Truth in journalism

Via Osocio.

AP on the Case

Have no fear, fair citizens! The AP, part of the unelected 4th branch of government continues to dig deep to ensure that our government remains in check:

"OBAMA BREAKS FROM BUSH, AVOIDS DIVISIVE STANDS"
by Liz Zidoti
Barack Obama opened his presidency by breaking sharply from George W. Bush's unpopular administration, but he mostly avoided divisive partisan and ideological stands. He focused instead on fixing the economy, repairing a battered world image and cleaning up government."

Keep up the great work, Liz!

Update: James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal has also taken notice of the AP's change in tone.

Quote of the day

Camille Paglia:

[O]f all the innumerable print and broadcast journalists who have interviewed me in the U.S. and abroad since I arrived on the scene nearly 20 years ago, Katie Couric was definitively the stupidest. As a guest on NBC's "Today" show during my 1992 book tour, I was astounded by Couric's small, humorless, agenda-ridden mind, still registered in that pinched, tinny monotone that makes me rush across the room to change stations whenever her banal mini-editorials blare out at 5 p.m. on the CBS radio network. And of course I would never spoil my dinner by tuning into Couric's TV evening news show. That sallow, wizened, drum-tight, cosmetic mummification look is not an appetite enhancer outside of Manhattan or L.A. There's many a moose in Alaska with greater charm and pizazz.

He should have done this years ago

Bush talks back to the press.

Via Ed Morrissey, who adds:

this exemplifies the vapidity of American war coverage. We saw this in the Basra coverage, where the initial pushback by Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army got portrayed as a great victory and an embarrassing loss for Nouri al-Maliki — and within 48 hours, Sadr started offering terms for retreat. When Maliki’s forces liberated Basra a few days later, the media outlets responded by reminding everyone that the Mahdis fought back, and therefore the victory didn’t count as much.

Bring out the hookers

What a boon this Eliot Spitzer thing is to the media. Right now I'm watching "New York's highest paid escort" giving relationship advice on "Today."

Monday, the show devoted its Spitzer coverage to talking to psychologists. Tuesday, it was about political wives, starring the former Mrs. Jim McGreevy, one-time wife of the country's favorite Gay American. Today it's hookers. I can't wait to see what tomorrow will bring.

Castro: What a great guy

As Castro announces his resignation, the BBC looks back.

But Cuba under his rule has made impressive domestic strides.

Pope John Paul II criticised Castro's human rights record
Good medical care is freely available for all, there is 98% literacy, and Cuba's infant mortality rates compare favourably with Western nations.

Do you suppose the Western media will ever get over their Castro mania? When it's finally, mercifully, time to write Fidel's obit, will Cuba's literacy rate and "free" medical care still trump the gulag?

Via Fausta.

See also Cuba’s Castro Won’t Seek New Term; Concerned He Won’t Be Able To Serve Full 49 Years

What do you want to bet

That someone will propose outlawing tigers in zoos in the wake of the San Francisco tiger incident?

I'm listening to the "Today Show" right now and Ann Curry is grilling this zoo expert as if the "zoo community" were pulling one over on the rest of us and knowingly exposing our children, or rather "The Children," to danger for the sake of ... What? Filthy lucre? Are the zookeepers of America in league with Big Pharma?

I paraphrase:

Zoo guy: This is a once-in-a-century event.
Curry: Sir, can you guarantee that this sort of thing will not occur again?
Zoo guy: This is as if there were never a car accident in the history of automobiles. It's unprecedented.
Curry: You, sir, are not responding to the question. Is it possible that this will occur again?
Zoo guy: Anything's possible when you're dealing with a wild animal, but this ....
Curry: Can you, sir, in good conscience recommend taking children to the zoo in light of this horrific event?

Rest assured that the San Francisco City Council is already "taking action."

The move came as Mayor Gavin Newsom's administration called on zoo officials Wednesday to make immediate changes to ensure that the gruesome attack is not repeated.

"Live animal attacks won't be tolerated in San Francisco, and the mayor expects immediate improvements in protocols and facilities so that tragedies such as this never happen again," Newsom's spokesman Nathan Ballard said. "It's simply unacceptable."

The media's annual Christmas tradition

Michael Gove:

Eggnog lattes on sale at Starbucks? Feature-length M&S commercials? There’s one invariable sign that Christmas is almost upon us – a story about how Bethlehem is suffering at the hands of wicked Israel.

It has become almost as much a feature of seasonal journalism as stories about how Nativity plays are being subverted and commentaries on how commercialism is snuffing out the true meaning of the festival.

This year we’ve already had our first exercise in demonising Israel for its treatment of Bethlehem with the graffiti artist Banksy enjoying extensive coverage for his trip to decorate the security barrier near the town with his work. The message of Banksy’s work and the coverage it has generated is the same: oppressive Israel has snuffed the life out of the town where the Prince of Peace was born. Herod’s spirit lives on, even as the spirit of Christmas is struggling to survive.

Via HonestReporting.

How about if we stop putting a human face on every issue?

Then the nasty old Republicans couldn't go after the adorable-but-wise-beyond-his-years Democratic spokesman.

I know they all do it, but it's a cheap trick. A cheap trick beloved of journalistic hacks who love to find the downest on their luck people to "highlight" an issue. Remember, for example, homeless families? A visitor to our planet during the Reagan years would have concluded that every other American family was living in their car. When the reality was that intact families were a tiny fraction of the country's homeless.

Fine, I guess, if you're selling papers. Not so good if you're setting policy.
Healthcare poses the same problem. Who can argue with healing a sick child? But our elected officials are supposed to consider the issues soberly, not with a case of the vapors about The Children.

If I never see a sick child pleading for healthcare, or a poor-but-honest-and-hard-working immigrant pleading to stay here so he can continue supporting his family in Mexico and remain at home with his 12 children, I would be very happy.

When will they stop getting tattoos?

The BBC notices that tattoos are pretty common.

"Do English teachers do things like this? You'll find they do. You'll find tattoos in accounting and lawyers and every straight-up job. It isn't just alternative people."

Where the hell have these people been for the last decade? These days it's the people without tattoos who stand out. It wouldn't surprise me to see a nun with a tramp stamp, perhaps something tasteful like Christ wearing a crown of thorns.

Pundits and preporters

This is so true

Jeff Jarvis on the death of TimesSelect.

I realized this morning — as the Times heavily promoted the death of TimesSelect as a new feature (’Free columnists!’ . . . or is that ‘Columnists freed!’?) — that I could link to and quote their opinion purveyors again. But I’m unlikely to, because TimesSelect broke the habit of reading the Times op-ed page. I lived quite well without it, thank you. Maureen Dowd had long since become a self-parody. I came to think that’d I’d already read every column Tom Friedman could write, a few times over. And when I stopped reading them — because, what was the point, I couldn’t link to them — I quickly found that I didn’t miss them. Newspapers are, in great measure, habit and once broken, it’s hard to reestablish that behavior. So bye-bye, guys.

A couple of years ago, every time a MoDo column was published, the blogosphere would erupt. Everyone was eager to skewer her. Now ... who cares?

'No time to quit'

One of a series of ads being put out by Freedoms Watch in the run up to a vote on the war in Iraq.

Via Don Surber.

Maureen Dowd for free

The New York Times will drop TimesSelect, according to the New York Post.

While other online publications were abandoning subscriptions, the Times took the opposite approach in 2005 and began charging for access to well-known writers, including Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich and Thomas L. Friedman.

The decision, which also walled off access to archives and other content, was controversial almost from the start, with some of the paper's own columnists complaining that it limited their Web readership.

I'll bet.

Liar, liar pants on fire

Thomas Scott Beauchamp.

fter a thorough investigation that lasted nearly a week the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division has concluded that the allegations made by Private Thomas Scott Beauchamp, the "Baghdad Diarist", have been

"refuted by members of his platoon and proven to be false"


The official investigation the 4th IBCT Public Affairs Office qualified as "thorough and professional" concluded late August 1st. Officials would not speculate on the possibility of further action against Private Beauchamp, nor would they confirm his current whereabouts or status.

Sergeant First Class Robert Timmons, the acting public affairs official of the 4th IBCT, 1st ID, in the absence of Major Luke Luedeke, remarked that despite the high level of attention this case received in the American media, soldiers at the 4th IBCT, 1st Inf. Div, a "surge" Brigade, have not been distracted from their missions.

Thanks to Andy for the link.

The Photoshop of Dorian Grey

Dorian eagerly rips the package from the messenger's hands, she'd been waiting for days to see the pictures from the Redbook photo shoot. This would mark the beginning of her comeback tour; she'd been languishing in semi-obscurity for the past 10 years since her marriage to Dale and the birth of her three children.

But her new CD, "Having It All," was scheduled for release in two weeks and she was ready to get back into the spotlight. The album told the bittersweet story of her current life. Once she'd had the world by the balls--she was beautiful, thin and talented--men wanted to bed her, women wanted to be her. Now, she was a little bit older and a little bit fatter but she had the love of a good man; three wonderful, smart and beautiful children; and her creative juices were flowing like never before. She was sure this latest venture really caught the current zeitgeist. She would become a symbol to women the world over, a sadder, but wiser gal who'd aged gracefully and was living life to the fullest--on her own terms. A MILF for the ages.

Still, she was a little nervous about the photos; it had been 10 years, after all. And even a macrobiotic diet, three hours of exercise a day and a fanatical sleep regimen couldn't totally make up for the passing of the years.

So what? I still look great. And celebrity photog Basil Hallward could make even that cow Madonna look young. Well, he couldn't disguise those cords in her neck, but hell, a woman of a certain age needs a little padding and Dorian had it. Then she remembered the sleeveless sundress that stylist Henry Wotton had chosen for the shoot. She'd been wary, but Hank kept telling her how fabulous it looked on her, how it hugged all her curves in the right places, how every woman in America over 40 35 would envy her shape. He talked her into it, now she was thinking she'd been a fool to listen to that woman-hating fag.

Dorian's hands shook as she struggled to open the package. She handed it to to her assistant, Maci. "You open it, I'm too nervous." Dorian shut her eyes. She heard the paper being ripped open, followed by a sharp intake of breath and then a great whoosh of air being expelled.

"What ... Oh My God!" Dorian stared at the photo, enraptured. "I look 10 years younger and 10 pounds thinner." Dorian puts on her reading glasses and scrutinizes the photo. She looks even better than when she first started out as the lead singer of the girl group, Girl Group. Then, she'd been the picture of virginal innocence. Now, she looks just as fresh but there's something in the eyes. A Mona Lisa vibe. She has depth. Depth and mystery.

"Dorian, it's fabulous," Maci said, turning to give her a hug. The phone rings, Basil's on the line.

"How's our cover girl this morning?"

"Basil, it's terrific, but I wonder ..."

"What, pet."

"I don't look nearly as young as this picture. I'll be on the Today Show tomorrow when the magazine hits the newsstands and everyone will see that I'm not as young--or thin--as I look here. I wish now I'd gotten that tummy tuck."

"Sweetie, no one will notice a thing. Hank's on his way with another outfit and the makeup and hair people on Today are real artists. Relax, it'll be fine."

"If only I didn't have to go through with all that. If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture's arms started to jiggle! For that—for that—I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!"

"Chill out, pumpkin," Basil soothes. "That's crazy talk."

Dorian spends the next hour looking at the photo and sighing. She tried to call Dale--he and the kids were out at the ranch in Montana while she made the rounds for the next two weeks--but there was no answer. Then Hank turns up, with a fabulous dress in tow, and her spirits start to rise. The two of them spend the day trying on clothes and experimenting with hairstyles. Then Hank convinces her to send home her pilates instructor and hit the clubs instead.

"Hank, I can't. I've got a 4 am call tomorrow for the show. I'll need my sleep."

"Dorian, precious, the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Besides, it will help you relax."

Dorian stumbled into her hotel room at around two. She managed to get her clothes off, but she didn't bother washing her face or brushing her teeth. When the wakeup call came, Dorian groaned in pain. Jesus, what an idiot I am. I'll be lucky if I pull this one off. She took a quick shower and threw on a pair of sweats. Maci was waiting in the limo with her dress.

"Christ, I'll be lucky if I can zip that thing up," she said. "I absolutely stuffed myself with caviar--and you know how I retain water. Ah shit. Maybe the coke speeded up my metabolism. Those makeup people are really gonna earn their keep."

She lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, blowing the smoke out her nose. I can't believe I started smoking again. Now I'll have a whiskey voice to go with my whiskey face. She took another drag. God, that felt good. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?

At the studio, the makeup girl spends a scant 10 minutes on her face and the hairstylist even less. And when she slips on the dress that had fit her like a glove the day before, it's loose and the wardrobe girl has to pin it at the waist. What the hell was going on? Dorian turns to look in the mirror.

"Jesus!"

It was the girl in the cover photo. The slim, perfectly coiffed girl of 21 with the knowing look. Her hair shines, her skin is perfection. And that body. Her breasts had risen two inches. And her ass! Her ass had never looked so good.

The interview went great. Meredith Vieira threw her nothing but softballs. OK, it was weird the way Al Roker kept coming over to her and massaging her shoulders, but all-in-all it went well. When they got back to the hotel, Dorian runs to her bedroom and picks up the package from Redbook. There she sees last night's debauchery. Her skin is blotchy and the bags under her eyes are like steamer trunks. Somehow her hair manages to look both greasy and dull. But the expression on her face is what really gets her. The Mona Lisa smile is replaced by a disturbing leer that makes her look both horny and desperate.

What a nightmare! Dorian shoves the photo into her private makeup case and resolves to hit the gym. But Hank stops by and the two of them hit the streets.

It goes on like that for two weeks. Then Dorian spends a week with Dale and the kids at the ranch she goes on tour. She's dismissed Maci and hired Hank to take her place. On nights when the two of them aren't out in the bars, Dorian's taken to binge eating. She generally orders a pizza or two from Domino's and washes it down with a half-gallon of Haagen Dasz triple chocolate ice cream. She never gains a pound. But her picture does. It's also grown grey roots, wrinkles and adult acne. And ... are there curly hairs erupting from her now not-quite-double chin?

The tour ends with Dorian on top of the world. She's been asked to grace the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, the oldest woman ever to appear on that page. She's exchanged her music producer husband for a younger model, a Hollywood director of only 28 with a string of hits to his name. She's nominated for a grammy and performs a morning concert at Rockefeller Center at another Today Show appearance.

Man, that Al Roker is creepy, but it's all good. Until suddenly it's not. Things start falling apart. Celebrity photog Basil Hallward disappears. Dorian drops Rufus Giancarlo after his film, The Maid of Orleans, starring the 47-year-old Dorian as the teenage martyr, flopped at the box office. Then tabloids get wind of her rowdy behavior. Dorian becomes a frequent fixture on Page Six, until the following blind item appears there:

WHICH recently separated celeb has a new habit to go along with her new friends? The cutie is spending way too much time in the bathroom of the many clubs she visits, hoovering down cocaine that her pals supply her with . . .

Dorian checks into rehab for drug and alcohol addiction, sex addiction and food addiction. Upon her release she vows to turn her life around and retreats to her New Mexico ranch to work on a new CD. The work is hard. Hank, who follows her everywhere, doesn't help. He insists on going out every night to cowboy bars. The last straw occurs one morning after they wake up in bed with two hands from the Imus ranch. Dorian kicks Hank to the curb. But still the music doesn't come.

Then it happens.

Switching on the TV one morning to Access Hollywood, Dorian discovers that her estranged daughter Jemima has written a tell-all book about her.

"This has got to stop," she screams and runs up the stairs. Dorian pulls out the Redbook cover photo and tries to rip it to shreds. Her assortment of hangers on hear a huge crash and run upstairs to investigate. Lying on the floor is a morbidly obese woman clutching a photograph of Dorian, the picture from the Redbook cover restored to its former beauty. The woman, a frightful old hag wearing clothes that seemed to have been shredded, has a scissors stuck in her heart. It isn't until her stylist notices that the tattered top the loathsome old hag is wearing is, in fact, the Prada sweater Dorian had put on that morning that they realize who the dead woman is.

Too good to check?

Michael Goldfarb wonders about a recent (subscription req'd) piece in The New Republic written by a pseudonymous soldier serving in Iraq.

It recounts several instances of gross misconduct by the men in his unit, some of which are, to echo the title of his piece, deeply shocking--If they are true--a big if, according to several people with experience in Iraq. One described it to me as sounding like a "pastiche of the 'This is no bullshit . . . stories soldiers like to tell."

The first episode puts "Thomas"'s unit at a "chow hall" at an unnamed base. A woman eating there is wearing "an unrecognizable tan uniform, so I couldn’t really tell whether she was a soldier or a civilian contractor." The woman's face is described as having been "more or less melted, along with all the hair on that side of her head," by an IED. She sits down for lunch next to the men. Here's how "Thomas" describes what happens next:

We were already halfway through our meals when she arrived. After a minute or two of eating in silence, one of my friends stabbed his spoon violently into his pile of mashed potatoes and left it there.
“Man, I can’t eat like this,” he said.
“Like what?” I said. “Chow hall food getting to you?”
“No—with that fucking freak behind us!” he exclaimed, loud enough for not only her to hear us, but everyone at the surrounding tables. I looked over at the woman, and she was intently staring into each forkful of food before it entered her half-melted mouth.
“Are you kidding? I think she’s fucking hot!” I blurted out.
“What?” said my friend, half-smiling.
“Yeah man,” I continued. “I love chicks that have been intimate—with IEDs. It really turns me on—melted skin, missing limbs, plastic noses . . . .”
“You’re crazy, man!” my friend said, doubling over with laughter. I took it as my cue to continue.
“In fact, I was thinking of getting some girls together and doing a photo shoot. Maybe for a calendar? ‘IED Babes.’ We could have them pose in thongs and bikinis on top of the hoods of their blown-up vehicles.”
My friend was practically falling out of his chair laughing. The disfigured woman slammed her cup down and ran out of the chow hall, her half-finished tray of food nearly falling to the ground.

Read the whole thing. Goldfarb asks milbloggers to look into the allegations. Does the story smell funny to you? It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Via John Podhoretz.

I just don't get it

First of all: I don't understand why British makeover experts Trinny and Susannah staged a "sex-change" operation on the Long Man of Wilmington. What was the larger point of this exercise? Sure it brought publicity to their TV show, but they could have done that by trying to set the world record for goldfish swallowing. Or kidnapping a fashion transgressor, stripping her naked and putting a video up on YouTube.

Second: Am I to take seriously the concerns of "a Druid battle chieftain" named Arthur Pendragon? What battles, I wonder, has the nomadic Pendragon fought and against whom?

Third: Judging by this picture, Trinny and Susannah (that's Trinny on the left) are one-trick ponies--or in the pay of the leggings industry.

The real mastermind behind 9/11

Not Osama or George Bush, but Ken Starr. Yeah that Ken Starr. Pejman has the details.

Unethical ethicist

Douglas Kern has some fun with the news that New York Times ethicist Randy Cohen was dropped from a Washington state newspaper for violating its ethics policy.

My highest law-school grade was in Legal Ethics. I achieved a stellar grade because I devised an infallible mechanism for solving any legal ethical dilemma. My mechanism was this: Remember that legal ethics is a system of rules:

1) designed by sociopaths;
2) for sociopaths;
3) to prevent public acknowledgment of their sociopathy;
4) while still allowing said sociopaths to fleece said public.

Once you realize that contemporary ethics is not morality but the clever simulation of morality, you’re halfway to qualifying for an ethics-consulting job.

Kern's point is that the rule Cohen violated--he contributed to MoveOn.org in violation of the paper's rule that its staff not contribute to political organizations--serves as a fig leaf for journalists to maintain the illusion of objectivity.

True, though regular readers of Cohen will not be surprised at his support of Move On. Cohen's philosophy, such as it is, seems to be that any action one takes is ethical as long as you're sticking it to "The Man." See this article by Jacob T Levy who takes Cohen to task for, among other things, telling a reader that it would be unethical to report shoddy work by a temp because it's immoral to "force" someone to have such a lousy job.

In response to the question about how to handle a poorly performing temp, Cohen declared, "if anyone's acting unethically here, it's your boss; it is ignoble to force people into soul-deadening, pointless, poorly paid jobs.... Organizing work into tedious, repetitive tasks, while profitable for the few, makes life miserable for the many; some political economists have called it a crime against humanity." In other words, as long as we have a division of labor, ethics is inapplicable to decisions we face about who does what job. In the face of"a crime against humanity," how could there be anything wrong with submitting fraudulent resumes, evaluations, or timecards?