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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?

LINK | Comments (11)

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.

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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.

LINK | Comments (12)

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.

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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."

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