Appeals court dismisses Dan Rather’s suit vs. CBS
Big news for those that hoped Rather would expose the right-wing conspiracy that forced him to air a story based on patently fraudulent documents:
A New York state appeals court on Tuesday dismissed former TV newsman Dan Rather’s lawsuit against CBS Corp in which Rather claimed he was made a scapegoat in a scandal over a 2004 report on then-President George W. Bush’s military record.The ruling on Tuesday by a panel of judges of the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division said Rather’s $70 million complaint should be dismissed in its entirety and that a lower court erred in denying CBS’s motion to throw out the lawsuit.
Perhaps this will help with the canonization of Rather under way in academic circles.
Probably not.
NY Times tunes in too late
The New York Times public editor chides his newspaper for its slow response to covering the ACORN video story:
But for days, as more videos were posted and government authorities rushed to distance themselves from Acorn, The Times stood still. Its slow reflexes — closely following its slow response to a controversy that forced the resignation of Van Jones, a White House adviser — suggested that it has trouble dealing with stories arising from the polemical world of talk radio, cable television and partisan blogs. Some stories, lacking facts, never catch fire. But others do, and a newspaper like The Times needs to be alert to them or wind up looking clueless or, worse, partisan itself.
Some editors told me they were not immediately aware of the Acorn videos on Fox, YouTube and a new conservative Web site called BigGovernment.com. When the Senate voted to cut off all federal funds to Acorn, there was not a word in the newspaper or on its Web site. When the New York City Council froze all its funding for Acorn and the Brooklyn district attorney opened a criminal investigation, there was still nothing.
Readers noticed. James Jeff Crocket of New Britain, Conn., spoke for many when he said he was sure he knew why the paper was silent: “protecting the progressive movement.”
Finally, on Sept. 16, nearly a week after the first video was posted, The Times took note of the controversy, under the headline, “Conservatives Draw Blood From Acorn, Favored Foe.” The article said that conservatives hoped to weaken the Obama administration by attacking its allies and appointees they viewed as leftist. The conservatives thought they had a “winning formula,” the article said, mobilizing people “to dig up dirt,” then trumpeting it on talk radio and television.
By stressing the politics, the article irritated more readers. “A suspicious person might see an attempt to deflect criticism of Acorn by highlighting how those pesky conservatives are at it again,” said Albert Smith of Chatham, N.J.
I thought politics was emphasized too much, at the expense of questions about an organization whose employees in city after city participated in outlandish conversations about illegal and immoral activities.
Good points.
So many stories start off in the blogosphere as vents from outraged partisans. Often times, those stories don’t get much traction. The trick is knowing which ones will evolve beyond partisan outrage into real-world policy changes. Lately the New York Times hasn’t found much success in figuring that out.
What happened to Randy Quaid?
Texas lawmen just apprehended character actor Randy Quaid for skipping out on a $10,000 hotel bill. Well, that’s a bizarre story, but even more bizarre is this recent picture of Quaid:
Who is that? What happened to the Randy Quaid pictured below?
We miss you, lovable Randy Quaid from the National Lampoon “Vacation” films! Please comes back. And pay your hotel bill, pls.
Sometimes it takes an outsider like Andrew Breitbart to show the press corps the way
Here’s an interesting take from Jack Safer, Slate’s media critic, on the ACORN video story:
The primary take-away from the videos, as best as I can discern, is that a shocking number of low-level ACORN employees think that helping to relocate houses of prostitution is part of the group’s agenda. Such an oblique, rambling point is interesting enough by my measure to qualify as news.The critics of Breitbart and the filmmakers don’t really dispute the basic information unearthed by the videos. Instead, they take issue with the duo’s spectrum of deception or their political motives in pursuing ACORN. The liberal advocacy group Media Matters for America complains that the ACORN videos, which aren’t a “major story,” are driving an “incomplete, misleading” media stampede.
But Media Matters is wrong. Independent news organizations, including the Washington Post, the New York Post, and the Baltimore Sun, are chasing the ACORN story not because they’ve been bamboozled by the Breitbart exposé but because the dress-up stunt has pointed them toward what could be fertile grounds for wrongdoing.
If you think Breitbart has corrupted the press, then you probably think he’s done the same to the U.S. Census Bureau and the Internal Revenue Service, too. Today’s (Sept. 23) Washington Post reports that the bureau, citing a lack of confidence in ACORN, has dumped the organization as a partner in the 2010 count, and just coming over the wires is news that the IRS has dismissed ACORN from its volunteer tax-assistance program. Next to shed ACORN will be oak trees everywhere. You read it here first.
Would Washington or the press be giving ACORN a second look if Breitbart, O’Keefe, and Giles’ prank hadn’t revealed the, um, unknown dimension of the organization? I doubt it. And that brings me back to my original observation: One of the great strengths of American journalism is that it will accept contributions from everybody from amateurs to entertainers (I’m looking at you, Jon Stewart) to gadflies to billionaires to activists to students to genocidal tyrants. The system is so delightfully open that even pornographers can spill worthwhile journalistic ink. That Breitbart comes swinging a political ax should bother nobody, unless the journalism published in Mother Jones, The Nation, the Huffington Post, Salon, the New Republic, the American Prospect, Reason, the Weekly Standard, or the National Review gives them similar fits. Viewing the world through an ideological lens can sometimes help a journalist to discover a story.
Great points. We read a lot about how terrible the world will be as newspapers continue their decline. Hogwash. There’s plenty of jouranlists out there — on both sides of the ideological isle — to keep democracy safe.
Why do anonymous sources leak?
Here’s a good reader from the military press on the motivation for government officials to speak anonymously to journalists.
Regarding a federal shield law for journalists
The New York Times editorializes in favor of a federal shield law to protect journalists who use unnamed sources:
Without the ability of reporters and news organizations to protect confidential sources, many important reports about illegal, incompetent or embarrassing behavior that the government is determined to conceal would never see the light of day. In recent years, the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the secret C.I.A. prisons in Eastern Europe for terrorists and warrantless wiretapping all came to light through the unauthorized disclosure of classified information.If reporters can be hauled into court and forced to reveal their sources, it makes it hard for them to gain the trust of people who have information that the public needs to know, and it makes it hard for their news organizations to publish or broadcast those reports.
The bipartisan bill is backed by Senators Arlen Specter, Democrat of Pennsylvania; Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York; Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina; and others. It would establish a calibrated right of reporters not to reveal the name of confidential sources. It already contains many conditions and qualifications to protect national security. For example, it expressly does not cover information gained from terrorists and agents of foreign powers.
My caveat: Under the law, who gets counted as a journalist? Do bloggers count? Will the United States government get to decide who is a “real” journalist and who doesn’t fit the bill? A troubling, unintended outcome of a federal shield law could be the de facto licensing of journalists.
The best sand animator in the world
Yeah, I’d never heard of sand animation before either. But, here’s the best sand animator I’ve ever seen. The Ukrainian artist can be seen on this clip from “Ukraine’s Got Talent.” She won.
She’s giving a history of her country, with its wars and authoritarian rule. Clearly struck a chord with the audience, many of whom are in tears.
Barber of Seville
I find it hard to listen to Rossini’s opera without thinking of Bugs Bunny.
Praise for ‘Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid’
One of my favorite films is a little-known Western called “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.” The 1973 Sam Peckinpah film starred James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson in the title roles. Now, most people don’t like it much, in fact Peckinpah wanted his name removed from the title credits. But, I think it’s a good, gritty Western with a couple of great leading men.
The film also features Bob Dylan in a supporting role. Now, Dylan can’t act at all, but he did lend his songwriting talents to the effort. Few people realize that the song “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” was written for this film. Here’s the scene which supported it — that’s character actor Slim Pickens who accepts his fate while staring at a beautiful New Mexico sunrise.
Quite a scene.
