BY DAN
KENNEDY
Serving the reality-based community since 2002.
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Friday, March 19, 2004
THE "H" WORD. Cynthia
Cotts's new Village Voice column has some good dirt on
The
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
(Motto: Speaking Pablum to Power!) Apparently Lehrer got very upset
when a guest said something naughty about Halliburton. Read Cotts's
column here.
Fairness & Accuracy in
Reporting has some
choice words for Lehrer's
suck-up performance as well.
And here's some unsolicited advice
for John Kerry: do not, under any circumstances, let Lehrer moderate
this year's presidential debates. As Jack Beatty explains,
Lehrer's unthinking even-handedness helped put George W. Bush in the
White House four years ago.
UNFREE PRESS. A major
press-freedom case is under way in Providence, where Jim Taricani, an
investigative reporter for Channel 10, has been ordered to pay a
$1000-a-day fine for refusing to say who gave him an undercover
videotape from the investigation of former mayor Buddy Cianci, who's
now serving time.
According to today's
Providence Journal
(reg. req.), the feds are seeking to have the fines kick in
immediately, before Taricani has even exhausted all of his
appeals.
This isn't exactly a First
Amendment case; reporters have no more right to protect the
identities of those they do business with than an ordinary citizen
does. Nevertheless, this amounts to federal harassment of a reporter
who was doing his job.
FLEET OF MOUTH. Look, I
don't want the Democratic National Convention to be held at the
FleetCenter. Neither do you. The South Boston convention center makes
all kind of sense. But it's March, and it's not going to happen.
Which is why this
item on the Romney Is a
Fraud weblog is so dead-on.
The convention has been in the
works for years now. It is cynical and ridiculous for Governor Mitt
Romney to jump on the South Boston bandwagon now.
The Boston Herald's Cosmo
Macero (sub. req.), who first floated this idea in December, hasn't
quite given up on it yet - although even
he admits, "It may in fact
be too late, and too costly, to do anything now but hope for the best
at the Fleet."
For Romney, though, it's not too
late to score some cheap points by getting behind a plan that doesn't
exist.
posted at 12:02 PM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
