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Times Watch for 05/08/03
Saddam-A-Bama?
After firing Mike Price over allegations of inappropriate behavior, the University of Alabama is looking for a new football coach. In his latest sports column, “Alabama’s Chance to Do the Right Thing,” the Times William C. Rhoden suggests rather strongly that the school hire black coach Sylvester Croom to take Price’s place.
Rhoden certainly isn’t shy about dispensing advice. Rhoden wanted the NCAA basketball tournament canceled because of the impending war in Iraq. Today, Rhoden brings up the Iraq war in an even less likely context:
“The United States sometimes sends mixed messages to the rest of the world. In the name of democracy we liberated Iraq with a multiracial fighting force that reflects the rainbow essence of our nation: black and white, brown and yellow, shoulder to shoulder. Our secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, is a black man with West Indian roots; our national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is an African-American woman from Alabama. The daily military briefings were given by Brig. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, an African-American and West Point graduate. Yet when we turn to America at play, there appears to be a bizarre contradiction in one of the nation's most prestigious and powerful college conferences: the Southeastern Conference can't find an African-American to be head football coach at one of its universities.”
(For some background on this dreadful disparity, note that the most storied football program at all, Notre Dame, hired its first black coach way back in, oh, 2002—and Tyrone Willingham was the first black head coach of any sport at Notre Dame. By that measure, Alabama had the Fighting Irish beat by five years.)
To Rhoden, the only way America can redeem its stature in the eyes of the world is for the University of Alabama Crimson Tide to hire as football coach Sylvester Croom, the running backs coach for the NFL’s Green Bay Packers.
“Any day now, Alabama's first-year president, Robert E. Witt, and fourth-year athletic director, Mal Moore, will introduce a new, new head football coach. The person they introduce had better be Sylvester Croom. This isn't a threat, just a bit of advice for a university struggling with credibility,” Rhoden explains. He concludes: “And remember, a lot of people are watching”--presumably “the rest of the world” Rhoden cited in the first sentence.
Rhoden’s fretting may be moot, because the Birmingham News reports this morning that Mike Shula, son of Don Shula, has been hired as coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide. What import ‘Bama’s decision will have on international relations must wait until Rhoden’s next dispatch.
For the William C. Rhoden column on Alabama football (and Iraq) in full, click here:
For the William C. Rhoden column on the NCAA Tournament (and Iraq) in full, click here ($ required)
Sridhar Pappu of the New York Observer sets the scene on the downfall of Jayson Blair, the Times plagiarist reporter: “On the evening of April 28, Jim Roberts, the national editor for The New York Times, called his reporter, Jayson Blair. Questions, he said he told Mr. Blair, had arisen about an April 26 story Mr. Blair had written about Juanita Anguiano, the mother of a 24-year-old Army mechanic who’d gone off to Iraq and was then the last American soldier declared missing in action. A reporter for the San Antonio Express-News, Macarena Hernandez—a former Times intern—had called the paper that day in distress, alerting the Times to similarities between Mr. Blair’s story and hers, also about Ms. Anguiano, that ran on April 18.…the Times is now investigating Mr. Blair’s reporting in at least two sniper-case stories.”
Among the problems with the 52 stories Blair filed on last fall’s D.C. sniper attacks (according to Erik Wemple and Josh Levin in the Washington City Paper): Blair alleged sniper suspect Lee Malvo confessed on videotape. No such tape exists. Blair also falsely claimed that Thomas DiBiagio, U.S. Attorney for Maryland, had interrupted the interrogation of sniper suspect John Muhammad just as investigators were about to get a confession.
Michael Paranzino suggests in National Review: “It thus appears highly likely that U.S. Attorney Thomas DiBiagio, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and President George W. Bush are all owed apologies by the Times. The scurrilous and apparently fictional allegation they fronted made headlines coast to coast. We'll see if the retraction gets similar coverage.”
Today, Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz says more of Blair’s reporting has come under suspicion. He writes that Blair “never talked to two other soldiers' parents he quoted in separate articles,” including Gregory Lynch, father of former POW Jessica Lynch. Kurtz says Gregory Lynch doesn’t even think Blair was ever in town, though Blair’s story was datelined Palestine, W.Va. (That points up one of the hazards of cell phones and email—datelines are hard to pin down.)
Taking another angle, the May 12 Weekly Standard finds that Blair wasn’t the only Times reporter with a correction problem: “How about Times associate editor R.W. "Johnny" Apple Jr., whose 327 bylines with 46 corrections (14.1 percent spoiled copy) would seem to label him--the numbers don't lie--less than half as reliable a newsman as the hapless youngster Howell Raines is now banishing to Purdah.”
To its credit, the Times reacted vigorously to punish Blair. Editor Raines told Kurtz that he’d put five reporters and three editors to investigate the accuracy of Blair’s previous stories. Still, some like journalist Mickey Kaus question (the second Monday entry) whether affirmative action had something to do with Blair being able to make so many errors and still keep his job (Blair is black.).
For links to all the other articles cited, see “Elsewhere on the Web.”
E-mail Times Watch Director, Clay Waters, with Times Watch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org