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By Sheila Lennon
'Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
4.04.03/ Iraq
news: Best sources portal
4.04.03/ The
Station Fire Weblog
April 4, 2003 - (Last
week's weblog)
What does peace look like? Shelley
Powers is rasslin' this too, on the 35th anniversary of the murder
of Martin Luther King, Jr., April 4, 1968 in Memphis. Here are some excerpts
from a story about a vigil in Raleigh, N.C.
"There are some who are for the war. There are some who are not.
But we should all be united for peace on earth as it is in heaven."
-- Rev. William A. Thurston, pastor at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church
in Wendell, N.C. and head of the Department of Religion and Philosophy
at Shaw University, quoted
in the Raleigh News & Observer.
"The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach
others and nothing to learn from them is not just. ... This business
of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with
orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins
of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody
battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot
be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues
year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs
of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." -- Rev. Martin
Luther King Jr., April 4, 1967, Riverside Church in New York City, quoted
in the same story.
Peace
Quotes at ImaginePeace.net.
They're not mush. Here's the lead:
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned
my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him
the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should
be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality,
deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how
despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than
be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under
the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
— Albert Einstein
The
Second Superpower Rears its Beautiful Head: Full text of Jim Moore's
essay. Here's the "nut":
There is an emerging second superpower, but it is not a nation. Instead,
it is a new form of international player, constituted by the “will
of the people” in a global social movement. The beautiful but
deeply agitated face of this second superpower is the worldwide peace
campaign, but the body of the movement is made up of millions of people
concerned with a broad agenda that includes social development, environmentalism,
health, and human rights. This movement has a surprisingly agile and
muscular body of citizen activists who identify their interests with
world society as a whole—and who recognize that at a fundamental
level we are all one.
Doc Searls is the
place to go today to follow up on this theme. Start at "Primary
Blogpower" and scroll up.
What does peace look like? Think about it... If you write it, draw it,
paint it, email me
a copy, please.
There's no one of us as smart as all of us.
Link
to this item | Comment
Hawaii
Senate resolution targets Patriot Act: From the Honolulu Advertiser,
The USA Patriot Act may infringe upon civil liberties guaranteed by
the U.S. and state constitutions, according to a resolution approved
yesterday by the Senate Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs Committee.
Senate Concurrent Resolution 18 and Senate Resolution 8 calls for the
state to urge Hawaii's congressional delegation to work to repeal any
sections of the USA Patriot Act "or recent executive orders that
limit or violate fundamental rights and liberties protected by the Constitutions
of Hawaii and the United States."
There's another, longer but slow-loading version of the story at stateline.org:
Hawaii Urges Restraint In Homeland Security
Related: Get
Ready for PATRIOT II: Matt Welch, an editor of the L.A. Examiner
and warblogger,
makes a list of provisions proposed in "The Domestic Security Enhancement
Act of 2003."
Link
to this item | Comment
The
Station Fire Weblog lists some interesting musical benefits in
Rhode Island and Wareham, Mass., this weekend for the victims and families
of those caught in the Feb. 20 fire during a Great White show in West
Warwick. The Wareham one is an all-ages show at a biker bar. Check it
out.
Link
to this item | Comment
The boys on the bus: Matt Labash of the Weekly
Standard may be a spiritual son of Hunter S. Thompson. Here's a piece
published today whose headlines say it all: Making
It: A unilateralist reporter hooks up with Christopher Hitchens and
makes a run for the Iraqi border. Excerpt:
...I suggested we pick up provisions in case we got stranded. Hitchens
waved it off as unnecessary. "We'll be back by tonight," he
said. Then his eyes grew saucer-like, as if he'd forgotten something.
"Bananas!" he said. "We need bananas--it's the easiest
way to carry food--plus, they're good for you." He disappeared
somewhere and came back with a couple of bananas and cheese sandwich
platters. If we ran into surly Baath party types, we could create a
diversion by offering them our pickles.
Link
to this item | Comment
Mozilla
development roadmap: Geek stuff. My browser's past and future.
J.D. Lasica is
full of news today. So is Dan
Gillmor. Handing you off to them...
TGIF.
April 3, 2003 - (Last
week's weblog)
Dr.
Atkins Is Getting Fat: It's not his waistline that's growing --
it's his wallet. Here's how Atkins Nutritionals turned the diet world's
flavor of the month into a $100 million-plus empire. At Business 2.0.
He and his executives are determined to make the world see the Atkins
way not as a "diet," with its connotations of sacrifice, but
as a spirit-liberating lifestyle. And they have a sweeping -- and to
Atkins's still-numerous critics, alarming -- vision for building a globe-spanning
business colossus. They foresee Atkins sections in every supermarket,
Atkins food in school cafeterias, in nursing homes, in restaurants,
in health clubs. Atkins and his team boil down their grand plan to what
may be the ultimate "doing well by doing good" formulation.
"I want to eradicate obesity and diabetes," Atkins says. "I
believe God wants me to do that."
Works for me. Now if only he'd hurry up with the low-carb bagels.
Link
to this item | Comment
Peace feedback: More from readers on this
blog dropping out of the war:
From Mike Sanders: "Thanks for helping both the left and the right
inch towards peace with your "I'm dropping out of the war"
post. I'm hoping it continues to have an impact on me."
From John Stanforth: Kudos on your 'Dropping out of the war' post....
I loved it. I too am really tired of the war, and as a foreign policy
major at UCLA back in the day, there are so many things about this war
that have been bothering me. After two initial weeks of sleepless nights
and untold irritation, I just finally ranted (and ranted and ranted)
into a nearly incoherent piece on my smirky new site (NeuroTripping.com)
and sort of left it at that. As I've told my friends, "I'm Done.
It's all there, so don't talk to me about it anymore." Sort of
my excuse to bow out of it all myself.
Not often that I just recoil completely from current events, but this
whole thing is just going round and round in circles that make my head
hurt and my heart ache. Hope "dropping out" brings you...
peace.
Link
to this item | Comment
Killer
pneumonia virus linked to birds: New Scientist reports,
The virus causing a global outbreak of deadly pneumonia is likely to
be a new hybrid that mutated in the intensively farmed livestock of
China's Guangdong province.
Bird vendors or chefs were the first people to fall ill with Severe
Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), the vice-director for viral diseases
at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has revealed.
Bi Shengli told the South China Morning Post that collaboration with
health officials in Guangdong had revealed that the earliest SARS patients
had been in close and continued contact with chickens, ducks, pigeons
and owls.
The connection between SARS and fowl bolsters preliminary scientific
data on the virus. Researchers have identified a coronavirus as the
cause of SARS, but have yet to publish full details. However, early
work suggests the virus is related to one that causes bronchitis in
birds, including chickens.
Related: Identity
of killer pneumonia bug confirmed
Link
to this item | Comment
How
Google's PigeonRank works: If the item above is true, this system
may not be viable much longer.
When a search query is submitted to Google, it is routed to a data
coop where monitors flash result pages at blazing speeds. When a relevant
result is observed by one of the pigeons in the cluster, it strikes
a rubber-coated steel bar with its beak, which assigns the page a PigeonRank
value of one. For each peck, the PigeonRank increases. Those pages receiving
the most pecks, are returned at the top of the user's results page with
the other results displayed in pecking order.
Google's pigeon-driven methods make tampering with our results extremely
difficult. While some unscrupulous websites have tried to boost their
ranking by including images on their pages of bread crumbs, bird seed
and parrots posing seductively in resplendent plumage, Google's PigeonRank
technology cannot be deceived by these techniques. A Google search is
an easy, honest and objective way to find high-quality websites with
information relevant to your search.
Link
to this item | Comment
(Almost) free at last: The
FTC has page on the National "Do Not Call " registry that's
attractive in a '50s sort of way. Here's the timetable:
Beginning in July, consumers will be able to put their telephone numbers
on the national registry, which telemarketers subsequently will be required
to access. When registration opens in July, consumers can register for
free in two ways: online or by telephone. The FTC will announce the
Web site URL for online registration and the toll-free number in June.
To better manage the anticipated volume of registrations, initial sign-up
by phone for the registry will be phased in, region-by-region, over
an eight-week period. Online registration will be available throughout
the United States in July. As of October it will be illegal for most
telemarketers to call a number listed on the registry.
That guy who leaves messages on my answering machine twice a week that
I've won two tickets to Orlando is gonna have to do something real with
his life. Hallelujah!
Link
to this item | Comment
Art
or 'sewage'? You decide: Construction of the artwork has been
halted while the city gets public input. Ballots are due on Monday. From
the Tucson (Ariz.) Citizen,
The beauty of art may be in the eyes of the beholder, but some residents
of three Tucson neighborhoods say they aren't beholden to anyone for
the work of art along North Mountain Avenue.
Construction on the sculpture, which looks to some like sewage spewing
from pipes and a spigot, was halted when it was about half finished.
The negative reaction from residents in the area was so pronounced
that the city's Department of Transportation halted construction and
sent questionnaires to the 3,000 homes in the three neighborhoods, asking
for input.
The questionnaires are due back Monday...
... The design includes "water" that appears to flow from
one pipe to another, disappearing into the soil and re-emerging a short
distance away.
(Artist Paul Edwards) chose to finish the sculpture with brown flagstone
mosaic, which he says resembles floodwater.
While some say the "water" should be blue, he said brown
is more appropriate. ...
Thre's another photo at the site. We'll let you know how it all comes
out.
Link
to this item | Comment
There's
a backyard roller coaster in Austin, Texas. There's even
video.
Link
to this item | Comment
Thanks,
Edwin Starr. From the BBC,
It's a bitter irony that the man who wrote the words "War what
is a good for, absolutely nothing" should die at a time when the
majority of the world is repeating his very words."
The American-born Starr died at 61 at his home near Nottingham, England.
Here's his site.
Link
to this item | Comment
April 2, 2003
How Matt Drudge makes "$3,500 a day":
From The
Secrets of Drudge Inc., at Business 2.0:
Run on a shoestring, the Drudge
Report, a plain-Jane page of news links and occasional scoops, clears,
by our back-of-the-envelope estimate, a cool $800,000 a year.
Link
to this item | Comment
The kindness of folks I've never met: The Drudge
link above was too juicy not to lead with, but I want to point you to
some thoughtful responses to yesterday's announcement that I'm not going
to blog the war any more.
Linux Journal editor Doc
Searls, in
an item headlined, "Peace On," justaposes an excerpt of
my statement with with
words from public radio host Christopher
Lydon,
I throw out the perhaps insanely cheerful thought that this could
be the war to end war. Meaning ... that the sole superpower has met
its adversary for the future in the stubborn, unintimidated, and close
to universal peace movement that has found its medium on the Web.
Doc then adds, "I tend to agree with both of them" and adds
his own sane thoughts.
Shelley Powers
blogs as Burningbird,
one of my favorite thoughtful reads, although her writing usually isn't
easy to fit into this news blog's pointers.
This time, in "Long
Haul," she responds to my dropout declaration sensibly, and furthers
it:
I can understand where Sheila's coming from, except that none of us
can drop out of the war. Especially the Iraqis. Especially the soldiers.
But Sheila isn't talking about dropping out of the war -- she's talking
about not feeding the frenzy of pro- and anti-war rhetoric.
How does it support the troops to accuse others of being traitors,
to make fun of people who disagree, to feed a constant anger? What's
peaceful about a peace movement populated by people screaming "I
hate you!" and throwing rocks?
Tellingly, in a later post today titled "Peaceblog
no more," Shelley writes,
I have removed the Peaceblog logo from the sidebar. I'm not sure at
this point exactly what a peaceblog is. After three difficult days of
thinking, I'm not sure what 'peace' is.
Good stuff.
Fellow journalists Dan
Gillmor and J.D.
Lasica also point to my dust, for which I am grateful.
Finally, thanks to reader Carol Williams for the email whose subject
is simply, "Good for you."
Link
to this item | Comment
Wi-Fi:
Anytime, Anywhere: Number Of Wi-Fi Hot Spots Set To Explode, Bringing
Wireless Technology To Rest Of Us
This is Monday's Wall Street Journal report, freely available at Yahoo.
The link above is Part 1; here's
part 2. via Wi-Fi
Networking News.
Link
to this item | Comment
Can
Saddam's desert be a Garden of Eden again? From the Guardian (UK):
When Azzam Alwash was a boy he went duck-hunting with his father on
the Mesopotamian marshes. They took an old wooden boat and rowed south
from his home in Nasiriyah into one of the largest wetlands in the world
– the land of the Marsh Arabs, which some believe is the origin
of the story of the Garden of Eden.
This week, watching TV images of the battle for Nasiriyah from his
new home in California, Alwash wonders at the different landscape. "I
look at the pictures of the bridges over the Euphrates. All the land
behind used to be endless bullrushes and reedbeds stretching for hundreds
of miles. But now there is nothing green. It is totally gone,"
he says.
The difference is Saddam Hussein. After the 1991 Gulf War he drained
most of the marshes and diverted the Tigris and Euphrates, the two great
rivers that once watered them. It was an epic work of destructive civil
engineering that turned the ecological jewel of the Middle East into
a scrub desert and drove out most of the 50,000 Madan, or Marsh Arabs,
who had joined the abortive post-war uprising against him in 1992.
Alwash, who is, like his father, a civil engineer, would probably have
had to work on the draining if he hadn't left for the US in the late
1970s. But now he has plans to bring back the landscape of his childhood.
Related: “Garden
of Eden” in Southern Iraq Likely to Disappear Completely in Five
Years Unless Urgent Action Taken a United
Nations Environment Programme release.
Beni
Hassan Village Weavers of Iraq: From Oriental Rug Review.
Link
to this item | Comment
Streaming
Internet Radio In Your Car: Illustrated.
The PSB Gallery of Thrift
Store Art: Scroll down to see the latest "acquisitions."
via Judy
Watt.
April 1, 2003
I'm dropping out of the war: Last night,
I took a longer look at the
"Peaceblogroll" that got added to the Best
sources portal yesterday. Some of these blogs turn out not to be "peace
blogs" at all -- they're part of the pissing match.
War plus anti-war does not equal peace.
Pro-war and anti-war blogs are two sides of the same coin. War and anti-war
fight each other with hearts and minds and furious typing.
On the streets, anger fuels protest, and is met with anger.
The potential for tearing our country apart again is already shaping
up: "Support the war, support the troops" vs. "Support
the troops -- Bring them home."
Spammers want to sell me a flag.
Salon today has three
stories that work together to address our domestic dilemma. (They're well
worth quickly clicking through the ad to get a free day pass):
"Why
is my country turning against me?"
Linda Johnson, a 40-something woman in faded jeans and Birkenstocks:
..."I'm from the Vietnam era. I don't necessarily believe in war.
Many soldiers and their families don't necessarily believe this war
is right," Johnson adds, reaching for more tissues. "However,
at this point, our soldiers feel they're protecting our country from
terrorists. And that they eventually will bring freedom to the Iraqi
people. We have to support them and say prayers for them."
"For
no good reason":
Military families who oppose the war in Iraq say there's a special
horror in watching this campaign unfold. Like everyone else who has
a relative serving in the Gulf, they're beset by a sickening anxiety
that builds as the troops move toward Baghdad -- and that paralyzes
them every time another casualty is reported. For those who believe
the war is unjust, though, there's no pride in a righteous cause to
ease the terror, no patriotic sense of shared sacrifice to make sense
of their families' disruptions. There is just the helpless feeling that
their loved ones might lose their lives for nothing.
Some of them have started a website, Military
Families Speak Out.
Here's what I hope will be the last war story on this blog:
Talking
to the enemy. Philip Robertson interviews Iraqi POWs:
A third Iraqi prisoner wants to testify about the American bombing
runs where he was stationed. "The airplanes were flying very low
over our position and it was very easy for them to kill us, but they
did not. They were so close we could see the pilots. We understood that
it was a message and it was a warning for us. The message was, 'We don't
want to kill you. Run away.'"
"We don't want to kill you." Peace starts there.
I'm dropping out of the war. I don't want war in my living room any more.
I don't want to give it my attention. I can't stop it, can't change it,
won't fight it. All I can do is live as peacefully as I can, without sucking
in its virtual fumes.
I'll still maintain the war news portal to make it easier for you to
inform yourself, if and when you choose to, but I don't want to blog war
no more.
Starting tomorrow, I'm going to dig through and under the words of war
weighing down the web and find what's good and buried there, bringing
the best of it to light.
Peace.
Link
to this item | Comment
April Fool's Day, from the Brown
Daily Herald:
Cianci
makes jailbreak, escapes to Macedonia:
Former Providence mayor Vincent "Buddy" Cianci made a break
from a federal prison in Fort Dix, N.J., Saturday and evaded authorities
for hours before being granted political asylum in Macedonia, prison
officials announced. Last December, Cianci's prison term was relocated
to New Jersey from an Ohio prison that was deemed "too tough"
for the former mayor.
Cianci's escape was not discovered until Monday night when prison
guards grew suspicious after noticing his toupee had not moved from
the corner of the cell in three days. Upon moving the toupee, guards
discovered a hole and the silver spoon Cianci apparently used to dig
it.
... Macedonian officials said Cianci fled to the county via a hot
air balloon. People from New York to Paris reported sightings of Buddy's
giant face floating through the sky, reports which until now had been
classified as mass hallucinations.
Upon arrival in Macedonia, Cianci was granted political asylum by
the country's prime minister in return for exclusive rights to his
famous marinara sauce.
The Journal newsroom got seven calls today asking if it was true that
Cianci was released early from prison. Seems a radio station was having
a little fun, too.
Cicilline
not gay or Jewish; still Italian:
At a hastily organized press conference Monday evening, Providence
Mayor David Cicilline '83 confirmed allegations that he is neither
gay nor Jewish, and that he lied about his background for votes. "I
am still Italian, and that should count for something," he told
reporters.
Rumors began to swirl after Cicilline was seen exiting the Foxy Lady
with a female dancer late Sunday night.
Cicilline, who was thought to be the first openly gay mayor of a
major city, claimed he only intended to escort the woman home, but
declined to explain Sunday night why he had been at the club in the
first place.
"I've struggled with my heterosexuality for a long time, and
I'm sorry my 'coming out' had to happen like this," Cicilline
said Monday. "I only hope the voters continue to judge me by
my record, not my personal life or sexual orientation."
The BDH cover will change tomorrow, so here's
the permalink to the story list.
Link
to this item | Comment
Peter Arnett's new gig: His first piece in The
Daily Mirror (UK): This war is not working. (link fixed!)
I like this quote: "I don't want to give aid and comfort to the
enemy -- I just want to be able to tell the truth."
And a story
about the New Zealander from New Zealand's Southland Times, where
Arnett began his journalism career as a teenager, includes,
New Zealand media expert and educator Jim Tucker says Arnett's sacking
was bad news for Iraq war coverage. "After all, Arnett was simply
displaying the tenacious qualities of the typical Kiwi journo, expressing
things as he saw them. What assurances are there now that what we see
as news isn't just what is deemed acceptable?"
Link
to this item | Comment
How to talk to to Vulnerable
Sources: Poynter Online old-timer Al Tompkins advises journalists
on how to break bad news, and more. Interesting "inside baseball"
piece:
Journalists who contact families and friends of soldiers who have been
captured, injured or killed may be encountering people at the worst
moment of their lives. The journalist's job is to find ways to tell
the story without causing more undue harm. Despite what the public might
think, most journalists I know hate to approach people who are in pain
and ask for an interview.
Link
to this item | Comment
'Wash.
Post' Offers Free Headlines to Web Sites: From Editor & Publisher,
NEW YORK -- Washingtonpost.com is now offering free headlines on a
variety of subjects, including the war in Iraq, to be posted on other
Web sites.
Web site owners must fill out a short online form and insert a small
amount of code on their sites to get the free headline boxes, which
can be customized to automatically post headlines on the war, politics,
business, entertainment, food, travel, style, and other topics.
The headline boxes include a "washingtonpost.com" logo at
the top, and if a user clicks on any headline, they are taken to The
Washington Post Web site for the complete story.
Go
here to check it out and sign up.
Link
to this item | Comment
Is
This the List of Pulitzer Finalists?
'E&P' Gets Its Annual Leak.
Link
to this item | Comment
March 31, 2003
Not the war: Lost
America: This is where you'll find a collection of night photography
of the abandoned roadside west. via
Judy Watt. Also, The
Andrew Breton collection is up for auction, explains Traveler's
Diagram, naming favorites.
Breaking
war news links: I've moved the links page I compiled last week
to
its own page. Please email other
links for this "best sources" portal.
Birthdays: Twenty-seven years ago today I gave birth to my daughter.
And, in the heat of the first day of the war, I didn't even notice that
this blog had turned one. The
first issue of shenews was March 20, 2002.
Andrea
Mitchell: Spin tough to separate from fact: (Providence Journal,
reg.req.) Andrea Mitchell, the chief foreign affairs correspondent
for NBC News, spoke at Brown University yesterday. Excerpts
...The Bush administration has the ability to "control information,"
in a way that Mitchell -- who covered the Reagan Cabinet -- said she
has "not seen previously in the White House." There is "a
premium on loyalty to George Bush."
Mitchell said the tight grip on information makes it difficult for
reporters to "separate spin from fact." Sources she's had
for 20 years will tell her what they think, and she'll wonder how much
of it is accurate, and what they want her to say so it "blows back
around" to the nation. Watching that she does not become a "propaganda
tool" for the U.S. government is a challenge unlike any she has
previously encountered as a journalist, she said. ...
... As the war moved into the Senate, Mitchell said, she kept waiting
for debate, the kind of "push-pull" she saw in the first Gulf
War. It never came, she said.
"Everyone was afraid to challenge this popular president,"
she said. ...
... In July, she said, after Afghanistan reached the point of control,
National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice told an administrator who
was discussing how to deal with Iraq: "Don't waste your breath;
that decision has already been made."
War-Gamed
- Why the Army shouldn't be so surprised by Saddam's moves (Slate)
War
Watch: Claims and counter claims made during the media war over Iraq.
From the Guardian (UK).
Saddam
-- The movie: Uncle
Saddam released on DVD all over the US (Al Bawaba). $29.95 for
the documentary.
Humor from Arab News: Coalition
of the Willing, but Unable?
...Sponsorship is the answer. Think about it! The possibilities are
endless! If a mere tennis player can sell rights to over a dozen body
parts to sponsors, why not the military? With sponsors on board, there
will no longer be agonizing drawn-out budget battles. Congress, Parliament
and People’s Assemblies can be bypassed.
For starters, GI outfits could be GAP-cool. On the other hand, elite
units could opt for the Army Armani look. Not to be outdone, Versace
could outbid the rest of the pack for the right to dress the generals,
although Hermes could try to muscle in on the silk neck scarves much
loved by big brass...
Doc Searls points
to Mark
Pilgrim's "Peaceblogroll."
Phil
Leggiere (Noosphere Blues) says Lisa
Reins is emerging as protest music's best blog chronicler.
The press and the war: A special section.
The links lead with a terrific multi-part first-person story by Essam
Al-Ghalib, an Arab News journalist who sneaked into Iraq. Two installments
are up, with Part 3 promised and no indication of how many more are to
come.
Part
1: ‘Terrified of Saddam Hussein’
Part
2: ‘If They Stop Now We’re As Good As Dead’
Deborah
Branscum: Reporters
Without Borders is tracking killed, wounded and missing journalists
(in Iraq).
On Arnett: National
Geographic fires Peter Arnett; here's the Transcript
of Peter Arnett interview on Iraqi TV.
Blogger (and former
journalist) Chris
Gulker suggests Arnett's Iraqi TV interview may have been part of
a trade-off:
If Peter Arnett made a mistake, it was by becoming a story. The notion
that MSNBC fired him for saying things that MSNBC has also aired, is
troubling. Granted, Iraqi TV is a propaganda outlet for Saddam's regime,
but Arnett didn't apparently say anything that wasn't being widely reported
by Western media (and FYI I haven't seen the tape).
Arnett landed NBC/MSNBC an exclusive interview with Tariq Aziz: I'm
guessing the Iraqi TV appearance was part of that deal. Journalists
make all sorts of deals with all kinds of unsavory people: it's how
they get information. There are no more free lunches in the media biz
than there are anywhere else.
Whether Arnett went too far in that deal, it's hard to say: NBC did
run the interview with Aziz (if they didn't like the deal, they shouldn't
have used it). It seems they're dumping Arnett because they're being
criticized for not 'supporting' the war. I don't think news organizations
should support, or not support, the war: they should report the war
honestly and unflinchingly. NBC and MSNBC, it should be noted, have
both been interviewing journalists, which is a bad practice IMHO...
10
Embedded Journalists Leave Their Posts: Others Stay to Preserve Their
Employers' Slots. By Joe Strupp at Editor & Publisher. Papers
Prep Replacement Reporters for Iraq. Who will be the first blogger
to drop out, tune out and go back to pre-war concerns?
Related: War
reporters find the going tough. USA Today.
Where's
Geraldo? CNN
says he's out of the war.
Getting
half the war story from TV news: We blogged
two version of this story from the Western press Friday. Here's the
Arab version, from Al-Jazeerah,
The most unfortunate and professionally disgraceful aspect of US television
coverage, in my view, has been the widespread double assumption that
Iraqis would offer no resistance and would welcome the American Army
with open arms. Some Iraqis will surely do so, but most people in this
region now see the Americans as an invading force that will become an
occupying force. The American media probably reflects widespread American
ignorance about what it means to have your country invaded, occupied,
administered and retooled in someone else’s image. Americans are
correct to assume that their impressive military might will prevail
on the battlefield in the end; yet they also appear totally and bafflingly
oblivious to the visceral workings of nationalism and national identity.
I have seen no appreciation whatsoever in America for the fact that
while Iraqis generally may dislike their vicious and violent Iraqi regime,
the average Iraqi and Arab has a much older, stronger, and more recurring
fear of armies that come into their lands from the West carrying political
promises and bags of rice.
Arab television channels display virtually identical biases and omissions,
including heavy relaying of film of the worst Iraqi civilian casualties,
interviews with guests who tend to be critical of the US, hosts and
anchors who often seem to see their role as debating rather than merely
interviewing American guests, accepting Iraqi and other Arab government
statements at face value without sufficiently probing their total accuracy,
and highlighting the setbacks to the attacking Anglo-American forces,
by means including showing film of captured or dead troops.
We in the Arab world are slightly better off than most Americans, because
we can see and hear both sides, given the easy availability of American
satellite channels throughout this region; most Americans do not have
easy access to Arab television reports, and even if they did they would
need to know Arabic to grasp the full picture.
Arab political cartoons: Today,
archived;
Western
cartoons.
Swazi
radio's "war correspondent" has cover blown: He's "broadcasting
out of a broom closet." From Reuters.
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Subterranean Homepage News
by Sheila Lennon
features & interactive producer of projo.com |
