Kurtz sums up the news. He starts with the way the LA Times handled the "Gods and Generals" story. Gives no opinion, but the facts are damning by themselves.
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The Media, the General and God
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 20, 2003; 9:06 AM
Sometimes how the media get the story is as interesting as the story itself.
Take, for example, the scoop about the Christian general whose controversial comments about religion sparked repeated questioning of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Here's how the piece began on the front page of Thursday's Los Angeles Times:
"The Pentagon has assigned the task of tracking down and eliminating Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and other high-profile targets to an Army general who sees the war on terrorism as a clash between Judeo-Christian values and Satan."
Lt. General William Boykin was described as "an outspoken evangelical Christian who appeared in dress uniform and polished jump boots before a religious group in Oregon in June to declare that radical Islamists hated the United States 'because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian and the enemy is a guy named Satan.' "
The LAT piece also said: "Audio and videotapes of Boykin's appearances before religious groups over the last two years were obtained exclusively by NBC News, which reported on them Wednesday night on the 'Nightly News with Tom Brokaw.' " The paper noted that its military columnist, Bill Arkin, "writes in an article on the op-ed page of today's Times that Boykin's appointment 'is a frightening blunder at a time that there is widespread acknowledgment that America's position in the Islamic world has never been worse.' "
But here's how an MSNBC report handled the credit issue:
"NBC News military analyst Bill Arkin, who's been investigating Boykin for the Los Angeles Times, says the general casts the war on terror as a religious war: 'I think that it is not only at odds with what the president believes, but it is a dangerous, extreme and pernicious view that really has no place.' "
So was NBC following the LAT, or the L.A. paper following the Brokaw broadcast?
The oddity was raised by Hugh Hewitt, a California radio host who often chats me up. Here's what he says on his Web site:
"I interviewed Arkin today and discovered that he developed the story on his own initiative as a columnist for the Times, and he decided with the full knowledge and approval of editors at the Los Angeles Times to provide NBC News with the story so that NBC could run the story before the paper ran Arkin's op-ed and the front-page story. He stated that the idea was to get the story some pop by using the audio and video.
"The Los Angeles Times thus gave away a scoop on a story that ended up on its front page. Why would it do that? It may have a precedent in the world of journalism, but to me it stinks. Didn't the Times engage in manipulation of the news to increase its impact on the audience? Or did the paper need cover for the story and gave it to NBC in order to generate that cover:
"Arkin: It was all coordinated, and I think that NBC's contribution was really its ability to showcase the video and audio of General Boykin which I think is much more powerful than anything I could put into words on paper.
"Hewitt: So the Los Angeles Times agreed to let NBC go first?
"Arkin: Yes."
Go figure.
Boykin, by the way, apologized Friday to "those who have been offended," the LAT reports.
We interrupt this column to bring you a special announcement. For the price of just one print column today, you get:
Exclusive excerpts of Bernard Goldberg's new media-bashing book!
The inside scoop of how the press outed that lunkhead Chicago Cubs fan!
Gregg Easterbrook's apology for slamming two Jewish Hollywood executives!
The identity of the New Yorker's new Washington correspondent!
And other stuff I've forgotten!
One-time-only bonus: My Sunday examination of Bush-hating from The Washington Post.
Last week I wondered whether Iowa and New Hampshire were worth all the attention lavished upon them by the media. Now, says Adam Nagourney of the New York Times, a couple of contenders are blowing off Iowa (hey, it didn't hurt John McCain):
"Two prominent Democratic presidential candidates, Gen. Wesley K. Clark and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, have decided to bypass Iowa's presidential caucuses, angering some party leaders there and signaling what could be a very different nomination battle next year.
"Mr. Lieberman's advisers said on Sunday that they would pull out all but one of his 17 staff members in Iowa and send them to states considered more receptive to his appeal, like Arizona. General Clark's aides said he would maintain a minimal presence in the state, which has the nation's earliest presidential selection contest. Last week, the general hired the former Iowa coordinator for Senator Bob Graham of Florida, who quit the race two weeks ago, and dispatched her to other states.
"General Clark's advisers said they concluded last week that his late-starting candidacy had left him unable to assemble the intricate organization needed to win the Iowa race, which puts a premium on drawing voters to some 2,000 precinct caucuses. Most of the state's experienced organizers have signed with other candidates.
" 'What we'll do is what I call the General MacArthur strategy,' a senior Clark adviser said. 'General MacArthur was very successful in World War II because he skipped over the Japanese strongholds, where they were more organized, and instead picked islands that were favorable or neutral terrain.' "
The first of many military metaphors to come, I'm sure.
Is the Clark boomlet running out of boom? The New York Post's Deborah Orin thinks so:
"The super-sizzle may be fizzling on Wes Clark's run for the White House and it could be that the retired general wasn't quite ready for prime time.
"Clark began with a 'Swoon Strategy' -- handsome general gets blessed by Bill Clinton, graciously agrees to run for president as a (gasp!) Democrat and the party swoons in rapture, hailing him as its savior.
"But the swoon was short. A month later, Clark is just part of the presidential pack, he shows up in an ordinary suit instead of an awe-inspiring general's uniform and there's a lot less hero-worshipping talk about 'The General.' "
Time has gotten hold of a new Clark video, this one more recent than the 2001 episode where he praised Bush's national security team:
"Another Clark speech recorded by videotape suggests that his hope wasn't snuffed out too quickly. Eight months later, even as some administration officials were making the case for war against Iraq, Clark still applauded the U.S. mission in Afghanistan as he addressed a large audience at Harding University, in Searcy, Arkansas.
" 'I tremendously admire, and I think we all should, the great work done by our commander-in-chief, our president, George Bush,' he said in the January 22, 2002 speech. The university provided TIME a videotape of his remarks. Clark's presidential campaign adviser Mark Fabiani said that the former general was simply crediting Bush for the Afghanistan campaign for which '90 percent of Americans would have agreed' at the time."
Another campaign reform is about to crumble, notes the Philadelphia Inquirer:
"The landmark system for financing presidential campaigns, enacted by Washington reformers 29 years ago to curb the power of private money, is teetering on the verge of collapse.
"Republican George W. Bush dealt the first major blow in the 2000 campaign, when he declined to play by the rules that all candidates had voluntarily obeyed since 1976. . . .
"Prominent Democrats, including national chairman Terry McAuliffe, now believe that staying within the system could cripple their bid to eject President Bush in 2004. They question the wisdom of voluntarily capping their own expenditures when Bush, in his second privatized campaign, has no intention -- or requirement -- of doing so.
"That's why Democratic contender Howard Dean may soon decide to spurn public financing in 2004 -- despite his original promise, uttered in March and repeated in June, to respect the historic reforms that were sponsored primarily by Democrats in the aftermath of Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal in the 1970s. If Dean opts out, rival John Kerry says he may do the same. . . .
"The debate today is whether Dean could pay a price for flip-flopping on the issue."
Even when Bush is shattering fundraising records?
If you read about Bill O'Reilly walking out on an interview with NPR's Terry Gross, you probably figured O'Reilly was just being his prickly self. But here's a critical view from none other than National Public Radio's ombudsman, Jeffrey Dvorkin:
"I agree with the listeners who complained about the tone of the interview: Her questions were pointed from the beginning. She went after O'Reilly using critical quotes from the Al Franken book and a New York Times book review. That put O'Reilly at his most prickly and defensive mode, and Gross was never able to get him back into the interview in an effective way. This was surprising because Terry Gross is, in my opinion, one of the best interviewers anywhere in American journalism.
"Although O'Reilly frequently resorts to bluster and bullying on his own show, he seemed unable to take her tough questions. He became angrier as the interview went along. But by coming across as a pro-Franken partisan rather than a neutral and curious journalist, Gross did almost nothing that might have allowed the interview to develop.
"By the time the interview was about halfway through, it felt as though Terry Gross was indeed 'carrying Al Franken's water,' as some listeners say. It was not about O'Reilly's ideas, or his attitudes or even about his book. It was about O'Reilly as political media phenomenon. That's a legitimate subject for discussion, but in this case, it was an interview that was, in the end, unfair to O'Reilly.
"Finally, an aspect of the interview that I found particularly disturbing: It happened when Terry Gross was about to read a criticism of Bill O'Reilly's book from People magazine. Before Gross could read it to him for his reaction, O'Reilly ended the interview and walked out of the studio. She read the quote anyway.
"That was wrong. O'Reilly was not there to respond. It's known in broadcasting as the 'empty chair' interview, and it is considered an unethical technique and should not be used on NPR."
American Prospect's Michael Tomasky says two big papers are dropping the ball on the CIA leak story:
"The major media are putting no pressure whatsoever on the administration, or the president, to do anything.
"See, back in the days when our leading journalistic institutions were bothering to do their jobs, there used to be these things in newspapers called 'editorials.' They demanded integrity and honest government of presidential administrations. They would bellow -- often a little pompously or earnestly, but, on balance, in the public interest -- that, say, President Johnson needed to explain to the American people what he knew about the risks of Vietnam before 1965, or that President Nixon had better come clean about what happened in Cambodia (or at the Democratic National Committee's Watergate headquarters). Back then, editorials thundered.
"Today? They still exist, of course, but now they whisper into a shoebox, essentially hoping that no one will hear them. The bully pulpit has become the 98-pound weakling's corner, and the government reaps the benefits of the shrinkage.
"The New York Times and The Washington Post are still our leading newspapers, and no doubt they consider themselves guardians of the public interest. So one might think that when a scandal of this potential magnitude appears, they would rush in to protect that interest. An undercover agent's identity was exposed, in possible violation of the law and in obvious violation of the old-fashioned morality that conservatives supposedly revere. If ever there was a moment for a newspaper's editorial page to demand that an administration take actions or offer explanations, it's a moment like this one.
"But this is what has happened: In the nearly three weeks now since the story broke on Sept. 28 -- that would be 18 editions of each newspaper, as I write these words -- the Times has written all of one editorial on the Plame-Joseph Wilson-Robert Novak matter. The Post has published two. . . .
"In the face of a disclosure by the now-infamous 'two senior administration officials' that may have put an agent's life and ongoing covert operations relating to weapons of mass destruction at risk, our two leading newspapers scratch their collective chins and muse."
Rich Lowry, the National Review editor who has a new book out on Clinton, is in full debunking mode:
"If only President Bush had listened to Bill Clinton. The former president, who is now the second-guesser in chief, told an audience the other day that he had warned President Bush about Osama bin Laden in an 'exit interview' as he left office in early 2001. 'In his campaign, Bush said that he thought the biggest security issue was Iraq and national missile defense,' Clinton said. 'I told him that in my opinion, the biggest security problem was Osama bin Laden.'
"Oh, the Delphic wisdom of the Arkansas bubba! He's a Metternich with an eye for the interns. Clinton was right, of course. Bin Laden was a big security threat, who became steadily bigger during Clinton's years in office. What else could Bush have learned from Clinton during that exit interview? He could have learned how to retreat, how to apologize, how to slap wrists and how to temporize. He could have learned, in short, everything that would need to be reversed in U.S. terror policy within months of his taking office. . . .
"He was, fundamentally, the do-nothing president about terrorism, although he knew -- as he tells us now -- the grave nature of the threat. It was Bush who could have told Clinton a few things about how to respond to terror in their exit interview, since his instincts were so much sounder."
This Philly story is getting pretty ugly:
"Besieged by a federal probe that has now extended to his family's finances" says the Phildelphia Inquirer, "Mayor Street and his supporters went on the attack at a series of rallies Saturday, denouncing the FBI investigation of city contracts as suspicious and racially motivated.
"Street refused to specifically address an Inquirer report that federal authorities subpoenaed financial records of Street, his wife, Naomi Post, and his son, Sharif Street. He said he believed leaks in the investigation were 'calculated to create headlines.'
" 'I don't like any of this,' Street said, 'and I have said from the very beginning that I believe the timing of all this is very suspicious.'"
Finally, Andrew Sullivan relates his travel woes:
"Strictly speaking, it's my fault. I booked a five-day hotel room stay in New York City for a bunch of commitments, one of which fell through. So having paid over $1000 in advance through Priceline.com, I delayed my trip by a day. But I didn't call the hotel to let them know I'd be a day late, assuming I'd have to absorb the extra day's cost, but still had a booking for four days. (No, free-lance bloggers do not have secretaries and we can be absent-minded.) So I called up Thursday morning to confirm the room for the remaining nights. They were sold out. My no-show allowed them to cancel the entire reservation. Would they refund the remainder? Nope. If my flight had been canceled, I might have had a chance, but I couldn't keep that pretense up.
"The hotel told me I should call Priceline. I did. They said that my no-show invalidated everything; that, since it was my fault, they had no obligation to find me any other rooms; and I should have read the fine print. So they get over $1000 for nothing; and they have no obligation to help out at all. The woman on the phone, I swear, was almost smirking. 'Sucker!' "
Priceline, he concludes, is "a great idea but the profit margin is obviously highly correlated with suckers and incompetents like me."
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