Ratings and real life

ABC News reporter Martha Raddatz last night complained about an article in the New York Times that suggested "World News Tonight" co-anchor Bob Woodruff was in Iraq for the purpose of bolstering the newscast's ratings. In an interview with NECN's Chet Curtis, Raddatz said her network would never do any such thing.

Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt were badly injured on Sunday. They are said to be in serious condition, but recovering.

Raddatz's comments are not yet available on NECN's Web site, so I won't attempt to quote her directly. But she raises an important issue: How much risk is acceptable for journalists covering the war in Iraq? And where is the line between legitimate newsgathering and ratings-mongering?

For starters, Raddatz would seem to be referring to this article in yesterday's Times, by Richard Oppel and Jacques Steinberg. Here are the sections to which Raddatz apparently was objecting:

For years now, "World News Tonight" has been lagging in the ratings, and ABC has much money and prestige riding on its new co-anchor format, which was intended to stand out from its competitors by having Mr. Woodruff and his partner, Elizabeth Vargas, take turns reporting from the field while the other stays in New York....

Since his first night as co-anchor, on Jan. 3, Mr. Woodruff has crisscrossed the globe, from Tehran to Jerusalem to northern California, and back again to Jerusalem, in an effort to imbue the program with an on-the-scene immediacy and vitality that ABC executives hoped could improve the program's ratings against its main competitors, NBC and CBS.

For the moment, the standings remain much as they had in recent years, when the broadcasts had been presided over by the so-called Big 3 anchors. NBC, led since Tom Brokaw's retirement in December 2004 by Brian Williams, is comfortably in first place; ABC remains a solid second; and CBS, with Bob Schieffer serving as anchor until a permanent successor to Dan Rather is appointed, is trailing in third.

At least in the short run, Mr. Woodruff's recovery figures to focus even more attention on the three broadcasts, particularly if he makes a quick return, but an extended leave could also upend ABC News, at a moment when Katie Couric of NBC's dominant "Today" show is mulling whether to further shake up the evening news race by jumping to the "CBS Evening News."

All three evening news broadcasts have been losing viewers for years, as people's workdays push past 6:30 p.m. -- when the evening news typically begins -- and the Internet is increasingly sought out as a news source.

This is pretty mild stuff, all of it obviously true -- but inappropriate under the circumstances. I'm quoting from the article at length to show how much analysis of the troubled television news business Oppel and Steinberg offered in an article that was supposed to be about two journalists who'd been injured in the line of duty.

In one sense, Raddatz is wrong. It is transparently obvious that ABC News executives have decided to fly Woodruff and Vargas around the country and the world, reporting and anchoring at the scene of major stories, in an effort to stand out from NBC and CBS -- and thus to bolster the network's ratings.

But in perhaps a deeper sense, Raddatz is right. The tone of the Times article is respectful, but its focus on the game of TV news suggests that there was something not quite serious about Woodruff's presence in Iraq.

Let's look at this logically. As a major news organization, ABC News has an obligation to cover the war in Iraq. If it hadn't sent Woodruff -- a gifted reporter as well as someone whom the network is trying to transform into a household name -- then it would have sent someone else. If sending someone who's not an anchor isn't a ratings stunt, then it's not a ratings stunt to send Woodruff, either. (Is the presence of John Burns in Iraq a Times circulation stunt?)

As for risk, Woodruff and Vogt do not appear to have been foolhardy. But covering Iraq is incredibly dangerous. According to Reporters Without Borders, 73 journalists have died since the war began -- a number that includes local journalists such as the Boston Globe's Elizabeth Neuffer and the Atlantic Monthly's Michael Kelly. The horrifying ordeal of Christian Science Monitor freelancer Jill Carroll represents another kind of risk.

That doesn't mean ABC's ratings don't enter into the calculation of whether to send a co-anchor into such a dangerous environment. Of course they do. They always do. It does mean that Woodruff and Vogt were in Iraq on a legitimate journalistic assignment.

Not that the Times article said otherwise. But devoting so much space to ratings and competition at a moment when Woodruff's and Vogt's lives were hanging in the balance suggests a certain tone-deafness on the part of the Times.

Beneath contempt

I realize this doesn't exactly qualify as a news flash. But White House press secretary Scott McClellan's performance yesterday, which I caught on television last night, struck me as yet another example of a certain type of political rhetoric that is so phony it ought to be held up and ridiculed on every occasion.

And though I'm not prepared to quantify it, it seems to me that it's the sort of thing engaged in far more often by Republicans -- or at least those Republicans whose reason for being is to promote the fortunes of George W. Bush -- than it is by Democrats.

The subject: U.S. Sen. John Kerry's announcement that he'll try to lead a filibuster of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. Rick Klein captures it in today's Boston Globe:

Seizing on the fact that Kerry demanded a filibuster from the economic summit -- held in Switzerland's posh Steigenberger Hotel Belvedere -- the Republican National Committee press release labeled Kerry and Kennedy the "Davos Dems." One Capitol Hill wag tagged their Quixotic move "the Swiss Miss."

Asked at the White House about the filibuster threat, White House press secretary Scott McClellan chuckled. ''I think even for a senator, it takes some pretty serious yodeling to call for a filibuster from a five-star ski resort in the Swiss Alps," he quipped.

Got that? Kerry is working at the world economic conference, doing whatever it is a senator might do at such a gathering. And the spokesman for Bush -- who is known for occasionally attending such events himself, as of course he should -- immediately mocks Kerry as though he had merely gone on an expensive ski trip. The "rich, elitist, out-of-touch liberal" trope rides again!

Now, if people want to mock Kerry for launching a filibuster that will likely be futile, that's fine. I laughed along with everyone else at David Kirkpatrick's piece in yesterday's New York Times, in which he wrote, "Democrats cringed and Republicans jeered at the awkwardness of his gesture, which almost no one in the Senate expects to succeed." (Not exactly a model of objectivity, though.)

But McClellan's putdown is so contemptible because it is inherently dishonest. The media have got to stop going along with this stuff.

Polishing his own apple

The Lowell Sun has a great story today on U.S. Rep. Marty Meehan, D-Lowell, whose staff edited his bio in Wikipedia to remove a long-since-broken promise to step down after four terms, as well as the size of his campaign account.

Check out Meehan's Wikipedia entry now, and it ends with this: "Meehan's staff members have been accused of editing out references to his campaign money and term-limit promises on Wikipedia." Yes, indeed.

Even better -- or worse, if you're Meehan -- the congressional vandalism made the humor site Fark.com, along with some pretty vicious comments.

The T-word

Now that Hamas has taken over the Palestinian parliament, we can expect a renewal of the debate over whether the news media should label the organization as "terrorist." Here is some background.

More than two years ago, then-Boston Globe ombudsman Christine Chinlund offered an expansive explanation for why the media shouldn't use the T-word to describe Hamas, and why they should use the term to describe "specific acts." An excerpt:

What possible reason is there for not unflinchingly applying the word terrorist to any organization or person who targets civilians? It may seem like hair-splitting, but there's a reason to reserve the terrorist label for specific acts of violence, and not apply it broadly to groups.

To tag Hamas, for example, as a terrorist organization is to ignore its far more complex role in the Middle East drama. The word reflects not only a simplification, but a bias that runs counter to good journalism. To label any group in the Middle East as terrorist is to take sides, or at least appear to, and that is not acceptable. The same holds true in covering other far-flung conflicts. One person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter; it's not for journalists to judge.

That said, journalists can not, and should not, be blind to reality. When we see terrorism, we should say so. A suicide bombing on a crowded bus is clearly an act of terrorism and should be so labeled. And it should also be described in all its painful detail. Such reporting is more powerful in its specificity than any broad label.

This approach -- call the act terrorist, but not the organization -- is used in many newsrooms, including the Globe's. It allows for variations: The terrorist label can appear in a quote or when detailing Washington's official list of terrorist groups. But not in the reporter's own voice.

That appears to be the policy followed by the New York Times, too. (Or as the New Republic Online once caustically put it (sub. req.), "close examination of the Times suggests a policy of referring to attacks against civilians as terrorism except when the victims happen to be Jewish.") So it was interesting today to see the split between the news pages and the editorial page. The lead news article, by Steven Erlanger, referred to Hamas as a "radical Islamic party," and noted carefully that the organization is "considered a terrorist group by Israel, the United States and the European Union."

The lead editorial throws such caution to the wind, calling Hamas "an organization that revels in terrorism." Of course, the editorial page is supposed to be opinionated -- and perhaps there really isn't any discrepancy, since the editorial might be said to refer to "specific acts" Hamas engages in rather than the organization itself.

Obviously Hamas uses terrorism to advance its cause of destroying Israel. Does that make it a "terrorist organization"? You would think so. Expect to see this debated extensively -- and heatedly -- in the days and weeks to come.

Spit and tarnish

As if Los Angeles Times columnist Joel Stein weren't already taking enough grief for his snotty Tuesday piece (the one that begins "I don't support our troops"), he also manages to repeat a disproven myth about what happened to some soldiers when they came home from Vietnam.

"I'm not advocating that we spit on returning veterans like they did after the Vietnam War, but we shouldn't be celebrating people for doing something we don't think was a good idea," Stein writes.

Unfortunately for Stein, there is no proof that that ever happened. He needs to read this.

Civil-liberties heroes

Kudos to officials in Newton, who refused earlier this week to let the FBI grab computers at the public library without a warrant. Dan Atkinson covered the story yesterday in the Newton Tab; his article was also published in the Boston Herald, the Tab's corporate big brother. Ralph Ranalli follows up in the Boston Globe today.

Yet this isn't entirely clear-cut. Reportedly nearby Brandeis University had been threatened with a terrorist attack over the Internet, and the FBI was able to trace the threat to a computer at the Newton Free Library. It's not inconceivable that time was of the essence.

In today's Boston Herald, columnist Virginia Buckingham writes (sub. req.), "Why would law enforcement want to look at those Newton library computers? They'd want to know, 'Is this part of a wider conspiracy?' one senior federal law enforcement officer told me. 'The quicker you can get access to information, the quicker you can determine if the threat is real and notify law enforcement around the country.'"

I don't dismiss that out of hand, although I think Buckingham is too quick to buy into the FBI's most dire scenario. As Ranalli writes in the Globe, "Gail Marcinkiewicz, Boston FBI spokeswoman, said yesterday that the bureau contends that the agents could have seized the computers without a warrant, under the legal theory that they were 'evidence of a crime in plain view.'"

Whether you buy that or not, it seems pretty clear from Marcinkiewicz's comments that if FBI agents were absolutely convinced they had to have access to the computers immediately, they would have acted first and figured out the legalities later. That they didn't suggests that library director Kathy Glick-Weil did exactly the right thing.

In a measured statement (PDF), the ACLU of Massachusetts praised Newton officials. According to executive director Carol Rose:

To be sure, we should all be concerned with the delay in law enforcement's access to the computer after it was identified as a possible source of a threat. But the delay is not the fault of the librarian. She was complying with the law, and we expect police officers and the FBI to do the same.

Clearly, after 9/11, there should have been a procedure in place to ensure that law enforcement could promptly obtain a search warrant in an emergency situation. In a situation like this, the answer is not to simply shelve the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, but to create an expedited process for obtaining search warrants. We can address security concerns without surrendering basic constitutional rights.

Those are words President Bush ought to consider with respect to the no-warrant wiretapping program he so pugnaciously defends. If the law makes it too difficult to investigate suspected terrorists, work to change it -- don't violate it.

Update: More details from the Newton Tab's Web site.

Missing context found

Adam Nagourney of the New York Times today writes the paragraph he should have included in his Saturday report on Karl Rove's speech to the Republican National Committee:

Democrats -- and, though Mr. Rove made no mention of this Friday, some Republicans, too -- have indeed challenged the administration for eavesdropping without obtaining warrants. They argue, among other points, that the White House is bypassing legal mechanisms established in 1978 that already allow law enforcement agencies to move rapidly to monitor communications that might involve terrorists. Yet it is difficult to think of a Democrat who has actually argued that it is not "in our national security interest" to track Qaeda calls to the United States, as Mr. Rove contested; he did not offer any examples of whom he had in mind.

Not a bad start.

Globe porn link

I'm working in a public library right now, so obviously I have to be very careful about what's on my screen. It might get me kicked out, for instance, if a librarian notices that I've gotten too wrapped up in today's "New England in Brief" column in the Boston Globe.

Because I might read the item headlined "Fire destroys another adult video store." And I might notice that some bonehead (or possibly some boneheaded software algorithm) built in a link to Amazing.net, the adult video store in question. And then I might click on it, and -- well, you'll see.

Update: Media Nation gets results! As Adam Gaffin notes, the link has now been removed.

Defining trashiness down

Or is that up? I'm not sure.

In today's New York Times Book Review, David Kamp writes about Norah Vincent's "Self-Made Man," in which the author spends a year disguised as a guy and chronicles the experience. The book itself sounds pretty interesting. Vincent is a lesbian, so there are layers upon layers here, especially given that -- in her male disguise -- she goes on several dates with women.

This morning, though, I come not to praise Vincent but to bury Kamp. Here is what he says about Vincent's experience in a men's bowling league:

The resultant chapter is as tender and unpatronizing a portrait of America's "white trash" underclass as I've ever read. "They took people at face value," writes Vincent of Ned's teammates, a plumber, an appliance repairman and a construction worker. "If you did your job or held up your end, and treated them with the passing respect they accorded you, you were all right." Neither dumb lugs nor proletarian saints, Ned's bowling buddies are wont to make homophobic cracks and pay an occasional visit to a strip club, but they surprise Vincent with their lack of rage and racism, their unflagging efforts to improve Ned's atrocious bowling technique and "the absolute reverence with which they spoke about their wives," one of whom is wasting away from cancer.

I quote this at some length to show that Vincent apparently gets it, even though Kamp doesn't. In Kamp's mind, a plumber, a repairman and a construction worker -- all of them employed in what has traditionally been well-paid blue-collar work -- constitute "America's 'white trash' underclass." What world is Kamp living in? Media Nation does not generally engage in reverse snobbery, but I can't let this go.

Plumbers, especially, need to be highly educated in their trade, and are -- along with folks such as electricians and carpenters -- members of a rather select group of skilled craftsmen who can and do charge a lot of money for their services. Or hasn't Kamp called a plumber lately? Kamp's casual dismissal of working people as "trash" says a lot about what's wrong with a certain type of Manhattan-centered elitism.

The tagline reads, "David Kamp, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, is at work on a book about the American food world, to be published later this year."

Keep him away from diners.

The media's terrorism test

President Bush's top two political advisers said on Friday that they intend to conduct the 2006 congressional campaign on the basis of an appalling lie about the Democrats. Will the media call them on it? Or are they too hidebound by the traditional rules of objectivity to get beyond their characteristic "on the one hand/on the other hand" style of coverage?

I'm all for fair, neutral coverage of politics. But it also has to be tough-minded. So when White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove and Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman claim -- falsely -- that Democrats oppose efforts to spy on Al Qaeda, that lie needs to be pointed out.

Unfortunately, our two leading newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post, are off to a bad start. Here's what Adam Nagourney writes in today's Times:

"The United States faces a ruthless enemy," Mr. Rove said, "and we need a commander in chief and a Congress who understand the nature of the threat and the gravity of the moment America finds itself in. President Bush and the Republican Party do. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for many Democrats."

"Let me be as clear as I can be. President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they're calling and why," he said, referring to the wiretapping program. "Some important Democrats clearly disagree."

Nagourney treats Rove's remarks -- made at a meeting of the RNC -- as straight-up event coverage, and doesn't even make an effort at ordinary objectivity in terms of getting comment from the Democrats. In the Washington Post, Dan Balz manages to go one better, quoting Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean as saying that Rove should resign over whatever his role was in the Valerie Plame matter. But Balz also reports this without rebuttal:

Mehlman and Rove ... defended Bush's use of warrantless eavesdropping to gather intelligence about possible terrorist plots. "Do Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean really think that when the NSA is listening in on terrorists planning attacks on America, they need to hang up when those terrorists dial their sleeper cells in the United States?" Mehlman asked. Pelosi (D-Calif.) is the House minority leader.

I assume you've figured it out already, but if you haven't, let me spell it out. Not one Democrat -- at least none I'm aware of -- has objected to having the National Security Agency spy on suspected terrorists. The sole objection has been to the way the Bush administration has gone about doing it. The administration has almost certainly broken the law by carrying out its wiretapping campaign without bothering to seek warrants from a judge under the terms of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), even though such requests are rarely turned down, and even though warrants can be applied for after the fact when there's a genuine emergency.

Is it possible that FISA needs to be changed to make it easier for the White House to conduct such surveillance? Well, perhaps. Media Nation makes no claims to being an expert on such matters. But such a change would have to be approved by Congress. Yet when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was asked about that, he replied, "We have had discussions with Congress in the past -- certain members of Congress -- as to whether or not FISA could be amended to allow us to adequately deal with this kind of threat, and we were advised that that would be difficult, if not impossible."

So much for the judicial and legislative branches of government. The White House is simply going to do what it wants to do.

The Rove-Mehlman sleight-of-hand is to cast Democrats as being against spying on terrorists if they so much as dare point out that the way the White House is going about its surveillance program is illegal. Never mind that this is false. Never mind that there are also outraged Republicans, such as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter.

This is a vital moment for truth-telling by the news media. When Republicans accuse Democrats of being opposed to spying, reporters and editors can let it go, blandly get "the other side" -- or point out that no Democrat has said any such thing. Which is it going to be? (Of course, Democrats such as U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York are fair game when they ludicrously compare Bush and his advisers to Nazis.)

Polls suggest that when Americans are asked whether the White House should have obtained warrants, they agree -- but that when they are asked if it's all right to spy on "suspected terrorists" without warrants, they agree with that, too. This inconsistency has given Bush's defenders an opening they are now intent on exploiting.

Rove and Mehlman have hit upon a powerful tactic to turn what should be an overwhelming negative into a positive. If any Democrat comes out against spying altogether, that's one thing. But the media have an obligation not to go along with attempts to cast Democrats who oppose official lawbreaking as soft on terrorism.

Jerry Williams and seat belts

We should light a candle for the late Boston talk-show host Jerry Williams today, as the Legislature and Gov. Mitt Romney are on the verge of tightening the state's seat-belt law.

In the 1980s, Williams -- then the king of afternoon drive time on WRKO Radio (AM 680) -- whipped the public into hysteria over plans to make seat-belt use mandatory. Williams, a staunch civil libertarian, saw the law as an infringement on personal freedom. I disagreed then and disagree now, seeing a seat-belt law as no different from making drivers stop at red lights. But I agreed with him on principle, and cheered on his equally vociferous efforts to end such police-state it's-good-for-you tactics as highway road blocks, where you'd be handed a pamphlet on the hazards of drunk driving -- and, of course, given the once-over.

No one could make the switchboard at the Statehouse light up the way Williams could, but he was fighting a losing battle. Eventually, when his ratings started to slip and his show was rescheduled, a mandatory seat-belt law was passed, although it couldn't be enforced unless you were observed doing something else, like speeding. The stronger law now under consideration will eliminate that anomaly.

Here is what Tony Schinella wrote about Williams at the time of his death nearly three years ago. Schinella, a one-time candidate for the Boston City Council, is now program and news director at WKXL Radio (AM 1450) in Concord, N.H. And here is anti-tax activist Barbara Anderson's tribute.

Herald libel case continues

On to the appeals court: the libel-suit saga involving the Boston Herald and Judge Ernest Murphy continues, as the trial judge, Charles Johnson, has refused the Herald's requests to act in response to Murphy's over-the-top letters to Herald publisher Pat Purcell. Phoenix coverage here; Globe coverage here; Herald coverage here.

Calling the shots

Dan Shaughnessy, the Red Sox' co-general manager:

[John] Henry and [Larry] Lucchino were in Phoenix yesterday at the owners' meetings. I spoke with Henry late in the afternoon before he boarded a jet to fly home to Boston. I told him the same thing I had told him in December. I thought it looked as if he could not make a decision. I thought he should either fire Lucchino or tell Epstein to get lost.

Whatever happened to journalists who ask questions? Amazing.

Tony Massarotti's take is worth reading, even if he doesn't strut around barking orders at the Sox' principal owner.

Not being evil

Good for Google, which is living up to its "Don't Be Evil" slogan by refusing to go along with the Justice Department's anti-pornography crusade. Supposedly the government is not looking for personal data, which is why Yahoo, AOL and MSN were willing to play along. But this is a bedrock liberty issue, and Google shouldn't retreat.

Still, this serves as a reminder of the kinds of data Google and other Internet services keep on all of us. It's not easy to link the data to any one individual, but it can be done, as I reported a year ago. As Kevin Bankston, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says:

The only way Google can reasonably protect the privacy of its users from such legal demands now and in the future is to stop collecting so much information about its users, delete information that it does collect as soon as possible, and take real steps to minimize how much of the information it collects is traceable back to individual Google users. If Google continues to gather and keep so much information about its users, government and private attorneys will continue to try and get it.

Wired.com has posted some advice on how to keep your private data private.

WRKO's local moves

It's so rare to see radio stations move toward quality local programming and away from syndicated screaming that attention must be paid. So here is the latest press release from WRKO Radio (AM 680):

WRKO AM 680, Boston's talk station, brings together three powerful business news sources -- Boston Globe "Downtown" business columnist Steve Bailey, Boston Herald Business Editor Cosmo Macero, and the Wall Street Journal -- to create "Boston Business Today," a local news package which started Monday, January 16.

"Boston Business Today" will cover Boston's business community with news and thoughtful analysis hourly during "Boston This Morning" and during "The Howie Carr Show."

Macero and Bailey, two of the city's top business journalists, will bring to "Boston Business Today" fresh business news and their view of important business stories. Macero will be on live at 6:37 a.m. every weekday, and Bailey will be on at 7:37 a.m. every weekday.

Joe Connolly of the Wall Street Journal will provide hourly business news updates, creating in-depth Greater Boston and New England business coverage to match the Wall Street Journal's legendary reputation. Connolly's reports will air during newsbreaks at 5:30, 6:30, 7:30 and 8:30 a.m. during "Boston This Morning," and then at 4:30 and 5:30 p.m. during "The Howie Carr Show."

"This is part of WRKO's plan to provide Greater Boston with the best local coverage, whether it's news, politics, business, lifestyle or the Boston Celtics," said WRKO Operations Director Brian Whittemore. "We're bringing together three business heavy-hitters to create a must-listen package for anyone in Boston business."

This brings Bailey back to the airwaves following the meltdown of Brad Bleidt, the sticky-fingered former owner of WBIX Radio (AM 1060), where Bailey and fellow Globe columnist Charlie Stein (who recently took the buyout and left the paper) had an hour-long morning show. ('BIX is still around, but it's a ghost of its old self.)

But that's not all. Mark Jurkowitz reports here on a new substance-abuse-recovery program that WRKO is planning to unveil on Sunday afternoons. I'm skeptical, to put it mildly, but it's local and it sounds well-intentioned.

And this comes not long after the station replaced "Blute & Scotto" with "Boston This Morning," which, despite the unexplained jettisoning of Peter Blute, strikes me as a reasonably high-minded attempt to put together something of substance. No one's going to confuse it with NPR, but we've already got that.

Best of all, WRKO recently bumped syndicated hate-monger Michael Savage from 7 to 10 p.m. in order to make way for "Taste of Boston." Not really my thing, but the fewer listeners Savage has, the better.

Restatement of purpose

Anonymous (a very common name, I've noticed) claims that I "missed" Al Gore's speech the other day. I did not, although I concede that I chose not to write about it. Which raises a point I've been meaning to make about Media Nation, or about any blog.

I look for items, mostly but not entirely media-related, that interest me, and that I hope will interest a few readers as well. (A political speech like Gore's doesn't cut it, even though I hold Gore in reasonably high esteem.) I don't feel obligated to post anything, with the possible exception of follow-ups to previous items -- especially if it's to correct the record.

Media Nation is likely to be sporadic over the next several months, because my teaching schedule this semester has made it hard for me to keep on top of my reading as much as I'd like -- at least until later in the day. There may be days when I post quite a bit; there may be days when I don't post at all.

For what it's worth: I consider anything I write to be fair game, so fire away. But I don't consider anything I choose not to write about to be fair game at all, and I hope you won't either. There's a flood outside, and I'm sitting here with a thimble.

Two rights about media bias

Romenesko today highlights a debate between liberal columnist/blogger Eric Alterman and conservative commentator Tucker Carlson on media bias -- if it exists, and whether it leans left or right. As you might expect, Carlson argues that the bias trends liberal, Alterman that it's conservative.

They are both right. As Carlson accurately observes, the elite media -- especially in big-city newsrooms -- hold views far to the left of average Americans on such issues as gay marriage, reproductive choice and gun control. Now, you and I might think it's to the credit of folks who work for those media institutions, but there's no doubt that conservative views on such cultural and social issues are rare within the media, and common elsewhere.

And Alterman is absolutely right that the same elite media want nothing to do with organized labor, and that they're at least partly responsible for the fact that a large plurality of Americans mistakenly believes Iraq had something to do with 9/11. Moreover, as Alterman wrote in his book "What Liberal Media?," the same liberal journalists who say they vote for Democratic presidential candidates have made a full-time sport out of torturing them: giving Bill Clinton a far rougher time than the public did over his personal failings; spreading untruths about Al Gore such as falsely claiming he'd said he'd "invented the Internet"; and providing too much (i.e., any) credence to the swift-boat liars who tried to bring down John Kerry.

So even though I think Carlson and Alterman are both right, I think Alterman is more right on what really matters: how the media cover electoral politics, and why that coverage works to the benefit of Republicans.

Literary truth and literal truth

There is no "controversy" over James Frey's admission that his book "A Million Little Pieces" is not the nonfiction memoir he had claimed it to be; only the exposure of a literary crime. There's been a voluminous amount of commentary since last week. Michiko Kakutani's, in today's New York Times, is especially good.

Bloviation over whether a memoir has to be entirely true is especially troubling because, at root, nonfiction -- whether it's memoir, history, biography or social science -- is a form of journalism, or at least its first cousin. If it isn't true, it's worthless, regardless of its literary merits. (I'm not talking about an inadvertent error or two. I'm talking about intent.)

Several years ago I published my one and, so far, only book -- a nonfiction work on the culture of dwarfism that combined social criticism, interviews, medical and science journalism, historical research and, yes, memoir. Titled "Little People: Learning to See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes" (that's where the memoir comes in), it is currently out of print, although I have some hopes for a paperback edition.

Readers can like what I wrote or not. But the one promise I made every effort to deliver on was that "Little People" would be a work of nonfiction. I taped hours upon hour of interviews. I kept reconstructed quotes from years past to a minimum, and explained their limits in the footnotes. When my editor asked for more of our daughter, Becky's, voice, I didn't try to rely on the vagaries of memory. Rather, I sat down with Becky -- who was 10 at the time -- and told her exactly what I was up to. She could have cooperated or not. Fortunately, she wanted to do it, and we had our first serious conversation about her dwarfism. With a tape recorder rolling.

There are so many authors trying to do it right that it's depressing to see someone like Frey succeed by cheating. The diminution of trust that accompanies such a revelation harms all of us -- readers and, of course, writers, who have a hard enough time getting published and noticed as it is.

Rev. Ray

Right after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the Washington Post published a report on people who thought the disaster was God's retribution. Post writer Alan Cooperman led with this:

Steve Lefemine, an antiabortion activist in Columbia, S.C., was looking at a full-color satellite map of Hurricane Katrina when something in the swirls jumped out at him: the image of an 8-week-old fetus.

"In my belief, God judged New Orleans for the sin of shedding innocent blood through abortion," said Lefemine, who e-mailed the flesh-toned weather map to fellow activists across the country and put a stark message on the answering machine of his organization, Columbia Christians for Life.

Well, yesterday New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who did so much to spread false rumors of rapes and killings last fall, was at it again, making common cause with Lefemine. Only Nagin's God is upset about a, uh, different set of issues. John Pope writes about Nagin's Martin Luther King Day speech in today's New Orleans Times-Picayune:

"This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be," Nagin said. "You can't have it no other way. It wouldn't be New Orleans."
Nagin's remarks were tucked into a wide-ranging speech, delivered on the steps of the federal courthouse, in which the mayor related a dream conversation he had with the slain civil rights leader.

In addition to discussing New Orleans' reconstruction, unity and numerous issues in the black community, in his speech Nagin attributed the recent hurricanes striking the United States to a God who is "mad at America" for waging a war in Iraq based on false pretenses. Nagin said God also is upset at the black community for not taking better care of its people....

"We ask black people.... It's time for us to come together," said the mayor, who is black.

"It's time for us to rebuild a New Orleans, the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans," he said. "And I don't care what people are saying in Uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day."

Nagin also said that last year's devastating hurricanes were signs of God's wrath.

"Surely God is mad at America," he said.

I think we finally have the definitive answer to the question of whether we need to take Ray Nagin seriously.

Just add money

Earlier this afternoon I stopped by my local Apple store, hoping one of the "geniuses," as Apple actually calls them, would accept the offering of my iBook-from-hell and ship it out for the fifth time in less than three years. (This time it's the video -- again.)

I was unsuccessful. The Genius Bar was booked for the day, and my rather heated argument that I shouldn't have to wait behind a bunch of people trying to figure out how to turn on their new iPods when I had an oft-broken computer to ship out failed to persuade the smug young manager.

While I was waiting, though, I did see something incredibly cool on the back-of-the-store projection screen -- a Mac version of Google Earth. As soon as I got home, I fired up the family iMac and went looking for the download. Alas -- it requires OS X 10.4, and we've only got 10.3.

Is this really necessary? Does Google Earth absolutely require something that's only available in 10.4, or did Google's programmers just not want to make the effort? By way of analogy, it's interesting that the latest version of Firefox, an open-source browser, works just fine with 10.3, whereas if you want to keep Apple's inferior Safari up to date you've got to upgrade to 10.4.

Google Maps offers much of what Google Earth has, and it doesn't require extra software. I guess it will have to do for now.

Instant update! Google says, "Currently, Google Earth isn't supported on the Mac OS 10.3.9 or earlier versions. We're working on this issue and hope to have Google Earth available for more Mac OS versions in the near future." Very nice. All is forgiven.

How do I love me?

If you click on the "contact" link at former Wonkette Ana Marie Cox's Web site, it will automatically start your e-mail program and fill in the subject header with this: "Love your website!" Somehow apt.

Epstein on the death of newspapers

Joseph Epstein has a terrific essay in Commentary about the ongoing death of newspapers. As you might expect, it's filled with conservative disdain for what he sees as a media overcome with liberal bias. But never mind. The writing is literate and elegant, and it closes with this wonderful passage:

The time of transition we are currently going through, with the interest in traditional newspapers beginning to fade and news on the computer still a vast confusion, can be likened to a great city banishing horses from its streets before anyone has yet perfected the automobile.

Nevertheless, if I had to prophesy, my guess would be that newspapers will hobble along, getting ever more desperate and ever more vulgar. More of them will attempt the complicated mental acrobatic of further dumbing down while straining to keep up, relentlessly exerting themselves to sustain the mighty cataract of inessential information that threatens to drown us all. Those of us who grew up with newspapers will continue to read them, with ever less trust and interest, while younger readers, soon enough grown into middle age, will ignore them.

My own preference would be for a few serious newspapers to take the high road: to smarten up instead of dumbing down, to honor the principles of integrity and impartiality in their coverage, and to become institutions that even those who disagreed with them would have to respect for the reasoned cogency of their editorial positions. I imagine such papers directed by editors who could choose for me -- as neither the Internet nor I on my own can do -- the serious issues, questions, and problems of the day and, with the aid of intelligence born of concern, give each the emphasis it deserves.

In all likelihood a newspaper taking this route would go under; but at least it would do so in a cloud of glory, guns blazing. And at least its loss would be a genuine subtraction. About our newspapers as they now stand, little more can be said in their favor than that they do not require batteries to operate, you can swat flies with them, and they can still be used to wrap fish.

Via Arts & Letters Daily.

Jurkowitz on the Globe

Mark Jurkowitz has got what you want -- his first big takeout on the Boston Globe since he left that paper and returned to the Boston Phoenix last summer. I don't want to read anything this long on the Web, so I'll wait until tomorrow. But you may, if you choose, get started right now.

The foolishness Factor

I rarely watch "The O'Reilly Factor" -- for that matter, I rarely have the TV on at 8 p.m. -- but I tuned in tonight to catch Boston civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate, who was on to talk about the NSA wiretapping story and his related essay in last week's Boston Phoenix.

O'Reilly was unusually respectful of Silverglate. But next up were Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, at Harvard's Kennedy School, and Marvin Kalb, Jones' predecessor, who now heads up the school's Washington branch. The ostensible subject was why the Shorenstein Center has gone "far left." But the subtext -- actually, it was right on the surface -- was O'Reilly's continued resentment of the fact that Al Franken researched his bestseller "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right" while he was at Shorenstein a few years ago.

O'Reilly, himself a K-School alumnus, referred incessantly to Franken's "defamation" book and to the fact (I guess it's a fact; maybe it isn't) that Franken used Shorenstein research assistants and misused Shorenstein letterhead in gathering material for his book, of which O'Reilly is one of the main targets. O'Reilly also claimed that his own research shows Shorenstein currently has 22 Democrats on board and just one Republican. (I'm using the ambiguous "on board" because O'Reilly seemed unable or unwilling to distinguish between fellows, faculty and staff.)

Where it really got weird, though, was when O'Reilly began attacking former Los Angeles Times editor John Carroll, who recently joined Shorenstein as a visiting professor, as "far left." His voice rising, O'Reilly claimed that both Carroll and editorial-page editor Michael Kinsley, whom Carroll brought to the L.A. Times, were forced out because of their "far left" views. What?

Carroll, who turned the Times into a Pulitzer machine, is well-known for, among other things, criticizing his staff for its alleged liberal bias. In May 2003 he wrote a memo that began:

I'm concerned about the perception -- and the occasional reality -- that the Times is a liberal, "politically correct" newspaper. Generally speaking, this is an inaccurate view, but occasionally we prove our critics right. We did so today with the front-page story on the bill in Texas that would require abortion doctors to counsel patients that they may be risking breast cancer.

The apparent bias of the writer and/or the desk reveals itself in the third paragraph, which characterizes such bills in Texas and elsewhere as requiring "so-called counseling of patients." I don't think people on the anti-abortion side would consider it "so-called," a phrase that is loaded with derision.

Was Carroll sincere? Consider the words of conservative pundit Catherine Seipp, writing in 2004 for National Review Online:

The longstanding leftist orthodoxy of the Los Angeles Times has improved noticeably under editor-in-chief John Carroll, a respected newsman who moved here from the Baltimore Sun four years ago. Carroll has made a real effort to rein in the paper's liberal bias, at least in straight news stories. Earlier this year, Carroll wrote a famous (in media circles) in-house memo scolding a reporter for a story about a Texas abortion law; the piece had implied anyone against abortion is obviously nuts.

As for why Carroll left, it's been pretty widely reported that he could no longer put up with the cost-cutting ways of the Times' corporate owner, Tribune Company. His hand-picked successor, Dean Baquet, is now in charge, so it's not as though the Carroll era has been discredited. As for Kinsley, well, he just didn't work out. Kinsley has always been the most tepid of liberals, and his problems at the L.A. Times appear to have had more to do with his refusal to move to Los Angeles and to his embrace of ridiculous notions such as wikitorials.

I know that pointing out O'Reilly's misrepresentations is pretty cheap entertainment. Still, I haven't done it for a while, and I'm not planning to tune in again any time soon. So there you have it.

Jill Carroll's fate

Romenesko's got a link to an exceptionally good post on the kidnapping of Christian Science Monitor freelancer Jill Carroll. It's by the Moderate Voice, a.k.a. Joe Gandelman, who is himself a former Monitor stringer. Gandelman sees clues that Carroll was grabbed by loyalists of a Sunni politician she was scheduled to interview. Somehow that leaves me optimistic -- if Gandelman's right, at least it's not Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

What's really wrong with Cheney?

It doesn't seem likely that we're being told the truth about Dick Cheney's medical condition, does it?

In December 2004, Josh Marshall wrote a speculative but informed item on the possibility that Cheney is suffering from congestive heart failure. It's worth another look now that it's making its way into mainstream outlets such as the New York Times.

What did Schumer say?

"Meet the Press" host Tim Russert seems to think he extracted a significant admission out of U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer on Sunday. I'm not even sure how to describe this, so just follow along with Media Nation and see if you agree with Russert -- or if you instead have the same head-scratching reaction that I had.

The subject: Whether and under what circumstances Schumer, a New York Democrat, would support a filibuster aimed at defeating the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Samuel Alito. From the transcript:

SCHUMER: I haven't made up my mind about how to vote and certainly whether to block him or not, whether to urge my colleagues in the caucus to filibuster. But he's got to answer a lot of questions.

RUSSERT: But you haven't ruled out a filibuster?

SCHUMER: Have not ruled it out, no.

Later in the program came this exchange:

SCHUMER: Judge Alito has stated unequivocally, just as you said, not only his personal view on pro-life, on pro-choice -- we approved lots of judges who were pro-life. I'm very strongly pro-choice, but I voted for 190 judges who were pro-life that the president has nominated. But he [Alito] has stated his constitutional view, his legal view, and that is that the Constitution does not provide for a right to an abortion. The worst thing that could happen with Judge Alito is if he tries to duck the question. Let him say, as you said, one way or the another, he doesn't agree but he'll respect precedent or this is one of those precedents that should be re-examined and turned over. But if he says, "I can't answer that question 'cause it might show bias," which is what John Roberts said, he can't do that because he's already shown bias, not in a pejorative sense. He's shown his view on this.

RUSSERT: Well, if he has 51 votes, he can do it.

SCHUMER: Well, you know -- but that's the issue here. And we Democrats --

RUSSERT: If he did that, would you filibuster?

SCHUMER: Well, it would certainly -- if he continued to do that on all of these issues that I mentioned, if he ducked the question, the American people have a right to answer and we know what's going on here. Seventy percent of the American people say they don't want a justice nominated who would overturn Roe v. Wade.

RUSSERT: No, but on the question of abortion, if he in your mind ducks that question, is that enough to filibuster?

SCHUMER: You can't judge on one specific question. If he continuously, given his previous record, refuses to answer questions and hid behind this shibboleth, "I can't answer this 'cause it might come before me," it would increase the chance of a filibuster, absolutely.

Still later, Russert was interviewing Kate Michelman, former head of NARAL Pro-Choice America, when he suddenly said this:

RUSSERT: You just heard Senator Schumer, Kate Michelman, say that even if Judge Alito will not answer questions about Roe v. Wade, that in itself is not grounds for filibuster.

Is that what Schumer said? Maybe my ability to understand plain English isn't what it used to be. But I don't think so. It strikes me that Russert is reading universes into Schumer's statement that "You can't judge on one specific question." But Schumer's statement that he hasn't ruled out a filibuster seems a lot more pertinent.

Polling update

Media Nation reader Doug H. thinks Craig Adams was referring to this Rasmussen poll in his letter to the New York Times. Could be. But as Doug points out, "Unfortunately, the poll omitted warrantless wiretapping, and thus missed the entire point of all the hoo-ha over the wiretapping scandal." Indeed. Given the way the poll question is worded, you could count me with the 64 percent who supposedly support the president's wiretapping practices.

Show us the numbers

Today's New York Times includes a letter to the public editor from Craig Adams of Egg Harbor, N.J., that highlights an ongoing dilemma for those who edit letters: How much fact-checking should be applied to vox populi? Adams' letter -- in which he objects to certain aspects of the Times' reporting on the NSA no-warrant wiretaps -- reads in full:

Was The Times, in the timing of publication, trying to deflect the importance of a story (the Iraqi parliamentary elections) that may have slightly benefited the Bush administration? The Patriot Act debate was particularly interesting, since many Democratic senators referred to the Times article in their effort to maintain the filibuster.

You did not address whether this leak disclosure was beneficial to the public. Given that a recent survey has shown that the majority of Americans think the surveillance was proper and justified, why wasn't that point of view addressed?

What is the survey to which Adams refers? Certainly it's not the one reported in this Associated Press story:

... 56 percent of respondents in the AP-Ipsos poll said the government should be required to get a court warrant to eavesdrop on the overseas calls and the e-mail messages of US citizens, when those communications are believed to be tied to terrorism.

Agreeing with the White House, 42 percent of those surveyed do not believe the court approval is necessary.

The "War On Terrorism" section of the maniacally updated PollingReport.com leads with the results of that poll. Scroll down, and you won't see any other questions pertaining specifically to the warrantless searches. However, there is an interesting finding from a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll conducted Dec. 16-18 in which respondents were asked:

Which comes closer to your view? The government should take all steps necessary to prevent additional acts of terrorism in the U.S., even if it means your basic civil liberties would be violated. OR, The government should take steps to prevent additional acts of terrorism, but not if those steps would violate your basic civil liberties.

The answer: "Take ALL Steps Necessary," 31 percent; "Don't Violate Basic Liberties," 65 percent. A rare landslide for the Bill of Rights.

Now, back to Mr. Adams. Is there actually a legitimate poll he could cite to support his contention? If there is, shouldn't an editor at the Times have insisted on including the details of that poll? Conversely, is this something Adams just thought he heard while listening to Sean Hannity for a few minutes while driving home from work? Could Adams simply be referring to polls showing that President Bush's approval rating has gone up recently? Did an editor even ask Adams to substantiate his claim?

If Adams is right, I'll be happy to correct the record. But, on the face of it, this strikes me as sloppy editing in the name of letting the readers have their say. No one benefits from such an exercise -- especially the readers.

Revisionist punditry

Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi today has a great catch. As I noted yesterday, Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell posted an instant analysis of the West Virginia mining tragedy in which he called the media's performance "disturbing and disgraceful." Vennochi reports that, later in the day, Mitchell toned it down, eliminating the word "disgraceful." Talk about backtracking. Mitchell's revised column is online here.

"In a telephone interview," Vennochi writes (link now fixed), "Mitchell said his first take on the miracle mine rescue might eventually show the same rush to judgment for which he was criticizing journalists." Gee, Greg, you think? Vennochi continues:

"One question that has to be asked," said Mitchell, "is 'how much did the media spread the news? ... the first question is whether the media carried the rumors, spread the rumors.'" Mitchell acknowledges that he does not know the answer to the question; and until the journalists on the scene recount their personal timetable and confirming sources, it is risky to draw conclusions about the quality of the journalism.

The Associated Press, by most accounts, played a key role in spreading the news -- a false rumor, as we soon learned -- that 12 of the 13 miners had been found alive. Here's the top of an E&P story on what happened:

The Associated Press, which carried to newspapers around the world false reports on trapped miners being rescued in West Virginia late Tuesday night, said in a statement this afternoon that it had reported "accurately" based on information "provided by credible sources -- family members and the governor."

The governor again. In a perfect world, journalists would check everything. But for the life of me, I can't see anything wrong with the media's relying on the word of West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin. Authoritative, on-the-record sources sometimes turn out to be wrong. But you can't blame the messenger.

Much of the criticism directed at the media has focused on the fact that they didn't wait to hear from the mining company before running with the story. On the face of it, though, I'm not sure why journalists should have considered company officials -- who weren't available -- more credible than the governor. Take this to its logical extreme, and presumably the media should not have reported that the miners were alive unless all 12 of them suddenly appeared at the Baptist church where family members were waiting.

There are plenty of reasons for the media to engage in self-flagellation. This isn't one of them.

Follow-up: Greg Gatlin of the Boston Herald caught Mitchell's switch-a-roo as well. Gatlin's also got some good stuff on AP's first dispatches, which weren't quite as reliant on Gov. Manchin as its statement would have you believe.

Collector's items

There are plenty more where those came from at "Today's Front Pages."

First thoughts on the mining disaster

Three quick observations about the terrible news coming out of West Virginia this morning -- news made all the more terrible because the media initially reported that 12 of the 13 miners had been found alive.

1. The North Pole edition of the Globe, dutifully delivered to Media Nation every day at about 5 a.m., runs with the headline "Body of one miner recovered; Hopes dwindling for others in W. Va." Reportedly both the Globe and the Herald later put out editions touting the miracle-that-wasn't. But if you go to the Globe and Herald Web sites right now, you'll see that both papers are up to date, complete with front-page images on the latest developments. I'm sure this scenario was repeated across the country.

Since the dawn of the television age, print has been irrelevant in covering fast-breaking news. The role of newspapers today is to provide depth, context and analysis after the fact. The Internet serves to emphasis that change -- only now, the newspapers' own Web sites are proving to be more valuable than their print counterparts. Thus, today marks another small step in the move toward paperless news.

2. Though it will be some time before we can sort out why the media got it wrong, preliminary indications are that they thought they were reporting authoritative news when in fact they were passing along rumors. Gov. Joe Manchin, it turned out, didn't have any inside information; rather, he was picking up on what the family members had somehow heard.

In that respect, this is reminiscent of what happened in New Orleans, where rumors of widespread rapes and murders were given credence by the mayor and the police chief. As the New Orleans Times-Picayune established, there was almost no truth to any of those stories. But it's hard to blame the media for reporting what the city's top two officials were telling them. And it's hard to blame the media today for reporting that the miners had been rescued when the governor himself believed it was true.

3. Everyone is reporting the frightening safety record of the mine. But the larger story is that the Bush administration has been letting mining regulation slide backward. Rick Klein and Susan Milligan report the lowlights in today's Globe. This is not a story the media should let drop.

Follow-up: Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher has wasted no time in calling the media's performance "disturbing and disgraceful."

Eileen Mac, tie-breaker

The Globe columnist essentially takes the Herald's side on the matter of whether Boston Mayor Tom Menino said enough about crime in his speech on Monday. McNamara writes:

I do wonder ... what the mayor was thinking when he relegated to a few sentences in his feel-good speech any mention of a rash of homicides that left 75 people dead in Boston in the year just ended. The introduction of a direct Boston-to-Beijing flight from Logan International Airport somehow does not feel like an adequate counter to that bad news.

Criminal intent

Once again, with apologies to Boston magazine, "Thank God We're a Two-Newspaper Town." If the magazine's not going to use it, can Media Nation have it?

Today's lead story in the Boston Globe is headlined, "Menino calls on Bostonians to shed fear, report crime." The article, by Lisa Wangsness, begins:

In his fourth inaugural speech yesterday, Mayor Thomas M. Menino declared that the burden of fighting Boston's violent crime wave rests not only on police but on city residents, who, he said, must overcome fear and turn in neighbors engaged in illegal activity.

"Personal responsibility must be our mantra," the mayor said, "from every single person on every single block. If you know someone who has an illegal gun, or you are witness to a crime, you must speak up and keep the specter of fear far away from our neighborhoods."

Meanwhile, the Boston Herald leads with "Speak no evil: Mayor's speech ignores crime crisis." Kevin Rothstein leads with this:

Mayor Thomas M. Menino virtually ignored the issue of crime in an upbeat inaugural address yesterday -- turning a blind eye to the city’s 10-year murder-rate high as he talked up a new air link to China and a feel-good faith in the city....

Instead, Menino stuck to a positive message, telling the packed house at Faneuil Hall that the biggest change in the city was "the feeling of faith that we have come to recognize in recent years" and boasting of a new non-stop flight from Boston to Beijing.

The Globe does note that "Menino devoted just six sentences of his 15-minute speech to crime." You can watch Menino's speech yourself by clicking here. And here are his "six sentences" (or so) on crime, which, by my reckoning, came 12 minutes into his address:

We had faith that we could create a top urban school system. We are doing just that. Today we have another challenge that we must address with the same conviction: the fight for public safety. We're putting more police officers on the streets, but police cannot solve this challenge alone. Personal responsibility: that must be our mantra, from every single person on every single block. If you know someone who has an illegal gun, or you're a witness to a crime, you must speak up, and keep the specter of fear far from our neighborhoods. I will not allow a handful of thugs to destroy families and lives. We have come too far forward to go so far back.

Was that enough? Did Menino "virtually ignore" crime? You decide.

Leak proof

New York Times public editor Byron Calame yesterday roasted publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and executive editor Bill Keller for not offering any real explanation as to why they waited a year before publishing news of the Bush administration's no-warrant wiretapping. Jay Rosen has let Times management have it here and here.

I'd like to know more myself. Naturally, I'm curious to know whether the Times could have published a story before the 2004 presidential election. I'd hate to think Keller sat on a story that could have changed the outcome.

But with the Justice Department's announcement that it plans to root out the source or sources who leaked this to the Times, there really isn't a chance that Keller will be able to say more. In fact, it's pretty obvious that Keller decided to stonewall the New York Observer, Calame and others because he knew his paper's reporting -- which continues -- would drag it into yet another legal battle.

Like Slate's Jack Shafer, I think it's likely that Keller has a good explanation for why he sat on this for so long. I wish he could tell us, but I think I understand why he can't.

Talking back to the media

Nothing earth-shattering, but Katharine Seelye has a good overview in today's New York Times on how those covered by the media are using technology to put their own version of reality before the public.

Act of courage

When a person or organization demonstrates an inclination to file libel suits, it can be considered an act of courage for someone simply to exercise his First Amendment rights.

My knowledge of the legal issues surrounding the Islamic Society of Boston wouldn't fill a thimble. All I know is that it is suing the Boston Herald and WFXT-TV (Channel 25), among others, for reporting on the society's alleged ties to terrorism -- ties that the society vociferously denies.

But it took some guts for Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby to weigh in yesterday with a tough piece on the organization and its "abusive lawsuit," headlined "Questions the Islamic Society should answer." Good for Jacoby. And good for Globe editorial-page editor Renée Loth for running it.

Mark Jurkowitz's backgrounder in the Nov. 18 Boston Phoenix is an essential guide to the players.