DARTS & LAURELS
DARTS
IDENTITY CRISIS
Under
the byline of Joel Greenberg, The New York Times on February 2
gave page-one, above-the-fold play to a story out of Jerusalem
on the “more than 100” reservists in the Israeli army
who had signed a statement saying that they would no longer serve
in the West Bank and Gaza Strip because of their government’s
policies in dealing with the Palestinians. Dramatizing the significance
of the statement by the reservists — a significance that
was open to debate — the article reminded readers that “Protests
by army reservists after Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon,
which Mr. Sharon, as defense minister, took all the way to Beirut,
are widely considered to have contributed to a subsequent military
pullback to southern Lebanon, from which Israel withdrew two years
ago.” But nobody reminded readers that Greenberg, an American-born
Israeli, was himself a resister, having gone to jail rather than
serve a second term of reserve duty in Lebanon.
Under
the byline of Ross E. Milloy, The New York Times frequently runs
stories out of Texas that range from local oddities to politics,
from border issues to the environment, and other hard news. It
seems that Texas modesty, however, forbids the free-lancer from
mentioning himself in his stories, thus leaving it to other Lone
Star publications to quote him, as they often do, as the president
of the Greater Austin-San Antonio Corridor Council, an umbrella
organization that aims to promote the area’s economic development
through lobbying and other activities. (One of Milloy’s activities
at the council office late last year involved sending out invitations
and handling responses to a party for Jill Abramson, Washington
bureau chief of The New York Times, hosted by the paper’s
Texas writers.)
Celebrating
itself in a March house ad, The Providence Journal boasted to
readers, “Only one can be the best. And it’s not The
Hartford Courant. It’s not The Boston Herald. It’s not
even The Boston Globe. The New England Newspaper Association picked
The Providence Journal as the New England Newspaper of the Year
in the Metro Category . . . .” Nowhere did it mention that
neither the Herald nor the Globe had bothered to enter the contest.
As
its “Guest Opinion” on January 30, the Daily Inter Lake,
in Kalispell, Montana, ran an 875-word piece calling on “all
Americans who love their country” to join Operation Restore
the Eagle, a four-day across-the-board work stoppage, including
keeping children out of school, immediately preceding and including
Earth Day 2002 — a mass-action protest both against the “obstructionist
stranglehold” of the Endangered Species Act and for the eviction
of “all illegal undocumented persons in America . . . .”
The sole clue to the source of this harangue was the disembodied
byline “SierraTimes.com.” Not until ten days later,
via a published letter from Christine Kaufmann, the research and
policy director for the Montana Human Rights Network in Helena,
were readers informed that SierraTimes.com is the voice of J.J.
Johnson, a leader of the national militia movement at the time
of the Oklahoma City terrorist bombing. (Kalispell, by the way,
is home to, among other right-wing militia groups, Project 7,
whose plans for a round of assassinations in early summer, according
to the FBI, were thwarted in March when the county sheriff discovered
two trailers packed with arms, ammunition, pipebombs, booby traps,
explosive chemicals, rations, and body armor.)
CURIOUS
COINCIDENCES
Material
that brightens the popular TV meteorologist Gary England’s
weather-page column in The Daily Oklahoman — how lightning
is recorded, the climate on Mars, and so on — has all too
frequently matched, almost word for word, material posted on various
science Web sites. (Tracked by the alternative Oklahoma Gazette,
the weatherman’s pattern caused a brief storm on a local
talk-show, followed by his welcome shift to proper attribution.
A less fortunate result was the Oklahoman’s firing of the
staffer it apparently suspected of alerting the Gazette.)
Adorning
the cover of selected issues of the March 17 Parade magazine was
a colorful photograph of Raquel Welch, the glamorous embodiment,
at sixty-one, of the Sunday supplement’s “Indispensable
Guide” to how to “Live Longer, Better, Wiser.”
Adorning a featured interview on an inside page was a colorful
photograph of Raquel Welch, talking “about beauty, fitness,
and attitude,” and sporting, as the credits noted, “hair
additions by Raquel Welch Signature Wig Collection.” Adorning
Parade’s back cover was a colorful photo of Welch, part of
a full-page ad in which, under the headline “For Raquel Welch,
Beauty Starts From Within,” the star described her personal
program against aging. The secret “to living better for longer,”
it turned out, was Raquel’s Timeless Nutrition supplements,
available on a “special offer” of “only $34.95”
a month.
LAURELS
INFORMATION,
PLEASE
Listen up, Time, Business Week, Washington Post, and all you other
enthusiastic bell-ringers for the disposable-cell-phone company
Hop-on.com. In the February 18 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle,
the telecom writer Todd Wallack left a message you may want to
save. In the course of reporting a routine story on the latest
must-have gadget, Wallack discovered, among other things, that
the publicly traded Hop-on (1) had filed no financial statements
with the SEC; (2) was run by a two-member board consisting of
c.e.o. Peter Michaels and his mother; (3) was the corporate sibling
of a Michaels & Mom online gambling operation that was being
investigated in California for investor fraud; and (4) had yet
to deliver the millions of phones ordered by distributors even
as the company’s launch date kept being postponed. Hel-lo-o?
THE
JUSTICE BEAT
The
Trib’s intrepid trio has done it again. Ken Armstrong, Steve
Mills, and Maurice Possley, staff writers for the Chicago Tribune,
recently concluded yet another groundbreaking investigation into
yet another flaw in the criminal justice system. This time, the
Who were people who had confessed to murder. The What was the
falsity of hundreds of such confessions, many by juveniles and
adults of low intelligence. The When and Where: 1991 to 2000,
in Cook County, Illinois. Why, the blind zealotry of the police,
for whom, to cite just one appalling example, a suspect’s
incarceration at the time of the murder was a detail unworthy
of note. And, finally, the How: methods that involved intimidation,
deprivation, deception, and more. The pattern uncovered in the
four-part series (December 16-19) raised not only the issue of
injustice for the vulnerable, but also that of safety for the
public, with police wringing confessions from innocent suspects
while murderers walked free to perhaps kill again. Comparing Illinois
practices with those of other, more conscientious states, the
investigation offered a compelling argument to follow the example
of those states and require the complete videotaping of all interrogations
from start to finish. For reasons known only to itself, however,
the Chicago Police Department has so far evidenced little interest
in either the problem or its solution.
RIPPING
THE PARACHUTE
As
the powerful chief executive for Wisconsin’s Milwaukee County
since 1992, Tom Ament apparently had it made — that is, until
last October. That’s when Bruce Murphy first revealed, on
his political guide Milwaukeeworld.com, the jaw-dropping details
of an enhanced pension plan created by Ament for himself and a
handful of his old-boy cronies. Bottom line, after figuring out
the complex provisions and doing all the math: Ament could retire
in 2004 with a lump sum payment of $1.2 million plus $92,040 a
year for life; if he ran for one more term and won, the parachute
would be more golden still. As things turned out, however, Ament
never got the chance at either option. Murphy followed his Web
site exposé with an article, published in late December
in Milwaukee magazine, in which he examined, among other things,
the irresponsibility of officials in allowing the deal as well
as that of the press in not reporting it. By January 6, the Journal
Sentinel, belatedly recognizing the story’s potential, picked
it up and ran with it — from the voters’ outrage, the
petition for recall, and Ament’s promise not to take the
money, to, on February 26, his resignation.
TAKING
CARE OF BUSINESS
Another
kind of axis, one you’ll never hear President Bush address
in a State of the Union speech, centers on the pivotal relationship
between industry, the military, and government. Case in point:
The Carlyle Group, a little-known, fourteen-year-old, D.C-based
investment firm whose power, purpose, and private operations are
now, thanks to the work of some enterprising journalists, becoming
exposed to public glare. As detailed by Dan Briody in Red Herring
magazine (December) and by Tim Shorrock in The Nation (April 1)
and elsewhere, The Carlyle Group has all the makings for a conspiracy
theorists’ picnic: a “vast, interlocking global network,”
as the group’s marketing literature puts it, that is led
by Reagan defense secretary Frank Carlucci and whose members range
from former presidents (George Bush, Sr., the Philippines’
Ramos), officials of the Reagan and Bush cabinets (Baker, Darman),
and prime ministers (Major of Britain, Park of South Korea, Panyarachun
of Thailand) to executives from such multinational companies as
Boeing, BMW, and Toshiba; a high-roller clientele that includes
George Soros, the estranged family of Osama bin Laden (recently
dropped), and Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal; $12.5
billion in investments (banks, telecommunications, real estate,
health care, and — of special significance since September
11 — aerospace and defense). The secret of Carlyle’s
success, of course, is access and influence — a well-placed
phone call here, a quiet meeting there, and lo, a policy is reconsidered,
a contract is signed, the profits roll in. The various examples
that Briody and Shorrock recount are none the less odorous for
being legal. And the crucial question of which comes first, policy
or profit, is all the more chilling for being unknowable.
Darts
& Laurels is written by Gloria Cooper, CJR's deputy
executive editor. Nominations may be addressed to her by mail,
phone (212-854-1887), or e-mail (gc15@columbia.edu).
