The death of Sean Bell at the hands of undercover police officers, who also wounded his two companions in their 50-shot barrage in Queens nine days ago, brought to mind a case from a few years back in which undercover cops, acting on bogus information, attacked an innocent group of young people in a car in Manhattan.
The cops in the Manhattan case assumed that the people in the car were lowlifes. They were all Ivy League graduates, and one is currently clerking for U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.
The incident occurred about 11:30 p.m. on Jan. 10, 2000. Two men and two women who were running their own startup Internet company, MagicBeanStalk.com, were parked outside a subway station on East 14th Street, near Union Square. Without any warning, a plainclothes officer leaped out of a yellow cab with his gun drawn and rushed the car with the four young people in it.
Thinking he was being carjacked, the driver put the vehicle in reverse and tried to get away. He was blocked by an unmarked police car that had pulled up behind him. He ended up hitting both the unmarked car and the cab (which was also a police vehicle) in his unsuccessful effort to flee.
The driver, Jason Rowley, who was 25 at the time, had no idea that the man with the gun was a cop. “I thought he was going to shoot me,” he said in an interview last week. “I was trying to get out of there.”
The passenger in the front seat, Sheldon Gilbert, said, “We thought we were going to die, plain and simple.”
The first cop was joined by two others, also in plain clothes. The officers apparently were enraged by Mr. Rowley’s effort to get away. One smashed the window on the driver’s side of the car and dragged Mr. Rowley through it, ripping his thumb in the process. Mr. Gilbert said his door was yanked open and he was punched in the face and then dragged from the car. The two men were then beaten.
The two women, Lauren Sudeall and Marie Claire Lim, were in the back seat, completely terrified. They were taken from the car at gunpoint and handcuffed. All four occupants were arrested.
It turned out that the cops were acting on a mistaken computer report that Mr. Rowley’s car was stolen. As frightening as the incident was, the four people in the car were lucky that none of the cops opened fire. “I spent that night in jail,” said Mr. Rowley, “and a lot of the officers told me that if this had been elsewhere — for example, if this has been in the Bronx or Harlem — I’d have been dead.”
As the case was processed, the police learned that the car indeed belonged to Mr. Rowley, that all four occupants had recently graduated from college (Mr. Rowley from Brown and the others from Yale), that Ms. Sudeall was carrying an acceptance letter from Harvard Law School, and that they had all been coming home from a long day’s work at their company. None of that protected them from being treated by the police like trash.
Mr. Rowley and Mr. Gilbert are black. Ms. Sudeall is of mixed parentage, black and white, and Ms. Lim is from the Philippines. The officers who rushed their car were white.
Jonathan Abady, a lawyer who represented the four in a subsequent lawsuit (which the city settled), believes that the race of the victims in that case and in the Sean Bell case — in which some of the cops were black — was a major factor in the way the police behaved.
“Our case was a classic example of disproportionate force being used against entirely innocent civilians,” he said. “It was an example of egregiously overaggressive police conduct that I think ultimately is based on stereotypes and perceptions. This case and the shooting of Sean Bell are examples of a very ignominious history of the police taking certain liberties, essentially in communities of color. It’s hard to believe that they would have fired 50 shots into a vehicle on Park Avenue and 57th Street in Manhattan.”
The four people who were in the car in the Manhattan incident have since done extremely well. Ms. Sudeall, for example, graduated from law school and is now a clerk for Justice Stevens. Mr. Gilbert has established a new Internet venture based on a program he invented that predicts people’s buying patterns online. It’s very creepy to think how easily one or more of the four could have been killed in their encounter with the police.
As Ms. Sudeall said yesterday, “It seems like it’s inviting disaster to be not in uniform, not showing identification and attacking people who may or may not have done anything wrong.”
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Ratings rise with Olbermann's anger
Broadcaster's commentaries, full of disgust and outrage, bring more viewers to MSNBC
SECAUCUS, N.J. // The Democrats may have wrested back control of power in Congress, but that hasn't quieted the ire of Keith Olbermann. Recently, he delivered one of his trademark blistering critiques of the country's leadership - this time charging that President Bush failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam by perpetuating the "monumental lie that is our presence in Iraq." And don't think the victors of the midterm election are going to escape his sharp tongue.
"If the Democrats don't undo a lot of the things that have been done, like the Military Commissions Act and many of the other infringements on freedom, as I see it, there will be a special comment with their name on it," Olbermann vowed on a recent afternoon, wearing a crisp, striped shirt and suspenders, his large frame hunched over his desk at MSNBC's Secaucus headquarters.
---
The longtime sportscaster, who doesn't vote and eschews any political identity - "I may be a Whig, possibly a Free-Soiler," he quipped - has nevertheless become an unexpected folk hero for the frustrated left. One woman approached him in a New York restaurant recently and burst into tears as she thanked him.
"People just think, 'He speaks for me,'" said Jane Hamsher, a Mill Valley, Calif., author who runs a liberal blog at firedoglake.com. "There was no resonance within the media for their perspective, and suddenly Keith came on the scene and gave voice to these long-simmering feelings of disgust with the war."
Olbermann said he never set out to court disaffected liberals. "But there's a time when what you're covering ceases to look like news and begins to look like history," he said. "And you say, 'Well, it doesn't matter how people might brand me or respond to this - I feel as if something very important is not being said.'"
SECAUCUS, N.J. // The Democrats may have wrested back control of power in Congress, but that hasn't quieted the ire of Keith Olbermann. Recently, he delivered one of his trademark blistering critiques of the country's leadership - this time charging that President Bush failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam by perpetuating the "monumental lie that is our presence in Iraq." And don't think the victors of the midterm election are going to escape his sharp tongue.
"If the Democrats don't undo a lot of the things that have been done, like the Military Commissions Act and many of the other infringements on freedom, as I see it, there will be a special comment with their name on it," Olbermann vowed on a recent afternoon, wearing a crisp, striped shirt and suspenders, his large frame hunched over his desk at MSNBC's Secaucus headquarters.
---
The longtime sportscaster, who doesn't vote and eschews any political identity - "I may be a Whig, possibly a Free-Soiler," he quipped - has nevertheless become an unexpected folk hero for the frustrated left. One woman approached him in a New York restaurant recently and burst into tears as she thanked him.
"People just think, 'He speaks for me,'" said Jane Hamsher, a Mill Valley, Calif., author who runs a liberal blog at firedoglake.com. "There was no resonance within the media for their perspective, and suddenly Keith came on the scene and gave voice to these long-simmering feelings of disgust with the war."
Olbermann said he never set out to court disaffected liberals. "But there's a time when what you're covering ceases to look like news and begins to look like history," he said. "And you say, 'Well, it doesn't matter how people might brand me or respond to this - I feel as if something very important is not being said.'"
Feral cats, beware
Asia Times
With the US government firmly on the back foot in Iraq and President George W Bush rendered a lame duck by a Democratic Congress, the end of the American century is approaching rather faster than previously expected. [1] My characterization of the United States as Garfield may have been too gentle in the context of what is likely to happen going forward, when the cat becomes feral. The death of any superpower usually carries with it a combination of military and economic defeats and, as with the Soviet Union's demise in the 1990s, America's decline will prove equally cruel.
Iraq has descended into a civil war in recent weeks, as a feckless US military attempts to recover lost ground with the same failed tactics of the past few years. Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result. Bush, reeling from stunning losses in mid-term elections, had to fire defense chief Donald Rumsfeld, but has since failed to signal any changes in strategy. The matter may not be entirely up to him as insurgents and terrorists, sensing a potential shift in US strategy, have stepped up their attacks to record levels. This makes an early US exit not only more likely, but also more ignominious.
For a people imbued with a sense of infallibility, this turn of events would be nothing short of a catastrophic reality check. As with the end of the Vietnam conflict, it might take 10 years or more for any resurgence in national optimism in the US. The difference is that this time around, putative successors are much better positioned to inherit the mantle of superpowers.
Echoes elsewhere
The impact of a significant foreign-policy setback is hardly minor for any economy, and will be quite marked for the US economy. A decline in government spending on the "military-industrial complex" would reduce profits for many US companies, especially the ones that tend to fund policymakers or send their executives into politics.
The downward adjustment of such sectors would, however, pale in comparison to the impact of reduced optimism at the top level. Simply put, US consumers would be less likely to spend on new houses, cars or home improvements. The notion of "keeping up with the Joneses", which underpins vast swaths of the US economy, would operate in reverse under such circumstances, with people cutting their spending in competition.
Financial markets are already signaling the possibility that the US confronts a recession at home, as the US dollar has declined sharply in recent days. While the prestige factor mentioned above is only part of the story, the other part is the likely monetary easing that makes the currency less attractive going forward. Stock markets have also seen a wobble in recent days.
The immediate impact of a decline in the US economy is of course negative for exporting countries, including China, Japan and pretty much the whole Middle East. However, to the extent that China and India continue to build their infrastructure, and allow their currencies to appreciate against the US dollar, one can expect increased consumption from these countries to take up the slack created by the US decline. The worst-positioned countries are those that do most of their business with the US today, namely those in Latin America.
Some financial commentators have pointed out that a falling US dollar is good for the country's exports. This might be the case when a country produces anything that others want to buy, but that's largely not the case with the US. In a previous article, [2] I wrote:
The US has lost its competitive edge in manufacturing ... The simple fact is that after the Cold War ended, US innovation stopped dead in its tracks. Evaluate the engineering aspects of any American car, and you are likely to walk away completely unimpressed. A six-liter engine used by US car companies produces the same power as an engine half that size from the Germans, and one-third of the size by the Japanese (tuned, admittedly). Leave out engineering, and simple design dynamics don't work either - Detroit has not produced a single desirable car in the past decade.
The United States came to the forefront of righting human-rights wrongs such as racism, but only when its economic prosperity was threatened by the status quo. Now, America's lost competitiveness in manufacturing comes alongside its declining demographics (when keeping immigrants out of calculations), and rising threats from the likes of India and China in all areas of the global economy that it currently dominates. In this high-pressure economic environment, rising geopolitical risks argue for an unwelcome acceleration of the country's transition. Much like a worker who becomes a wife-beater when threatened with losing his job, the US lashes out, with its anger directed toward garnering any resource advantage that it can to lengthen its reign at the top.
As I pointed out then, the US is unlikely to go quietly into the night. It will attempt to lash out at the rest of the world, particularly at its potential successors - the Eurozone, Russia and China.[3] Of these, the Eurozone has neither the military nor social mandate to pose a strategic counterbalance to the US. This leaves Russia and China to consider. I have already written about the latter in the aforementioned article, concluding that China would make necessary accommodations to its currency and economic policy to avoid confrontation with the US. Russia's role, though, is more intriguing.
Russia's sinister game
That President Vladimir Putin has stepped up his great Asian game comes as no surprise in the context described above. To a large extent, his strategy has been shaped by the impact of a dying Soviet Union on the national psyche, something that he has personally mourned more than once. A shameful withdrawal of the US from Iraq guarantees a strong role for his country in the immediate aftermath, particularly given the proximity of concerns with Iran, whose potential to disturb southern Russian regions has never been doubted in Moscow.
The assassinations of various dissidents, including journalist Anna Politkovskaya and former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko, show a return to the "bad old days" of the KGB under Josef Stalin and Leonid Brezhnev, while apparent intransigence on energy businesses show that the Kremlin is keen to maximize every advantage it perceives. What this means for Putin himself is a matter of much conjecture, but it seems a fairly safe bet that he will not slide into oblivion quite as easily as president Boris Yeltsin did.
At the logical extreme, one can expect that Russia will hold Europe hostage with its gas supplies, while increasing its shrill behavior on world forums against US interests. This would in turn cause the US to dial back its old suspicions on Russia. The nomination of Robert Gates (of "Mikhail Gorbachev is a fraud" fame) as US defense secretary makes it ever more likely that the US would prefer to pick battles with known enemies, particularly one that appears to be so willing to become recognized once again as the strategic counterbalance to the US.
The only event that could derail this train would be a large terrorist attack on Russia, perhaps mounted by Chechen Muslims. [4] Similarly, a bigger attack on the US may make Americans more amenable to concessions for the Russians, making any conflict escalation unlikely.
Over the longer term, though, Russia's tilt toward regaining the Soviet Union's lost dominance is ill-conceived for both historical and demographic reasons. However, it provides just enough breathing room for China to emerge fully into the limelight. For this reason, more than anything else, China's foreign policy in the next few months is likely to "encourage" adventurism on the part of the Russians, while playing lip service to the United States.
Notes
1. Garfield with guns, Asia Times Online, September 2.
2. In-Sen!, Asia Times Online, September 16.
3. China's four-play, Asia Times Online, November 11.
4. It is interesting to note that Alexander Litvinenko alleged that it was the KGB rather than the Chechens who bombed Moscow apartment buildings.
With the US government firmly on the back foot in Iraq and President George W Bush rendered a lame duck by a Democratic Congress, the end of the American century is approaching rather faster than previously expected. [1] My characterization of the United States as Garfield may have been too gentle in the context of what is likely to happen going forward, when the cat becomes feral. The death of any superpower usually carries with it a combination of military and economic defeats and, as with the Soviet Union's demise in the 1990s, America's decline will prove equally cruel.
Iraq has descended into a civil war in recent weeks, as a feckless US military attempts to recover lost ground with the same failed tactics of the past few years. Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result. Bush, reeling from stunning losses in mid-term elections, had to fire defense chief Donald Rumsfeld, but has since failed to signal any changes in strategy. The matter may not be entirely up to him as insurgents and terrorists, sensing a potential shift in US strategy, have stepped up their attacks to record levels. This makes an early US exit not only more likely, but also more ignominious.
For a people imbued with a sense of infallibility, this turn of events would be nothing short of a catastrophic reality check. As with the end of the Vietnam conflict, it might take 10 years or more for any resurgence in national optimism in the US. The difference is that this time around, putative successors are much better positioned to inherit the mantle of superpowers.
Echoes elsewhere
The impact of a significant foreign-policy setback is hardly minor for any economy, and will be quite marked for the US economy. A decline in government spending on the "military-industrial complex" would reduce profits for many US companies, especially the ones that tend to fund policymakers or send their executives into politics.
The downward adjustment of such sectors would, however, pale in comparison to the impact of reduced optimism at the top level. Simply put, US consumers would be less likely to spend on new houses, cars or home improvements. The notion of "keeping up with the Joneses", which underpins vast swaths of the US economy, would operate in reverse under such circumstances, with people cutting their spending in competition.
Financial markets are already signaling the possibility that the US confronts a recession at home, as the US dollar has declined sharply in recent days. While the prestige factor mentioned above is only part of the story, the other part is the likely monetary easing that makes the currency less attractive going forward. Stock markets have also seen a wobble in recent days.
The immediate impact of a decline in the US economy is of course negative for exporting countries, including China, Japan and pretty much the whole Middle East. However, to the extent that China and India continue to build their infrastructure, and allow their currencies to appreciate against the US dollar, one can expect increased consumption from these countries to take up the slack created by the US decline. The worst-positioned countries are those that do most of their business with the US today, namely those in Latin America.
Some financial commentators have pointed out that a falling US dollar is good for the country's exports. This might be the case when a country produces anything that others want to buy, but that's largely not the case with the US. In a previous article, [2] I wrote:
The US has lost its competitive edge in manufacturing ... The simple fact is that after the Cold War ended, US innovation stopped dead in its tracks. Evaluate the engineering aspects of any American car, and you are likely to walk away completely unimpressed. A six-liter engine used by US car companies produces the same power as an engine half that size from the Germans, and one-third of the size by the Japanese (tuned, admittedly). Leave out engineering, and simple design dynamics don't work either - Detroit has not produced a single desirable car in the past decade.
The United States came to the forefront of righting human-rights wrongs such as racism, but only when its economic prosperity was threatened by the status quo. Now, America's lost competitiveness in manufacturing comes alongside its declining demographics (when keeping immigrants out of calculations), and rising threats from the likes of India and China in all areas of the global economy that it currently dominates. In this high-pressure economic environment, rising geopolitical risks argue for an unwelcome acceleration of the country's transition. Much like a worker who becomes a wife-beater when threatened with losing his job, the US lashes out, with its anger directed toward garnering any resource advantage that it can to lengthen its reign at the top.
As I pointed out then, the US is unlikely to go quietly into the night. It will attempt to lash out at the rest of the world, particularly at its potential successors - the Eurozone, Russia and China.[3] Of these, the Eurozone has neither the military nor social mandate to pose a strategic counterbalance to the US. This leaves Russia and China to consider. I have already written about the latter in the aforementioned article, concluding that China would make necessary accommodations to its currency and economic policy to avoid confrontation with the US. Russia's role, though, is more intriguing.
Russia's sinister game
That President Vladimir Putin has stepped up his great Asian game comes as no surprise in the context described above. To a large extent, his strategy has been shaped by the impact of a dying Soviet Union on the national psyche, something that he has personally mourned more than once. A shameful withdrawal of the US from Iraq guarantees a strong role for his country in the immediate aftermath, particularly given the proximity of concerns with Iran, whose potential to disturb southern Russian regions has never been doubted in Moscow.
The assassinations of various dissidents, including journalist Anna Politkovskaya and former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko, show a return to the "bad old days" of the KGB under Josef Stalin and Leonid Brezhnev, while apparent intransigence on energy businesses show that the Kremlin is keen to maximize every advantage it perceives. What this means for Putin himself is a matter of much conjecture, but it seems a fairly safe bet that he will not slide into oblivion quite as easily as president Boris Yeltsin did.
At the logical extreme, one can expect that Russia will hold Europe hostage with its gas supplies, while increasing its shrill behavior on world forums against US interests. This would in turn cause the US to dial back its old suspicions on Russia. The nomination of Robert Gates (of "Mikhail Gorbachev is a fraud" fame) as US defense secretary makes it ever more likely that the US would prefer to pick battles with known enemies, particularly one that appears to be so willing to become recognized once again as the strategic counterbalance to the US.
The only event that could derail this train would be a large terrorist attack on Russia, perhaps mounted by Chechen Muslims. [4] Similarly, a bigger attack on the US may make Americans more amenable to concessions for the Russians, making any conflict escalation unlikely.
Over the longer term, though, Russia's tilt toward regaining the Soviet Union's lost dominance is ill-conceived for both historical and demographic reasons. However, it provides just enough breathing room for China to emerge fully into the limelight. For this reason, more than anything else, China's foreign policy in the next few months is likely to "encourage" adventurism on the part of the Russians, while playing lip service to the United States.
Notes
1. Garfield with guns, Asia Times Online, September 2.
2. In-Sen!, Asia Times Online, September 16.
3. China's four-play, Asia Times Online, November 11.
4. It is interesting to note that Alexander Litvinenko alleged that it was the KGB rather than the Chechens who bombed Moscow apartment buildings.
Saturday, December 02, 2006
The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism
The Objective Standard
"In 1994, American voters elected Republican majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate for the first time in forty years. This ascent to power gave Newt Gingrich and his colleagues the opportunity to launch their “Republican Revolution” with its signature “Contract with America” platform. The election was said to mark the end of an era—the era of big government liberalism that had dominated American political life since the New Deal. After struggling for almost half a century to gain political power, the conservative movement finally seemed to have reached the political promised land.
In theory, the “Republican Revolution” proposed to “relimit” the powers of the federal government and to restore some of the basic principles and institutions of free-market economy. The preamble to the “Contract with America” pledged to the American people that the GOP would put an end to “government that is too big, too intrusive, and too easy with the public’s money.”1 The political goals of the Gingrich “revolutionaries” were not revolutionary in any meaningful sense, but they did promise to begin some necessary reforms. As a rule, the Gingrich Congress preferred less to more government controls.
In practice, the Republicans began to whittle away at the welfare state. Their first post-election budget proposed to eliminate three cabinet agencies (the Departments of Commerce, Education, and Energy) and more than 200 federal programs. Within a year, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives had reduced federal spending by almost $14 billion.2 Such early successes led even Bill Clinton to declare in his 1996 State of the Union address that the “era of big government is over.”3 A Republican Congress passed and Clinton signed far-reaching welfare reform legislation that promised to end “welfare as we know it.”4
By the end of the 1990s, America’s political fault line appeared to have moved considerably to the Right for the first time since the early 20th century. The advocates of limited government faced an historic opportunity to begin the process of dismantling the welfare state and deregulating the economy. ....
--MORE--
"In 1994, American voters elected Republican majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate for the first time in forty years. This ascent to power gave Newt Gingrich and his colleagues the opportunity to launch their “Republican Revolution” with its signature “Contract with America” platform. The election was said to mark the end of an era—the era of big government liberalism that had dominated American political life since the New Deal. After struggling for almost half a century to gain political power, the conservative movement finally seemed to have reached the political promised land.
In theory, the “Republican Revolution” proposed to “relimit” the powers of the federal government and to restore some of the basic principles and institutions of free-market economy. The preamble to the “Contract with America” pledged to the American people that the GOP would put an end to “government that is too big, too intrusive, and too easy with the public’s money.”1 The political goals of the Gingrich “revolutionaries” were not revolutionary in any meaningful sense, but they did promise to begin some necessary reforms. As a rule, the Gingrich Congress preferred less to more government controls.
In practice, the Republicans began to whittle away at the welfare state. Their first post-election budget proposed to eliminate three cabinet agencies (the Departments of Commerce, Education, and Energy) and more than 200 federal programs. Within a year, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives had reduced federal spending by almost $14 billion.2 Such early successes led even Bill Clinton to declare in his 1996 State of the Union address that the “era of big government is over.”3 A Republican Congress passed and Clinton signed far-reaching welfare reform legislation that promised to end “welfare as we know it.”4
By the end of the 1990s, America’s political fault line appeared to have moved considerably to the Right for the first time since the early 20th century. The advocates of limited government faced an historic opportunity to begin the process of dismantling the welfare state and deregulating the economy. ....
--MORE--
Scoops, Impact or Glory: What Motivates Reporters?
NYT --- The Public Editor
SOME readers are convinced that certain reporters at The New York Times are motivated solely by partisan politics. A New Jersey reader’s March e-mail, for example, described one reporter as a “GOP operative/hack-writer” who “uncritically sounds his party’s theme today in a piece about the 2008 campaign.” But a Florida reader contended in a September e-mail that the anti-Bush political bias of the same Times staffer and a colleague “is in their DNA.”
My reviews of these two stories turned up no bias. More important, however, my stint as The Times’s public editor and my 39 years at a competitor lead me to conclude generally that reporters and editors in the newsrooms of major newspapers are not motivated by a devotion to any political party or cause. It just isn’t in their DNA.
So what does motivate newspaper reporters? Based on the hundreds of reporters with whom I’ve worked and competed, I’ve sorted out several major driving forces — and considered the potential dangers to good journalism those forces can present. As a reality check, I talked to a half-dozen Times reporters and a half-dozen editors with decades of experience at The Times and other major newspapers. In an effort to avoid righteous platitudes about newspapering, I promised confidentiality to these journalists.
Two caveats bear mentioning. Reporters in newsrooms across the country can be driven by many different factors, and they aren’t necessarily motivated by all of the ones I’m holding up. While editors are driven by many of the same factors that motivate reporters, the differences are sufficient to force me to focus on the people who gather the news.
Being first with new facts or fresh insights.
The drive to be first with the basic facts of a newsworthy development remains embedded in the culture of newsrooms and in the minds of reporters. The daily news cycle of the print version of The Times continues to get top priority on many exclusive articles, although a growing number are being published online during the day. The obvious signal to reporters: Old-fashioned scoops still count.
But “intellectual scoops” — stories with new insights that are lauded on a regular basis by Bill Keller, the executive editor — are what reporters increasingly view as a more vital way to be first. As one editor told me in an interview, “When you can look at all the dots everyone can look at, and be the first to connect them in a meaningful and convincing way, that’s something.”
Evidence of the continuing reportorial passion to be first, with facts or insights, emerges clearly when reporters think a competitor hasn’t appropriately credited them with being out in front. They often demand that their editors seek a correction from the competing publication. In one of my earliest brown-bag lunches with Times staffers, a reporter reminded me that I had refused a year or so earlier, while still an editor at The Wall Street Journal, to publish a correction conceding that he had been first on a story.
The dangers to readers of a rush to be first are obvious. Accuracy can suffer, and a fresh insight can be left without the convincing example that another day of reporting could have produced. And cheap scoops about, say, some routine presidential appointment to be announced the next day are of little real value to readers.
Pursuing stories that can have impact.
All reporters want to write articles that people talk about — but some are driven to journalism that produces corrective action or beneficial changes. Two major goals of these reporters are to hold the powerful accountable and to right wrongs. (These two goals embody what motivated me to become a journalist.)
“Holding those with power accountable as to how they use it” is a key part of the watchdog role of the press, one reporter told me. “That’s why I got into this.” Another reporter spoke of giving “voice to people who don’t have a voice” and getting a “chance to afflict some who are unjustly comfortable.” These comments are from reporters who practice what they preach.
Righting wrongs in society is a motivation that sometimes gets boiled down in newsroom shorthand to “catching bad guys.” It’s what motivates many investigative reporters to spend months digging into wrongdoing — sometimes before law enforcement officials have detected trouble. But another reporter, also motivated to right wrongs, may pursue a story that shows a person has been unjustly convicted of a crime.
A major downside risk with these motivations, factoring in the strong egos common among reporters, is that a reporter’s zeal can turn into a crusade that corrupts the impartiality of the journalism. Another risk is the temptation to push for follow-up articles about the impact of the coverage that present details well beyond what readers really need to know.
Winning prizes.
Reporters are most reluctant to acknowledge that their journalism is driven by the desire to win a prize. The criteria for many journalism contests, however, favor stories that cause change or make waves. So reporters motivated to pursue such stories — and their editors — are inevitably weighing the prize possibilities. Certain prizes can bring reporters numerous benefits, including greater freedom in choosing future topics to pursue — in itself a key motivation for some reporters.
Impressing sources.
The better reporters assigned to a beat or specialized area of coverage are likely to cultivate the better sources, including experts on the subject. Such reporters will write certain articles that will be viewed as unfavorable by some sources. Yet many of the journalists remain highly motivated to impress their sources with the accuracy, fairness and depth of their work. Beat reporters, after all, typically get more feedback from their sources than from readers, and the respect of those experts looms large for them.
“This, of course, can become dangerous, if it leads reporters to write for their sources rather than for the broader public,” one editor said to me, but “that sometimes happens.”
Reporters acknowledge the motivation to impress sources. “I’m prepared for their anger, but not their contempt,” one told me. Another said: “It can be a huge motivation if a source says, ‘You nailed it.’ But I have to keep in my mind that I’m not writing for the wonks.”
Figuring out what’s really happening.
A fundamental motivation of reporters is the curiosity that drives them to get to the bottom of a confusing or complicated situation and find patterns that help explain it to readers. Making sense out of chaos — especially when you can do it first — is something many reporters find very rewarding.
“It’s the anomalies of life, the thing that didn’t happen, that prompt you to ask why,” said one reporter. “You try to figure out what the machinery is underneath the development ... and try to find accurate, meaningful patterns.” This kind of curiosity can also foster a healthy skepticism in the newsroom and help keep cynicism at bay, both pluses for readers.
Telling stories in a compelling way.
There are two motivations (and often fairly strong egos) at work here. One is the desire of almost all reporters to tell an important story so that it will be read to the end. The other is the satisfaction, or even delight, that many reporters derive from good writing of the kind that can move readers to laugh or to cry.
When the reporting has turned up a compelling story, one editor said, the reporter’s motivation is to “write about it so compellingly that you know the reader can’t put your story down. That’s a storyteller’s ethic — and storytelling is an honorable thing, and has been since men and women lived in caves.”
Many reporters find themselves motivated to search for the right words. One spoke of finding “an unseemly delight” in simply producing what he felt was “a good phrase.” His passion for good writing is also stoked any time someone quotes from one of his stories in conversation, he said.
Getting on the front page.
While it’s no longer a dominant motivation, the hope of turning up a really big story that will make it to the front page never seems that far from the minds of many reporters. As newspapers make the transition to the Web, the importance to reporters of landing on Page 1 will probably fade as readers gain the capability to customize the kinds of stories delivered to them.
When it comes to summing up what motivates reporters, I was most intrigued by the concise list provided by a candid reporter who responded to my question by quickly ticking off four motivations:
“The superego, the public service part. The id and mischief making, say something that will get people’s attention. Reporting is surprisingly fun. Bosses and sources.”
SOME readers are convinced that certain reporters at The New York Times are motivated solely by partisan politics. A New Jersey reader’s March e-mail, for example, described one reporter as a “GOP operative/hack-writer” who “uncritically sounds his party’s theme today in a piece about the 2008 campaign.” But a Florida reader contended in a September e-mail that the anti-Bush political bias of the same Times staffer and a colleague “is in their DNA.”
My reviews of these two stories turned up no bias. More important, however, my stint as The Times’s public editor and my 39 years at a competitor lead me to conclude generally that reporters and editors in the newsrooms of major newspapers are not motivated by a devotion to any political party or cause. It just isn’t in their DNA.
So what does motivate newspaper reporters? Based on the hundreds of reporters with whom I’ve worked and competed, I’ve sorted out several major driving forces — and considered the potential dangers to good journalism those forces can present. As a reality check, I talked to a half-dozen Times reporters and a half-dozen editors with decades of experience at The Times and other major newspapers. In an effort to avoid righteous platitudes about newspapering, I promised confidentiality to these journalists.
Two caveats bear mentioning. Reporters in newsrooms across the country can be driven by many different factors, and they aren’t necessarily motivated by all of the ones I’m holding up. While editors are driven by many of the same factors that motivate reporters, the differences are sufficient to force me to focus on the people who gather the news.
Being first with new facts or fresh insights.
The drive to be first with the basic facts of a newsworthy development remains embedded in the culture of newsrooms and in the minds of reporters. The daily news cycle of the print version of The Times continues to get top priority on many exclusive articles, although a growing number are being published online during the day. The obvious signal to reporters: Old-fashioned scoops still count.
But “intellectual scoops” — stories with new insights that are lauded on a regular basis by Bill Keller, the executive editor — are what reporters increasingly view as a more vital way to be first. As one editor told me in an interview, “When you can look at all the dots everyone can look at, and be the first to connect them in a meaningful and convincing way, that’s something.”
Evidence of the continuing reportorial passion to be first, with facts or insights, emerges clearly when reporters think a competitor hasn’t appropriately credited them with being out in front. They often demand that their editors seek a correction from the competing publication. In one of my earliest brown-bag lunches with Times staffers, a reporter reminded me that I had refused a year or so earlier, while still an editor at The Wall Street Journal, to publish a correction conceding that he had been first on a story.
The dangers to readers of a rush to be first are obvious. Accuracy can suffer, and a fresh insight can be left without the convincing example that another day of reporting could have produced. And cheap scoops about, say, some routine presidential appointment to be announced the next day are of little real value to readers.
Pursuing stories that can have impact.
All reporters want to write articles that people talk about — but some are driven to journalism that produces corrective action or beneficial changes. Two major goals of these reporters are to hold the powerful accountable and to right wrongs. (These two goals embody what motivated me to become a journalist.)
“Holding those with power accountable as to how they use it” is a key part of the watchdog role of the press, one reporter told me. “That’s why I got into this.” Another reporter spoke of giving “voice to people who don’t have a voice” and getting a “chance to afflict some who are unjustly comfortable.” These comments are from reporters who practice what they preach.
Righting wrongs in society is a motivation that sometimes gets boiled down in newsroom shorthand to “catching bad guys.” It’s what motivates many investigative reporters to spend months digging into wrongdoing — sometimes before law enforcement officials have detected trouble. But another reporter, also motivated to right wrongs, may pursue a story that shows a person has been unjustly convicted of a crime.
A major downside risk with these motivations, factoring in the strong egos common among reporters, is that a reporter’s zeal can turn into a crusade that corrupts the impartiality of the journalism. Another risk is the temptation to push for follow-up articles about the impact of the coverage that present details well beyond what readers really need to know.
Winning prizes.
Reporters are most reluctant to acknowledge that their journalism is driven by the desire to win a prize. The criteria for many journalism contests, however, favor stories that cause change or make waves. So reporters motivated to pursue such stories — and their editors — are inevitably weighing the prize possibilities. Certain prizes can bring reporters numerous benefits, including greater freedom in choosing future topics to pursue — in itself a key motivation for some reporters.
Impressing sources.
The better reporters assigned to a beat or specialized area of coverage are likely to cultivate the better sources, including experts on the subject. Such reporters will write certain articles that will be viewed as unfavorable by some sources. Yet many of the journalists remain highly motivated to impress their sources with the accuracy, fairness and depth of their work. Beat reporters, after all, typically get more feedback from their sources than from readers, and the respect of those experts looms large for them.
“This, of course, can become dangerous, if it leads reporters to write for their sources rather than for the broader public,” one editor said to me, but “that sometimes happens.”
Reporters acknowledge the motivation to impress sources. “I’m prepared for their anger, but not their contempt,” one told me. Another said: “It can be a huge motivation if a source says, ‘You nailed it.’ But I have to keep in my mind that I’m not writing for the wonks.”
Figuring out what’s really happening.
A fundamental motivation of reporters is the curiosity that drives them to get to the bottom of a confusing or complicated situation and find patterns that help explain it to readers. Making sense out of chaos — especially when you can do it first — is something many reporters find very rewarding.
“It’s the anomalies of life, the thing that didn’t happen, that prompt you to ask why,” said one reporter. “You try to figure out what the machinery is underneath the development ... and try to find accurate, meaningful patterns.” This kind of curiosity can also foster a healthy skepticism in the newsroom and help keep cynicism at bay, both pluses for readers.
Telling stories in a compelling way.
There are two motivations (and often fairly strong egos) at work here. One is the desire of almost all reporters to tell an important story so that it will be read to the end. The other is the satisfaction, or even delight, that many reporters derive from good writing of the kind that can move readers to laugh or to cry.
When the reporting has turned up a compelling story, one editor said, the reporter’s motivation is to “write about it so compellingly that you know the reader can’t put your story down. That’s a storyteller’s ethic — and storytelling is an honorable thing, and has been since men and women lived in caves.”
Many reporters find themselves motivated to search for the right words. One spoke of finding “an unseemly delight” in simply producing what he felt was “a good phrase.” His passion for good writing is also stoked any time someone quotes from one of his stories in conversation, he said.
Getting on the front page.
While it’s no longer a dominant motivation, the hope of turning up a really big story that will make it to the front page never seems that far from the minds of many reporters. As newspapers make the transition to the Web, the importance to reporters of landing on Page 1 will probably fade as readers gain the capability to customize the kinds of stories delivered to them.
When it comes to summing up what motivates reporters, I was most intrigued by the concise list provided by a candid reporter who responded to my question by quickly ticking off four motivations:
“The superego, the public service part. The id and mischief making, say something that will get people’s attention. Reporting is surprisingly fun. Bosses and sources.”
FRANK RICH: Has He Started Talking to the Walls?
IT turns out we’ve been reading the wrong Bob Woodward book to understand what’s going on with President Bush. The text we should be consulting instead is “The Final Days,” the Woodward-Bernstein account of Richard Nixon talking to the portraits on the White House walls while Watergate demolished his presidency. As Mr. Bush has ricocheted from Vietnam to Latvia to Jordan in recent weeks, we’ve witnessed the troubling behavior of a president who isn’t merely in a state of denial but is completely untethered from reality. It’s not that he can’t handle the truth about Iraq. He doesn’t know what the truth is.
The most startling example was his insistence that Al Qaeda is primarily responsible for the country’s spiraling violence. Only a week before Mr. Bush said this, the American military spokesman on the scene, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, called Al Qaeda “extremely disorganized” in Iraq, adding that “I would question at this point how effective they are at all at the state level.” Military intelligence estimates that Al Qaeda makes up only 2 percent to 3 percent of the enemy forces in Iraq, according to Jim Miklaszewski of NBC News. The bottom line: America has a commander in chief who can’t even identify some 97 percent to 98 percent of the combatants in a war that has gone on longer than our involvement in World War II.
But that’s not the half of it. Mr. Bush relentlessly refers to Iraq’s “unity government” though it is not unified and can only nominally govern. (In Henry Kissinger’s accurate recent formulation, Iraq is not even a nation “in the historic sense.”) After that pseudo-government’s prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, brushed him off in Amman, the president nonetheless declared him “the right guy for Iraq” the morning after. This came only a day after The Times’s revelation of a secret memo by Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, judging Mr. Maliki either “ignorant of what is going on” in his own country or disingenuous or insufficiently capable of running a government. Not that it matters what Mr. Hadley writes when his boss is impervious to facts.
In truth the president is so out of it he wasn’t even meeting with the right guy. No one doubts that the most powerful political leader in Iraq is the anti-American, pro-Hezbollah cleric Moktada al-Sadr, without whom Mr. Maliki would be on the scrap heap next to his short-lived predecessors, Ayad Allawi and Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Mr. Sadr’s militia is far more powerful than the official Iraqi army that we’ve been helping to “stand up” at hideous cost all these years. If we’re not going to take him out, as John McCain proposed this month, we might as well deal with him directly rather than with Mr. Maliki, his puppet. But our president shows few signs of recognizing Mr. Sadr’s existence.
In his classic study, “The Great War and Modern Memory,” Paul Fussell wrote of how World War I shattered and remade literature, for only a new language of irony could convey the trauma and waste. Under the auspices of Mr. Bush, the Iraq war is having a comparable, if different, linguistic impact: the more he loses his hold on reality, the more language is severed from its meaning altogether.
When the president persists in talking about staying until “the mission is complete” even though there is no definable military mission, let alone one that can be completed, he is indulging in pure absurdity. The same goes for his talk of “victory,” another concept robbed of any definition when the prime minister we are trying to prop up is allied with Mr. Sadr, a man who wants Americans dead and has many scalps to prove it. The newest hollowed-out Bush word to mask the endgame in Iraq is “phase,” as if the increasing violence were as transitional as the growing pains of a surly teenager. “Phase” is meant to drown out all the unsettling debate about two words the president doesn’t want to hear, “civil war.”
When news organizations, politicians and bloggers had their own civil war about the proper usage of that designation last week, it was highly instructive — but about America, not Iraq. The intensity of the squabble showed the corrosive effect the president’s subversion of language has had on our larger culture. Iraq arguably passed beyond civil war months ago into what might more accurately be termed ethnic cleansing or chaos. That we were fighting over “civil war” at this late date was a reminder that wittingly or not, we have all taken to following Mr. Bush’s lead in retreating from English as we once knew it.
It’s been a familiar pattern for the news media, politicians and the public alike in the Bush era. It took us far too long to acknowledge that the “abuses” at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere might be more accurately called torture. And that the “manipulation” of prewar intelligence might be more accurately called lying. Next up is “pullback,” the Iraq Study Group’s reported euphemism to stave off the word “retreat” (if not retreat itself).
In the case of “civil war,” it fell to a morning television anchor, Matt Lauer, to officially bless the term before the “Today” show moved on to such regular fare as an update on the Olsen twins. That juxtaposition of Iraq and post-pubescent eroticism was only too accurate a gauge of how much the word “war” itself has been drained of its meaning in America after years of waging a war that required no shared sacrifice. Whatever you want to label what’s happening in Iraq, it has never impeded our freedom to dote on the Olsen twins.
I have not been one to buy into the arguments that Mr. Bush is stupid or is the sum of his “Bushisms” or is, as feverish Internet speculation periodically has it, secretly drinking again. I still don’t. But I have believed he is a cynic — that he could always distinguish between truth and fiction even as he and Karl Rove sold us their fictions. That’s why, when the president said that “absolutely, we’re winning” in Iraq before the midterms, I just figured it was more of the same: another expedient lie to further his partisan political ends.
But that election has come and gone, and Mr. Bush is more isolated from the real world than ever. That’s scary. Neither he nor his party has anything to gain politically by pretending that Iraq is not in crisis. Yet Mr. Bush clings to his delusions with a near-rage — watch him seethe in his press conference with Mr. Maliki — that can’t be explained away by sheer stubbornness or misguided principles or a pat psychological theory. Whatever the reason, he is slipping into the same zone as Woodrow Wilson did when refusing to face the rejection of the League of Nations, as a sleepless L.B.J. did when micromanaging bombing missions in Vietnam, as Ronald Reagan did when checking out during Iran-Contra. You can understand why Jim Webb, the Virginia senator-elect with a son in Iraq, was tempted to slug the president at a White House reception for newly elected members of Congress. Mr. Bush asked “How’s your boy?” But when Mr. Webb replied, “I’d like to get them out of Iraq,” the president refused to so much as acknowledge the subject. Maybe a timely slug would have woken him up.
Or at least sounded an alarm. Some two years ago, I wrote that Iraq was Vietnam on speed, a quagmire for the MTV generation. Those jump cuts are accelerating now. The illusion that America can control events on the ground is just that: an illusion. As the list of theoretical silver bullets for Iraq grows longer (and more theoretical) by the day — special envoy, embedded military advisers, partition, outreach to Iran and Syria, Holbrooke, international conference, NATO — urgent decisions have to be made by a chief executive who is in touch with reality (or such is the minimal job description). Otherwise the events in Iraq will make the Decider’s decisions for him, as indeed they are doing already.
The joke, history may note, is that even as Mr. Bush deludes himself that he is bringing “democracy” to Iraq, he is flouting democracy at home. American voters could not have delivered a clearer mandate on the war than they did on Nov. 7, but apparently elections don’t register at the White House unless the voters dip their fingers in purple ink. Mr. Bush seems to think that the only decision he had to make was replacing Donald Rumsfeld and the mission of changing course would be accomplished.
Tell that to the Americans in Anbar Province. Back in August the chief of intelligence for the Marines filed a secret report — uncovered by Thomas Ricks of The Washington Post — concluding that American troops “are no longer capable of militarily defeating the insurgency in al-Anbar.” That finding was confirmed in an intelligence update last month. Yet American troops are still being tossed into that maw, and at least 90 have been killed there since Labor Day, including five marines, ages 19 to 24, around Thanksgiving.
Civil war? Sectarian violence? A phase? This much is certain: The dead in Iraq don’t give a damn what we call it.
The most startling example was his insistence that Al Qaeda is primarily responsible for the country’s spiraling violence. Only a week before Mr. Bush said this, the American military spokesman on the scene, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, called Al Qaeda “extremely disorganized” in Iraq, adding that “I would question at this point how effective they are at all at the state level.” Military intelligence estimates that Al Qaeda makes up only 2 percent to 3 percent of the enemy forces in Iraq, according to Jim Miklaszewski of NBC News. The bottom line: America has a commander in chief who can’t even identify some 97 percent to 98 percent of the combatants in a war that has gone on longer than our involvement in World War II.
But that’s not the half of it. Mr. Bush relentlessly refers to Iraq’s “unity government” though it is not unified and can only nominally govern. (In Henry Kissinger’s accurate recent formulation, Iraq is not even a nation “in the historic sense.”) After that pseudo-government’s prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, brushed him off in Amman, the president nonetheless declared him “the right guy for Iraq” the morning after. This came only a day after The Times’s revelation of a secret memo by Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, judging Mr. Maliki either “ignorant of what is going on” in his own country or disingenuous or insufficiently capable of running a government. Not that it matters what Mr. Hadley writes when his boss is impervious to facts.
In truth the president is so out of it he wasn’t even meeting with the right guy. No one doubts that the most powerful political leader in Iraq is the anti-American, pro-Hezbollah cleric Moktada al-Sadr, without whom Mr. Maliki would be on the scrap heap next to his short-lived predecessors, Ayad Allawi and Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Mr. Sadr’s militia is far more powerful than the official Iraqi army that we’ve been helping to “stand up” at hideous cost all these years. If we’re not going to take him out, as John McCain proposed this month, we might as well deal with him directly rather than with Mr. Maliki, his puppet. But our president shows few signs of recognizing Mr. Sadr’s existence.
In his classic study, “The Great War and Modern Memory,” Paul Fussell wrote of how World War I shattered and remade literature, for only a new language of irony could convey the trauma and waste. Under the auspices of Mr. Bush, the Iraq war is having a comparable, if different, linguistic impact: the more he loses his hold on reality, the more language is severed from its meaning altogether.
When the president persists in talking about staying until “the mission is complete” even though there is no definable military mission, let alone one that can be completed, he is indulging in pure absurdity. The same goes for his talk of “victory,” another concept robbed of any definition when the prime minister we are trying to prop up is allied with Mr. Sadr, a man who wants Americans dead and has many scalps to prove it. The newest hollowed-out Bush word to mask the endgame in Iraq is “phase,” as if the increasing violence were as transitional as the growing pains of a surly teenager. “Phase” is meant to drown out all the unsettling debate about two words the president doesn’t want to hear, “civil war.”
When news organizations, politicians and bloggers had their own civil war about the proper usage of that designation last week, it was highly instructive — but about America, not Iraq. The intensity of the squabble showed the corrosive effect the president’s subversion of language has had on our larger culture. Iraq arguably passed beyond civil war months ago into what might more accurately be termed ethnic cleansing or chaos. That we were fighting over “civil war” at this late date was a reminder that wittingly or not, we have all taken to following Mr. Bush’s lead in retreating from English as we once knew it.
It’s been a familiar pattern for the news media, politicians and the public alike in the Bush era. It took us far too long to acknowledge that the “abuses” at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere might be more accurately called torture. And that the “manipulation” of prewar intelligence might be more accurately called lying. Next up is “pullback,” the Iraq Study Group’s reported euphemism to stave off the word “retreat” (if not retreat itself).
In the case of “civil war,” it fell to a morning television anchor, Matt Lauer, to officially bless the term before the “Today” show moved on to such regular fare as an update on the Olsen twins. That juxtaposition of Iraq and post-pubescent eroticism was only too accurate a gauge of how much the word “war” itself has been drained of its meaning in America after years of waging a war that required no shared sacrifice. Whatever you want to label what’s happening in Iraq, it has never impeded our freedom to dote on the Olsen twins.
I have not been one to buy into the arguments that Mr. Bush is stupid or is the sum of his “Bushisms” or is, as feverish Internet speculation periodically has it, secretly drinking again. I still don’t. But I have believed he is a cynic — that he could always distinguish between truth and fiction even as he and Karl Rove sold us their fictions. That’s why, when the president said that “absolutely, we’re winning” in Iraq before the midterms, I just figured it was more of the same: another expedient lie to further his partisan political ends.
But that election has come and gone, and Mr. Bush is more isolated from the real world than ever. That’s scary. Neither he nor his party has anything to gain politically by pretending that Iraq is not in crisis. Yet Mr. Bush clings to his delusions with a near-rage — watch him seethe in his press conference with Mr. Maliki — that can’t be explained away by sheer stubbornness or misguided principles or a pat psychological theory. Whatever the reason, he is slipping into the same zone as Woodrow Wilson did when refusing to face the rejection of the League of Nations, as a sleepless L.B.J. did when micromanaging bombing missions in Vietnam, as Ronald Reagan did when checking out during Iran-Contra. You can understand why Jim Webb, the Virginia senator-elect with a son in Iraq, was tempted to slug the president at a White House reception for newly elected members of Congress. Mr. Bush asked “How’s your boy?” But when Mr. Webb replied, “I’d like to get them out of Iraq,” the president refused to so much as acknowledge the subject. Maybe a timely slug would have woken him up.
Or at least sounded an alarm. Some two years ago, I wrote that Iraq was Vietnam on speed, a quagmire for the MTV generation. Those jump cuts are accelerating now. The illusion that America can control events on the ground is just that: an illusion. As the list of theoretical silver bullets for Iraq grows longer (and more theoretical) by the day — special envoy, embedded military advisers, partition, outreach to Iran and Syria, Holbrooke, international conference, NATO — urgent decisions have to be made by a chief executive who is in touch with reality (or such is the minimal job description). Otherwise the events in Iraq will make the Decider’s decisions for him, as indeed they are doing already.
The joke, history may note, is that even as Mr. Bush deludes himself that he is bringing “democracy” to Iraq, he is flouting democracy at home. American voters could not have delivered a clearer mandate on the war than they did on Nov. 7, but apparently elections don’t register at the White House unless the voters dip their fingers in purple ink. Mr. Bush seems to think that the only decision he had to make was replacing Donald Rumsfeld and the mission of changing course would be accomplished.
Tell that to the Americans in Anbar Province. Back in August the chief of intelligence for the Marines filed a secret report — uncovered by Thomas Ricks of The Washington Post — concluding that American troops “are no longer capable of militarily defeating the insurgency in al-Anbar.” That finding was confirmed in an intelligence update last month. Yet American troops are still being tossed into that maw, and at least 90 have been killed there since Labor Day, including five marines, ages 19 to 24, around Thanksgiving.
Civil war? Sectarian violence? A phase? This much is certain: The dead in Iraq don’t give a damn what we call it.
Media Matters Latest, December 02, 2006
Hannity suggested use of Quran in representative's swearing-in same as using "Nazi bible" Mein Kampf
Echoing columnist Dennis Prager, Sean Hannity claimed that incoming Rep. Keith Ellison's reported intention to use a copy of the Quran apparently during the ceremonial photo op on the day he is sworn in "will embolden Islamic extremists and make new ones" and suggested that using the Quran for a swearing-in is comparable to using "Hitler's Mein Kampf, which is the Nazi bible." Read more
Coulter: "[P]rofiling Muslims is more like profiling the Klan"
In a November 30 syndicated column about the removal of six imams from an airplane in Minnesota after other passengers saw them praying prior to boarding, right-wing pundit Ann Coulter claimed that racially "profiling Muslims is more like profiling the Klan" than it is like profiling African-Americans, "because of the history of discrimination against blacks in this country." Coulter added: "What did we do to the Arabs? I believe Americans are the victims in that relationship." Read more
O'Reilly: Iraq is "not [in] a civil war," rather "they're all Muslims ... doing what they do"
On the November 29 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Bill O'Reilly denied that Iraq is in a "civil war as NBC News wants you to think" and asserted that "they're all Muslims, and they're doing what they do. They're killing each other. And they're killing Americans." Read more
Fox's Wilson falsely suggested NBC alone in characterizing Iraq situation as "civil war"
In his report on whether it is "accurate to call what is happening [in Iraq] a civil war," as NBC News recently decided to do, Fox News' Brian Wilson featured several people who say that Iraq is not experiencing a civil war, while noting only the announcement by NBC News explaining of its decision. Wilson did not mention any of the numerous scholars, journalists, and retired military officers who have described Iraq as being in the midst of a civil war. Read more
CNN's Blitzer ignores possible political motives in McCain's call for more troops
On The Situation Room, Wolf Blitzer asked whether Sen. John McCain's call for more troops is "a Profiles in Courage kind of statement," adding that McCain deserves "credit" for his statement because "he totally believes that the United States does not have enough troops in Iraq right now." But Blitzer ignored the possible political motives behind McCain's proposal. Read more
American Spectator, Scarborough echoed George Will's dishonest attack on Sen.-elect WebbIn his latest column, George F. Will distorted his own newspaper's reporting by leaving out a key part of an exchange between President Bush and Sen.-elect James Webb in order to attack Webb's "calculated rudeness toward another human being." Read more
O'Reilly still blasting retail chains for apocryphal "Merry Christmas" ban
On his radio show, Bill O'Reilly claimed that retailers Best Buy and Crate & Barrel are "still ordering their people not to say, 'Merry Christmas,' " and that the stores "will fire" employees who do. According to each store's spokesperson, neither retail chain has such a policy. Read more
Shuster failed to challenge Corker when he blamed "independent" groups for ads run by his campaign and the RNC
On the November 30 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, guest host and MSNBC correspondent David Shuster failed to challenge the claim by Sen.-elect Bob Corker (R-TN) that "a lot of independent expenditure groups that got involved" in his Senate race against Democratic challenger Rep. Harold Ford Jr. had "changed the tone of the race." In fact, Corker's campaign ran at least one radio advertisement that was criticized as racially charged, and the ads Corker attributed to "independent expenditure groups" were, in fact, paid for by the Republican National Committee (RNC), which Shuster failed to note. Read more
CNN's Blitzer let slide Gonzales' dodge of question about wrongful detentions
In response to a question from Wolf Blitzer about why people have been wrongfully detained by the U.S. government, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales claimed he didn't "know the specific cases" Blitzer was "referring to." Blitzer did not challenge Gonzales or point out any of several such detainments documented by human-rights groups and foreign governments. Read more
Olbermann named Bozell "Worst Person" for claiming "100 generals ... would disagree" with NBC's characterization of Iraq as "a civil war"
On the November 30 edition of MSNBC's Countdown, host Keith Olbermann awarded Media Research Center president L. Brent Bozell III winner of his nightly "Worst Person in the World" segment for claiming, as Media Matters for America documented, that "probably 100 generals in the field in Iraq would disagree" with NBC News' "decision to call [the war in Iraq] a civil war," without providing any examples. Bozell recently was part of a "five-way tie" for "Worst Person" along with Fox News host Sean Hannity, nationally syndicated radio host Laura Ingraham, Boston University professor Bob Zelnick, and Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, who all distorted media tycoon Ted Turner's explanation for why he has a problem with President Bush's statement, "You're either with us or against us," as Media Matters also noted. Read more
Limbaugh said he learned about women from his cat, which "gets loved," "petted," and "fed" and "doesn't have to do anything for it"
On the November 30 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, host Rush Limbaugh proclaimed: My "cat's taught me more about women, than anything my whole life" because his pet cat "comes to me when she wants to be fed," and "[s]he's smart enough to know she can't feed herself. She's actually [a] very smart cat. She gets loved. She gets adoration. She gets petted. She gets fed. And she doesn't have to do anything for it." Limbaugh has previously stated, on the March 1, 2005, edition of his show, that "[w]omen still live longer than men because their lives are easier"; on January 10, he suggested that some women "would love to be hired as eye candy." Read more
Echoing columnist Dennis Prager, Sean Hannity claimed that incoming Rep. Keith Ellison's reported intention to use a copy of the Quran apparently during the ceremonial photo op on the day he is sworn in "will embolden Islamic extremists and make new ones" and suggested that using the Quran for a swearing-in is comparable to using "Hitler's Mein Kampf, which is the Nazi bible." Read more
Coulter: "[P]rofiling Muslims is more like profiling the Klan"
In a November 30 syndicated column about the removal of six imams from an airplane in Minnesota after other passengers saw them praying prior to boarding, right-wing pundit Ann Coulter claimed that racially "profiling Muslims is more like profiling the Klan" than it is like profiling African-Americans, "because of the history of discrimination against blacks in this country." Coulter added: "What did we do to the Arabs? I believe Americans are the victims in that relationship." Read more
O'Reilly: Iraq is "not [in] a civil war," rather "they're all Muslims ... doing what they do"
On the November 29 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Bill O'Reilly denied that Iraq is in a "civil war as NBC News wants you to think" and asserted that "they're all Muslims, and they're doing what they do. They're killing each other. And they're killing Americans." Read more
Fox's Wilson falsely suggested NBC alone in characterizing Iraq situation as "civil war"
In his report on whether it is "accurate to call what is happening [in Iraq] a civil war," as NBC News recently decided to do, Fox News' Brian Wilson featured several people who say that Iraq is not experiencing a civil war, while noting only the announcement by NBC News explaining of its decision. Wilson did not mention any of the numerous scholars, journalists, and retired military officers who have described Iraq as being in the midst of a civil war. Read more
CNN's Blitzer ignores possible political motives in McCain's call for more troops
On The Situation Room, Wolf Blitzer asked whether Sen. John McCain's call for more troops is "a Profiles in Courage kind of statement," adding that McCain deserves "credit" for his statement because "he totally believes that the United States does not have enough troops in Iraq right now." But Blitzer ignored the possible political motives behind McCain's proposal. Read more
American Spectator, Scarborough echoed George Will's dishonest attack on Sen.-elect WebbIn his latest column, George F. Will distorted his own newspaper's reporting by leaving out a key part of an exchange between President Bush and Sen.-elect James Webb in order to attack Webb's "calculated rudeness toward another human being." Read more
O'Reilly still blasting retail chains for apocryphal "Merry Christmas" ban
On his radio show, Bill O'Reilly claimed that retailers Best Buy and Crate & Barrel are "still ordering their people not to say, 'Merry Christmas,' " and that the stores "will fire" employees who do. According to each store's spokesperson, neither retail chain has such a policy. Read more
Shuster failed to challenge Corker when he blamed "independent" groups for ads run by his campaign and the RNC
On the November 30 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, guest host and MSNBC correspondent David Shuster failed to challenge the claim by Sen.-elect Bob Corker (R-TN) that "a lot of independent expenditure groups that got involved" in his Senate race against Democratic challenger Rep. Harold Ford Jr. had "changed the tone of the race." In fact, Corker's campaign ran at least one radio advertisement that was criticized as racially charged, and the ads Corker attributed to "independent expenditure groups" were, in fact, paid for by the Republican National Committee (RNC), which Shuster failed to note. Read more
CNN's Blitzer let slide Gonzales' dodge of question about wrongful detentions
In response to a question from Wolf Blitzer about why people have been wrongfully detained by the U.S. government, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales claimed he didn't "know the specific cases" Blitzer was "referring to." Blitzer did not challenge Gonzales or point out any of several such detainments documented by human-rights groups and foreign governments. Read more
Olbermann named Bozell "Worst Person" for claiming "100 generals ... would disagree" with NBC's characterization of Iraq as "a civil war"
On the November 30 edition of MSNBC's Countdown, host Keith Olbermann awarded Media Research Center president L. Brent Bozell III winner of his nightly "Worst Person in the World" segment for claiming, as Media Matters for America documented, that "probably 100 generals in the field in Iraq would disagree" with NBC News' "decision to call [the war in Iraq] a civil war," without providing any examples. Bozell recently was part of a "five-way tie" for "Worst Person" along with Fox News host Sean Hannity, nationally syndicated radio host Laura Ingraham, Boston University professor Bob Zelnick, and Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, who all distorted media tycoon Ted Turner's explanation for why he has a problem with President Bush's statement, "You're either with us or against us," as Media Matters also noted. Read more
Limbaugh said he learned about women from his cat, which "gets loved," "petted," and "fed" and "doesn't have to do anything for it"
On the November 30 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, host Rush Limbaugh proclaimed: My "cat's taught me more about women, than anything my whole life" because his pet cat "comes to me when she wants to be fed," and "[s]he's smart enough to know she can't feed herself. She's actually [a] very smart cat. She gets loved. She gets adoration. She gets petted. She gets fed. And she doesn't have to do anything for it." Limbaugh has previously stated, on the March 1, 2005, edition of his show, that "[w]omen still live longer than men because their lives are easier"; on January 10, he suggested that some women "would love to be hired as eye candy." Read more
DHS official admits taking bribes to fake documents
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A federal immigration official pleaded guilty Thursday to receiving more than $600,000 in bribes for falsifying documents for illegal immigrants.
Robert Schofield, 57, could face 25 years in federal prison when he is sentenced in February.
He pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, to issuing fraudulent documents to at least 184 illegal immigrants who falsely received U.S. citizenship.
Schofield, a former supervisor for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, was arrested in June.
He had served as a supervisory district adjudications officer at the Washington district office of agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security.
According to court documents, Schofield illegally helped Asian immigrants obtain U.S. citizenship in return for payments of $30,000 or more.
Under terms of the plea agreement Schofield has agreed to surrender his home, his bank accounts and his government retirement account.
"The breadth and scope of Mr. Schofield's fraud and corruption are truly stunning," said U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg.
"Those who compromise the integrity of our national immigration system betray the confidence of the American people, and their actions are shameful."
Prosecutors said Schofield employed a network of brokers to bring aliens to him who were willing to pay for the phony documents.
The government says it has identified a number of these brokers.
One of them, Qiming Ye of Washington, has already pleaded guilty and will be sentenced December 21.
Robert Schofield, 57, could face 25 years in federal prison when he is sentenced in February.
He pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, to issuing fraudulent documents to at least 184 illegal immigrants who falsely received U.S. citizenship.
Schofield, a former supervisor for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, was arrested in June.
He had served as a supervisory district adjudications officer at the Washington district office of agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security.
According to court documents, Schofield illegally helped Asian immigrants obtain U.S. citizenship in return for payments of $30,000 or more.
Under terms of the plea agreement Schofield has agreed to surrender his home, his bank accounts and his government retirement account.
"The breadth and scope of Mr. Schofield's fraud and corruption are truly stunning," said U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg.
"Those who compromise the integrity of our national immigration system betray the confidence of the American people, and their actions are shameful."
Prosecutors said Schofield employed a network of brokers to bring aliens to him who were willing to pay for the phony documents.
The government says it has identified a number of these brokers.
One of them, Qiming Ye of Washington, has already pleaded guilty and will be sentenced December 21.
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