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Times Watch for November 11, 2004

Arafat Dies, But At Least the Mrs. Lives Modestly

     The Times topped the front page with the death of Yasir Arafat, “the symbol of the Palestinian revolution and aspiration for an independent state for some 40 years.” While Steven Erlanger’s story on the front page contained the mourning of Palestinian official Tayeb Adbel Rahim that “the Palestinian people mourn their leader, their teacher, their father,” you have to turn to page A-10 to recall “The Israelis regarded him as a terrorist and an obstacle to peace.”

     The more interesting Erlanger report in Thursday’s Times came on A-10, exploring the whereabouts of Arafat’s “hidden fortune.” Erlanger noted the PLO boss “personally controlled several billion dollars, and no one else knew where it all was,” and the struggle over the Arafat booty was “giving the final days of this revolutionary figure the elements of a Victorian novel.”

     But Erlanger’s willingness to explore Arafat’s corruption came with excuses and flattery: “Mr. Arafat, abstemious, spent very little money on himself, living like a soldier with a narrow bed and a few uniforms in his closet. But the pattern of his revolutionary days in exile -- financing the Palestine Liberation Organization through secret contributions, the black market and extortion, and being ready to run at a moment's notice -- persisted most obviously in his refusal to trust others and his desire to keep large amounts of cash available in case of emergency.”

     The story didn’t get comically defensive until the next paragraph: “There has been much speculation about how much money went to support the lavish living of his wife, Suha, in Paris, with reports from her enemies in the Palestinian Authority of subsidies of some $100,000 a month,” Erlanger reported. That’s 1.2 million dollars a year! Erlanger downplayed it: “But the sums were relatively small compared with Mr. Arafat's total holdings.”

For the Erlanger big-picture story on Arafat’s death, click here.

For the Erlanger story on Arafat’s financial finaglings, click here.

• Steven Erlanger | Yasir Arafat

No Lingering “Glow” Once the “Civil Rights Groups”
Start Hammering

     Liberals and conservatives alike have concerns about the nomination of White House counsel Alberto Gonzales to replace John Ashcroft as Attorney General. But the Times, with just one exception, described liberal politicians and activists without a label. In the front-page story by David Sanger and Eric Lichtblau, People for the American Way was identified as a “liberal group,” but Sen. Ted Kennedy was merely “a leading Democrat on law enforcement and judicial issues,” and Senators Joe Biden and Charles Schumer were merely Democrats from Delaware and New York. Anthony Romero of the American Civil Liberties Union also drew no label.

     Sanger and Lichtblau described the ACLU and other left-wing critics this way: “Many civil rights groups on Wednesday were quick to attack Mr. Gonzales for what they saw as legal policies and opinions that opened the door to the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.” But conservatives were accurately labeled without euphemism: “some conservatives regard Mr. Gonzales as too moderate on the question of abortion and not sufficiently hardline in opposing affirmative action.”

     In a Gonzales profile titled “Riding an Ideological Divide,” reporters David Johnston and Richard W. Stevenson followed a similar formula: “He is viewed with some suspicion by Democrats…And he is seen as unreliable by many conservatives, who say he has not been sufficiently hard line on the issue of most concern to them, including abortion and affirmative action.” In the Johnston-Stevenson story, the word “conservative” is used five times, while the word “liberal” does not appear. Senator Patrick Leahy is “the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, while Gary Bauer is “president of American Values, a conservative group.”

     The Times reporters promise: “But the glow over the appointment of the first Hispanic to be the country’s chief legal office is not likely to linger once Mr. Gonzales’s nomination goes to the Senate.”

For the full Sanger-Lichtblau story, click here.

For the full Johnston-Stevenson profile, click here.

• Labeling Bias | Alberto Gonzales | Eric Lichtblau | David Johnston | David Sanger | Richard Stevenson

The “Moderate” Man from “Conservative” Industry

     Now that he’s landed one of the most glamorous, highest-paying lobbyist jobs in Washington, as president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), Dan Glickman, is going to have to get used to the entertainment press. It’s too bad the entertainment press isn’t very sharp on Dan Glickman.

     Times reporter Sharon Waxman had some interesting ideas about how to use the word “conservative” in relation to Glickman’s career as a Democratic member of the House of Representatives from 1977 to 1995. She reported “he says he is used to building consensus, both from his years representing a heartland state in Congress and from serving a heavily conservative industry as a cabinet secretary.”

     Can America’s agricultural sector be considered “a heavily conservative industry.” It might be rural, and so in the urban-liberal reporter’s shorthand, that means traditional, culturally conservative – “redneck,” to use Waxman’s lingo. But many farmers, including Kansas wheat farmers, are used to a heavy dose of Washington subsidies and regulations – it’s not an industry you’d consider economically conservative, no free-market fiefdom. But to Waxman, if you loved “Hee Haw,” you’re a conservative.

     Later, Waxman added, Glickman “served in Congress for 18 years, racking up a record as moderate, if not a conservative, representative of his largely agricultural state. After losing the 1994 election to a Republican who attacked his stance on gun control and associated him with Mr. Clinton, Mr. Glickman was named agriculture secretary by the president.” But a look at Glickman’s voting ratings with the American Conservative Union show he often failed to crack the 20-percent barrier of voting for the conservative position each year on major votes. That might place him to the right of most Democrats, but it doesn’t make him much of a “moderate” in the broader scheme of things.

For the full Waxman story, click here.

• Dan Glickman | Sharon Waxman

E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org