revoke a 1932 Pulitzer Prize awarded to Walter Duranty of the New York Times.
According to Kurtz’s piece in the Post (notably, the Times’ chief competitor in the annual race for Pulitzers), the paper of record’s new executive editor, Bill Keller, yesterday acknowledged that Duranty’s reporting on Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union in the early 1930s was egregiously in violation of journalistic standards and
“pretty dreadful . . . . It was a parroting of propaganda.”
After a review conducted by a history professor, Keller said, the Times essentially told the board in a letter that “it’s up to you to decide whether to take it back. We can’t unaward it. Here’s our assessment of the guy’s work: His work was clearly not prizeworthy.”
Columbia University professor Mark von Hagen said he found that the Moscow correspondent’s 1931 work “was a disgrace to the New York Times. There’s no one there who disagrees with me. They acknowledged that his is some of the worst journalism they ever published.”
Good to hear it. Duranty’s defense — if not outright praise — of Stalin’s gulag (one of the most shameful events of the past century, though Howard Kurtz doesn’t actually invoke it by name) was inexcusable, and perhaps indirectly led to the propagation of these forced labor camps and detention centers.
So, if the Times is looking to clean house and rid itself of potentially disgraceful awards given to those who “parrot propaganda,” we humbly look forward to the revocation of op-ed columnist Thomas L. Friedman‘s 2002 award. Friedman, after all, received his award based largely on his passionate writing on the events of September 11th, and more specifically, his defense of the present administration’s War on Terror™. Friedman’s most recent book, Longitudes and Attitudes (2002), is a compendium of these award-winning columns, and includes his twice-weekly musings on topics as diverse as why the bombing of Afghanistan was a just act, to why the bombing of Iraq was a just act, to…well, you get the idea. If the Bush administration wanted a viewpoint put forward, Friedman spent the past year providing justification for their actions.

When then-Governor George W. Bush would canvas the Southwestern U.S. for votes during the 2000 Presidential Election, it was often noted that he would sprinkle Spanish aphorisms into his stump speeches when facing crowds that had any significant Latino presence.
Rest assured that that sort of pandering hasn’t come to an end. In his visit to Australia yesterday (before he was effectively chased off the continent by unruly hecklers and protesters), President Bush spoke to the nation’s joint houses of Parliament to express his gratitude for Prime Minister John Howard’s support during the invasion of Iraq:
“Five months ago, your prime minister was a distinguished visitor of ours in Crawford, Texas, at our ranch. You might remember that I called him a man of steel,” Mr Bush said.
“That’s Texan for fair dinkum.
“Prime Minister John Howard is a leader of exceptional courage, who exemplifies the finest qualities of one of the world’s great democracies. I’m proud to call him friend.”
If you’re as baffled by that expression of praise as most non-Aussies are, the phrase apparently conveys a sense of being “the real deal” or some such cliched colloquialism. Of course, as Bush’s speechwriters must have told him before writing his script, “fair dinkum” sounds so much cooler.

After yet another volley in the sadly commonplace back-and-forth of Israeli-versus-Palestinian violence, the New York Times has thrown together a rather slapdash “analysis” of the most recent round of deaths, and more specifically, the reporting and documentation thereof by the two respective sides.
How does author James Bennet conclude the piece? With this simple paragraph consisting of one short sentence:
“Hamas vowed to retaliate for the Israeli air strike.”
He may as well have written, “Tune in tomorrow as our story continues.” And to think that I’d always wondered what happened to the serial novels of generations past.

Today’s journalism lesson from Page Six is how to out a public figure and avoid lawsuits: simply quote another media outlet (or another media outlet quoting a comic strip, as it were) and you’re in the clear. Hey, The Post didn’t ask if Condoleeza Rice is gay, Richard Blow did!
Read and learn: Rice Dish.

This week’s Newsweek takes a look at Bush’s new P.R. tactics, including the much-discussed new reliance on local TV reporters as disseminators of the adminstration’s policies. Of note, however, is a mention of a newfound sort of stonewalling of which even the inestimable Ari Fleischer might have proven incapable.
According to the article, on October 9th, one day after 13 American servicemen were injured by an Iraqi grenade attack, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s daily press briefing made no mention of these developments.
“Pushed by reporters, U.S. officials would only say the incident was under investigation. It was as if the ambush, and the casualties, had never happened.
In Baghdad, official control over the news is getting tighter. Journalists used to walk freely into the city’s hospitals and the morgue to keep count of the day’s dead and wounded. Now the hospitals have been declared off-limits and morgue officials turn away reporters who aren’t accompanied by a Coalition escort. Iraqi police refer reporters’ questions to American forces; the Americans refer them back to the Iraqis.”
Here’s hoping for a return to more politically expedient coverage of soldiers’ woes. How is Jessica Lynch doing, anyway? I bet she can’t wait to return to teaching kindergarteners from impoverished families again.

Gothamist takes a look at verbal and physical assault complaints filed against taxi drivers in New York today. What the usually eagle-eyed Gothamist missed (or deemed unrelated) was this nugget from The Times Metro Briefing column:
CABDRIVERS’ GROUP THREATENS STRIKE… [citing] deteriorating conditions, higher gas and lease costs and a rate that sometimes pays drivers less than $2 per hour.
Two dollars an hour!?! I thought that people who did dangerous, unpleasant jobs were supposed to get paid more, not below minimum wage.

A few years ago, Might Magazine wondered on its cover if all local news was actually being broadcast from hell. Once again, Eggers and his merry band of pranksters were dead-on but suffered from being too far ahead of the curve.
In today’s New York Times, Elisabeth Bumiller tells us that President Bush is bypassing those biased White House press pool reporters in favor of some non-judgmental, down-to-earth interviews with local newsmen and women. Five newsmen and women, back-to-back (junket-style), apparently. Said the President:
There’s a sense that people in America aren’t getting the truth…I’m mindful of the filter through which some news travels, and sometimes you have to go over the heads of the filter and speak directly to the people.
Right on, Mr. President! We the people, don’t like our news filtered for us by opinionated people, do we? Hell, no! I mean, what kind of an ignorant fool would want their news filtered for them? Not us, that’s for sure!