Posted 8:02 AM by Peter Fallow
WAR IN THE CLUBHOUSE: Boston Red Sox relief pitcher Mike Timlin has a pro-war bumper sticker on his locker at Fenway Park. Big frickin' deal, you say? Apparently, it was to a Boston-area journalist:

The controversy started last week, when Boston Herald sportswriter Howard Bryant took note of a yellow bumper sticker that veteran reliever Mike Timlin kept on his locker. Next to a peace sign was the legend: "The footprint of the AMERICAN CHICKEN." Timlin is conservative, and comes from Midland, Texas, the president's home town. But he was disinclined to make a big deal of the sticker, which a local policeman had given him. He just thought it was funny.

Bryant didn't. In his April 22 article, in fact, he reacted to the bumper sticker as if nothing had ever struck him as funny in his entire life. The language was rabid: "Whether he wants to admit it or not," Bryant wrote of Timlin, "he's dead wrong, and for some people in his own clubhouse, the implication is rightly offensive. The sticker spoke not only for him, but volumes about him." And the tone was pompous: "The sticker spoke clearly, symbolic on numerous, uncomplicated levels. First, there was the double-entendre; the peace symbol is shaped similar to the foot of a chicken, thus de facto joke." [sic] Bryant described Timlin as a "Southern neoconservative," and accused him of "politicizing his corner of the room."

This was illogical. Bryant was picking a fight with Timlin not--as he claimed--over etiquette but over ideology.

As TAPPED might say, "Astounding. Most of the time, it's generally agreed, liberal media bias is subtle -- topics not covered, conservative sources not interviewed, or reporters and producers blatantly editorializing throughout so-called straight news stories in order to please their bosses. But it looks like the campus-speech-code strategy of trying to censor messages that make leftists even vaguely uncomfortable has spread to the sports pages."

Posted 7:38 AM by Peter Fallow
LEST WE FORGET: Here's an interesting story on the journalism industry from the New York Times. A study of media coverage of the achievement gap between black and white students highlights the cyclical nature of the media's response to long-term social problems. It's "a research model developed in 1972 by Anthony Downs of the Brookings Institution, describing the classic American 'issue attention cycle.' ":

The news media and public ignore a serious problem for years; for some reason, they suddenly notice, declare it a crisis and concoct a solution; next they realize the problem will not be easily fixed and will be costly; they grow angry, then bored; finally, they resume ignoring the problem.

It's no Feiler Faster Thesis, but it's fascinating nonetheless.

Posted 7:07 AM by Peter Fallow
I'M GONNA PUKE: That's basically what Salt Lake Tribune publisher William Dean Singleton said when he found out two reporters sold salacious information on the Elizabeth Smart story to the National Enquirer. (The reporters were first suspended, then fired.)

Posted 7:00 AM by Peter Fallow
DIVERSITY FOLLIES: John Rosenberg of Discriminations wades into the waters of newsroom diversity by dissecting an article from the Poynter Institute. Give it a look. It perfectly encapsulates the "diversity uber alles" mind-set prevalent in so many newsrooms and the mental gymnastics required to maintain that perspective.

Posted 9:00 AM by Peter Fallow
FREE AMERICA'S PRESS! Rand Simberg has the scoop in a very funny post.

Posted 6:55 AM by Peter Fallow
TIM ROBBINS UPDATE: Here's an update to my post below on the bogus story of Tim Robbins being "censored" by the Today Show, an idea that TAPPED found "astounding" without checking the facts.

A bit of Googling has turned up video of Robbins' appearance, though only the last 2:15 of it. But that's important, because it clearly demonstrates that the segment DOES NOT wrap up in the way TV producer Steve Rosenbaum described it. In fact, it seems that Rosenbaum saw the first nine minutes of Robbins' interview, took the abrupt segueway to a commercial as proof of "censorship," and didn't tune back in to see Robbins' additional two minutes of interview time. Either that, or Rosenbaum is being incredibly dishonest.

What this means is that America was actually subjected to an EXTRAORDINARY 11 MINUTES of Robbins' paranoid ramblings, not a longer-than-average nine minutes, as I posted last night. That also means Robbins was granted NEARLY FOUR MORE MINUTES of airtime than the longest recent celebrity interview currently available at the Today Show Web site. (See post below.)

As I wrote last night, "astounding" indeed.

Furthermore, I found this post about Robbins' appearance at a blog called The Pod Bay Door. Sean Engmann (who had found the link to the Robbins clip above) sets the record straight in the post's comments, and I'll excerpt his entire comment here:

This "news" story of Tim Robbins being censored on The Today Show is as bogus as it gets. The "story" broke over the weekend as the result of a piece by one Steve Rosenbaum, a TV producer for the prestigious Rock and Rap Confidential. "Not in Our Name" picked up the story, and without checking up on the facts, decided to run with it. The story is now permeating through college campuses as professors recklessly read Rosenbaum's account verbatim to classes and send out a copy via e-mail.

Upon first reading the story, I was skeptical, particularly since, if NBC censored Robbins, it would logically have been a major news story on every other network. Also, had Robbins been cut off on the April 14th Today Show, surely he would have brought it up in his remarks to the National Press Club in his April 15th speech regarding what he perceives to be an erosion of his 1st Amendment rights. There was not one mention of any wrongdoing by Today in his entire speech (though he did attack other networks, such as FOX News quite pointedly). (Here's a transcript of Robbins' speech. -- Ed.) My skepticism led me to search for the streaming video of the interview, which MSNBC has available at: http://www.msnbc.com/m/mw/mw.asp?t=V&id=tdy_lauer_robbins_030414&sk=&pl=&name=&opt=0

As you'll see in the video, much of the content described here by Rosenbaum is discussed, however, there is clearly no evidence of any censorship whatsoever. The fact that people are giving such extremists credibility shocks me. This story continually gets passed along by chain e-mail, distorting the views of many, with a reckless disregard for the truth. Anyone sending out this story should be ashamed of themselves as it is a blatant power grab by extremists. These people send out a classic piece of propaganda, in which they have the audacity to claim that the media itself is being used as a propaganda tool by the Bush Administration. I guess the best way to get away with a lie is to be overt about it, and accuse others of doing what you are. Shameful.

There's not much more I can add to that.

UPDATED ON 5-01-2003: Spinsanity has picked up on my post and added its own research. Thanks, guys. Meanwhile, here's TAPPED's lame-ass update: "Our friends at Spinsanity says the story may not be quite as diabolical as Rosenbaum's account suggests." Way to go, TAPPED. Bad grammar and a mealy-mouthed non-apology for your role in helping to spread this poisonous and grotesquely dishonest story.

Posted 8:13 PM by Peter Fallow
MORE 'CRUSHING' OF DISSENT: I don't usually comment on TV-related stuff, but something I saw over at TAPPED deserves a word or two. It seems that Steve Rosenbaum, a New York TV producer, was watching Tim Robbins' visit to the Today Show the other day and got his panties all in a wad because NBC appeared to wrap up the segment before Robbins could finish a rant about the right-wing conspiracy to silence him, or the Bush administration's plans to take over the world, or some similar garbage. As Rosenbaum so melodramatically put it, "something happened that has perhaps never happened before in the history of morning television." (And I'm sure it also "changed us in a deep and profound way from that day forward.")

Here's TAPPED's equally melodramatic commentary on the "incident":

Astounding. Most of the time, it's generally agreed, corporate media censorship is subtle -- topics not covered, liberal hosts not hired, or reporters and producers self-censoring for fear of offending their bosses. But it looks like the Bill O'Reilly techniques of guest control have spread to other networks.

Let's take a deep breath and examine the facts we have before us. According to Rosenbaum's description of what transpired, Matt Lauer introduced Robbins at 8:15 a.m., and the interview began to wrap at about 8:24 a.m.

Folks, that's a nine-minute segment. NINE MINUTES of Robbins' paranoid delusions. Now, I'm no TV expert, but that seems to be an exceptionally long interview, even by Today Show standards. (I'm a regular watcher, but I don't usually tune in until 9 a.m. or so.)

In fact, a quick glance at video clips of celebrity interviews available at the Today Show Web site reveals that the Robbins interview was nearly two minutes longer than the most recent ones granted to a star, or even a newsmaker. This was the video content on the site as of 10 p.m. Monday:

• An interview with former CIA director James Woolsey about the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein runs 5:08.
  

• An interview with author Harlan Coben runs 5:05.

If those links are gone, check out recent celebrity interviews here. A sampling of what was posted as of 10 p.m. Monday:

• An interview with Madonna, who has also taken a lot of flak for her anti-war views, runs 6:02.
  

• An interview with Nick Nolte runs 6:27.
  

• An interview with Ed Burns runs 5:50.
  

• An interview with Dustin Hoffman runs 6:10.
  

• An interview with Cher runs 5:18.
  

• An interview with Sigourney Weaver runs 7:46, the longest one posted on the Web site.

Astounding indeed. Robbins was actually granted EXTRA TIME to share his deluded ramblings with Americans as they ate their corn flakes. And the abrupt ending seems to confirm that. (Who hasn't seen a TV interview run long and get cut short for a commercial?) That "deluge of invective" in Lauer's earpiece was most likely a producer screaming "wrap this thing up," not some CEO hollering "get this commie off the air."

To me, the worst thing you could say about this whole mini non-controversy is that it confirms the "corporate media's bias" to honor its contracts with advertisers.

Posted 7:17 AM by Peter Fallow
FUNNY PAPER: The Weekly Standard wonders what the New York Times would have written in the weeks after the American Revolution. Give it a look.

Posted 7:14 AM by Peter Fallow
THE CORRECTIONS: Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler has a useful column describing the process for getting corrections in the paper. Along the way, he reminds us how easy it is for mistakes to happen:

The Post, in general, is a well-edited newspaper. But it publishes, on a typical day, about 150,000 words plus dozens of graphs, charts and photo captions. So mistakes are certain to happen. The mistakes I'm talking about are factual errors, like the one I made last week. There are also occasional errors in spelling, grammar and usage, as well as typographical errors. These may happen too often for close readers. But they are facts of life for a big daily newspaper, and they don't get officially corrected, although they do get pointed out to reporters and editors when they are caught.

Obviously, the bigger the staff you have, the fewer mistakes you should see in the paper (or so the theory goes). So, if you are among the vast majority of American newspaper readers who don't get a paper produced by a staff the size of the Post's, please keep that in mind.

Posted 6:58 AM by Peter Fallow
EMBEDDED REPORTER SPEAKS: Last Friday, I highlighted the story of Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter Carl Prine, who was being blasted by the Pittsburgh City Paper for grabbing a gun when the unit he was embedded with came under attack in Iraq. (Scroll down to read the item critical of Prine.) Well, it appears that Prine left a comment in the original post responding both to the City Paper's charges and some of the other commenters, and I think it's worth pulling out and highlighting here for you:

Since I am the subject of this curious post, I shall respond, in Barry's style, of course:

1) I never "carried" a weapon. One was thrown to me in an ambush. I held it for, at most, 10 seconds. The weapon never came off "safe," and I never fired. The rifle was returned, quickly, without any bragging or fist-pumping, moments after we cleared the kill zone.

2) Although I wore camouflage utilities (beware of snipers) and carried a gas mask, they weren't the standard U.S. uniform. I went without a knife, helmet and body armor so that I would NOT appear to be an American combatant. Early in the war, I tagged along on two combat patrols toting nothing but my camera and a notebook. I don't know of any other journalist in the conflict that went to this extreme to avoid being labled by the Iraqis as an American soldier.

3) For Tim Porter, the "apparent" lousy writing wasn't so "apparent" after all. I hadn't written anything about the incident. I was interviewed within seconds of the attack by TV newsmen. In hindsight, I should've let the adrenaline dip before yacking with them. I certainly thought the focus of the interview was Al Tuwaitha, not the ambush. Perhaps I'm old fashioned, but isn't it refreshing to see a reporter who does NOT write about himself in war? Who concentrates solely on the news at hand? Heavens, where is my objectivity, minders?

4) After being contacted by the CIty Paper, the Pentagon reviewed what happened during the ambush. These officials determined that not only had I not violated the Geneva Convention (an absurb, likely libelous, charge), but that I hadn't even broken the embed agreement. Perhaps we should all ask why the Pittsburgh City Paper failed to print that salient fact.

Questions: cprine@tribweb.com

Very interesting.

Posted 7:04 AM by Peter Fallow
WELCOME BACK, REGULAR NEWS CYCLE: William Powers heaps praise on something most of us would probably bemoan: the return of "regular news," warts and all. But Powers, as usual, reaches the kind of conclusions you wouldn't expect:

The distinction between worthy news stories and unworthy ones is not half as clear as we like to tell ourselves. There is ego and venality and muck and tawdriness at every level of the news. And fascination. The normal media cycle isn't inferior to what we experienced during the war. It's just different. And it arguably is a more accurate reflection of the brawling, grasping, endlessly layered society that we are.

Check it out.

Posted 7:35 AM by Peter Fallow
BLOGGING JOURNALISTS UPDATE: Hartford Courant editor Brian Toolan tells Editor & Publisher why he forced Denis Horgan to shut down his blog:

"Denis Horgan's entire professional profile is a result of his attachment to The Hartford Courant, yet he has unilaterally created for himself a parallel journalistic universe where he'll do commentary on the institutions that the paper has to cover without any editing oversight by the Courant," Toolan said. "That makes the paper vulnerable."

The editor added that allowing an employee to set up his own opinion blog was a bad precedent. "There are 325 other people here who could create similar [Web sites] for themselves," Toolan said.

Yeah, we wouldn't want journalists exercising their First Amendment rights, would we?

I do realize that there is a whole laundry list of reasons why newspaper editors might be leery of blogging journalists, the chief one being a reporter commenting editorially on issues he or she covers, or on stories that appear in the paper he or she works for. However, papers could easily put some kind of minor clause into the ethics agreements newsroom folks are often required to sign, either yearly or as a condition of being hired. (Hell, a lot of those documents may already have such clauses that could be interpreted in such a way, if anyone signing them ever bothered to read closely.)

I think it's interesting to contrast the Hartford Courant's reaction to a blogging journalist with that of the Boston Herald, which gladly links to blogging columnist Cosmo Macero Jr.

As for myself, I'm going to keep on doing what I do -- anonymously but carefully. I don't think anyone in my office is getting hurt by this page.

Posted 7:16 AM by Peter Fallow
SHAFER ON THE CASE: Jack Shafer continues his investigation into The New York Times' "scoop" on the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He's raising some troubling questions, both about the Times' reporting on this story and the government's assessment of Iraq's WMD program.

Posted 8:48 AM by Peter Fallow
WOLFF VERACITY UPDATE: Remember Michael Wolff, the New York magazine reporter who was so proud of his smug little question at a CentCom briefing? The other day, I wondered why Wolff couldn't have named the "Republican operative" who allegedly intimidated him after his performance. (As I pointed out, Wolff could have just asked the guy his name.) I further wondered whether Wolff had just made the encounter up, despite the fact that he seems to be describing a real person, GOP media strategist Jim Wilkinson.

Well, it appears that Wolff may, indeed, have problems with the truth. (Thanks to Henry Hanks for the tip.)

Posted 8:07 AM by Peter Fallow
UH-OH: Romenesko reports that Dennis Horgan, a longtime Hartford Courant columnist, has been ordered to shut down the blog he started following his newspaper's decision to kill his column. (I notice that he picked the same Blogger template that I chose. I hope that's not a bad sign.)

Well, at least they didn't fire the guy.

Posted 7:55 AM by Peter Fallow
THIS IS FUNNY: "Christopher Hitchens Forcibly Removed From Trailer Park After Drunken Confrontation With Common-Law Wife." It's The Onion, of course.

Posted 7:15 AM by Peter Fallow
DEEP THROAT UNCOVERED! Read all about the identity of the Watergate mole made famous in All The President's Men at the appropriately named Deep Throat Uncovered.

Posted 9:22 AM by Peter Fallow
WHAT A SCOOP: The Telegraph is reporting that British Labour Party member and prominent anti-war activist George Galloway was being paid off by Saddam Hussein. If true, that's a blockbuster of tremendous proportions. Kudos to The Telegraph for finding the documents that led to this great scoop.

Posted 7:01 AM by Peter Fallow
ARABS BASHING SYRIA: The National Review points out a series of articles in a Kuwaiti newspaper detailing the brutality of the Baathist regime in Damascus. As the author writes, "The idea that Arab opinion is monolithic has just received a shattering blow."

I think that's something we should all remember.

Posted 6:52 AM by Peter Fallow
DID EMBEDDING WORK? Apparently, yes:

The Pentagon's decision to ''embed'' reporters with the troops gave journalists more access to this conflict than any since the Vietnam War. An April 9 Pew Research Center survey revealed that 80 percent of the respondents thought embedded journalists' reports were fair and objective. In journalistic circles, there was a good deal of hand-wringing that the bonds forged between reporters and soldiers could threaten objectivity. But the verdict is that the incredible access to the action made the embedding experiment a solid and surprising success.

There's more in this Boston Globe story.

Posted 6:49 AM by Peter Fallow
THE NEW RULES: Jack Shafer wonders if the New York Times "changed the rules of journalism" in an exclusive story about the search for chemical and biological weapons in Iraq. Give it a look.

Posted 7:27 AM by Peter Fallow
CHAVEZ RELENTS: Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has decided to allow newspapers to resume purchasing newsprint. Chavez had originally prohibited the importation of newsprint in an attempt to silence the vocal opposition to his neo-Marxist regime.

Posted 7:11 AM by Peter Fallow
FOOL ME ONCE: Here's the story of the hapless reporter who interviewed "Heywood Jablome" at the Masters. Check it out.

Posted 9:02 AM by Peter Fallow
BOOK REVIEW: Here's an excellent review of a book by retired British journalist Ian Hargreaves, "Journalism: Truth or Dare?" A teaser:

This engagingly written book does not, however, conform to the stereotype of the retired journalist attacking journalism. It is, if not exactly a celebration of journalism, at least a defence of some of its virtues - of which he rightly says that the most significant is the ability to discover, and to report, the truth.

Give the review a look. It's an enjoyable and informative read. (Link via Arts & Letters Daily.)

Posted 7:40 AM by Peter Fallow
SATURDAY IS NATIONAL COLUMNISTS DAY: I've never heard of this until now.

I'm sure somebody could use this to come up with a gift list for national columnists. You know, something along the lines of, "For Paul Krugman: A sense of perspective." That kind of thing. I just don't care enough today, but if you've got any ideas, leave them in comments.

Posted 7:32 AM by Peter Fallow
ETHICS WATCH: Here's a doozy. A newspaper faked a blurb on an arson in order to help police catch a suspect in a murder-for-hire plot. Journalistic ethics watchdogs are outraged, and I'm not feeling well, either. I wonder, though, if there was a way the paper could have helped out without actually publishing a fake story. Here's why:

"The King County Sheriff's office staged this fire ... and requested that the King County Journal put in a blurb that there was a fire there and it seemed suspicious — and it was then mailed to Sherer," sheriff's spokeswoman Christina Bartlett said yesterday.

The suspect, who was in jail, wanted the clip mailed to him to verify that the arson had taken place. With that in mind, the newspaper could have produced a page mock-up through its pagination system and photocopied the galley flat. Or, if it needed to be more elaborate, they could have actually made a fake page and run it off on newsprint just for the police.

Posted 7:11 AM by Peter Fallow
COMPARE AND CONTRAST: Journalists in war zones are often faced with difficult decisions, especially when they come under enemy fire. With that in mind, let's take a look at how two such incidents were reported by two different alternative newspapers.

First, here's Dan Kennedy's take on the remarkable story of Boston Herald reporter Jules Crittenden, who came under enemy fire in Iraq while embedded with the 3rd Infantry Division:

While rolling through Baghdad, Crittenden called out the positions of three Iraqi soldiers aiming rocket-propelled grenades at the vulnerable, "lightly armored" vehicle he was riding in so that an American gunner could kill them. "I saw one man’s body splatter as the large caliber bullets ripped it up," Crittenden wrote. "The man behind him appeared to be rising, and was cut down by repeated bursts."

Here's Kennedy's assessment of Crittenden's actions:

You’d have to search high and low to find anyone willing to criticize him for what he did. He found himself in a life-and-death situation, and he acted in self-defense.

Hold on, Dan. I think we have a winner. Check out this story from Chris Potter of the Pittsburgh City Paper. It's about the actions of Pittsburgh Tribune-Review embedded reporter Carl Prine, who was with U.S. troops when they discovered what appeared to be a secret hiding place for nuclear material. (Scroll down to the third item with the revealing headline, "When Journos Go Rambo.")

But Prine did report something on Fox-53 no one had heard before. On the drive from Al-Tuwaitha, he said, the Marines came under enemy fire. An incendiary shell, he said, “just splattered our jeep, or Humvee, with hot flames just cascading across the windshield. I grabbed a rifle because we were ready to rock and roll.”

Prine has not mentioned taking up arms in his Tribune-Review stories. But if his TV account is true, he violated Pentagon “ground rules” for reporters in embedded units. Those rules say that “media embedded with U.S. forces are not permitted to carry personal firearms.” Violating the rules “may result in the immediate termination of the embed,” according to the policy statement.

Potter goes on to point out that a Pentagon spokesman, a left-leaning media critic and a spokesman for the Committee to Protect Journalists all consider Prine's actions to be in violation of the Geneva Convention, though I have to wonder whether the act of merely picking up and holding a gun constitutes "taking up arms" against enemy combatants. I guess we'd also have to know how long Prine held the gun. Did he keep it with him at all times? Did he let it go when the danger passed? We simply don't know.

Now, there are certainly many ethical questions raised by the whole "embedding" thing, and it's certainly fair to raise them. But surely, even reporters from the evil, Scaife-funded Tribune-Review can be cut some slack for the eminently human reactions they might have when bullets and mortar shells are crashing around them. But then, I think the Herald's Crittenden had the best response:

"Some in our profession might think that as a reporter and non-combatant, I was there only to observe. Now that I have assisted in the deaths of three fellow human beings in the war I was sent to cover, I’m sure there are some people who will question my ethics, my objectivity, etc. I’ll keep the argument short. Screw them, they weren’t there. But they are welcome to join me next time if they care to test their professionalism."

As someone once said, there are no atheists -- or media ethicists -- in fox holes.

Posted 9:17 AM by Peter Fallow
SURVEY SAYS: Tim Porter links to an interesting and mildly surprising survey of American journalists. (For example, there are fewer reporters who identify themselves as Democrats than at any time since 1971.) Give it a look.

Posted 8:55 AM by Peter Fallow
AMITAI ETZIONI'S BLOGGING: The George Washington University professor and a leader of the communitarian movement has a blog. Check it out.

Posted 7:45 AM by Peter Fallow
WOLFF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING: There's been a lot written about New York magazine media critic Michael Wolff's story on "the question" he asked at a Centcom press conference in Doha, and the unnamed operative who said some not-very-nice things to him. Here's the excerpt:

The next person to buttonhole me was the CENTCOM Über-civilian, a thirtyish Republican operative (part of his job seemed to be to seed the press pool with specific questions that CENTCOM wanted asked during the briefings, telling reporters, for instance, that CENTCOM wouldn’t show the video of Private Lynch being rescued, because it would be seen as “the United States spiking the ball in the end zone,” unless reporters asked for proof that the rescue was successful). He was more Full Metal Jacket in his approach (although he was a civilian, he was, inexplicably, in uniform—making him, I suppose, a sort of paramilitary figure): “I have a brother who is in a Hummer at the front, so don’t talk to me about too much fucking air-conditioning.” And: “A lot of people don’t like you.” And then: “Don’t fuck with things you don’t understand.” And, too: “This is fucking war, asshole.” And finally: “No more questions for you.”

I have to wonder: Why couldn't a top-notch journalist such as Michael Wolff ASK THIS GUY TO TELL HIM HIS NAME? Assuming Wolff didn't just make him up, that is.

Posted 7:21 AM by Peter Fallow
SIGNORILE WATCH: Michelangelo Signorile accuses Washington Post gossip columnist Lloyd Grove of "paying" political allies who feed him information by placing items in his column for them, a serious ethics violation. And the evidence? Signorile used to do something similar when he worked at a PR firm where Grove was previously employed.

Here’s how it worked: We gave the gossip columnists a bunch of items on a page, each one usually no longer than a paragraph. Every other item was a "free" item–delicious, sometimes even scandalous gossip about a celebrity or a politician. The others were "client" items (which were always underlined, so as to distinguish them). We got our gossip from a variety of sources around town, as well as in Hollywood, Washington, Europe and elsewhere, and we’d often pay them off with screening passes to films or house seats for Broadway shows. If the columnists used a "free" item, it was understood that they had to use a "client" item. Sometimes they’d run it in the same column; other times the items would run days apart.

That's interesting, but it's quite a bit different from what Signorile accuses Grove of doing. But why should we expect honest commentary from him?

Posted 7:05 AM by Peter Fallow
RAINES OF TERROR: I wanted to blog about this yesterday, but I ran out of time. Here's yet more proof that the New York Times under Howell Raines is being run like Captain Queeg's ship:

According to insiders, Raines is the kind of 1950s-style autocrat who manages through humiliation and fear. Aside from right-hand men Gerald Boyd and Andy Rosenthal and a core of loyalists, morale is said to be at a new low. There are many rooms in that palace and nobody sees the whole picture. But, says one source, "the old timers who lived through the worst of [former executive editor] Abe Rosenthal say they have never seen anyone be so arrogant, so petty, so mean. Vindictiveness is in." Another source says, "It's no longer about managing down. It's about paying obeisance to the king." Among cognoscenti, 43rd Street is now known as the "republic of fear."

This does not bode well for the future of the Times.

Posted 7:33 AM by Peter Fallow
PERSPECTIVE, PLEASE: The Weekly Standard has another piece analyzing the media's gloom-and-doom attitude toward the war in Iraq:

The rest of the press should get a grip. This is the most successful U.S. military intervention since 1945. This was no half victory like Kosovo, in which U.S. forces liberated only one province, or Afghanistan, where the U.S. left warlords in control of much of the country. This was the real deal: marching to the enemy capital and imposing peace on our terms. This calls for champagne and tickertape. Instead the press, and opponents of the war, are moving the goalposts.

Amen to that.

Posted 7:27 AM by Peter Fallow
THE IDIOT FACTOR: Lloyd Grove is reporting on a racist comment the jackass Bill O'Reilly allegedly made at a fundraiser for an inner-city charity. If this is true, I hope it does some serious damage to his career, because it sure needs to be damaged.

I am one of the first people to decry silly racial witch hunts, but it seems to me that O'Reilly really crossed the line. Suggesting that inner-city kids who are trying to do well may be out stealing hubcaps is a couple of degrees removed from using the word "niggardly" at a press conference.

Further down in Grove's column is an item on Sid Blumenthal's upcoming book. Apparently, he disses Michael Kelly in it. Bad timing, Sid.

Posted 7:16 AM by Peter Fallow
CNN & IRAQ: The Washington Post excoriates CNN for covering up Saddam Hussein's atrocities in this stinging editorial. Check it out.

Posted 7:44 AM by Peter Fallow
A CHRISTIAN SITE? Susanna Cornett of Cut on the Bias fame sent me this e-mail the other day:

I just found out via The Volokh Conspiracy that some lowlife has captured the web addresses of a whole slew of "misspelled" blog addresses.

http://mediaminded.blogpsot.com/

Thought you might find it interesting to see that the link takes you to Aarons Bible, an alleged Christian site. I must say that I personally think that no matter the quality of his content, the sneaky backdoor way of getting traffic empties his words of any value.

Sure enough, the link opens on a Christian-themed Web site with a ton of pop-up windows. Very bizarre. (And here's the Volokh Conspiracy post that Susanna noticed.)

Posted 7:33 AM by Peter Fallow
CNN IN IRAQ: The fallout continues from Eason Jordan's New York Times editorial describing how CNN covered up Iraqi atrocities in order to maintain a bureau in Baghdad. Franklin Foer, who wrote a piece that criticized CNN's Iraq operation several months ago for The New Republic, has an I-told-you-so column in the Wall Street Journal.

But I found a revealing bit of information over at TNR's &c. blog. Many observers, including myself, initially felt that CNN knew full well that it had made a deal with the devil in order to operate inside Iraq. Well, apparently some of the folks on the ground didn't get the memo:

But the thought that occurs to us as we read Eason's op-ed is: Well, then why the hell did CNN's Baghdad bureau chief, Jane Arraf, write us a scathing letter accusing TNR's Franklin Foer of "cross[ing] over into fiction" when his piece, "Air War," chronicled the extent to which CNN's (and other networks') desire to appease the Iraqi regime was distorting its news coverage. "I'm not sure why anyone would go through the process of obtaining the Iraqi visas Foer describes," Arraf wrote, "other than to fuel dinner-party stories about the horrors of getting into Iraq or to rack up frequent guest points at the InterContinental Hotel." Come to think of it, we're not sure either.

Just another in a long line of those things that make you go "hmmmm."

Posted 7:03 AM by Peter Fallow
PACKING FOR WAR: Here's an informative article from Columbia Journalism Review on the massive amount of gear toted by journalists in Iraq.

And to think I bitch about having to carry a laptop occasionally.

Posted 6:38 AM by Peter Fallow
A 'STORY' ABOUT 'SNEER QUOTES': An interesting article in The Weekly Standard looks at how journalists such as Robert Fisk have employed "sneer quotes" in a their skeptical, negative coverage of the war in Iraq:

Scare quotes have two functions, the first of which is quite straightforward: They allow their users very easily to express incredulity about, and often contempt for, the views of their political opponents. But they also allow those users to avoid the hard work of thinking up their own descriptions of events or people or ideas. And they're parasitic: They suck all their nourishment from the host words, contributing nothing of their own. Fisk's sneer quotes--he's not as scary as he'd like to be--allow him to express his revulsion at the very notion of describing what's happening in Iraq as "liberation," but relieve him of the obligation to say just what he thinks is happening in that city. Is it (as many left-wing critics have said) a new form of colonization? Ah, but that is a claim too easily refuted, unless one wishes to stretch the term beyond all historical recognition. Is it occupation? But if so, we would need to have a conversation about the purposes of occupation, some of which can be better than others. This is all too complicated; it's so much simpler to wheel out the trusty old inverted commas.

Personally, I think there's a place for sneer quotes. The problem comes when they become overused (or "overused"). Anyway, give the story a look.

Posted 7:30 AM by Peter Fallow
SHAFER PEELS APPLE: Another delightful takedown of New York Times ace reporter Johnny Apple from Slate's Jack Shafer. I loved this:

The best way to give critical justice to today's piece would involve reproducing all 1,100 words of it and highlighting every sentence in yellow, with an appropriate annotation ("Well, duh!"; "No kidding?"; "How stupid does Johnny Apple think we are?"; and so on).

Just go read the whole thing.

Posted 7:26 AM by Peter Fallow
VENEZUELA MEDIA UPDATE: President Hugo Chavez's crackdown on the press continues. His latest tactic is to use "currency controls" to deny newsprint to newspapers.

This should make The Nation happy.

Posted 7:14 AM by Peter Fallow
THE HORRORS OF IRAQ: Here are some of the things a CNN reporter couldn't tell the world about Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It's chilling, gut-wrenching stuff.

UPDATE: I was prepared to write this off as one of those difficult situations worldwide media organizations sometimes find themselves in, but reading this post from the Volokh Conspiracy makes me wonder. Eugene Volokh dug up a transcript from an interview with Jordan for WNYC's On the Media. Check out this passage (I've highlighted the same ones Volokh did):

BOB GARFIELD: Back in '91 CNN and Peter Arnett in particular were heavily criticized, mostly by civilians, for reporting from within Baghdad during the U.S. attack in ways that they'd consider to be utter propaganda and to -- out of context and not reflecting the overall reality of Saddam Hussein'[s] regime. Have you analyzed what you can get access to without appearing to be just a propaganda tool for Saddam?

EASON JORDAN: Well absolutely. I mean we work very hard to report forthrightly, to report fairly and to report accurately and if we ever determine we cannot do that, then we would not want to be there; but we do think that some light is better than no light whatsoever. I think that the world, the American people will be shortchanged if foreign journalists are kicked out, because even in Peter Arnett's case there were things that he reported on -- and this is a long time ago now -- but things he reported on that I don't think would have been reported at all had he not been there. We feel committed to our Baghdad presence. We've had a bureau there for 12 years with occasional interruptions when we've been thrown out, but we're not there to please the Iraqi government -- we're not there to displease the Iraqi government -- we're just there to do our job.

BOB GARFIELD: Let's say there's an -- a second Gulf War. Is that the mother of all stories? Do you have to be there? Are there -- decisions you'll make on the margins to be s -- as certain as you possibly can that you will have a presence there?

EASON JORDAN: We'd very much like to be there if there's a second war; but -- we are not going to make journalistic compromises in an effort to make that happen, being mindful that in wartime there is censorship on all sides, and we're prepared to deal with a certain amount of censorship as long as it's not -- extreme, ridiculous censorship where -- which we've actually seen a number of cases in previous conflicts -- not just with Iraq. But -- sure! We want to be there, but it's -- we don't want to be there come hell or high water. We want to be there if we can be there and operate as a responsible news organization. . . .

Like Volokh, I think Jordan's statements could be interpreted in a number of ways. The most generous interpretation is that he's being dishonest to protect the lives of his Iraqi colleagues. But the bigger question is this: Why risk their lives (and the lives of their families) just so CNN can get some kind of "exclusive" if war breaks out? And why spend years peddling low-level propaganda for Saddam just so you can be there when the shit hits the fan?

Matt Welch has some typically astute observations, too. Check them out, if you haven't already.

Posted 7:07 AM by Peter Fallow
ANOTHER KELLY TRIBUTE: This one by William Powers may be the best one yet. I especially liked this passage:

The most amazing thing about Mike's career is how unsmooth and unpackaged it was, and how blithely he defied the established rules about how to get ahead in the media. Rule No. 1 is, once you've clawed your way inside the establishment and secured a personal beachhead at a respectable daily paper, a prestige magazine, or a major TV organization, you do whatever it takes to hang on.

That is, you do all the things that people everywhere do to survive and prosper in bureaucracies.

Read the landscape carefully. Say the right things. Protect your flank. Please your superiors, both bosses present and potential bosses future. And cultivate your talent so it delights the crucial constituencies. There are invisible tribes in the media -- cultural and ideological, high and low, left, right, and center -- and they lavish jobs and prizes on those who meet their stinting criteria. The surest way to the top is to do a new, improved version of the story, the interview, the column, the book that's been done a thousand times before, because that's what most people, the poor dolts, crave. Step up to the template and meet it.

Mike was nobody's fool, and he knew precisely how the system worked. Yet he strutted around the media establishment for 25 years subverting it at every opportunity.

That's not just nicely written. It also reveals some important and little-noticed truths about the media. Bravo.

Posted 7:10 PM by Peter Fallow
ANOTHER HOWLER FROM THE HOWLER: I hate to keep picking on Bob Somerby, but it's kind of hard not to when you stumble on something such as this:

THE FORGOTTEN VILLAGE: For those who care about kids in our urban schools, Marc Fisher’s lengthy piece in Sunday’s Post magazine is essential reading. We’ll offer more thoughts at the end of the week, when we return from a one- or two-day hiatus. In the meantime, Fisher’s piece demands to be read. Such articles almost never appear in the mainstream press—a press which much prefers to publish pleasing “Schools That Work” stories.

Emphasis mine. Such stories "almost never appear in the mainstream press"? Well, look at what I turned up in a very quick perusal of Derek Willis' excellent journalism blog, The Scoop:

Fired cops hold jobs as school security, New Orleans Times-Picayune

In an embattled school system with declining enrollment, weak test scores and growing financial problems, hiring standards for security guards has not been a pressing issue. With a starting salary of $20,400 and wide-ranging duties that include patrolling school grounds, protecting students and staff, enforcing laws and making arrests, school officials traditionally have welcomed almost any applicant with some law enforcement experience.

Segregation persists in Chicago's public schools, Chicago Tribune

...the integration of Chicago's public schools has produced "a school system as segregated as it was 20 years ago." Using state enrollment figures, the paper says that "along with the decline in white students, black students have slipped to 51 percent of the total enrollment, while Hispanic students have become the fastest-growing group. They account for more than a third of Chicago students, at 36 percent - yet most are clustered in their own segregated schools."

Teacher quality, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette launched a five-part series on teacher quality in Western Pennsylvania with a story by Jane Elizabeth reporting that "even though teacher requirements appear to have gotten tougher in recent years, there are loopholes you could drive a school bus through."

Permanent substitutes, Gannett News Service

Gannett News Service checked into the tactic of using long-term substitute teachers to fill job vacancies, "one of the dirty little secrets in education," as one expert said. Half of public schools serving minority children rely on long-term subs.

Experienced teachers and minorities, The Des Moines Register

The Des Moines Register's Kathy A. Bolten analyzed Iowa education records and found that "poor and minority students in Iowa's largest school districts typically are taught by the least experienced teachers." The paper focused on school districts in the state's largest areas that had a "high percentage of elementary students from families who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches."

Stories touching on safety, segregation and teacher quality, all issues of vital interest to urban school districts and all reported in big-time newspapers. And those are just the ones that a single blogger has noticed since mid-December.

Applying the Howlerian standard, I could claim that Somerby's wild charges of media indifference to the plight of public education have done deep damage to the country's discourse on the matter -- only it wouldn't be true, because very few people actually read him, and far fewer read me.

Posted 7:50 AM by Peter Fallow
IN THEIR OWN WORDS: The National Review highlights some of the more ridiculous doom-and-gloom predictions regarding the war in Iraq. Give it a look.

Posted 7:34 AM by Peter Fallow
READER MAIL: Yesterday's post on the Bob Somerby-Michael Kelly brouhaha has generated a couple of, uh, interesting e-mails.

The first, from JD:

The only reason anyone knows who Bob Somersby is is because he is friends with Al Gore. He went to college with him and still talks to him on a regular basis. ****Notice how over at the Daily Howler he never mentions this.

The Daily Howler's origins stem mostly to Somersby's lengthy, spirited defense of his friend Al Gore during the previous presidential campaign. Somersby did a fair, thorough job of discrediting all the supposed lies that Al Gore was saying on the campaign trail i.e. "Love Canal", "discovering the Internet" etc.

In email exchanges between Somersby and myself last year, he tried to claim that the Daily Howler was not partisan but merely seeking a full truth on issues of the day. To his credit, he has from time to time exposed some pretty lazy reporting. But he also denied to me that it would be appropriate to disclose his relationship with Al Gore on his website, even during the height of his vigorous defense. I find this to be ethically alarming and cannot take his rantings seriously as a result.

Well, I don't know about "fair" or "thorough," but Somerby has certainly been spirited.

Maybe a little too spirited. Here's a letter from best-selling author Jerry Bledsoe, whom I've been fortunate enough to share occasional correspondence with over the past several months:

I don't know who this fucking Somerby is but if I ever run onto him I fully intend to kick him in the ass, and if you have any correspondence with him please advise him of that. Michael Kelly was an incredible journalist, and a truly fine writer. I had just read his column when I flicked over to some site and saw that he'd been killed. Tore my heart out. He needs no defending but you did a fine job.

Watch your back, Somerby. And consider yourself "advised."

Posted 7:12 AM by Peter Fallow
CORRECTION COMING: David Tell of The Weekly Standard points out how the New York Times (and other media organizations) screwed up when reporting and commenting on a Supreme Court decision regarding cross burning. Give it a look.

Posted 7:04 AM by Peter Fallow
THE FULL ALTERMAN: There's not much I can add to this wonderfully snarky piece on Eric Alterman, in which the What Liberal Media author and champion of the common man Fisks himself over a lunch of "foie gras, the Kobe beef and a glass of pinot noir" at an upscale Manhattan eatery. It's great fun.

And just for old times' sake, here's more on Alterman.

Posted 9:59 AM by Peter Fallow
THE ONLY GOOD MICHAEL KELLY ...: In a bizarre, two-day rant, Bob Somerby of The Daily Howler spits on the grave of Michael Kelly while painting a caricature of the media that could have come straight from the extended dance mix of Don Henley's "Dirty Laundry." Of course, this spitting is done daintily, so that you hardly notice it, and it's followed by a dab at the corners of the mouth with a lace handkerchief of qualifications. But it's a load of spittle nonetheless. Let's look at this closer.

On Day One, we note that Somerby is careful to say that "no one wishes for a premature death" and that "Kelly was a very nice person—in his private dealings." But then we find out that Kelly was "a relentless dissembler" and "the equivalent of a loud, angry drunk" who "did deep damage to his country’s discourse —and as such, he harmed the public interest." Later, discussing praise for Kelly from The New Republic's Jonathan Chait, we are instructed that "sensible people who 'knew Kelly through his columns' disliked him for his assaults on simple decency and for the damage he did to the American public discourse." (Emphasis Somerby's.)

Apparently, the only good Michael Kelly is a dead Michael Kelly. And the only good "discourse" is that which doesn't offend Bob Somerby, i.e., talking points straight from the Democratic National Committee presented without challenge.

But the "meat," such as it is, of Somerby's argument is found by sifting through the flood of eulogy columns from Kelly's colleagues. What has he turned up? "Proof" of the venality of the press, because it seems that a lot of people actually liked Michael Kelly personally even though they disagreed with him politically. Apparently, Somerby believes that someone who expresses political views contrary to your own is not just someone you disagree with in one area of your life; that person is, by definition, a person who is beneath contempt, a person whose life is not worth celebrating.

Somerby damns Kelly as a shoddy journalist because of mistakes he made in some of his opinion columns for The Washington Post -- which was just one part of Kelly's long and varied journalistic career, most of which Somerby deliberately ignores. One "smoking gun" is this excerpt from a Hanna Rosin memorial:

Life under Mike was The Children’s Hour. Try to choke down this ugly picture of the way your public discourse is conducted:

[W]ith countless [people who didn’t know Kelly], I found myself helping square what Mike himself called “the two Mikes.” Those [choleric] columns were him, for sure; when I worked for him at the New Republic I’d seen him bang out plenty in half-hour fits of pique or passion. (One hilariously mean one about Robert Reich as Walter Mitty he practically dictated out loud, in the 10 minutes it took us to walk from the coffee shop back to the office.) But taken alone, they created an all-too-dark impression of him.

It was “hilarious” when Kelly was so “mean,” Rosin says—and Kelly would bang out his “fits of pique” in ten minutes.

Somerby seems to think that the speed Kelly employed to churn out copy was all the fault of Kelly and not the fault of something Somerby obviously has little experience with: THE PRESSURE OF FILLING BLANK PAGES ON A TIGHT DEADLINE. A good percentage of the content of daily and weekly publications is produced under just such deadlines -- not hours, but minutes, depending on breaking news. Deadline pressure has always shaped "the way your public discourse is conducted."

If this is satire (Somerby is an alleged stand-up comedian), it certainly falls far short of Swift.

On Day Two, Somerby's fevered imagination conjures up images of reporters who won't speak out against a "terrible 'journalist' " such as Kelly because they see a chance for career advancement in eulogizing him. Again, we get no sense of the basic human decency that so many saw in Kelly, his quest for excellent writing in himself and those under him, the non-ideological manner in which he edited stories. Here's what Chait said about that editing style:

One fact about Mike that his readers did not know was that he had an unparalleled gift for editing prose. I've worked for some fantastic editors, and none of them came close to Mike in this regard. A writer often hopes his editor will change as little as possible. With Mike it was just the opposite. The first time I wrote a cover story for the New Republic, he rewrote the first half nearly from scratch. He sent me the draft, and told me that if there were any parts I didn't like, I was free to change them. I read over his handiwork - it was breathtaking - and I called to say only that I wished he'd rewritten the other half as well.

The "journalism" Somerby sneers at is much more than dashing off opinion columns. Great editing may be the most important -- and most unrecognized -- aspect of the whole shebang. It's a fact that Somerby has either forgotten or is deliberately ignoring in order to discredit someone he didn't agree with politically. Certainly, Kelly's Washington Post columns could be quite screedy, as were a lot of his columns for The New Republic. But Somerby makes virtually no mention of Kelly's skills as an editor other than sneering at missteps made under his watch at The New Republic -- most of which can be laid at the feet of the fraudulent reporting of one writer, Stephen Glass. As Washington Post staffers can tell you, Kelly is not the first editor to be fooled by too-good-to-be-true reporting. I wonder if Somerby will piss on Ben Bradlee's grave after he goes on to that great newsroom in the sky. By Howlerian standards, the Janet Cooke fiasco allows him to let someone else's dishonesty define the career of the man who led the Post to its greatest journalistic glories. But I won't hold my breath for that.

More tellingly, Somerby completely ignores Kelly's universally praised boots-on-the-ground reporting of Gulf War I and his few dispatches from the recent conflict. Here's an excerpt from Jack Shafer's tribute to Kelly, quoting former TNR editor Hendrik Hertzberg about Kelly's war reporting:

Kelly had covered the first Gulf War with the fierce independence that defined his life. In that war, the Pentagon barred all but a few pool reporters from the battlefield, and Kelly, who persuaded the Boston Globe and New Republic to let him cover the war as a stringer, put his life on the line by free-lancing his way onto the front.

"He simply walked away from the whole apparatus of information management there and hitched a ride on an Egyptian tank," says Hendrik Hertzberg, then editor of the New Republic. This was the dangerous war, the battle against an unknown but potent foe in an unfamiliar land. Kelly traversed Iraq, filing extraordinary dispatches that he eventually reworked into his 1993 book, Martyr's Day: Chronicle of a Small War. ...

"He was just incandescent," Hertzberg says. "War was the perfect subject for him. He was so full of emotion and yes, anger, too. And war was the subject that gave that its fullest scope."

Kelly's most memorable piece from the war described the Iraqi corpses and burned-out vehicles from the now-famous "Highway of Death."

"He was amazing at seeing," says Hertzberg. "He cranked up the color and the contrast, and, Pow! So you as the reader saw it with some of the vividness that he saw it."

And Somerby doesn't even mention Kelly's award-winning work at The Atlantic Monthly. Someone please tell me why he's considered the kind of serious media critic who gets invited to speak to state press associations?

For more on Michael Kelly and Somerby, check out Romenesko's Letters page.

Posted 6:50 AM by Peter Fallow
THE FOREIGN MEDIA: National Review examines the shockingly biased media coverage in Mexico regarding the Iraq war. Check it out.

Posted 6:38 AM by Peter Fallow
JOURNALISTS KILLED: There's a war going on in Iraq. Three journalists were tragically killed Tuesday covering that war. Al-Jazeera claims the U.S. military is deliberately targeting the media.

Is anyone surprised by either development?

Then again, the U.S. might not be responsible. According to an April 8 report from the occasionally reliable Debka File:

The Iraqis gained some propaganda mileage Tuesday from the US tank shell that hit the media center at Hotel Palestine in Baghdad, killing two TV cameramen and injuring two more journalists.

DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources have discovered that the shell did not come from a US tank. The explosion that hurt the correspondents occurred on an upper floor and was rigged and planted by Iraqi military intelligence. To avoid a row with the press corps covering the war and nip the incident in the bud, the US command assumed responsibility and apologized before it went any further. This is unlikely to work.

Things that make you go "hmmmm."

UPDATE: Maybe Debka has it right this time. Go read this.

Posted 6:53 AM by Peter Fallow
BLUE BALL THREE UPDATE: Journalists will remember the story of the three USA Today staffers who were fired in 2001 for some minor vandalism to a corporate muckety-muck's objet d'art. Well, AJR reports that they've all landed on their feet. That's good news.

Posted 6:34 AM by Peter Fallow
WHAT LIBERAL MEDIA: In a piece on coverage of civilian casualties in Iraq, Editor & Publisher, the leading house organ of American journalism, links approvingly to Marc Herold's dubious Iraq Body Count. The E&P folks seriously need to expand their reading list, because Iain Murray has once again debunked Herold's "research."

I report, you decide.

Posted 6:18 AM by Peter Fallow
FORE: The American Prowler dissects a condescending New York Times editorial on the Masters. Check it out.

Posted 6:10 AM by Peter Fallow
BOBBING APPLE: Slate's Jack Shafer skewers New York Times reporter R.W. Apple for his vacillating reporting on the progress of war in Iraq. (Talk about dramatic swings.) Good stuff.

Posted 6:00 AM by Peter Fallow
PULITZER WINNERS: If you haven't seen them already, here's the list of Pulitzer winners for 2003.

Posted 3:34 PM by //page
HAPPY BIRTHDAY: This blog has been hijacked!

But not for long.

This is a quick post to wish Media Minder a very happy birthday. Here's to many, many more.

Posted 6:46 AM by Peter Fallow
THE MEDIA & THE WAR: Howard Kurtz has an interesting column today on how embedded newspaper reporters have been getting some great stories out of the war in Iraq. Check it out.

Posted 6:36 AM by Peter Fallow
SO LONG, DAVID BLOOM: I was also saddened by the death of this NBC correspondent. I remember seeing his name and wondering, "who is this guy," and then I saw his picture and said, "oh yeah, him." Sounds like he was one of the good ones.

Posted 6:31 AM by Peter Fallow
SO LONG, MICHAEL KELLY: I am exceedingly late getting to this because of a weekend spent on the road, but I just want to say I was shocked and saddened by Michael Kelly's death. Obviously, I agreed with him politically, but professionally I also admired his writing ability.

Rest in peace, Michael, and God bless.

Posted 6:26 AM by Peter Fallow
ON THE ROAD AGAIN: Be back Monday. Have a good weekend.

Posted 7:19 AM by Peter Fallow
EMBEDDING WORKS: How do we know? Well, because the Project for Excellence in Journalism says so.

Posted 7:07 AM by Peter Fallow
THE DOCTORED PHOTO: I'm a little late getting to this, but I wanted to comment on the Los Angeles Times photographer who spliced together two photos to make one dramatic one and lost his job. First of all, I want to make it absolutely clear that what the photographer did was absolutely wrong. Manipulating a photo is a firing offense, and he got caught.

That being said, I disagree with the assessment of some warbloggers that the photo was manipulated so that it appears the British soldier is "menacing" Iraqi civilians. It seems to me that the photographer sought a more "dramatic" picture -- a shot with the soldier in motion and the Iraqi civilian looking directly at him. (News photographers are always looking for the ultimate picture in the hopes that more of their work will get published.) Yes, it is dishonest manipulation of a news photo, but I think it's a couple of levels removed from manipulating the photo in some attempt to negatively portray coalition forces as "threatening" civilians. After all, as this Wall Street Journal article reveals, the photo caption tells the story:

The caption under the original photo in the paper said, "Warning: A British soldier manning the Azubayr Bridge orders fleeing Basra residents to hit the dirt as Iraqi forces opened fire."

Of course, the Los Angeles Times hasn't acquitted itself with honor in this war. Something such as this will only invite even more criticism.

For more on this story, check out Susanna Cornett. She always has good stuff, anyway.

Posted 8:03 AM by Peter Fallow
NEW BLOG: It's Views from the Heart of America. Check it out.

Posted 7:38 AM by Peter Fallow
GERALDO UPDATE: Because I've been criticized by a commenter in this post for not criticizing the jackass Geraldo Rivera, I am hereby linking to this criticism of the jackass Geraldo Rivera.

Posted 7:02 AM by Peter Fallow
FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS: Jonathan V. Last excoriates the foreign media covering the war in Iraq for ridiculous questions such as this:

Kevin Dunn of Britain's ITV News: General, going back to the friendly fire incident in which a British soldier was killed, his colleagues have said or found it inconceivable that the pilot of the A-10 was unable to identify the British armor, and he is said to have made not just one, but two passes over the column. In fact, they described his actions as being that of a cowboy. What do you say to the family of the dead soldier?

Last's summary is appropriately stinging:

On the one hand, it's frightening to realize that the global media operate on a professional level roughly equivalent to a bad college paper. But on the other hand, it's a little bit liberating: After all, with press like this, no wonder the rest of the world hates us--America really is besieged by a vast, left-wing conspiracy.

Check it out.

Posted 6:48 AM by Peter Fallow
DEAD JOURNALISTS PSA: Leave it to the French to come up with some shit like this.

Posted 7:22 PM by Peter Fallow
'NEWSDAY' JOURNALISTS SAFE: They had been held for a week in an Iraqi prison. Thank God they're OK.

Posted 8:00 AM by Peter Fallow
D-DAY FOR AA: The Supreme Court hears arguments today in that landmark affirmative action case involving the University of Michigan. A decision isn't expected until July, but you can follow all the developments over at John Rosenberg's excellent Discriminations blog. He's been focusing on this issue for months, paying special attention to the biased media coverage of this divisive issue.

Again, that's Discriminations. Check it out.

Posted 7:14 AM by Peter Fallow
THE MEDIA & THE WAR: Here's an exceptionally smart column on media coverage of the war -- from the San Francisco Chronicle, of all places. Give it a look.

Posted 7:03 AM by Peter Fallow
PULITZER LIST LEAKED? Editor & Publisher has apparently scored the list of Pulitzer nominees. It seems the Los Angeles Times has the most entries in contention. (Don't forget, today is April Fool's Day.) Check it out.

Posted 6:51 AM by Peter Fallow
ARNETT FOLLOWUP: It seems that a good deal of the media think canning Peter Arnett for his interview on Iraqi TV was exactly right. However, it's interesting to note that some prominent voices are wondering what the fuss is all about.

Here's one:

"I don't think he should be disciplined in any way," says Frank Brady, professor of communications, journalism and media at St. John's University.

"The journalist's job is to analyze what's happening. The fact that he said something that was unpopular to the [Bush] administration or to his network is not necessarily grounds for removal.

"Anything that appears anywhere can be considered propaganda. We propagandize what we're doing all the time. Perhaps the Sunday-morning talk shows are a form of propaganda. Should they all be disciplined?"

How very postmodern. Here's another, and it's none other than Bill Kovach of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, one of the industry's biggest hand-wringers:

"It's regrettable that a news organization feels compelled to fire a journalist for essentially doing journalism," said Bill Kovach, chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists.

Doing journalism? Here's a transcript of Arnett's interview, which is much more dubious than initial reports painted it yesterday. Arnett begins by praising the "unfailing courtesy and cooperation of the Ministry of Information, which has allowed me and many other reporters to cover 12 whole years since the Gulf War with a degree of freedom which we appreciate. And that is continuing today."

Hmm. And what of the fate of two Baghdad-based reporters from Newsday who have vanished? Maybe they're getting a taste of "courtesy and cooperation" in a dungeon somewhere.

And I don't think Arnett was "doing journalism" when he said this on Iraqi TV: "So our reports about civilian casualties here, about the resistance of the Iraqi forces, are going back to the United States. It helps those who oppose the war when you challenge the policy to develop their arguments." That's little more than pure propaganda for a totalitarian government.

Meanwhile, Arnett has landed on his feet. The Mirror, a British tabloid rag that is vehemently anti-war, has hired the disgraced hack. And here's his first column.

The guy is pathetic. And Slate's Jack Shafer agrees, so I'm in pretty good company.