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Times Watch for
December 11, 2003
No Good News From Baghdad?
Thursday's story by Edward Wong, "Attacks in Iraq Kill 2 G.I.'s, and a Bank Is Robbed of $800,000" at first reads like another roundup of bad news from Baghdad--until the ninth paragraph. After noting the shooting death of soldier on guard at a Mosul gas station and protests over gas shortages, Wong adds: "In contrast, a heavily policed march in central Baghdad on Wednesday, organized peacefully by the country's major political parties, drew thousands of Iraqis to protest attacks by guerrilla fighters, which have injured and killed Iraqi civilians as well as occupiers." (The Times also run a photo on page A18, titled "Rally Against Terrorism in Iraq." The caption reads in part: "Taking a stand against guerillas, Iraqis stood on columns in Baghdad yesterday during a rally that attracted thousands.")
Given how eager the Times has been to hype anti-war protests on its front page, stuffing the news of a huge anti-terror protest in Baghdad in the ninth paragraph of a Page 19 story looks like bias against good news out of Iraq. Yet sadly, the Times may actually be out in front of the story compared to other national dailies. A cursory inspection of the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe and USA Today find no other mentions (never mind full stories) of Wednesday's anti-terror protests. (Blogger Zeyad has an on-the-scene write-up from Baghdad.)
For the rest of Wong on the news from Iraq, click here.
• Baghdad | Iraq War | Protests | Terrorism | Edward Wong
Everything's Free Under Communism
In Stephen Holden's Wednesday review of "Power Trip," a documentary on the politics of electricity in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, he sees connections between post-Communist infrastructure and energy scandals at home, like Enron. Then there's this economic puzzler, wrapped in a historical oddity: "When Georgia was a constituent of the Soviet Union, electrical power was state controlled and free. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Georgia slid into chaos and civil war, and utility services crumbled. Desperate for electricity, the citizens improvised crude wiring systems to steal power."
A "constituent" of the Soviet Union? That's a strange way to phrase Georgia's relationship with the U.S.S.R. Georgia was invaded by the Red Army in 1921 and was swallowed up by the Soviet Union the following year. Though Josef Stalin was himself a Georgian, he was as ruthless in suppressing dissent there as he was in the other Soviet republics. And of course, nothing is "free" in a Communist society, certainly not the people and not goods and services either--when everything is "free," there's generally nothing worth buying.
For the rest of Holden's review of "Power Trip," click here.
• Communism | Stephen Holden | Movies | Soviet Union
Kyoto Curtailed by White House
Andrew Revkin and Jennifer Lee hash out criticism of the Bush administration for not backing the environmental Kyoto Protocol for Thursday's edition: "The Milan meeting, which ends Friday, is intended to gauge countries' progress under the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change, and to hash out details of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, an amendment to the original pact requiring cuts in gas emissions by industrialized countries. The 1992 treaty calls for voluntary action to avoid 'dangerous' human interference with the climate. President Bush has said he intends to adhere to that treaty, but has rejected the Kyoto pact because it does not apply to China and other developing countries and because he says it could hurt the nation's economy." This is just the latest
Times story not to point out that this White House isn't the first to reject the Kyoto Protocol--the U.S. Senate did so by a 95-0 vote in 1997, while Bill Clinton was in office.
For more on the Bush administration's mauling in Milan, click here.
• Environment | Global Warming | Kyoto | Jennifer Lee | Andrew Revkin
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org