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BuzzMachine
by Jeff Jarvis
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July 31, 2003
Prefab
: Michael Graves, the architect who made Target classy, is advertising pavilions -- prefab gazebos and buildings that remind me of the old house kits sold by Sears. Price: $25K plus installion (read: $40k).
Another jailed Internet journalist
: I got email today from the Committee to Protect Journalists: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a New York-based press freedom advocacy group is writing to request your signature on a petition we will present to Tunisian President Zine El Abdine Ben Ali, asking for the release of imprisoned Tunisian Internet journalist, Zouhair Yahyaoui.
Yahyaoui, 35, has been in jail since June 4, 2002 after authorities arrested him at the Internet cafe where he worked. The website he ran under a pseudonym, Tunezine.com (similar to a blog) carried material critical of the regime and of the Tunisian president, and on June 20, 2002, he was sentenced to 28 months in jail after being found guilty of publishing false information and using stolen communication lines to post his site. An appeals court later reduced the sentence to exactly two years. Yahyaoui's only transgression was that he dared challenge the government, something few journalists do in a police state like Tunisia which has imprisoned, assaulted and harassed critical journalists since Ben Ali came to power in 1987.
As part of CPJ's campaign, we are hoping to gain the support of his fellow Internet journalists here in the United States, (who luckily, will not suffer the same fate as Zouhair Yahyaoui for being critical of the government.) See press releases on the case here and here.
Sigh
: Don't you just hate it when your allies do something stupid, offensive, and generally indefensible? Israel's parliament passed a measure Thursday that would force Palestinians who marry Israelis to live separate lives or move out of Israel. The government said the law was necessary to prevent terror attacks, but critics called it racist.
The mullah or Rome
: Says blogger Amr Malik: The pope came out (here is wordplay for ya) against homo-sexual marriages. I don't really think much of the institution of "marriage" to begin with, but the latest announcement by the Pope seems to me the throwing down of the gauntlet....
How is this different from the Taliban? The difference is that of degrees, not of philosophical background....
Why is everyone so calm when its Cathalocism and not Islam? Damned good question.
Innocent until tried by headline
: A top TV presenter in Britain whose reputation and career were destroyed by an accusation of rape has just been cleared of the charges.
And this has led to a debate over whether those accused of rape -- and not just their accusers -- should have their identities withheld.
There's a fallacy in the logic here that leads to something we don't believe in here (well, excepting that nasty little business of suspected terrorists being arrested in secret): The law and its enforcement must be transparent to protect the accused and so the accused can face his accuser and so his justice is meted out under public scrutiny.
In the case of rape, it's not transparent because the accuser's name is withheld and that leads down this slippery slope.
Rape is no longer seen as the shame of the victim. It is a crime like any other and needs to be treated like any other. This case and Kobe Bryant's lead us there.
Hear here
: Christopher Lydon is doing an amazing job creating a soundtrack for the blogosphere, interviewing many of its leading lights [I just erased the post with all the direct links, so, to hell with it, go to the page and scroll]: Glenn Reynolds today, David Weinberger, David Sifry, Dave Winer, Doc Searls, Ed Cone, Eugene Volokh. I was just writing that post about how good it is when I saw the Winer put up the story behind it here.
Fickle finger of blame
: I'm glad I'm no longer the only one saying this: There was nothing wrong with the British government releasing the name of David Kelly. The BBC had an obligation not to reveal its source but to the government, it's fair game. Yet after the guy offed himself, gushy brains tried to make this the government's fault. It's not their fault for releasing the name. It's not their fault that he killed himself. In the Scotsman: PETER Hain raised fresh questions yesterday about the extent of the government’s role in the death of Dr David Kelly, claiming it would have been "absurd" for the name of the weapons expert to have been kept from the media....
In a startling intervention, Mr Hain, the Leader of the House and the Welsh Secretary, said that if Dr Kelly’s identity had not been revealed, then the government would have stood accused of a "cover-up".
"With the media pack in full cry, the very idea that David Kelly’s name could have been kept a secret is absurd," he told a seminar at the Institute for Public Policy Research.
"If it hadn’t emerged, doubtless the media would have spun it into a cover-up story, with endless speculation on the Today programme as to why." Exactly.
Complain, complain, complain
: The "public editor" of the New York Times has to be the worst job in journalism.
July 30, 2003
Money makes the world go 'round
: View from Iran -- the weblog by the Iranian/American couple in Iran -- writes about money and the Islamic revolution. Money is destroying the people of Cuba. Money is destroying the people of Korea. Money is the issue in Iran: Since the revolution, I have heard, money has become more important. “Most family arguments are about money,” a friend tells me. Everyday we meet taxi drivers who were pilots, mechanics, and doctors. They cannot earn enough money at any of these jobs to support their families. “Driving a taxi pays a lot better,” we hear over and over again.
So, since the revolution, the mullahs and their families have gotten rich, while others have become poor. One woman we met who served in both the Shah’s army and the Islamic Republic’s army showed us copies of her paychecks from before and after the revolution. Before, she made a decent salary. After, it dropped to $75 a month. “Meanwhile,” she said, “the sons of the mullahs became millionaires.”
Many Iranians I meet think that the reason the regime will eventually fall apart is because they have stolen all there is to steal. “It’s amazing that with all of the money they have stolen that there is still money to build new roads and public services,” one friend says. Her brother replies, “Just think how much money there was that they still could spend some on public services.”
Coulter, gagged
: I have the TV on behind me. Ann Coulter is on FoxNews. I don't know what makes me think this but, I swear, she sounds constipated.
: Maybe that's why she has never put a post on her weblog, which was announced with much fanfare back on June 23.
: Meanwhile, Geraldo Rivera hasn't updated his weblog since April 24.
 What a way to go
: This is the saddest New York scene I've seen in a long time: On a light pole at 23rd and 6th, some good soul has taped up bouquets of carnations with this sign:
In Loving Memory of
Betty Kapetanakas
Who Was Struck Down
On This Corner By A Garbage Truck
On July 29, 2002 Ms. Kapetanakas was a community leader.
I always said the most ignominious was I could imagine to die would be to be struck down by a speeding New York Post truck. This is worse.
  Signs of stupidity
: I'm walking through Manhattan the other day and suddenly realize that the WALK/DON'T WALK signs have all changed, practically overnight.
Who the hell made this numb-nutty decision?
We're struggling to come out of a recession. We're struggling to defend ourselves against terrorism. We're struggling to pay for a few wars. We're struggling to get people employed. We're struggling with ever-increasing taxes. We're struggling with ever-decreasing services.
And some nitwit decided we had to change WALK/DON'T WALK to HAND/WALKMAN.
Why? Because we're all illiterate (well, the way the schools are going...)? Because we want to be nice to foreigners (as if they couldn't figure out what the red letters DON'T WALK coinciding with a red traffic light meant?).
It's idiotic but worse, it reflects an utterly irresponsible stewardship of our money.
People will make fun of me saying this one more time but it's relevant in this discussion: I'm a liberal. Thus I don't object to spending tax money for good ends of a civilized society, such as education and protection and, yes, safety nets for the poorest among us.
But I do object to spending money on stupidity.
And this is far from a Republican/Democratic thing. This is a power thing. People in power spend the money because it's there and because they can. They don't act as if the money is their own. They don't say, do we really need to spend that? And they don't say, do we really need to spend that right now while suffering budget hell.
  No, they put up stupid signs for the stupid.
Now this is not entirely New York's fault -- nor will it be limited to crosswalks here. The AAA reports:
The days of the old-fashioned WALK message are numbered. In the world of traffic signals, symbols are in, words are out. Symbolic pedestrian signals have long been the staple in Europe, and can be found in many parts of this country. New York City has announced that it is joining the crowd for the same reason that new federal guidelines will soon call for symbolic signals: They're just plain easier to see and comprehend. Plus, people don't like to spell anymore. So look for a brightly lit pedestrian figure to tell you when to walk, and a red hand to tell you when to stay put. And one other thing that bugs me about this: Schoolmarmish government. I hate the government treating us like a bunch of idiots.
 : But even more idiotic is this sign that has spread across New Jersey faster than the West Nile Virus:
Keep New Jersey Moving. (signed) Our Governor.
What the F does that mean? Go faster? Rear-end the guy in front of you? Get out of town? Eat fiber?
The pinhead who decided to spend tax dollars to buy and install those signs should be strung up from any of the signs he installed. Actually, I'm sure it's a committee of pinheads. I can't imagine the meeting at which this was decided. Wasn't there just one sane soul in the room who (a) asked what the F that sign was supposed to mean (b) asked why the F the state should spend money on it, and (c) reminded everyone else in the room that the economy is still in the crapper (see rant above)?
: I'm on a rant-roll here. I've started shouting about similar issues on my hometown blog.
My city fathers and mothers (Republican, every one) just put up a new and expensive sign at the pool for no reason; we all know where the pool is.
They built a road to and from nowhere.
They want to raise parking fees.
They plan to spend a lot of money to create a town TV channel.
STOP! Spend money on my kids' education, great. Spend it on plowing the snow, fine. But don't waste it on this stupidity.
July 29, 2003
More Iranian weblogs
: Hooman links to more Iranian blogs auf Englisch.
 Good-night, Bob
: Howard Stern told his Bob Hope story this morning: He had just arrived at NBC radio when he was told to interview Mr. Hope because Mr. Hope did not want to get up early enough for Imus to interview him. Mr. Hope had a great deal of clout at NBC. Don't mess this up, Howard was told.
Howard was doing a character that day: Out of the Closet Stern. He did the entire interview with a high-pitched lisp.
After the show, the engineer came to Howard and said that Hope's manager was on the phone and he was irate about "that lady" who had interviewed Mr. Hope. Put him through to me, Howard said. No, said the engineer, we'll get in trouble. Do it, Howard insisted.
The manager asked for the station's general manager. Howard said he was the general manager.
Hope's manager started to complain and Howard-as-GM interrupted and said he knew exactly what the problem was and that "that lady" had already been fired. Well, good, said Hope's manager.
Years later, Howard interviewed Mr. Hope again. They loved each other. And Hope loved the story of the lady he got fired.
The sun never sets...
: So England won the first international karaoke contest. England? Not Japan? No, the competition displeased Japanese karoake purists. And all of this is just an excuse to send you to one of my proudest creations, KaraokeCam.
Politics v. sex
: Lest we all get cocky, those of us living in the high-altitude, low-oxygen environs of this here Blogosphere, lest we think we're the biggest thing in blogs, lest we think we're changing the world, we should first note that according to the NITLE blog census this LiveJournal creation is the most-linked-to blog in English. An excerpt: SCREW YOU ALL, EX-BOYFRIENDS!! you all regret it within a week or two anyways...or as soon as i find someone new...regardless of if you know i have found someone new.
SCREW YOU ALL!!!
arg....
i a feeling better about the breaking up than i was two days ago...the sprks boy took care of me the first two nights, and last night i was just tired and did laundy before the trip. one night here, and then i head home for a week at the beach with my kim kim.
i have nothing majorly inspirational to say right now...nothing that will make the world seem like a better place, but every time i actually have a chance to update my beloved little lj, i like to add something. Yes, that's what life is about: boyfriends, laundry (sic), and the beach with kim kim -- not the BBC and the second amendment and Howard Dean and Paul Krugman and RSS.
Cut-and-paste-and-cut-and-paste
: Dan Gillmor found this little ap for a Mac that I want for my PC -- namely, the ability to copy multiple items into memory ("clipboards," the parlance) on one window and then move to another window and paset multiple items from memory. It is the blogger's dream: copy the url here then one quote and then another and then the author's impossible-to-remember name and then go over to your blog and paste each into a post. I want that. I used to be able to do that on my old steam-powered, coal-fired newspaper editorial systems. Surely, there's some way to do it on an all-powerful PC?
: Silly me: A commenter has me read down the page and find a Windows version.
What I meant to say was: Why the hell isn't this built into the browser or the operating system (now that they're the same)? That is, I should be able to simply hit control and c and then a number or any letter of the keyboard and save something at that address.
In the meantime, I'll try this ap.
: UPDATE: Damn, this changed my life!
All you do is (1) download and install the aforelinked ap, (2) when you cut or paste, just hit a number from 1 to 99 before you let up on the control key, (3) pay these people $20 out of eternal gratitude.
To hell with sliced bread.
500 to 1 on a dirty bomb
: Forget a futures market in terrorism, which caused such a hubub today. What they should do is allow Vegas gambling on terrorism.
Bets, anyone:
: Chance a dirty bomb will be used in the world: 500 to 1
: Chance a dirty bomb will be used in the U.S.: 1000 to 1
: Chance a biological weapon will be used in the world: 5000 to 1
: Chance of an Palestinian human bomb in next week: even
: David Weinberger has more.
Liberal suicide
: More on the hijacking of liberalism and its values (not to mention its pragmatic politics), first from today's New York Times: The moderate Democratic group that helped elect Bill Clinton to the White House in 1992 warned today that Democrats were headed for defeat if they presented themselves as an angry "far left" party fighting tax cuts and opposing the war in Iraq....
"It is our belief that the Democratic Party has an important choice to make: Do we want to vent or do we want to govern?" said Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, chairman of the organization. "The administration is being run by the far right. The Democratic Party is in danger of being taken over by the far left."
When a reporter asked a panel of council leaders whether Democratic woes were a result of Republican attacks or Democratic mistakes, Senator Bayh responded with a curt two-word answer that silenced the room.
"Assisted suicide," he said. And Andrew Sullivan quotes (Marxist, prowar) blogger Norman Geras on the left's failure to to support the human rights of the Iraqis just so they can hope to nya-nya the Republican administration: But what these critics of the war thereby wished for was a spectacular triumph for the regime in Baghdad, since that is what a withdrawal would have been. So much for solidarity with the victims of oppression, for commitment to democratic values and basic human rights....
That is caring more to have been right than for a decent outcome for the people of this long unfortunate country. How horribly true: In the PC era, it is better to be right than to be moral.
If you want to natter at Bush's butt, how much better it would be to natter not about the war but about doing a better job at building an economy and democracy in Iraq.
Geras delivers deeper thrusts of the knife regarding the left's reaction to September 11: The response on the part of much of it was excuse and apologia.
At best you might get some lip service paid to the events of September 11 having been, well, you know, unfortunate - the preliminary 'yes' before the soon-to-follow 'but' (or, as Christopher Hitchens has called it, 'throat-clearing'). And then you'd get all the stuff about root causes, deep grievances, the role of US foreign policy in creating these; and a subtext, or indeed text, whose meaning was America's comeuppance. This was not a discourse worthy of a democratically-committed or principled left, and the would-be defence of it by its proponents, that they were merely trying to explain and not to excuse what happened, was itself a pathetic excuse....
Why this miserable response? In a nutshell, it was a displacement of the left's most fundamental values by a misguided strategic choice, namely, opposition to the US, come what may. What's most pathetic is that one hears this even from the American left.
But this isn't the left. This is a crackpot cult that calls itself the left and the real crime is that liberals let them.
That is why I won't yet give up on the liberal label.
July 28, 2003
In her new condo
: ElizabethSpiers.com
We are all Jewish
: Douglas Rushkoff writes: I got an email this weekend from Daniel Pearl's parents, who are publishing a book called "I am Jewish," after the Wall Street Journal reporter's last words before being executed in Pakistan.
The idea is to get a bunch of writers and thinkers to reflect on this phrase, and what it means to be Jewish. They're hoping that a diverse set of responses will allow some underlying commonality - and pride - to shine through.
It's hard to know exactly how to respond. The effort, like the Daniel Pearl Foundation, is a way of transforming a heinous moment into the catalyst for positive thought, unity, and pride. But it's hard for me to use the 'rebound effect' in this way. The "I am Jewish" that Pearl was forced to recite had nothing to do with being Jewish - except in that this word and supposed bloodline was something hated by the people who killed him. Of course, there are no Jews in Pakistan, so the hatred had to do with something else. Some idea about Israel or zionism. Most likely an imported form of anti-Semitism.
But how does one approach these words, "I am Jewish," when they come in this context? How do they become a source of pride? Is tying this senseless murder to some sort of Jewish pride like turning the destruction of the Shoah (holocaust) into a righteous sacrifice?
Why should a collection of this sort by the parents of a murdered person cause me concern? Have I grown paranoid, or is there something amiss in this transition from bloodshed to inspiring reflection? Rushkoff's concerns are well-taken and though still unformed, well-said.
I see the challenge differently -- in no small measure because I am not Jewish. I tried to write about this in a sermon I gave last month, aimed at the audience of a small Congregational church.
I have always wondered why Christian churches reject the rituals and thus heritage of our Jewish ancestry (and though I've never heard the reason why, of course, I fear one reason: anti-Semitism).
There is every good reason for us -- Christians and Muslims -- to celebrate Passover, for example, and to read Kaddish when we mourn (which I did in the sermon I gave on the first anniversary of 9.11). We should do these things because sharing these rituals will remind us of our common religious heritage; it will remind us that we are all children of God, descended of Abraham; it will build a bridge from worship to worship and people to people.
We are all Jewish.
I don't mean this in a post-9.11-We-are-all-Americans way; it's not just about solidarity.
No, I mean this in a more fundamental, connected, intimate way; it's harder to kill your own.
We are all Jewish.
I am a proud centro-sensible-prowar-unpc-lib
: Both Roger L. Simon and Michael J. Totten (damn, I feel so classless, even naked not using a middle initial) answer my challenge -- well, actually, my bit of sniveling beggging -- that they not abandon the liberal label and instead retake and reform it.
Totten says in the comments: I've been tempted to just start calling myself a centrist, but then you have to go and write stuff like this, so I just don't know.
The whole labelling this is ridiculous, but I don't want "liberal" to become synonomous with pacifism just yet. Or ever, for that matter. But at some point, and I don't know where that point is, my differences with the peacenik crowd may just become too much for me.
And there's nothing wrong with just being an independent centrist. And Simon objects more to being called sensible than being called liberal: "I’m a rebel, dammit! Didn’t you read my clippings back in 1973? (Anyway, I was a rebel then.)" Yeah, I know how you feel, Roger. It's just part of growing up or old. I didn't become Republican (as my father prayerfully predicted). But I did become sensible. And the beard turned gray. And hair started growing in strange places. And knees rattle. But anyway...
Roger makes two bigger points, if I summarize them faithfully (go read and judge for yourself): First, he says the word "liberal" is a stalking horse for the Democratic party and the Democratic party isn't necessarily worth the effort --- and neither is the Republican: It is time, especially for us in the blogosphere, to criticize the system in its entirety and see if there is a possible replacement....
What I want is system consistent with the age of high-speed information that we are now in. Do I know what that is? No. But I do know that our knowledge moves at warp speed, that we can be informed on most issues within minutes (something that once took us weeks or months—and then we could never check it as we can now) and this has tremendous ramifications (and positive potential) for democracy. Among other things, it could make the failure of McCain-Feingold and the continued Inside-the-Beltway influence peddling irrelevant—or at least substantially weaken its power—without the involvement of the legislature or the courts. Whole new arrangements could occur because money (or substantial money) is not involved. This has been a theme that Roger has been whistling for sometime now and I think I'm starting to get it: Information empowers and that power is now in our hands. We, the people, have new tools -- the Internet and weblogs -- to spread information and opinion and influence. We should use them. That's downright visionary.
So I agree with Michael that I, too, am essentially a centrist -- but a centrist who still holds onto some ideals of liberalism (ideals that have, sadly, been rejected by liberals of late -- ideals that would lead us to defend the human rights of the Iraqi people, for example).
And I agree with Roger that these new tools gives us the power that a few printing presses and sharp knives gave to French revolutionaries once upon a time. We need to take this advise to heart and see whether we are yet taking full advantage of the power we have. I think we are not (more on that later).
Yet I still worry in a whiny way that by trying to stand apart from the parties and process we are abdicating the power and influence we sensible liberals should have; we are ceding the party and the process to the fringe. And that leaves us out of power; we become todays' equivalent of a John Anderson voter, a Ross Perot voter, or a Ralph Nader voter, or a Florida voter; we don't count.
Is liberalism lost? I hope not -- not yet, or at least not without a fight.
The Palestinian solution
: Michael J. Totten has a breathtaking column in Tech Central Station arguing that we must be careful, very careful not to reward terrorism: It is time to ask ourselves honestly: Is it possible to support a Palestinian state without encouraging terrorists elsewhere?
There are many stateless Muslims; the Chechens in Russia, the Kurds in the Middle East, the Uighurs in Eastern China, and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Opinion leaders tsk-tsk the Russians, but no one holds demonstrations for the liberation of Chechnya. The Kurds are good people and they deserve their own state, but nearly everyone agrees it would only make trouble. Few even know the Uighurs exist. Meanwhile, as the Palestinians continue the jihad, the number of their supporters isn't declining. It's rising. The lesson for extremists is clear: the squeaky wheel gets greased.
Lest the Arab-Israeli conflict grind on indefinitely, Palestinians eventually need their own state. But we need to find a way to get them that state while discouraging bad actors elsewhere....
The trouble with the road map isn't that Palestinians won't cooperate. The problem is there's no punishment if they don't....
Before the intifada was launched in 2000, a Palestinian state was not a guaranteed outcome but an option to be negotiated. George W. Bush is the first American president to use the words "Palestinian" and "state" in the same sentence. Bill Clinton never went so far. Bush didn't do this because the Palestinians are suddenly more deserving of a homeland. He did so because they violently demanded it.
It's an object lesson for would-be terrorists elsewhere. Terror precipitates a crisis, generates public sympathy, and produces results on a much faster schedule.... Totten offers a different and decisive road map: "First, defeat terrorism. Second, nurture democracy. Third, negotiate a settlement." Worth the read.
Tehran's left bank
: Hooman has an interesting post saying that Iran is the France of the Middle East (and he knows you'll read into that what you please). He lists the says and here's the one that amused me: 8- Both countries make "artistic" movies that only the other one can make a head or tail of. That may explain why Iranian movies are so successful in the Cannes film festival.
Objectivity schmobjectivity
: Robert L. Bartley, editor emeritus of the Wall Street Journal, writes today that objectivity in journalism is dead. But he writes about it from the wrong perspective, that of the journalists and their institutions, saying that objectivity is hard to maintain.
I look at it from the audience's perspective instead. I've been saying in this space for sometime the success of both FoxNews and weblogs indicate that the audience expects opinion -- and straightforward honesty about that opinion.
: Hylton Jolliffe of Corante also sends us to this article, Rethinking Objectivity.
: See also Bradford Pilcher.
July 27, 2003
Sex and the city
: The ladies are all getting older and more miserable. Welcome to your midlife crises, ladies.
What it's about
: Where's my elephant, a weblog by an expat Iranian and soon-to-be Harvard law student, writes to remind us about the victims of Iran's Islamic republic: this morning, as i looked at my usual sites, i came across this article (in persian), commemorating the anniversary of the mass executions which took place in iranian prisons in 1988, a time when the iranian regime decided to empty the prisons of all their political opponents.
i looked through the partially-compiled list (in english) of all of all of those executed and i recognized quite a few names....
i saw the name of a distant relative who had been arrested on no real charges and kept in prison idefinitely. one random day, his father was called by the prison authorities and told: "come here and pick up your son. he's now free." the father went to the prison excitedly only to be greeted with his son's corpse.
i saw the names of family friends who had been executed. husband and pregnant wife.
and finally, with real dread, i saw my uncle's name. he was arrested in 1980, at the age of 20. his "crime" was selling political newspapers and attending some protests....
they called my grandmother's house one day from the prison. they asked my grandmother if she was the mother of the prisoner. then they coldly told her to come and pick up my uncle's clothes and his watch.
to this day we don't know how he was killed or where his body is buried.
sometimes people tell me that it is time to move on. to forgive. to focus on reform.
and i can't help but laugh at the absurdity of that notion.
will the so-called 'reformists', many of whom were directly complicit in these murders and others who deny they occurred, answer to my grandmother when she asks about what was done to her son?
how can she forgive?
America
: Blue Bird Escape -- the teen who just a week ago returned to America from a visit to her native Iran -- gains more perspective and writes: American life
Saturday mornings people go to the mall and spend their morning and part of their afternoon shopping.
The road is clear. Not too many cars. Not too much traffic. It is a joy to drive.
At home music can play loudly.
At the movies people quiet down when the film starts.
People are not allowed to smoke in public places.
Choosing a comfortable outfit is not a problem.
Writing is not a crime.
Speaking is not wrong.
Dreaming is allowed.
Success exists.
Freedom is a word.
Love is a reality.
Swan song
: Brian Linse got a preview of Warren Zevon's album and he loves it.
Clueless
: Gawd, Larry Lessig drives me nuts. He's so obsessively one-note about intellectual property. And he's so wrong.
He sends his blog readers to a New York Times story by Jake Tapper and then he can't help adding this: (BTW: this is a NY Times piece, which means you need to be registered to read it and eventually you’ll have to pay to read it. There’s something rotten in that.) And just what is rotten about that, huh? The New York Times paid money -- a good deal of money -- to have Tapper write that story and more money to edit it and more money to publish it. The New York Times bought and owns rights to that story and has the full privilege to charge for it; you have no right to get it for free. The fact that the Times is giving it to you for free -- for the mere price of registration -- is a gift and you look at that horse in the mouth.
But what's good for the goose is good for the gander, professor: Your knowledge should be mine. If you paid for it, tough; if you got scholarships, then that's all the more reason you should share it. You should teach for free. Your books should be free. You should come and give lectures and charge nothing. If you practice law, you should do it for free because, hey, we all own the law and the knowledge about it, eh? Anything else would be, well, rotten, wouldn't it?
Defending a nation
: It's amazing that anyone should feel the need to defend a nation's "basic right to exist, to protect its citizens from terrorism, and to defend its borders from hostile enemies."
But Alan Dershowitz wrote a book to defend these rights of Israel and a sneak preview of the beginning of the book is in the new edition of Jewsweek.com.
Watchyoucallinme?
: Roger L. Simon is bristling at being called a liberal (because he's trying to erase such definitions from the dictionary). Actually, I wish he'd wear the label with pride and help redefine what it means along with other sensiblelibs (such as yours truly, of course). Without the sensible ilk of Simon and Michael J. Totten calling ourselves liberal, then all we'll find in the dictionary under the word is this.
Cover-ups never end
: So Nixon flunkie Jeb Stuart Magruder says -- finally -- that Richard Nixon ordered the Watergate break-in.
Why didn't he say it before? "Nobody ever asked me . . . about that."
Once a slimy operative, always a slimy operative.
: I met Magruder after he got out of jail. He was attending Princeton Theological Seminary and working as a student minister in Princeton's Presbyterian church, where my sister was associate pastor. She had a party one night and invited me and there I met Magruder. We chatted about this and that. And then he asked what I did for a living.
I write for People magazine, I told him.
It was as if he had just learned that I had anthrax, bad breath, body odor, and a loaded pistol. I've never seen anyone back away from me so fast and with such fear in his eyes.
: I've often quoted a story Magruder told in Princeton about the moral relativism of working in the Nixon White House. I tell this story whenever someone I'm working with admits that something's not right but justifies it by saying that at least they saved the situation from being even worse.
Magruder said that working at the White House he'd spend all day shooting down crazy scheme after crazy scheme from the likes of Howard Hunt. He'd get home at night, put up his feet, and pat himself on the back: "I killed nine crazy Hunt schemes today."
The only problem was, the tenth crazy Hunt scheme was Watergate.
Do as I say, not as I do
: A man responsible for the assassination of Anwar Sadat now renounces his act and says it's wrong to kill the rest of us: ...a prison inmate has stirred the Islamic world by citing the Quran and the Sunna (the sayings and doings of the prophet Mohammed) to argue that "killing Jews, Christians and Americans is wrong."
Egypt, an important player in several Middle Eastern and African peace processes, is considering releasing from prison Karam Zohdi, 50, a key figure in the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat....
Zohdi says that killing Anwar Sadat and the policeman who died defending him was a "grave sin."
July 26, 2003
Blogathon
: Haven't had time to post today; been busy with chores. But I did send a post to Michele for Blogathaon.
July 25, 2003
Release the 28 pages!
: Well, it sounds as if even the Saudis agree that we should release the 28 pages of the 9/11 report about them: Saudi Arabia has angrily rejected US allegations that the kingdom may have had a hand in the September 11 terror attacks.
The Saudi Ambassador to the United States called the claims, contained in a long-awaited Congressional report on the attacks, "blatantly false".
Prince Bandar bin Sultan suggested in a statement released after the report was made public yesterday that sections of the document dealing with possible Saudi involvement had been blacked out because they could not be substantiated.
The White House has refused to declassify 28 pages of the report - a decision that drew sharp rebukes from numerous members of Congress, who called on the White House to allow the information to be made public.
The Ambassador said: "In a 900-page report, 28 blanked-out pages are being used by some to malign our country and our people.
"Rumours, innuendos and untruths have become, when it comes to the kingdom, the order of the day."...
"Saudi Arabia has nothing to hide. We can deal with questions in public, but we cannot respond to blank pages." So let's forget the rumors, innuendos, and untruths and release the 28 pages!
And by the way, Mr. Saudi, if you haven't seen the 28 pages, how do you know they're not true?
Bruuuuuuuce Blooooooog
: We've started another blog: the Bruce Blog in honor of the Boss' tour.
Vini Lopez, former Bruce band member who sat in the other night, even emailed our blog with his first-person account.
As I said in my ill-fated story about weblogs, I'm very proud of the creativity coming from all quarters of my company regarding blogs. Cleveland.com will have a blog by a Cleveland Indians player starting any second. As I've mentioned often, my colleague Joe Territo is turning his blog into a forum for email interviews of National Interest.We blog Bourbon Street. And, of course, there's Beach Blog.
More fun with editors
: James Taranto pointed to this bit of creative editing (it should be called creative writing) from Reuters. The reporter Deanna Wrenn's original lead: In this small county seat with just 995 residents, the girl everyone calls Jessi is a true heroine — even if reports vary about Pfc. Jessica Lynch and her ordeal in Iraq. Reuters' "edited" lead: Jessica Lynch, the wounded Army private whose ordeal in Iraq was hyped into a media fiction of U.S. heroism, was set for an emotional homecoming on Tuesday in a rural West Virginia community bristling with flags, yellow ribbons and TV news trucks. : Meanwhile, a little more reaction to my tale of ham-handed, agenda-injecting, sleep-inducing, writer-enraging editing from Nieman Reports. JD Lasica, who gave my name to Nieman and probably regrets it, says that I say "the only good editor is no editor." Actually, being an editor, that's not what I hold. A good editor helps the writer say what the writer wants to say better; a good editor acts in place of the reader to ask the questions a reader would ask; a good editor also knows what to shut the f up.
And Sheila Lennon of the Projo also defends editors but acknowledges that they should ask questions first, rewrite later. She says she's rewriting herself now in anticipation of the edit. That's a mistake, Sheila. You write for a large audience every day. Trust your own judgment. Use your own voice. That's what a good editor should want.
My biggest gripe with the questionable editor in question is not so much that she butchered the prose (though, of course, I will gripe about that) but that she inserted her own views and own agenda under my name (just as someone at Reuters did to poor Ms. Wrenn); that is the lowest sin. It not only affects my credibility, then, but also the credibility of the publication or organization. That's why I killed the story: I did not want to imagine what else would be published in Nieman Reports and did not want to be associated with it.
 : My favorite story of editor ego: When I worked at People magazine, a "top editor" who shall remain nameless, edited into a story that Abe (Barney Miller, Fish) Vigoda was dead. Now Time Inc. publications have an elaborate system of editing and fixing what editors do. The reporter reports and sends in reams of material. A writer in New York, one step removed from the story, writes it. A senior editor edits it and probably rewrites it. Then a top editor edits it and often rewrites it. Then the managing editor edits it and even occasionally rewrites it. Then even the corporate editors upstairs edit it and demand rewrites. Then, at the end, the poor and poorly paid researcher tries to bring it all back to the facts. That's what the researcher tried to do in this case, insisting in every version that Abe was alive. The top editor re-inserted the words "the late" in front of poor Abe's name.
Abe was shocked to read of his death.
He took out an ad in Variety showing himself in a coffin, reading People.
And this has become a bit of cultural lore.
You can even go to a website to make sure that Abe is alive.
RIP
: Britain reacted the pictures of the dead Saddam sons differently. The Mirror plastered the corpses onto the front page (and evil the Mirror admitted that they were evil). Yesterday, for awhile, the Guardian had them on the home page.
Here in the U.S., CNN and my own sites put them behind a linked that warned of the graphic nature: see them if you wish.
But leave it to The Sun to have the last laugh. Their headline: "Rest in pieces"
: Update: Now the U.S. says it will allow reporters to videotape the bodies just to absolutely completely utterly fully once and for all without a shred of doubt in this universe or the next convince skeptical Iraqis that the SOBs are dead.
Next, the bodies will be shipped to Madame Tussaud's so they can become a New York tourist attraction.
: Update: And there's this from the Telegraph: The brothers' bodies will be kept at the morgue until a member of their family comes to claim them. Saddam calling.
Men's room
: Pedram finds this gem of a comment from an Iranian reader on the Farsi section of the BBC's web site: "Our country is free and democratic and people enjoy complete social freedoms. The internet is a scientific phenomena and if used properly, it is a noble element. This regime is not against science. Mr. Khamenei himself owns several sites. The important factor is how it is used. In my opinion, if chat rooms are divided into separate men and ladies rooms it will be better and could prevent spread of moral corruption."
July 24, 2003
Import
: Alan Rusbridger, the editor of The Guardian, gave a wise keynote at the media confab (below), which I won't do the disservice of summarizing in a paragraph post.
He also acknowledged discussion about starting an American Guardian.
He said they were inspired by the two million Americans a month who read The Guardian online. He said it's still just a dream and they're not even sure whether it would be daily, weekly, or monthly.
The other war
: Forgot to mention earlier that Tom Rogers, former head of Primedia, told me that he was asked by Mayor Bloomberg to mediate the fight between the Yankees' YES network and Cablevision. Now that's a war.
(I side with Cablevision on this one. They don't want to give it to everybody and charge everybody. I don't watch baseball and so I don't want to pay a penny for the channel.)
Alterman agonistes
: So I ran into Eric Alterman at the New York Mag/Guardian media/war confab (overblogged, below).
I thought it was a friendly how-do-you-do during the coffee break: Good to see you, Eric.
Eric thought otherwise and took out after me. He said he almost responded to my "attack" on him (here and here) regarding his stance on attacks on Jews in France.
To recap: He said that the attacks were coming from Muslim immigrants angered by the occupation of Palestine. I said that by seeing a motive other than hate he is ascribing a justification to anti-Semitism and that is a moral mistake.
We went back and forth for a few minutes. He said he was trying to learn and understand the reasons behind these acts. I said he was giving a hate crime credit for rationality it does not deserve. He made some metaphor about learning the behavior of mosquitoes so he can avoid them. I tried to make a joke that he just saw me as a pest now. He was not to be amused, not to be trifled with.
A TV crew was getting ready to interview him and had its camera turned pointed in our direction. Alterman pushed the microphone away and snapped, "I'm not talking to you."
He turned to me and said, "Your attack is unfair." Then je walked away.
I want to emphasize that we had a perfectly friendly conversation later. That's not my point.
What's interesting here is what happens when bloggers meet after having a disagreement onine. So we had a public disagreement. Happens. But that apparently festered in private. Well, I say the better thing to do is to continue the discussion in public until you work it out (unlikely) or tire out. I wish Eric had responded, in public and in kind; that's oddly easier to deal with than a private spat.
You talk to my blog, you talk to me. Talk to me, talk to my blog.
Media last
: Just a few last notes from the media confab.
: Adrian Van Klaveren, head of newsgathering for the BBC, says regarding the Kelly affair, "The BBC is confident that our position will be vindicated." Surprise, surprise. He has the sputtering demeanor of an embattled Washington aide.
: There a dust-up over a BBC film about the rescue of Jessica Lynch. The BBC reporter, John Kampfner, says he stands by the report. Members of the audience take him to task.
: The BBC is acting like the cocky powerful clique in its last days in power but unaware that the click is ticking.
: Sidney Blumenthal insists that many members of the Bush White House, partidularly Chaney, are secretly rooting for Tony Blair to be kicked out.
: Eric Alterman asks an irksome question at the end: "We can all agree that truth is very important. But the American people don't care about truth. They care more about results." A lady in the audience gashs about shouts: "Not true." Amen, lady. If your own audience doesn't care about the truth, why write for them, Eric. That's essentially insulting to the entire damned nation. And it's wrong.
Media more
: More bits from the media and war confab:
: Discussion of embed fashion: The BBC's Gavin Hewitt said that apart from wearing the chemical suit, when ordered, he made sure to wear civvies.
"The truth is, some of the embeds really enjoyed the dressing up," said ABC's John Donovan.
Blogger Eric Alterman calls out from the audience: "So did the president."
: Michael Wolff tries, as usual, to see the sinister intent of the military in providing khakis.
ABC's LeRoy Sievers: "John was a White House correspondent. He dressed like the president: Dark suit, white shirt. Nobody said, 'John is trying to act like the President.'"
: Jonathan Foreman of the NY Post says the Iraqis did not need embedded reporters because the BBC's Andrew Gilligan (who said the Americans were not in Baghad when they were) "was doing the job for them."
: Wolff tries to say that embedded reporters weren't experienced at war. The reporters jumped down his throat. LeRoy Sievers of ABC said the reporters had more experience in war than the soldiers.
: Foreman complains that reporters were getting excited and calling one shot a "heavy bombardment." Sievers says "that happens every day on many stoies."
: Rick Leventhal of FoxNews: "I would never go unilateral (that is, not embedded) in a war. You guys are nuts."
: James Meek of the Guardian says the problem with the embed program was that no one was embedded with the Iraqis and thus, we did not know where our bullets and bombs landed. He makes an analogy to a boxing match and portrays the Iraqis as a little guy being beaten by a big guy.
Meek says that when he arrived over the border in Safra, he found people who were happy to see the Americans; he saw looting; he saw no administrative structure. He was not embedded. John Donovan of ABC was not embedded and he had a different perspective, saying the Iraqis are uniformly pissed off. He says his producers were asking for him to find pictures of people cheering. So which story was the right story?
Donovan says it was crazy dangerous, more than he knoew.
He says the Iraqis wouldn't believe us that we were neutral. "And, in fact, we weren't neutral."
Well, Mr. Donovan, then were you doing your job?
: Gavin Hewitt of the BBC says being embedded let him get more stories than he could have otherwise: He could show the sand storms that delayed the invasion; he showed images of dead Iraqis on the road into Baghdad. He said he self-censored images of gruesome injury. "I wondered whether we hadn't shown enough of the reality of the war."
: Wolff tries to say that embedded reporters weren't experienced at war. The reporters jumped down his throat. LeRoy Sievers of ABC said the reporters had more experience in war than the soldiers.
: Foreman complains that reporters were getting excited and calling one shot a "heavy bombardment." Sievers says "that happens every day on many stoies."
: Wolff tries to get it all ways. He complains that the reporters are uninformed. They say they're informed -- in part by attending bootcamps set up by the military and then Wolff complains that the military was setting up coverage.
: The Guardian's Meek said when he got back, "I felt as if he had missed the war because I had not seen it on TV."
: Sievers says in Vietnam, we all knew soldiers in the drafted army. Now, there is more "separation" from soldiers and part of the story was to close that gap.
: Donovan says media doesn't show how awful war is. Again, Mr. Donovan, and why not? "The principle isn't we're trying to be pro-American," he says. "It fits more oddly into standards and practices. We don't show naked breasts and we don't show this (corpses) because we think you can't take it." Sievers add: "If we don't, then war is too easy."
: You leave an hour with these people realizing that they are a smart bunch who care and work hard to get the story to you.
It's all our fault
: Kaveh points us to a provocative Usenet post on Iranians blaming America written by an Iranian expat in America answering an Iranian complaining about us: Let me ask you something. . .have you bothered looking into the collective soul of Iranians as a people?
Is it the United States who is responsible for Tehran's 8 million
drivers who can't seem to extend common courtesy to each other respect
right of way driving in between lanes, or stop at a red lights?...
Is it the United States fault that Iranian women who are beaten by
their husbands and ask for a divorce have to leave their child with
the bastard who was beating them?! And speaking of that do you know
how many Iranian men are abusive to their wives?
Were those Americans who were riding motor cycles in the streets last
month beating students with chains?...
People like you don't want to address what is wrong with us Iranians
as a nation. You want to say it's all America's fault or it's all the
Arabs fault. . .I have news for you: Iranians have been screwing other
Iranians longer than any other nation has screwed Iran. Five Hundred
years after there were no more Arabs ruling Iran, Iranians were
screwing their fellow countrymen over.
In the last 100 years Iranians screwed Iranians.
I know. . .I know. . .your going to say that the Mossadegh Coup was
all America's fault. . .well let me tell you, America sent a single
American (Kermit Roosevelt. . .grandson of the former president) to
Iran with a bag filled with 1 million dollars to start that Coup, but
the people who accepted the money, and ran in the streets and beat
Mossadegh's people were Iranian not Americans. If you came to
downtown New York with a truck full of money (a billion), and asked
people to betray America, you would get your ass beat by the first
poor Puerto Rican from the Bronx, but a million dollars was enough for
Iranians to sell their own country down the drain.
Who is the monster?. . .the American who showed up with a million or
the Iranians who accepted the money and changed sides at the drop of a
hat?!
Iranians are the biggest roadblock to the welfare of fellow Iranians
in Iran. Not Arabs, not Americans not Aliens from Mars!...
Media at war
: A few notes from the start of the NY Mag/Guardian media/war confab:
: Gossip first: I introduce James Truman of Conde Nast to Nick Denton of Gawker.
"We stalk you," Nick says.
"Well, stop," James said.
A moment of British irony.
: The session starts with an agenda-dripping intro from a provost of the New School: "I have never been more concern and indeed angry about where the republic is headed today." That set the course.
: Michael Wolff, the media columnist from New York, keeps trying to put the media right in the middle of the war, to make the media the story. That is, after all, the meat of a media critic.
"Was the war staged for our benefit?" he asks. "To what extend is war a staged event, a media event?"
That could be cosmic question: Is war the message?
But that's not where he headed. He was counting column-inches.
: Paul Steiger, ME of the Wall Street Journal, was impressively level-headed and smart about all this.
"Sometimes we think over-much that it's about us," he said. "There is a tendance to overplay our role."
: Much discussion of the Palestine Hotel shelling with an undercurrant -- never said aloud -- that journalists were targeted.
David Chater, a correspondent for SkyNews, gave this balance. He said that day, he saw the fiercest firefight he'd ever seen. "It's extaordinary," he said, "that they showed such restraint... I think it's understandable that this happened."
Much discussion also of the bombing of the Al-Jazeera offices that day, which Chater said was a bigger story.
Al-Jazeera D.C. correspondent Hafez Al-Mirazi said he did believe that the offices were targeted -- not for killing but to get them off the air. He said it's not just chance that they were hit. "Some people in our office are saying we should start buying lottery tickets if the odds are that much in our favor."
: Reuters Middle East editor Barry Moody argues: "If there hand't been journalists in Baghdad the possibility of civilian casualties would have been much higher."
What a load. He's saying that if there were not media witnesses, the U.S. would have gone on a killing spree. Crap.
: Chris Albritton, who raised money to go to Iraq for his blog, Back to Iraq, was there.
: Tom Rogers, former head of Primedia, owner of New York, came to the conference. He was ousted in a big change of strategy by KKR (that is: they want to sell off much of the empire). He showed loyalty to his former employees to come.
Bleu
: I don't speak French worth a damn, but I can tell from this lead in le Monde under the headline "New York City Blues" that there'll be fun in this story (over to you, multilinqualists): "Crise financière et crise de confiance, New York n'a toujours pas surmonté le 11 septembre 2001. La ville a le blues."
: Treacher forwards a link to an imperfect Google translation of the story.
: And let's commission a story called Paris Blues. The world knows that your leader is a twit. The richest economy on earth has stopped buying your wine (damn, I like Australian wine). Our tourists have stopped coming to spend our money there. Your stupid tower is on fire. You are playing host to anti-semitic attacks.... Yeah, Paris is is whistling a happy tune itself.
Quagmire this
: Andrew Sullivan has a nice bit of rebuttal from Wolfowitz re progress in Iraq.
Editors
: Continuing on my snit fit about the editing job I got from Nieman Reports...
: Dave Winer says we don't need no stinking editors.
: Dan Gillmor says we are our own editors.
: Tim Porter says bad editors are everywhere.
: Ed Cone says we can all stand a good edit.
: Cyberwriter says "recht hat er."
: Mike says in the comments: "Oh fine, now you've burned your bridges and you've lost out on the audience of 500 who read the Nieman Report and will have to fall back on the 10,000 who read your blog. Smart move, Mr. Blogger-guy."
: An important note: Only once before in my (long) career have I seen an editor try to insert her or her own agenda into a piece I have written. The prior case (a story I have told here before): The editor in chief of Time Inc. tried to turn my positive review of a miniseries about Alger Hiss into a negative review so he could defend his mentor, Whitaker Chambers. I put my career on the line over that and threatened to resign; my editor put her career on the line backing me; we won. The top guy admitted that he had gone too far.
That's important to note because American journalism is not filled with editors rewriting and perverting the writing of reporters (as, I think, some assume happens habitually under the reign of powerful editors like Howell Raines). If that happened, the writers would revolt (their principles and egos are that strong).
: David Galbraith fantatizes: I have this fantastic image of a drab, librarian-type cowering behind a stack of old books, dust flying, as a 6' 4" Jarvis in a don't give a damn suit slams his original manuscript on the top of the pile. Weblogs allow you to do that - but without getting dust on your jacket. : Did somebody at the wall street journal edit den beste? He wrote fewer than 200,000 words!
: Canadians are Smug says: All I can think is, what an excellent time to be a young journalist. The ground is shifting beneath the feet of journalism, and such earthquakes are an excellent time to move forward while the old guard nonchalantly reports "Ground seen shaking". All the ridiculous gargoyles adorning journalism's ivory tower are going to fall off.
Springer's wisdom
: Blogging colleague Joe Territo -- who's cleverly turned his blog into a forum for email interviews with the notable -- has Jerry Springer today, talking about youth and violence: A. I think blaming the entertainment industry for violence among our youth is absurd. If violent movies and television shows were the problem, you'd expect to find the same level of violence in Canada that you do in America, since Canadians mostly watch the same shows and movies that we do. In fact, of course, Canada has a violence rate many times smaller than ours. And the truth is that the vast majority of kids in this country are perfectly capable of distinguishing between make-believe violence and real life. Sure, there may be a few souls who are motivated to violence by what they see on TV or in the movies, just as there is a small percentage of adults who can't drink liquor responsibly and become alcoholics. But when we tried banning alcohol, Prohibition wasn't exactly a ringing success.
Confab
: I'll be at the NY Mag/Guardian media confab today, blogging when possible.
July 23, 2003
Why that hate us? Because they're incredibly stupid
: A poll in Germany reports: Almost one in three Germans below the age of 30 believes the U.S. government may have sponsored the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, according to a poll published on Wednesday
And about 20 percent of Germans in all age groups hold this view, a survey of 1,000 people conducted for the weekly Die Zeit said. Heiko Hebig (who finds this via the Agonist via Die Zeit) wonders what I'll say about this. What can a sane person say: They're nuts. Is the fault of German media that they're so ill-informed? Is it the fault of German politicians that anti-American bigotry has reached such depths of idiocy? Is it the fault of German education that a third of the next generation is just so stupid?
Shocking stupidity
: Mayor Bloomberg admitted that various machers have not been going through the metal detector at City Hall and that's how the shooter got in with a gun. Shocking. Stupid. Dangerous. Incredible. Bloomberg makes a big deal that now he and other officials will all go through. After 9/11 and all the security worries in New York, they should have been setting this example ages ago. When Dan White went into San Francisco's City Hall to murder George Moscone and Harvey Milk, he had to sneak in through a basement window.
New York attack
: A gunman opened fire in New York's City Hall today, apparently shooting two councilmen, killing one.... UPDATE: Both victims are now dead....UPDATE: Now they say the second dead person was the assailant. Why the hell did it take them so long to get the news straight? New York feared an assassin was out on the streets when he was dead.
: I was a columnist in San Francisco when Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were murdered by Supervisor Dan White.
George and Harvey were both friends.
It was a terrible time for the city. More than 900 had died in Jonestown. Now City Hall ran with blood. And soon, thousands and thousands would die of AIDS. Then let's not forget the lies and busted dreams of the bubble.
I don't think San Francisco ever fully recovered from its tragedies. I haven't been there in too long but I never hear people talk about it -- as everyone used to -- with sighs about its beauty, charm, innocence, and magic. I hear people complain how crowded it is and how it mismanages the homeless problem and how its politics are a carnival sideshow.
Damn, I used to love that city.
Now New York is just trying to rebuild after 3,000 were murdered at the World Trade Center. And now City Hall runs with blood.
But New York cannot suffer San Francisco's fate. It can't take on the face of a loser. This is a tougher town. And unlike San Francisco, it's not a luxury but a necessity for America and the world.
Twit
: Howard Stern was ranting quite rightly about star twit Kate Hudson's sound bite saying that she was just in France and she understands why people hate us because we're loud and ask for ketchup.
Yes, that's why the terrorists attacked us: Ketchup.
Howard says he demands an apology. Damn straight.
: Now I have her quote: "I've been listening to some Americans. Of course they hate us. Of course they can't stand us. We're the most annoying, boisterous creatures in the world."
And the French?
July 22, 2003
A world without editors
: Nick Denton and I were taking on IM sometime back about why we liked blogging so much and with typical Nick understatement, he popped this simple reason onto my screen:
"No editors."
Amen, blogging brother, amen.
I just had an unnerving encounter with an editor -- print, of course. I was debating whether to blog it and whether to be coy about the publication. But, what the hell, it's a publication about journalism that was asking for a piece about blogging and so they should expect a journalist to blog it.
Nieman Reports, a thumbsucking quarterly out of Harvard's Nieman Foundation for Journalism, asked me and many others to write pieces for an issue about weblogging. Be happy to, I said, without a moment's hesitation. For the good of journalism. For the good of blogging. Anything.
So I wrote the piece. You can see it here. To most of you, there'll be nothing new in it. But I wasn't writing for a blogging audience. I was writing for the audience of 10 journalism machers who actually read these wet-thumb periodicals and many of them apparently don't yet know what blogs are. So I tried to tell them about my happy experience with blogs -- my own blog, Iranian blogs, and my company's blogs.
The edit I got back was a ham-handed butchery that also betrays plenty of print prejudices about this, our new medium. For example:
: I said that weblogs have the "potential to unlock a treasure of audience content."
: She said, "a treasure of audience interactivity."
: And that's essentially insulting to weblogs; it devalues them. This isn't just another way to chat, damnit. This is content as much as any newspaper's or magazine's content.
: I said: "Weblogs are conversation."
: She said, "Weblogs are a tool for creating conversation."
: There's a difference. Again, this isn't just another community tool. It's a content tool. Besides, her sentence was wordier. First rule of editing: Take words out, don't add them in.
: I said: "Weblogs can also change the world."
: She said: "Weblogs ... can also expand the way we think about and experience events around the world."
: Well, that's poorly stated and wimpy and wordy and it's not what I said. I meant what I said. This isn't about viewing the world. It's about changing the world. Again, the apparent aim is to defang weblogs.
: I said: "Weblogs are revolutionary."
: She said: "In Iran and other nations where people are repressed, we are learning that Weblogs can be tools of revolution."
: Once again, wordy and obtuse and diluted. Weblogs are revolutionary much closer to home -- in America ... and in newsrooms.
: I said: "Webloggers are also being given credit for at least keeping up the pressure that helped bring down Majority Leader Trent Lott (thanks mainly to Josh Micah Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo.com). Bloggers are influencers."
: She said: "Webloggers -- in this case, Josh Micah Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo.com, in particular – received credit for keeping up the pressure that eventually led to mainstream media coverage and, in turn, political pressure, which resulted in Majority Leader Trent Lott’s resignation."
: No, I was giving Josh starring credit in this drama; she reduced him to a bit player. Still devaluing.
: I said, "Now I don’t intend to engage in a debate about whether webloggers will replace reporters; that’s at least as tedious as a J-school seminar on objectivity."
: She took out the J-school line.
: Thus my joke turned into a haughty declaration and I turned into an asshole. Second rule of editing: Never make your writers look like assholes -- unless you pay handsomely for the privilege. And, by the way, we wouldn't want to joke about J-school, would we?
: I said: "So now a print columnist can create video commentary; she can be the Web’s Andy Rooney (or, I hope, aim higher)."
: She took out the parenthetical gag.
: Good God, that's the worst sin of all: making me look like a fan of Andy Rooney's! The shame, the shame!
The editor said she wanted fewer plugs for my company and I fully understand that; I was simply trying to use my personal experience to give practical advice for how to integrate weblogs into a big media operation.
She also wanted me to address the issue of weblog news coming from often anonymous, sometimes unreliable sources and that's also a fair question. My answer is that the audience -- especially after the last cablecast war -- is becoming accustomed to judging news, even news from the big boys, with a grain of salt. They now know that the first news out of the box is unconfirmed; they know to wait until time has passed and confirmation and reporting have come in. They know that they need to look at what CNN says live through a filter just as they look at what webloggers say through a filter. It's all about trusting the intelligence of the audience.
Now, you can write this all off to the bad editing and a bull-headed writer. But there's something more here: an indication that journalism the institution doesn't get and isn't yet willing to get weblogs as a revolution. I feared that this publication would try to devalue and belittle weblogs. I didn't want to be part of that.
So when I got the "edit" back, I responded by simply asking to kill the piece. I would have left it at that: time wasted. But then I got this most irksome email: "I knew that when we set out to do this project there might be a culture clash between the more staid journalism world (which I guess we tend to represent) and blogosphere, and I think you and I might have stumbled into that clash."
Whoa right there! I am a journalism executive, a writer and an editor, J-school trained, even; check the about me. My DNA is filled with pulp paper and slick ink and TV dots; I'm a damned journalism gray-beard (albeit prematurely gray, of course). I have unique experience living in both worlds, old and new. Yet here she was treating me like some blogosphere crackpot. Culture clash? I was insulted at the notion.
But maybe there is a culture clash, more than I knew or would admit. Journalism still needs to escape its closed, think-tank think and get out there and use the tools the audience is using. They need to read what the audience is writing. They need to listen. That's what is so damned exciting about weblogs. Weblogs give you the chance to hear your audience and what they really care about -- if only you are ready to listen.
Aw, to hell with it. I decided to just put the piece up here, for you are the audience I care about, not the handful of insular souls who'll read a self-referential, self-reverential faux scholarly periodical about weblogs -- when it would be so much better if they just read weblogs instead.
And if I'm wrong, you'll tell me. For you are my editor.
Experience democracy
: Pedram has a wonderful post today urging his fellow expat Iranians to experience Western democracy, wherever they are, so they can take that experience back to a free Iran. It is hopeful yet responsible and realistic talk from Iran's next generation of leaders.
He's everywhere
: Tom Watson, Britain's blogging MP, responded to an online interview with my blogging colleague, Joe Territo. Today's topic: democracy in Iran: It's not an issue of national interest - this is about global freedom and global interest. Democratic empowerment of Middle Eastern youth is invaluable to building a better future in the region. Joe also has Jerry Springer signed up for regular interviews, coming soon.
The sweetest hero
: Jessica Lynch was just great on her homecoming to the peaceful Palestine. The poor woman looked more frightened facing cameras than she must have looked facing the enemy. But she did a good job and she was real and honest, right down to her little but visible "WHEW" after it was all over.
Damn, I was going to enjoy that trial
FoxNews says there's a 90-95 percent chance that we killed Saddam's sons in Mosul today.
It's a boomer thing, you wouldn't understand
: Roger L. Simon insightfully sees more in l'affaire BBC/Blair (and NYTimes/Blair before it): It's a generational thing, about authority and jealousy. It's one of those rare blog posts you can't summarize in a snippet, so go read.
Gilligan's blog
: David Steven performs a great bit of digging and analysis through Andrew Gilligan's contributions to the BBC's group war blog. Point 8, Gilligan never apologises. One of the beauties of blogging is the ability to use later posts to comment on, reshape or even correct earlier ones. 'That's what
I thought was happening then, but this is what I now know…' That sort of thing.
Gilligan doesn't go in for any of that. He never tells us what went wrong with the airport story. We don't hear why he thinks Iraqi support for Saddam, 'stronger than we thought' on April 1st has evaporated a week later.
In fact, not one single recapitulation, reversal or reanalysis in 6000 words.
Instead, when a prediction or report is wrong, Gilligan moves seamlessly on to the next one.
July 21, 2003
Fate
: Here how the Guardian's leader (translation for us Americans: editorial) begins: It is exactly 10 years to the week since the deputy White House counsel, Vince Foster, put the barrel of a Colt revolver in his mouth and pulled the trigger. He left behind a crumpled suicide note intended as an epitaph on the culture he had experienced during his short six months in Washington: "Here ruining people is considered sport."
Anyone reading the newspapers over the past few days might well conclude that London does not lag far behind Washington in its playful appetite for destroying people. I don't mean to sound hard but I will: People who commit suicide -- by definition -- are not destroyed; they destroy themselves.
David Kelly killed himself. Vince Foster killed himself. (Note to tin-hatters: Spare me your reheated Clintonian conspiracy theories on this; I'm tired and grumpy and will bark and bite and thwap you on the nose with a rolled-up Times.)
Sadly, for reasons only they will know, neither man could not stand the pressure of politics: Foster in the middle of the White House, Kelly in the middle of the hottest story du jour. It is a tragedy that neither knew that soon enough and managed to get away or grow a tougher skin. If you can't stand the heat of politics, then for God's sake, man, stay away from the stove!
But politics is tough and for good reason: If you want to sway the ship of state, there will be people who disagree with you. They will say so. They will fight you. They will want you to lose so they can win. That's politics and it always will be. That's democracy. Even if you could strip away all the childishness and sniping and gossiping and petty fighting and greedy power-grabbing that will still be true: Politics is tough because it matters.
I find the chest-thumping and sodden sympathy over Kelly to be frequently disingenuous. He is being used in death more than in life. If he had not killed himself, he would be a trivia question in no time.
Kelly is not the issue.
The issue is: Who lied when no one should lie, especially not government, especially not the press?
TV kills
: Literally.
Ayatollah Fidel
: Ayatollah Khamenei showed off a missile that can hit Israel. Get a load of the picture; he looks like Castro surrounded by his drab-green minions.
Iran's supreme leader on Sunday inaugurated a new ballistic missile that brings Israel within range of the Islamic republic, hailing the event as a key moment in the defence of the Palestinian cause.
"Today our people and our armed forces are ready to defend their goals anywhere," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told a ceremony for the elite Revolutionary Guards carried on state television.
"This divine force has answered all threats, and we are witnessing today that this divine force is now doing the same for the Lebanese and the Palestinian people," he added in the ceremony to bring the Shahab-3 missile into service. Divine force? A missile? Some man of God, this guy is.
I'm getting Gilmore a button that reads, "I'm a Jerk"
: I'm tired of the Gilmore saga but I can't resist the discussion in the comments at MemeFirst (which I'll take out of context): Matthew: As a well-known lawyer, I'd venture that sort of speech might not be protected, for the same kinds of reasons you can't yell fire in a crowded theater....
I wonder if there's a first-amendment satire defense for his badge?
You know, arguing that it's aaaaaahrt.
Felix: I think airplane captains have the right to throw anybody they want off their plane (well, assuming it's on the ground, anyway) for any reason: I'd be astonished to hear that Gilmore has any kind of constitutional right to free speech at 30,000 feet. If I don't like what you're saying in my house I can kick you out; captains similarly....
Charles: Dunno about in the 'States, but certainly in the UK you can impersonate a (very) suspected terrorist, crash a party, kiss the second in line to the throne, and still not go to jail. Though he do get chucked out of the party, which may be more to the point. : And go enjoy Richard Bennett's comments on the button affair here.
Privatization
: There's a discussion starting in the comments, below, regarding privatization of the BBC. I'm in favor of it for a few reasons -- most obvious is that government control of media in any form is a conflict. But I also believe that the open market is a good thing for media -- and, no, not because I'm a free-market freak. I earnestly believe that it's a good thing for editorial quality because it ties editors to their market -- aka, their audience. If the audience doesn't want to buy what you produce, you fail. I've long held that circulation directors of newspapers and magazines should report to editors and that editors should be both accountable for and responsible for circulation.
Is Howell Raines moving to the BBC?
: The BBC scandal is sure starting to smell like the New York Times scandal. Now the staff is revolting: Senior BBC executives seemed isolated from their own staff last night when the corporation implicitly accused David Kelly of failing to be entirely open when he appeared before MPs last week.
Andrew Gilligan, the journalist at the centre of the row, said he did not misquote Dr Kelly in his original report. Executives believe privately that the scientist, who committed suicide on Thursday, held reservations about Downing Street's involvement in the notorious September dossier which he did not air to the foreign affairs select committee.
But journalists, editors and presenters contacted by the Guardian yesterday questioned - on condition of anonymity - the credibility of this stance. They expressed doubt about the positions of Gilligan and Richard Sambrook, the director of news, who has given unswerving support to the reporter since he learned that Dr Kelly was his source. A few even talk darkly of revolt. Support for Gilligan, outside the increasingly fraught confines of the Today programme where he is defence and diplomatic correspondent, is slipping away.
"It's one thing if the top brass choose to go to the wall for Gilligan. It's quite another if they expect us to do it too," one insider said.
More blood on their hands
: The Guardian reports that the BBC could have prevented the outing of Kelly as its source but refused: BBC bosses blocked a compromise which might have prevented the suicide of David Kelly, the weapons expert confirmed by the corporation yesterday as its source for the story of the "sexed-up' dossier.
The Guardian can reveal that the BBC chairman, Gavyn Davies, and the director general, Greg Dyke, were made an offer in the days before Dr Kelly was identified, but turned it down because they were determined to give no ground in their battle with Alastair Campbell, director of communications at No 10. So, once again, blame the Beeb, not Blair.
And, by the way, it was the BBC that was morally bound not to reveal its source, Kelly. The government had no such obligation; he wasn't their source and, in fact, he was violating rules talking to the press. That's the risk you take. And the release of his name by the government is an issue only because he committed suicide; that is something they could not be expected to have predicted. Kelly was a grown-up; he chose to talk to Gilligan.
Self-fulfilling punchlines
: Proving his very own point that liberals are no fun, Frank Rich writes a story about liberals that is itself no fun.
July 20, 2003
Excuse me, I'm trying to listen to the transmission in my teeth
: Further evidence that Larry Lessig is part of the tinfoil hat privacy nuts club: He takes the Gilmore airplane story seriously.
: I like Dan Gillmor, but I end up disagreeing with him about some things, like his paranoia about an airline taking pictures of passengers. I think it's a good idea. Even Slashdotters agree with me.
: This privacy paranoia thing has gone too far. Way too far.
And now for the left side of the scale
: Via Brian Linse, I see that Danny Goldberg -- president of Artemis Records, macher at the ACLU and Tikkun, and more -- has a weblog and I like it already because it's unpredictable and pop-culturally wise: It seems impossible to have a conversation about progressive or Democratic political hopes without someone lamenting the corrosive influence of Fox News. This seems like a cop-out to me.... Fox News is far more complicated and entertaining than simplistic put-downs would indicate. Part of the job for progressives at this time is to learn how to use some of the same cultural tools in service of a different philosophy.
The blood is on the BBC's hands
: So now the BBC has admitted that dead weapons inspector David Kelly was the source for its story accusing the Blair government of "sexing up" Iraq intelligence.
Kelly admitted having unauthorized contact with BBC foreign editor Andrew Gilligan. Kelly denied having been the source for the sexing up story, saying he could not see how what he said became the story the BBC produced. That means either that (1) Kelly lied and he was the source or (2) the BBC lied and stretched this story itself beyond what Kelly said. But Kelly killed himself, so we won't know from him what happened.
We must know from the BBC what happened. The BBC must launch a Blair-like (that is, Jayson-Blair-like) investigation of Gilligan and his reporting. The BBC's credibility demands it. The credibilty of the profession demands it.
My fellow journalists should demand it as well. Intead of standing in a press gang and asking Tony Blair about blood on his hands, those reporters should turn to their BBC colleagues and ask about the blood on their hands. A source of theirs killed himself over this story. Why?
The truth is coming out and that truth is:
The Blair government did not sex up this story.
The BBC and Andrew Gilligan are the ones who sexed up this story.
: See also a commentary by Blair-ally Peter Mandelson in the Guardian: Yet, even now, if you challenge BBC executives on this, they insist in their defence that you do not have smoke without fire, even though the smoke was created by their own correspondent. In their view, if you put a 'spin doctor' anywhere near a factual report, you are entitled to assume that the contents will be dodgy, regardless of who testifies to the contrary.
That is simply not good enough. It has led the director-general and the chairman of the governors to stake their reputations on a story that has turned out to be untrue, punted by a journalist who many inside the corporation regard as controversial, whatever they say about him in public.
The fact is that the journalist in question, Andrew Gilligan, persuaded his managers that his one source was a senior intelligence official and few now believe this to be true. Dr Kelly was a scientist, not a spook, and when he told MPs, in his gratuitously bruising encounter with them, that he was not the BBC's source he should have been properly understood to mean that he was not the source for what Gilligan said about Campbell. Gilligan should have been big enough to admit that he did not have another source for his central claim and that he had stretched what he had been told to suit his own prejudices. Amen.
Mandelson backs up a few thousand feet to make a broader and very right point about media's relationship to the world they co | |