October 22, 2007
Matt Drudge Rocks
There have been reasons for blasting Matt Drudge, but one has to hand it to him. More than a decade ago, his Drudge Report brilliantly pointed the way to the vitality of the Internet as a news medium. And personally, he stood tall against his critics -- largely in the mainstream news media who found his early years a threat to their pipeline of distributing news and among liberals who didn't like his sometimes erroneous meddling or huge impact in bringing President Clinton's affair with a White House intern to the forefront.
So congratulations to Drudge for receiving page-one coverage in the New York Times about his abilities to set the news agenda in the presidential coverage. The glowing story says:
The site is a potent combination of real scoops, gossip and innuendo aimed at Mr. Drudge's targets of choice -- some of it delivered with no apparent effort to determine its truth, as politicians of all stripes have discovered at times.Aides in both parties acknowledge working harder than ever to get favorable coverage for their candidates -- or unfavorable coverage of competitors -- onto the Drudge Report's home page, knowing that television producers, radio talk show hosts and newspaper reporters view it as a bulletin board for the latest news and gossip.
Here's the story: Clinton Finds Way to Play Along With Drudge
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October 05, 2007
It Ain't Like the Clinton Years: Fawning over Chris Matthews
Friday's DC edition of the Examiner opens with what sounds like an explosive lead:
Chris Matthews had barely finished praising his colleagues at the 10th anniversary party for his "Hardball" show Thursday night in Washington, D.C. when his remarks turned political and pointed, even suggesting that the Bush administration had "finally been caught in their criminality."
The Clinton camp, he said, never put pressure on his bosses to silence him.
"Not so this crowd" he added, explaining that Bush White House officials -- especially those from Vice President Cheney's office -- called MSNBC brass to complain about the content of his show and attempted to influence its editorial content. "They will not silence me!" Matthews declared.
These are the words of the guy who made his TV career in 1997 on redfaced blabber fests over Bill Clinton's affair with White House intern Monica Lewisky -- an event that inspired the Republican-controlled Congress to impeach the president .
GOOGLE COUNT:
"Chris Matthews" and "Monica Lewinsky": 63,900.
"Chris Matthews" and "Yellowcake": 16,100.
Hmmmm.... Is that White House pressure is working?
Of course not. Sex sells -- especially when you can ride the ratings all the way to impeachment.
ADDED NOTE: A Google foray just popped this up from the leftist Think Progress: Matthews Obsessed With Clinton Sex Speculation.
Of course, I am being flip, but it is telling that the most covered story of the Clinton administration was a blowjob. It was all the news media could do in what was likely the most affluent period in human history.
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September 17, 2007
Who is Alexis Debat?
Former ABC News terrorism consultant gets roughed up by his former boss and others for allegedly faking interviews under his byline:
Former President Bill Clinton, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan have added their names to the list of people who say they were the subjects of fake interviews published in a French foreign affairs journal under the name of Alexis Debat, a former ABC News consultant. ABC News
Debat was a consultant on terrorism for ABC News for five years until this June, when ABC News officials demanded his resignation after he failed to satisfy questions raised about his academic credentials.
I recall pitching a story to Debat once. He said he had it great at ABC and was once handed $20,000 in cash to travel in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
ABC hired Mr. Debat as a consultant in November 2001. Mr. Debat said: “I was on the ABC payroll. They sent me to Pakistan.” He called himself a consultant who also reported information for the network. He said he even occasionally shot video that the network used.
He also told me he was a former high-level official with the French Ministry of Defense, something that that French officials are not discrediting via The New York Times:
And the French Ministry of Defense tried to debunk his claims to have been an official or adviser in the ministry, saying he was little more than an intern.... Mr. Debat said the French government was out to discredit him because he had appeared on television identified as a former Defense Ministry official.Rue89 runs through the allegations of dirty laundry in How Alexis Debat managed to cheat everyone in Washington.
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June 25, 2007
Private Security Companies in the News Media
Researchers with the Project for Excellence in Journalism tackle news coverage over the past four years of private security companies and they suggests that it is very much on the slim side:
Coverage of events inside Iraq, which includes the actions of U.S. troops there, was the third=biggest news story in the American media for the first quarter of 2007, according to PEJ research.... But those numbers do not include some 30,000 employees of U.S. and European-based Private Security Companies (PSCs), who work in some of Iraq's most dangerous areas.
Unanswered Questions: Using the number of 30,000 armed contractors, the study claims that 20 percent of the foreign troops in the Iraq are private employees.
$Money$: This is one of the vexing issues. How much money is being spent on PSCs? "Financing can be difficult to track. Some PSC personnel are paid directly by the U.S. government, while others work as sub-contractors or sub-sub-contractors for other companies doing business in Iraq."
Who's in Charge?: " While PSCs work alongside the U.S. military in Iraq, ultimately they serve at the discretion of the groups that hire them. Those employers may be the government, but they could also be some third party."
How Much Media Coverage?: "Private Security Companies are a relatively unknown commodity in the mainstream media’s Iraq reportage."
All the empirical data on media outlet coverage and accompanying narrative can be found at Private Security Companies in Iraq: A PEJ Study
The study forgot to throw these into the mix: Scandals Confront Military Security Industry and Tension and Confusion Grow Amid the "Fog of War"
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May 24, 2007
The Contractor's Fight at Home
War for Hire: Dan Rather explores the "invisible army" in Iraq and the combat contractors face. In an extended online report for HD.net scheduled for June 4, Rather portrays the 100,000 or more civilian contract workers as being caught in the "crosshairs," whose uncounted casualties and injuries go overlooked in daily Pentagon briefings and the news media.
Interviews Include: Injured contractors who have returned to the United States only to battle for disability and medical coverage with their former employers to heal their wounds and rebuild their lives. Video from Iraq constantly suggests to viewers that the civilian truck drivers remain a largely-unarmed and untrained "soft" targets.
One contractor now missing a leg and struggling with serious loss of sight, recalls that before he took a job with KBR, President Bush announced "mission accomplished" and "major combat is over."
See It Now: Americancontractorsiniraq.com links to the entire program. The Website's founder, Knoxville, Tenn., resident Jana Crowder weighs in heavily on behalf of the challenges contractors face.
Congress Speaks: Several lawmakers in US Congress also share their thoughts about the lack of attention contractors receive. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., notes that the uncounted presence of contractors supporting the U.S. mission in Iraq "is completely unknown to the American people."
That may not be the case in the coming weeks. Major broadcast and newspapers are preparing similar reports, which echo a 2005 story originally reported by CorpWatch: 'Adding Insult to Injury.'
One Shortcoming in Rather's Report: The lack of attention to how many casualties and injuries have occurred among third country nationals and Iraqi nationals who are laboring under the U.S. flag.
Reuters Does Notice: in a Wednesday story:
The war in Iraq is killing nine civilian contractors a week on average, roughly three times the rate of last year, and U.S. government statistics show that non-Americans do most of the dying.... The contractors -- mostly Iraqis and nationals from more than 30 developing nations -- perform jobs from guarding senior U.S. officials to translating, cooking meals, driving trucks, cleaning toilets and servicing weapons systems and computers.
How many of those TCNs and Iraqi nationals are collecting their benefits as guaranteed by the Defense Base Act remains unexplored territory.
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March 06, 2007
Boo Hoo for Bohos in Washington's Press Corps
"The passing of the Bohemian is certainly in many ways a great loss," he lamented. The newer generation was just as smart, he admitted, "but the personal side of journalism, with its ample sentiment and color, is gone, and the men who make newspapers what they are have been swallowed up in the general impersonal waste-basket of modern newspaperdom."Compliments to John Kelly of The Washington Post for excerpting Washington Correspondents Past and Present -- Brief Sketches of the Rank and File by Ralph M. McKenzie, 1903. Kelly adds: "He never saw my etchings."
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February 28, 2007
It's in the Mail (Yeah, Sure)
When posed with a question that's off the daily script or unrelated to a planned press event, government public affairs people sometimes put reporters on the "slow roll." Frequently that means that they don't have a clue about how to answer a question or that the person who knows the answer would prefer not share it. (The real payoff for a cynical bureaucrat is if the reporter gets distracted by another story long enough for everyone to forget about it.)
FOIA requests can invite the same treatment: How else to explain MY three-dozen unfulfilled Freedom of Information Act requests sent to the Pentagon and elsewhere over two years ago when it allegedly takes just 20 working days to deliver the goods?
In fact, I hear that one request of mine is one of the top ten oldest requests around. It is a request for information on the food contractor at Abu Ghraib that screwed up so badly that prisoners started rioting en mass. Do doubt, the request being passed from desk to desk is now crawling with worms and is as rancid as the food the contractor was serving. (And the FOIA is sort of important. The food riots led to the crackdown in security that led to the torture that led to....well, lots of things.)
I'M NOT ALONE IN THE WAITING GAME.... (But darling, I have moved on):
New research by the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government shows that the government's overall FOIA performance remains at the lowest point since agency reporting began in 1998, despite President Bush's executive order last December [2005] directing agencies to become more service oriented and reform legislation introduced in the Congress
Here's the report: The Waiting Game: FOIA Performance Hits New Lows.
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February 01, 2007
Tim Hates Chris and Other Nasty Business
Kiss, kiss in the Beltway. Tales of media favors, backstabbing and manipulation.
This morning's Los Angeles Times reports on the Libby trial:
As they talked by phone, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby scribbled down a series of Machiavellian suggestions from Cheney's then-communications guru, Mary Matalin: What to do about MSNBC talk show host Chris Matthews and his steady barrage of Iraq war criticism? "Call Tim," Libby wrote, referring to Tim Russert of NBC News. "He hates Chris."
No mention of that in MSNBC.com's wire rewrite.... Mmmm, what a love fest.
Testimony from two of the Bush administration's top media handlers -- former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer and former Cheney communications director Catherine J. Martin -- have largely taken center stage during the first five days of the trial, notes reporter Greg Miller with the LA Times.
And, those crafty media handlers in the Bush White House spent a good deal of time scheming away, doling out news like bon bons:
Martin, in particular, offered in her testimony last week an unusually detailed description of how the White House seeks to manipulate the news media.She described plans to leak stories to certain reporters, including the New York Times' David E. Sanger and the Washington Post's Walter Pincus; freeze out others, such as New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof; book administration officials on talk shows such as Russert's "Meet the Press"; and release bad news on weekends, when it was more likely to be ignored.
(Now, how can a working reporter take the White House press office seriously the next time a press officer answers a question with the perennial "when's your deadline?")
It sounds as though office politics at the White House were just as manipulative. Tim may hate Chris, but somebody at the presidential mansion unsheathed the long knives for Libby as well.
Tim Reid with The Times reports on nasty accusations that West Wing power players tossed Libby out to the snarling dogs beyond the White House gate:
Mr Libby's lawyers claimed yesterday that White House officials rallied around Mr Rove but stopped short of protecting Mr Libby. Having been asked by Mr Cheney to rebut Mr Wilson's criticisms, Mr Libby felt betrayed and sought out his boss."They're trying to set me up. They want me to be the sacrificial lamb," the attorney Theodore Wells said, recalling Mr Libby's end of the conversation. "I will not be sacrificed so Karl Rove can be protected."
ADD: Justly noted. Ana Marie Cox beat the clock with her "Tim Hates Chris" item yesterday. After posting on Time.com, she later added the caveat:
UPDATE: Just to be clear, not everyone hates Chris Matthews (though apparently many commenters do); I just think there's something kind of awesome about "Everyone Hates Chris" being a show on the CW network. I am personal a long-time, committed fan of Matthew's eccentric approach to political chat, n.b.: "ALL PANTS ARE MADE IN CHINA NOW!"
(And not to burn a bridge to future TV appearances?)
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January 29, 2007
(Huh?) 'Increasingly Sexy' Global Warming (?)
Global warming is making people hot around the collar, perhaps, but sexy?
Maybe The Washington Post's new blogger, Paul Kane, is just being "cute" by calling it "sexy." After all, a newly-hired columnist can't be too careful about giving credibility to an issue once advanced exclusively by lefties (readers might think you have a liberal bias or something).
Left or right, Kane's eye caught a good one coming up: three presidential candidates parade before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Tuesday -- Sens. Joe Biden (D-Del.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.). Meanwhile Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) sits on the panel. They will all be offering their solutions to that "increasingly sexy topic" of global warming.
Paul correctly predicts the hearing to be "toothless," so where did he come up with the "fireworks" part starting at 9:00 am?
Fireworks is doubtful, but hopefully it will be more than a lot of hot air.
The safe bet for putting the match to a fuse is with the more substantive hearing Tuesday before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Led by Henry Waxman of California, the committee be investigating political interference by the Bush Administration in the work of government scientists studying climate change.
Then beginning February 6, Waxman will launch hearings on waste, fraud and abuse under Iraq contractors -- the first of what Waxman says will be a series unfolding in coming months. Notes The Wall Street Journal:
They will mark the opening of what promises to be one of the most significant inquiries by the new Congress into actions by the Bush administration while Republicans controlled the House and Senate.
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January 14, 2007
Gripping Headline!!! Hold the Phone! This Just In!!!
A guy I was standing next to in line at Murky Grounds on Capitol Hill pointed this out to me.
"That's no headline," he said, pointing to a stack of Washington Post newspapers by the cash register.
And there it was, above the fold on The Washington Post front page:
"HOUSE GOP SHOWS ITS FRACTIOUSNESS IN THE MINORITY"
Fractiousness???
Forget news stand sales, darling, please whisper sweet nothings in my ear....
I'm no headline writer, but the man was right. That's definitely no headline word and certainly not the kind of word that wakes me up on a Sunday morning.
No wonder newspaper circulation is in a nosedive.
How about: "Unity Falls Apart, "Republican Leaders Lose Their Grip,"" Republican Goose Stepping Ends," or "Republicans Break Rank."
The news media needs to get out of the Ivy Leagues and regain a little street sense (no matter how unruly and fractious those streets may sometimes be).
Fractiousness
A. noun
1. unruliness, fractiousness, willfulness, wilfulness
the trait of being prone to disobedience and lack of discipline.
Interesting story, nonetheless:
"You're freer to vote your conscience," said Rep. Jo Anne Emerson (R-Mo.), who received an 88 percent voting record from the American Conservative Union in 2005 but has so far sided with Democrats on new budget rules, Medicare prescription-drug negotiations, raising the minimum wage and funding stem cell research. "Or, really, I feel free to represent my constituents exactly as they want me to be."
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January 10, 2007
And the Oscar for Best Documentary Goes to.....
This is a tough one. Two outstanding docs are up for the nomination: Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and The War Tapes by Deborah Scranton and Chuck Lacy.
Al Gore lucidly delivers an urgent warning about global warming in Inconvenient Truth that is jaw dropping in its punch. PLUS, there's an enormous appeal to the idea that a former Vice President could win an Oscar. No doubt, the novelty has thrown the Hollywood momentum to Gore, but the Oscars are about films, not inspired PowerPoint presentations -- no matter how brilliant and important.
So my vote goes for War Tapes.
Scranton and Lacy handed out video cameras to US soldiers deploying for Iraq. A year later, the soldiers returned with video from the front lines that only a soldier could provide. The priceless material reflects great soul and brutal honesty. Thus, the film's driving concept proves brilliant. The rest is consummate filmmaking.
Sergeants Steve Pink and Zack Bazzi and Specialist Mike Moriarty are riveting as the central characters. All are New Englanders with Charlie Company, 3rd of the 172nd Infantry Mountain Regiment. 
(Army Sgt. Zack Bazzi)
When their regiment first heads for Iraq, they are imbued with working class affection for America, a hope to serve with honor and a dogged determination to do the right thing for those who touch their lives. Their values are quickly challenged. Based at Camp Anaconda in the deadly Sunni Triangle, they are among a group of 21 soldiers with cameras who tell a shocking story of war. It is a bloody unfolding of horror they help sow and, for a year, they struggle to prevail.
While in Iraq, the soldiers are charged with protecting KBR/Halliburton convoys and they constantly travel on Iraq's roads through cities and villages.
Having interviewed hundreds of contractors working on the battlefields of Iraq over the past few years, I was stunned by what I saw on screen. The scenes echo what workers and soldiers have been telling me again and again. Iraq is a horrible war.
From the frightening insurgent and terrorist attacks, to the cold stare of dead men on the battlefield and the gruesome deaths of civilian Iraqis run over by frightened drivers of speeding US truck convoys; this film is very sadly, the real thing.
Although fighting not to admit it, not one soldier comes back unscarred. This is Cinema Verite at its most elemental and at its very best.
The difficult part to swallow is that Inconvenient Truth is now just as real.
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January 05, 2007
Ouch!
From a December 12 Bill Moyers speech before a bunch of lefty groups gathering in New York sponsored by The Nation, Demos, the Brennan Center for Justice and the New Democracy Project: Democrats are ebullient as they prepare to take charge of the multitrillion-dollar influence racket that we used to call the US Congress. Let them rejoice while they can, as long as they remember that while they ran some good campaigns, they have arrived at this moment mainly because George W. Bush lost a war most people have come to believe should never have been fought in the first place....
Democrats would be wise to be mindful of Shakespeare's counsel, "'Tis more by fortune ... than by merit." For they were delivered from the wilderness not by their own goodness and purity but by the grace of K Street corruption, DeLay Inc.'s duplicity, the pitiless exploitation of Terri Schiavo, the disgrace of Mark Foley and a shameful partisan cover-up, the shamelessness of Jack Abramoff and a partisan conspiracy, and neocon arrogance and amorality (yes, amoral: Apparently there is no end to the number of bodies Bill Kristol and Richard Perle are prepared to watch pile up on behalf of illusions that can't stand the test of reality even one Beltway block from the think tanks where they are hatched). The Democrats couldn't have been more favored by the gods if they had actually believed in one!
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January 04, 2007
Arianna's Aggressive Pursuit of (the) Action
Talk about swing voters!
Some readers may take interest in remembering that Arianna Huffington, publisher of the innovative and liberal Huffington Post, first spun into the American political limelight as the GOP diva and head ideological cheerleader when Republicans took control of Congress in 1995.
She could be sighted everywhere flying about town (Washington, DC, that is) in hyperdrive while hosting luncheons in the name of compassionate conservatism and toasts to "Newt's Revolutionaries."*
Commenting to me on the 1995 Republican Tsunami:
"It's about three revolutions, really," she explained. "There's the political revolution that launched the Republican landslide, the cultural revolution without which the political revolution cannot succeed, and the personal revolution in how we see the purpose of our lives."
Arianna loved talking about the revolution then and she loves talking even more about the revolution now -- although she now is cheerleading for the Democrats -- the very people that so disgusted her in 1994.
And she is once again making news. Today Rep. John Murtha, R-Pa. the incoming chair of the House appropriations defense subcommittee, announced on Huffington Post that he will recommend extensive hearingson the war in Iraq starting on Jan. 17. Murtha said he plans to shine a light on issues of accountability, military readiness, intelligence oversight and the activities of private contractors.
"We will be demanding substantive answers to questions that have gone unanswered for far too long," he says in his Huffington Post blog.
The war in Iraq and its effect on our military and our nation's future remains the most crucial issue facing the new Congress. I will be recommending an aggressive pursuit of action that will allow us to reduce our military presence in Iraq at the soonest practicable date.
*I received an autographed book from Arianna in 1995 after writing a Sunday profile on her for The Los Angeles Times. She struck me as one of the most well-read people I have ever met. Her husband, Texas oil heir Michael Huffington, had just lost the 1994 California Senate race against Democrat Dianne Feinstein. Michael spent something like $30 million of his own money on the race. The Huffingtons divorced several years later after he announced being gay and entered the movie business.
Read The Los Angeles Times story: FULL OF BIG IDEAS, ARIANNA HUFFINGTON JOINS GINGRICH BRAINTRUST
Sunday, Home Edition
Copyright 1995 The Times Mirror Company; Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
February 5, 1995, Sunday, Home Edition
LENGTH: 1033 words
HEADLINE: ARIANNA'S WORLD;
WITH HER 'BROWN BAG' LUNCHES AND PLANS FOR A 'BEAT THE PRESS' SHOW, MIKE HUFFINGTON'S WIFE CRUSADES IN WASHINGTON FOR GOP CAUSES
BYLINE: By DAVID PHINNEY, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
BODY:
Mike Huffington may have spent $27.5 million of his own money in his failed bid for the U.S. Senate, but that did not prevent him and his wife, Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington, from returning to Washington.
While former congressman Huffington cultivates a low profile in the labyrinthine social world of Washington, his wife is visibly riding on the Republican tsunami that swept over the nation's capital in November.
Welcome to Arianna's world, a constellation of right-wing thinkers and politicians accented with New Age activists, a sprinkling of reconstituted liberals and some who refuse to be classified at all.
Immersed in a flurry of activity, Arianna Huffington is putting the finishing touches on a dinner scheduled for Tuesday, featuring House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
She hopes the dinner will raise about $600,000 to benefit the nonprofit National Empowerment Television, the broadcaster of Gingrich's weekly lecture, "Progress Report," and sponsor of his "Renewing American Civilization." NET also once ran Arianna Huffington's now-discontinued program, "Critical Mass."
Price per couple for a dinner with the speaker: $50,000.
Huffington has also signed on as a senior fellow with the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a think tank closely allied to Gingrich, and she is busy developing a television program called "Beat the Press," featuring herself as a self-styled investigative media critic.
The show would use video clips and commentary to chronicle her discoveries of press blunders and inaccuracies. Guests who have been made "victims" by media harpies will drop by to tell their side of the story, she said.
First media victim guest: Fellow Republican and political soul mate Newt Gingrich.
Huffington takes offense at a New Yorker article likening Gingrich's speech-making style to that of the Ayatollah Khomeini, and she intends to set the record straight. For "Beat the Press" she has edited a video segment of the Ayatollah sermonizing about "streets filled with blood" and combined it with tape of Gingrich talking about welfare.
"Satire is a great way to show bias," she said.
As part of her critique of the American media, she plans to feature a segment of good news. "What the media missed this week," she said. "It's so much more important than some little law that's passed."
Although she has completed much of the pilot, there are no takers for the program yet, but she has an eye on selling the idea to network television or for syndication.
There is also a new book project, Huffington's fifth in 20 years.
This one recounts the Republican revolution with frequent asides about her husband's recent defeat.
"It's about three revolutions, really," she explained. "There's the political revolution that launched the Republican landslide, the cultural revolution without which the political revolution cannot succeed, and the personal revolution in how we see the purpose of our lives."
And Arianna Huffington's purpose these days -- her public-personal purpose -- is to fill the public welfare void that will be left if the Republican majority in Congress succeeds in dismantling the welfare system.
"If you believe, as we believe, that the safety net government provides is full of holes and torn and doesn't really work anymore, then there has got to be something to take its place," she said.
And that is what her monthly lunches in a Georgetown condominium overlooking the Potomac River -- contributed by the Seagram's Corp. -- are all about, she said.
She invites people to a "brown bag lunch" so they can join in intimate discussions about how to replace the welfare state. The fare is not literally brown bag: Guests treat themselves to a beef stroganoff buffet and baby carrots served on blue-rimmed Limoges china.
Twenty-two guests attentively gathered at last month's meeting, including staffers from the Progress and Freedom Foundation, public housing professionals, members of nonprofit organizations and former Delaware Gov. Pete DuPont.
Conservative writers Marvin Olasky and Don Eberly, whose books are on Gingrich's reading list, assisted Huffington in leading the discussion. "I must admit, I have an intellectual love affair with both of these men," she said as she introduced them.
"This is the beginning of a conversation about what needs to be done," Huffington said while the chocolate cake was served. "We've got to get to work.
"Everybody knows that money alone is not going to solve the acute problems facing us," she said as she explained the group's plans to replace welfare programs soon to hit the congressional chopping block. "The question is how do you turn lives around? How do you turn around the lives of addicts and alcoholics and the single mothers?"
The answer, she says, is volunteerism, community involvement, local control and private funding of programs that have little to do with federal government. Huffington wants all facets of the private sector to chip in -- individuals, corporations and churches.
Being married to multimillionaire Mike Huffington makes her ideas an easy target for those less fortunate. But even in liberal camps, Arianna Huffington has her supporters.
"There is so much overlap between liberals and conservatives, and in many cases, we agree more than disagree," said Jane Fortsen, who once worked with the Carter Center in Atlanta. Describing herself as a liberal Democrat with a longtime involvement in public housing, Fortsen recently joined the Progress and Freedom Foundation.
"I'm not a liberal, I'm not a conservative, but they characterize us as a liberal organization," said Andrew E. Taubman, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization pushing to apply "Jeffersonian democracy" to the changes being wrought by technology.
Taubman said he was intrigued with the monthly lunch and plans to return. "They say what they think and stick their chin out. If they get hit, they get back up and keep on plugging. I like that."
Besides, it's good networking. "It's fascinating to think that Newt Gingrich could be president someday and these people around him could be his advisers," he said.
Phinney writes for States News Service.
GRAPHIC: Photo, Arianna Huffington, shown strolling in Santa Barbara last year, is immersed in a flurry of activity. Associated Press
LOAD-DATE: February 6, 1995
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December 19, 2006
Happy Birthday, CIA
Someone just sent me this link: from Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting:
Extra! November/December 1997
One of the most evenhanded examples of mainstream coverage of the CIA's anniversary was on ABC News' website, where the report opens on a note of caution: "No doubt the nation's leading band of spies prefers to forget about the disastrous Bay of Pigs, bumbling plots to knock off political leaders and an abject failure to predict the fall of the Berlin Wall," writes ABC's David Phinney. "During the 1960s, the CIA experimented with LSD on unsuspecting subjects and spied on citizens protesting the Vietnam War. In the 1980s, it associated with groups found to be involved in torture and executions, and became mixed up in trading drugs for arms during the Iran/Contra era." Unlike most features on the CIA's anniversary, Phinney's story includes a quote from a CIA critic, a representative of Human Rights Watch.
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October 11, 2006
Follies for Foley
The Republican effort to cast blame on the media for publicizing Rep. Foley's masturbatory online flirtations with teenage house pages doesn't appear to stick.....
I ran into a friend who told me he was sitting on a story about a then-unnamed US Representative with a predilection for young teenage pages last spring -- say six months ago. He said he didn't know what to do with it and was planning to tell a member of Congress about it sometime. I would have begged him for it if I had a place to publish it.... But alas, not at the time.
Well, I ran into him last weekend sitting on a bar stool in a Capitol Hill Haunt -- alone and being very, very quiet.
I asked what he was doing. After all, it might be a good time for a celebration after breaking such a very large and consequential story to the media. He almost singlehandedly put the Bic lighter to what has become a huge firestorm of news.
His response? "I am trying to avoid a subpoena."
And, in fact, he may be doing just that. According to some reports the FBI is investigating HOW the story broke as much as to what extent Foley's fixation was with House pages and if the Florida Republican broke any laws.
Ken Silverstein's account with Harper's online is much more lucid than mine.
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September 13, 2006
American Airlines Prepared to Pull Ads From ABC
Ooops.... Bad research and fact checking at ABC leads to advertiser concern for the recently aired, slanted movie, The Path to 9/11. American Airlines may pull its advertising!
The film in both its first and second parts appears to suggest that chief hijacker Mohammed Atta was flagged as a security risk at Boston's Logan Airport by American Airlines personnel. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, that incident occurred earlier that morning, in Maine, and the airline was U.S. Airways.
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September 07, 2006
ABC, bin Laden, Clinton and Monica
It figures that ABC would be bending current events for reasons beyond my understanding. Ratings? Politics? Ass kissing to the current administration?
Who knows? Perhaps, it's just typical corporate incompetence.
On January 21, 1998, ABC's Jackie Judd was the first network reporter to broadcast the allegations about President Clinton and former White House intern Monica Lewinsky and the accompanying Paula Jones freak show relating to sexual harassment complaints. Judd saw it all the way through, thanks to her pipeline to Kenneth Starr's engineered leaks and his seven-year, $70 million investigation of the Clinton's stupidity.
The end result? Starr found a semen-stained dress and helped spark the impeachment of a president.
What could be more decadent than for an entire Congress to be consumed by such an event? How about a news media that found easy pickings in headlining the steamy details of a president with an unzipped pecker and a willing intern on her knees?
My theory is that the Republican Congress was simply following the headlines.
So, let's have a docudrama about TV news executives and their decision making during the Monica Lewinsky days while Osama bin Laden was laying plans for attacking US embassies (257 people were killed and over 4,000 wounded) and the USS Cole (17 sailors were killed and 39 were injured).
I worked at ABC and my managers were on the brink of masturbatory delight over how many ways to describe an Oval Office blow job for family viewing. Every morning, they would look at the viewer ratings and chant "Monica, Monica, Monica."
The constant drumbeat drove a president to impeachment and when the Clinton Administration bombed Afghanistan and Sudan to hit bin Laden, ABC managers mused that it was to distract people from impeachment.
Oh, and my stories on terrorism and bin Laden? One news manager called them "thumb suckers."
I am sure he is still a consummate ass kisser.
Then again, thumb sucking, cock sucking and ass kissing is just just business. Some just make better news.
Posted by davidphinney at 06:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 14, 2006
Welcome to My Quandary
I have been pitching a story on labor trafficking under US contractors in Iraq since April.
How about interviews with Filipino laborers who escaped Iraq and claimed they were forced to work there against there will?
No, the network producer wants something fresher.
How about Jesus Christ being nailed to the cross in the Green Zone?
"That would be fabulous!"
I got that.
"Can he speak English?"
Maybe.
"Ask him to stay there until September...."
Posted by davidphinney at 11:08 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack