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Times Watch for 05/09/03
Raines: Diversity “More Important” Than Better Journalism
Looks like Mickey Kaus and Howard Kurtz were right about affirmative action being involved in the storm over plagiarizing Times reporter Jayson Blair.
Melissa Block, a host of the National Public Radio program “All Things Considered,” interviewed Times executive editor Howell Raines on the Blair fiasco--and challenged Raines with a rather incriminating blast from Raines’ past:
“Mr. Raines, you spoke to a convention of the National Association of Black Journalists in 2001, and you specifically mentioned Jayson Blair as an example of the Times spotting and hiring the best and brightest reporters on their way up. You said, 'This campaign has made our staff better and, more importantly, more diverse.' And I wonder now, looking back, if you see this as something of a cautionary tale, that maybe Jayson Blair was given less scrutiny or more of a pass on the corrections to his stories that you had to print because the paper had an interest in cultivating a young, black reporter.”
Raines’ defensive reply: “No, I do not see it as illustrating that point. I see it as illustrating a tragedy for Jayson Blair, that here was a person who under the conditions in which other journalists perform adequately decided to fabricate information and mislead colleagues. And it is--you know, I don't want to demonize Jayson, but this is a tragedy of failure on his part.”
It sounds like a failure of nerve on the part of Raines. And as for his proud admission to the NABJ that increasing racial diversity was more important to him than increasing the quality of his paper’s journalism—that’s just pathetic.
The Times finally finds a group of Iraqi bad guys it can sink its teeth into: Greedy landlords. Edmund Andrews’ front-page story follows a newlywed couple who are settling in at Saddam Hussein’s former Ministry of Defense: “This is real estate in postwar Baghdad, a place essentially without government or police force or enforceable laws. It is also a city that is violently readjusting to the end of an autocracy that distorted market forces in almost every aspect of daily life.”
It’s nice for the Times to come out in favor of market forces, but surely it realizes Iraq wasn’t exactly idyllic back when it had “enforceable laws” under Saddam Hussein.
“Nothing epitomizes the wrenching upheaval more than the scramble for housing,” Andrews continues. “Freed of virtually all government regulations, landlords are summarily evicting Palestinian refugees who were given apartments almost rent-free by the Hussein government….In the might-makes-right anarchy of today's Baghdad, thousands of people have been uprooted from their homes while thousands of others are squatting in newly abandoned buildings.”
Hussein’s government, of course, practiced “might-makes-right” totalitarianism instead, and had its own views on subsidized housing.
For the rest of Edmund Andrews’ story on housing in Iraq, click here:
Nicholas Kristof’s column “No Time To Get Squeamish,” on the opposition of social conservatives to some methods of the fight against AIDS, claims “most AIDS scientists are terrified these days” of “witch hunts by neo-Puritans in and out of the Bush administration.”
At one point Kristof stumbles onto the obvious: “Most Americans are unlikely to regard tax dollars as well spent when used to finance gay sex workshops.” But then he follows up with a burst of self-satisfaction aimed against those reactionary prudes of the right: “The bottom line, though, is that Mr. Bush must make it clear that he is on the side of scientists, not the witch burners. He can't stay on the fence. Too many Americans have already died of AIDS to allow promising fields of research to wither because some Americans get the willies when they see terms like ‘anal sex.’”
Liberals like Kristof can brag about not blushing at sex talk, but they do get squeamish when college girls sidle up to the Second Amendment, as Kristof did in March 2002: “The women at Mount Holyoke, who have formed the first collegiate chapter of Second Amendment Sisters, a national women's pro-gun group, reflect the times. Alas, one of the most far-reaching consequences of 9/11 is a surge in gun sales around the country. So while we don't know whether more Americans will be killed by anthrax, we can be quite confident that plenty of us will be killed by these additional handguns.”
For the rest of Nicholas Kristof’s column on AIDS, click here:
For the rest of Nicholas Kristof’s column, “Chicks With Guns,” click here. ($ required):
Greg Myre describes a Palestinian terrorist who blew himself up trying to kill Jews as just another victim of “scattered violence” and “bloodshed.”
Myre writes: “Israeli attack helicopters fired missiles that killed a senior Hamas militant driving in Gaza City today. Three more Palestinians were killed in scattered violence, including one who blew himself up with a car bomb next to an Israeli tank in southern Gaza. The bloodshed pointed to the challenges facing Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who is scheduled to arrive Saturday for talks on putting the latest Middle East peace plan, called the road map, into effect. The plan says Palestinians must halt attacks, and Israel is required to withdraw troops from Palestinian areas, but the fighting has not subsided since it was introduced last week.”
Myre’s “were killed” formulation makes it sound as if the suicide bomber was a victim of an Israeli attack. Also, when a terrorist manages to kill no one but himself, it can’t really be described as “bloodshed”—more like a perfect outcome.
For the rest of Greg Myre’s article on Israel, click here:
E-mail Times Watch Director, Clay Waters, with Times Watch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org