The Strident Centrist Blog

Ken Silverstein at the Harpers blog points us to a truly fair and balanced obituary in the Daytona Beach News-Journal:

Shock doesn’t begin to describe the effect on those who stay behind. Try anger, try a sense of loss that, contrary to greeting-card drivel, never fades until, I expect, one’s own final collapse. Russert wasn’t family, but it’s fair to say, as the casket-lidded lines at the end of obituaries usually do, that his survivors include the 3 million viewers who tuned in every Sunday to watch “Meet the Press,” and even the procession of politicians who’ve been squirming their way through his show since 1991. . .

Respect for the man aside, there’s a matter of respecting journalism when assessing Russert’s place in the trade. That respect has been lacking in the almost universally fawning tributes to Russert and the craft he represented. . . .

The truth is that on any night of the week Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” does more in a two-minute segment to show in politicians’ own words how venal, dishonest, contradictory and just plain dense they can be than Russert did in his Sunday services. . .

I mourn his death. But I wish I could mourn the death of the journalism he represented. To the detriment of journalism and malinformed citizens, that parody lives on.

Commenter “WilliamOccam” on the blog Emptywheel points us to the most prescient journalism ever on what we were in for as the George W. Bush administration took office: It’s an article in The Onion that is dated January 17, 2001. Here’s the Headline:

Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over’

Here’s some of the text:

“After eight years of relatively sane fiscal policy under the Democrats, we have reached a point where, just a few weeks ago, President Clinton said that the national debt could be paid off by as early as 2012,” Rahway, NJ, machinist and father of three Bud Crandall said. “That’s not the kind of world I want my children to grow up in.”

“You have no idea what it’s like to be black and enfranchised,” said Marlon Hastings, one of thousands of Miami-Dade County residents whose votes were not counted in the 2000 presidential election. “George W. Bush understands the pain of enfranchisement, and ever since Election Day, he has fought tirelessly to make sure it never happens to my people again.”

Bush concluded his speech on a note of healing and redemption.

“We as a people must stand united, banding together to tear this nation in two,” Bush said. “Much work lies ahead of us: The gap between the rich and the poor may be wide, be there’s much more widening left to do. We must squander our nation’s hard-won budget surplus on tax breaks for the wealthiest 15 percent. And, on the foreign front, we must find an enemy and defeat it.”

And we thought it was satire. What more is there to say?

At his blog The Reality-based Community, Mark Kleiman asserts that David Herszenhorn’s writing in the New York Times bears similarities to ancient Hebrew and Koine Greek (of the Old and New Testaments of the Christian scriptures, respectively). That is, like both of those languages, Herszenhorn’s piece in yesterday’s Times on John McCain and torture leaves implicit a lot of “connecting tissue”l, so to speak. So Kleiman helps us along by inserting the missing pieces in italics, as was the custom for the translators of the King James version. To wit, the opening paragraph as so elaborated:

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted Wednesday to ban waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods [called “torture” under domestic and international law] that have been used by the Central Intelligence Agency [and an unknown number of other agencies and contractors] against [an unknown number of people described by the government as] high-level terrorism suspects [at least scores of whom have died as a result]. The vote, following House passage of the measure in December, set up a confrontation with President Bush, who has threatened to veto it.

John Hockenberry currently with the MIT Media Lab, formerly with NBC Dateline and before that a reporter for NPR, has some pithy observations in MIT’s Technology Review about the abject irrelevance of network TV news:

One might have thought that the television industry, with its history of rapid adaptation to technological change, would have become a center of innovation for the next radical transformation in communication. It did not. Nor did the ability to transmit pictures, voices, and stories from around the world to living rooms in the U.S. heartland produce a nation that is more sophisticated about global affairs. Instead, the United States is arguably more isolated and less educated about the world than it was a half-century ago. In a time of such broad technological change, how can this possibly be the case?

. . .

(more…)

The ever-thorough emptywheel at The Next Hurrah finds some gems in the filing documents of Dan Rather’s suit against his former employer. From the legal documents:

In late April 2004, Mr. Rather, as Correspondant, and Mary Mapes, a veteran producer, broke a news story of national importance on 60 Minutes II–the abuse by American military personnel of Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison. The story, which included photographs of the abusive treatment of prisoners, consumer American news media for many months.

Despite the story’s importance, and because of the obvious negative impact the story would have on the Bush administration with which Viacom and CBS wished to curry favor, CBS management attempted to bury it. As a general rule, senior executives of CBS News do not take a hands-on role in the editing and vetting of a story. However, CBS News President Andrew Heyward and Senior Vice President Betsy West were involved intimately in the editing and vetting process of the Abu Ghraib story. However, for weeks, they refused to grant permission to air the story, continuously insisting that it lacked sufficient substantiation. As Mr. Rather and Ms. Mapes provided each requested verification, Mr. Heyward and Ms. West continued to “raise the goalposts,” insisting on additional substantiation.

Even after obtaining nearly a dozen, now notorious, photographs, which made it impossible to deny the accuracy of the story, Mr. Heyward and Ms. West continued to delay the story for an additional three weeks. This delay was, in part, occasioned by acceding to pressures brought to bear by government officials urging CBS to drop the story or at least delay it. As a part of that pressure, Mr. Rather received a personal telephone call from General Richard B. Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, urging him to delay the story.

Only after it became apparent that, due to the delay, sources were talking to other news organizations and that CBS would be “scooped,” Mr. Heyward and Ms. West approved the airing of the story for April 28, 2004. Even then, CBS imposed the unusual restrictions that the story would be aired only once, that it would not be preceded by on-air promotion, and that it would not be reference on the CBS Evening News. (Emphases presumably by ew)

As ew points out following that extensive excerpt:

Sad thing is, you could effectively replace “CBS,” “Dan Rather and Mary Mapes,” “Mr. Heyward and Ms. West” and “General Myers” with the words “NYT,” “James Risen and Eric Lichtblau,” “Pinch Sulzberger and Bill Keller,” and “Dick Cheney,” and it’d all make perfect sense. .And let’s not forget how the NYT refused to publish the NSA story until Risen threatened to scoop his own paper, and the NYT buried the most alarming parts of the news in the black news hole of a Saturday Christmas Eve. Rather’s complaint paints a picture of a media outlet that willfully allows itself to be the Administration’s propaganda tool–but that’s clearly not unique to CBS.

Fox News has announced they are canceling The Half Hour News Hour, the program that was supposed to be their Jon Stewart killer. The bad news memo reads, in part:

While HHNH performed admirably in the ratings and Kurt Long and Jennifer Robertson did a wonderful job, we are considering ways to retool the show for future scheduling needs. There is still a chance you will see the program at some point in the future.

As TRex at Firedoglake put it, Fox finally realized “the ugly truth about conservatives only being funny when they’re trying to be serious.”

Stephen Dubner at Freakonomics asks a provocative question: If libraries didn’t exist in today’s environment, could they be started?

But here’s the point I’m (finally) getting to: if there was no such thing today as the public library and someone like Bill Gates proposed to establish them in cities and towns across the U.S. (much like Andrew Carnegie once did), what would happen?

I am guessing there would be a huge pushback from book publishers. Given the current state of debate about intellectual property, can you imagine modern publishers being willing to sell one copy of a book and then have the owner let an unlimited number of strangers borrow it?

I don’t think so. Perhaps they’d come up with a licensing agreement: the book costs $20 to own, with an additional $2 per year for every year beyond Year 1 it’s in circulation. I’m sure there would be a lot of other potential arrangements. And I am just as sure that, like a lot of systems that evolve over time, the library system is one that, if it were being built from scratch today, would have a very different set of dynamics and economics.

Brad DeLong has a thoughtful piece up on the possible implications of Rupert Murdoch’s likely purchase of the Wall Street Journal. DeLong suggests three possible motives behind the tycoon’s interest in the paper:

One possibility is that Rupert Murdoch likes to keep what he has and that he has sons: the thirty-something Lachlan and James (and a daughter, Elizabeth). His sons will already be rich beyond the wildest dreams of avarice. Giving his sons roles at News Corp. has proven difficult: he still wants to run the show, and people whom he has hired and had long-term relationships with want to go around him if they don’t like what his sons are doing. But there is nobody at the Journal with strong personal ties to Murchoch. If Murdoch buys the Wall Street Journal and spins it off, then at least one of his sons can become an independent global power broker in his own right without Murdoch having to loosen the reins at News Corp. . . .

A second possibility is that Rupert Murdoch thinks that in the age of new-media convergence the Wall Street Journal has the brand and the authority and the staff to make it an excellent launching pad, worth a $2 billion bet. Can Murdoch synergize the Journal’s brand on TV and via new media in a way to further boost his fortune? Perhaps. . . .

A third possibility–by far the most likely, IMHO–is that Rupert Murdoch is one of the boys who just wanna have fun. It would be more fun shaping the opinions of the world through both News Corp.’s current properties and the world’s preeminent global financial newspaper than through just News Corp.’s current properties alone–plus it would be more fun receiving the bowing and scraping that the world’s powerful would engage in to placate the owner of News Corp. plus the Wall Street Journal than just the bowing and scraping that accrues to the owner of News Corp. alone. That is probably what is going on.

Which of these three possibilities is truest has implications for what is likely to happen to a Journal under Murdoch ownership, and whether the Murdoch purchase is a good thing.

Brad finds the contents behind doors #1 and #2 quite palatable, but doesn’t like what’s behind door #3 much at all:

So: as the Murdoch acquisition of the Journal moves forward, watch carefully. If Murdoch’s children wind up being the effective proprietors of an organization run separately from News Corp., be happy. If Murdoch spends his time and energy leveraging the brand in new media space, reshaping things into the editorial pages to please his political contacts, and leaving the news pages alone to run themselves, then be happy.

But if Murdoch starts running the Journal the way he runs his other properties, be alarmed. Be very alarmed.

If you’re not yet aware of the four part bombshell series on Vice President Cheney that the Washington Post began running yesterday (Sunday, June 24), then push that rock off of the entry to your hiding place and get with it. This link will take you to the first installment, and from there you can get to both today’s and the rest as they come out.

Perhaps even more interesting than the chapters and verses about Cheney’s power intoxication is the back story that is emerging regarding how the piece negotiated the hazards of the WaPo editorial process to get published at all. First, Laura Rozen:

That in turn suggests that this piece has been ready to run for some time. Insertions like the one about the veep’s office not being part of the executive branch and seriatim “softenings” show that jamming it into the paper at the end of June, when only cats and the homeless are around the read the paper, was made at the last minute.

Why? My guess is that this series ready to go during the debate over the supplemental funding of the Iraq war and that Downie or someone at the top held it back until Gellman and others started carrying snub-nose .38s to work under their seersuckers.

A key element of the coup is also ignored: the role of the press as revealed in the Libby scandal … : Note in particular paragraph seven the phrase that Cheney’s subversive roles “went undetected.” The correct verb is “unreported.”

This series is a landscape of an internal war. Parts of it are still smoking and some reputations are visibly dying–anonymously, for the moment. The journalistic graves registration people will go in later and tag the corpses.

Regarding the corpses, Rozen points out in an update to her blog entry that Jo Becker, one of the two coauthors of the WaPo piece, has already departed for the New York Times.

Meanwhile, Marcy Wheeler has some interesting analysis of possible sources and why these folks might have opened up:

. . I’d like to inventory the sources that Gellman and Becker used for their articles, as a way to understand where the shifting loyalties of the Administration lie. One thing that becomes clear by mapping this out is the centrality of Josh Bolten to many of the more damning accusations against Cheney. Thus, while these articles may reflect the fingerprints of Poppy (likely) or Scooter (implausible, IMO), I think it is primarily an attempt by the COS and possibly Condi to bring Cheney under control, aided by former Administration lawyers they know to have soured on Cheney’s ways.

Wheeler’s take on who talked and why is fascinating, but it’s too long to quote here in any depth. So read the whole thing!

h/t to CHS of FDL

The Badger assesses the adequacy of US press and blog coverage of the goings-on in Iraq, and finds it wanting:

There are at least six story-lines that are woven into the English-language coverage of Iraq, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. They are the following:

(1) The “US withdrawal: victory for the left” story (Helena Cobban)
(2) The “Victory for the middle-class Shiites” story (Juan Cole)
(3) The “Sunnis fight back” story (Arabic language only)
(4) The “Augmented catastrophe” story (Arabic language only)
(5) The “Indomitable American perseverance” story (IraqSlogger)
(6) The “No real American defeat, but a civil war” story (James D. Fearon, Foreign Affairs magazine)

. . .

In terms of English-language coverage, there is no meat in the sandwich. Eventual stability under Shiite rule (Cole) and definitive US withdrawal (Cobban), while they are very nice ideas, they mean not paying any attention to the next phase of the US-runs-Iraq story, once Bush “runs out of patience” with Maliki. For Cole, it is unthinkable that the SCIRI establishment would be in any meaningful way dislodged from its current position, and for Cobban, it is politically incorrect to discuss any new government, coup-generated or otherwise, that isn’t based on the idea of a definitive US withdrawal. So their story ends with this (probably illusory) US withdrawal/Shiite-led stability.

Instead of continuing the story of American involvement in Iraq and the Mideast along the lines of the Arabic-language coverage, with careful attention to the Arab and American efforts to create a Sunni “moderate alliance” against an alleged Shiite threat, the risks involved in that, and what it means for Iraq, that story is for all intents and purposes abandoned, and in its place we have a return to the comic-book tales of public-spirited Americans fighting evil, under the heading of civil war in Iraq.