HITCHENS SPEAKS: I don't read Salon anymore, so I missed this excellent interview with Christopher Hitchens. (Heck, it was probably in their pay-per-view section, anyway.) But here it is in full from Frontpagemag. Joe Bob says check it out.

FEELING THE HEAT IN THE DESERT: The Arizona Daily Star is under fire for its decision to publish a 22-page letter sent to its publisher by a man who killed three professors at the University of Arizona before killing himself. However, it appears that a lot of people read the letter anyway:

Sentiment was running at least 2-to-1 against the Star's decisions to publish any or all of the letter from callers to three local talk radio shows, and among people who phoned or wrote the paper e-mails or faxed letters.

However, a much larger number of readers chose to vote with their computer mouses, said John Bolton, editor of StarNet, the online version of the Arizona Daily Star.

By 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, the special online report containing Flores' letter had received more than 900,000 page views. One person reading each page of Flores' letter once would have logged 22 page views.

The entire StarNet site got more than 1.1 million page views by that hour. That's the most page views the site has received on a given day, including Sept. 11, 2001, since the paper went online in 1995, said StarNet Director David Reed. On a typical day, the site gets about 150,000 page views.

My own feelings are that the Star should have waited a discreet period of time before publishing the letter. Or, if they wanted to get the information out immediately, they could have published select excerpts only.

MIND GAMES: I was driving to work yesterday when I heard an interesting item on Charles Osgood's "The Osgood File." (Hard to believe, but true.) It was about a new online video game called "Tropical America," and it appears to be yet another shoddy attempt by educators in the hard-core multicultural left to "radicalize" minority students.

Here's a description of the game, from its Web site:

Inspired by the similarly titled mural by David Alfaro Siqueiros -- subsequently whitewashed in Los Angeles in 1932 -- Tropical America explores the causes and effects of the erasure of history. From the battles of Bolivar, to the single-crop economy of Cuba, the myth of El Dorado and the poems of Sor Juana de la Cruz, Tropical America reveals a forgotten terrain, the birthplace of contemporary cross-cultural life.

The story of Rufina Amaya, sole survivor of the 1981 massacre of El Mozote in El Salvador, becomes the contextual anchor for Tropical America, and the impetus from which the game begins. El Mozote symbolizes the silencing of one people’s histories and the perseverance of its survivors to bring the events into the open.

Here is a link about the mural called "Tropical America." It may have been skillfully executed, but it was little more than a piece of Marxist agitprop. I've excerpted the pertinent passage:

As the central visual and symbolic focus of the piece, an Indian peon representing oppression by United State imperialism is crucified on a double cross capped by an American eagle. A Mayan pyramid in the background is overrun by vegetation, while an armed Peruvian peasant and a Mexican campesino sit on a wall in the upper right corner, ready to defend themselves.

According to this online biography, Siqueiros was a brilliant artist. He was also a violent, hard-core Stalinist who was the leader of an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Leon Trotsky in Mexico City:

In the great Stalin-Trotsky schism that split the communist world, Siqueiros was firmly on the side of Stalin. So firmly that on in the early morning of May 24, 1940, he led an attack on Trotsky's house in Mexico City's Coyoacán suburb. (Trotsky, granted asylum by President Cárdenas, was then living in Mexico.) The attacking party was composed of men who had served under Siqueiros in the Spanish Civil War and of miners from his union. After thoroughly raking the house with machine gun fire and explosives, the attackers withdrew in the belief that nobody could have survived the assault. They were mistaken. Trotsky was unhurt and lived till August, when he was killed with a pickaxe wielded by an assassin who had wormed his way into the ex-Soviet leader's entourage by romancing one of his secretaries. Shortly before the attack, Siqueiros had been censured for mishandling Communist Party funds. Isaac Deutscher, Trotsky's biographer, believed that Siqueiros planned the attack to get back into the Party's good graces. Describing Siqueiros as a "Latin American buccaneer," Deutscher describes him as a man in whom "art, revolution and gangsterism were inseparable."

Do you see where I'm going with this?

As for Rufina Amaya and the 1981 atrocity at the village of El Mozote in El Salvador, the crime was carried out by the infamous Atlacatl Battalion, a unit allegedly trained by the U.S. military and a favorite target for the annual protests at the former U.S. Army School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga.

Again, do you notice a pattern here?

The study of history -- warts and all -- is vitally important. But this "game" sounds more like an exercise in political indoctrination that drains all complexity from the story of the Americas, reducing it to little more than a parable of "brown" good vs."white" evil. And, as the game's credits point out, you helped pay for it:

This collaboration has been generously supported by the U.S. Department of Education in conjunction with the National Endownment for the Arts, and through the Arts in Education Partnership of the California Arts Council.

Your tax dollars at work.

BIZARRE: This is freaky. That University of Arizona nursing student who killed three professors and then himself sent a 22-page letter to the publisher of the Arizona Daily Star. Here's the story, and here's the letter. (Links via Romenesko.)

NEWTON'S FIGMENTS UPDATE: Slate's Jack Shafer weighs in on the story of Christopher Newton, the AP reporter who allegedly fabricated sources in a lot of his stories. (Love Slate's "Fib Newton" headline, by the way.) Shafer lists some of the fake experts Newton quoted:

"Robert Janson" toiled at the nonexistent "Voice for the Disabled"; "Thomas Jakes" served as president of "People for Civil Rights"; "Angelica Victor" did her business at the "Education Alliance," and "Bruce Fenmore" did his at the "Institute for Crime and Punishment in Chicago."

The names of those fake organizations remind me of that Seinfeld episode where George gave all of his co-workers a bogus Christmas gift -- a "donation" in their name to something called "The Human Fund," whose motto was, "Money For People."

Anyway, Shafer's article presents a valuable overview of how The Associated Press operates, and how it would be possible for a faker to operate undetected for 32 months. (The answer: Newton's quotes were overwhelmingly throwaways that editors -- and most readers -- basically ignored.) He also makes an excellent point about inconsequential quotes that are often added to stories in order to provide "balance":

Every day, thousands of reporters pad their stories to fit the stock news formula. Like casting agents, they phone around looking for the precise quotation their story needs to appear "balanced." They lead their witnesses with language such as, "So would you say ...?" or asking the question five different ways until they get the right quotation to fit their predetermined thesis and complete the formula. If it's a journalistic crime for Christopher Newton to invent characters who mouth empty but passable clichés, what's the name of the offense when respectable reporters deliberately harvest the same worthless clichés from bona fide sources?

Just go read the whole thing. It's one of the best insider looks at the newsgathering process I've read in a while.

BRITISH MEDIA INVASION: In The New Republic, Andrew Sullivan writes about a "second British Invasion," one of crass tabloid newspapers, outrageous reality-TV shows and bawdy, freewheeling men's magazines. Sullivan sees both good and ill in this flood of bad taste from across the pond. Give it a read and decide for yourself.

'POST' POSITIVE: The Columbia Journalism Review has a longish piece on The Washington Post under publisher Donald Graham. Check it out.

'CITY JOURNAL' IS OUT: At last! The autumn issue of The Manhattan Institute's City Journal is now online. And there's an absolutely must-read story by Harry Stein on how a speech he gave in Texas became the basis for a political smear job by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Stein's story needs to be disseminated as widely as possible, because it illustrates the mind-set so prevalent among many in the media when it comes to race. Once again, this guy's book looks more and more timely.

ARE NEWSPAPERS 'RELEVANT'? Gawd, I can't count the number of seminars I've attended on this subject, and now David Shaw of the Los Angeles Times shares the inner workings of these shindigs with his readers:

So how can newspapers be relevant on routine, personal issues -- while simultaneously trying to explain terrorism, global warming and a faltering economy? There is room in a good newspaper for both functions, and the best way to balance them is to connect them.

Connecting the personal to the political and the global to the local is a matter of survival for newspapers, which have been losing circulation for more than 30 years. Knowing that they risk becoming irrelevant to readers who are busier than ever, and who have ever more alternative sources of information, many newspapers across the country are trying desperately to make those connections.

I can't add much more to this story. There are some things in the article I agree with, and some I don't. But for an inside look at the hand-wringing that goes on in publisher's offices around the country, check it out.

IT'S NATION TIME: There's a strange article in the most recent issue of The Nation. It accuses The Washington Post's op-ed pages of being too hawkish about military action against Iraq. However, it lacks any hard numbers, i.e. percentage of hawkish vs. dovish pieces; the article merely asserts that the presence of opinion pieces by those in favor of military action in Iraq is a bad thing, and claims that the hawks are "drowning out" other voices. But the truth seems to be somewhat different. It's not like Post readers are forced to endure the unending drumbeat of war. The Nation article makes it clear that there have been plenty of dissenting voices presented on the editorial page, and it points out that editorial page editor Fred Hiatt has been quite critical of many aspects of U.S. foreign policy in his own writing.

Ironically, after all the hand-wringing about the right-wing imbalance at the Post, the Nation nails the crux of the problem in this passage:

To an extent, the tilt on the Post's Op-Ed page may reflect the difficulties liberals in this country have had in articulating the case against military action. The magnitude of Saddam's cruelty, his lurid history of aggression and mass murder, his clear determination to obtain weapons that could disrupt world peace--all have placed critics of war on the defensive. That's why so many have taken refuge in calls for deliberation, diplomacy and multilateralism.

And that's why so many suddenly find themselves irrelevant. Americans are tired of the "useful idiots" of the peace movement. That the Post, alone among America's major newspapers, seems to understand this is not a badge of shame. It is a tribute to those liberals who are unaffected by what passes for cutting-edge political thinking at The Nation and recognize that a threat to U.S. interests is a threat to the stability of the entire world.

For more on the irrelevance of much of the anti-war movement, read this column by Todd Gitlin. And here's an outstanding piece on the rejection of patriotism by large sections of the American left, and how that strategy can be rectified.

AND FINALLY: The always-excellent William Powers discusses how the sniper coverage may have caused a shift in America's news appetite:

Every news consumer with a pulse knows the feeling I'm describing -- that visceral craving for simple, unadorned information. But I don't think it's dawned on some media people how widespread this stark view of the news has become in the nearly 14 months since the terrorist attacks of September 11, or how profoundly it's affected the way Americans think about the media. The news values of the 1990s -- personality, ideology, scandal for scandal's sake -- are completely out of sync with the world of right now. And when news outlets embrace those old values, as most still do at least part of the time, they become irrelevant.

Read the whole thing.

SPEAKING OF THE SNIPER: I wonder if anyone has explored John Muhammad's belief system, specifically whether he is a member of the Five Percent Nation of Islam. (It has been widely reported that he converted to Islam several years ago, and that he helped provide security at Louis Farrakhan's Million Man March.)

The Five Percent Nation is a bizarre offshoot of the Nation of Islam. Here's a description from the ADL:

Five Percenters believe that blacks are the original people of Earth, that they founded all civilization, and that in fact the "blackman" is god. They also believe that whites have deceived the whole world, causing it to honor and worship false gods and idols.

As we all know, some of the notes left near shooting scenes contained the phrase, "I am God." Very interesting, and worth pursuing.

The ideology and imagery of the Five Percent Nation are prevalent in the world of hip-hop. Read here and here. That's disturbing, to say the least.

SNIPER AFTERMATH: Howard Kurtz has a fine piece today on the media's overkill coverage of the sniper case:

So the van wasn't white. And the sniper wasn't white. And it wasn't a loner with no family. So will all the so-called experts who were flat wrong in their wild speculation about who the killer might be do the honorable thing and resign from the airwaves?

Fat chance.

Check it out.

HARRY BELAFONTE UPDATE: Ronald Radosh, who penned an article a couple of years ago on Harry Belafonte's Stalinist sympathies that I highlighted last week, has another column up today at FrontPageMag. As you know, Belafonte gained attention recently for calling Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice "house slaves."

INTERNATIONAL INTRIGUE: Slate's Jack Shafer has a good piece today on The New York Times' purchase of the Washington Post's share of the International Herald Tribune.

Until now, the Graham and Sulzberger dynasties have gotten on like royalty from neighboring countries. We've go so much in common! Family-controlled empires, a tradition of quality journalism, and, hey! look! we're both luminously rich. The ugly International Herald Tribune divorce ends the air-kiss romance between the two families and signals the Times' disdain for the Post with all the velocity of a mud pie. We don't need your pitiful copy, the Times is saying. If you were Donald Graham, you'd cry, too.

It's a fun read. Check it out.

THE TIMES, THEY AREN'T A-CHANGIN': The National Review rips The New York Times for revealing U.S. military plans for urban warfare in Iraq. I tend to agree with a lot of the author's conclusions, but it must be noted that he is an officer candidate in the United States Marine Corps, so he may be slightly biased.

IRAQ AND THE MEDIA: I missed this story the other day, but you've got to check it out. The New Republic describes how Saddam Hussein uses the U.S. media to his advantage:

If the bombs begin falling on Baghdad, a broad swath of the TV-viewing world will quickly become intimate with Jane Arraf, CNN's Iraq correspondent for the past four years. Arraf files her reports from the third-floor landing of a blocky white building a few hundred meters from the Tigris River, with the ancient city's minaret-filled panorama behind her. CNN shares the building with the BBC, Associated Press, Reuters, and the handful of other news organizations that have a permanent presence in Baghdad. But there's an uncomfortable fact about this building to which these tenants don't often call attention: It's the Iraqi Ministry of Information. ...

Like their Soviet-bloc predecessors, the Iraqis have become masters of the Orwellian pantomime--the state-orchestrated anti-American rally, the state-led tours of alleged chemical weapons sites that turn out to be baby milk factories--that promotes their distorted reality. And the Iraqi regime has found an audience for these displays in an unlikely place: the U.S. media. It's not because American reporters have an ideological sympathy for Saddam Hussein; broadcasting his propaganda is simply the only way they can continue to work in Iraq. "There's a quid pro quo for being there," says Peter Arnett, who worked the Iraq beat for CNN for a decade. "You go in and they control what you do. ... So you have no option other than to report the opinion of the government of Iraq." In other words, the Western media's presence in the Ministry of Information describes more than just a physical reality.

Just go read the whole thing.

MORE ON NEWTON'S FIGMENTS: Slate has an Explainer today on the possibility of suing former Associated Press reporter Christopher Newton for fraud (Newton is accused of using fake sources in many of his stories).

Inventing sources is not a crime in and of itself, although it certainly violates every code of journalistic ethics known to man. A criminal fraud case would require that the reporter's deceit had been malicious and resulted in financial gain. The latter, in particular, would be difficult for a prosecutor to prove, since a published story is not intended to attract investment or gifts. Quoting "Hugh Brownstone" of the "Intergon Research Center" in his story on stealth bombers, for example, did not net Newton any additional revenue.

Check it out.

THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE UGLY: The Columbia Journalism Review has its latest installment of "Darts & Laurels" posted. This is a bimonthly roundup of the great and the not-so-great from the world of journalism. Check it out.

NEWTON'S FIGMENTS: The Associated Press reports that it has dug up 39 more examples of possibly fictitious sources from former reporter Christopher Newton. This story provides a long list of the names.

I'm really surprised that more of this kind of thing hasn't surfaced before. I would think that, especially at smaller papers, this might be rather common.

GUESS THE AUTHOR: Here's a fine piece of writing by a well-known journalist. Notice the attention to detail, and see if you can guess the author's identity (the answer is at the bottom of this post).

'Tis the night before Christmas. 'Tis evening of a gloomy Saturday that is cold and wet. In the parks the trees stand firm, their bare boughs creaking in the wind, The sky is overcast; the damp wind sniffs at every lamp post and deserted alleyway.

In the big churchyard on Trade Street, the rocks are wet. The gravel paths, clean from many rains, are neat against the dead brown of faded grass. Mist falls upon the asphalt.

In the windows of all the stores, the "Merry Christmas" signs hang, their silvered lettering staring out on the street. The neon gets mixed up in the mist. In one shop window, dressers in felt slippers are already at work, taking away the displays, getting ready for post-Christmas sales. They take down the fake holly wreaths, cotton, silver dust, and speak choppily to each other, their mouths full of pins....

Oh, the side streets are the coldest! Jake Bowers knows it. Jake walks along Church Street, stands on the corner of Fourth, takes his hands from his pockets and begins blowing on his fists. Jake is broke. His overalls are frayed, his hair is long, and he is getting thin. He shuffles in the cold, watches an auto skim along the wet pavement, and thinks about wheatcakes. When he reaches the mission, his mind is warm with wheatcakes, but his legs are like wood.

The Yuletide is going on. The lights in front of the mission are put out, all except one single bulb that burns brightly over the doorway near a gilt sign which reads, "Jesus Saves." Inside, in a corner, the tin cups used for stew are piled up on the floor; and a few feet away, the folding chairs are lined up. The twenty-dollar upright piano used for hymn singing is locked tight. The manager has the key; it swings from a shiny silver ring and hangs inside his vest. On the sidewalk in front of the mission, half obliterated by the dampness of the weather, is a passage from the Scriptures printed in many colors of chalk -- red, green, purple, white, and old rose: "What does the Lord require of thee but to love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly..."

Toward midnight, the air grows damper, the chalk marks blur, running together, and all that is visible is "walk humbly." No more, or less. The heavy sign above the movie distributor's down the street begins to sway slightly when the wind shifts.

Two old bums stand in a grocery store doorway. "Where you goin'?" The first one says.

"Me?"

"Yeah, you."

"I'm goin' to sleep," the second one answers and walks up into the doorway. "Where you goin'?" he says, stretching out on the damp tiles, moving his bones around to find a nice, soft tile or two.

"I'm gonna sleep, too," the first one says and ambles up, shuffling his old varicose legs, settling down before his pal.

Across the way, the bulb burns brightly: "Jesus Saves." The light is in their eyes. They turn their backs toward it.

Over on Trade Street, the church with the big yard begins ringing its bells. Christmas morning steals along like a gray wolf sneaking into a dead prairie town at dawn. Panes of glass rattle in their sockets. A roomer from the second floor goes tramping down the stairs, turns the knob, and slams the door, while outside the street lamps throw their cold white glare.

Answer: This wonderful little essay was written by Charles Kuralt ... in 1950. He was 15 years old at the time, and clearly had already found the voice that would become so familiar to so many. You can read more gems like this, and reminiscences of Kuralt's life from friends and associates, in Remembering Charles Kuralt. It's an enjoyable read.

HITLER=BUSH...IN THE FUNNY PAPERS: Chicago Tribune ombudsman Don Wycliff gives a half-assed defense of The Boondocks, an often-offensive comic strip that sunk to new lows recently when it compared President Bush to Adolf Hitler. (Here's the comic in question.) Aaron McGruder, the creator of Boondocks, seems to be comparing the Bush election mess to an undemocratic coup. And here's Wycliff's explanation:

The unspoken obverse of Huey's observation--that Bush was not democratically elected--is at least arguable. It appears that Al Gore got more votes nationwide than did George W. Bush, although by virtue of our Electoral College arrangement and thanks to a Supreme Court decision, Bush was the winner. As McGruder and other bitter-enders never tire of reminding us, Bush may have won the election legally, but he didn't win it, strictly speaking, democratically.

This is preposterous. It was the Democrats who first appealed to the courts to resolve the election, so if Gore had ended up the winner, you could also make the argument that he "didn't win it, strictly speaking, democratically." I seriously doubt that argument would appear in The Boondocks, however.

But this was the part I found really interesting:

As to McGruder's being allowed to say the things he says only because he is black, it would probably be more accurate to say that he is able to see the things he sees because he is black. Loath though many Americans are to accept it nowadays, having a different historical experience--whether it be slavery and segregation for blacks; pogroms and Holocaust for Jews; Communist totalitarianism for Eastern Europeans; extermination and reservations for Native Americans, or whatever it is we'll eventually call what's happening now to people who look Middle Eastern--gives one a different perspective on life and issues.

Ah, yes, that mythical "black perspective." Once again, it seems to boil down exclusively to an experience with oppression and degradation -- even for a 28-year-old nationally syndicated comic-strip artist. But look at the other examples. Are Jews defined only by their experiences as victims of prejudice, or do they have other sources of inspiration? The various cultures of Eastern Europe surely suffered under communism, but it's insulting to assume that's the only influence that matters. Ditto for Native Americans. Visit an Indian casino, and you're more likely to see exhibits celebrating the tribe's ancient way of life, not agitprop about the raw deal they suffered at the hands of the American government. And I don't even know what the hell he's talking about with "what's happening now to people who look Middle Eastern" -- does he mean those Muslim-Americans who have been largely embraced and universally acknowledged as NOT being the same as the terrorists who struck us last year?

In short, Wycliff seems to be saying that black people have a blank check to make stupid, inflammatory political statements because they've been so damaged by this racist country that we really shouldn't expect anything better from them.

Update: The Ombudsgod offers his sentiments.

PROFESSOR RIPS MEDIA: Barbie (yes, that's her real name) Zelizer, a journalism professor at the University of Pennsylvania, rips the media's coverage of the deadly bomb attack in Bali:

The explosions happened early Saturday morning, and only inched on to the news. Initial stories on the broadcast news focused on a tight recounting of what happened without extensive analysis. By the end of the weekend, the focus shifted to broader considerations of its effect elsewhere in the world, as it should have, but failed to flesh out the story. The blast received terse mention on the inside pages of Sunday newspapers, bursting onto their front pages only on Monday. In the meantime, stories of the sniper shootings filled the news hole, following what journalists call "firefighting" or "parachute journalism." Bali just wasn't important enough to lead the news.

Amen to that. This certainly was one of the biggest stories of the year, and it seemed to get far less attention than it should have. I'll venture one possible explanation, though: Bali's relative geographic isolation might have been the reason the news was so slow to arrive in the United States.

QUICK TIME: Hey, Bill, usually it's me jumping on whatever idiocy Michelangelo Signorile is posting this week. But rock on with your bad self. I gotta get ready for work.

MEDIA BLOW-UPS, PRESENT AND PAST: Wow. This looks like it could be a doozy. Rhonda Roland Shearer, the widow of Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, is on a mission to thoroughly debunk and discredit the upcoming book American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center, by journalist William Langewiesche. (You may recall it as the exceptional three-parter on the destruction of the World Trade Center and the subsequent recovery effort that ran this summer in The Atlantic.) To that end, she has prepared a 33-page, 56-point rebuttal to Langewiesche's stories. According to the Observer, it will be posted here sometime today.

CALL IT A DURANTY: Dean Esmay has a meme he wants to spread. It's another name for biased, slanted reporting. Check it out.

WHERE DOES BIAS COME FROM? Andrew Cline's excellent Rhetorica blog has detailed various biases that are inherent in the news-gathering process. But lately I've been thinking about another huge source of slanted reporting: the search for "context."

Context as a source of bias crops up frequently, especially in elite media outlets such as The New York Times. It appears when a news report attempts to explain why the information being relayed is important. (This is a bit different from the "why" of the familiar "five W's." That "why" is more often about "why" a particular event happened, i.e., the car ran off the road because its brakes failed. The "why is it important" angle would be something along the lines of the number of cars that have been sold in the U.S. that could have a similar brake failure.) A lot of the time, the "why is it important" is fairly innocuous. But far too often, context or impact drives slanted reporting. Top-shelf blogger Eugene Volokh pointed out an example of this back in September, and it was duly noted by Mickey Kaus. In a New York Times story about Muslims having difficulty obtaining U.S. visas, you get this lead:

Under a policy quietly imposed by the Bush administration three months ago, tens of thousands of Muslim men, from more than 26 countries, have not been able to get United States visas, disrupting lives, creating diplomatic tensions and causing headaches for American diplomats.

Once a reporter has the "context" firmly in his or her sights (in this case the impact the new visa policy is having on the lives of Muslims), it can frame a story in a slanted way. This kind of "contextualization" crops up even more frequently in political reporting. Without careful editing, it can become a virtual license for editorials to pose as news reports, and it happens all the time at the Times.

THAT'S ABOUT RIGHT: Joan Ryan of the San Francisco Chronicle blasts the media for sensationalizing the serial sniper case:

The sniper clearly is taking cues from what he sees on television and reads in the papers. Experts on serial killers say the attention likely emboldens his sense of invincibility as an all-powerful hand yanking the police and media in any direction he likes. The police now have backed off on public statements. But the media is still going full tilt: All the Sunday morning political shows, not just Russert's, led with the sniper attacks rather than Iraq or the economy. All three major news magazines put the sniper story on their covers this week.

Check it out.

FLAME ON: Here's another excellent piece from The Boston Globe's new Ideas section. It's about the nastiness one finds in a lot of political chat rooms and message boards:

Political Internet boards tend to attract people with unusually shaky conversational skills. According to Jennifer Stromer-Galley, a professor in the communication department at the University at Albany, SUNY currently studying the sociology of political bulletin boards, most users rarely discuss politics elsewhere. The see the boards as outlets, not as places to learn and discuss. Fredefrekl, a Yahoo! user who contributed to the Iraq debate with a message titled ''mommy, my butt itches,'' backs this up. When I asked him via e-mail why he bothered to post drivel, he responded, ''I think people who post on message boards are a special kind of breed. We are angry and feel impotent in normal situations. Message boards are our only means of expressing ourselves and feeling validated at the same time.''

It's an interesting article. Give it a look.

FAR LEFT, MEET FAR RIGHT: Ronald Radosh, a former left-wing radical who is now a fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute, reveals that Pat Buchanan's new magazine, The American Conservative, is not radically different from The Nation:

In their Oct. 7 debut, the editors bitterly lament the victory of the ''neoconservatives'' in our country's cultural and political wars; the neoconservatives, in their view, stand for unfettered interventionism, free trade, and unlimited immigration. By contrast, The American Conservative promises to champion a number of causes that also find support on the political left: protectionism to keep workers' wages high in America; opposition to globalism (''we will point to the pitfalls of the global free trade economy''); and the struggle against ''global hegemony.'' Noam Chomsky probably would not put it differently.

Check it out.

ARMEY UPDATE: The New Republic takes Dick Armey out to the woodshed for his recent underhanded, politically motivated attempt to work a provision into a defense-spending bill that would force a Dallas-area media company to sell off one of its properties:

Hear that? It's the sound of consumer advocates across the country bursting into hysterics. Sure, there's an argument to be made that media monopolies limit the public's access to information. And in light of the FCC's September announcement that it will review the long-standing limits on the number of outlets a media company can control in any given market--a move that would encourage even greater consolidation--Congress probably should be paying more attention to this issue. But for Dick Armey to paint himself as some sort of trust-busting champion of the hapless consumer borders on the ludicrous.

This is, after all, the same Dick Armey who, in throwing his support behind the controversial merger of two satellite-TV giants earlier this year, called on Attorney General John Ashcroft to keep "the heavy foot of government off the necks of these growing businesses." (This despite the fact that the $25 billion merger, still under consideration by the FCC and the Justice Department, would put the new corporation in control of 90 percent of the satellite-TV industry.) Similarly, back in 1999, Armey very publicly sided with Bill Gates in the antitrust battle between Microsoft and the Justice Department. The Republican "e-contract" that the majority leader introduced that June warned, "When federal agencies use heavy-handed tactics to target specific companies, the real message they send to the market place is this: You could be next."

It's a good thing Armey is out of office this January. Anyone who would sell out the Republican principle of less government intervention in the nation's business affairs in order to carry out a personal vendetta against the media is not to be trusted.

LOONY-LEFT WATCH: Jonathan V. Last of The Weekly Standard attended an anti-war press conference Thursday, and here's part of his report:

The event at the National Press Club in downtown Washington was sponsored by a host of mainstream lefty (is that an oxymoron?) organizations--among them the National Council of Churches, and NOW. It's clear they're in a bind. On the one hand, they hate George W. Bush. But Saddam Hussein, who is quite wicked to women and homosexuals and other minorities, doesn't make a good victim.

The speakers spouted your typical kumbaya stuff. But the real nuttiness ensued during the question-and-answer session:

Full disclosure: I went to this event hoping to be disturbed and wasn't. At least not by the speakers. But they might have been disturbed by the crowd they drew, which was further to the left, and with which they seemed out of touch. The question and answer session that followed wasn't about some namby-pamby, progressive, pro-U.N. triangulation--for the most part it featured people who either identified with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, hated America, or both.

Just go read the whole thing.

POLICE & THE MEDIA: Howard Kurtz has an interesting piece today on the publication of evidence in the serial sniper case. It's a difficult issue, and Kurtz explores all sides of it. Check it out.

HARRY BELAFONTE -- STALINIST DUPE: What is a Stalinist? In popular culture, the definition has evolved somewhat, from "follower of Stalin" to "a person who engages in outrageous personal attacks in an attempt to discredit a political foe."

With that in mind, Harry Belafonte's recent outburst accusing Colin Powell of being a sell-out to his race is a perfect example of Stalinist rhetoric.

But it's a little-known fact that Belafonte appears to be an actual Stalinist, as in a supporter of "the bureaucratic, authoritarian exercise of state power and mechanistic application of Marxist-Leninist principles associated with Stalin."

In July of 2000, Ronald Radosh published this piece at Frontpagemag.com. I was astonished to learn that Belafonte is, in Radosh's words, "an unreconstructed Stalinist." But it's all there in black and white. There's Belafonte, speaking (and weeping) at Fidel Castro's side during a memorial service in Havana for atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. There's Belafonte, praising the American communist dupes who fought for Stalin during the Spanish Civil War. There's Belafonte, singing at a "peace" rally in communist East Germany in 1983 and dedicating one of his banana-boat songs to "the people of Grenada" who "will one day be free" -- from the yoke of America. (This happened just after the island nation had been liberated from a Marxist dictatorship by the American military.)

But as former leftist Radosh points out, the pseudo-religious Marxist fantasy -- the opiate of the intellectuals -- does not die easily:

And now we are in a new millennium, far removed from the once cherished dream shared by Harry Belafonte and Paul Robeson that humanity would somehow build a model for the future based on the Soviet model. And what a strange figure he cuts --without the attention of the Western press – as he continues to travel to the last survivor of the old Soviet bloc, Castro's Cuba, to demonstrate his continuing dedication to the old dream, which even most of the faithful have been forced to acknowledge was really a nightmare.

And Belafonte, despite his apparent affection for the totalitarian enemies of the nation that gave him so much, remains an honorable man.

NEWS JUNKIES UNITE! Dave Shiflett praises the proliferation of Internet news sites, including blogs, in this fine piece:

A recent survey shows that employees visit Internet news sites during business hours more than porn sites, shopping sites, and online gambling Meccas. This is said to be a bad thing. Indeed, the survey called the sites "time burners." That is a wretched slander. Employees who are reading the news as it unfolds are surely up to something more useful than loitering around the water cooler, dissing the boss and analyzing his mistress's recent bun-tuck. But two things are not in doubt. One is that these sites are addictive. The other is that they have dramatically changed what is broadly called journalism, especially the opinion-writing branch.

Just go read the whole thing.

PAPER BOY PACKS HEAT: Here's an interesting story. A newspaper carrier in Birmingham, Ala., shot and killed an armed robbery suspect.

They always told me to watch out for those folks in circulation.

THE LYING TIMES: David Tell of The Weekly Standard eviscerates an amazingly slanted story that appeared in The New York Times yesterday:

"Poll Says Bush Needs to Pay Heed to Weak Economy," written up by Times correspondents Adam Nagourney and Janet Elder, and awarded pride of place--the front-page lede--in yesterday morning's edition, isn't just slanted (or misleading or imbalanced or overstated or any other word commonly applied to such things). The story is an outright fraud, a falsehood, a work of fiction.

Tell did something that the Times apparently didn't expect most of its readers to do -- he examined the actual polling data over at CBS' Web site:

...CBS News, which has reported the same poll with a great deal more circumspection, and therefore has less to be embarrassed about, has posted the survey's entire script -- along with all the relevant raw numbers... And those numbers, it turns out, say the New York Times has . . . well, lied about its own public opinion research.

Just go read the whole thing.

ARMEY TIMES: What the hell is Dick Armey thinking? He tried to slip a provision into a military-spending bill that would have forced the Belo Corp. to sell one of its media properties in the Dallas area. The reason?

Terry Holt, communications director for the House majority leader, said Armey has always been concerned about maintaining an independent news media.

"In this particular case, Mr. Armey represents the constituents in this media market and felt that it was important at least in his constituency to send a signal that media independence is extraordinarily important and when people have no where to go but to the same company for news media that is not good service to civil life," Holt said.

An independent media would become even more important after campaign reforms take effect, because the political parties and other groups will have a more limited ability to get their ideas to the public outside the major media, he said.

The real reason?

In their coverage of Scott Armey's run for Congress, the News and Record-Chronicle examined his record as a Denton County judge, the chief administrator in the county. Armey lost to political newcomer Michael Burgess in a Republican runoff.

In an interview later with Roll Call, a publication that covers Congress, the elder Armey blamed the newspaper, charging that the coverage was driven by "an outrageous vendetta against me that was focused on my son."

Sorry, Dick. There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about the impact of campaign finance reform, but if a candidate gets caught doing bad things -- and no one has disputed that the stories weren't true -- it's vitally important to present that to the public. It's unfortunate that it was your son, but spouting conspiracy theories doesn't help the cause.

J-SCHOOL STRIKES BACK! This was noted on Romenesko. In the wake of yesterday's piece by Jack Shafer on journalism schools (see item below), Slate's Fraywatch posted some responses. The most notable one was from Helen Benedict, a professor at Columbia's graduate school of journalism. After informing us that she's the author of seven books, we get a predictably self-serving post, but there's one part I'd like to comment on:

Reporters can learn just as much on a newspaper as they can at school. If that is the case, why do we have dozens of students every year who flock to us to escape small newspapers saying they learn nothing there? The average age of our students is 28. Most of them have worked, and most of then have discovered that newspaper editors are too busy, too arrogant or just too damn cynical to help anyone with reporting techniques, style or grammar, let alone ethical dilemmas.

OK, I've known several people who tried for a master's degree in journalism, and NOT ONE of them did it to "learn more." They did it to pad their resumes and make it to a much bigger newspaper. The assumption was that the elite newspapers wouldn't even talk to them if they didn't have an advanced degree. The extra "learning" would be gravy compared to the doors that would be opened with that magical master's degree.

But in the end, none of the people I knew who got master's degrees in journalism significantly improved their job prospects. None. Thousands of dollars and two years away from a newsroom didn't yield squat. (Granted, these folks didn't go to Columbia, but they went to other well-respected schools noted for journalism -- UNC, Missouri and Oregon among them.) So I don't buy the idea that J-schools can save newspapers. Hard work and a return to the things newspapers have always done best -- reporting and analyzing current events in a manner that is accessible to all -- will save newspapers.

J-SCHOOL BLUES: Jack Shafer of Slate weighs in on the future of the journalism school at Columbia University. This paragraph grabbed my attention, because it echoed my experiences as a non-J-school guy:

As one who never considered J-school—graduate or undergrad—and who knows zip about J-school and its pedagogical worthiness aside from a gut sense from speaking before its students and hiring its graduates, I'm neither fer J-school nor agin it. According to a 1996 American Society of Newspaper Editors survey, 54 percent of all newspaper newsroom employees hold an undergraduate degree in journalism or communication. Perhaps the education these journalists received was essential. But I doubt it. (I wonder how much—if any—journalism education those "communication" graduates got.) I'm convinced that if all the programs in journalism—undergrad and graduate—disappeared tomorrow, America's newspapers, magazines, and broadcasters wouldn't miss a beat of the news cycle. Our culture produces news junkies, English majors, aspiring novelists, sports nuts, failed lawyers, and student journalists in such profusion that we'll never run out of the green material from which to build excellent reporters and editors.

Amen to that. You don't need a degree in journalism to be a journalist (though too many newsroom managers seem to think it is essential and regard a J-school degree as a free pass to beginning a career in AA or AAA instead of rookie league or A ball). You need to work hard and "pay your dues" by taking shit jobs at small papers and acquiring clips and experience. If you're lucky, you'll get some good mentors along the way -- like I did. If you're really lucky, they'll resemble the people Shafer so eloquently describes at the end of his piece:

Journalism depends on uncredentialed losers, outsiders, dilettantes, frustrated lawyers, unabashed alcoholics—and, yes, creative psychopaths—to keep its blood red.

Truer words have never been written.

DISCRIMINATIONS HAS MOVED: The fine blog by the Rosenbergs (John and Jessie) has a spiffy new home here. Adjust bookmarks accordingly, and visit them every day. It's time well spent.

SAY IT AIN'T SO: Arts and Letters Daily is no more? This is a major blow. It was without a doubt the finest blog that ever was. Maybe it can come back someday.

INSIDER TRADING: According to this story in Editor & Publisher, more newspaper insiders are making a killing in the stock market:

In the first three quarters of this year, insiders -- such as directors, officers, and holders of 10% or more of the stock -- at 12 companies sold or planned to sell 5.68 million shares, accounting for 76.94% of trading activity. In the same period a year earlier, insiders sold or planned to sell 4.43 million shares, accounting for 71.21% of trading activity.

The net effect of all this selling? The average newspaper stock price will fall, which could mean more belt-tightening in newsrooms. Thanks, guys. Thanks a lot.

BLOGGED DOWN: C.W. Nevius of the San Francisco Chronicle, in addition to disparaging the wonderful Google News in this column, makes it a twofer by adding an anti-blogging angle:

If you'd like further proof, we suggest that you check out the other medium that is going to end journalism as we know it -- blogs. These are sites set up by energetic and often very opinionated souls who want to pass on interesting facts, stories and opinions. They can be very interesting.

They can also, as one of my old editors used to say, "wear you slick in a hurry." Self-indulgent claptrap would be the kind description. Hundreds and thousands of words about waking up a little late this morning and deciding to have a second cup of coffee.

There's not much I can say to this that hasn't been repeated over and over again when one of these pieces appears.

DIVERSITY UBER ALLES: Among today's Washington Post coverage of the tragic, senseless, random murders of five people in Montgomery County, Md., comes this sidebar with the Cringe-Inducing Headline of the Week. I am not making this up:

Arbitrary Victims, Identical Fate
County's Growing Diversity Reflected in Those Gunned Down

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Please, God, make it stop!!

CROUCH ATTACKS: The always excellent Stanley Crouch gives New Jersey poet laureate Amiri Baraka a beat-down for his recent poem suggesting Jews had a hand in the Sept. 11 attacks:

Jones should not be asked to resign. Those who appointed him should resign - if they have read his work over the last 35 years. It is an incoherent mix of racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, black nationalism, anarchy and ad hominem attacks relying on comic book and horror film characters and images that he has used over and over and over. His so-called growth from what he was then to what he is now eventually meant regurgitating the theories of Marxist dictators and any radical agenda that embraced mass murder as a means of expressing the will of the proletariat, whom Jones initially thought of as black Americans - then "African peoples," then the entire Third World.

It was simple evolution: All whites - and Jews especially - should be murdered; then all Negroes who did not submit to his agenda; then all homosexuals; then all capitalists; then all who did not agree that the Western world and capitalism should be destroyed.

And this:

That he has been able to repeatedly revive his career after all he has done to his talent is a testament to how much certain white people want bygones to be bygones so they can feel that lunatic or manipulative or ruthless Negroes "like" them again. He is also elevated by certain Negroes (usually leftists, uninformed students, academics and Village artistic types who also want him to "like" them after years of his berating them for their white wives and girlfriends). These black people back him because he calls out racism, America and the free market - all of which should be called out whenever they are out of hand or are caught red-handed in the middle of some monstrous action.

The issue is how deep does it go after the calling out. In the case of LeRoi Jones, it is no more than a piece of used toilet paper stuffed in a paper cup floating in the dirty pond of our racial desperation.

Just go read the whole thing.

NOT ON THE FRONTLINE: Mackubin Owens refutes one of the most pernicious lies in popular culture -- the idea that minorities bore the brunt of casualties in Vietnam and will bear the brunt of casualties in any future war:

The contention that in America's wars, minorities bear a disproportionate burden of the fighting and dying has long been a staple of Left-wing rhetoric since the Vietnam War. Even as late as the Gulf War in 1991, Jesse Jackson, addressing a largely black audience, claimed that "when that war breaks out, our youth will burn first."

But as Will Rogers once said, "it's not the things we don't know that get us into trouble. It's the things we know that just ain't true." The claim of disproportionate minority casualties wasn't true during the Vietnam War, where the record indicates that 86 percent of those who died during the war were white and 12.5 percent were black, from an age group in which blacks comprised 13.1 percent of the population. It is even less true today.

Go read this piece right now.

MEMRI OF AN ELEPHANT: The Columbia Journalism Review has a piece today on the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), the watchdog group that reports on the often-horrifying anti-Semitism that regularly appears in the Arab media. It's a good piece, although James Zogby of the Arab American Institute is quoted at the end to provide "balance." He fails miserably:

Not everyone applauds MEMRI’s contribution. James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, agrees with Carmon that there is hate speech and incitement in the Arab press. Zogby claims, however, that MEMRI distorts the Middle East debate because, he says, there is just as much intolerance voiced in the Israeli media. “It’s a two-sided monster,” Zogby says. “Is there incitement in the Israeli press? Yes, there is. Are there disgraceful articles that treat Arabs in racist ways that should raise concern in the West? Yes, there are. Are those articles known? No, they aren’t. MEMRI made it a one-sided issue.”

Ridiculous. Israel has a largely free press that regularly and vigorously criticizes many of the policies of its government. And any "incitement" is likely to be prosecuted. According to World Audit:

Newspapers are privately owned and freely criticize government policy. ... Publishing the praise of violence, however, is prohibited under the Counter-terrorism Ordinance.

Granted, the law may not be enforced equally, but at least it is on the books.

Furthermore, in the most recent rankings of press freedom from Freedom House, Israel received a score of 30, which means its press is free. (Any score above 60 is considered "Not Free.") Compare that to Egypt (77), Iran (75), Iraq (96), Jordan (60), Lebanon (74), Syria (78) or Saudi Arabia (80). Actually, there is no comparison, yet that didn't prevent Zogby from inventing an equivalence between Israel's press and that of her enemies.

ANNENBERG R.I.P. -- IN HELL! OK, I admit I'm not familiar with the late Walter Annenberg beyond his philanthropy, so I wasn't especially interested when he died the other day. But Slate's Jack Shafer makes it clear what he thinks of the "fetid undercurrents and tidal filth" of Annenberg's life. Check it out.

WATCHING THE WATCHDOGS: The October issue of the American Journalism Review is out, and it has an interesting article on corporate media giants who don't practice the same business standards they preach:

While they have duly reported on some of the most egregious examples of corporate wrongdoing, America's news organizations have regularly omitted or glossed over the shortcomings of some of the most powerful businesses in the country: their own. Media companies have also shown a willingness to ignore the advice of their editorial writers and columnists on the subject of stock options -- an issue that has created a split within the industry and that appears to have surprisingly large consequences for at least some media firms.

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Especially if you're screaming the loudest about the problem.

LIBEL ALERT: The Cincinnati Enquirer is being sued for libel because it incorrectly identified a criminal as the son of a black police captain who formerly worked for the Cincinnati Police Department. The plaintiffs seek $10 million:

Reporter Jane Prendergast also reported an adult with Thomas, Deangelo Williams, was arrested — but she incorrectly reported that Williams was the son of Clarence Williams III and also was a convicted drug dealer.

"Plaintiff Clarence Daryl Williams (IV) has no adult conviction and at all times relevant to this complaint, specifically Sept. 26th, 27th and 28th, was attending college on the campus of Alabama A&M, where he maintains a 4.0 grade average," Monday's suit notes.

The Williams family is suggesting that elements in the Cincinnati Police Department colluded with the reporter to knowingly disseminate false and defamatory information. From my reading of libel laws, that may be difficult to prove. They would have a better shot if they accused the Enquirer of negligence, but the case is clouded by the fact that the newspaper did not name Clarence Williams IV as having a police record; it said criminal Deangelo Williams was the son of the police captain in question. That's a fairly indirect form of identification, especially considering that the police captain now lives in Florida and his son attends college in Alabama. A retraction and apology might be enough, but you never know.

This case bears watching.

IT WAS NO BIG DEAL: According to this story from The National Review, last week's brouhaha over President Bush accusing the Senate of not caring about national security was blown way out of proportion by the media:

The Post reported: "Bush has suggested that Democrats do not care about national security, saying on Monday that the Democratic-controlled Senate is 'not interested in the security of the American people.'" But was Bush criticizing Democrats? Consider a more complete quote of the president's speech:

the Senate is more interested in special interests in Washington and not interested in the security of the American people. I will not accept a Department of Homeland Security that does not allow this president and future presidents to better keep the American people secure. People are working hard to get it right in Washington, both Republicans and Democrats. See, this isn't a partisan issue

The president criticized "the Senate" — specifically not Democrats — over the Homeland Security Bill. Bush never even mentioned that Democrats control the Senate. The criticism was really one of union-job regulations and union influence, something with which Democratic senators such as Zell Miller agree. Some of the press coverage corrected the misimpression that Bush was referring to the war with Iraq.

As NRO points out, that would seem to make a difference:

The impact of these selective quotes is obvious. Ideally, Daschle's or Byrd's angry floor speeches would never have taken place. But if just the next few sentences in Bush's speech had been mentioned, no one would have taken them seriously. Amazingly the distortion was so effective that by the end of the week even some Republicans were breaking ranks with the president.

Damn media.