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Times Watch for
November 15, 2004
Chris Hedges Blows in Again, Predicting a Draft
He's back: Anti-war reporter Chris Hedges told a Manhattanville College audience on November 4: "We are losing the war in Iraq very badly, but the Bush administration will not walk away from the debacle without trying to reoccupy huge swaths of the territory they have lost."
Journal News reporter Susan Elan notes in her November 5 story: "To regain territory lost in Iraq, it will take double or triple the current 140,000 troops, Hedges said during the last lecture in a series called 'The Costs of War.' The reservists and National Guard members who make up half of the U.S. forces are stretched to the breaking point and need relief, he said, and the draft is the only way to assemble the numbers needed. Reintroduction of the draft will be made in the name of the war on terrorism soon after an attack in the United States or abroad, he predicted."
This isn't the first controversial anti-war statement Hedges has made to a college audience, though the one in New York State apparently went better than last year's commencement address in Rockford, Ill., in which Hedges' microphone was unplugged midway through a rant in which the war correspondent claimed, among other things: "We are part now of a dubious troika in the war against terror with Vladimir Putin and Ariel Sharon, two leaders who do not shrink in Palestine or Chechnya from carrying out acts of gratuitous and senseless violence."
• Draft | Gaffes | Chris Hedges | Iraq War
"Investigative Pieces….By Nature, Carry a Point of View"
Ombudsman Daniel Okrent makes the case against objectivity in his latest column, "It's Good to Be Objective. It's Even Better to Be Right."
He notes: "In recent years, though, the concept of objectivity has taken a bit of a beating. Some journalists (and critics of journalists) argue that it is in fact unachievable; we all bring our experiences, sensibilities and innate prejudices to the door, and even the act of attempting to leave them on the stoop will alter our approach. Besides, you can't police objectivity simply by scouring an article for evidences of bias, imbalance or other taints. Try starting with the headline writer, who is inherently constrained by space yet charged with distilling essences from what is often an extremely complex stew -- a necessarily reductive act that can't help but deform nuances. Then there's the editor who determines placement: 'Ex-C.I.A. Chief Nets $500,000 on Talk Circuit' would have been interesting on A26 last Thursday; on A1, it carried a suggestion of scandal."
Okrent demonstrates how human nature comes into play in making editorial decisions, and notes how most investigative pieces evolve, not from an objective look at the news, but instead boil up from a reporter or editor with a passionate point of view (though Okrent says nothing about how the liberal leanings of reporters could skew that investigative reporting to the left): "And before an article finds its way into the paper -- sometimes long before -- the decision to assign it is itself influenced by personal predisposition. 'In Health Care, Gap Between Rich and Poor Persists, W.H.O. Says,' also in Thursday's paper, was a discretionary choice. It made it into print on one desk editor's watch, but could have been just as plausibly ignored had someone else, with even a slightly different worldview, been sitting in the same chair that day. As for major investigative pieces, they generally start not because they are propelled by a piece of news but because a reporter or an editor determines -- often out of white-hot passion -- that 'This is important. This is something we must do.' Most investigations, by nature, carry a point a view."
For the full Okrent column, click here.
• Media Bias | Objectivity | Daniel Okrent
Zeller Tamps Down Fuzzy Vote-Fraud Allegations
Reporter Tom Zeller engages in some debunking of left-wing Internet conspiracies alleging anti-Kerry vote fraud in "Vote Fraud Theories, Spread by Blogs, Are Quickly Buried."
He goes through the accusations: "The e-mail messages and Web postings had all the twitchy cloak-and-dagger thrust of a Hollywood blockbuster. 'Evidence mounts that the vote may have been hacked,' trumpeted a headline on the Web site CommonDreams.org. 'Fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines,' declared BlackBoxVoting.org. In the space of seven days, an online market of dark ideas surrounding last week's presidential election took root and multiplied. But while the widely read universe of Web logs was often blamed for the swift propagation of faulty analyses, the blogosphere, as it has come to be known, spread the rumors so fast that experts were soon able to debunk them, rather than allowing them to linger and feed conspiracy theories. Within days of the first rumors of a stolen election, in fact, the most popular theories were being proved wrong -- though many were still reluctant to let them go."
Near the end, Zeller states: "A preliminary study produced by the Voting Technology Project, a cooperative effort between the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, came to a similar conclusion. Its study found 'no particular patterns' relating to voting systems and the final results of the election. 'The 'facts' that are being circulated on the Internet,' the study concluded, 'appear to be selectively chosen to make the point.' Whether that will ever convince everyone is an open question."
For the rest of Zeller's debunking, click here.
• Blogs | Campaign 2004 | Sen. John Kerry | Tom Zeller
U.S. "Naïve," But "Great at Taking Things Apart"
Baghdad-based reporter Edward Wong contributes another bleak assessment of the war in Iraq, "Breaking a City in Order to Fix It." (A conscious echo of the notorious Vietnam-era saying, "We had to destroy the village in order to save it"?)
Wong, whose grim assessments from Iraq are preoccupied with doubting whether "legitimate" elections can be held there, writes Sunday on the battle for Falluja: "As in a fevered dream, that and other scenes of destruction played out last week in Falluja before the eyes of American troops, residents and reporters. By early Saturday, marines and soldiers had swept through most of the city and cornered insurgents in the south, leaving behind shelled buildings, bullet-riddled cars and rotting corpses. It proved one thing: That the Americans are great at taking things apart. What comes after the battlefield victory has always been the real problem for them during their 19 months in Iraq."
Later Wong wonders if the U.S. isn't being "naïve" in its vision for Iraq: "It is the last aim -- persuading the Sunnis to act as a loyal minority in a democracy -- that may be the most improbable goal of the retaking of Falluja by storm. American officials say that if it can be done, Falluja, which has assumed mythic status across the Arab world for its resistance, could then serve as a model for the rest of Iraq, and Iraq as a model for the rest of the Middle East. But given the track record of the Americans and their allies, military analysts say, the immediate goals in Falluja seem naïve, if not utterly inconsequential given the surging resistance across the Sunni-dominated regions of Iraq, almost certainly organized by the very leaders who fled Falluja before the offensive."
Wong follows up Monday with a story co-bylined with Eric Schmitt under the loaded headline "Raids in the Mosul Region Undermine Values of Victories." They summarize: "The attacks in northern Iraq underscore a growing problem for American forces -- namely, that battlefield victories can be quickly undermined after the Americans leave and weaker Iraqi security forces are left to hold the area."
For Wong from Sunday, click here.
For Wong on Monday, click here.
• Falluja | Iraq War | Edward Wong
Democratic "Embrace" of Civil Rights Cost Party the South
Republicans vs. civil rights? Robin Toner's front-page story Monday on the decline of the Southern Democrat ("Southern Democrats' Decline Is Eroding the Political Center") fingers the civil rights movement for costing the party its footing in the once Solid South: "This moment has been a long time coming. Ever since the national Democratic Party fully embraced the cause of civil rights 40 years ago, shattering its hold on the so-called solid South, Republicans have been making steady inroads among culturally conservative white voters in the region. But the acceleration of this trend is important for the next Congress: some of these Southern Democrats, along with Northeastern Republicans, were among the last remaining lawmakers in the political center of an increasingly polarized House and Senate."
Only later in the piece does Toner quote Republicans who suggest the party's current hold on the South has more to do with "a strong message of patriotism, individual freedom, lower taxes and moral values" than it does opposition to civil rights.
For the rest of Toner's analysis, click here.
• Campaign 2004 | Civil Rights | Democrats | Robin Toner
This Review Rated G for "Gosh, Where'd That Come From?"
From film critic Manohla Dargis' Wednesday review of "The Polar Express," an animated film starring Tom Hanks: "Tots surely won't recognize that Santa's big entrance in front of the throngs of frenzied elves and awe-struck children directly evokes, however unconsciously, one of Hitler's Nuremberg rally entrances in Leni Riefenstahl's 'Triumph of the Will.' But their parents may marvel that when Santa's big red sack of toys is hoisted from factory floor to sleigh it resembles nothing so much as an airborne scrotum."
For the rest of Dargis' review, click here.
• Arts | Manohla Dargis | Gaffes | Movies
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org