MEDIA
LOG BY DAN
KENNEDY
Serving the reality-based community since 2002.
Notes and observations on
the press, politics, culture, technology, and more. To sign up for
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For bio, published work, and links to other blogs, visit
www.dankennedy.net.
Friday, August 29, 2003
Competition for USA
Today? Reader JM today sends along an e-mail that clearly
looks like spam. But is it? Here is a press
release I found for the
USA Times that is similar to the e-mail, and it obviously
doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. Apparently it's going to be sold
through some multiple-level-marketing system, sort of like
NuSkin.
Says the press release:
This will be the first
nationwide newspaper in 21 years! You Know How Huge USA TODAY is,
so you can imagine the potential! The newspaper will be promoted
by MLM. This is going to be a very big deal and their 5 level
commission plan is awesome!
Hmmm.
The press release directs you to
this
page at a site called
newsbucks.com, which describes the USA Times as "THE LARGEST
VENTURE IN THE HISTORY OF NETWORK MARKETING!" It continues: "The USA
TIMES is poised to take the nation by storm with a new kind of hard
hitting journalism that people will want to see on their doorstep
every day of the week!"
So is it real? I did a "whois"
search, and it turns out that the domain name newsbucks.com and
theusatimes.com are registered with the same owner, which is a good
sign, I suppose. It appears to be based in Miami.
And there is a classy-looking
website
for the USA Times that claims the paper will launch on January
1.
I wouldn't want to bet that the
USA Times will ever come into being, but it's worth keeping an
eye on.
posted at 11:14 AM |
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Today's news today. The
Globe's website has now been updated.
posted at 7:48 AM |
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The wayback machine. I keep
trying to tell myself that the Boston Globe's redesigned
website isn't as bad as it
looks. But it's 7:10 a.m., mid-morning for some of us, and
yesterday's paper is still up.
Okay, it's the week before Labor
Day. I'll let them call this the beta if they'd like. But come
Tuesday, they should be prepared to convince us all that it doesn't
suck.
Meanwhile, off to the
New
York Times
...
posted at 7:18 AM |
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Thursday, August 28, 2003
Conflicts and ethics. A
couple of weeks ago I
wrote about the Boston
Globe's decision to pull one of its freelancers, Gail Spector,
out of Newton. Spector had been covering the Newton school system for
the Globe West section even though she served on the state-mandated
advisory council of her child's elementary school.
It was an open-and-shut case.
Unfortunately, Spector -- who I'm sure is a nice person who was
trying to do a good job -- still doesn't get it. In the current
Newton Tab, she gives her
side of the story,
attributing her demise to "a three-year vendetta" by the conservative
Newton Taxpayers Association. She writes:
Questioning my ethics --
particularly for being an involved parent -- is a dirty tactic. My
integrity is what I am and it's what's made me a successful
reporter. I was, and still am, a fair, honest journalist, and I am
proud of my work.
Come, now. Spector wasn't
questioned for being an "involved parent." She was questioned for
serving in the very same government that she was supposed to be
covering. Here's a section from the Society of Professional
Journalists' Code
of Ethics:
Journalists should be free
of obligation to any interest other than the public's right to
know.
Journalists should:
- Avoid conflicts of interest,
real or perceived.
- Remain free of associations
and activities that may compromise integrity or damage
credibility.
Spector also writes, "I would have
resigned but the editor who hired me thought it was unnecessary." If
that's true, then the Globe ought to schedule a seminar in
Ethics 101 as soon as possible.
It is unfortunate that this lapse
of judgment has handed a victory to an anti-school group whose
leaders include Brian Camenker, a homophobic
crank. But as the saying
goes, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Camenker is right rather less often
than that. But he's right in this case.
New in this week's
Phoenix. Joe Conason's new book, Big Lies, is the
latest sign that liberals are mad
as hell and aren't going to
take it anymore.
Also, the Globe deletes a
crucial paragraph -- and makes a state rep look like a
vengeance-seeking
monster. And the BBC
engages in a mind-blowing bit of Israel-bashing.
posted at 9:09 AM |
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Wednesday, August 27, 2003
Get in the back and no one gets
hurt. You won't find a more bizarre story today than
this
one, buried well inside the
New York Times.
Headlined "Fear of Air Bag Sends
Children to Back Seat, Saving Many," the article, by Matthew Wald,
reports that parents have been properly terrified by stories that
exploding air bags have decapitated and maimed babies and small
children sitting in the front passenger's seat.
The response -- sticking them in
the back -- may have saved hundreds of lives in recent years. That's
good, of course. But it's unclear why this is better than getting rid
of deadly air bags and instead re-engineering the front seat so that
it's safer.
Or, conversely, since the incentive
appears to be arming the front seat with a lethal weapon, why not
just take a cheaper approach, and mount an AK-47 in the glove
compartment of every new car? If the rider is four-foot-10 or
shorter, blammo!
I am no libertarian when it comes
to auto safety. I'm all in favor of mandatory-seatbelt laws, for
instance. But air bags are a proven mistake, and government efforts
to justify their continued use only compounds the mistake.
For a laugh-out-loud example of
bureaucracy run amok, check out this
pamphlet from the National
Traffic Highway Safety Administration (NTHSA) on what you have to go
through to get an on-off switch installed so that you can disconnect
your air bag.
Air bags have been a hot issue for
years in Little
People of America, the
leading organization for dwarfs and their families. It's an issue for
drivers more than passengers: because most people with dwarfism are
roughly the same size as everyone else from head to hips, they do not
appear unusually short when sitting. In the passenger seat, the air
bag isn't a problem -- or rather, it's no more deadly for them than
it is for the rest of us.
But because their arms and legs are
disproportionately small, a driver with dwarfism tends to sit much
closer to the steering wheel. And that, as even the NTHSA concedes,
is dangerous.
Sensible advice on Iraq.
Newsweek's Fareed
Zakaria, as you might
expect, has some excellent suggestions for solving the chaos in
Iraq.
Zakaria supported the war, and thus
underestimates, I think, the degree to which the entire world
suspects the Bush administration's motives and resents its thumbing
its nose at the international community.
Still, Paul Bremer and company
would do well to ponder Zakaria's outline of heavy international
involvement and a long-term commitment. His conclusion:
The fundamental purpose
behind the invasion of Iraq -- more important than the exaggerated
claims about weapons of mass destruction -- was to begin cleansing
the Middle East of the forces that produce terror. Were America to
quit, it would give those armies of hate new strength and resolve.
A failed Iraq could prove a greater threat to American security
than Saddam Hussein's regime ever was.
Of course, it would have helped if
George W. Bush had told us what the "fundamental purpose" was
ahead of time instead of mindlessly repeating his aides' lies about
weapons of mass destruction.
Good news, bad news.
Boston Herald columnist (and former Boston city councilor)
Tom
Keane writes today that the
Massachusetts Convention Center Authority has managed to overcome its
hack origins and reinvent itself as a lean, mean, convention-snaring
machine.
Even so, it appears that the only
way it's been able to book any business has been to steal shows from
the privately owned Bayside Expo Center and World Trade
Center.
A well-run boondoggle is still a
boondoggle.
posted at 8:43 AM |
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Tuesday, August 26, 2003
A lying what? With
what? The size of what? You are hereby commanded to
read Russ
Smith's "Mugger" column in
the current New York Press. Yes, you may read the whole thing.
But do not bail out until you've read his advice to John
Kerry. It's in the second-to-last paragraph.
Wow.
Eric
Alterman has some thoughts
on Kerry in his Altercation blog, too. Alterman heard Kerry speak at
an off-the-record fundraiser. His conclusion: Howard Dean may have
passion on his side, but Kerry -- despite "zero personal charisma" --
would probably make a better president.
posted at 7:36 PM |
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The end of Ozone. Most of
the time, when someone screws up he's given a second or even a third
chance. Sometimes, though, a screw-up forces management to reassess
-- to decide that the person who committed said screw-up isn't the
right person for the job after all.
That's what happened to former
New York Times executive editor Howell Raines, who was forced
out not because of the Jayson Blair scandal but because, in its
aftermath, it became clear that Raines had fostered an atmosphere of
fear and favoritism that allowed a con artist like Blair to
thrive.
Not to compare WRKO Radio (AM 680)
with the Times -- or John "Ozone" Osterlind with Raines, who
is, despite his flaws, a great journalist -- but that's apparently
what happened to Osterlind yesterday when program director Mike Elder
let him go.
According to coverage today in the
Herald
and the Globe,
Osterlind is stunned that he has been dropped from Blute &
Ozone, the morning-drive-time show. And he denied to the
Herald -- as he has from the beginning -- that he ever called
for the entire Arab race to be "eradicated."
Osterlind was initially suspended
for two weeks following reports that, on August 12, he called for the
"eradication" of the Palestinians. The sequence of events that led to
his suspension began when I received an anonymous tip that Osterlind
had advocated the Palestinians' "extermination."
I asked Elder about it, and, after
he listened to a partial tape of the show (he said a full tape didn't
exist), he told me that he'd heard Osterlind say "eradicate," which
was apparently close enough for Elder. (Disclosure: I'm paid to blab
about the media on WRKO's Pat Whitley Show every Friday at 9
a.m.)
The suspension was reported
exclusively
on Boston Phoenix Media Log
later that afternoon, with the Globe and the Herald not
having the story until the next day.
When I interviewed Osterlind
shortly after he'd learned about his suspension, I couldn't help but
feel bad for the guy. He obviously didn't get it, and I can
understand why. He'd been paid to be as outrageous as possible, he is
not someone who's particularly well-versed on the issues, and he'd
just gotten nailed for doing pretty much what he always does. On a
personal level, I don't think he's got a mean bone in his
body.
But you certainly can't blame Elder
for taking advantage of the situation to elevate the tone of his
station. Now let's see if he'll do something about his venom-spewing
afternoon star, Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr, and
syndicated host Michael Savage, the hate-mongering right-winger who
holds down the evening shift.
Ten to 15 years ago, WRKO was a
model for what great talk radio could be, with first-class hosts such
as the late, great Jerry Williams, Gene Burns, Janet Jeghelian, and
Ted O'Brien. Osterlind sneers in today's Herald that Elder
apparently wants to turn 'RKO into NPR -- yet, with the exception of
Burns, the station's stars of yesteryear were every bit as populist
and occasionally outrageous (especially Williams) as today's fakers
like to think they are.
Can the old formula work today?
Well, David Brudnoy is still the ratings king on WBZ Radio (AM 1030),
so clearly there is a market for intelligent talk. And Osterlind's
dismissal of NPR aside, public station WBUR Radio (90.9 FM) pulls
down good numbers while broadcasting hours of talk each
day.
So maybe it's time for WRKO to try
quality. It's certainly tried everything else.
A remarkable look at an unfit
mother. If you haven't been reading the Globe's series on
Barbara Paul and her sons, you can catch up by clicking
here.
Reporter Patricia Wen and
photographer Suzanne Kreiter have done a remarkable job of
documenting the life of a mother who neglected her children, and yet
who loved them -- and still does. Paul gave up her parental-custody
rights under pressure from state authorities.
One minor quibble: I would have
liked to see a stronger point of view. After all, it was Wen and
Kreiter who spent nine months with Paul, not us.
But their even-handedness is a
strength, too. We find ourselves emphathizing with Paul and yet
understanding why social workers concluded that she was an unfit
mother.
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Monday, August 25, 2003
Catching up on the news.
What could be better than coming back from a three-day weekend and
finding more than 220 e-mails, nearly all of them spam? Good grief.
I'm still catching up with the news, so pardon today's minimalist
Media Log.
Of all the unanswered questions
surrounding the murder of former priest John Geoghan, the one I find
most intriguing -- if perhaps among the least important -- is why his
accused killer changed his name from Darrin E. Smiledge to Joseph L.
Druce.
The Globe
and the Herald
don't know why. So what is the story? Is there a character in some
neo-Nazi or white-supremacist fiction named Joseph L. Druce? Was he
trying to pull a scam? Perhaps we'll find out soon.
It's time to start listening to
Scott Ritter. Actually, we should have listened to the former UN
weapons inspector before the war in Iraq, but I -- like many
observers -- thought his flip-flop on Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction made him less than credible. And
then he was silenced.
Today he has an
op-ed piece in the New
York Times in which he asks a devastating question: why -- if
former Iraqi officials are to be believed -- did American troops
allow looters to destroy records pertaining to the weapons
program?
It's a question that demands an
answer.
posted at 10:16 AM |
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Thursday, August 21, 2003
Mistakes were made.
D'oh! What can I say? The Curse of Blogging strikes again.
Within minutes of tweaking
the Poynter Institute for dropping the URL "www.medianews.org" from
Jim Romenesko's media-links page, I heard from Romenesko and his
editor, Bill Mitchell.
It turns out that way
back last February, Poynter
announced it was dropping the name "MediaNews" because of a letter
sent by a lawyer for Dean Singleton's MediaNews
Group expressing, uh,
displeasure.
Media Log takes full responsibility
for a boneheaded error.
Media Log pre-Labor Day
break. I'm posting tonight because I'll be leaving tomorrow
morning with my son, Tim, his friend Troy, and Troy's mother for
three days in the White Mountains. We're staying here
(hope it doesn't look like that!) and here,
and on Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning we'll be here.
See you Monday.
posted at 7:38 PM |
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A perfect excuse to hype my
book. Not that I need any excuses! But Boston Globe
columnist Alex Beam today has a must-read
(right now!) piece on three authors named Dan Kennedy. Two of us have
books coming out this fall, and the third -- a sales-and-marketing
guru -- seems to put out a motivational book or a tape every other
week or so.
I am DK1 in Beamspeak, and
here's
the link to more
information on my book, Little People: Learning to See the World
Through My Daughter's Eyes, which will be published in October by
Rodale.
If you want to find out more about
DK2 and DK3, check out the links in the lower-right corner of my
home
page.
More creeping Poynterization.
(Note: This item was later corrected.)
The last I checked, it costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $10
or $20 to register a domain name for a couple of years. Are they
really that cheap at the Poynter
Institute?
A few years ago, obsessive
media-linker Jim Romenesko went to work for Poynter, which
necessitated his changing the name of his site from MediaGossip.com
to MediaNews.org. Then, last November, the site was completely
redesigned.
The new MediaNews was and is more
attractive and useful, although it took some campaigning by
NarcoNews.com's
Al Giordano to get Poynter to restore the left-rail items, which had
initially been reserved for institutional (a word I use advisedly)
purposes. I called it "creeping
Poynterization."
As it turned out, the redesign also
resulted in the dropping of the name "MediaNews" -- something I
didn't really pay much attention to until this morning, when I
spotted this
item. According to
Romenesko, "The medianews.org domain expires in September and won't
be renewed by Poynter."
It's easy to make too much of these
things. After all, the name of the page is "Romenesko," which hardly
suggests that Poynter is trying to depersonalize it. Still, it's been
MediaNews.org practically forever -- and now, for the want of 10
bucks, the link will cease to work.
Then again, "www.medianews.org"
doesn't have the word "Poynter" in it anywhere, does it? I suppose
that's the point. Sigh.
New in this week's
Phoenix. Roger Ailes's "fair
and balanced" lawsuit
against Al Franken seems crazy -- until you take a closer
look.
Also, thoughts on "Ben," Governor
Mitt Romney's secret Internet
tormentor.
posted at 8:18 AM |
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Wednesday, August 20, 2003
Ex-Phoenicians buy Bay
Windows and South End News. Bay Windows is the
largest gay-and-lesbian newspaper in New England. The South End
News is a neighborhood paper. I've got the details on
BostonPhoenix.com. Click here.
posted at 2:27 PM |
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Under cyberattack. Between
yesterday at 3:52 a.m. and today at 8:49 a.m., I received 91 copies
of the SoBig virus. So incessant was the invasion that I had to delay
posting yesterday's Media Log for several hours.
Because of a peculiarity in the way
I choose to have my Phoenix e-mail delivered -- I actually
have it forwarded to a different account -- the viruses never get
intercepted by the paper's server-level virus-scanning software. So I
get every damn one of them.
Fortunately, I can't actually be
affected by SoBig: I use a Mac, and can't even open the infected
attachments, which carry names such as "application.pif" and
"thank_you.pif." But, as many of you already know, the SoBig attack
-- one of several virus invasions over the past week -- has slowed
down the entire Internet and crashed some sites.
Moreover, each copy of the virus
runs around 100 KB (I remember when floppy disks for the Apple II
held a maximum of 140 KB), which would make downloading my mail an
endless task if I were still on dial-up. That's 9.1 MB of crapola in
just a little more than 24 hours.
I also received several
computer-generated e-mails from other sites telling me that I had
attempted to send the virus to them. I opened them up, and sure
enough, the e-mails appeared to be from dkennedy[a]phx.com. But they
had been sent to addresses I'd never heard of, and that are
definitely not in the address book of my e-mail program, Microsoft
Entourage.
No surprise there. This is how
insidious SoBig and similar viruses have gotten. Once it infects a
computer, it burrows into the address book and sends out a copy of
the virus to every e-mail address that it finds. All I can be certain
of is that someone out there has an infected Windows-based computer
with dkennedy[a]phx.com in its address book.
Hiawatha
Bray has a good story on
the latest virus invasion in today's Globe. If you want to
know more, check out InformationWeek
and Wired.
The Wired piece, by Michelle Delio,appears to make a good case
that the endless proliferation of viruses is at least partly the
fault of Microsoft.
I'm not in a position to judge, but
a little Bill-whacking is always in order.
Horror and quagmire in Iraq.
Media Log has been Iraq-free for a bit -- not because I'm not
horrified by the way the US-led invasion has descended into
all-too-predictable chaos, but because I've been at a loss to find
anything that really puts it all in perspective.
But after yesterday's terrorist
attack on UN
headquarters in Baghdad,
it's clear that the quagmire is deepening. On today's New York
Times op-ed page, Harvard
terrorism expert Jessica Stern
offers a brilliant -- and disturbing -- analysis of the situation.
Her lead:
Yesterday's bombing of the
United Nations headquarters in Baghdad was the latest evidence
that America has taken a country that was not a terrorist threat
and turned it into one.
Of course, we should be glad
that the Iraq war was swifter than even its proponents had
expected, and that a vicious tyrant was removed from power. But
the aftermath has been another story. America has created -- not
through malevolence but through negligence -- precisely the
situation the Bush administration has described as a breeding
ground for terrorists: a state unable to control its borders or
provide for its citizens' rudimentary needs.
How do we get out of it? On the
same page, Tom
Friedman, as usual, offers
some ideas that are both idealistic and useful. But it would have
been a lot easier not to have created this disaster in the first
place.
posted at 9:15 AM |
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Tuesday, August 19, 2003
More questions than answers.
But what great questions! Frank
Phillips reports in the
Globe today that Governor Mitt Romney may have profited from a
dubious stock deal.
Follow the bouncing wad of cash: a
Lehman Brothers analyst was pressured into giving a higher
recommendation to a stock than it deserved. The company that issued
the stock, DDi Corporation, was backed by Bain, Romney's
venture-capital firm. Romney himself invested in DDi. Romney bailed
in May 2001, selling his shares for $4.1 million. The stock collapsed
shortly thereafter.
There are many, many questions that
need to be asked, but the big one is the classic. What did Romney
know and when did he know it?
And, of course, what will
Ben
say about all this?
Elevating us all. Okay, one
doesn't turn to the Herald expecting a surfeit of political
correctness. But, really, now. Today the paper follows up
yesterday's
Globe story on a
mentally ill man who gouged out his own eyes. The Herald's
charming
headline: "Eye-Plucker Was
in Mass. for Care."
posted at 10:36 AM |
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Monday, August 18, 2003
Raisins and terrorism. The
Globe's Sunday Ideas section has an interesting profile by Lee
Smith of Ibn
Warraq, the pseudonym for
an agnostic critic of Islam who is the author of a 1995 book called
Why I Am Not a Muslim.
An anecdote: during Easter weekend
in 2002, I covered
the annual convention of American
Atheists, which was being
held in Boston that year. Warraq -- who spoke at the convention --
got off one of the best lines of the weekend. He noted that recent
scholarship suggests the Koran promises holy warriors "white raisins
of crystal clarity" rather than 72 virgins. The lesson, he said, was
obvious: terrorists should "abandon their culture of death and
concentrate on getting laid 72 times in this
world."
Smith enlists Khaled Abou El Fadl,
a scholar of Islamic law, to critique Warraq. El Fadl participated
this past April in a roundtable-style piece on the future of the US
role in Iraq, which you can read here.
El Fadl also wrote a cover essay
for the Boston Review this past spring titled "Islam
and the Challenge of Democracy."
Warning to Mac users: for some
reason the piece displays in Zapf Dingbats if you try opening it up
in Safari. Mozilla seems to work fine.
Everybody's Fair and Balanced
(TM)! A weblog called Blah3.com is compiling a list
of blogs that have adopted
the "Fair and Balanced" label since Fox
News sued Al Franken over
the title of his new book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them:
A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. (Via Joe
Conason; sub
req.)
posted at 7:41 AM |
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Friday, August 15, 2003
Darkness, followed by light.
The lights are pretty much back on, according to this
story on CNN.com. Talk
about more alleged news. Don't get me wrong -- it was obviously a big
story. But, honestly, once terrorism was ruled out (and it was,
pretty quickly), how much do you need to know?
I did tune in long enough to watch
what may be the best question anyone has ever asked Senator Hillary
Clinton. On Larry King Live, Wolf Blitzer asked: Senator,
everybody's been getting likkered up for hours. Aren't they going to
run wild tonight?
Okay, I exaggerate, but not by
much. Blitzer:
Senator, the people of New
York have responded well so far, but I have some concerns standing
here on the streets of New York. It's dark, obviously, very dark
right now. A lot of people are mulling around. I have seen a lot
of crowds mulling around. Clearly for some -- for some misguided
New Yorkers, there almost seems to be a festive atmosphere. A lot
of people drink[ing] beer and other spirits up if you
will.
Have New York law-enforcement
authorities done everything necessary to make sure it doesn't get
ugly in parts of New York City tonight?
Clinton was on by phone; I wish
she'd been on camera so I could have watched her scrunch her lips.
Anyway, she eluded the question and was boring to boot, so I won't
quote her response. But at least Blitzer provided a moment of cheap
entertainment during the Live Story from Hell. ("The lights are still
out ...")
Ventura highway to oblivion.
I suppose MSNBC, the number-zero cable news channel, deserves a
little bit of credit for indefinitely postponing Jesse
Ventura's prime-time debut.
To my knowledge, this is the first time that the channel has ever
cleaned up one of its train wrecks before it's aired for a few
painful months.
Still, Nobody's News Channel will
let Ventura hold forth on weekends, as it did earlier with right-wing
hatemonger Michael Savage. Obviously Ventura is considerably more
savvy -- and less offensive -- than the gay-bashing, garbage-mouthed
Savage. But an on-air train wreck remains a distinct
possibility.
This, from the aforelinked Jim
Rutenberg and (ooh, sorry; with) Charlie LeDuff's account in
the New York Times, offers a scary insight into how MSNBC
president Erik Sorenson and his drones think:
One concept that the
network tried this summer, according to someone present at the
taping, had Mr. Ventura eliciting commentary from his guests while
an attractive woman served up different topics.
Sounds like the bimbos who flaunted
themselves at ringside back in The Body's days with the
WWF.
That hissing sound you hear is a
sigh of relief from Brian Williams, who escaped from MSNBC last
summer and who now holds forth on the unwatched, but unembarrassing,
CNBC.
posted at 8:58 AM |
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Thursday, August 14, 2003
The Globe's confusing new
website. Is it too soon to say that the redesign of
the
Globe's website is
seriously flawed? After all, these things do take time. So far,
though, not so good.
Aside from the look -- pinched and
cluttered, with teeny type -- I'm having a hard time figuring out
what the mission is. Ideally, you'd like to see the entire paper put
online in a well-organized manner, with perhaps a few extras. But
given that people at the Globe, like everyone else, are
presumably questioning the practice of giving away their content
online while watching their paid circulation fall, maybe they're
trying to move away from that. Still, what they're moving
toward is anything but clear.
Two observations this
morning:
1. As a paid subscriber who
receives the North Pole edition somewhere around 5:30 a.m., I often
don't get late results when the Red Sox are on the West Coast. So I
went to the online sports section a few moments ago and saw this
hype: "A's
5, Red Sox 3: Red Sox stuck in
reverse." But that wasn't
last night's game; it was Tuesday night's game.
I backed up and clicked on
"All
of today's Sports stories,"
only to find the tertiary stuff that no one reads anyway. Finally, I
backed up again, clicked on "Latest
sports news," and found
an
AP story reporting that
Derek Lowe and the Sox beat the A's, 7-3, last night.
Okay, that's better than nothing,
but still not good enough. Presumably the late edition of the
Globe has staff coverage of the game. But even though I'm a
paying customer, I can't read that coverage online.
But wait! I just went to
Boston.com,
the übersite that's separate (but not really) from the
Globe's, and the lead story was a staff-written (by
Bob
Hohler) piece on last
night's Sox win. So why couldn't I find it in the Globe's own
online sports section? Pre-emptive defense: if it's there and I just
missed it, well, believe me, I looked. This is supposed to be easy,
right?
2. If you click on "All
of today's Editorials and Op-Ed
columns," you will get
exactly what you're promised. There's also an improvement over the
old site: an editorial cartoon by Dan Wasserman. But it's
yesterday's. Again, the Globe is under no obligation to give
away its content, but the concept of publishing the day's paper on
the Web is being lost.
Am I being too harsh? Hah! On
Monday, Jason
Feifer (scroll down) wrote
to Jim Romenesko's MediaNews.org that "the paper's website has
morphed from a user-friendly digital facsimile of a newspaper into
something resembling the love child of Google news and a content-free
blog."
Then again, Feifer also doesn't
like the print edition's new pastel teaser boxes on page one, an
innovation that has given Media Log a reason to get up in the
morning. So maybe he's being unfair.
But the Globe Web folks,
having set out to fix what wasn't necessarily broken, need to do some
quick thinking. They could start by explaining exactly what it is
they're trying to accomplish.
New in this week's
Phoenix. I consider the career of Massachusetts House
Speaker Tom
Finneran, who's not looking
quite as powerful these days thanks to the rise of Governor Mitt
Romney and a small but growing rebellion in his own
chamber.
Plus, an update of Tuesday's
Media Log item on the
suspension of John
"Ozone" Osterlind, the
morning-drive-time host on WRKO Radio (AM 680) accused of wanting to
"eradicate" the Palestinians.
posted at 9:12 AM |
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Wednesday, August 13, 2003
Bullying language and a
publisher's prerogative. Bad as the Vatican's recent statement on
homosexuality may be, it does go out of its way to assert that
lesbians and gay men must be treated with dignity (see
"Rome
Casts Its Ballot," News and
Features, August 8).
Quoting from earlier Church doctrine,
the
statement says that "men
and women with homosexual tendencies 'must be accepted with respect,
compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in
their regard should be avoided.'" This may amount to little more than
hypocrisy -- and as
the saying goes, "Hypocrisy
is the homage vice pays to virtue" -- but at least it's better than
the bishops' sitting around telling homo jokes over a few
brewskis.
Unfortunately, they didn't get the
message over at the Pilot, the official weekly newspaper of
the Archdiocese of Boston. An editorial
this week on the Vatican statement (second item), headlined
"Courageous Document," begins with this sneering lead: "The GLBTQ (Gay, Lesbian,
Bisexual, Transgender, Queer) agenda is advancing quickly these
days."
Like the N-word among
African-Americans, the Q-word is sometimes used in a joking manner
among gays and lesbians themselves. But for an official publication
of the Church to invoke it is insulting, degrading, and utterly
lacking in "respect, compassion and sensitivity."
As archbishop, Seán O'Malley
is publisher of the Pilot. He should call editor Antonio
Enrique in for a chat about appropriate language at the first
opportunity.
The definition of a conflict of
interest. A freelance reporter for the Globe's Globe West
section wrote "about 300 articles" about the Newton Public Schools
while serving on the state-mandated advisory board of her children's
elementary school, according to this
story by Sarah Andrews, in
the Newton Tab.
Writes Andrews: "Newton
conservatives say they have been complaining for three years that
writer Gail Spector's work for the Globe's West Weekly section
has been biased." It looks like they had a legitimate
beef.
Ellen Clegg, the Globe
editor who runs the regional news sections, called Spector's dual
role "a violation of Globe policy," and said Spector would no
longer cover Newton.
Newton conservative Tom Mountain
gloats here.
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Tuesday, August 12, 2003
WRKO suspends "Ozone" for two
weeks. John Osterlind, the loud, raspy-voiced "Ozone" half of the
Blute & Ozone team on WRKO Radio (AM 680), has been
suspended for two weeks after telling listeners this morning that the
Palestinians should be "eradicated," according to Michael Elder, the
station's director of operations and programming.
Elder was unaware of Osterlind's
alleged remarks when contacted earlier today by the Phoenix,
which had received an anonymous tip that Osterlind had advocated
"extermination" of the Palestinians. After listening to a partial
tape of the show, Elder said, "Your source was pretty close to
accurate," but added: "I did not hear exterminate. Eradicate is what
I heard." (Disclosure: I am paid to discuss the media on WRKO's
Pat Whitley Show every Friday morning.)
Elder said that cohost Peter Blute,
a former Republican congressman, sounded aghast at Osterlind's
outburst. "Peter Blute kept trying to reel him out of it," said
Elder, adding that, at one point, Blute warned Osterlind that he was
advocating "Hitlerian genocide." Blute could not immediately be
reached for comment.
Osterlind, contacted at home,
denied the allegation, saying, "It was dancing around that line, but
never once did the words come out of my mouth that the Palestinians
should be eradicated. But the bad ones, definitely." Several minutes
later, he added, "Arafat, sure, you know, him and his people, no
doubt."
This afternoon on the
WRKO website, under the
heading "Today on Blute & Ozone," is this: "After two more
suicide bombings in Israel the other day, a frustrated Ozone wants to
rid the world of anti-Israeli Pallestines [sic]. Peter
says there is, more violence that occurs on a daily basis, in
Massachusetts than Israel [sic! sic!
sic!]."
In explaining his decision to
suspend Osterlind, Elder said, "I can't let that kind of language
against a whole race of people go on the airways unpunished. Other
people are going to get the idea that it's okay. It's not okay. That
kind of language I'm just not going to let on the radio station." He
added: "Quite frankly, I just don't think that's a good way to run
talk radio."
Osterlind's suspension comes about
a month after Elder suspended syndicated talk-show host Michael
Savage's show for one
day, following Savage's
homophobic outburst on what turned out to be his final appearance on
MSNBC.
Neither Elder nor Osterlind could
say whether the two-week suspension would be paid or unpaid. Elder
said the terms of Osterlind's contract probably require that it be
paid.
Osterlind seemed stunned this
afternoon, describing the events that led to his suspension as a
combination of an aggressive approach on his part and outrageous
calls from some listeners. He said that when callers suggested
eradicating all Palestinians -- and, in one case, the entire "Arab
street" -- he replied, "Are you nuts?"
He described his conversation with
Elder like this: "He said he'd gotten some calls, and that he had to
do something to appease the people who are upset." Asked whether he
believed he himself had made a mistake, Osterlind replied, "Maybe
baiting the listeners into calling and saying something like
that."
He added: "You do a talk show, you
talk about controversial things. I've been doing this a long time,
and it's the first time I've ever been suspended. I just don't think
he [Elder] liked the whole tone of the segment."
A pause, and then this:
"I'm just a peace-lovin' person,
Dan."
posted at 4:39 PM |
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Hey, Rupe! Media Log is Fair and
Balanced (TM), too! And I mean it the way I presume you mean it,
at least when you're talking among yourselves over drinks and cigars:
ironically, with a good laugh at the rubes you've bamboozled into
thinking that it's true.
Anyway, Fox is suing Al Franken for
trademark infringement, charging that the title of his forthcoming
book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look
at the Right, would "blur and tarnish" the image of the Fox News
Channel. (So why aren't they suing Sean Hannity?)
It gets better. According to
this
account in the New York
Times, Fox contends, "Franken is neither a journalist nor a
television news personality. He is not a well-respected voice in
American politics; rather, he appears to be shrill and unstable. His
views lack any serious depth or insight."
Not to appear to take this drivel
seriously, but anyone who has paid any attention whatsoever knows
that Franken's political analysis is as deep and serious as that of
anyone on Fox, with the possible exception of Britt Hume. It's just
that Franken also happens to be a very funny guy.
Here's a Q&A
with Franken on his book --
and on his recent confrontation with Bill O'Reilly, who didn't like
it one bit when Franken exposed O'Reilly's claim to have won a
Peabody Award as something other than the truth.
Berkowitz online. The
Boston Globe's website
redesign is now well along
(Woo, hoo! It looks
like the Herald's!),
and Peter Berkowitz's essay on the raging
moderate known as George W.
Bush can be read here.
On the other hand, I was going to
link to James Carroll's excellent Globe column today on
anti-Semitism within the Catholic Church (yes, he's got something new
to say) -- but today's editorials
and op-ed columns were not
online. Perhaps they will be later this morning.
posted at 9:01 AM |
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Monday, August 11, 2003
Q: Is Bush a moderate or an
extremist? A: Both! Peter
Berkowitz, writing in the
Globe's Ideas section yesterday, wants you to believe that
George W. Bush isn't really a right-wing crazy. His evidence: the
president has been generally moderate on cultural issues such as
religion, abortion, gay and lesbian rights, affirmative action, even
his court appointments. Plus, he's got black people in his Cabinet!
(No link. The Globe's website is in the midst of redesign
hell, but Berkowitz's piece might pop up here
later today.)
Sorry, but this is argument by
straw man. I'm prepared to accept all or most of the above, although
I have some quibbles. Certainly a few of Bush's judicial picks have
been dangerously right-wing, for instance. And the president's views
on homosexuality, although arguably within the mainstream of moderate
conservatism, are ugly nevertheless: no marriage, no civil unions,
not even domestic-partner benefits.
But, still, what Berkowitz does is
raise a whole host of matters on which Bush is moderate in order to
frame the two really important issues -- his budget-busting tax cuts
and his hyperaggressive foreign policy -- in a less threatening
way.
On taxes, Bush really is a
right-wing crazy. For some non-fuzzy math, check out this
chart (PDF format)
put together by Citizens
for Tax Justice. Okay, I
know you're not really going to take a look, so here's the
lead:
As a result of the three
major tax cuts enacted at President Bush's instigation in 2001,
2002 and 2003, taxes on the best-off one percent of Americans will
fall by 17 percent by the end of this decade. For the remaining 99
percent of taxpayers, the average tax reduction will be 5
percent.
The share of total federal taxes
paid by the best-off one percent will fall from 23.7 percent to
21.3 percent in 2010 compared to prior law -- a drop of 2.4
percentage points. The top one percent is the only income group
with a substantial reduction in its share of the total federal tax
burden.
Berkowitz seems to think that
Bush's runaway spending shows that he's not really a conservative
when it comes to budgetary matters. He's right! In fact, it
demonstrates that Bush is a radical who wants to match or even exceed
the borrow-and-spend policies of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, running
up hundreds of billions of dollars in debt, a situation that benefits
wealthy bond-holders, but certainly no one else.
As for foreign policy, what needs
to be said? Here's Berkowitz on the run-up to the war in
Iraq:
Today, Bush's critics,
usually upholders of international law, rarely acknowledge the
manifestly inaccurate and incomplete accounting of WMD that Saddam
submitted to the UN Security Council in December 2002. This put
him in clear material breach of Resolution 1441, which was
unanimously passed by the Security Council one month before. On
the Bush administration's reasonable reading, Saddam's defiance of
1441's terms authorized the use of force to disarm him and
suggested he had WMD to hide.
Who are these critics who refuse to
acknowledge the lies contained in Saddam's December 2002 report?
Berkowitz doesn't say. This is, in fact, another straw man. It was,
after all, UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix who took the lead in
denouncing Saddam's refusal to come clean about the weapons of mass
destruction that he had been known to possess in the past.
But in the absense of the imminent
threat that Bush and Tony Blair talked about so many times, Blix and
most of the rest of the world called for a stepped-up inspections
regime, not war. The Bush administration kept pushing for war,
building
a disingenuous case on not
just those 16 words, but on phony claims about aluminum tubes,
doctored intelligence, and allegations of ties between Saddam and al
Qaeda.
Berkowitz concludes of
Bush:
[A]s his
administration makes its mistakes, rolls with the punches, and
adapts to changing circumstances, the president reveals himself to
be a pragmatic conservative who knows in his gut that it is a
liberal welfare state that he wishes to reform, and to conserve.
This will continue to discomfit purists on both sides. And it may
prove attractive to a majority in 2004, not only in the Electoral
College but in the popular vote as well.
Berkowitz's argument, essentially,
is that Bush is not uniformly extreme in his conservative views.
Rather, he's moderate in some areas and extreme in others -- mainly
the ones that really matter. Berkowitz intends all this as an
endorsement. Seen in a different light, it looks a lot more like an
indictment instead.
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Saturday, August 09, 2003
O'Malley's mysterious signals.
Archbishop Seán O'Malley today is receiving well-deserved
credit for making a concrete (if underfunded) proposal to settle with
the victims of pedophile priests (Globe coverage
here;
Herald coverage here),
and for announcing that he'll move out of the archbishop's mansion in
Brighton.
What strikes me as a ruse, though,
is the notion that the archdiocese will not sell the chancery
property even though O'Malley will decamp for more-austere quarters
in the South End.
The Herald
quotes a "source familiar with church finances" as saying, "The
chancery is categorically not for sale." The Globe
offers, more obliquely: "O'Malley suggested he did not plan to sell
the heavily mortgaged Brighton residence, which is coveted by Boston
College, but instead would use it for church offices."
Why would O'Malley want his staff
across town, inaccessible to him? Why does he need to keep St. John's
Seminary, also located on the property, when the number of priest
candidates is way down and another, cheaper location could easily be
found?
The answers are obvious. Which is
why it makes sense -- purely as a matter of sheer speculation -- that
O'Malley is being coy in order to drive up the price. If he publicly
announced he was going to sell the property and commenced
negotiations with Boston College, then BC would hold the upper hand
in a down market.
This way, he can delay negotiations
indefinitely, and allow another potential buyer to come along and
blow him away with an offer that he can't refuse. Assuming the
settlement is behind him by then, that would mean more money for the
Church's mission -- including its extensive social-services network,
which has been badly hurt at the worst possible time by the
mind-boggling misdeeds of his predecessors, especially Cardinal
Bernard Law.
If I'm right about what O'Malley
may be thinking, then he deserves all the credit in the
world.
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Friday, August 08, 2003
Extra! It now turns out that
New England Cable News had the story about the Vatican document on
July 28 -- a day earlier than the Worcester Telegram &
Gazette and the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune. Click
here and watch "Church
Critics Seek Charges."
Okay, let's get this out of the way
once and for all: Media Log does not rule out the possibility that
another news org reported this even before NECN. Hey, maybe someone
even reported it in 1962!
And not only did CBS News not
"uncover" this, but we now know that its Wednesday report wasn't even
"the first time that this has been reported on television," as CBS
spokeswoman Sandy Genelius told me yesterday.
posted at 11:46 AM |
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Curioser and curioser. The
story about the story regarding that
secret 1962 Vatican document
is getting increasingly convoluted.
The website Catholic World
News posted an
analysis yesterday
attempting to show that the conventional interpretation -- that the
Vatican was giving marching orders to cover up the misdeeds of
pedophile priests -- is just plain wrong.
According to CWN, the
document pertained to a much narrower matter -- priests who solicit
sex inside the confessional:
The Vatican document deals
exclusively with solicitation: an offense which, by definition,
occurs within the context of the Sacrament of Penance. And since
that sacrament is protected by a shroud of absolute secrecy, the
procedures for dealing with this ecclesiastical crime also invoke
secrecy.
In short, by demanding secrecy
in the treatment of these crimes, the Vatican was protecting the
secrecy of the confessional. The policy outlined in that 1962
document is clearly not intended to protect predatory priests; on
the contrary, the Vatican makes it clear that guilty priests
should be severely punished and promptly removed from
ministry.
CWN specifically blasts CBS
News, which claimed on Wednesday to have "uncovered" the document,
and which reported that the Vatican "calls for absolute secrecy when
it comes to sexual abuse by priests." In fact, though, the existence
of the document had already been reported a week earlier by the
Worcester Telegram & Gazette, the Lawrence
Eagle-Tribune, and the Boston Herald.
Today's Herald includes
this
piece by Eric Convey that
covers much the same ground as the CWN analysis.
Yesterday, even as I was posting my
own item on the scuff-up over CBS's self-aggrandizing "uncovered"
claim, the Herald's Convey, the Eagle-Tribune's
Gretchen Putnam, the Telegram & Gazette's Harry Whitin,
and CBS News's Jim Murphy were going at it hot and heavy on
the
letters page of Jim
Romenesko's MediaNews.org website.
And contrary to my report yesterday
-- and to Whitin's assertion to Romenesko -- it now appears that the
Telegram & Gazette did not break the story all by itself,
but rather finished in a first-place tie with the
Eagle-Tribune. Both papers broke the story on July
29.
The T&G's, by Kathleen
Shaw, has slid into the paper's paid archives, but the
Eagle-Tribune's, by Meg Murphy, is still online for free
here.
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Thursday, August 07, 2003
It depends on the meaning of
"uncovered." This morning, while I was driving to work, I heard a
curious report on the radio. The announcer said that CBS News had
uncovered a confidential 1962 document from the Vatican specifying
how the Catholic Church should respond to complaints of child sexual
abuse.
Curious because I knew that a copy
of the report had been sitting on my desk at work since last week --
and that my colleague Kristen Lombardi had obtained it a few days
earlier than that.
Upon looking into it further, I
learned that the first report on the existence of the document was
published on July 29 in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.
The 923-word page-one piece, by Kathleen Shaw, began like
this:
The hierarchy of the
Catholic church has been instructed by the Vatican at least since
1962 to keep certain cases of clergy sexual abuse secret under
pain of excommunication, according to Boston lawyer Carmen L.
Durso.
A copy of the directive was sent
yesterday to U.S. Attorney Michael J. Sullivan at his Boston
office by Mr. Durso, who said he believes the church has been
obstructing justice.
The next day, the Boston
Herald's Robin Washington covered much the same ground in a story
on page eight. His lead:
A Latin document bearing
the seal of Pope John XXIII outlined a 1962 Vatican procedure for
shielding sexually abusive priests, two lawyers for plaintiffs in
cases against the church maintain.
Yet when the CBS Evening
News began last night, here's how anchor Scott Pelley introduced
the story:
We begin tonight with a
surprising development in the sex-abuse scandal in the Roman
Catholic Church. For decades, priests in this country have abused
children in parish after parish while their superiors covered it
all up. Now it turns out the orders for this cover-up were written
in Rome at the highest levels of the Vatican. Correspondent Vince
Gonzales has uncovered a church document kept secret 40
years, until now.
The transcript does not appear to
be freely available online (I got it from Lexis-Nexis). But you
can read a version of the story on the
CBS News website that
includes this: "CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales has
uncovered a church document kept secret for 40
years."
What is going on here?
Houston lawyer Dan Shea, who
represents some of the alleged victims, is the person who has called
the document to the attention of much of the media. Earlier today he
told me,
"The real credit for this goes
to Kathy Shaw and Robin Washington. Hey, smoke and mirrors." As for
CBS, Shea said, "They interviewed me for the piece. They spent an
hour-and-a-half with me in my office in Houston. And I never even
showed up in the piece."
I couldn't reach Shaw. But
Washington's comment was succinct: "This is ridiculous. It's beyond
the pale."
CBS News spokeswoman Sandy
Genelius, though, defended her network's actions. She said of the
T&G and Herald reports, "I think they did a great
job, and I think that we did our own reporting about it and put a
piece on the air. It's that simple."
Genelius added that Gonzales could
have broadcast his report earlier, but that he expended considerable
effort trying to authenticate the document.
When I asked whether CBS's claim
that Gonzales had "uncovered" the document might be fairly
interpreted as meaning that the network was claiming an exclusive,
she replied, "We never claimed any exclusivity on it, nor would
we."
Well, maybe CBS makes a distinction
between "exclusive" and "uncovered," but I seriously doubt that it's
a distinction any typical news consumer would make.
The broadcast strongly implied that
CBS was breaking news. It wasn't.
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The Bulger aftermath, and
questions for Chancellor Lombardi. After having spent a good part
of the morning reading almost every word the Globe
and the Herald
have to offer on the resignation of UMass president Bill Bulger --
and having glanced at coverage in the New
York Times and
Washington
Post as well -- I have
come to a sad conclusion:
I've got nothing to say, beyond
what I've
already said.
Bulger's $960,000 get-out-of-town
package seems excessive, given that his pension should run about
$200,000 a year. He might have been talked into taking less rather
than staying to face a newly constituted board of trustees with Alan
Dershowitz screaming at him through every meeting.
Still, the man was under contract,
and it wasn't going to be cheap to make him go away.
But with the Bulger matter having
been so thoroughly chewed over, let's shift to a sidebar: the story
that UMass Amherst chancellor John
Lombardi may be named
president -- interim, permanent, or both.
The Globe's Marcella
Bombardieri reports that
Lombardi -- who's been at Amherst for a year -- did a terrific job
during his nearly 10 years as president of the University of
Florida.
What Bombardieri does not report is
that Lombardi failed to distinguish himself, to say the least, in a
troubling academic-freedom case that came up last fall.
Economics professor M.J. Alhabeeb,
an Iraqi native and a staunch opponent of Saddam Hussein, was paid a
visit in his office by an FBI agent and a campus cop after they
learned that he was against President Bush's plans to invade
Iraq.
Alhabeeb pronounced the matter "not
a big deal." But the fact is that a naturalized American citizen was
informed upon and questioned because of his political views and his
national origin.
Yet when the faculty senate met to
discuss the matter, the Springfield Union-News quoted Lombardi
as saying:
I have had, at some time
or another, had my friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors
asked about my activities, views, and politics in order to get one
job or another. When we are talking about the FBI on campus asking
questions, we ought to be clear about which activity we
have.
Lombardi also urged that the UMass
community "not be distracted over cases that are not fundamental
attacks on free speech."
For his spineless performance in
the face of a challenge to academic freedom, Lombardi was recently
singled out for a Boston
Phoenix Muzzle Award.
It's something he ought to be
called to account for before anyone starts talking seriously about a
promotion. The Dersh would be just the one to ask Lombardi the
questions that need to be asked.
The next Sony?
BusinessWeek has a fascinating piece by Jane Black on
Apple's
ongoing attempt to reinvent itself
-- from a boutique computer maker that, despite its cutting-edge
reputation, is slowly fading away to "a high-end consumer-electronics
and services company à la Sony."
Her examples: the to-die-for
iPod
portable music player (the envious take note: Mrs. Media Log got me
one for Father's Day) and the iTunes
Music Store.
Thanks to FarrellMedia
for pointing this out.
New in this week's
Phoenix. I've got a problem with the Vatican's recent
statement on same-sex
marriage -- and its demand
that democratically elected politicians toe the line.
Also, a
Harvard study shows that
the so-called liberal media are far more tolerant of conservative
arguments than the conservative media are of liberal ones. But
you
already knew that.
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Wednesday, August 06, 2003
Times signs write-o-matic
Brooks. David Brooks is a fine writer, a provocative thinker, a
sensible conservative, and a hell of a nice guy. He is also
dangerously overexposed.
You can read him in the Weekly
Standard, the Atlantic Monthly, Newsweek, the
New York Times Book Review, the New York Times
Magazine, the Times of London, and on the Wall Street
Journal editorial page. You can see him on The NewsHour with
Jim Lehrer. You can hear him on All Things Considered.
Several years ago he wrote a briskly selling book about the nouveau
riche called Bobos in Paradise. If he were a pop star, his
agent would tell him to lay low for a while and cultivate an air of
mystery.
Today we learn that he will soon
begin writing an op-ed-page column for the New York Times. The
news comes in the oddest of places: buried
inside a Times feature
today on summer jobs. Brooks is quoted on the subject, and his
forthcoming new gig is revealed as an afterthought. (Note: After posting this item shortly before 9 a.m., I was immediately informed that Brooks's appointment is not news. Must have happened while I was on vacation.)
I'm sure Brooks is not looking for
Media Log's advice, but I'm going to offer some anyway. Brooks can be
a terrific op-ed columnist. But he's going to have to devote most of
his attention to it and cut way back on the outside work. The
Times job will be the most important thing he does.
Besides showing that the liberal
media are far more open to conservative voices than the conservative
media are to liberals, Brooks's addition will be welcome because he's
so good at what he does. But if he doesn't cut way back on his
outside work, he runs the risk of becoming not a writer, but a word
processor.
Slick Howie. The Howard Dean
described this morning by Boston Globe columnist
Scot
Lehigh sounds like someone
who is pragmatic to the point of being cynical.
Lehigh doesn't draw the analogy
directly, but that whatever-it-takes attitude, unattractive though it
may be to those who have to interact with him personally, calls to
mind another politician whom many Democrats are pining for these
days: Bill Clinton.
Joe Fitz, paragon of
objectivity. The funniest thing about Boston Herald
columnist Joe
Fitzgerald's screed
(sub. req.) today is that you have to pay to read it online.
The second-funniest thing is his lame-o attempt to wag his finger at
the Episcopal Church for confirming
Gene Robinson, an openly
gay man, as the bishop of New Hampshire.
Fitzgerald claims Delphic powers of
insight, writing, "To more objective observers ... Robinson's
ascendancy is an abomination, which is precisely how Scripture
describes the kind of lifestyle he maintains." I guess Fitzgerald
considers all that love stuff attributed to Jesus as a bunch of
'60s-style hooey.
Even better, Fitzgerald quotes
Martin Luther King Jr. as an authority for his side of the argument.
Give Fitz this much: he knows King isn't going to complain.
Media Log update. Due to
some recent changes in Blogger.com's software, I am now going to
upload each morning's items as one post, rather than as individual
tidbits. It'll save me a minute or two, and make it easier to post
items in the order that I want.
This should only create a minimum
of hassle to websites seeking to link to Media Log items. It is also
the practice followed by many other weblogs, including that of the
prolific Andrew
Sullivan.
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Tuesday, August 05, 2003
How to lose $400 million and not
pay any taxes. First, make
$400 million.
posted at 8:47 AM |
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Do as he says, not as he
does. Here is the original Lawrence Eagle-Tribune story
from Sunday on Lawrence superintendent of schools Wilfredo
Laboy, who can't pass a
mandatory English-proficiency test and who outrageously asserts that
he shouldn't be held to the same standard as his teachers.
A couple of great
quotes:
What brought me down was
the rules of grammar and punctuation. English being a second
language for me, I didn't do well in writing. If you're not an
English teacher, you don't look at the rules on a regular
basis.
And:
I should have never taken
the test because I came here with a very clear understanding
[from the state] that I had licensure.
This is really amazing stuff. Even
if Laboy is technically correct about not needing to be as proficient
as an English teacher, his inability to grasp the symbolism of the
situation is appalling.
Even more appalling is that city
leaders in Lawrence don't
seem to care. And most
appalling of all, neither does Governor Mitt
Romney, the scourge of
bilingualism, who is demagoguing the Democrats on minor changes they
made to the voter-approved anti-bilingualism ballot
question.
To be fair, Romney makes it clear
that Laboy must pass at some point. But his solicitousness toward
Laboy contrasts sharply with his bullying stance on bilingual
education.
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Judge not anymore. Now
here's some quick action. On Monday, Herald columnist
Joe
Sciacca (sub. req.)
reported on Thomas Rango, the federal immigration judge whose
outrageous behavior reportedly included making Tarzan jokes to a
Ugandan woman named Jane who was seeking political asylum.
Today Rango's
gone.
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Monday, August 04, 2003
Defending terrorism futures.
Last Friday, during my weekly appearance to discuss media issues on
WRKO Radio (AM 680), talk-show host Pat
Whitley said he was going
to take a controversial stance: in the 10 a.m. hour, he would come
out in favor of John Poindexter's idea to create an Internet-based
futures market aimed at predicting acts of terrorism.
Well, Whitley's attempt to make
waves got overwhelmed pretty quickly. To an extent one couldn't have
imagined, what seemed like a
bona fide terrible idea
when it was first reported last week was quickly embraced by media
pundits seeking to be counterintuitive.
Here are the examples I saw -- and
I'm sure I missed a few:
- Beating Whitley to the punch,
New Yorker financial columnist James
Surowiecki wrote a piece
for his alma mater, Slate, on July 30 in which he argued,
"If the price of getting better intelligence is having our
sensibilities bruised, we should be willing to pay
it."
- On Sunday, the New York
Times' Floyd
Norris suggested that
the idea was a useful one, and explained why the US government had
to get involved in order for it to work: "The answer is that
Uncle Sam had been picked to play the role of designated loser in
the gambling." In other words, if the terrorism-futures market
were private (and there already is one), it wouldn't be as useful,
since there would be some bets that no one would take.
- Also on Sunday, the Boston
Globe's Gareth
Cook (ex of the
Phoenix) reported that the market idea was just one of a
number of creepy and potentially vital projects being undertaken
by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the office that
Poindexter will continue to head for at least a few more
weeks.
- McGill University lecturer
Reuven
Brenner, in an op-ed
piece for the Wall Street Journal last Friday that was
posted to the free OpinionJournal.com site on Sunday, writes in
defense of the market idea -- but, in true WSJ fashion,
argues that there is "no reason" for government
involvement.
- This morning, the
Globe's Hiawatha
Bray offers a defense.
Unfortunately for him, he writes that "there's nothing to stop
some businessperson from launching a similar project," showing
that he didn't read Norris's Times piece. Or maybe he read
Brenner's piece instead.
- Also today, the Boston
Herald's Ted
Bunker, his weekly
"Capital Focus" column, interviews former DARPA scientist Vincent
Cerf, who complains that the political pressure being exerted
today might have hampered the development of the Internet, an
earlier DARPA innovation.
So, was the Policy Analysis Market,
as the terrorism-futures lottery was formally known, a good idea?
Damned if I know. I remain deeply suspicious for two reasons: the
involvement of Iran-Contra figure Poindexter, and the notion that
futures markets are far better at predicting mass behavior -- say, a
presidential election, or changes in soybean prices -- than they are
at predicting the behavior of a few mayhem-minded
individuals.
But this much is certain: what had
seemed like a deeply controversial idea when it was first revealed
may not actually be very controversial at all.
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Turning away readers at the
Atlantic. The New York Times' David
Carr reports this morning
that David Bradley, owner of the Boston-based Atlantic
Monthly, has a radical
idea: turning a profit.
He plans to do it by raising
subscription prices and cutting circulation, a move intended as a
signal to advertisers that Atlantic readers are willing to pay
a premium.
It's a fascinating piece on the
daunting economics of publishing a high-quality magazine of
ideas.
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Friday, August 01, 2003
What "embarrassment"? The
normally astute Glen
Johnson gets weird in his
Globe report today on some delinquent property taxes owed by
John Kerry and Teresa Heinz Kerry on their place in
Nantucket.
In his lead, Johnson reports that
the $10,000 bill is wholly attributable to sloth on the part of the
Kerrys' bank, Mellon Financial Corporation of Pittsburgh.
Here is Johnson's third
paragraph:
"It was our responsibility
to make the payment and we are researching this matter to
determine why the fourth installment was not paid in a timely way,"
said company spokesman Ron Gruendl. "We have sent the payment in
the overnight mail."
The definition of a non-story, in
other words. But then comes this:
Politically, the error
could prove something of an embarrassment, coming at a time when
Kerry, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, is
hammering President Bush over the fairness of his tax-cut
policy.
"Something of an embarrassment"?
Why? Because the Kerrys' mortgage company screwed up? This is
insane.
A few months ago, our mortgage
company failed to pay our homeowners' insurance in a timely manner.
We actually got a cancellation notice. Fortunately, we got a "never
mind" letter before Media Log was forced to go nuclear.
Johnson notes that the Kerrys have
also had to pay some late fees in the past, though he doesn't say
whether those were also the result of bank screw-ups.
But come on. If anyone should be
"embarrassed" by the Mellon thing, it's Mellon.
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MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
