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Times Watch for
December 12, 2003
"Conservative Catholic Complicity with Nazism"
Stephen Holden reviews "The Statement," a thriller inspired by the life of a Vichy police officer who ordered the execution of Jewish hostages, for Friday's movie section. His appraisal of Michael Caine's latest starring role includes this bit of anti-Catholicism: "Instead of seriously addressing the issue of the conservative Catholic complicity with Nazism (the Roman Catholic Church viewed Communism as a much greater threat than Hitler), the screenplay is content to skirt any serious controversy by reducing the drama to a prolonged, largely suspense-free manhunt, in which [the main character] scurries like a weary hunted animal from one monastery to the next as the net closes around him." (For a comprehensive alternative view of how the Catholic Church actually battled Nazism, see Ronald J. Rychlak's article, "Goldhagen v. Pius XII," in the Catholic magazine First Things.)
For the rest of Holden's review, click here.
• Catholicism | Stephen Holden | Movies | Nazis | Religion | World War II
Halliburton's Front-Page Non-Scandal
Friday front-page story by Douglas Jehl, "U.S. Sees Evidence Of Overcharging In Iraq Contract," begins breathlessly with hints of Halliburton-enriching scandal: "A Pentagon investigation has found evidence that a subsidiary of the politically connected Halliburton Company overcharged the government by as much as $61 million for fuel delivered to Iraq under huge no-bid reconstruction contracts, senior military officials said Thursday."
By the third paragraph, Jehl duly reminds readers of the old Halliburton-Dick Cheney connection: "The problems involving Halliburton, where Vice President Dick Cheney was chief executive, were described in a preliminary report by auditors, the officials said. The Pentagon contracts were awarded without competitive bidding and have a potential value of $15.6 billion; recent estimates by the Army have put the current value of the Halliburton contracts at about $5 billion."
Not until the ninth paragraph do we get this deflating sentence: "The officials said Halliburton did not appear to have profited from overcharging for fuel, but had instead paid a subcontractor too much for the gasoline in the first place."
Slate's Eric Umansky makes the point in his column "Today's Papers": "In a point that the NYT, inexcusably, doesn't make until the ninth paragraph (after the jump), the paper acknowledges that Halliburton doesn't appear to have profited from the overcharging."
(The Washington Post's account provides some perspective: "Halliburton isn't being accused of wrongdoing, and the government isn't yet seeking reimbursement this is the first instance the Pentagon has said it believes that major contracts for the war in Iraq and its reconstruction have been mishandled.")
For the rest of Jehl's story on the Pentagon audit, click here.
• Dick Cheney | Halliburton | Iraq War | Douglas Jehl
Krugman's Latest Conspiracy Refuted--by the
Times
Columnist Paul Krugman's Friday entry, "A Deliberate Debacle," goes conspiratorial
(no surprise there, considering the source) about the White House's decision to exclude countries who opposed the Iraq war from the rebuilding process: "I think the administration's hard-liners are deliberately sabotaging reconciliation. Surely this wasn't just about reserving contracts for administration cronies. Yes, Halliburton is profiteering in Iraq--will apologists finally concede the point, now that a Pentagon audit finds overcharging?"
That's a reference to the subject of the Times lead story by Douglas Jehl--but it doesn't match Krugman claims. In fact, Jehl's story says rather the opposite: "The officials said Halliburton did not appear to have profited from overcharging for fuel, but had instead paid a subcontractor too much for the gasoline in the first place." So there's nothing for "apologists" to concede yet, judging by the Times own news pages.
Undaunted, Krugman gets to a familiar-sounding stopping point: "In the end the Bush doctrine--based on delusions of grandeur about America's ability to dominate the world through force--will collapse. What we've just learned is how hard and dirty the doctrine's proponents will fight against the inevitable."
For the rest of Krugman's latest conspiracy theory, click here.
• Columnists | Halliburton | Iraq War | Paul Krugman
Callers Grill
Times on Baghdad Protest Blackout
C-SPAN's Washington Journal program aired live Friday morning from the Washington bureau of the New York Times, with five of the bureau's reporters and editors taking calls. Two callers wanted to know why the Times (along with all the other major dailies) had failed to cover Wednesday's anti-terrorist demonstration in Baghdad--a question
Times Watch and others have asked as well.
Addressing Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman, a caller from Illinois asked "if he was aware that there was a pro-coalition demonstration in Baghdad two days ago. Being that it didn't get reported in his newspaper." (Editors note: The Times did mention the rally Thursday in the ninth paragraph of an unrelated page 19 story, as well as in the caption of a photo on page 18.)
Taubman's reply: "I was not aware of that, but that's something that you really should take up with the correspondents who work for the Times in Baghdad. I don't know what their decision-making was that day. But I can assure you that we make every effort every day to try to be fair and balanced in our coverage. And I know that there are accusations that somehow the Times has opposed the war in its news coverage. I don't think that's a fair statement. We have tried to be exceedingly careful in giving all sides, all points of view ample coverage in the newspaper."
Later in the show, Times chief diplomatic correspondent Steven Weisman had a caller from Virginia who noted: "I saw in a European paper, in a Spanish paper, where the day before yesterday, there was a manifestation in the streets of Baghdad of about 15,000 people, they calculated, in favor of the current government, the councilors there, and against Saddam Hussein and calling for the trials of Saddam Hussein. And there was nothing that I saw in the Post or any of the American papers about that manifestation. But I can't imagine that a manifestation against the United States and against the current efforts of the United States in Baghdad of 15,000 people would have gone unreported in American papers."
Weisman admitted the media does have a problem covering positive developments in Iraq: "That's a very thoughtful question. And it gets to a dilemma for the news media, which does tend to focus on problems and conflicts rather than where things are going right. And sometimes we're rightly criticized for that. But in defense of that, you know, I don't think that we can run stories saying, and with respect--I know this is an exaggeration--but we don't run stories saying, you know, '100,000 GIs were not killed yesterday.' I mean, the nature of news is to report on what's going wrong."
Weisman then noted things are returning to normal in much of Iraq. As for the anti-terror demonstration? Weisman apparently hadn't heard about it, either: "I'm not sure that I know about that specific episode, that demonstration that you just referred to. But I would say that we, the readers of the Times ought to be aware that many things are going well in Iraq, but the fact that the security situation is not going well is not something that we can ignore."
• C-SPAN | Iraq War | Protests | Philip Taubman | Steven Weisman
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org