Posted 7:29 AM by Peter Fallow
THE READING ROOM: I've been reading Dinesh D'Souza's excellent "What's So Great About America," and I stumbled across a quote I'd like to share with you:

The phrase that captures this unique aspect of America is the "pursuit of happiness." Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul analyzes the concept in this way: "It is an elastic idea; it fits all men. It implies a certain kind of society, a certain kind of awakened spirit. So much is contained in it; the idea of the individual, responsibility, choice, the life of the intellect, the idea of vocation and perfectibility and achievement. It is an immense human idea. It cannot be reduced to a fixed system. It cannot generate fanaticism. But it is known to exist; and because of that, other more rigid systems in the end blow away."

So simple, and yet so deep.

Posted 7:27 AM by Peter Fallow
REFORMING THE LEFT: Camille Paglia pens a scathing column on the Left's loss of moral capital:

The language of leftism is out of date. It desperately needs reconstruction and revitalisation, if the Left is ever to regain its proper status as a voice of ethical critique of materialistic modern society.

So true. As much as I hate to admit it, we DO need a Left that can provide that critique, as long as it comes within the framework of our American political heritage of individual (as opposed to group) rights. From where I sit, a serious Left can check the worst excesses of the Right, and vice versa. Unfortunately, as Paglia's piece points out, the Left seems to have lost its way since the moral triumphs of the civil rights movement.

Posted 7:03 AM by Peter Fallow
MISSING-CHILD MANIA: Slate has a story today on the media frenzy in England that surrounded the story of two missing children. It seems it was a bit much for even the over-the-top English papers, which have produced some hand-wringing analysis pieces.

Posted 7:45 AM by Peter Fallow
TEARING INTO THE 'TIMES': Charles Krauthammer rips the "New York Times" for its heavily slanted coverage regarding a possible U.S. attack on Iraq:

Not since William Randolph Hearst famously cabled his correspondent in Cuba, "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war," has a newspaper so blatantly devoted its front pages to editorializing about a coming American war as has Howell Raines's New York Times.

Posted 7:28 AM by Peter Fallow
REPARATIONS FOLLIES: A lot of folks in Blogtown noticed the news reports from the "Millions for Reparations" march in Washington, D.C., over the weekend. Needless to say, the march drew hundreds, not thousands or millions, and the anti-white sentiments of Brooklyn Councilman Charles Barron and others could prove to be an embarrassment to the reparations movement. It's fairly strong evidence that, despite the rhetoric, reparations isn't fueled by a desire for justice; it's driven by hatred of America and its white majority. I think those pushing for reparations should consider the words of Orlando Patterson, a left-leaning black Harvard sociologist who, while still highly critical of this country, nonetheless had this to say about the United States. (This is from Arthur Schlessinger's excellent "The Disuniting of America."):

"The sociological truths are that America, while still flawed in its race relations... is now the least racist white-majority society in the world; has a better record of legal protection of minorities than any other society, white or black; offers more opportunities to a greater numer of black persons than any other society, including all those of Africa; and has gone through a dramatic change in its attitude toward miscegenation over the past 25 years."

Speaking of reparations, those of you unfortunate enough to have "USA Weekend" as the insert in your Sunday paper instead of the far superior "Parade" were treated to a love letter to slavery reparations this week. The supplement featured a cover story by Charles Ogletree, the Harvard professor who is a leading figure in the reparations movement, and two sidebars -- one a brief overview of the Atlantic slave trade, the other a profile of Frederick Douglass IV, who travels the country doing a one-man show portraying his great-great-grandfather.

That's it. No dissenting view is offered for what could be the most divisive domestic issue since slavery itself. I know that "USA Weekend" is just a revenue-generating rag, but that's simply irresponsible. Newspapers are supposed to enhance our democracy by airing all viewpoints on controversial subjects, but when it comes to race, they fall down on the job far too often.

I'm reminded of Jim Sleeper's great closing line from his positive review of William McGowan's "Coloring The News":

This country's vast race industry of activists, consultants, foundation officers, civil rights lawyers and government monitors enhances its funding, job lines and moral cachet by playing up bad racial news and discounting the good. Whatever his mistakes, McGowan is right to argue that journalists should be investigating the race industry, not working for it.

Amen to that.

Posted 6:44 AM by Peter Fallow
NEW LINKS AND MY DOPPLEGANGER: I'd like to welcome Clay Waters to the permalinks. He's got a fine blog, plus he posts pictures of Manhattan's bartending babes. Check it out.

And after my self-revealing post of the other day, I received an e-mail from Dean Esmay, proprietor of a blog of the same name. Here's what Dean wrote:

Dude! You sound like my long lost brother! (Spiritually.)

Just read your self-description. I used to be a Reagan-hating liberal. I used to be a pot-smoker who dabbled in other drugs. I love Bass Ale and other British beers. I drive a Toyota with over 100,000 miles on it. I dig country more than I used to, but am still basically a rock 'n' roll/R&B/jazz kind of guy. I'm 36. I run a weblog. Are you sure you aren't me?

I'm pretty sure, Dean. But welcome.

Posted 7:51 AM by Peter Fallow
LEARNING FROM THE 'TIMES': Here's an interesting story. The "New York Times" and NPR are joining forces to propagandize the students. (I'm sorry. That was a typo. The Web site actually says it will be "engaging high school students in informed political discourse.") Here's the press release:

NYTimes.com and National Public Radio on Wednesday announced the launch of Justice Learning, a civics education Web site for high school students and teachers based on NPR's radio program, "Justice Talking."

The Web site will use content from "Justice Talking" and related lesson plans and articles from The New York Times Learning Network, a free service for teachers, parents, and students in grades 3-12.

Justice Learning is designed around eight distinct civics issues that are updated twice a year. Current issues include affirmative action, civil liberties, death penalty, gun control, juvenile justice, and Web censorship.

Sounds all well and good until you visit the Justice Learning Web site and click around a little bit. Soon, you discover that the "lesson plans" are astoundingly one-sided. They're supported by editorials and news stories from the "Times," which provide a gloss of high-minded objectivity to the whole affair. (Not to mention a mighty nifty product placement with a captive audience.)

This might be a valuable program if there were more dissenting voices brought into the debate. But there aren't. Instead, it seems that students will be encouraged to regurgitate the left-liberal positions they've been spoon-fed. So much for newspapers being disinterested observers of the American scene.

Posted 6:24 AM by Peter Fallow
THE SPORTSWRITER & THE CONGRESSMAN: Remember the story about the "L.A. Times" reporter who was fired for sending an e-mail to a Republican congressman? The "New York Press" has its take on the story. Check it out.

Posted 8:52 AM by Peter Fallow
ANONYMOUS BLOGGING: Susanna Cornett over at Cut On The Bias has a post today about bloggers who post anonymously, and she heaps praise upon this humble operation. Thanks, Susanna. But I'm still not telling you my name. Hee hee!

Why do I blog anonymously? Simple. It's safer that way. Seriously. I work for a media company that would take a dim view of what I'm doing, especially since I've been critical of its policies in the past (see the "Profiles in Discourage" at the right side of this blog). I don't know if I'd lose my job over it, but it's a definite danger. Some of my co-workers have been fired for reasons A LOT more trivial than running a blog, and I've heard horror stories of journalists getting canned for "unauthorized" Internet use.

But for those of you who are curious about me, let me tell you a little bit more about myself.

I'm 36 years old. I was born in South Carolina but grew up in North Carolina. I've been working in newspapers since 1989. I have a wonderful girlfriend (the Amazing Techie Girlfriend) that I am "shacked up" with.

Politically, I consider myself a centrist Republican with libertarian leanings. (I used to be a flaming liberal. Read "The Nation" and "In These Times" regularly in college. DESPISED Reagan. I was also extremely liberal on racial issues, a veritable fount of white guilt. My experiences with "diversity" journalism beat that out of me, though.)

I attended a medium-sized college that you've probably only heard of if you follow I-AA football. I majored in communications, NOT journalism.

I'm 5-foot-9, with semi-curly brown (now partially gray) hair and brown eyes. I'm not fat, but I could lose a few pounds. I'm digging country music more than I did when I was growing up, but I'm still a rock 'n' roll/R&B/jazz kind of guy. I like to go hiking, and I used to be into cycling. Not the Lance Armstrong kind of 150-miles-per-day cycling, but the 12-miles-up-steep-hills-every-day-for-fitness-on-an-old-mountain-bike kind of cycling. I played soccer growing up, but I'm not a "soccer weenie." In other words, I don't value it over our American sports. I like beer (Bass especially). I also like Citron and tonics when I'm feeling swanky.

My mother died of breast cancer in 1991. It was the saddest day of my life. She's buried in her hometown in Alabama. I visit her grave every year when I visit my grandmother.

I drive a 1995 Toyota Corolla with 120,000 miles on it. I'm not getting a new car until this one completely conks out. My other cars: A 1979 Pontiac Grand Prix (hand-me-down from Dad when it hit 180,000 miles), a 1990 Beretta (another hand-me-down) and a 1970 Corolla (my first car in high school).

Yes, I work with a lot of liberals at my newspaper, but it's not a soul-sapping exercise to sit among them. I get along well with almost every one of them. I just disagree with a lot of what they say.

I've had a few "brushes with greatness." During my sports days, I interviewed Sam Perkins and J.R. Reid. Whoohoo! I sat next to Ralph Sampson while covering a college basketball game. I met Bobby Bonilla once in Atlanta when some friends were managing a chain of bar/restaurants in the area, and I also met a few of the early-90s Atlanta Braves through those friends. (Ron Gant, Brian Hunter, etc. Gant was especially nice. We actually had a conversation for about 10 minutes.) One time in Charlotte, N.C., I saw John Cusack at a bar. He looked like shit -- unshaven, hair all stringy, his slender frame wrapped in a crumpled, ratty-looking trench coat. It was weird. What the hell was he doing in Charlotte, N.C., of all places? I also saw Dennis Rodman in Charlotte in 1990. This was before the freak show began. He was out at a club after a game against the Hornets, having a good time. He seemed like an extremely fun, gregarious, yet basically normal kind of guy. Why did he seem to change? I blame the media.

Little-known facts I'm not really proud of: I've been arrested three times. Alcohol was a factor in all three arrests. One was a DWI in 1992, one was a drunk & disorderly in 1993, and the other was an open-container violation in Myrtle Beach, S.C., in 1985. Those days are behind me now, I hope.

I used to smoke a lot of marijuana. From eighth grade through college, I was pretty much a pothead. I also was a big fan of mushrooms in college, and I've dropped acid a few times. Coke, qualudes, Valiums. I tried 'em all in my youth. A lot of my friends from high school still smoke a lot of weed, but I don't. It just doesn't interest me anymore. Drugs in general don't interest me anymore, but I think many of them should be legalized.

Anyway, there's a lot more. But I've got to get ready for work. I just wanted you folks to know that there's a real person behind this anonymous blog.

Posted 7:26 AM by Peter Fallow
THE DEATH OF NEWSPAPERS: Via Poynter comes this interesting piece on the future of your daily rag in the Internet age. Check it out.

Posted 8:32 AM by Peter Fallow
WESTERN MEDIA -- TERRORIST DUPES? "National Review" has a piece about how the Western media has been too quick to accept the Palestinian version of Mideast history. It's a bit longish, but it provides a lot of historical background on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Check it out.

Posted 8:16 AM by Peter Fallow
BLAME THE NEWSROOM: A departing "Philadelphia Inquirer" editor lays the smack down regarding the marketing-driven crises affecting newsrooms today:

"From a leadership perspective, the Inquirer of 20 years ago was building a culture that the leadership of today is seeking to dismantle," he says. "Back then, reporters came in thinking big--they were trusted by the leadership and allowed to try and fail if that's what it took to get good stories.

"A lot of thought went into the journalism instead of the ancillary issues of money and circulation. Twenty years ago the management protected the staff from that. Today the newsroom has been made to feel responsible for circulation problems, and it is my belief that is not the newsroom's fault."

Just go read the whole thing.

Posted 8:10 AM by Peter Fallow
'FOG OF NEWSPAPERING': Jack Shafer explores the various angles of why Iraq attack plans have been "leaked" to the "New York Times" recently. Here's the summary:

If ... the leaked Iraq invasion plans are part of an aggressive Bush disinformation campaign, who among us would have any sympathy for the Times? "Times Duped by the Pentagon" is both a wonderful and horrible prospect to imagine.

Posted 7:27 AM by Peter Fallow
WEIGH-IN SWITCHES SCALES: Justin Sodano has moved to Blogfodder. Adjust bookmarks accordingly.

Posted 6:44 AM by Peter Fallow
SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: I hate to rip off Andrew Sullivan's creation, but here goes. It seems Susan Sontag is up for her award again after her most recent outburst. After watching three traditional Iranian plays at Lincoln Center, here's what she had to say:

The plays concerned child martyrdom—indeed, one ended with the bloody beheading of a ten-year-old—and during a post-production symposium Sontag congratulated the festival director for importing the dramas to the U.S. “You’ve done something incredible,” she burbled. “To view these works was a privilege and a duty for us who don’t live by the contemptible rhetoric of the Bush administration. The last thing in the world we want to do is cooperate with the jihadist mentality of this administration.”

She might have used the favored pejoratives of the Left: “Eurocentric,” “exclusionary,” or even “crusader-like,” but that would not have been good enough for Sontag. Thus her use of “jihadist,” deriving, of course, from the Arabic word for “holy war or spiritual struggle against infidels.” Manifestly, Sontag did not intend to imply that George W. Bush had converted to Islam. She meant that the present U.S. government was as zealous and vengeful as . . . but the lady preferred not to connect the dots. Nor did acolytes who applauded her tirade during a post-production symposium.

Posted 6:11 AM by Peter Fallow
DON'T MESS WITH...DELAWARE? Fritz Schranck, proprietor of the excellent Sneaking Suspicions, fact-checks Jonathan Chait's ass regarding a story about Delaware and the state's income from gas taxes and tolls. The usually excellent Mr. Chait got a couple of facts stunningly wrong. Fritz works for the Diamond State (never knew it was called that) and knows his stuff on this particular issue. Check it out.

Posted 7:36 AM by Peter Fallow
'BUTTERFLY MEETS BAZOOKA': Here's an interesting story. It seems that an "L.A. Times" sports writer got fired for dashing off an angry political diatribe to a Republican congressman. The guy's mistake was sending the e-mail from his workplace e-mail address.

The Times' policy, as written in the employee handbook, is that the company e-mail system is not to be used for personal reasons. (That's nice, but it's hard to imagine that Times employees don't e-mail friends and spouses, or occasionally book airline fares online. Doesn't everybody?) My phone message seeking comment from editor John Carroll eventually made it to Times spokesman David Garcia, who said he cannot discuss personnel-related issues. You can't blame them for ducking on this one.

I think the "L.A. Weekly" folks missed part of the handbook. Ours includes the bit about not using the company e-mail for personal reasons, and yes, it is abused widely and regularly. But our handbook also includes a policy against using the company's electronic communication system for political or business purposes, which I think most newspapers would consider a much bigger no-no. Granted, the "L.A. Times" overreacted, and probably should have disciplined the guy in some other, less drastic manner. (Heck, the guy covers prep sports in a bureau. It's not exactly the same kind of conflict of interest it would have been if he reported on government or politics.) And the congressman should have eased up. I'm sure he gets hundreds of angry e-mails a day. But our sportswriter should have known better than to send his diatribe from work.

Posted 7:14 AM by Peter Fallow
STATS NEWS TO ME: I missed this update of the excellent Web site of the Statistical Assessment Service, but go check it out. It's one of the most valuable (and apparently underappreciated) sources of criticism about the ways the media screw up statistics. Check it out.

Posted 6:27 AM by Peter Fallow
THE MEDIA AND MURDERS: Here's an excellent response to the charge that the media only care about murdered children when the victims are white:

On the face of it, the claim that the media lavish a disproportionate amount of attention on abducted or murdered white kids might seem to have merit. The problem is that it's possible to make any theory about media bias seem plausible if one is willing to ignore enough anomalous data. Anomalous data like the case of 8-year-old Kevin Shifflett of Alexandria, Va. In April 2000, Kevin was killed in his frontyard by a stranger who shouted racist epithets before slitting the boy's throat and running away. Kevin's slaying had all the ingredients that would normally propel a case into national headlines: a brutal stranger-slaying, a racist killer, a suspect on the loose. But there was one wrinkle; Kevin was white, and his alleged killer, Gregory Murphy, who had penned a note before the killing in which he pledged to "kill them racist white kids," was black. The national media were nearly silent about this case (and even the Virginia media downplayed it). Compare this with the example of young Sherrice Iverson, the 7-year-old, "unwealthy" African American girl killed in the bathroom of a Nevada casino in 1997 by 18-year-old white kid Jeremy Strohmeyer. The Iverson case made national headlines (and is still talked about in the press).

And then this excellent summary:

The news business is, by nature, fickle and arbitrary. Newspaper pages have to be filled; hourlong news shows can't have dead air. There will always be inconsistencies and inequities in coverage. Sometimes these inequities will appear to favor whites; sometimes they will appear to favor minorities. A media critic should examine all of the available evidence before charging other journalists with the serious offense of allowing racial favoritism to influence the very difficult choices they are forced to make each day.

Posted 7:34 AM by Peter Fallow
MEDIA BIAS UPDATE: Ramesh Ponnuru rips "Time" for a biased news article (not opinion piece) on the possibility of the U.S. invading Iraq. Here's the lede:

Although President Bush has a "near obsession with extinguishing Saddam," his administration is divided into two camps — "one pragmatic, the other jihadist." That's not an editorial in The Nation. It's Michael Duffy writing an alleged news article in Time. (It's in the issue with the cover story on how the Bush administration could have prevented 9/11 if only it had listened to the tough counsel of Sandy Berger. Gee, wonder who the sources were?)

Just go read the whole thing.

Posted 7:30 AM by Peter Fallow
BUBBLE BOY: William Powers has another useful column today. It's on news coverage of the real estate "bubble" and whether it's going to burst. Check it out.

Posted 7:15 AM by Peter Fallow
BLACK JOURNALISTS ATTACK: During the recent NABJ convention in Milwaukee, the organization set up a "debate" between leftist academic Michael Eric Dyson and the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, a black conservative. Apparently, it got ugly. Dyson continued the ugliness in his weekly column for the "Chicago Sun-Times."

I'm not familiar with Rev. Peterson's work, and there are no transcripts of the debate available, but it's entirely possible he's a loose cannon who was in way over his head against Dyson, who's extremely strident and extremely sharp. It seems to me the NABJ wanted a black conservative straw man they could humiliate and heckle as an Uncle Tom. Questions: Why didn't they invite, say, John McWhorter or Thomas Sowell to debate Dyson? (Possible answer: Perhaps they did, but those folks knew they'd be entering a den of vipers.) Why is the NABJ afraid to have a serious challenger to its views engage in the debate?

Posted 7:34 AM by Peter Fallow
KURTZ ON KIDNAPPINGS: Howard Kurtz weighs in on the media's recent hypersensitivity to child kidnappings. Check out this lede:

Are we all in the exploitation business?

Are journalists basically vultures who pick at the carcasses of tragedy victims?

And are politicians also getting into the act?

Yeouch! Kurtz also provides lots o' links to the ongoing discussion about this issue.

UPDATE: The Instapundit noticed this story, too, and excerpted the same block quote. Damn, that dude's fast.

Posted 7:23 AM by Peter Fallow
'PRESS' PLAY: I haven't stopped by the "New York Press" in a while. Let's see.....Signorile remains shrill and silly....Mugger's still solid....Hey! How about their semi-blog, the Daily Billboard?

OK. Here's a goodie. J.R. Taylor eviscerates a slanted hit piece in Salon on disparities in drug sentencing:

It’ll be a shame when Salon.com succumbs, because the site does so much to keep hackery alive. Marvel at this article from Michelle Goldberg, sensitively titled "Noelle Bush gets rehab, the poor and black get hard time." Why invoke Noelle Bush instead of, say, privileged leftist druggies like Steve Earle or Aaron Sorkin? Obviously, there’s a political angle—and Salon doesn’t care if Bush wasn’t even prosecuted under the New York Rockefeller drug laws addressed in the article.

Click all over the Daily Billboard. Lots of good blog-type stuff.

Posted 7:04 AM by Peter Fallow
'PATIO MAN': I found this link over on Dave Copeland's fine blog. It's an article by the excellent David Brooks on the boom in "exurbs," those suburbs beyond the suburbs that are attracting more and more residents. It's longish, but like almost anything Brooks writes, well worth the time.

Posted 6:46 AM by Peter Fallow
CANNED FOR BLOGGING: Via Romenesko comes a disturbing story. A journalist has been fired for running an anonymous blog. Hmmm. That's hauntingly familiar.

Yes, that's what I do, but I think there are major differences. He was a reporter, writing satirically about people he covered on a daily basis in his immediate geographical area. That's a basic conflict of interest right there. I'm a copy editor. I don't interview anybody or write news stories, and the main thrust of this blog is media news and criticism, sprinkled with anecdotes of the Dilbertean experiences inherent in working for a massive media company, a company which also remains anonymous. Additionally, someone tipped off the reporter's employer that he was running a site, which hasn't happened to me yet. (And hopefully won't. I've kept this thing a pretty tight secret. Only about two people who know my identity are aware I'm doing this, they don't work for our company and they would never rat me out. I hope.)

Posted 9:04 AM by Peter Fallow
DUMB DIVERSITY: Here's a story from Poynter entitled "Diversity, Democracy and the J-School Professor." It's about the value of "diversity" in journalism education. As you might expect, there are a lot of wrong-headed assumptions about American society in the piece. Here's an example:

At stake is not just the contents of a course or the education of a student. At stake is journalism's ability to tell accurate, complete stories about a society steadily morphing from monolithic myth to boundless mosaic.

When has America ever been a "monolithic myth"? In his excellent "The Culture of Bruising," essayist Gerald Early provides one of the best attacks against the "diversity" and "hard multicultural" mind-set I've ever read:

Diversity is in fact part of the American myth; we are probably the only country in the world to make such a big deal over the fact that our culture, like everyone else's, is a synthesis. The problem with multiculturalism today, the paradox it presents, is that the more we see diversity, the harder it is to discover synthesis ... Multiculturalism has this distinct purpose from the liberal perspective; it is the liberal's intellectual assault against the stigma and anonymity of mass culture.

At the time I blogged this, there was one comment posted about the article at Poynter's site. Here's part of that comment:

I thought we were all the same. I thought we weren't supposed to make an issue of race, color, and creed. But now we're supposed to "celebrate diversity."

Amen to that. Our commonality supercedes our largely superficial differences, no matter how fascinating those differences may be. I think the popular phrase "unity in diversity" should be changed to "diversity within unity." That's much closer to the human truth of America.

Posted 6:09 AM by Peter Fallow
LOPEZ UPDATE: Yesterday, I pointed out this Howard Kurtz article about the decline of local columnists in American newspapers. The focus of Kurtz's piece was Steve Lopez, a local columnist for the "Los Angeles Times." Well, people much more familiar with Lopez's work than I am weighed in with their opinions of Lopez's work.

The guy makes $300,000 a year? Jesus Christ, that's outrageous. I consider my income comfortable considering that the cost of living is rather high where we reside, but Lopez's pay is SIX TIMES what I make now, and my current salary is DOUBLE what I was making about four years ago (albeit in an area with a much lower cost-of-living index). And the guy only has to write three times a week?

In the words of a former co-worker, that's a gravy train with biscuit wheels, folks.

Posted 6:18 AM by Peter Fallow
BLASTING THE 'TIMES': The "National Review" goes after the "New York Times" for its sloppy, incomplete reporting on the possibility of removing Saddam Hussein from power. And the "Weekly Standard" piles on. Check 'em out.

Posted 6:04 AM by Peter Fallow
DECLINE AND FALL OF LOCAL COLUMNISTS: Howard Kurtz has an interesting article today on the decline of the big-time local columnist in American newspapers. The Mike Roykos are gone, mostly replaced by bland, cutesy writers guaranteed not to offend:

Across the country, many metro columnists are polite or parochial or tend toward soft-feature blandness. Some newspapers seem to dole out the slots on demographic grounds -- fielding a white man, a woman and a minority -- who play to their constituencies. Few register on the outrage meter. Unlike op-ed pundits, who often deliver opinions from Olympian heights, metro columnists are supposed to be out in the streets, more reporters than pontificators. But as journalists have become more firmly entrenched in the upper middle class -- writing books, sending their kids to private school, moving from market to market -- many readers have come to view them as out of touch with the community. And in a Web-surfing age, with newspaper readership continuing a 30-year slide, writing something that makes people argue over the breakfast table is harder than ever.

The focus of Kurtz's piece is Steve Lopez, a columnist for the "Los Angeles Times." In a revealing exchange, Lopez describes the mind-set that William McGowan rails against in "Coloring The News."

After City Council member Nate Holden put a couple of pals on the payroll until they could find real jobs, Lopez showed up at his office with a résumé. "People said, 'You're going to take on one of the most visible black politicians in L.A.' Hell, yeah," Lopez says. "Why not? I don't care what color he is." And during the 10th anniversary of the L.A. riots, Lopez came up with a different angle. "Every possible story was covered except 'Where's the apology from all the people who looted and burned their own neighborhood?' " As he churns out three pieces a week, Lopez says he gets the greatest response on "politically incorrect" subjects -- the kind that other Times writers must treat delicately because of journalistic constraints. "You have all these people wandering around the building talking about the truth, and the truth is not in the newspaper," he says. "Here you come with a column where there are no such rules and restrictions and you can just let loose. You can take this two-fisted approach and not have to worry about the tone and whether this is appropriate."

If only more journalists could be as candid as Lopez about the suffocating attitudes inside far too many of America's newsrooms.

Posted 5:38 AM by Peter Fallow
DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS: Slate points out a huge correction in the "New York Times" regarding a error-riddled travel piece on Israel. (Special note to readers from England: There's a spanking angle!) Check it out.

Posted 7:30 AM by Peter Fallow
BLASTING THE 'POST': Also in the "National Review," Michael Ledeen rips the "Washington Post" for its failure to notice the coming revolt against Islamist tyranny in Iran. Ledeen has been all over this story for months, yet it has gotten little play in the mainstream press. The Post story Ledeen cites is an example of why.

Posted 7:24 AM by Peter Fallow
WHAT IS RACISM? Mark Goldblatt writes an excellent piece for the "National Review," and poses questions that he easily (and accurately) answers:

What is racism, rhetorically?

It's a reflexive, irrational, all-encompassing alibi for black failure derived from a hyper-sensitivity to racially disparate outcomes; it is also, more familiarly-with few exceptions — whatever a black person says it is.

What is racism in reality?

It's the false belief that the intellectual, moral, or spiritual potentials of individual human beings are limited by the geographic origins of their distant ancestors; it is also any action predicated on that belief.

Check it out.

Posted 6:59 AM by Peter Fallow
CRIMINAL LIBEL: Here's a "Washington Post" editorial on a little-used but still-controversial law that is on the books in several states. Just read the whole thing.

Posted 6:49 AM by Peter Fallow
NO SURPRISE HERE: A recent survey from the Pew Research Center finds that the public's distrust of the media has returned. Only 49 percent of those surveyed think the press "stands up for America." Meanwhile, those inside the media worry that they've been standing up for America too much. Again, the huge disconnect between many in the media and the public they claim to work for is revealed.

Posted 7:35 AM by Peter Fallow
MINORITY AFFAIRS: At their annual convention in Milwaukee, the National Association of Black Journalists paraded the family of Alexis Patterson, a young black girl who was kidnapped by a stranger, in order to once again castigate American society for its racism and wallow in their collective victimology. The NABJ also trotted out a comic-book publisher (?!) to offer his "expert" opinion:

Alonzo Washington, a Kansas City comic book publisher, who has taken up the plight of Alexis and other missing minority children, said he feels that race determines how abduction cases are covered. Robinson has published the "Omega Man" comic for 10 years. It now carries a picture and information on Alexis. Race affects decisions on abduction case coverage, Robinson charged. "I think when white producers see white children, they identify with them," he said. "When they see black children, they don't."

That's a fairly ugly sentiment dressed up in some passive language. For this successful black comic book publisher, it's forever 1854 in Amerikkka. Talk about a disconnect from reality. It makes me wonder if he even knows any white people. If he does, they might be surprised to learn how he really feels about them.

I believe the media may have dropped the ball in the case of Alexis Patterson, but that doesn't prove racism. What about Erica Pratt, the young black girl who was kidnapped in Philadelphia the other week? She was all over the news for a couple of days and was even Time's Person of the Week. And I seem to recall a little story out of Atlanta that caused a minor stir in the media some 20-odd summers ago. As Michelle Cottle so eloquently pointed out the other day, this whole child-abduction story, sensational as it may be, is really getting out of hand.

Posted 6:47 AM by Peter Fallow
A BLOGGING CLEARINGHOUSE: Check this out. MSNBC plans to launch "Weblogs Central," a list of blogs that is divided into subjects. This should be interesting. Wonder which blogs will make the list? (Link via Romenesko.) Looks like it's another example of the possible growing importance of blogs.

Posted 10:27 AM by Peter Fallow
HOWLER ATTACKS 'COLORING': For the past three days, the estimable Daily Howler has been attempting to punch holes in William McGowan's excellent book, "Coloring The News." He hasn't been very successful. Let's take a look, shall we?

DAY ONE: The Howler highlights one of the first case studies in McGowan's book. It was a nasty incident at an Afrocentric, black-separatist charter school in Washington, D.C., where a white reporter from the "Washington Times" was assaulted by Mary Anigbo, principal of the Marcus Garvey School. McGowan criticizes the "Washington Post" for not giving the incident the kind of bare-knuckles coverage that would have surely been generated had a black reporter been assaulted by racist whites at, say, the Bull Connor School in, say, Roanoke, Va. Here's the Howler's summation of McGowan's thesis:

"The media’s minority critics…frequently assert that the press conspires to portray African-Americans in a negative light,” he says. But “the Washington Post’s coverage of the Marcus Garvey incident…suggests that the double standard runs much more often in the opposite direction.” According to McGowan, the Post’s treatment of the Garvey incident was typical of a kind of politically correct journalism which “represents a compromise of basic journalistic standards and practices. More importantly,” McGowan continues, “it represents a betrayal of the Civil Rights Movement and its core integrationist ethos, which many journalists of that day took considerable risks to advance.”

The Howler counters that, indeed, the Post did point out the absurdity of Anigbo's account. His proof? One rather mealy-mouthed editorial. Here's the excerpt he chose. I've highlighted in bold the pertinent passages:

Washington Times reporter Susan Ferrechio, who is white, said that when she went to Garvey to research an article on charter schools, [principal Mary] Anigbo, joined by some of her staff and students (all of whom are black), attacked her, took her notes, and cursed and referred to her race repeatedly as they physically removed her from the school building. Mrs. Anigbo and staff also reportedly engaged in a pushing contest with police officers who returned to the school with Ms. Ferrechio and a Washington Times photographer to retrieve her notes. Mrs. Anigbo denies either initiating the scuffle or seizing the journalist’s notes, and blames the whole thing on the reporter. Sorting out the truth about this outrageous incident shouldn’t be hard to do. It must be done quickly.

Note the language that is used here. The editorialist chose the passive "referred to her race repeatedly" instead of the stronger (and more accurate) "uttered racial epithets," which is exactly what the staff and students did. And the last bit about "sorting out the truth"? Come on. If anything, it sounds like the writer (of an opinion column, no less) is doing his or her damnedest to restrain themselves from anything that someone in a majority-black city might deem controversial. (Compare it to the much more hard-hitting editorial from the other day on the death of white supremacist William Pierce.) Again, do you really think there would be this kind of lame-ass editorial in the Post if the races of the participants had been reversed? Racism is certainly among the worst elements of our society. It should be purged in all its precincts, and the press has a responsibility to be just as hard on black racists as it is on those who are white. Unfortunately, as we shall see, it is often far too easy on them.

DAY TWO: The next day, the Howler takes McGowan to task for this:

In fact, in the first week after the confrontation at the school…the Post gave prominent space to black political activists like former NAACP president Benjamin Chavis and Nation of Islam activist Malik Shabazz who rallied to her side, blaming the white media and threatening racial violence.

And the Howler's response? He points out that the "political activists" were given "prominent space" just once. But the Howler's excerpt indicates that it was a Page 1 story. Sounds pretty "prominent" to me. And note another mealy-mouthed description of the activists from reporter Hamil Harris:

(second graf of story) Several activists with a history of employing racially charged rhetoric—including the Rev. Willie F. Wilson, pastor of Union Temple Baptist Church, and Malik Zulu Shabazz, head of a Nation of Islam offshoot called Unity Nation—appeared yesterday with principal Mary A.T. Anigbo at the Marcus Garvey Charter School. They defended Anigbo’s role in altercations at the school Tuesday—one with a reporter from the Washington Times and another with several D.C. police officers who accompanied the reporter back to the school.

(12th graf of story) Wilson and Shabazz on several occasions have drawn fire for statements or actions that critics called racist. Several years ago Wilson led a boycott of an Asian merchant who operated a store in predominantly black Southeast Washington, and Shabazz has appeared at several rallies during which antisemitic statements were made. Wilson’s church is large and growing, but neither Wilson nor Shabazz has drawn widespread support in recent political organizing efforts.

The Howler claims "this report was striking for the overt way it challenged the racial good faith of Anigbo’s supporters." What's striking about it is the half-assed way it does so. "A history of employing racially charged rhetoric"? "Statements or actions that critics called racist"? That's pretty weak, considering some of the outrageous statements these folks have made over the years.

Here's a quote from Rev. Wilson from an overwhelmingly glowing story on Page 1 of the July 7, 1996, "Washington Post." (It was also written by Hamil Harris.) This passage is found approximately halfway into the story, and again, note the lame way it kinda sorta touches on the views of Wilson, a Christian minister who is a supporter of Louis Farrakhan:

The result has its share of critics -- mainly members of Anacostia's older establishment -- who are put off by Wilson's melange of religion and pop culture and wonder what it really has meant for the beleaguered community. Others are uncomfortable with Wilson's racial consciousness, believing he too often tags color to religion. The criticism comes in murmurs from people -- both black and white -- unwilling to publicly take to task such a popular clergyman... "If you say Jesus has blond hair, blue eyes and rosy cheeks, then your mind concludes that Jesus is white, his Father is white," Wilson boomed from the pulpit recently. "And if God is great, then white people are great. The image of Jesus is for white supremacy, and it makes black people hate themselves."

Declaring depictions of Jesus as white to be endorsement of white supremacy is merely an expression of "racial consciousness" and tagging "color to religion"? Would some white racist from the Church of the Creator get a similar break in the pages of the Post? Of course not. So why the double standard?

Even more outrageously, the Post lumps certified nutbag Malik Zulu Shabazz in with "activists with a history of employing racially charged rhetoric." Here's some examples of Mr. Shabazz's "rhetoric" (note that these are words he actually uttered, and many pre-date the blow-up over the Garvey school), and here's Shabazz featured in the Southern Poverty Law Center's "Intelligence Report" for his possible role in the bombing of that Korean-owned store in D.C. The SPLC, the leading anti-hate watchdog group in the country, lumps Shabazz and his ilk in with the KKK. Why does the "Washington Post" simply refer to him as an "activist"? These are the kinds of double standards that McGowan attacks over and over again in his book.

As for Ben Chavis (sorry, Ben Chavis Muhammad), the story the Howler cites so approvingly apparently fails to mention the former NAACP chief's highly publicized fall from grace when he looted the civil rights organization's funds to settle a sexual harassment suit. As Stanley Crouch noted in his excellent "The All-American Skin Game," Chavis blamed "right-wing Jews" for his demise and embraced Farrakhan's Nation of Islam cult. Don't the readers of the Post deserve to know this? As McGowan writes on page 26 of his award-winning, roundly praised but (according to the Howler) "absurdly misleading," "skewed" and "puzzling" book:

The sins of omission were as bad as those of commission, and brought to mind Orwell's famous observation that propaganda is as much a matter of what is left out, as of what is actually said.

DAY THREE: The Howler actually makes a good point here. It seems McGowan may have misread an editorial by Colbert King. Here's McGowan:

The most disturbing aspect of the Post’s coverage, though, was the response of the paper’s prominent black columnists. Colbert King, a member of the editorial board who writes a regular column under his own byline, dismissed the outrage of public officials who had condemned the incident and remained silent on the incendiary remarks of activists who had come to Anigbo’s defense.

And here's the Howler's response:

He did? King wrote about the incident on December 14, 1996. “As the night must follow the day and rhythm tracks the blues,” he wrote, “what’s a racial confrontation in this town without a strong dose of racial rhetoric? And not to disappoint, by Day Four of the altercation, a posse had rallied and, with cameras rolling, they commenced to lay it on thick.” That passage was, for all who read, King’s description of Anigbo’s supporters. Nor did King bow down to Anigbo. “Meanwhile, we keep learning, through various news accounts, just enough about principal Anigbo, her staff and our precious school board’s role in approving the Marcus Garvey charter, to reinforce all of the negative stereotypes about this city,” King wrote. And did King dismiss what officials had said? He wrote, “the mayor spoke for me when he said of Anigbo et al., ‘adults have a responsibility to serve as role models…We cannot tolerate this kind of violent behavior.’” For the record, the mayor, in speaking of “Anigbo et al.,” had not been speaking about Ferrechio, the reporter who had been assaulted (as a jury later found).

Reading King's column (unavailable online), I can easily see how the Howler reached his conclusion. But King's column seems to be a rather half-assed response to a more strident (and accurate) column from Richard Cohen on Dec. 10 entitled "Curriculum of Hate." (Also unavailable online.) In it, Cohen does some of the reporting about the true nature of the Marcus Garvey School and the actual views held by Malik Zulu Shabazz and Rev. Wilson that somehow failed to make the editorial cut over on the news side. Unfortunately, Cohen's column also failed to rate a mention in McGowan's book, as did the Donna Britt column the Howler points out. Does this oversight completely damage McGowan's credibility, as the Howler suggests? Hardly. The incident he's picked apart for three days covers four pages in a heavily footnoted 250-page book.

But the Howler missed the most important angle of the whole brouhaha. He only gives passing mention to Courtland Milloy's angry column of Dec. 18, 1996, noting that it was "controversial." Yet here's what McGowan wrote about Milloy's column, and it gets to the crux of his thesis about double standards in the media:

Ignoring the violence against Susan Ferrechio and the questions raised about public accountability, Milloy wrote: "The eagerness with which whites have seized on this case is astounding. Their outrage at the perceived slight against a white woman at the hands of a black is matched only by the sheer absence of any concern when whites do worse to blacks ... It's as if whites were engaged in a desperate bid to absolve themselves of racism by going to any length to prove that blacks are racist, too." He turned Ferrechio into a symbol of white arrogance, describing her as a white "Missy" tossing her hair into Mary Anigbo's face. Milloy closed his tirade by writing that if in fact Anigbo did tell Ferrechio to get her " 'white ass out of here,' then I think I know how she feels."

Many in the Post's newsroom, angered by the column's crude tone and racist language, thought Milloy had crossed a line. Had a white columnist written anything so racially blunt, those Post staffers held, he or she would have been fired, or at least severely chastised. But the Post's editors neither issued an apology nor disciplined Milloy. The only response to the column was a following piece by Geneva Overholser, the paper's ombudsmen representing reader's interests, which was a study in racial double standards. Overholser's column noted the furor Milloy's column had triggered, but somehow also managed to hold it up as a valuable contribution to "diversity." Quoting a white reader who was outraged, she took pains to note that black readers were elated at the presence of a black columnist who "can tell folks what they wouldn't otherwise hear."

Emphasis mine. Yes, some black editorial writers at the Post weakly declared that Anigbo should be punished for her outrageous actions. All well and good. But the fact that Milloy was allowed to write a racist screed that the paper defended as an expression of "diversity" is outrageous. It's not the net balance of editorial opinion; it's the blatant double standard regarding Milloy's over-the-top piece that is at the heart of McGowan's argument. Compare Milloy's kid-glove treatment to what happened to Paul Teetor, a former reporter in the diversity-obsessed Gannett company who lost his job for basically reporting the truth about a meeting in the black community of Burlington, Vt., that barred whites. (Teetor is featured later in McGowan's book.) I'm sorry the Howler failed to note that, just like he failed to note that the book has been positively reviewed by the same "Washington Post" he's so eager to defend as blameless in far too often foisting wrong-headed "diversity" on its readers.

Posted 6:58 AM by Peter Fallow
'TIMES' DISCREDITS IRAQ ATTACK: Stephen Hayes of the "Weekly Standard" attacks the "New York Times" for a recent article suggesting that a U.S. attack on Iraq would wreck the economy.

This latest effort, by Times writers Patrick Tyler and Richard Stevenson, is striking both for what it includes and what it omits. The authors focus almost exclusively on what they suggest would be the damaging consequences of war. (For that reason, the use of the soft verb "affect" in the lede is an interesting--and misleading--choice.) Any serious look at the economic impact of war would include two key issues the authors choose to ignore: First, a discussion of the disastrous economic consequences of another, larger terrorist attack--the possible result of inaction with regards to Iraq. (A GAO report out yesterday suggests that New York City and New York state each lost $1.6 billion in tax revenues alone in 2002.) Second, what about the economic boon presented by a liberalized Iraq? The Times, however, appears less interested in a thoughtful discussion about the economic impact of war, and more interested in laying out obstacles to military intervention.

Posted 6:11 AM by Peter Fallow
WAR, RUMORS OF WAR: Jack Shafer has a story on leaked Iraq invasion plans. They don't concern him too much, and with good reason:

To interpret what the disclosed plans really mean, one must understand that the Pentagon is a plan-happy enterprise. If it was in the bridal business instead of the war business, the Pentagon's strategizers would have plans to cover every contingency from shotgun weddings to stadium-marriage orgies of the sort staged by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. Plans to invade Mexico, drop the bomb on European allies, and perhaps even fight Martian invaders currently gather dust on Pentagon shelves. The existence of a plan is not a sure predictor that it will be used. And, as one Washington reporter explains it, not all "plans" are created equal. Some of the plans being bandied about might be old war games pulled down for review or "concept of operations"—essentially riffs on a military theme that aren't excruciatingly detailed, as a real war plan is.

Posted 6:54 AM by Peter Fallow
'DREAD' REVIEWS: Andrew Stuttaford has a less-than-enthusiastic review of Martin Amis' "Koba The Dread." And keep your eyes peeled for the September online edition of "The Atlantic Monthly." Christopher Hitchens, to whom Amis directs his anti-Stalin book, has a generally positive review of "Dread." (Our copy of "The Atlantic" arrived in the mail yesterday.)

Posted 7:25 AM by Peter Fallow
JOURNALISM SCHOOL BLUES: Tunku Varadarajan has a great, snarky piece on the debate over the future of the journalism school at Columbia University. He nails the crux of the problem:

If a virus were to strike our universities tonight, wiping out--by tomorrow--all schools of medicine, would the sudden disappearance of med-school graduates throw America's hospitals into crisis? Of course, and you'd better believe it. But if, instead, the virus were to kill off all our schools of journalism, would America's newspapers seize up? Of course not--in fact, you'd probably find distinguished observers who'd be prepared to celebrate the J-schools' demise.

So true. J-school is fairly irrelevant to learning how to do newspaper work. (Though it will get your foot in the door a little higher up the food chain.) I didn't go to J-school, and I'm proud of that. It means I got here through my own hard work, and not because one of my professors is a former colleague of someone who might hire me. (For the record, I went to a small college you've probably never heard of unless you follow I-AA football.)

Posted 7:06 AM by Peter Fallow
COMING HOME: Staffers for the "Wall Street Journal" are beginning to return to their old offices, which were heavily damaged in the World Trade Center attacks. Welcome back, folks.

Posted 6:53 AM by Peter Fallow
TV TROUBLE: This may seem like an incredibly mundane story, but it's serious stuff to folks who work at newspapers. There's so many cable channels now that most papers have trouble squeezing them into the weekly TV book. I used to occasionally handle the TV book at my last job, and boy, did people call up to complain about the listings. The Journal story reports that 45 percent of Americans still depend on the TV listings in newspapers to decide what to watch, but if you've got cable, you've more than likely got the Preview Channel. I probably watch that channel more than any other.

I predict that the TV book will die out in a few years because of the cost of newsprint. And good riddance.

Posted 6:33 AM by Peter Fallow
BUSH BASHING: Howard Kurtz has a piece today on the media's relentless search for something, anything with which to tar President Bush's administration:

"There are probably a fair number of people in the press who don't think he deserves to be that high," says Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol. "There's a real eagerness to find any straw -- or invent a couple of straws in the wind -- to claim it's all falling apart for him." Newsweek's cover -- "Like Father, Like Son?" -- questioned whether the younger Bush would also be a war hero and domestic flop. " 'Crime in the suites' is finally stripping some of the Teflon off this president," the magazine says.

There's probably some truth to that. (God knows my colleagues are liberals; there was blatant cheering and booing in the newsroom on Election Night 2000 as the results kept shifting from Bush to Gore, and you get one stab at guessing who they were cheering for.) But we can't overlook the media's thirst for any kind of scandal.

One thing that leaped out at me was the ideological fairness of this article. Beside Kristol, "Nation" executive editor Katrina vanden Heuvel is quoted, as is Jonathan Alter, the co-author of the "Newsweek" cover story in question. If only more "news" stories could be that balanced. And it has a great headline: "Egg on his Teflon?/For Bush, an increasingly sticky situation." (They should have gotten the word "media" in there somewhere, but space is often a problem on news pages, and few newspaper Web sites bother to change heads in the transition to the Net.)

Posted 7:14 AM by Peter Fallow
POWERS' POINT: William Powers has another excellent piece today in "National Journal." (Somebody needs to hire this guy. I know "National Journal" is a prestigious publication, but this guy should be reaching a wider audience.) It's about how the press is enjoying the corporate scandals about as much as Garth Elgar enjoyed climbing the rope in gym class:

There's a gigantic culture gap between the news tribe and corporate America, one that comes down to different views of money. Basically, we subscribe to the biblical view that money is the root of all evil, and our job is to expose that evil through news stories about bad companies such as Enron and WorldCom. ...When Alan Greenspan said last week that "an infectious greed seemed to grip much of our business community," he touched the media in a very special place, and days later we were still shuddering with delight. The phrase was used in hundreds of articles and broadcasts. National Public Radio invited an ethicist to comment on the infection. "Some attribute the recent corporate scandals to a widespread culture of greed, and others say it's just the misbehavior of a few bad apples," said the host. "What do you think?" Citing Greenspan, the ethicist said we're not just talking about a few scoundrels here; corporate greed is a "more systemic" problem.

Posted 7:04 AM by Peter Fallow
JOURNALISM SCHOOL FOR RIGHTIES: Romenesko has a link today to a story about the National Journalism Center.

The idea, organization leaders say, is not to indoctrinate anyone, but to foster fairer and more balanced reporting. After all, they note, they don't want to create a counter bias to the one they argue already exists. "The guiding philosophical light with these people is not to bring in a conservative world view; it is to bring in a broader perspective to the issues. Which is why there are some people who have gone through some of these programs who are not at all conservative," says Mr. Bozell.

Posted 8:11 AM by Peter Fallow
CONSERVATIVE 'DISMAY': I've got to run right now, but check out Jonathan V. Last's piece in the "Weekly Standard" on a "blockbuster" of a story: religious conservatives "criticizing" John Ashcroft. Imagine that. Those on the right don't all march in ideological lock-step. Put it on the front page of the "New York Times"!

Posted 7:55 AM by Peter Fallow
'NATION' TWEAKS CONSPIRACY-THEORY BOOK: Here's an interesting read from the "Village Voice" on the internal debate at "The Nation" about "Forbidden Truth," a book that asserts that "secret diplomacy between the Bush administration and the Taliban" may have led to the Sept. 11 attacks. "The Nation," which published the book, did some editing:

As proof, authors Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquié point to a July 2001 meeting of a UN initiative known as Six Plus Two, formed to discuss Afghanistan's future and to offer incentives for building a Central Asian oil pipeline. The group that met in July included two former U.S. ambassadors, ostensibly chosen to float ideas that could not be traced to the U.S. government. At the meeting, according to one participant, one of the Americans informed the group, "Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs." And when news of this unusual military threat reached bin Laden, the authors imply, he launched a preemptive strike on the U.S.

With an outrageous premise like that, it's no wonder that chapter six of Forbidden Truth has been touted as the smoking gun that proves Bush's indirect responsibility for 9-11—or that Nation Books, the publishing arm of The Nation, has just published the book in English. What's really interesting is that after The Nation's hard-nosed Washington editor, David Corn, denounced the authors as conspiracy theorists, Nation Books neatly excised the smoking-gun allegations from the text.

The smoking-gun claim first appeared in the foreword of the book's original edition, in which the authors dubbed the 9-11 attacks "a foreseeable" and "tragic" "outcome" of the UN initiative. But the foreword in the Nation Books edition merely states that the 9-11 attacks were "possibly the outcome" of the UN initiative, and soberly calls for "further investigation." A similar text massage was performed at the end of chapter six.

Here's an exchange between Corn and his detractors that the Instapundit highlighted the other day, and here's a story from "The American Prospect" that comprehensively debunks the "Afghanistan attack was about oil" thesis.

Posted 7:37 AM by Peter Fallow
ETHICAL PET PEEVES: Here are a couple of good reads from Poynter about journalistic ethics. Some are funny, some are serious. Here's one that echoes my experiences at my last newspaper job:

"I'm never crazy about the disingenuous practice of some media outlets covering an 'uproar' or 'furor' that they have themselves created. 'There has been a lot of hype and controversy about such-and-such' - when the source of the hype is nobody but the media." (Monica Moses, Poynter visual journalism faculty.)

Amen to that.

Posted 7:23 AM by Peter Fallow
PRESS CHICANERY: Here's a startling story:

The New York Times waited six months after gathering all the key information before publishing a report this week on allegations that Iran masterminded the 1994 bombing of the Jewish communal center in Buenos Aires, according to sources in Argentina who were interviewed by the Times for its report. The front-page report, which generated headlines around the world, also alleged that former Argentinean president Carlos Menem had negotiated a $10 million payoff to divert the investigation away from Iran. The allegations were based largely on a transcript of secret testimony given by an Iranian defector, a former senior Iranian intelligence officer known as Abdolghassem Mesbahi. But two sources in Argentina who were interviewed by the Times that the newspaper of record received the transcript at the beginning of 2002. In addition, the Times completed most of its supporting interviews within a few weeks after that, according to most of those named in the story. Observers noted, moreover, that all the information in the Times article had been published elsewhere months earlier, both in Argentine newspapers and in a series of investigative articles in the Forward. Such assertions are sure to fuel already rampant speculation in Argentina that the Times had timed publication of its version in order to maximize political damage to Menem, who announced last week that he was running for president again. Elections are scheduled for next March.

Check it out.

Posted 7:10 AM by Peter Fallow
RUBIN NOT SCANDAL-WORTHY: Tim Noah has an excellent piece in Slate today. He wonders why Robert Rubin is getting a free pass in the current corporate scandals. But he refuses to call it "liberal media bias," though he does suggest a different kind of media bias:

Chatterbox expects that, in the face of this pressure, financial reporters will make at least passing reference to Rubin in future stories. It's pretty appalling, though, that they've protected him so blatantly thus far. Chatterbox chalks it up not to liberal media bias, but rather to Rubin's membership in the bipartisan Society of Media Darlings, whose other members include James Baker and John McCain.

Posted 7:27 AM by Peter Fallow
LIBEL OR SATIRE: Here's an interesting story. Courts in Texas have cleared the way for a libel case to proceed against the "Dallas Observer," an alternative weekly, because it printed a satirical story but failed to label it as such.

The Observer filed two motions to have the case thrown out before trial. Conceding that the story was fiction, it argued that, just as with the infamous Campari advertising parody that lampooned the Rev. Jerry Falwell in Hustler magazine, the average reader would never have thought that the article stated facts about the plaintiffs. Obviously, a reasonable person would understand that it was satire. Not in Texas, apparently. In May of this year, the Second District Court of Appeals in Fort Worth unanimously affirmed the trial court's decision to allow a jury to hear the case. Finding that parody or satire about a public official is not absolutely protected by the First Amendment if it can be taken as fact, Judge Anne Gardner's opinion chided the Observer for running Farley's article without a label to indicate that it was satire, as Hustler magazine had done with the Falwell ad parody. She wrote that the piece appeared in a news column, included truthful details from the Beamon case and was accompanied by Farley's reporting credentials. Those factors misled "even intelligent, well-read people," Gardner wrote. And if the Observer knew or suspected that the article would be taken seriously, then it would have published with actual malice and could be held liable for damages.

Hmm. I'm no legal expert, but reading the story in question, it seems to me that there's really no obvious tip-off that it's satire until six graphs from the end, when the "spokesperson" from the ACLU talks about singing "Marijuana, marijuana, LSD" when she was six years old. I think the libel suit is ridiculous (Texas judges should grow thicker skins, especially when it comes to small-circulation weeklies) but the "Observer" could have completely avoided this mess by putting a small disclaimer at the end of the story. Or they could have made it funnier. Here's some questions that aren't answered by the AJR article: Does the "Observer" regularly publish satirical pieces in the same space that this story appears? Was the story adjacent to other satirical or humorous articles? I guess a jury will have to sort it all out.

Posted 6:36 AM by Peter Fallow
SICK MAN: Chris Matthews has malaria. How in the hell did that happen?

Doctors aren't sure when he picked it up, but suspect it was on one of his trips in recent years to Africa, Vietnam or the Middle East. Malaria can incubate for four years.

Wow. I never knew malaria could lay dormant for that long. Freaky.

Posted 11:50 AM by Peter Fallow
MORE ON 'COLORING': Tapped is jumping on the anti-"Coloring The News" bandwagon. They call the award-winning book "atrociously bad" and point out what they call an "excellent review" by Seth Mnookin in the "Washington Monthly." However, McGowan issued a stinging rebuttal to Mnookin's review -- virtually the only negative review of the book I've found -- in which he questions Mnookin's ability to check even basic facts:

You gave Mnookin’s review the headline, “Yellow Journalism.” In terms of Mnookin’s dubious sense of honesty and accuracy, you got at least one thing right.

Just go read the whole thing.

Posted 7:47 AM by Peter Fallow
LOOSE LIPS: James Robbins has an excellent piece in today's "National Review" on leaked military secrets and the press. Give it a read.

Posted 7:19 AM by Peter Fallow
NEW BLOGS, AND WHY I'M NO LONGER A LIBERAL: I'm adding the Politburo and David Horowitz's blog to the perma-links. Go check 'em out.

The Poliburo is a well-organized, wide-ranging discussion of many different issues. It's edited by Michael Moynihan. Horowitz, of course, is a writer and political commentator who has recently jumped on the blogging bandwagon. I don't always agree with David, and sometimes I think he goes too far on racial issues, but his writing is enjoyable (especially "Radical Son," "Destructive Generation" and "The Politics of Bad Faith") and his position as a former radical faintly echoes my own left-to-right conversion.

Emphasis on faintly. My youthful "radicalism," such as it was, never came close to Horowitz's lifelong involvement with leftist politics. When I was 17, I tried to write a novel about a small-scale communist revolution led by poor blacks in my dad's hometown in South Carolina (which I quickly abandoned after about 10 pages; even at that young age I was embarrassed by it) and I made inquiries into joining the American Civil Liberties Union. In college, I used to read "In These Times" and "The Nation" and "Mother Jones" regularly. I signed some no-nukes and anti-Contra petitions and got into many bitter arguments with my Republican-leaning friends. (This was the height of the Reagan era, after all.) I voted for Clinton in 1992, but I had been feeling The Doubts for a couple of years before that because of some personal experiences. By 1996, I considered myself a conservative. (This was before I discovered Horowitz's writings.) Now, I'm a full-fledged member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

Posted 6:38 AM by Peter Fallow
THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE UGLY: The Darts and Laurels feature in the "Columbia Journalism Review" is online. The leading laurel: The media's debunking of the Jenin "massacre."

Posted 6:23 AM by Peter Fallow
'COLORING' BACKLASH: Minority journalists are outraged that William McGowan's "Coloring The News" won an award from the National Press Club.

Richard Prince, a Washington Post editor and member of the National Association of Black Journalists, said the book is full of ''half-truths, spin and inaccuracies and is not worthy of an award from a journalistic organization.'' Juan Gonzalez, a New York Daily News columnist who heads the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, said, ''This insulting book is a poorly argued indictment of the need to ensure diversity in America's newsrooms, in the pages of its newspapers and magazines, and in the images on the nightly news.''

This doesn't really surprise me. In fact, I'm surprised there hasn't been more of a backlash. I've been tracking the progress of this book since it came out a few months ago, and I've found very few serious critiques of the substance of its arguments. Instead, there's been an emotional reaction from the usual suspects, who seem shocked that someone would dare question the "diversity uber alles" worldview. That only serves to confirm a central irony of McGowan's book -- members of the media, traditionally skeptical of groupthink, now willingly engage in it on a massive scale.

Posted 8:15 AM by Peter Fallow
RACE AND MEDIA COVERAGE: The "Los Angeles Times" weighs in on what it believes are differences in coverage when white and minority children are murdered.

"We tend to, in the media, on the national level, place more weight with children who are white, children who come from economic circumstances that are middle or upper level, and we tend to dismiss ... children from personal situations that are too complicated or messy," said Kelly McBride, a member of the ethics faculty at the Poynter Institute, a journalistic think tank in St. Petersburg, Fla.

I'm sorry, but I don't buy it. Anyone remember Rilya Wilson, the young black girl in Florida who disappeared while in foster care? She was all over the news back in May. Or Sherrice Iverson, the black girl who was raped and murdered by a young white male in a restroom at a Nevada casino? That was a huge story a couple of years ago. As at least one person quoted by the "Times" points out (correctly, it seems to me), media coverage in this day and age depends more on the circumstances of a particular case and less on the race of the victims. Of course, for a large percentage of our professionally aggrieved class, it's forever 1930 in Amerikkka, and only a thin veneer of false media civility prevents headlines that scream "Bigger Thomas captured."

All this fretting over which race gets more coverage when its children are murdered reminds me of a quote from Albert Murray's excellent book "The Omni-Americans."

"..in spite of their common destiny and deeper interests, the people of the United States are being misled by misinformation to insist on exaggerating their ethnic differences. The problem is not the existence of ethnic differences, as is so often assumed, but the intrusion of such differences into areas where they do not belong."

Amen to that.