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Times Watch for
April 1, 2004
No "Ferocity" From the Franken-phile Left?
Alessandra Stanley's review of Al Franken's first day as a host on the liberal radio "network" (actually just five stations on which it has purchased programming time) Air America carries the headline "Talk Network Makes Debut, With Rage a No-Show." Stanley actually thinks AA's first day was too mild, failing to match the unreasoned "rage" of "most successful political talk shows" (read: conservative ones).
Yet quotes from Air America itself rather undermine Stanley's fear the network will lack ferocity. Here's one from Franken not cited by Stanley: "We know that [Republicans] are lying--lying without shame, lying with impunity, safe in the knowledge that there is no watchdog with a platform large enough to call them on their willful untruths. I will have to do."
Still, Stanley writes: "The tone of Air America was supposed to be as bold and belligerent as Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, an unapologetically liberal riposte to the conservative radio talk shows that dominate the airwaves. Air America may yet grow as a radio network, but the first day mostly highlighted the difficulty of trying to match the fervor and ferocity of right-wing radio. Satire and sarcasm come more easily than rage to Mr. Franken, a former 'Saturday Night Live' performer and writer. And rage--unbound by reason or reticence--is what fuels the most successful political talk shows….most of Mr. Franken's ire was directed at conservative commentators, including Mr. Limbaugh and his drug problems and the outrageous statements of Ms. Coulter, whom Mr. Franken described as a 'walking horror show.'"
If Stanley had listened to the other show hosts, she'd have heard plenty of "ferocity." Listening to fellow Air America host Randi Rhodes, Howard Kurtz notes: "Seeming to embody liberal anger, Rhodes launched into an extraordinary diatribe about why the president continued to speak to a second-grade class after two planes hit the World Trade Center, and said he then flew to Nebraska because he was 'scared . . . Republicans have been drinking this Kool-Aid for a really stinking long time.'"
Kurtz noted host Janeane Garofalo railed against: "closet-bigot, homophobe, misogynist people who masquerade as Republicans" on her evening show, while her sidekick, actor Sam Seder, called the Fox News Channel "Special Report" team (half-jokingly, according to Kurtz) as: "extreme right, far extreme right and very, very far extreme fascist right."
For the rest of Stanley's review of Air America's debut, click here.
• Air America | Al Franken | Alessandra Stanley | Talk Radio
Two Standards on Tasteless Photos
The Times, along with much of the rest of the mainstream media, hit Bush for running campaign ads showing brief clips of the 9-11 aftermath. But Thursday's front page proves the Times has no compunction against displaying on its front page far more grisly photos--in this case, the burned bodies of American civilians hanging from a bridge after an attack in
Falluja, Iraq.
An inside story by Bill Carter and Jacques Steinberg, "To Portray the Horror, News Media Agonize," mulls the issue: "As photographs and videotaped images of the attack on four private security workers in Falluja arrived at news organizations yesterday, editors and producers faced an immediate challenge: how to show what happened without offending viewers and readers?"
They get a comment from Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, who defends the use and front-page placement of the gruesome AP photo: "'On the one hand, you can't shy away from the news, and the news in this case is the indignities visited upon the victims and the jubilation of the crowd,' said Bill Keller, the executive editor. 'At the same time you have to be mindful of the pain these pictures would cause to families and the potential revulsion of readers, and children, who are exposed to this over their breakfast table.'"
For the rest of Carter and Steinberg on the media's use of grisly images, click here.
For the Times article that links to the photo, click here.
• Iraq War | Bill Keller | Photos
Clarke's Candor vs. Condi's Contradictions
The Times has yet
to compare Clarke's 2002 pro-Bush comments with his anti-Bush allegations of 2004, but on Thursday it finds Rice guilty of an apparent "contradiction."
Philip Shenon and Douglas Jehl's "Sept. 11 Panel Scrutinizing Past Testimony" claims that Eleanor Hill, former staff director for an earlier bipartisan joint congressional inquiry on 9-11, has "cited passages in the joint investigation's final report that appeared to back up Mr. Clarke's contentions, especially this finding: 'It appears that significant slippage in counterterrorism policy may have taken place in late 2000 and early 2001. At least part of that was due to the unresolved status of Mr. Clarke as national coordinator for counterterrorism and his uncertain mandate to coordinate Bush administration policy on terrorism and especially on bin Laden.' That passage of the report would seem to contradict Ms. Rice, who has insisted that the Bush administration considered terrorism a high priority throughout 2001 and that the White House had gone on 'battle stations' to deal with dire warnings from intelligence agencies about an imminent, possibly catastrophic attack by Al Qaeda."
Again, the Times focuses on "Clarke vs. Rice" when it could easily focus on "Clarke 2002 vs. Clarke 2004."
For more on Rice's "contradiction," click here.
• Richard Clarke | Condoleezza Rice | Terrorism
New Deaths a Turning Point In Iraq Opinion?
Monica Davey's Thursday story on the brutal killings of four Americans working for a security company in Iraq reminds readers of the Mogadishu tragedy, and wonders if the Iraq death toll is becoming too much for Americans to bear: "But as the number of American troops killed in Iraq now approaches 600, including 5 Army soldiers who were killed by a bomb on Wednesday, and as the particularly gruesome manner of death and mutilation of the four American civilians played out on televisions around the country on Wednesday, some said the number of casualties had passed painfully out of control."
Images the Times featured on its front page, by the way.
For the rest of Davey on Iraq, click here.
• Monica Davey | Iraq War
Pro-Palestinian Movie Leaves Reviewer "Infuriated"
Stephen Holden reviews "Checkpoint," an Israeli documentary focusing on the plight of Palestinians that leaves him "infuriated and mystified" at Israeli actions.
He writes: "Its main message is pounded home: Subjecting mostly innocent Palestinian travelers to humiliating inspections that can halt traffic for hours on end is no way to ease the tensions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
The key word there is "mostly." And, if one balances the inconvenience to Palestinians against the reality of deadly suicide bombings against Israelis, are Israel's actions really that unreasonable?
Holden concludes: "The viewer is left to suppose that, beyond foiling terrorists, it's all just a plot to humiliate and demoralize the Palestinians and discourage them from traveling altogether. If that's the case, it will never work."
As if foiling terrorists should be a secondary consideration for Israel?
For the rest of Holden's review, click here.
• Stephen Holden | Israel | Movies | Palestinians | Terrorism
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org