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Serving the reality-based community since 2002.

Notes and observations on the press, politics, culture, technology, and more. To sign up for e-mail delivery, click here. To send an e-mail to Dan Kennedy, click here. For bio, published work, and links to other blogs, visit www.dankennedy.net.

Saturday, October 30, 2004

THE POLITICS OF TERRORISM. The re-emergence of Osama bin Laden raises a natural question three days before the presidential election: who benefits politically? This is dicey territory, and it's easy to come off as flip or disrespectful. But since bin Laden almost certainly wants to influence the outcome of the election, we ought to try to figure out what he's looking for. Not that it should change our minds about anything.

I can't seem to find the link this morning - I remember seeing it on Slate, but maybe it was elsewhere - but I subscribe to the bipartisan view that bin Laden would like to see George W. Bush win, because he's such a great recruiting tool for Al Qaeda, but that the Iraqi insurgents would like to see John Kerry win, because they're convinced he'll cut a deal (or cut and run). So, terroristically speaking, it's a wash.

Now, if it's true that bin Laden wants Bush, then it's fascinating to see how he weaves in bits from Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, including the part about Bush continuing to read My Pet Goat to the schoolchildren after the second World Trade Center tower had been hit. Kerry has adopted some of this rhetoric in his own campaign. Nothing wrong with that - Bush should be criticized for his seeming inability to excuse himself politely and get to work in the midst of Pearl Harbor II. Atmospherically, though, it can't help Kerry to have bin Laden delivering the same lines during the campaign's final hours. Is that deliberate on bin Laden's part?

And by the way, Kerry has been getting ripped lately for being a Monday-morning quarterback by criticizing Bush for "outsourcing" the job of killing bin Laden after he'd escaped to Tora Bora. The New York Times' David Brooks has a column today that's typical.

Well, fine. But shouldn't Kerry's critics point out that Monday morning took place not during this campaign but in June 2002? That's when Kerry appeared on Meet the Press and leveled that criticism for the first time. Kerry said:

Al Qaeda, a thousand strong, was gathered in one single mountain area, Tora Bora, and we turned to Afghans, who a week earlier had been fighting for the other side, and said, "Hey, you guys go up there in the mountains and go after the world's number-one terrorist and criminal who just killed 3000-plus Americans." I think that was an enormous mistake. I think the Tora Bora operation was a failed military operation.... And the fact is that the prime target, Al Qaeda, has dispersed and in many ways is more dangerous than it was when it was in the mountains of Tora Bora.

HUMAN TOUCH. The stakes in this election are so high that it's almost impossible not to personalize everything. If you're a regular Media Log reader, then you know that I think Bush is the worst president since Richard Nixon, and that the war in Iraq was by far the biggest foreign-policy blunder since Vietnam - maybe bigger. And on and on: tax cuts for the rich, the environment, civil liberties, etc., etc. You know the drill.

Anyway, I want you to read this post ("Bush for President") by John Ellis about his cousin. I know Ellis a bit and like him. He has been unfairly skewered for doing his job at Fox News four years ago - that is, calling Florida for Bush and, like everyone else, getting it wrong. Ellis does not change my mind about anything. But it's a useful reminder that Bush is human, and that - though I find his arrogant, bird-flipping, good-old-boy act incredibly off-putting - in his private life he's a perfectly fine person.

When it's all over, be it Wednesday morning or January 2009, I think the tragedy of the Bush presidency will be that he lacked the wisdom, the judgment, and the maturity to know enough not to surround himself with the likes of Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, and to do everything they tell him.

Bush is not my kind of guy. Remember his mocking Karla Faye Tucker after her execution? I think the country's future depends on his losing on Tuesday. But still, we should remember that there's an actual person behind the caricature.

WHO'S WINNING? Oh, who knows? Electoral-Vote.com: Bush, 280; Kerry 243. Slate: Kerry, 272; Bush, 266. Zogby: Kerry, 47 percent; Bush, 46 percent. (Four years ago at this time: Bush, 46 percent; Gore, 42 percent.) Real Clear Politics: Bush, 48.7 percent; Kerry, 46.2 percent.

posted at 10:58 AM | 5 comments | link

Friday, October 29, 2004

"I CAN'T BELIEVE I'M LOSING TO THIS GUY." That's what Jon "Mike Dukakis" Lovitz said about Dana "George Bush" Carvey 16 years ago. And it's what John Kerry ought to be saying about George W. Bush today.

No, Kerry's not exactly losing. The polls are very close (though Kerry's behind in all of them), and there are trends that work in Kerry's favor: the fact that undecideds tend to break for the challenger, and the enormous voter-registration efforts made by Democratic groups. Media Log is predicting that Kerry will squeak out a victory. But I say that with full knowledge that the numbers suggest otherwise. All this despite another mind-blowing week underscoring the incompetence and perniciousness of the Bush administration.

The big news of the week, of course, is that the Pentagon allowed 380 tons of incredibly dangerous explosives to slip through its grasp following the invasion of Iraq. The White House has been spinning like mad all week. Just yesterday, Bush denounced Kerry's "wild charges." But now a videotape has turned up containing incontrovertible proof that the US military moved through the compound in April 2003, happened upon what was likely a vast store of explosives, and - lacking orders to do anything about it - moved on.

Josh Marshall has been on this like a lamprey eel on a lake trout. Be sure to read his account of former weapons inspector David Kay's interview with CNN's Aaron Brown.

But if the missing explosives is the most important story, it's far from the only one.

The Bushies are trying to take away the NAACP's tax exemption, because chairman Julian Bond had the temerity to speak out against the Great Leader, and because the Republicans can't bring back the poll tax until the second term, after they've replaced a few justices on the Supreme Court.

Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton, on whose payroll he remains, is under criminal investigation.

A new study suggests that 100,000 Iraqi civilians died for what Cheney calls a "remarkable success story."

And the flagging campaign of Kentucky senator Jim Bunning, a Republican whose re-election is key to the GOP maintaining its majority, is taunting Democratic opponent Daniel Mongiardo as one of them "limp-wristed" guys, if you follow their drift.

All of which is why Kerry ought to be saying: I can't believe I'm losing to this guy.

Three more days to change that.

PAGING JOE FITZGERALD! The Boston Herald's selectively outraged ethics cop needs to be heard from. Today the Herald runs a story about the arrest of Mathew Westling, the son of former Boston University president Jon Westling, who was charged with acting up in Kenmore Square after the Red Sox' World Series victory. The Herald's headline: "Son of BU Ex-Prez Strikes Out with Police."

Oh, my. Isn't that exactly what got Joe Fitz so upset with the Globe when it noted in a subhead that Joe Nee - charged in the South Shore Columbine wanna-be case - was the son of Boston police union president Tom Nee?

Why, yes it is! Here's what Joe Fitz wrote just eight days ago: "What did this father's job have to do with his kid's alleged offense? How were the two in any way connected, let alone worthy of such attention?" That Fitzgerald column was headlined, "Globe's Headline Hit Way Below the Belt."

It will be fascinating to see whether Fitzgerald displays equal empathy for the Westling family.

posted at 1:58 PM | 4 comments | link

Thursday, October 28, 2004

PRACTICING FOR ELECTION NIGHT. Watch the video here. (Thanks to Susan Ryan-Vollmar.)

posted at 2:06 PM | 5 comments | link

HAD O'TOOLE BEEN TRAINED? Yesterday's coverage of the investigation into Victoria Snelgrove's death left a significant unanswered question: had Deputy Superintendent Robert O'Toole been trained to use the "less lethal" pepper-pellet gun or not? According to the Globe, he hadn't been; according to the Herald, he is "among the city's most experienced weapons experts."

Today that question appears to have been resolved in favor of the Herald's account. Here is today's Globe:

Disputing an account in yesterday's Globe, [attorney] Timothy M. Burke said his client [O'Toole] was trained to use the weapon....

Police sources and a person involved in the investigation into Snelgrove's death have told the Globe that Robert O'Toole was not trained to use the weapon.

But Burke said his client was trained to use the gun and fired it "at least 10 times" when he attended a five-day civil disturbance seminar in Ithaca, N.Y., prior to the Democratic National Convention in July....

Asked if O'Toole's firing the weapon 10 times at a single instructional session constituted being trained, Burke said, "In conjunction with his use of all sorts of weapons, yes."

The Herald reports today on whether O'Toole may have abandoned his supervisory role by firing the gun himself.

posted at 1:01 PM | 0 comments | link

AT LONG LAST. My Red Sox memories are the same as yours, so no need to rattle on at too much length. I first became dimly aware of the Sox in the Impossible Dream year of 1967, and began following them closely in 1968. That kicked off a several-year span when I would read the Sporting News from front to back, right down to obscure goings-on in the Pacific Coast League.

I watched the sixth and seventh games of the 1975 World Series with my parents, who were then the same age that Mrs. Media Log and I are today. The 1978 playoff game took place on the same day that my media-law class at Northeastern was meeting for the first time. We all assumed the professor, Joe Mahoney, would let us go as soon as he took attendance. We assumed wrong, but we did get out in time to hear Bucky Dent do his thing on a radio at the Northeastern News. By 1986, my father had passed away and my mother was terminally ill; she and I watched the horrifying sixth and inevitable seventh games together. Since then, I haven't gotten too emotionally invested in the Sox, although - like everyone else - I walked around in a daze for a while last year over Grady Little's utter loss of sanity.

But like I said, I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. You've lived it, too. So last night was just an incredibly satisfying moment. I've never believed in the Curse, unless you define it as perpetually fielding teams that aren't good enough. But for this team, in particular, to win it all was astounding. They were dead through July. They were dead through the first eight innings of the fourth game against the Yankees. Even though they've got the second-highest payroll in baseball, and even though they were a consensus choice to win the Series way back last spring, these Red Sox somehow found a way to make themselves beloved underdogs.

I don't even care that Curt Schilling endorsed George W. Bush on Good Morning America today. Schilling had a magnificent season, and did exactly what he was brought here to do: win a World Series, even though he risked ending his career.

It also says a lot about this team that even after handing the Cardinals a four-straight pasting, there was no obvious choice for Series MVP. Manny Ramirez was as good a pick as anyone, especially since the Sox spent most of last winter trying to get rid of him.

Given the looming free-agent situation and the possibility that Schilling won't be able to come back, it may be a few years before the Red Sox are in a position to win another one. I don't care. This is a moment many of us have been waiting for all of our lives.

BURIED IN HIS GLOBE T-SHIRT. You might have missed this one, but it's worth sharing. On Tuesday, the Boston Globe published Gloria Negri's obit of Kevin Capelle, a 37-year-old news dealer who was a dwarf. By all means read the entire piece, but the last line is priceless: "In accordance with the family's wishes, the funeral director said, Mr. Capelle will be buried wearing a Boston Globe T-shirt."

SONG OF THE SOUTH. WBUR Radio (90.9 FM) recently broadcast Michael Goldfarb's fine Southern State of Mind documentary, on how the old white South is (and isn't) changing. Of course, the problem with radio programs such as this is that they're never on when you're listening. But you can hear it online right here, as well as check out Goldfarb's photos and observations.

Because I didn't want to sit in front of my computer for an hour, I had to capture the stream on my computer, save it, convert it to a format that my iPod would understand, and then move it over. So here's a suggestion for WBUR's interim general manager, Peter Fiedler: put at least some of 'BUR's content online as MP3 files, as WNYC Radio does with On the Media.

NEW IN THIS WEEK'S PHOENIX. From the Patriot Act to presidential records, George W. Bush has presided over an unprecedented rise in government secrecy.

posted at 11:04 AM | 4 comments | link

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

THE SYNTAX OF DEADLY FORCE. Was the death of Victoria Snelgrove a tragic, unforeseeable accident? Or was it the perfectly predictable consequence of the manner in which Boston police responded to the surging crowd outside Fenway Park last Thursday morning? It all comes down to one little word: than. And the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald have gotten it wrong as often as they've gotten it right.

I'm no weapons expert, but I can understand ordinary English. The problem is that the papers have alternately described the pepper-pellet gun that killed Snelgrove as being "less than lethal" and "less lethal," as though they mean the same thing. Not exactly. Not even close. "Less than lethal" means "nonlethal"; there's really no room for interpretation. "Less lethal" means the opposite: "lethal." Less lethal than an Uzi, for sure, but lethal nevertheless.

So which is it? A website known as PoliceOne.com describes the pellet gun that was used - the FN 303, manufactured by FN Herstal - as "less lethal." The headline of this press release couldn't be more clear: "FNH USA Extends Less Lethal/FN 303 Training Program For 2004." Another law-enforcement site, Tactical Response Magazine Online, refers to "the FN Herstal 303 less-lethal weapon system." A less savory-sounding site, Sniper Country PX, is selling the 303 for $875.50. Here's the come-on: "The FN 303 is designed to be the premier system for situations requiring less lethal response. Completely dedicated to reduced lethality and liability."

The only logical conclusion is that the FN 303 is lethal, only less so than standard-issue police weapons. Yet the Globe and the Herald have seemingly gone out of their way to obfuscate the situation.

Both papers have used the phrases "less lethal" and "less than lethal" almost interchangeably, but the Globe's headlines have been particularly egregious. Last Friday, the paper ran a headline that said "'Nonlethal' Guns Causing Alarm," with a lead that made a generic reference to "less lethal weapons." On Saturday came this headline: "Nonlethal Weapons Draw Praise, Caution." The story even refers to "so-called less-than-lethal munitions." Uh, no, they're actually not so called.

The Herald has been slightly better about sticking with the phrase "less lethal," but on Monday it ran a headline that said "Protesters Demand Ban on 'Less-Than-Lethal' Guns." Columnist Mike Barnicle referred to "less-than-lethal crowd control weapons" on Tuesday. Columnist Peter Gelzinis gets it right today.

As the extent of police irresponsibility becomes clear, the distinction between "less than lethal" and "less lethal" will be crucial. Today's Globe story adds a lot of details about the alleged actions of Deputy Superintendent Robert O'Toole. The Herald is well worth reading, too. Based on what we now know, it seems that police officers fired into a crowd with weapons that they knew, or should have known, could be deadly.

Yes, this was a tragic accident. But it was also one that was entirely predictable.

CALLING ALL LAWYERS! If I were a lawyer for the Kerry campaign, I would be knocking on the door of the Club for Growth right now, demanding to see the model releases for all the elderly folks in this sleazy ad. A full-page version appears in today's New York Times, and the faces are clearly recognizable. Did these people really agree to let their images be used to sell the club's dubious message? I doubt it.

THREE REASONS WHY THE RED SOX HAVE TO WIN TONIGHT. 1) Tim Wakefield in Game Five. A good guy who helped croak the Yankees. But he had a mediocre season and stunk out the joint in Game One against the Cardinals. 2) Curt Schilling in Game Six. Sure, if he does it again, it will be one of the great sports stories of the year - it already is. But do you really want to take the chance that his stitched-up ankle will hold out for another six innings? 3) Pedro Martínez in Game Seven. Pedro can't pitch in the cold. The long-range forecast for Sunday night: 44 degrees.

Go, D-Lowe!

posted at 9:47 AM | 8 comments | link

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING. I haven't changed my mind about those Boston Herald photos, but I have calmed down. In the interest of offering some additional perspective, I suggest you take a look at Herald business reporter Jay Fitzgerald's blog, in which he offers some characteristically smart, thoughtful comments in guarded support of the Herald's original decision to run the photos.

Letters to Romenesko has a few intelligent comments, as well as a few stupid ones. They're posted in reverse chronological order, so all of the letters come after my response. Herald staffer Tom Mashberg's is particularly good, though I disagree with him.

Last Friday, on Greater Boston's "Beat the Press" media roundtable on WGBH-TV (Channel 2), I was surprised to find myself pretty much alone in asserting that the photos shouldn't have been run. You can watch it here; click on "View Webcast" in the lower left, at your own chosen speed, and make sure your popup blocker has been turned off.

In what may be a first and last, Herald columnist Mike Barnicle and I are on the same side.

Finally, the Boston Globe today has significant new information. According to the report, by Donovan Slack and John Ellement, Deputy Superintendent Robert O'Toole was among four officers who shot pepper pellets into the crowd, which raises questions as to whether that conflicted with his supervisory role. One of those pellets, as we know, killed Victoria Snelgrove.

It also turns out that O'Toole's career had been dealt a huge setback after he roughed up a prisoner on television during the 1986 World Series. He was brought out of the wilderness only last April by the new police commissioner, Kathleen O'Toole, who is not related to him.

POLLING MADNESS. I don't know what it means. You don't know what it means. Nobody knows what it means. But what else do we have?

Electoral-Vote.com, whose wild swings every day can induce motion sickness, has it Bush 285, Kerry 247 in this morning's state-by-state roundup. But that's mainly because Florida and Ohio have been awarded to Bush, which seems by no means certain.

Slate scores it closer, Bush 276, Kerry 262. The main difference is that Slate thinks Kerry's going to win Ohio.

The Los Angeles Times' do-it-yourself interactive map gives Bush 177 electoral votes and Kerry 153. Sitting in the comfort of your own home, you can add swing states to your guy's column until he reaches the magical 270. If only it were that easy!

The national polls all have the race extremely tight, with Bush generally ahead by a few points. Go to Real Clear Politics for a roundup.

posted at 11:20 AM | 2 comments | link

Monday, October 25, 2004

OCTOBER SURPRISE. Of all the arguments in favor of the war in Iraq, one of the strangest is that it's better to fight them over there than over here. Republicans, and George W. Bush himself, have used that line repeatedly. Never, though, do they explain why the turmoil in Iraq somehow renders Al Qaeda incapable of carrying out operations in the United States. Indeed, the chaos we've created is exactly the sort of environment in which terrorists thrive, making it easier for them to hop on a plane to the US rather than harder.

Thus the front page of today's New York Times is filled with the sort of dark, frightening news that points out precisely why the Bush presidency has been such an unmitigated disaster. Fifty Iraqi police recruits have been killed, execution-style. The Zarqawi organization, which now calls itself Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, has claimed responsibility, suggesting that the terrorists are growing stronger by the day.

Far, far worse is the news that 380 tons of incredibly dangerous explosives disappeared in Iraq in the aftermath of the American-British invasion. The explosives are of the sort that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 in Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, and are also useful for triggering a nuclear bomb. Saddam Hussein may not have had weapons of mass destruction, but this stuff is horrifying nevertheless.

What happened? The Times report says:

Officials in Washington said they had no answers to that question. One senior official noted that the Qaqaa complex where the explosives were stored was listed as a "medium priority" site on the Central Intelligence Agency's list of more than 500 sites that needed to be searched and secured during the invasion. "Should we have gone there? Definitely," said one senior administration official.

In the chaos that followed the invasion, however, many of those sites, even some considered a higher priority, were never secured.

Josh Marshall has a ton of supplementary material, drawing mainly from a newsletter called the Nelson Report. Apparently this story has been the subject of rumors in Washington for weeks. Think carefully about Marshall's two key observations, both backed up by evidence:

1. The White House has known about the missing explosives for many months - possibly for a year and a half - and has covered it up all this time, keeping the information not only from the American people but from the International Atomic Energy Agency as well. No doubt it desperately wanted this story not to come out until November 3.

2. The evidence suggests that these very same explosives have already been used against our troops in the form of suicide and terrorist bombings in Iraq.

We've known at least since early summer 2003 that the invasion was poorly planned and sloppily executed. Now we have the first indication that the bungling has cost Americans their lives - eight days before the election.

THE HERALD APOLOGIZES II. Here is the Boston Herald's published apology as it appeared in Saturday's editions.

SLITHERING BELOW GAYDAR. Susan Ryan-Vollmar's got a roundup of how the Bush-Cheney campaign hopes to squeak out a victory by demonizing gay and lesbian voters. You already knew that, but she's got details.

ANONYMOUS SOURCES SAY ... I'm glad that the number of people posting comments to Media Log has been increasing (guess I should whack Jon Stewart more often!), but it has exposed a flaw in Blogger.com's software.

Here's how it works. If you're a registered member of Blogger.com, you can post a comment under your user name or anonymously. But if you're not a registered member (and most people aren't), you can only post anonymously.

A few people have gotten around this by making their name part of their comment. For the most part, though, the comments section is just a sea of anonymous observations, which can be somewhat problematic.

I don't want to turn off the comments feature, but I am pondering the value of all this anonymity.

posted at 9:37 AM | 8 comments | link

Friday, October 22, 2004

THE HERALD APOLOGIZES. Editorial director Ken Chandler has issued this statement:

The Herald today published two graphic photos that angered and upset many in our community. For that I apologize. Our aim was to demonstrate this terrible tragedy as comprehensively as possible. In retrospect, the images of this unusually ugly incident were too graphic.

Word is that this will appear in tomorrow's edition as well.

Good. But I'd like to know how Chandler's going to make sure this doesn't happen again.

posted at 5:02 PM | 5 comments | link

THE GLOBE, TOO. I confess that I hadn't noticed the Globe's photo of a dying Victoria Snelgrove until I read the comments to my earlier item. I had seen the photo, and had noticed the dreadlocked young man in the foreground. But Snelgrove's sprawled body eluded my not-so-keen eye the first time around. No excuse - all I had to do was read the caption.

It's black-and-white, it's small, and it's not nearly as graphic as either of the two photos that the Herald published. It's also not on the front page. But I wouldn't have run it, and I don't think the Globe should have.

posted at 1:36 PM | 0 comments | link

A TABLOID'S NEW LOW. Last April, the Boston Herald published on its front page an Associated Press photo of the charred body of an American contractor who had been killed in Fallujah. It was an eminently newsworthy picture. Yet so deeply ingrained is the unwritten rule that you don't show photos of dead bodies that the caption said the image had been darkened so the poor man's features would be obscured.

Today, the Herald has a large, page-one color photo of Victoria Snelgrove, bloody and dying on a sidewalk outside Fenway Park, the victim of what appears to be a horrible accidental shooting by police amid the chaos and violence that took place early Thursday morning. (And no, I'm not going to link to it. Thank you for asking.) The headline: "Triumph and Tragedy." I guess the message is that it's too bad the 21-year-old Emerson College student got killed, but hey, baby, the Sox are going to the Series! Indeed, there's a "Go Sox!" teaser right above the picture.

On page four is an even more graphic photo of Snelgrove, eyes closed, her face covered with blood, as another woman checks her vital signs. At least it's in black-and-white.

What is going on here? I'm a believer in using graphic photos; I think it's safe to say that I'd go farther than a lot of people. But this doesn't add to our understanding of what happened in any way. We already know what happened: Torie Snelgrove was shot in the eye by a marble-sized projectile containing pepper spray. It happened at a moment when police officers no doubt had legitimate fears that the situation was about to spin completely out of control, as the Herald's Dave Wedge describes in pretty compelling language.

This was a terrible accident; as Kevin Cullen and Heather Allen report in today's Boston Globe, if the young woman had been hit in any part of her body other than her eye, she wouldn't have been killed. We learn absolutely nothing from the photos other than the fact that the Herald in this instance has lost all sense of decency and proportion.

How bad is this? This morning on Dennis & Callahan, on WEEI Radio (AM 850), Gerry Callahan, who writes a column for the Herald and who is not exactly known for his squeamishness or taste, refused to defend the paper when challenged by John Dennis.

The Herald has posted numerous reactions from its readers. "Outraged," "disgraceful," "shocked and appalled," "extremely troubled," "disgusted," "horrified," "thoughtless," "gratuitious and offensive," "sensationalism," and "despicable" are just some of the words and phrases that are used.

I am well aware of counterarguments in favor of running graphic photos, even of death. Years ago the Boston Herald American took an enormous amount of criticism for a Stanley Forman photo of a woman and her goddaughter plunging from a faulty fire escape; the adult died, the child survived. Forman's picture wound up winning a Pulitzer, and it played a role in improving the safety of such fire escapes. Photos of the bodies of American soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, and of a streetside execution in Vietnam, drew similar criticism, but those were obviously newsworthy.

For the past couple of years, media folks have been debating whether and how much to depict of the beheadings and other executions carried out by terrorists - a debate that the Phoenix has found itself right in the middle of. Serious people can differ, but on this they would agree: there's an inherent newsworthiness to the evil acts of people with whom we are at war that is entirely lacking from the photos of a dying Victoria Snelgrove.

I'm predicting an apology by Herald publisher Pat Purcell - but even if I'm right, that's not good enough. For the past year-and-a-half, his once-respectable tabloid has been getting racier and more offensive by the week. There are times when I think it's settling down - and then something like this happens. The paper's got some damn good reporters and photographers (the photos of Snelgrove were not taken by a Herald photog). But, under editorial director Ken Chandler, the paper has shown absolutely no controls to prevent itself from stumbling into situations like this. An apology will be meaningless unless this comes with some sort of real assurance that this won't happen again.

Meanwhile, Media Log anxiously awaits Joe Fitzgerald's take on this horrendous breakdown of any sense of journalistic ethics.

(Note: This item has been updated.)

posted at 11:23 AM | 12 comments | link

Thursday, October 21, 2004

UNBELIEVABLE! What an amazing, stunning, wonderful week this has been. I watched bits and pieces of the Red Sox' "Impossible Dream" season in 1967. I distinctly remember Game Six of the 1975 World Series, perhaps the greatest baseball game ever, and Game Six of the '86 Series, certainly the all-time worst on a long list for Sox fans. And, of course, there was last year's Game Seven, number-two on the list.

I have nothing to say beyond that, other than what hundreds and thousands of others are saying. I just thought you'd enjoy the back page of today's New York Post, along with this piece on New York's newest villain: Alex Rodriguez, the Greatest Shortstop of All Time, the guy who almost came to Boston and who is now a distinctly mediocre third baseman for the Yankees.

Not to mention a poor sport and a crybaby.

JOE FITZ, MEDIA CRITIC. If you're like most people, you may be surprised to learn that Joe Fitzgerald still writes a column (free this week) for the Boston Herald. The former sportswriter's sleepy compendium of religious pieties and gay-bashing isn't exactly a must-read.

Yesterday, Fitzgerald turned his keenly honed moral eye to the Boston Globe, which, he claimed, had done something truly repellant: this past Tuesday the Globe mentioned in a front-page subhead the fact that Joe Nee, a just-arrested 18-year-old suspect in the Marshfield "Natural Born Killers" case, is the son of Boston Police Patrolmen's Association president Tom Nee.

"What did this father's job have to do with his kid's alleged offense? How were the two in any way connected, let alone worthy of such attention?," asked the shocked, shocked Joe Fitz in a column headlined "Globe's Headline Hit Way Below the Belt."

Now, let me back up for a moment. I've been troubled by the way both dailies (not to mention other media outlets) have handled this story. The Globe actually led the paper with it on October 7, the day after authorities revealed they had arrested Tobin Kerns, 16, on charges that he had planned to kill eight teachers and students at Marshfield High School in a plot reminiscent of the Columbine killings.

Granted, you never know until something horrible actually happens, but it struck me then - and still does - that the Globe and the Herald have both overplayed the story, given the high likelihood that Kerns is guilty of little more than having an unusually disturbing fantasy life. The primary fault lies with law-enforcement officials, who should have quietly insisted on this kid getting help rather than turning him into a poster boy for school violence. Still, the papers shouldn't have played along.

Okay, now, back to the scene of the crime, as it were. It turns out that the first newspaper to mention Joe Nee's name in connection with this case was - yes! - the Herald. Way back on October 7, the Herald reported:

Benjamin Kerns [the suspect's father] and other sources said one of the other members of Kern's group is Joe Nee, the son of Boston police union President Thomas Nee. Numerous attempts to contact Thomas Nee were unsuccessful.

However, a source said Nee was one of a group of kids "hanging around saying, 'Wouldn't it be cool to blow up the high school?'"

But "once they realized [Kerns] was serious, they went to authorities."

Here is what the Globe reported the same day:

[Benjamin] Kerns said that ... his son had associated with three male friends from school and that the group may have discussed plans for a violent act, but he didn't think the youths would have carried out the plan. And he said one of the other three youths was the ringleader, not his son....

Kerns identified the teenager who he said was the mastermind, but the Globe is withholding that identity because the youth has not been charged. That youth's father declined to comment last night.

Uh, Professor Fitzgerald, who do you think was leading the journalistic ethics battle at that point?

In his column yesterday, Fitzgerald hangs his hat on the fact that the Globe stuck Joe Nee's father in its headline, whereas the Herald merely gave it a "mention" in its story. (Actually, three mentions, including a story with this lead: "The teen son of the Boston police union head showed a handgun to a classmate near Marshfield High School and showed another a hit list of people 'they were going to kill,' prosecutors said.")

I'm sure Fitzgerald knows all this, which is why he was clever enough to restrict his criticism to the Globe's headline. For good measure, he also threw in a few of the Herald's past journalistic sins, just to make sure everyone knew that of course he wasn't singling out the Globe. But his selective presentation of the facts was, needless to say, fundamentally dishonest.

As this story moves forward, I hope both papers, as well as other news orgs, stop salivating over handouts from prosecutors and start showing proper skepticism about this story.

But Joe Fitz's take on the Globe's subhead is ludicrous. He might have a point if Joe Nee's arrest had gotten more attention than it should have simply because Nee has a well-known father. But that's obviously not the case given how much coverage this story has been getting all along.

The real concern is that the media's overheated coverage could end up damaging the lives and prospects of at least two troubled young men. In that context, the headline about Tom Nee was irrelevant.

READ THIS. Former Phoenix news editor Susan Ryan-Vollmar has started a blog "about motherhood, politics, and gay marriage." Last night she posted a dispiriting item about a meeting she attended on Boston's school-assignment plans. Her conclusion: "When I came home from the meeting, I gave Mrs. SRV a summary and, just one year after buying our house in Boston, we had our first serious discussion about moving out of the city."

NEW IN THIS WEEK'S PHOENIX. Dick Cheney's reputation is that of "the evil genius." His record at Halliburton, though, reveals him to be nothing more than a corrupt, incompetent hack.

posted at 9:13 AM | 3 comments | link

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

COLD COMFORT. Keeping their Sox on atop Mount Washington at 7:31 this morning.

MORE ON STEWART. CNET's got a good piece by Matt Hines on the Net's fastest-growing phenomenon - Jon Stewart's appearance on Crossfire. "The volume of downloads outpaced CNN's recent ratings numbers for the actual show," Hines writes, which isn't exactly a surprise.

Hines also describes Crossfire as a "hit" in its current 4:30 p.m. time slot, reporting that it drew an average audience of 615,000 during the month of September. I guess it all depends on your point of reference. The three network newscasts draw between 20 million and 30 million viewers depending on the news, and National Public Radio's All Things Considered has about 10 million listeners. Just trying to put into perspective Stewart's accusation that Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson are personally dragging down the level of political discourse.

Meanwhile, Media Log reader C.P. suggests a useful expansion of my comment yesterday that "I know Carlson a little, and he's not a dick, although I'll admit that he often plays one on television." So here's a reminder about how Carlson earlier this year dismissed John Edwards's representation of a little girl whose intestines were sucked out by faulty swimming pool motor as a "Jacuzzi" case - and of how he kept returning to that theme over and over even after the record had been set straight.

Disgusting and shameless, to say the least. C.P.'s point: If you play a dick long enough, you eventually become a dick.

THIS IS HILARIOUS. The only thing missing from this fantasy is Christopher Reeve rising from the dead and walking again. (Thanks, Bill.)

posted at 9:11 AM | 2 comments | link

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

MEDIA LOG IN THE CROSSFIRE! I've never written anything for Media Log that has generated as many comments - okay, attacks - as my Saturday post on Jon Stewart's Crossfire appearance. (The comments begin at the end of the item.) "Did you even watch the show?" asked one. A: Yes, and I read the transcript, too. "Man, Stewart does everything but build a 4-lane highway to his point and you still miss it," said another. About the kindest it got was this: "Dan, you're usually very insightful, but you missed the point here completely."

I haven't changed my mind, but I do have some additional thoughts that might help put this in perspective. I yield to no one in my admiration of Stewart and The Daily Show - something I made crystal clear on Saturday. But that doesn't mean I have to like what he did on Crossfire. To wit:

1. Stewart picked the wrong targets. By directly challenging Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala, the hosts of a tired old show that no one watches, Stewart came off - as I said earlier - as something of a bully and a bore. That doesn't mean Stewart has to shut up unless he can wangle an invitation onto Meet the Press. (And wouldn't it be sweet to see him get in Tim Russert's face?) It does mean that Stewart would have been better served by criticizing the mainstream media in general, even to the point of asking Begala and Carlson whether they agreed with him, and to join with him. Not that they would have, but so what?

2. Stewart needs to be more self-aware. By offering serious media criticism, and then throwing up his hands and saying, in effect, "Hey, I'm just a comedian" every time Carlson took him on, Stewart came off as slippery and disingenuous. Sorry, Jon, but you can't interview Bill Clinton, Richard Clarke, Bill O'Reilly, Bob Dole, etc., etc., and still say you're just a comedian. The Daily Show is a hybrid, and a brilliant one at that. Yes, it's funny, but it's also truer than most real news shows, which is one of the reasons that people watch it. Stop pretending otherwise.

3. Stewart endangered the franchise. By stepping out of character the way he did, Stewart runs the risk of being seen as less of an inspired subversive and more of an activist with an agenda he's trying to push. In another context, this would be known as being willing to spend one's political capital, and I suppose there's something admirable about it. But his single most important contribution to the culture (sorry for the pomposity, but I don't think I'm overstating it) is as host of The Daily Show. If he starts taking himself too seriously, then he's just another Bill Maher - not a bad thing, but a lot less unique. We can all see exactly what Stewart and company think of the mainstream media every night, and they make their point a lot more effectively than Stewart did last Friday.

4. Stewart became what he criticized. Everyone's favorite moment was when Stewart called Carlson "a dick." (For the record, I know Carlson a little, and he's not a dick, although I'll admit that he often plays one on television.) Quite a closing for someone who had just spent an entire interview lamenting the confrontational nature of political talk shows. Yes, I know, he was also criticizing how stupid and predictable they are. Well, calling someone "a dick" may not be predictable, but it's definitely stupid.

Over at Slate, Dana Stevens loved Stewart's outburst, calling it a "searing moment of lucidity." Well, I'll concede that it was that, too. Meanwhile, keep those e-mails coming.

posted at 1:33 PM | 22 comments | link

Monday, October 18, 2004

THE "L" WORD. It's not "liberal"! Like most sane observers, I've been puzzled and disheartened by the apparent success the Bush-Cheney campaign is having over the issue of John Kerry's mentioning Dick and Lynne Cheney's lesbian daughter, Mary.

I thought Kerry's invocation of the Cheneys during last week's debate was awkward and perhaps unnecessary; John Edwards handled it better in his debate with Dick Cheney, probably because he was talking to Dad, not about him. But never would I have dreamed that the Republicans could score points by referring to Kerry's "cheap and tawdry political trick," as noted lesbian-romance novelist Lynne Cheney did last week.

Now Paul Johnson, of 365Gay.com, reports that the furious Republican response may be have been the brainchild of M-Che herself. Johnson writes:

Sources close to the Bush-Cheney campaign tell 365Gay.com that the idea came up in a telephone call between Mary and her parents immediately after the presidential debate Wednesday night.

The younger Cheney, who serves as a backroom advisor to her father, suggested that she would continue to be a "issue" for Democrats unless something was done to stop it immediately.

If Johnson is right, then the temptation is to call this perhaps the ultimate in self-loathing, but I'm not going to go there. Even though she used to work as the liaison to the gay-and-lesbian community for Coors, and even though she has a prominent position in her father's campaign, Mary Cheney is known to value her privacy. She may have genuinely been getting sick and tired of hearing the Democrats drop her name every time the issue of same-sex marriage came up. Still, her parents' rhetoric suggests they are still not comfortable with their daughter's sexual orientation.

What's truly weird about this is that the Cheneys and other Republicans have gotten away with practically accusing Kerry of outing a openly lesbian adult who is also a public figure. The Democrats must feel like the Red Sox getting flogged by the Yankees once again: How do they do it? Adam Nagourney has an idea in today's New York Times:

In Mr. Kerry's mind, he was stating a well-known fact. Ms. Cheney is openly gay, and her father mentioned it at one of his rallies before the Republican convention. More significant, calling someone a lesbian in this era is hardly an insult in Mr. Kerry's mind, his advisers said.

But to listen to conservative radio shows, or to talk to voters since the debate, it is clear that not everyone shares Mr. Kerry's view. Even some Democrats said that many viewers thought either that Mr. Kerry was outing Ms. Cheney, or that calling someone a lesbian was a schoolyard insult, a bit of behavior that was unseemly for a presidential candidate.

The Incomparable One agrees, writing:

Some of you still don't understand why we've said that this comment was stupid. It was stupid because John Kerry is running for president, and has to get people to vote for him. And, however enlightened you may be about this, the American electorate does not share your outlook. Almost surely, Kerry is losing votes because of this ill-advised comment.

In an election as close as this one is likely to be, any little thing can make a difference. Four years ago, Al Gore may very well have lost (well, not "lost," but you know what I mean) because the media falsely and repeatedly quoted him as saying he had "invented the Internet."

Wouldn't it be something if Kerry loses because he said the word "lesbian"? Does anyone think it's even remotely as important as the deaths of 1101 American troops in Iraq?

NOT SO SWIFT. Last Friday, Media Log received intelligence that Ted Koppel had let swift-boat liar John O'Neill run wild on Nightline the night before. I did not have a chance to check it out, but Somerby, as usual, has all the ugly details.

posted at 11:53 AM | 6 comments | link

Saturday, October 16, 2004

STEWART IN THE CROSSFIRE. Media Log has received several e-mails urging me to look at Jon Stewart's getting-more-famous-by-the-minute appearance on CNN's Crossfire yesterday, and asking me what I make of it. Frankly, not much. In taking down hosts Paul Begala and especially Tucker Carlson, Stewart offered some sharp criticism of the mainstream media and political discourse - criticisms with which I largely agree. But Stewart seems not to realize his own place in the modern media firmament.

Stewart's Daily Show does enormous numbers for cable; a recent appearance by Bill Clinton drew a reported 1.9 million viewers. The crew has a bestselling book, America (The Book). Stewart's on the cover of Rolling Stone. By contrast, Crossfire is a dying show based on a dying paradigm. (At least I'd like to think so, although Fox's detestable Hannity & Colmes would seem to suggest otherwise.) Moved out of its prime-time slot last year, Crossfire is now seen at 4:30 p.m. by an audience that is somewhere around 500,000 people - few of them in the prime youth demographic that watches Stewart.

Despite this power imbalance, Stewart's attitude during his Crossfire appearance was that he was the little guy, standing up for what is good and true against the big, bad mainstream media in the persons of Carlson and Begala. Look at what he said every time he was challenged:

If you want to compare your show to a comedy show, you're more than welcome to....

You know, it's interesting to hear you talk about my responsibility.... I didn't realize that - and maybe this explains quite a bit ... is that the news organizations look to Comedy Central for their cues on integrity....

You're on CNN. The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls.

Yes, Stewart made some serious points about the deleterious effect of shouting-head shows such as Crossfire. But every time Carlson tried to defend himself, he pulled his Hey-I'm-just-a-comedian shtick. The fact is, it's Jon Stewart who is the 500-pound gorilla. He's already won. Far from speaking truth to power, his appearance was akin to the victor coming in and shooting the wounded.

Look at this Annenberg Center survey on how knowledgeable Daily Show viewers are about politics. The Daily Show may be a comedy program, but it's more politically savvy than anything else on television, and Stewart's interviews with political figures are uncommonly insightful and civilized.

No doubt Stewart thought he was performing a public service yesterday. The truth is that he does that every Monday through Thursday at 11 p.m. Yesterday, he was just a bore and a bully.

posted at 2:41 PM | 32 comments | link

Friday, October 15, 2004

FISH IN A BARREL. As these quotes suggest, Bill O'Reilly is no hypocrite. The closest I could come was his hilarious comment about "respect" for one's partner. Even so, his past utterances on matters of the flesh look pretty damn entertaining right now, don't they?

Monica Lewinsky is going to be up there on the stand, if the trial happens, describing salacious acts. That's going to be cleansing? I'm going to need a shower after that. - The O'Reilly Factor, 12/28/98

O'Reilly's prescriptions on sex are thoroughly modern and in strong contradiction to his strict Catholic upbringing. One of the book's surprises is the revelation that he is definitely no social conservative, as most viewers of his TV show might falsely conclude. Abstinence is "intrustive and ridiculous ... Use protection. Make dead sure that no one else is going to be hurt by this encounter. Respect your partner before and after." - Dale Steinreich, 2/2/00

This is not about a bare breast. If Janet Jackson wants to flash, she can come on over to my office anytime. I'll leave the door unlocked for you, Janet. Partial nudity's no big deal except when it is totally out of context and youngsters are watching. Get it? That's sleazy. - The O'Reilly Factor, 2/3/04

The message here is that American society really doesn't care how anyone behaves and that some in corporate America will reward tawdry behavior all day long. Believe me, this situation is not lost on children. They see Monica scoring in the media, and they know exactly how the play was made. - O'Reilly's syndicated column, 5/3/03

posted at 10:56 AM | 0 comments | link

Thursday, October 14, 2004

ADVICE TO PRESIDENT BUSH. Vigorous hand-washing should be enough, but you might want a tetanus shot just to be sure. And by the way, the New York Daily News account doesn't stint on many of the details. Highly recommended!

posted at 2:01 PM | 0 comments | link

BLACK CAUCUS FOLLOW-UP. Kerry did blow it on the Congressional Black Caucus, according to this analysis by FactCheck.org. Some of this stuff, though, is nitpicking and even a little misleading. For instance:

• "Kerry wrongly claimed Bush 'hasn't met with the Black Congressional Caucus.' He garbled the organization's name, for one thing. It's actually the Congressional Black Caucus, made up of 39 African-American members of the House." Well, excuse me!
• "Kerry twice claimed 1.6 million jobs have been lost under Bush, which is 1 million too high." Actually, Kerry meant to say that 1.6 million private-sector jobs have been lost. FactCheck is being accurate but misses the point.
• "Kerry claimed Bush 'has taken a $5.6 trillion surplus and turned it into deficits as far as the eye can see.' But the country never actually had a $5.6 trillion surplus. The projected surplus Kerry was referring to was a 10-year figure that was already made dubious by a weakening economy and a pent-up Congressional urge to spend. The largest annual surplus actually realized was $236 billion in fiscal year 2000, which ended a month before Bush was elected." This is wrong? Not by my accounting.

In theory, truth-testing the candidates' claims is a great idea. In practice, it's surprising what a subjective exercise it really is.

NEW IN THIS WEEK'S PHOENIX. What's next for WBUR Radio (90.9 FM)?

posted at 1:45 PM | 2 comments | link

VOTERS TO BUSH: WE'VE SEEN ENOUGH. The third and final presidential debate was the only one in which John Kerry and George W. Bush came across as stylistic and substantive equals. And yet the immediate post-debate polls show that the public believes Kerry beat Bush decisively last night. That might mean that viewers genuinely like what Kerry is saying more than they like Bush's pronouncements. Or it might mean that, nearly four years after they didn't actually elect him president, the voters are sick and tired of Bush. Whatever, it's certainly not good news for Republicans.

Not to rely too heavily on polls (hah!), but Gallup this morning - so recently flogged by liberals for polling samples that seemed to skew Republican - reports that the registered voters it surveyed thought Kerry won last night's debate by a margin of 52 percent to 39 percent. That's nearly as wide a gap as Gallup recorded after the first debate, which was a disaster for Bush.

CBS News's survey of uncommitted voters found that Kerry beat Bush by 39 percent to 25 percent.

ABC News had it 42 percent Kerry, 41 percent Bush; but though I can't find a reference to it on the ABC website this morning, the network reported last night that its sample comprised 38 percent Republicans and 30 percent Democrats, so award Kerry at least another two or three points.

This sounds like a country looking for a new president, does it not? If Kerry can keep running an error-free, forward-looking campaign, then he ought to win this thing. A few days ago even Jay Severin, a right-wing talk-show host on WTKK Radio (96.9 FM), predicted Kerry would win if the final polls show him within a few points of Bush, since undecideds tend to break heavily against the incumbent. Offensive though Severin's rhetoric may be, he does know a few things about politics. Add to that the vigorous voter-registration efforts that Democratic-aligned groups have been conducted in swing states, and it looks like Kerry's got more going for him than Bush does at this point.

You may have noticed that I'm staying away from the debate itself. True! Rhetorically, I thought it was a little flat. There really weren't any lines or attacks or assertions that really stood out as transformative or even particularly interesting. I did think that Kerry was reasonably effective in continually pushing the line that the richest one percent of Americans received $89 billion because of Bush's tax cut last year, while (take your pick) Social Security, after-school programs, and health-care needs go unfunded. Bush seemed especially pathetic on the assault-weapons ban. And he came off as petulant and petty after Kerry observed that two network newscasts had concluded that Bush's critique of Kerry's health plan was "fiction" and "untrue." Said Bush: "In all due respect, I'm not so sure it's credible to quote leading news organizations about - oh, never mind."

As for factual screw-ups, Kerry's pronouncement that Bush had never met with the Congressional Black Caucus turned out not to be true. That strikes me as potentially dangerous, although I'm waiting for further word on a tip I received this morning from Media Log reader W.R. Apparently NPR reported that Bush only met with the CBC after members showed up at the White House uninvited and demanded that he meet with them. So this one could bounce back in Bush's face.

The biggest screw-up of the night, though, goes to Bush. His and Dick Cheney's sloppy rhetoric about Kerry's supposed wimpiness toward terrorism has been a consistent theme of the campaign. In the past few days, and last night, Bush has been ripping Kerry for suggesting that terrorism ought to be approached like organized crime and brought down to a manageable level - never mind that that sounds rather like Bush's remarks to Matt Lauer a few months ago, in which he said it may not be possible actually to "win" the war against terrorism.

Well, last night Kerry criticized Bush for once having minimized the threat posed by Osama bin Laden - and Bush, falsely, denied it. I'll let Slate's Chris Suellentrop pick up the play-by-play:

Just as it took Al Gore three debates to settle on the right tone during the 2000 campaign, President Bush figured out in his third face-off with John Kerry how to be neither too hot nor too cold. But Kerry was as good as he can be, too, and more important, what good the president did with his performance will be overshadowed Thursday when the TV networks spend the entire day running video clips of him saying of Osama Bin Laden on March 13, 2002, "I truly am not that concerned about him."

By denying that he had ever minimized the threat posed by Bin Laden, Bush handed Kerry, during the very first question, the victory in the post-debate spin. The Kerry campaign's critique of the president is that he has doesn't tell the truth, that he won't admit mistakes, and that he refuses to acknowledge reality. Bush's answer played into all three claims.

This morning, at least, I'd rather be Bob Shrum than Karl Rove.

posted at 7:05 AM | 3 comments | link

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

OH. MY. GOD. Just for the record, Media Log has absolutely no opinion as to the truthfulness of this sexual-harassment complaint filed against Fox News loudmouth Bill O'Reilly. But the Smoking Gun, which has got the whole thing posted, understates matters by calling it merely "an incredible page-turner."

I am also intrigued by the Gun's speculation that "[b]ased on the extensive quotations cited in the complaint, it appears a safe bet that [Andrea] Mackris, 33, recorded some of O'Reilly's more steamy soliloquies." Well, if there's a God in heaven, she did. Let's be cautious, though - according to this AP account, O'Reilly's trying to get Mackris to turn over whatever tapes she has. Of course, that could be just typical O'Reilly bravado.

By all means read the whole thing. Meanwhile, I think I'll try to catching the opening minutes of The Factor tonight.

posted at 7:17 PM | 1 comments | link

WBUR NAMES INTERIM GM. Two days before WBUR Radio general manager Jane Christo officially leaves, Boston University has announced that Peter Fiedler - the son of the late Boston Pops conductor Arthur Fiedler - will replace her on an interim basis. The text of the announcement is as follows:

BOSTON - Boston University today announced that Peter Fiedler will be the interim general manager of WBUR-FM. Fiedler met with station managers today and will begin work immediately.

"Sitting down with staff members will be my top priority," said Fiedler, who will oversee the day-to-day operations of the station during the search for a permanent general manager. "I want to hear from employees at all levels of the operation as we work on strengthening one of the top public radio stations in the country."

Fiedler began his 25-year media career in television production at WCVB-TV, the ABC affiliate in Boston, where he held a variety of positions including unit manager and field producer/director. He provided creative production and direction to an interactive video startup in 1984. He then became Vice President and General Manager for Target Productions and then served as Director of Operations for Channel 68 in Boston. Fiedler currently oversees sports broadcasting, media services, publications and the classroom upgrade technology program as an assistant vice president at Boston University.

Fiedler, who lives with his wife and three children in Boxford, is the son of legendary Boston Pops Conductor Arthur Fiedler and remains actively involved in the annual 4th of July concert on the Esplanade.

The two most significant pieces of news here, I think, are that (1) Fiedler was named so quickly (in an interview with the Phoenix this week, for an item that will be published tomorrow, BU spokeswoman Nancy Sterling suggested the interim GM might not be named until next week); and (2) Christo will be replaced not by one of her own underlings, but rather by someone with significant broadcast experience who's now in an executive position at BU.

The Channel 68 background is interesting as well. During the 1990s, BU acquired the station and attempted to turn it into a news-and-public-affairs channel. You might say the university tried to emulate what Christo had accomplished at WBUR and failed (the station is now owned by the family-friendly PAX chain), although that would be unfair, since Channel 68 had nothing like National Public Radio to rely on for a good share of its programming.

Among the folks who passed through Channel 68 were Charles Adler, now a talk-shot host at CJOB Radio, in Winnipeg, as well as two hosts who moved on to prominent slots at WBUR: Ted O'Brien (now at BU) and Delores Handy-Brown.

posted at 4:35 PM | 2 comments | link

EVIL AND TRAGEDY IN IRAQ. One of the reasons I'm sympathetic to John Kerry is that his agonized stance on the war in Iraq reflects my own. By no means have I always agreed with him. I thought he should have voted against giving George W. Bush the authority to go to war, but for the $87 billion in reconstruction money for Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, I agree with his fundamental stance that we needed to work closely with the international community in order to get rid of Saddam Hussein, truly one of the most evil people on the planet.

That's why Bush's swaggering, unilateral invasion of Iraq was such a tragedy. The goal shouldn't have been to deprive Saddam of his non-existent weapons of mass destruction. As Kerry and numerous others have argued, if the UN weapons inspectors had been allowed to do their jobs, it would eventually have become clear that Saddam didn't have any. Rather, what was needed was some sort of intervention to stop what was an ongoing human-rights catastrophe.

Perhaps a US-backed coup would have done the trick, although Bill Clinton supposedly pushed for that during his presidency and wasn't able to penetrate Saddam's inner sanctum. Perhaps the world community could have been persuaded to drive Saddam out of power - a dubious proposition, I'll acknowledge, given that some of our would-be allies, including the French, were on the take, as New York Times columnist William Safire explains today.

Regardless, Bush's policies have left us with the worst of all possible worlds. Yes, Saddam is gone, but Iraq is in chaos, on the brink of civil war, with its people in far more danger than they were when the dictator was in power.

Yet, every so often, we're reminded of the horrors of Saddam's Iraq. Today the Boston Globe's Thanassis Cambanis - who has managed to find a way to do courageous, enterprising reporting from Iraq despite the dangers - has a gut-wrenching piece on a mass grave being excavated in the Kurdish area of northern Iraq. The excavation is taking place to amass evidence to be used against Saddam when he is put on trial. This passage tells you everything you need to know about Saddam Hussein:

At the end of the process, the team will produce evidence packets for each individual case in the form of slide presentations. Kehoe showed some of the slides:

One series showed a boy, first in the grave holding a red-and-white-striped ball, then his skeleton and clothes laid out in order.

Another showed a mother and her infant son. The mother's severed hand was found in her child's blanket with the baby's skeleton. The forensic pictures show his T-shirt, which bears the legend "Summer," and the mother's five pairs of gold earrings.

What should we have done? I don't know. I don't think Kerry knows, either. What's clear is that we shouldn't have done what Bush did. An evil dictator today sits in prison. But the Iraqi people are less safe than they were before the war, and so are we.

Kerry has acknowledged repeatedly that we can't possible pull out now. If we did, Iraq would complete its transformation into a haven for terrorists. All we can do is keep fighting and hope for the best.

ME UPON MY PONY ON MY BOAT. I did not immediately appreciate the loathsomeness quotient of Irene Sege's Globe profile yesterday of former network news personality Jane Clayson Johnson. But after my fellow Phoenicians started screaming about it, I took a closer look.

I'll skip the full analysis, but do check out this passage on Johnson's decision to give up her career in order to become a full-time mother:

Over and over, Johnson says she respects whatever path mothers take. "I want to talk about my choice," she says, "and not make judgments about other people." She recognizes that she has more financial means than most. "I'm very aware and very respectful of single moms out there who are working two and three jobs to make ends meet. I respect what they're doing. I put enough money away where I could make this decision. I understand that. And I have a husband who makes a good living." What about married mothers who work outside the home? "I don't know," she says. "Sometimes there are two incomes and maybe it would be important for the kids to have a parent at home. Sometimes to forego a new car or a boat or some sort of luxury, and maybe live in a more modest fashion so you're not sacrificing at home, is an important thing."

And kudos to whoever wrote what I assume (hope?) was the deliberately sly headline, "Focus on the Family." Dr. Dobson would be pleased.

WE DO IT ALL FOR YOU! Outsiders may assume that it's nothing but craft-brewed beer and mushroom pizza with extra cheese here at Media Log Central. In fact, our duties sometimes weigh heavily upon us. Such will it be tonight, when I'll be watching the third debate between Kerry and Bush rather than the Red Sox-Yankees playoff game. Although I imagine I'll steal a few glances at the game.

Kerry's got work to do. According to this roundup of state-by-state polls, he now trails Bush in the Electoral College by a margin of 291 to 228. That's a turnaround from just a few days ago, when Kerry, if I recall correctly, had 270 electoral votes.

Your pre-debate assignment for today is to read this Salon piece on whether Bush was wired for sound in the first two debates. I have no idea what to make of this story. But that's no ordinary bulge, is it?

posted at 10:04 AM | 7 comments | link

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

A SMALL MATTER OF FREE SPEECH. Sinclair Broadcast Group's decision to order 62 of its television stations to air a vicious anti-Kerry "documentary" in the closing weeks of the campaign is loathsome, of course. But what I find fascinating is the ease with which Democrats and liberals are ready to trample over the First Amendment in order to keep Stolen Honor off the air.

This morning, I heard syndicated progressive talk-show host Stephanie Miller ask rhetorically, "That can't be legal, can it?" The Democrats are moving on two fronts. The Democratic National Committee plans to file a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, charging that the broadcast amounts to an illegal in-kind campaign contribution to Bush-Cheney. And 18 Democratic senators will ask the Federal Communications Commission whether broadcasting Stolen Honor just before the election amounts to an improper use of the public airwaves.

So much for freedom of speech, eh?

Now, granted, there are all kinds of ironies and hypocrisies involved here. Last night, on CNN, Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz observed how outraged conservatives would be if any of the broadcast or cable networks had decided to show Fahrenheit 9/11. By contrast, the Sinclair story isn't getting much attention. CNN anchor Aaron Brown looked as though he had accidentally swallowed a cockroach as he interviewed Sinclair's unctuously disingenuous spokesman, Mark Hyman. As well he should have. What Sinclair is doing is sleazy political gamesmanship.

But in a perfect world, there would be nothing wrong with what Sinclair is doing, at least not from a constitutional, legal, or regulatory point of view. Then again, in a perfect world, Sinclair would not own 62 television stations. It might own a handful in different parts of the country. And other media companies would face the same ownership restrictions.

If 62 independent television-station owners decided to show Stolen Honor - or Fahrenheit 9/11, for that matter - well, what of it? It's the magnifying effect of huge media conglomerates that's the concern here. One decision in one corporate suite, made by executives who've given money to the Bush campaign and who depend on the regulatory favors of the Bush-appointed FCC, and anti-Kerry hate propaganda is broadcast from coast to coast.

In the current monopoly environment, it's hard to disagree with the Democrats. Still, shouldn't we be just a little uncomfortable with the notion of demanding that the government censor (and censure) speech that we don't like?

The title of Nat Hentoff's 1992 book, Free Speech for Me, but Not for Thee, says it all.

COMPUTER WOES CONTINUE. For the third and what I hope will be the final time in less that three months, I am without the official Media Log iBook. This time, the problem is the internal Airport (i.e., WiFi) antenna, which is apparently disconnected or frayed. Blogging will be affected, but not too much - I hope.

posted at 10:21 AM | 13 comments | link

Monday, October 11, 2004

TERRORISM, CHEEZ WHIZ, AND THE VIRTUES OF NUANCE. Matt Bai has an excellent analysis of John Kerry's anti-terrorism policy in the current New York Times Magazine. But perhaps what's most fascinating about it is Bai's sense (he doesn't have much in the way of hard evidence, but I suspect he's right) that Kerry himself is wary of talking much about it for fear of being further labeled as a weak-willed - yes, you guessed it - flip-flopper.

Such is the state of the political dialogue these days. The Republicans put out the word that Kerry is a weathervane, the media pick up on it, and, finally, the candidate himself is stuck with slogans that he probably doesn't fully accept (such as the "war" on terror) for fear of being misunderstood and lampooned.

Based on the very directly stated views of Kerry's likely secretary of state, Richard Holbrooke ("We're not in a war on terror, in the literal sense. The war on terror is like saying 'the war on poverty.' It's just a metaphor. What we're really talking about is winning the ideological struggle so that people stop turning themselves into suicide bombers.") and on Kerry's own lengthy, if indirect, comments, Bai deduces that Kerry's principal weapon against Al Qaeda will be the sort of international policing efforts he's been talking about for years, long before 9/11. Bai writes:

Kerry's view, that the 21st century will be defined by the organized world's struggle against agents of chaos and lawlessness, might be the beginning of a compelling vision. The idea that America and its allies, sharing resources and using the latest technologies, could track the movements of terrorists, seize their bank accounts and carry out targeted military strikes to eliminate them, seems more optimistic and more practical than the notion that the conventional armies of the United States will inevitably have to punish or even invade every Islamic country that might abet radicalism.

And yet, you can understand why Kerry has been so tentative in advancing this idea. It's comforting to think that Al Qaeda might be as easily marginalized as a bunch of drug-running thugs, that an "effective" assault on its bank accounts might cripple its twisted campaign against Americans. But Americans are frightened - an emotion that has benefited Bush, and one that he has done little to dissuade - and many of them perceive a far more existential threat to their lives than the one Kerry describes. In this climate, Kerry's rather dry recitations about money-laundering laws and intelligence-sharing agreements can sound oddly discordant. We are living at a time that feels historically consequential, where people seem to expect - and perhaps deserve - a theory of the world that matches the scope of their insecurity.

Theoretically, Kerry could still find a way to wrap his ideas into some bold and cohesive construct for the next half-century - a Kerry Doctrine, perhaps, or a campaign against chaos, rather than a war on terror - that people will understand and relate to. But he has always been a man who prides himself on appreciating the subtleties of public policy, and everything in his experience has conditioned him to avoid unsubtle constructs and grand designs. His aversion to Big Think has resulted in one of the campaign's oddities: it is Bush, the man vilified by liberals as intellectually vapid, who has emerged as the de facto visionary in the campaign, trying to impose some long-term thematic order on a dangerous and disorderly world, while Kerry carves the globe into a series of discrete problems with specific solutions.

For a better understanding of the intellectually impoverished landscape on which this campaign is being fought, have a look at Jonathan Chait's cover story (sub. req.) in the current New Republic. Chait observes that Kerry is hardly unique in being labeled a "flip-flopper" - that the Republicans also used it to considerable effect against Bill Clinton in 1992 (and, to a lesser extent, in '96) and against Al Gore in 2000.

Chait argues that the "flip-flopper" label is a natural consequence of Clinton's having taken some of the Republicans' favorite issues off the table, such as welfare reform, taxes, the military, and crime. All the Republicans really had left at that point was to claim that Clinton/Gore/Kerry have switched so profoundly on the issues that they don't have the character to be president. Yet as Chait notes, the notion that Kerry has flip-flopped more than George W. Bush has is absurd. Bush has been for and against abortion rights, for and against a Department of Homeland Security, for and against the formation of the 9/11 Commission, even for and against letting national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice testify before Congress. Chait writes:

The alleged character flaws of whomever the Democrats nominate for president change from election to election. But the charge of flip-flopping always plays a central role for a very important reason: It's the natural parry to the Democrats' post-Clinton centrism. The moderation that has characterized the Democratic Party since Clinton has the natural advantage of avoiding unpopular stances. It also has two disadvantages. First, as the party has shifted right, it has forced Democrats in its mainstream to shift along with it. (Hence Kerry's flip-flop on the death penalty.)

Second, New Democrat-style centrism saddles its adherents with positions that straddle the political divide. Kerry supported developing missile defense but not deploying it immediately; he supported NAFTA, which had labor and environmental provisions, but opposed a trade bill that did not. When your position on many issues is "neither too much nor too little," you can appear inconsistent even if you're not. Sure, it doesn't help that Kerry has trouble explaining himself. But even a gifted communicator like Clinton, remember, was widely seen as a waffler.

So why does the label stick to Democrats but not Republicans? Chait argues that it's got a lot to do with the Republicans' superior skills at media manipulation - at establishing a narrative for which the press, ever hungry for perceived character flaws, is all too eager to fill in the details. Chait revisits Kerry's encounter with Cheez Whiz to illuminating effect, noting how much more that seemed to resonate than did another incident in which Bush got peeved at an underling for eating his peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich.

"One reason stories about Bush's elitism don't receive the same attention as stories about Kerry's elitism is that the model for the latter is far better entrenched," Chait writes. "This simply reflects one of the most tiresome habits of the political media. Once a narrative template has been established, nearly any fact can be wedged into it."

As Chait further observes, this is a pretty pathetic way to choose a president.

posted at 1:37 PM | 1 comments | link

Saturday, October 09, 2004

KERRY'S MISSED OPPORTUNITIES. David Ortiz saved me from a terrible dilemma last night. If the Red Sox-Angels game had gone past 9 p.m., I'm not sure what I would have done when the opening bell sounded for the second presidential debate.

This morning, I still don't have a particularly clear handle on what happened. On substance, I thought John Kerry did far better than George W. Bush, just as he did in the first debate. It wasn't just because I agreed with Kerry more often, but because he offered clear, fact-filled explanations as opposed to the campaign slogans that Bush likes to bark out. On the other hand, there's no question that Bush was more energized and better prepared than he had been in their first encounter. By being able to interact with a crowd, the president was able to come off as more engaged than he had been in the formal setting of a week earlier. Plus, he kept the smirk under control.

My frustration is that I thought Kerry missed a lot of opportunities to counter some of Bush's more ridiculous claims. Unlike John Edwards, who was a master of looping back, answering Dick Cheney's accusations, and then returning to the question at hand, Kerry took too many strikes on pitches he should have been able to hit. (Sorry. I'm still thinking about the Red Sox.)

Perhaps the weirdest, if not necessarily the most serious, example of this came when Kerry attempted to refute Bush's notion that Kerry's proposal to raise taxes on Americans earning above $200,000 will harm small businesses:

KERRY: Ladies and gentlemen, that's just not true what he said. The Wall Street Journal said 96 percent of small businesses are not affected at all by my plan.

And you know why he gets that count? The president got $84 from a timber company that owns, and he's counted as a small business. Dick Cheney's counted as a small business. That's how they do things. That's just not right.

Now, Kerry's delivery and syntax in this instance were terrible. Maybe I'm unusually dense, but I couldn't tell whether Kerry actually meant that Bush had invested in a timber company, or was instead offering some sort of hypothetical using Bush as a theoretical example. I decided it must be latter upon hearing Bush's rebuttal:

BUSH: I own a timber company?

[Laughter]

That's news to me.

[Laughter]

Need some wood?

Worse, Kerry just sat there on his stool, grinning, and never returned to the subject. Granted, it was a small matter, but it was Kerry who raised it, and Bush had left him looking like an idiot. Yet as we learned as soon as the debate was over, it was Bush who should have looked like an idiot, for denying something that was clearly true. On ABC News, Jake Tapper noted that Bush had, in fact, reported $84 in income one year from a timber company. Here are the details. It was a minuscule point by Kerry, inartfully made, but Kerry should have at least made it clear to everyone that he knew what he was talking about.

And by the way, will the fact-checkers please get off Kerry's back over the retirement of General Eric Shinseki in 2003? Here is what Kerry said last night:

KERRY: General Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, told him he was going to need several hundred thousand [troops]. And guess what? They retired General Shinseki for telling him that. This president hasn't listened.

Here is what CNN's fact-checkers (among others, including Tapper) said:

Kerry implies that Shinseki was forced to retire as a result of his comments about troop levels in Iraq, which is inaccurate. Shinseki served a full four-year term as Army chief of staff, and did not retire early. Since World War II, no Army chief of staff has served longer than four years.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld decided in April 2002 on who he would tap to succeed Shinseki, according to a Pentagon official, long before Shinseki's troop level comments in 2003. So by the time Shinseki made his comments on troop levels, it was already known that he would not remain in his post beyond his full four-year term. The Bush administration may not have been fond of Shinseki, who was appointed to his post by President Clinton, but it is inaccurate to say that he was forced to retire because of his comments on troop levels in Iraq.

That is true, and yes, Kerry should find a way to make his point more accurately if he is going to keep returning to the matter of General Shinseki. But CNN only hints at the extent of the how deeply Shinseki and Rumsfeld clashed. For instance, here is the top of a Washington Post story from October 2002 on the reasons for Shinseki's retirement:

The biggest battle facing Donald Rumsfeld is with the Army, the nation's largest military service, which effectively has gone into opposition against the secretary of defense.

Among all the services, the Army, for institutional and historical reasons, is most skeptical of Rumsfeld's drive to move the military into the information age. Rumsfeld has complained that the Army is too resistant to change; Army officers claim Rumsfeld doesn't sufficiently appreciate the value of large, armored conventional ground forces.

"Does he really hate the Army?" asked one Army officer, obviously pained by the question. "I don't know."

The relationship, never close, hit the rocks when Rumsfeld let it be known in April that he had decided to name Gen. John Keane, the Army's vice chief of staff, as its next chief, 15 months before its current chief, Gen. Eric Shinseki, was scheduled to retire.

This immediately made Shinseki a lame duck and undercut his ambitious "transformation" agenda, which he had set forth in late 1999.

"I do feel that this secretaryship has been very hard on this chief and has undermined his ability to bring about the kind of transformation that Shinseki envisioned," said Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., chairman of the House Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee.

And here's the top of a USA Today story from June 2003:

The former civilian head of the Army said Monday it is time for the Pentagon to admit that the military is in for a long occupation of Iraq that will require a major commitment of American troops.

Former Army secretary Thomas White said in an interview that senior Defense officials "are unwilling to come to grips" with the scale of the postwar U.S. obligation in Iraq. The Pentagon has about 150,000 troops in Iraq and recently announced that the Army's 3rd Infantry Division's stay there has been extended indefinitely.

"This is not what they were selling [before the war]," White said, describing how senior Defense officials downplayed the need for a large occupation force. "It's almost a question of people not wanting to 'fess up to the notion that we will be there a long time and they might have to set up a rotation and sustain it for the long term."

The interview was White's first since leaving the Pentagon in May after a series of public feuds with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld led to his firing.

Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz criticized the Army's chief of staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, after Shinseki told Congress in February that the occupation could require "several hundred thousand troops." Wolfowitz called Shinseki's estimate "wildly off the mark."

Rumsfeld was furious with White when the Army secretary agreed with Shinseki.

So if Kerry wants to be more accurate, all he needs to do is use White rather than Shinseki as an example of a top military official who was fired for publicly disagreeing with the Bush administration's low-ball estimates on the number of troops that would be needed to maintain order in Iraq. Alternately, Kerry could portray Shinseki as a hero who was forced to retire for having the temerity to stand up to Rumsfeld, and who then became one of the most outspoken critics of the White House's troop-strength estimates.

And since Kerry's point is essentially correct, the media fact-checkers ought to explain the context even as they tut-tut Kerry for not being 100 percent accurate.

Finally, since everyone else is doing it, allow me to indulge in a little cheap armchair psychoanalysis. I was really struck by how Bush answered a question about the Patriot Act. Audience member Rob Fowler asked, "With expansions to the Patriot Act and Patriot Act II, my question to you is, why are my rights being watered down and my citizens' around me? And what are the specific justifications for these reforms?" Here is how Bush replied.

BUSH: I appreciate that.

I really don't think your rights are being watered down. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't support it if I thought that.

Every action being taken against terrorists requires court order, requires scrutiny.

As a matter of fact, the tools now given to the terrorist fighters are the same tools that we've been using against drug dealers and white-collar criminals.

So I really don't think so. I hope you don't think that. I mean, I -- because I think whoever is the president must guard your liberties, must not erode your rights in America.

The Patriot Act is necessary, for example, because parts of the FBI couldn't talk to each other. The intelligence-gathering and the law-enforcement arms of the FBI just couldn't share intelligence under the old law. And that didn't make any sense.

Our law enforcement must have every tool necessary to find and disrupt terrorists at home and abroad before they hurt us again. That's the task of the 21st century.

And so, I don't think the Patriot Act abridges your rights at all.

And I know it's necessary. I can remember being in upstate New York talking to FBI agents that helped bust a Lackawanna cell up there. And they told me they could not have performed their duty, the duty we all expect of them, if they did not have the ability to communicate with each other under the Patriot Act.

Now, there are some factual quibbles I could offer here. The Lackawanna case has been widely criticized as government overkill, and Bush is being disingenuous when he says that "[e]very action being taken against terrorists requires court order." In fact, the Patriot Act allows agents to obtain subpoenas in terrorist cases - which are very broadly defined - from so-called FISA judges, whose discretion over whether to grant those subpoenas is far more limited than in normal criminal cases. Moreover, under the Patriot Act, someone served with a subpoena - say, a librarian or bookstore owner told to turn over a patron's records - may not challenge the search or even tell anyone about it.

But what really struck me about Bush's answer was the narcissism he displayed: You don't have to worry about the Patriot Act because I don't feel that it abridges your rights; because I wouldn't have signed it if I thought it did; because I, the president, would never allow that to happen. This is personalizing policy to a truly uncomfortable degree, and it's the subject of an excellent cover piece (sub. req.) in last week's New Republic by Noam Scheiber.

Scheiber's argument is that Bush isn't so much ideologically driven as he is motivated by a deep-seated need to see himself as the hero of his own narrative. Since he has surrounded himself with right-wing advisers, he has become a right-winger by going along with their narrative. Scheiber writes:

Conventional wisdom holds that the president is a conservative hard-liner bent on upending the Middle East and the U.S. tax code. But, while those may be the practical implications of the decisions he's made as president, the way George W. Bush makes sense of the world isn't through ideology. It's through narrative. Bush has always been a sucker for a good storyline - and never more so than when it involves him. In his own mind, Bush is the central figure in an ever-unfolding series of dramas. As such, Bush prides himself on possessing the qualities of a hero: compassion and justness on the one hand; boldness, principle, and resolution on the other. Bush almost always supports policies that appear to reinforce this image of himself; he opposes policies that appear to contradict it.

Make of this what you will, but I think Scheiber's on to something: this is followership disguised as leadership.

posted at 10:18 AM | 1 comments | link

Friday, October 08, 2004

WBUR MAKES IT OFFICIAL. The station just e-mailed the following press release on the departure of general manager Jane Christo (click here for earlier item and links):

WBUR General Manager Jane Christo Announces Resignation

BOSTON - Jane Christo announced today that she is leaving her post as General Manager of WBUR effective October 15, 2004. Ms. Christo informed the staff of WBUR of her decision during a meeting held earlier in the day.

"I am eternally grateful to the listeners, corporate and individual contributors, the staff of WBUR, and Boston University for the opportunity to have been part of building something very special over the past 25 years. However, the present controversy regarding my leadership of WBUR has become too large a distraction. I have decided to step aside so that the focus of the staff and management at WBUR can be returned to providing our listeners with the very best in public radio news programming. I am extremely proud of the significant contribution that WBUR has made to public radio here in New England and nationally. I am confident that when concluded, the internal investigation will show that the allegations of improper conduct against me are baseless," said Jane Christo.

Jane Christo served as General Manager from January of 1979. The WBUR Group operates and manages a total of four public radio stations in Massachusetts and Rhode Island: 90.9 WBUR-FM in Boston, 1240 WBUR-AM in West Yarmouth (MA), 1290 WRNI-AM in Providence (RI), and 1230 WXNI in Westerly (RI). WBUR consistently rates among the top ten stations, commercial and non-commercial, in the Boston metropolitan market.

posted at 1:55 PM | 13 comments | link

CHRISTO OUT AT WBUR. WBUR Radio (90.9 FM) will announce later today that its embattled general manager, Jane Christo, will resign from the post she has held since 1979, Media Log has learned. Christo reportedly made her intentions known to senior managers at the station this morning. Her actual departure date is not yet known.

The Boston Herald presaged her departure in a piece today by Greg Gatlin, who wrote that "speculation was growing among station insiders that she may resign as soon as this weekend."

Christo's resignation shows how dramatically her position has deteriorated since last Friday, when Boston University - which holds the license for the much-admired public-radio powerhouse - announced that it was investigating accusations of mismanagement and nepotism. As late as Tuesday, as I was approaching deadline for this Boston Phoenix article, well-informed sources were suggesting that Christo's job was probably safe until BU wrapped up its probe, which was expected to take two weeks.

Still, I also heard suggestions that BU would be wise to nip what had become a public-relations nightmare in the bud as quickly as possible, and not wait while the station continued to lose confidence with donors and corporate underwriters. As for whether that's what finally happened, or if Christo decided she'd had enough, it's impossible to say right now. The circumstances of her pending resignation point to its being voluntary.

Christo had long presided over WBUR with a mixture of fear and secrecy. She built the station into among the most important and influential in the country, offering five hours a day of locally produced (if not exactly local) news programming in addition to shows from National Public Radio and the BBC World Service. But her treatment of the station as though it were her personal realm, combined with a brutal management style and her precipitous firing of good people for the slightest of reasons, earned her a long and influential list of enemies.

Meanwhile, it appears that there is little likelihood of WGBH's swooping to the rescue over the mess that Christo left behind in Rhode Island. Recently Christo announced that WBUR would sell WRNI (AM 1290) in Providence, as well as a sister station in Westerly, stunning the community and walking away from a $2.4 million investment it had made just six years ago.

At the behest of Rhode Island officials, BU put the sale on hold pending the review of documents pertaining to WBUR's internal operations, which include reports of millions of dollars in losses at both 'BUR and 'RNI over a period of several years.

Today the Providence Journal reported that, though WGBH might want to form some sort of partnership with those seeking to keep WRNI as a public-broadcasting outlet, it would not purchase the two stations outright.

Nevertheless, Christo's departure has still got to be considered good news for Rhode Island. Earlier this week Gene Mihaly, president of the Foundation for Ocean State Public Radio, told me he believed the stations could have become solvent if it had not been for 'BUR's profligate spending. Maybe BU will now choose to keep the stations.

posted at 1:41 PM | 1 comments | link

Thursday, October 07, 2004

EVERYTHING IS BROKEN. Paging through the headlines this morning, it struck me that, as never before, everything is falling apart for George W. Bush, and it's happening in a very ugly, public way. That doesn't mean he's going to lose - he should, of course, although we all know that's not how things necessarily work. But it seems that all at once, nearly four years of lies, exaggerations, and bullying are finally catching up with him.

Just look around. His chief weapons inspector, Charles Duelfer, now acknowledges that Saddam Hussein had dismantled his WMD programs in the early 1990s. Loyalist that he is, Duelfer prattled on yesterday about how Saddam really, really wanted weapons of mass destruction, as though that were something we didn't know. Guess what? So does Burma, I'm sure.

Earlier this week, as we know, Bush's former guy in Iraq, Paul Bremer, said in a speech that the White House had never sent enough troops to Iraq to keep the peace. Again, this is another Bush loyalist, a man who immediately tried to distance himself from his own remarks as soon as he realized they were not off the record, as he had presumed. Looks like he can forget about being secretary of state if Bush is elected to a second term.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been spinning all week to dissociate himself from remarks that he'd seen no "strong, hard evidence" that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaeda. Again, as with Duelfer and Bremer: not a critic, but rather someone so loyal to Bush that he's clearly mortified over his momentary outburst of candor.

At Tuesday night's vice-presidential debate, moderator Gwen Ifill asked John Edwards if Saddam would still be in power if he and John Kerry had been in office. Edwards, sensing trouble, evaded the question. That was probably smart.

But Edwards certainly wouldn't have harmed himself with Media Log if he had spelled out explicitly the clear implications of Kerry's approach to Iraq:

You know, Gwen, maybe Saddam would be still in power. At the time that Bush went to war with Iraq, there were UN weapons inspectors on the ground, and Saddam was boxed in by economic sanctions and no-fly zones in the north and south of his country. If the inspectors had found weapons, or had presented convincing evidence that Saddam was trying to hide something, then I'm confident we could have built a real alliance and gone to war to overthrow him. But if not, then yes, Saddam Hussein would probably still be in power today. What of it?

An impolitic answer? Sure. But 1066 Americans would still be alive today (this count is as of Tuesday), not to mention other coalition forces and many thousands of Iraqis. And the United States would be not one bit less safe.

Meanwhile, Bush is getting desperate. Read how the White House hoodwinked CNN and MSNBC into televising his latest attack speech yesterday, under the guise of its being a major presidential address.

NEW IN THIS WEEK'S PHOENIX. The latest on WBUR Radio (90.9 FM) and its embattled general manager, Jane Christo, whose possible departure is now the subject of speculation. Also, unpacking those pro-Bush Gallup polls, and liberal radio comes (almost) to Boston.

posted at 9:35 AM | 2 comments | link

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

EDWARDS TRIUMPHANT. Stylistically, I thought last night's vice-presidential debate between Dick Cheney and John Edwards ended in a tie. Cheney's matter-of-fact, business-like demeanor and Edwards's lawyerly approach were both effective. Following last Thursday's presidential debate, we now know that the only person on either national ticket who can't form a coherent thought is George W. Bush.

But style alone is not enough. Overall, I thought Edwards did far more to help himself - and John Kerry - than Cheney was able to accomplish for the Republican ticket. Here's why.

1. Edwards had more to prove. The North Carolina senator is not a well-known figure in national political circles. The undecided voters who tuned in probably barely knew who Edwards was. What they saw was not the grinning Ken doll of the Democratic primaries, but an engaging, engaged, smart, sharp person of sufficient gravitas and experience to make a plausible vice-president. For that matter, he came off as a far more plausible president than Bush did four years ago.

2. Perceptions of Cheney remain unchanged. Public-opinion polls have showed Cheney to be the most unpopular member of the Bush administration. In this new ABC News/Washington Post poll, for instance, Cheney's favorability rating is 44 percent, and his unfavorability rating is 43 percent. Cheney did nothing to overcome his Dark Lord image last night, coming across as deeply negative, and often sneering at Edwards with such leering contempt that you almost expected to see blood dripping from his fangs. As William Saletan observes in Slate, "Though Edwards was delivering the harsher blows, Cheney looked meaner."

3. Edwards treated the stage like a courtroom. You may have heard that Edwards was a trial lawyer before he entered politics. The Republicans like to point that out often enough, repeating the phrase "trial lawyer" as though it was akin to "male prostitute." Last night, we got to see why Edwards was so successful. Unlike Cheney, Edwards repeatedly used his time to answer earlier accusations from Cheney, but he was always careful to veer back to moderator Gwen Ifill's question. He used the clock more effectively, too. Cheney, for instance, took advantage of a 30-second rebuttal to refute Edwards's charges about Halliburton. Edwards then used his 30 seconds simply to repeat the charges:

These are the facts.

The facts are the vice-president's company that he was CEO of, that did business with sworn enemies of the United States, paid millions of dollars in fines for providing false financial information, it's under investigation for bribing foreign officials.

The same company that got a $7.5 billion no-bid contract, the rule is that part of their money is supposed to be withheld when they're under investigation, as they are now, for having overcharged the American taxpayer, but they're getting every dime of their money.

I'm happy to let voters make their own decision about this.

What was so impressive about this from a tactical point of view was that Edwards knew Cheney wouldn't have a chance to rebut this. Edwards knew that the next question would go to him, and that after that the debate would turn to domestic issues. Edwards showed that Kerry may be a better pure debater, but that he's the better lawyer.

4. Cheney lied - and got caught. Cheney lied about little things, and he lied about big things. We've become accustomed to that, of course, but this isn't September 2003, when he made a fool of Tim Russert by telling him he was no longer on Halliburton's payroll - a flat-out falsehood. This time, everyone is watching.

A little lie: Cheney told Edwards that even though he, as vice-president, is the presiding officer of the Senate, last night's debate was the first time he had ever met Edwards. As the Los Angeles Times reports, "It seems, however, the vice president's memory was a little off. Or maybe Edwards didn't leave much of an impression." (I grabbed the photo of Cheney and Edwards from the Daily Kos.)

A big lie: Edwards correctly pointed out that Cheney has repeatedly promoted the false notion that Saddam Hussein was involved in the terrorist attacks three years ago. As a truth-serum analysis in today's Washington Post observes:

Early in the debate, Cheney snapped at Edwards, "The senator has got his facts wrong. I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11." But in numerous interviews, Cheney has skated close to the line in ways that may have certainly left that impression on viewers, usually when he cited the possibility that Mohamed Atta, one of the hijackers on Sept. 11, 2001, met with an Iraqi official - even after that theory was largely discredited.

Read the whole thing - it's striking how easy it is for the Post to find examples of Cheney lies from last night's debate, and how hard it strains to find examples of Edwards lies with which to balance it off. Ain't objectivity grand?

How is it going to play? An ABC News instant poll scored the debate 43 percent to 35 percent, but it's hard to know what to make of that, since respondents skewed Republican by a margin of 38 percent to 31 percent. CBS News, which only polled undecided voters, had it 41 percent Edwards, 28 percent Cheney.

Last night was potentially dangerous territory for the Kerry campaign. Four years ago, Joe Lieberman was thought to have a huge advantage over Cheney - and got his clock cleaned. By contrast, Edwards fought Cheney at least to a tie, and possibly better than that. Kerry couldn't have asked for a better performance as he heads into his second debate with Bush this Friday.

posted at 9:14 AM | 6 comments | link

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

RATE THE DEBATE. MediaChannel.org and the Tyndall Report have set up a website so that you can score tonight's vice-presidential debate. Click here; and check out the results from last Thursday's presidential debate.

posted at 5:00 PM | 0 comments | link

IS EDWARDS READY FOR HIS CLOSE-UP? I've been lukewarm on John Edwards from the moment that John Kerry chose him as his running mate. Back when the announcement was made, I called Edwards "probably the best of some not-so-great choices." Nor was I crazy about his speech at the Democratic National Convention.

Tonight it's up to Edwards to keep the momentum from last Thursday's debate moving in Kerry's direction. On the face of it, he should have an easier time than Joe Lieberman did four years ago. Back then, to the extent that Dick Cheney was a known quantity, he was generally well-regarded for the job he had done as secretary of defense during the first Gulf War. Now he comes with some pretty heavy baggage.

Among other things, Cheney has earned a reputation as perhaps the most untruthful member of the Bush administration, lying to Tim Russert about his Halliburton compensation package (see "Whopper No. 7" specifically) and lying to the American people about the (nonexistent) ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. And when Cheney's not lying, he's running around telling people that a vote for Kerry is a vote for Osama bin Laden. Cheney, to most observers' surprise, beat Lieberman handily by projecting an air of cool, business-like confidence. There's no way that Cheney should come out of tonight's debate the winner.

Is Edwards up for it? In today's Boston Globe, Peter Canellos has a pretty smart analysis of what was wrong with the Edwards pick. Canellos argues that, at first, it appeared to be an inspired choice. But as Kerry came under fire for his service in Vietnam, of all things, Edwards's sunny disposition suddenly seemed not nearly as important as the fact that he is an inexperienced, first-term senator with virtually no background in foreign policy or military affairs. In such a changed environment, Canellos writes, Wesley Clark or Dick Gephardt might have been a better choice, since either would have been able credibly to defend Kerry rather than forcing Kerry to do the job himself.

So what should Edwards do tonight? I think he simply needs to remember two things. First, it's not about him, it's about Kerry. So he should forget his Mr. Nice Guy persona and be prepared to go deeply negative. Second, he's one of the best trial lawyers in the country. He should look at Dick Cheney the way he would look at the defendant in one of the medical-malpractice suits that made him rich and famous, and regard the viewers back home as though they were the jury. Moderator Gwen Ifill might make it difficult for him to do that. But Edwards needs to find a way.

And by the way, if you haven't read it yet, be sure to check out Curtis Wilkie's piece in the Sunday Globe on how Edwards fits in to the tradition of progressive Southern trial lawyers. Good stuff from a guy who really understands the South.

posted at 11:57 AM | 0 comments | link

Saturday, October 02, 2004

TROUBLE INTENSIFIES AT WBUR. Thanks to an anonymous letter to Boston University, all of the whispered, off-the-record allegations about the way Jane Christo has run WBUR Radio (90.9 FM) are starting to come out. According to the Boston Globe's Mark Jurkowitz and the Providence Journal's David McPherson, the university, which is the license-holder, has received information about Christo - the general manager of WBUR since 1979 - that has led to an intensification of the investigation into the circumstances surrounding 'BUR's planned sale of two Rhode Island radio stations.

According to McPherson:

A BU source confirmed for The Journal that WBUR's hiring is one area of the investigation. BU's online employee directory indicates that Christo's son, Zachary Christo, is employed by WBUR.

Also, former WBUR employees have told The Journal of at least 10 Albanian immigrants employed by the station. Their names are included in the BU online directory and are listed as WBUR employees.

The practice of hiring Albanian immigrants is notable because Christo's husband, Van Christo, is executive director of an Albanian immigration and cultural organization, the Frosina Information Network. He is an Albanian native himself.

Other areas of inquiry, the BU source confirmed, include general spending at WBUR, use of automobiles, a no-bid printing contract and the conduct of WBUR's "Citizens of the World" travel program, which is supposed to raise money for the station.

I can attest that these are precisely the charges that come up over and over again in off-the-record conversations with current and former WBUR employees.

I would urge some caution. I was told by several people, for instance, that though the Citizens of the World tours might actually lose money - not exactly what you're looking for from a fundraising event - they are also valuable opportunities for Christo to schmooze with potential big contributors. I was also told of at least one example in which the schmoozing paid off.

Also, the issue with the Albanians - which Jurkowitz touched on in a harsh profile of Christo in 1997 - has always been a difficult one. If they are performing jobs that need to be done (a matter of some dispute), then there isn't any obvious reason why there's something wrong with giving them a helping hand.

This week, the Phoenix published an editorial calling on Boston University to conduct a thorough investigation and to hold WBUR more accountable to the community, which has done so much to support the station over the years. Among our suggestions: greater financial disclosure, more frequent annual reports (at 'BUR, "annual" doesn't always mean "once a year"), and a community-based board with real oversight power. The Phoenix's Ian Donnis updates the story with this.

Here is a piece that Ian Donnis and I wrote a week earlier on the mounting troubles at 'BUR.

As someone who's listened to and admired WBUR for years, and has also heard many stories about Christo's dysfunctional management style, I have found the last few weeks to be both troubling and fascinating. It would be foolhardy to predict what's going to happen - or, for that matter, to assert with any confidence what the truth is. But it does appear, at long last, that many questions people have been asking for a long time are finally going to be answered.

Who knows? Before this is all over, maybe Christopher Lydon will be back on the air.

posted at 7:59 AM | 4 comments | link

Friday, October 01, 2004

FAIR AND BALANCED QUOTES. Josh Marshall catches Fox News' Carl Cameron making up quotes and sticking them in John Kerry's mouth. The story disappeared from the Fox website without comment until Marshall got on the case and embarrassed them into posting a retraction. Cameron had Kerry, at a post-debate rally, referring to himself as a "metrosexual" and saying something about his "cuticles." Marshall's got all the details here.

Cameron is supposedly one of Fox's straight-news reporters. His lapse doesn't tell us anything we don't already know. But still.

COSMO'S WORLD. Boston Herald business editor Cosmo Macero has a good column today (sub. req.) on Boston Globe publisher Richard Gilman's being named to the Red Sox executive board. Macero's barking in the right forest, if not necessarily up the right tree: the real conflict of interest, as he points out, is that the New York Times Company, which owns the Globe [corrected], also controls a sizeable ownership chunk of the Red Sox. Given that, the fact that Gilman is replacing retiring Times Company chief executive Russell Lewis on the board isn't that big a deal.

Macero's most salient point about the Globe: "The paper's biggest mistake has been a rather bold habit of avoiding disclosure when it editorializes on Red Sox business matters: annexing Yawkey Way; creating a 'scalp-free' zone, etc." I'm not sure if I'd call it avoidance. Sometimes it discloses, sometimes it doesn't. The point is that it should always disclose, and Macero's absolutely right about that.

Macero also announced today that he's hired former Boston-magazine executive editor John Strahinich. According to the announcement, Strahinich will "serve in a specialty role as our sole general assignment reporter - backstopping us where necessary on several beats, handling the flow of excess assignments on any given day, and, most important, developing enterprise pieces on a wide range of topics."

Strahinich is an impressive hire, and the move shows that Macero is going to be aggressive about changing the business section.

posted at 5:27 PM | 0 comments | link

THINK LOCALLY, ATTACK GLOBALLY. Keep your eye on the phrase "global test." It's Media Log's nomination for Most Likely to Be Spun Mindlessly by the Bush Campaign into a Negative. But let me back up. Here is the exchange from last night's debate that led Kerry to use the phrase:

JIM LEHRER: New question. Two minutes, Senator Kerry. What is your position on the whole concept of pre-emptive war?

KERRY: The president always has the right, and always has had the right, for pre-emptive strike. That was a great doctrine throughout the Cold War. And it was always one of the things we argued about with respect to arms control. No president, though all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to pre-empt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America. But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons. Here we have our own secretary of state who has had to apologize to the world for the presentation he made to the United Nations.

A few minutes later, George W. Bush came back with this: "Let me - I'm not exactly sure what you mean, 'passes the global test,' you take pre-emptive action if you pass a global test. My attitude is you take pre-emptive action in order to protect the American people, that you act in order to make this country secure."

As you can see, taken in context, Kerry's comment made perfect sense: the president should be able to take pre-emptive action to protect the security of the United States, but if he does so without first convincing the world community of the legitimacy of said action, then the president is going to have a big, honking mess on his hands. Need an example? Hmmm ... maybe if I think hard enough I'll be able to come up with one.

Bush, though, managed to turn Kerry's phrase around, and use it as a sort of French-bashing-by-proxy. And his sycophants are already starting to pick up on it. For instance, this morning, on WRKO Radio (AM 680), Peter Blute and Scott Allen Miller were very worked up about this, all but declaring that Kerry would turn over foreign policy to the cheese-eating surrender monkeys. The Prince of Darkness, syndicated columnist Robert Novak, picks up on that theme as well, in an entry in what might just be the worst blog in the short history of blogging.

Can Karl Rove turn this sickly acorn into a mighty oak over the next few days? We'll see. And, obviously, it's up to the media not to play along.

Meanwhile, the consensus of public opinion seems to be that Kerry won the debate handily, but that Bush did a good enough job of getting his points across that the central dynamic of the race probably won't change all that much. ABC's instant poll had respondents giving it to Kerry, 45 percent to 36 percent, but with Bush retaining a 51 percent to 47 percent lead in the presidential-preference question. Then again, ABC calls that "customary," raising the possibility that as the reality of Kerry's superior performance sinks in, Kerry may start to move up.

Finally, the Phoenix crew offers its thoughts on the debate at BostonPhoenix.com.

posted at 11:57 AM | 6 comments | link

MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES

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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.