Highlights
WAPO’s Howard Kurtz exposes liberal media
FISA Judges Support Bush
Jewish World Review takes on the libs
Iraq vet runs against anti-war Dem in NJ
Nasdaq hits 5-year high
Spanish Media Organized Nationwide Mass Protests
CNN Anchor turns advocate (do I hear “bias”?)
Lib calls libs unpatriotic
Dem Congressman Loses Appeal in Phone Taping
Covering Saddam’s Shenanigans, Not His Crimes
Something New . . . Condoleezza Rice sees significance in the Saddam documents.
ABC Misleads Viewers with "Pulitzer-Prize Winner"
Supreme Court judge says civil rights for Guantanamo inmates 'crazy'
Clinton chauffeur an illegal immigrant
Global Warming (1)?
The Times of India:
Then last Christmas, I went on vacation to Lake Argentina. The Upsala glacier and six other glaciers descend from the South Andean icefield into the lake. I was astounded to discover that while the Upsala glacier had retreated rapidly, the other glaciers showed little movement, and one had advanced across the lake into the Magellan peninsula. If in the same area some glaciers advance and others retreat, the cause is clearly not global warming but local micro-conditions.
Yet the Greenpeace photos gave the impression that glaciers in general were in rapid retreat. It was a con job, a dishonest effort to mislead. From the same icefield, another major glacier spilling into Chile has grown 60% in volume.
Global Warming (2)?
A recent Washington Post article gave this scientist's quote from 1972. "We simply cannot afford to gamble. We cannot risk inaction. The scientists who disagree are acting irresponsibly. The indications that our climate can soon change for the worse are too strong to be reasonably ignored."
The warning was not about global warming (which was not happening): it was about global cooling!
Howard Kurtz exposes liberal media
In his column today, Howard Kurtz puts the emphasis back where it belongs: on reporters here in the United States who spin the news coming out of Iraq in an attempt to frame the war in a negative way. He compiles a list of questions such reporters asked the president last week. Questions like:
ABC's Jessica Yellin: "Are you willing to sacrifice American lives to keep Iraqis from killing one another?"
CNN's Kathleen Koch: "Do you believe [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld should resign?"
USA Today's David Jackson: "Are you concerned that the Iraq experience is going to embolden authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and make it tougher to get democracy there?"
Bob Deans of Cox News: "Is there a point at which having the American forces in Iraq becomes more a part of the problem than a part of the solution?"
The Washington Post's Jim VandeHei: Polls show "a growing number of Americans are questioning the trustworthiness of you and this White House. Does that concern you?"
Hearst columnist Helen Thomas: "Your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true."
FISA Judges Support Bush
Reuters reports:
A panel of former Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judges yesterday told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that President Bush did not act illegally when he created by executive order a wiretapping program conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA).
The five judges testifying before the committee said they could not speak specifically to the NSA listening program without being briefed on it, but that a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does not override the president's constitutional authority to spy on suspected international agents under executive order.
"If a court refuses a FISA application and there is not sufficient time for the president to go to the court of review, the president can under executive order act unilaterally, which he is doing now," said Judge Allan Kornblum, magistrate judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida and an author of the 1978 FISA Act. "I think that the president would be remiss exercising his constitutional authority by giving all of that power over to a statute."
Jewish World Review March 27, 2006 /27 Adar, 5766
All bad news, all the time: People are tired of journalistic practices that obscure the reality of good news
By Jack Kelly
On Thursday, the Associated Press reported an "unexpected" jump in home sales, and a "greater than forecast" drop in unemployment claims.
"Unexpected" by whom? Economic conditions are nearly the same now as they were at this point in Bill Clinton's second term. The unemployment rate last month was 4.8 percent. In February of 1998, it was 4.6 percent. Gross domestic product grew 4.1 percent last year (even with Katrina), compared to 4.5 percent in 1997.
News coverage then emphasized good economic news (Nexis indicates there were 81 stories in 1997 that used the phrase "booming U.S. economy," versus just 13 last year). News coverage now emphasizes bad news.
This likely explains the substantial disparity between the percentage of Americans who think they're doing well economically and those who think the country is. (According to the Gallup Poll, 52 percent of Americans think their personal finances are excellent or good, but only 34 percent give that description to the economy as a whole.)
From Jewish World review
Ms. Taylor is the wife of an Army sergeant who just returned from Iraq. At a town meeting in Wheeling, West Virginia Wednesday, she told the president:
"It seems that our major media networks don't want to portray the good. They just want to focus on another car bomb. They just want to focus on some more bloodshed..."
Ms. Taylor's question was greeted by a standing ovation from nearly everyone in the packed hall.
ABC News received hundreds of emails after the town meeting. "The vast majority believed the media were biased in their Iraq coverage," ABC acknowledged.
The media "jump at the chance to report completely unsubstantiated claims by Iraqis of killings or theft or abuse that simply isn't credible when you know even the first thing about the American military," said "Buck Sargent," an infantry squad leader in Iraq, in an email to radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt. "They give the ruthless killers the benefit of the doubt every time, just to spread more nonsense about us."
The news media have run many stories about Abu Ghraib, including the phony one in the New York Times March 11. But when's the last time you read a story about an American hero in Iraq?
There've been many, but journalists never seem to make it the awards ceremonies.
A recent study by the Media Research Center of broadcast network news coverage of the trial of Saddam Hussein is indicative of imbalance.
ABC, CBS and NBC have broadcast 90 minutes of air time of Saddam's trial (compared to 824 for the O.J. Simpson trial). Of that, just 11.5 minutes have been devoted to actual testimony and evidence. More air time was devoted to Saddam's complaint he was not receiving a fair trial, much more to his courtroom disruptions.
"The trial gives the world the opportunity to understand the scope and brutality of the Saddam regime," wrote Web logger Ed Morrissey. "Our media instead talks about Saddam's love of Cheetos, Ramsey Clark's complaints about Saddam's treatment, and the tyrant's utterly predictable and unremarkable political observations. No wonder we hold journalists in such low esteem"
Iraq vet jumps into 9th Dist. congressional race (NJ)
Star Ledger ^ 3/29/06 STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
An Iraq war veteran who says the U.S. should stay the course in the Middle East announced yesterday he is running for Congress against Rep. Steve Rothman (D-9th Dist.), who has called for a rapid withdrawal of American forces from Iraq.
Vince Micco, 34, is a reservist who served in Iraq for a year. He is seeking the Republican nomination in the heavily Democratic 9th District, which includes parts of Bergen, Passaic and Hudson counties.
US man in Bush murder plot gets 30 years in jail
Reuters ^ March 29 2006
A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced a U.S. man convicted of plotting to assassinate President George W. Bush and conspiring with al Qaeda to 30 years in prison.
In November, Abu Ali was found guilty of all charges in a nine-count indictment, including conspiracy to assassinate Bush, conspiring to support al
Techs lead Nasdaq to 5-year high
U.S. stocks rallied on Wednesday, led by a surge in the Nasdaq Composite to its highest since February 2001, after positive comments by a brokerage about wireless technology makers, including Qualcomm Inc.
The Dow Jones industrial average was up 67.64 points, or 0.61 percent, at 11,222.18. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was up 10.05 points, or 0.78 percent, at 1,303.28. The Nasdaq Composite Index was up 31.07 points, or 1.35 percent, at 2,335.53.
“Nothing I have witnessed is as potentially transformative of media and olitics as the emergence of blogging — or rather, the emergence of the ‘voice of the people through blogging,’” says journalist David Kline, who recently participated in a webchat hosted by the U.S. Department of State.
Kline, author of the book “blog! how the newest media revolution is changing politics, business, and culture,” discussed the function of blogs in the political arena, how blogs fit in with mainstream news media and the blogosphere’s evolution.
“My own theory is that political bloggers will make it more possible for previously unheard voices to be heard and attract an audience — and for streams of political opinion outside the traditional two-party [Republican and Democrat] rhetoric to gain a following,” said Kline.
For the full transcript:
http://usinfo.state.gov/eur/Archive/2006/Mar/27-734425.htmlSpanish Media Organized Nationwide Mass Protests
(AP)
LOS ANGELES The marching orders were clear: Carry American flags and pack the kids, pick up your trash and wear white for peace and for effect.
Many of the 500,000 people who crammed downtown Los Angeles on Saturday to protest legislation that would make criminals out of illegal immigrants learned where, when and even how to demonstrate from the Spanish-language media.
For English-speaking America, the mass protests in Los Angeles and other U.S. cities over the past few days have been surprising for their size and seeming spontaneity.
But they were organized, promoted or publicized for weeks by Spanish-language radio hosts and TV anchors as a demonstration of Hispanic pride and power.
In Milwaukee, where at least 10,000 people rallied last week, one radio station manager called some employers to ask that they not fire protesters for skipping work. In Chicago, a demonstration that drew 100,000 people received coverage on local television more than a week in advance.
"This was a much bigger story for the Latino media," said Felix Gutierrez, a professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication. "If the mainstream media had been paying better attention, there would not have been the surprise about the turnout."
Adrian Velasco first learned of House legislation to overhaul immigration policy on Los Angeles' Que Buena 105.5 FM. Over two weeks, the 30-year-old illegal immigrant soaked up details about the planned march against the bill from Hispanic TV and radio. On Saturday, he and three friends headed downtown.
"They told all the Hispanic people to go and support these things," Velasco said. "They explained a lot. They said, 'Here's what we're going to do."'
One of those doing the most talking was El Piolin, a syndicated morning show radio host who is broadcast in 20 cities.
El Piolin, whose real name is Eduardo Sotelo and whose nickname means "Tweety Bird," persuaded colleagues from 11 Spanish-language radio stations in Los Angeles to talk up the rally on air.
In Milwaukee, the Spanish-language station WDDW 104.7 made a point of publicizing the House legislation and the protest against it on its morning and drive-time shows two weeks ahead of time.
Operations manager Armando Ulloa said his goal was at least 10,000 people -- and police estimated that was what the rally attracted. After the march, Ulloa said, he called some employers and asked them to be lenient on protesters who missed their shifts.
In Los Angeles, 10 prime-time Spanish-language news anchors filmed a promotion urging demonstrators to show respect, said Julio Cesar Ortiz, a television reporter who covers immigration.
Anchor-Advocate on Immigration Wins Viewers
By BILL CARTER and JACQUES STEINBERG
The nation's most prominent opponent of current immigration policy began his day yesterday on the "Today" show on NBC, debating a Hispanic defender of illegal immigrants. He moved on to "American Morning" on CNN to denounce a bill passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday as "an amnesty program."
By nightfall he was on a plane headed to Mexico, where he intended to assess critically the planned discussions on the issue between President Bush and President Vicente Fox of Mexico.
This central figure in the increasingly fractious debate over future immigration policy was not a senator or congressman, nor even a lobbyist on either side of the issue. It was instead, a television news anchor, Lou Dobbs of CNN.
But in the past several weeks, Mr. Dobbs has ratcheted up his criticism of Bush administration policies, first on the Dubai ports deal and now on immigration, to a point where in the view of many he has become a significant factor in shaping public opinion on these issues.
The management of CNN denied yesterday that Mr. Dobbs's soaring profile on the immigration issue — and the increased ratings he has garnered along with it — would steer the network toward adding more opinions on other news programs.
But CNN was hardly holding back yesterday on giving Mr. Dobbs opportunities to unleash opinions on the immigration debate, views that seem to have only grown more vociferous in reaction both to last weekend's mass marches in Los Angeles and other cities in support of illegal immigrants and the action Monday by the Senate committee.
On the CNN morning show he called the Senate bill "an unconscionable act" and "a sellout." He appeared again on CNN's midday "Live From..." program, saying, "I think illegal immigrants are a burden to the taxpayer, unequivocally."
Later, the network's "Situation Room" program displayed a clock counting down to the hour when Mr. Dobbs would be arriving in Mexico.
He said he did not believe that traditional objective journalism brought people closer to the truth. Asked if he himself knew what the truth was, Mr. Dobbs said: "I have strong feelings that I do. I have strong evidence I do."
CNN certainly has reason to celebrate Mr. Dobbs's expanding profile on the immigration issue. His program, which was up 24 percent in total viewers over the same period last year, is the only good news story in CNN's evening and prime-time lineup, which was otherwise down across the board in ratings for the past quarter.
Lib calls libs unpatriotic
Ultra-liberal Todd Gitlin, a Columbia professor of journalism and sociology, spoke at Yale Tuesday, and the liberal Yale Daily News reports that he questioned liberals’ patriotism:
He elaborated on his feeling of frustration concerning what he views as liberals' voluntary estrangement from the rest of the nation, citing their alleged rejection of patriotism as an example of this alienation.
"I think that the upshot is that patriotism is experienced by many people on the left as something of an embarrassment," Gitlin said.
Gitlin said he thinks left-leaning individuals are now rejecting patriotism because they believe it forces them to identify with a larger group of Americans with whom they disagree and contradicts the spirit of cosmopolitanism that they espouse.
"The left sees itself as standing outside a country that does bad," Gitlin said. "However, it is strategically disastrous to take this position as outsiders, since it is a concession to people who are not entitled to be the spokespersons of patriotism. It is a move against public life, public domain, public virtue and public-mindedness."
Congressman Loses Appeal in Phone Taping
Mar 28 1:34 PM US/Eastern
By MATTHEW DALY
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON
A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that Rep. Jim McDermott violated federal law by turning over an illegally taped telephone call to reporters nearly a decade ago.
In a 2-1 opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a lower court ruling that McDermott violated the rights of House Majority Leader John Boehner, who was heard on the 1996 call involving former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
The lower court had ordered McDermott to pay Boehner more than $700,000 for leaking the taped conversation. The figure includes $60,000 in damages and at least $600,000 in legal costs.
McDermott, D-Wash., leaked to The New York Times and other news organizations a tape of a 1996 cell phone call. The call included discussion by Gingrich, R-Ga., and other House GOP leaders about a House ethics committee investigation of Gingrich. Boehner, R-Ohio, was a Gingrich lieutenant at the time and is now House majority leader.
A lawyer for McDermott had argued that his actions were allowed under the First Amendment, and said a ruling against him would have "a huge chilling effect" on reporters and newsmakers alike.
Lawyers for 18 news organizations _ including ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, The Associated Press, The New York Times and The Washington Post _ filed a brief backing McDermott.
But Boehner's lawyers said McDermott's actions were clearly illegal.
By leaking the tape McDermott "chilled the free speech of others," namely Boehner and Gingrich, lawyer Michael Carvin said.
A spokesman for McDermott said Tuesday the congressman had just received the ruling and was studying it.
Remember the media’s publication of what Cheney wants when he is traveling; Maybe they should reveal what Kerry wants:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com//archive/0327061kerry1.htmlPolls: Public Concerned About Immigration
By The Associated Press
Most people in the United States think illegal immigration is a
serious problem. A solid majority oppose making it easier for illegal
immigrants to become legal workers or citizens.
Some findings in recent polling:
_ Some 59 percent say they oppose allowing illegal immigrants to apply for legal, temporary-worker status, an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll found.
_ More than six in 10, 62 percent, say they oppose making it easier for illegal immigrants to become citizens, according to a Quinnipiac University poll. Nine in 10 in that poll say they consider immigration to be a serious problem _ with 57 percent of those polled saying very serious.
_ Three-fourths say the United States is not doing enough along its borders to keep illegal immigrants out, a Time Magazine poll found.
The NBC-WSJ poll was taken in March, Quinnipiac in February and Time in January. The NBC-WSJ and Time polls surveyed about 1,000 adults and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The Quinnipiac poll of 1,892 registered voters had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
Covering Saddam’s Shenanigans, Not His Crimes
Media Research Center ^ March 20, 2006 Rich Noyes
With the Iraq war now three years old, one of its main achievements — the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s mass-murdering dictatorship — has been largely shunted to the sidelines as the media focus on bad news: terrorist attacks, U.S. casualties and pessimistic warnings that Iraq is on the verge of “civil war.”
Not even Saddam’s trial for crimes against humanity has encouraged TV to take more than a cursory look at the ex-dictator’s horrifying record. MRC analysts reviewed every mention of the trial on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening news from October 16 (when the networks began previewing the trial) through March 15 (when Saddam himself took the stand).
MRC found the networks spent nearly three times as much airtime on Saddam’s courtroom antics as on the serious testimony of his victims and the documentary evidence that Saddam himself ordered the killing of more than 140 residents of the Shiite town of Dujail and the imprisonment and torture of hundreds more townspeople. Details:
■ He’s No O.J. Simpson. Saddam’s trial has been mentioned in just 64 stories (including brief anchor-read items) over the last 5 months. Total coverage amounted to just under 90 minutes. The CBS Evening News offered the most coverage (21 stories, 34 minutes) followed by ABC’s World News Tonight (23 stories, 30 minutes). NBC Nightly News aired the least: 20 stories amounting to 25½ minutes of coverage, barely five minutes per month.
In contrast, the first six months of O.J. Simpson’s murder trial garnered 431 stories (824 minutes) from those same networks, a 1994 Center for Media and Public Affairs study found. Simpson was accused of killing two people; Saddam is thought responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths.
■ Saddam Steals the Show. In spite of a record equal to some of the worst tyrants in human history, reporters found Saddam’s personal reactions and orchestrated antics more compelling than the witness testimony against him. The networks gave Saddam’s behavior more airtime than any other topic — nearly 30 minutes, one-third of the coverage.
In contrast, the networks allotted just 11½ minutes for witness testimony and evidence, just slightly below the nearly 12 minutes devoted to suggestions Saddam would not get a fair hearing. On the Oct. 18 World News Tonight, ABC’s Jim Sciutto pointed out how “human rights groups doubt the former dictator will get a fair trial.” On March 15, after Saddam’s testimony was cut off by the judge, ABC showed complaints from Ramsey Clark: “Look, he’s on trial for his life. A defendant has a right to give his background and his thoughts and his emotions.”
■ Hiding the Evidence. The networks provided merely sporadic coverage of the evidence. ABC was the only newscast to air a full report on Saddam’s admission on March 1 that he ordered the Dujail killings. (CBS and NBC gave that news just 11 and 18 seconds, respectively). Only CBS mentioned the December 21 testimony of Ali al-Haydari, who was 14 when he saw evidence of torture: “I heard screaming and shouting, then silence as a body came out in a blanket.” But that same night all of the networks mentioned Saddam’s claim that U.S. soldiers had beaten him.
Despite the severity of the crimes, reporters fixated on the villain. “Saddam seemed like he was still president,” claimed NBC’s Richard Engel (Oct. 19). To CBS’s Lara Logan, Saddam’s disruptive shenanigans were winning the day: “The appearance of credibility is what really matters in this trial, and that’s what’s missing at the moment.” (Feb. 2)
The networks could have resisted the impulse to reward Saddam’s cynical strategy and focused on the evidence. Instead, they’ve played right into his hands. — Rich Noyes
Something New . . . Condoleezza Rice sees significance in the Saddam documents.
Weekly Standard ^ 03/27/2006 12:00:00 AM by Stephen F. Hayes
SECRETARY OF STATE CONDOLEEZZA RICE on Sunday contradicted claims from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that documents captured in postwar Iraq and now being posted on the Internet will not contain anything new or significant.
"We're going to find some important and surprising things in these documents," Rice said in an appearance on NBC's Meet the Press.
Rice also addressed revelations, important but not surprising, that former Russian ambassador to Iraq, Vladimir Teterenko, passed the U.S. war plan to Iraq shortly before the war began. The charges, based largely on two Iraqi documents captured in postwar Iraq, came in a report issued by the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia, and released by the Pentagon late last week. Rice said she is not in a position to confirm or deny the claims but vowed to take "a hard look at the reports" of Russian betrayal.
ABC Misleads Viewers with "Pulitzer-Prize Winner"
“Starting off a week’s worth of “in-depth” reporting on global warming, “World News Tonight” falsely presented a liberal journalist and author as a Pulitzer Prize winner.
“Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ross Gelbspan blames a 15-year misinformation campaign by the oil and coal industry” for the public’s lack of alarm over climate change, ABC’s Geoff Morrell told viewers of his network’s March 26 evening newscast.
“The point of this campaign was not necessarily to persuade the public that global warming wasn't happening. It was to persuade the public that there is this state of confusion,” Gelbspan told ABC News.
But it was ABC News confusing its viewers over Gelbspan’s credentials as well the scientific debate over climate change. While Gelbspan’s publisher and the group he founded, Climate Crisis Coalition, claim the journalist won a Pulitzer Prize, a search for Gelbspan on the Pulitzer Prize’s official Web site yields no results for the former Boston Globe editor.
Alec Baldwin v. Sean Hannity in Radio Donnybrook
Hollywood liberal Alec Baldwin stormed out of an in-studio radio interview Sunday night after he was confronted on the phone by radio hosts Sean Hannity and Mark Levin.
Baldwin was 30 minutes into a planned two-hour-plus sitdown with WABC Radio's Brian Whitman when Hannity called in.
The fireworks commenced almost immediately.
HANNITY: Alec, I wanted to give you an official WABC welcome considering you were supposed to come on my program last week and you didn't show up. What happened?
BALDWIN: No, I wasn't supposed to come on your program, Sean Hannity.
HANNITY: No, actually you were supposed to come on the program because a deal was made with your agent that if you were going to come on with Brian, first you'd come on with me.
BALDWIN: I wouldn't dream of coming on your program, Sean Hannity. I'm here with Brian. I'm here with a really talented broadcaster.
HANNITY: [Crosstalk] that you are, you don't tell the truth.
BALDWIN: Why would I want to come on the show with a no-talent, former construction worker hack like you?
HANNITY: Are you the guy that said of our vice president, while we're at war, while we're leading troops in harm's way - are you the reckless, third-rate Hollywood actor who said that Dick Cheney is a terrorist? Are you the guy . . .
BALDWIN: Yes I am.
HANNITY: ... who said to stone Henry Hyde to death? Are you the guy who said our president is a CIA mass murderer? I wanted you to come on the program and defend that, you gutless coward.
BALDWIN: At first I thought this was a joke. But you can hear all the acid venom spewing hatred. It is Sean Hannity.
The exchange got even hotter when Mark Levin joined in.
LEVIN: We've only just begun - are you 40 or 50 pounds overweight now?
WHITMAN: Oh, C'mon now . . . .
HANNITY: Once and for all you need to be challenged. You want to call our vice president a terrorist - fine. You want to talk about stoning people to death, say it on my program. If you want to be irresponsible and call our president a mass murderer while he's at war leading troops in harm's way ...
BALDWIN: And what are you gonna do about it, Sean Hannity?
HANNITY: You don't have the courage to answer questions.
BALDWIN: And what are you gonna do? And what are you going to do about it, Sean Hannity. If I come on your program, what are you going to do?
LEVIN: He's going to show that you have a two digit IQ - that's what he's gonna do.
BALWIN: What are you going to do?
LEVIN: I just told you - you've got a two digit IQ.
BALDWIN: And who's that - who's your little cabin boy there with you.
LEVIN: I'm not a cabin boy, butt-boy.
BALDWIN: What are you doing there, cabin boy? ... I now dub you Sean Hannity's cabin boy.
LEVIN: And you know what you are? You're "Brokeback" Alec.
The confrontation continued to spiral out of control, with Whitman intermittently trying to make peace and Baldwin repeatedly urging him to move on to other callers.
BALDWIN: Listen, Sean - you incredibly ignorant boob from Long Island ...
HANNITY: Oh, ouch, Alec.
BALDWIN: No, no, no, you've spoken, let me talk, Sean. Cause you've been spewing your ...
HANNITY: You're a third-rate Hollywood egomaniac.
BALDWIN: You're a no-talent, ignorant fool from Long Island. You should go back to building houses in Hempstead.
LEVIN: Why was your [former] wife [Kim Basinger] so pissed off at you, anyway?
WHITMAN: Now, c'mon guys.
BALDWIN: OK. We're done. [Gets up and leaves the studio]
WHITMAN: Come back. Come back. Alec? They're gone. Alec? Alec has walked out of the studio. Alec, please come back.
Sandiego tribune
Myths of Iraq
By Ralph Peters
March 26, 2006
During a recent visit to Baghdad, I saw an enormous failure. On the part of our media. The reality in the streets, day after day, bore little resemblance to the sensational claims of civil war and disaster in the headlines.
No one with first-hand experience of Iraq would claim the country's in rosy condition, but the situation on the ground is considerably more promising than the American public has been led to believe. Lurid exaggerations and instant myths obscure real, if difficult, progress.
I left Baghdad more optimistic than I was before this visit. While cynicism, political bias and the pressure of a 24/7 news cycle accelerate a race to the bottom in reporting, there are good reasons to be soberly hopeful about Iraq's future.
Much could still go wrong. The Arab genius for failure could still spoil everything. We've made grave mistakes. Still, it's difficult to understand how any first-hand observer could declare that Iraq's been irrevocably “lost.”
Consider just a few of the inaccuracies served up by the media:
Claims of civil war. In the wake of the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, a flurry of sectarian attacks inspired wild media claims of a collapse into civil war. It didn't happen. Driving and walking the streets of Baghdad, I found childrenn playing and, in most neighborhoods, business as usual. Iraq can be deadly, but, more often, it's just dreary.
Iraqi disunity. Factional differences are real, but overblown in the reporting. Few Iraqis support calls for religious violence. After the Samarra bombing, only rogue militias and criminals responded to the demagogues' calls for vengeance. Iraqis refused to play along, staging an unrecognized triumph of passive resistance.
Expanding terrorism. On the contrary, foreign terrorists, such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, have lost ground. They've alienated Iraqis of every stripe. Iraqis regard the foreigners as murderers, wreckers and blasphemers, and they want them gone. The Samarra attack may, indeed, have been a tipping point – against the terrorists.
Hatred of the U.S. military. If anything surprised me in the streets of Baghdad, it was the surge in the popularity of U.S. troops among both Shias and Sunnis. In one slum, amid friendly adult waves, children and teenagers cheered a U.S. Army patrol as we passed. Instead of being viewed as occupiers, we're increasingly seen as impartial and well-intentioned.
The appeal of the religious militias. They're viewed as mafias. Iraqis want them disarmed and disbanded. Just ask the average citizen.
The failure of the Iraqi army. Instead, the past month saw a major milestone in the maturation of Iraq's military. During the mini-crisis that followed the Samarra bombing, the Iraqi army put over 100,000 soldiers into the country's streets. They defused budding confrontations and calmed the situation without killing a single civilian. And Iraqis were proud to have their own army protecting them. The Iraqi army's morale soared as a result of its success.
Reconstruction efforts have failed. Just not true. The American goal was never to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure in its entirety. Iraqis have to do that. Meanwhile, slum-dwellers utterly neglected by Saddam Hussein's regime are getting running water and sewage systems for the first time. The Baathist regime left the country in a desolate state while Saddam built palaces. The squalor has to be seen to be believed. But the hopeless now have hope.
The electricity system is worse than before the war. Untrue again. The condition of the electric grid under the old regime was appalling. Yet, despite insurgent attacks, the newly revamped system produced 5,300 megawatts last summer – a full thousand megawatts more than the peak under Saddam Hussein. Shortages continue because demand soared – newly free Iraqis went on a buying spree, filling their homes with air conditioners, appliances and the new national symbol, the satellite dish. Nonetheless, satellite photos taken during the hours of darkness show Baghdad as bright as Damascus.
Plenty of serious problems remain in Iraq, from bloodthirsty terrorism to the unreliability of the police. Iran and Syria indulge in deadly mischief. The infrastructure lags generations behind the country's needs. Corruption is widespread. Tribal culture is pernicious. Women's rights are threatened. And there's no shortage of trouble-making demagogues.
Nonetheless, the real story of the civil-war-that-wasn't is one of the dog that didn't bark. Iraqis resisted the summons to retributive violence. Mundane life prevailed. After a day and a half of squabbling, the political factions returned to the negotiating table. Iraqis increasingly take responsibility for their own security, easing the burden on U.S. forces. And the people of Iraq want peace, not a reign of terror.
But the foreign media have become a destructive factor, extrapolating daily crises from minor incidents. Part of this is ignorance. Some of it is willful. None of it is helpful.
The dangerous nature of journalism in Iraq has created a new phenomenon, the all-powerful local stringer. Unwilling to stray too far from secure facilities and their bodyguards, reporters rely heavily on Iraqi assistance in gathering news. And Iraqi stringers, some of whom have their own political agendas, long ago figured out that Americans prefer bad news to good news. The Iraqi leg-men earn blood money for unbalanced, often-hysterical claims, while the Journalism 101 rule of seeking confirmation from a second source has been discarded in the pathetic race for headlines.
To enhance their own indispensability, Iraqi stringers exaggerate the danger to Western journalists (which is real enough, but need not paralyze a determined reporter). Dependence on the unverified reports of local hires has become the dirty secret of semi-celebrity journalism in Iraq as Western journalists succumb to a version of Stockholm Syndrome in which they convince themselves that their Iraqi sources and stringers are exceptions to every failing and foible in the Middle East. The mindset resembles the old colonialist conviction that, while other “boys” might lie and steal, our house-boy's a faithful servant.
The result is that we're being told what Iraqi stringers know they can sell and what distant editors crave, not what's actually happening.
While there are and have been any number of courageous, ethical journalists reporting from Iraq, others know little more of the reality of the streets than you do. They report what they are told by others, not what they have seen themselves. The result is a distorted, unfair and disheartening picture of a country struggling to rise above its miserable history.
Supreme Court judge says civil rights for Guantanamo inmates 'crazy'
WASHINGTON (AFP) - A US Supreme Court judge has said it would be "crazy" to give war on terror detainees rights in civil courts, and has castigated Europeans for criticising the Guantanamo detention camp, media reports said.
The comments attributed to Justice Antonin Scalia were published a day before the Supreme Court starts hearing a key challenge to special military tribunals for "war on terror" suspects at the US naval base in Cuba.
"War is war, and it has never been the case that when you captured a combatant you have to give them a jury trial in your civil courts," Scalia said during a talk on March 8 at the University of Freiburg in Switzerland, Newsweek magazine reported.
"Foreigners, in foreign countries, have no rights under the American Constitution," Scalia said, according to the www.scotusblog legal website, adding that "nobody has ever thought otherwise."
"If he was captured by my army on a battlefield, that is where he belongs," Scalia told the audience.
Clinton chauffeur an illegal immigrant
UPI ^ March 27, 2006 --
NEWARK, N.J., March 27 (UPI) -- An embarrassing hole in security surrounding former U.S. President Bill Clinton turned up when one of his chauffeurs was found to be a wanted man.
Shahzad Qureshi, 42, was in one of three cars awaiting Clinton at Newark Airport last week when a Port Authority policeman happened to check license plate numbers. The computer came back showing the Pakistani national had skipped a residency-status hearing in 2000, and a deportation order had been issued by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the New York Post reported.
Qureshi was still in jail Monday awaiting immigration processing, the report said.
CNN RELIABLE SOURCES
Are Media Turning Against War in Iraq?
KURTZ: I want to play for you a piece of tape involving Laura Ingraham, the conservative radio talk show how who was on "The Today Show" earlier this week and criticized "The Today Show" for not doing more from Iraq.
Let's listen to what she had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LAURA INGRAHAM, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: To do a show from Iraq means to talk to the Iraqi military, to go out with the Iraqi military, to actually have a conversation with the people instead of reporting from hotel balconies about the latest IEDs going off.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KURTZ: What do you make of that comment about reporting from hotel balconies?
LOGAN (CBS news): Well, I think it's outrageous. I mean, Laura Ingraham should come to Iraq and not be talking about what journalists are doing from the comfort of her studio in the United States, the comfort and the safety.
NOTE: Laura Ingraham HAS been in Iraq…with the troops.
KURTZ: ... do they want objective reporting?
Richard WOLFFE(senior WH correspondent, MSNBC WOLFFE: No, they don't. They want to replace one piece of bias with another.
The WaPo ombudsperson writes an extremely long article claiming that it is too dangerous for reporters to really cover the war in Iraq.
Some comments:
1. Buried 11 paragraphs from the end of the endless article:
“A Gallup poll of the public, the military and the media, commissioned for a McCormick Tribune Foundation conference on military-press relations, showed some sobering numbers. Seventy percent of the military believes the media are too negative and only 20 percent of the public believe the coverage is balanced. Seventy-two percent of the military think media access to military officials is sufficient. Only 16 percent of those in the media agreed that the level of access is sufficient.”
2. here’s a quote: “Norrelle Combest, a Post copy aide, came by my office to say that The Post should cover more of the kind of support work done by the D.C. National Guard. She's a specialist fourth grade in the Guard.”
The writer doesn’t even care enough o get her rank correct. How can anybody believe anything else she writes.
3. She complains that the military pays reporters to write favorable articles about Iraq. The WaPo pays reporters to write unfavorable articles. Where is there any difference?
4. The whine that it is dangerous to cover a war is ludicrous. Ernie Pyle is flipping over in his grave. Even Dan rather had the courage to cover a war.
