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“Death Panels” Live On With Fox Viewers

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A picture of President Obama rests on the ground during a town hall meeting at Broughton High School in Raleigh, N.C., on July 29. (Credit: Lawrence Jackson/White House)

Pro, Con Health-Care Ads a Bonanza for Local Stations

Regular viewers of the Fox News Channel are far more likely than viewers of other cable news channels to say claims of "death panels" in federal health-care reform plans are true, the Pew Research Center for People & the Press reported on Thursday.

"Among those who say they regularly get their news from Fox News, 45% say claims of death panels are true, while 30% say they are not true. By contrast, majorities among regular viewers of rival cable news channels MSNBC and CNN and nightly network news say they think it is false that health care legislation will create death panels; fewer than 30% in each group say they think such claims are true," the center said.

"Most of those who regularly get news from the newspaper or the internet (53% of each) also do not believe that health care legislation will create death panels. Among those who regularly get news from radio, 48% say proposed health care legislation does not create death panels, while 37% say it does.

"While a plurality of Americans (43%) say press coverage of Barack Obama has been fair, that figure has declined by 10 points since early June and is down from 64% in January. The proportion saying that coverage of Obama is too critical has risen since early June – from 16% to currently 23%.

"Fox News viewers are about twice as likely as those who regularly watch MSNBC, CNN or the broadcast network news to say the press has not been critical enough of the president."

The health-care debate is good news financially for television, according to Michael Malone, writing in Broadcasting & Cable:

"According to figures from TNS Campaign Media Analysis Group (CMAG), over $60 million has been spent thus far in an attempt to get viewers to pressure their elected officials on health care one way or the other, with around $45 million of that going to local television," he wrote.

"Until Washington works out an agreement on the polarizing issue, CMAG President Evan Tracey says the ad money will continue to gush. ‘Big issues are typically not resolved quickly,’ he says, ‘and this is a big issue.”

Mark Jurkowitz, associate director of Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, wrote on Tuesday, "there were enough flaring tempers and raucous ruckuses last week to generate the biggest single week of health care coverage so far this year. And that coverage was virtually non-stop on conflict-driven cable news, which became ground zero for town hall confrontations across the country.

"News consumers watched as senators such as Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter and Maryland’s Ben Cardin faced hostile, shouting crowds at town halls. The term ‘death panels’ entered the media vernacular and William Kostric, a man walking outside Obama’s New Hampshire town hall meeting with a gun strapped to his thigh, got his 15 minutes of fame. Death threats, swastikas, and comparisons with Hitler’s regime in Nazi Germany became part of the media narrative. Helping inflame passions, the ideological talkers on cable and radio spent the week lobbing rhetorical grenades at their foes.

". . . Much of the coverage was driven by the talk show culture that permeates cable news and radio today. Within those two media sectors, the 13 cable and radio talk shows studied by PEJ had an even more intense focus. Fully three quarters (75%) of the airtime studied in this talk universe was devoted to the health care issue last week. As the News Coverage Index has shown, talk shows tend to amplify the most polarizing political issues, and last week coverage of the hot-button topic seemed to literally boil over."

Jayson Blair: From Plagiarist to Life Coach

On MSNBC Thursday night, Kent Jones joined host Rachel Maddow to talk about former New York Times reporter and plagiarizer Jayson Blair’s new career as a life coach, disclosed that day by Matthew Barakat in an Associated Press report.

It was one of many reactions to the development.

"Oftentimes the most f—– up people do make the wisest counselors once they get cleaned up. Jayson Blair could certainly fall in that category," Hamilton Nolan wrote¬†on Gawker.com.

In the Washington Post, Annie Gowen took a different angle: "Blair isn’t the first to choose a safe spot in the Washington exurbs to make a new life after a bruising scandal. Monica Lewinsky confidante Linda Tripp, for example, retreated to chic Middleburg after that scandal died and runs a gift store there called the Christmas Sleigh. (She did not want to comment for this article.)

"’I think that Washington, D.C., and Hollywood are the two places you can [rebuild your life] successfully,’ said Deborah Gore Dean, a Housing and Urban Development official during the Reagan years who has run an antiques store in Georgetown in the 17 years since her fraud conviction.

"’Almost everywhere else, people remember every detail, every indiscretion,’ Gore said."

Likewise, members of the Sports Task Force of the National Association of Black Journalists were on both sides.

"I was glad that he picked up another career to make a living and help out others in need. It helped redeemed his image after all of the trouble he put himself into as a journalist," one said.

But another professed "no love" for Blair: "He got where many of us aspired to be by lying, cheating and disgracing the profession — and undoubtedly made it harder for brothers and sisters to get those positions.

"It’d be more fitting if Blair instead stuck to what he showed he had the most talent for: writing works of fiction."

As the AP reported, "Blair, 33, resigned from the Times in 2003, leaving a journalistic scandal in his wake. The resulting furor led the paper’s top two newsroom executives to resign. Blair wrote a book, then mostly disappeared from view."

Group Seeks to Save Japanese American Paper

"The Nichi Bei Times, Northern California’s oldest Japanese American community newspaper, said Thursday that it is shutting down, but a group of community leaders hopes to keep the presses rolling by forming a nonprofit organization," Benny Evangelista wrote Friday for the San Francisco Chronicle.

"The board of directors said in a letter printed in the 63-year-old publication’s latest edition that they decided ‘with great sadness’ to close on Sept. 10.

"The paper, which has about 8,000 subscribers, changed in 2006 from a daily bilingual format to publishing three times per week, with one English-language edition inserted in one of the three Japanese-language editions. Board Chairman Ken Abiko said the board planned to give the new format three years to reverse a long, steady decline in circulation and advertising revenue.

"The closure of the paper would leave the market open for the rival Hokubei Mainichi newspaper. However, a group of journalists and community leaders is forming the Nichi Bei Foundation, which would try a novel approach to saving a for-profit newspaper by turning it into a nonprofit operation supported by donations, fundraisers and grants.

"Nichi Bei Editor Kenji Taguma; Paul Osaki, executive director of the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California; Keith Kamisugi, communications director of the Equal Justice Society; and Kerwin Berk, a former sports desk editor for The Chronicle, are spearheading that effort."

Redding Named Program Director at La. Talk Station

Robert "Rob" Redding, host, Web-site proprietor, former Washington Times reporter and an African American, has been named program director of conservative radio talk station KMLB-AM in Monroe, La.

"It’s a little unusual to have a minority heading a conservative talk station," owner Bob Holiday allowed to Journal-isms on Friday. "But while he may not be 100 percent in line" with KMLB listeners, "he knows good talk radio" and "he will do what’s best for the listener." He said he hired Redding¬† because of "his experience and his passion for talk radio."

Redding, 33, has been in Monroe studying at the University of Louisiana. He calls himself a political independent and has expanded his Matt Drudge-style black-oriented Web site into a business that includes podcasts and radio broadcasts.

As Holiday noted, outside of public radio, African American program directors at mainstream talk-formatted stations are rare.

When Robert Novak Called NABJ’s President a Racist

Columnist Robert Novak, who died Tuesday at age 78 after a battle with brain cancer, will be remembered for his "Prince of Darkness" persona, his long-running, well-reported political column, his time as a television talking head, and his role in the Valerie Plame CIA leak case. He was the first to publish the name of Plame, a CIA employee.

For others, Novak will be remembered for calling the president of the National Association of Black Journalists a racist.

The occasion was the Aug. 13, 1998, edition of CNN’s talk-shout "Crossfire," which Novak was hosting at the time. Members of the journalism old-boys network were rallying around white Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle, who was serving a two-month, unpaid suspension for lifting jokes from a best-selling book by comedian George Carlin.

Patricia Smith, who is black, had been forced out that June after admitting she had fabricated characters in four of her columns. Some saw a double standard, and Vanessa Williams, a Washington Post reporter who was president of NABJ, was invited on "Crossfire" to discuss the dust-up, along with columnist Michael Kinsley.

"Vanessa Williams, let me ask you a very straight question right off the bat. Would you have any interest at all in this story if, in fact, in protesting this way the Globe handled that if, in fact, Mike Barnicle were a black man?" Novak asked.

WILLIAMS: "I’m sorry. I don’t even understand that question. This is about journalistic ethics. It shouldn’t be about race. It didn’t have to be about race."

NOVAK: "Well, then answer my question, would you be protesting if the fact is that Mike Barnicle were not white?"

WILLIAMS: "Of course. If a journalist violates the rules and the standards of our profession, of course we’d be upset. We are journalists and ‚Äî"

NOVAK: "Well, wait ‚Äî go ahead. I’m sorry."

WILLIAMS: "No, we’re journalists and the issue here is were the rules followed. Now, certainly because of Patricia Smith’s race and gender and Mr. Barnicle’s race and gender, this issue has arisen. But it didn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t have been this way. It should have been about journalistic ethics. But I have to tell you that based on the very different way the newspaper handled these cases, a lot of people are now asking what are the standards at the Globe? Forget double standards, are there any standards there? Are the rules applied willy-nilly depending on who’s up or in trouble at the given time?

NOVAK: "Well, to be totally frank, Ms. Williams, I don’t see the National Association of Black Journalists going around the country as an ethics cop saying this paper upholds standards, this paper didn’t uphold standards. Let’s be honest. You feel that a black woman was bounced off the paper and a white man was kept on and that’s why you’re in that and that sounds like racism to me.

WILLIAMS: "Well, I guess you wouldn’t know what we go around the country doing because you’re not a member and perhaps you don’t pay attention to what we do. But we also think the Globe was absolutely correct in letting Patricia, in asking for Patricia’s resignation because that is wrong. We don’t condone that. We don’t support that. She should have resigned. And give her credit, she did admit, OK, I made a mistake, I messed up, I broke the rules, I will resign whereas Mr. Barnicle gets to run around the country on a public relations campaign and said ‘well, I sort of broke the rules but maybe not, I wasn’t being malicious, I was just sloppy and lazy.’

"And how any journalist of any color can defend someone who admits to even sloppiness and laziness at a time like this when, over the last couple of months, this profession has been hammered by a series of professional and ethical lapses. Right now journalists should be rallying around the flag, reassuring the public that we are honest, we work hard, we play straight with them and not asking for forgiveness and trying to split hairs over whether fabricating a story or making up a story is worse than stealing other authors’ work."

A week later, Barnicle resigned at the Globe’s request.

Afghan Police Beat, Detain Journalists During Election

"Security forces obstructed, assaulted, and detained Afghan and foreign journalists in Kabul and elsewhere in Afghanistan today, enforcing an official gag order on news of violent incidents during the presidential election. A spokesman for President Hamid Karzai told the press that information about attacks would discourage voter turnout," the Committee to Protect Journalists reported on Thursday.

"Police briefly detained at least three foreign journalists and several local journalists during the course of the day, according to news reports. Multiple accounts mentioned police beating journalists, threatening them with guns, and snatching equipment, but no serious injuries have been reported. Almost all the reported incidents occurred at the scene of attacks by militant groups.

"Afghanistan’s Foreign and Interior ministries issued statements on Tuesday asking reporters to suppress news of violent incidents and stay away from sites of reported strikes during polling hours, which concluded this evening. Taliban spokesmen have threatened repeatedly to disrupt the election process, and terrorist violence has risen in the days running up to today’s vote, according to international news reports."

 

The family and friends of teenage track star Caster Semenya, who struck gold in the women’s 800 meters at the World Athletics Championships, hit out at claims that she could be a man. (Credit: Daily Mail.)

Explaining Gender as "Not Just a Binary Affair"

"At first thought, it seems strange that the South African runner Caster Semenya needs to take a sex test to determine whether she is indeed a woman ‚Äî or a man, as rumours suggest," Michael Hanlon of London’s Daily Mail wrote¬†in a public service to the many who were wondering.

"In fact, it can be rather more complicated than that. It is not generally appreciated that gender in humans — and many other species, too — is not just a binary affair, a simple case of being male or female.

"While the vast majority of people are clearly either a man or a woman, many others are somewhere between the two — often with tragic consequences.

"Indeed, while people have been making jokes for decades about burly, allegedly female shot putters and javelin throwers, who turn out ‚Äî after often humiliating and invasive ‘investigations’ ‚Äî really to be men, the fact is that such cases do not always involve intentional deception, and can result from true biological ambiguity.

". . . I once went to a talk given by a group of doctors and biologists who were all themselves intersex, and some of the tales were both moving and harrowing.

"There were stories of surgical castration and remodelling, with disastrous psychological consequences later in life.

"Sex testing can be harrowing as well. The Indian 800 metre runner Santhi Soundarajan, who was stripped of her silver medal and reported to have attempted suicide in the wake of her very public gender test ‘failure’ at the 2006 Asian games, simply did not know that she had ‘androgen insensitivity syndrome’.

"This means that despite having no visible male genitalia and a visibly female body, she does, in fact, have a ‘male’ pair of XY chromosomes.

"What this sorry affair teaches us is that sport, with its emphasis on precise measurements and defined quantities, is badly equipped to cope with something as vague and emotionally charged as human sexual differentiation."

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