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Times Watch for
May 10, 2004
Abu Ghraib = My Lai?
Arts editor Frank Rich compares the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison to the My Lai massacre of Vietnam in his Sunday column, as if the incidents were equally abhorrent: "It was in November 1969 that a little-known reporter, Seymour Hersh, broke the story of the 1968 massacre at My Lai, the horrific scoop that has now found its match 35 years later in Mr. Hersh's New Yorker revelation of a 53-page Army report detailing 'numerous instances of 'sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses' at Abu Ghraib.' No doubt some future edition of the Pentagon Papers will explain just why we restored Saddam Hussein's hellhole to its original use, torture rooms included, even as we allowed Baghdad's National Library, a repository of Mesopotamia's glorious pre-Baath history, to be looted and burned."
Of course, there are vast differences between My Lai and Abu Ghraib, differences not only of degree but of kind. My Lai involved the massacre of hundreds of civilians, including women and children, not the mistreatment of war prisoners, as at Abu Ghraib. But Rich doesn't let such factual quibbles spoil another chance to compare Iraq to Vietnam.
For the rest of Rich's piece, click here.
• Abu Ghraib | Iraq War | My Lai | Prisoners | Frank Rich | Vietnam
Bush's "Chilling Effect" on Broadcasters
Reporter Jacques Steinberg's "Eye on F.C.C., TV and Radio Watch Words" employs the emotionally fraught term "chilling effect" to describe the atmosphere the Bush administration has allegedly created for broadcasters. Yet Steinberg provides no evidence Bush is actually driving the current crackdown on obscenity by the Federal Communications Commission, which is, after all, just enforcing regulations that have been on the books for years.
He writes for Monday's front page: "This year, the exposure of Janet Jackson's right breast during a Super Bowl halftime show seen by tens of millions of viewers provided something of a gift to a Republican administration seeking to shore up its standing with conservatives, as well as with those who complain that media companies have grown large in recent years while facing little government scrutiny. Two recent rulings by the F.C.C. have had a particularly chilling effect on broadcasters. Last month, the agency proposed levying nearly $500,000 in fines on six radio stations owned by Clear Channel Communications for broadcasting a 20-minute snippet of Howard Stern's program dealing mostly with sexual talk. (Clear Channel has since stopped carrying Mr. Stern's program.)"
As the current content of prime-time television demonstrates, the "chilling effect" is pretty much hot air.
For the rest of Steinberg's piece, click here.
• George W. Bush | FCC | Obscenity | Jacques Steinberg
Abuse in U.S. Prisons "Similar" to Abu Ghraib
Crime reporter Fox Butterfield's "Mistreatment of Prisoners Is Called Routine in U.S." uses the events at the Iraq prison of Abu Ghraib as an excuse to serve up some warmed-over, factually thin gruel of liberal anti-prison anecdotes.
His Saturday story opens: "Physical and sexual abuse of prisoners, similar to what has been uncovered in Iraq, takes place in American prisons with little public knowledge or concern, according to corrections officials, inmates and human rights advocates. In Pennsylvania and some other states, inmates are routinely stripped in front of other inmates before being moved to a new prison or a new unit within their prison."
Then Butterfield brings back this blast from the past: "In Arizona, male inmates at the Maricopa County jail in Phoenix are made to wear women's pink underwear as a form of humiliation." (County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his unorthodox methods have been around since 1993.)
Butterfield quotes a prison consultant who makes general complaints about prison violence, then shifts to his bete noire, prison overcrowding: "But Chase Riveland, a former secretary of corrections in Washington State and Colorado and now a prison consultant based near Seattle, said, 'In some jurisdictions in the United States there is a prison culture that tolerates violence, and it's been there a long time.' This culture has been made worse by the quadrupling of the number of prison and jail inmates to 2.1 million over the last 25 years, which has often resulted in crowding, he said. The problems have been compounded by the need to hire large numbers of inexperienced and often undertrained guards, Mr. Riveland said."
Butterfield is obsessed with crowded prisons: He once famously pondered why prisons kept on filling despite falling crime rates, ignoring the connection between having more criminals in prison and a drop in crime.
For the rest of Butterfield's story, click here.
• Fox Butterfield | Crime | Iraq War | Prisoners
Rumsfeld in the Balance
Elisabeth Bumiller's front-page Saturday story, "In the Balance: Rumsfeld's Job," sets the gallows up for the Defense Secretary by noting a tough question from a Republican senator during Rumsfeld's testimony on Capitol Hill. Bumiller writes: "[Senator Lindsey] Graham had asked Mr. Rumsfeld a pivotal question: Could the greatly diminished prosecutor of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still have the power to carry out his duties? Did he have the ability, in Mr. Graham's words, to come to Capitol Hill and carry the message and carry the water for the Pentagon?"
Actually, that "greatly diminished" part doesn't emanate from Graham at all--it's either a wishful assumption by Bumiller or a failed attempt to read between the lines of what Graham actually asked the Secretary of Defense, which was this:
"And, Secretary Rumsfeld, people are calling for your resignation. Somebody is drafting an article of impeachment against you right now. I've got my own view about people who want to call for your resignation before you speak, but I'll leave that to myself. Do you have the ability, in your opinion, to come to Capitol Hill and carry the message and carry the water for the Department of Defense? Do you believe, based on all things that have happened and that will happen, that you're able to carry out your duties in a bipartisan manner? And what do you say to those people who are calling for your resignation?"
For the rest of Bumiller on Rumsfeld, click here.
• Elisabeth Bumiller | Iraq War | Prisoners | Donald Rumsfeld
More Conservative Conservatives
Religion reporter Laurie Goodstein's "Methodists Vote Overwhelmingly Against Call to Split the Church," is fairly unobjectionable but provides an amusing example of the Times' obsession with calling out "conservatives" wherever it sees them. Her Saturday story includes seven uses of the term as a descriptive phrase within nine sentences--all within the first 220 words of the story on the church's stand on homosexuality.
Here's a sample: "Dr. Hinson, who had issued the call for an 'amicable separation,' received a standing ovation at a jubilant breakfast meeting for several hundred conservatives. Scott Field, legislative coordinator for a coalition of conservative Methodists, said the proposal had generated scores of congratulatory e-mail messages and phone calls from around the world. Then nine conservative leaders who have agreed to spend the next few years meeting with disaffected Methodist congregations and pastors were called to the podium and given a blessing with a traditional laying on of hands."
In case you missed it, conservatives are involved in the debate.
For the rest of Goodstein's story, click here.
• Gays | Labeling Bias | Laurie Goodstein | Religion
Bush's Tax Cuts Killing Social Programs?
Monday's lead editorial, "Killing Off Housing for the Poor," implausibly blames Bush's tax cuts for killing social programs: "The Bush administration's tax cuts for the well-to-do have taken a heavy toll on the nation's most important social programs for the poor and working class. Prominent casualties include child care assistance for working mothers and federal aid for needy college students. The latest victim appears to be Section 8, the government's main housing program for the poor."
Left unmentioned is that the Department of Housing and Urban Development receives a 2.8 percent spending increase in Bush's proposed budget for fiscal year 2005--showing that social programs are hardly being starved to pay for tax cuts.
For the rest of the editorial, click here.
• George W. Bush | Editorial | Housing | Tax Cuts
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org