Fair & providing balance

Here’s an amazing piece from San Francisco, of all places in the Chronicle, in which Debra J. Saunders makes precisely the point to be made about Fox News:

AS FOX NEWS celebrates its 10-year anniversary, media watchers should appreciate how Fox, which tilts right, has provided balance to major new operations such as CNN and the New York Times, which tilt left.

Many tilt without knowing it.

Go to most newsrooms and you'll find a staff that overwhelmingly voted for John Kerry in 2004, while the rest keep their politics to themselves lest they be considered biased. A survey of the Washington press corps found that 89 percent voted for Bill Clinton in 1992. It's true, most reporters do their level best to tell a story straight and present both sides. To use Fox-speak, most reporters I know strive to be "fair and balanced."

But they can't escape the presumptions that underlie their stories, and they are likely not to notice the presumptions when all the newsroom management thinks alike. That's how illegal immigrants became "undocumented workers" and global warming became a certainty. (Italics added)

It’s the old one about what one fish said to the other: “What water?”

The worst of it is: They have no idea that they're biased. They think their positions are neutral.

And they say Fox is the biased one.

Do I like everything on Fox? No. I hit the remote when feuding talking heads are spouting prefab talking points and I can get a real news story on CNN. (Other times, I turn to Fox to escape the same on CNN.) I also turn to Fox because its coverage on the war in Iraq takes the longer view, and its coverage on intelligence eavesdropping does not read like an ACLU press release.

As for the Chris Wallace-Bill Clinton dustup:

Bill Clinton berated . . . Wallace for a "nice conservative little hit job" -- just because Wallace asked Clinton a question. In a respectful tone, Wallace told Clinton that Fox viewers wanted him to ask why the former president had not done more to stop Osama bin Laden.

A Bubba tirade followed, when an answer would have worked fine.

As Wallace told the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz, the surprising thing was that he (Wallace) was the only TV interviewer among many to ask Clinton that question, even though Clinton had been complaining about an ABC miniseries that faulted his handling of bin Laden. It is amazing no one else asked. It goes to show that Fox News keeps American media fair and balanced.

It was as if Wallace broke the rules and Clinton had to hit back (even threatening jobs as he left the studio).

Nostrum bites dust

A fool and his money are soon parted, you say?  Bosh, in view of the Ted Turner experience.  He still has his money.

"I am absolutely convinced that the North Koreans are absolutely sincere," Turner said [in a Sept. 19, 2005, interview on CNN after meeting N. Korean officials]. "There's really no reason for them to cheat" and use nuclear power for weapons instead of generating electricity and other civilian uses.

"I looked them right in the eyes, and they looked like they meant the truth," he added. "I mean, you know, just because somebody's done something wrong in the past doesn't mean they can't do right in the future or the present. That happens all the, all the time." [Italics added]

On the other hand, he proves Barnum was right about suckers.

Muslim cabbies . . .

. . . won't take alcohol-carrying passengers at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, Daniel Pipes reports.  The relevant city commission effectively goes along with this as an easy way out.  He's worried about this concession to sharia, rightly so.  Egad, considering all that is forbidden by the Koran, what's next?

Piling on Com Ed

If you are tempted to resent Com Ed’s wanting to raise electricity prices, read Dennis Byrne in Chi Trib and Dan Miller in Sun-Times.  Between the two of them, you will be moved to resent the politicians who want to stop the world so we can all get off.

Byrne on “Playing politics with electricity rates” in part:

Nothing says more about the pandering, spineless nature of our current knot of politicians than their call for a special session of the Illinois General Assembly to zap one of the best deals that electricity consumers in Illinois have ever had.

The deal was made 10 years ago when ComEd, consumer groups, businesses and the politicians agreed to roll back electric rates more than 20 percent and freeze them there. ComEd customers have saved billions.

So what?  It’s close to election time, with the votes meat a-cooking.

Miller, with “New freeze would pull rug out under ComEd”:

Illinois' electricity market for the last 10 years has been based on a complex infrastructure of laws and regulations negotiated and agreed to by all players, from the General Assembly and the Illinois Commerce Commission to the Citizens Utility Board and the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, and dozens of other special interest groups in between. Tampering with that infrastructure now threatens the reliability of Illinois' electricity supply, the stability of every business enterprise in the state, and -- make no mistake about it -- the financial survival of the state's biggest utility, Commonwealth Edison.

Read them both.

How To Describe Strategy 101

Look at this week-old story about Dems in pursuit of election victories and compare it with the weakness of a Chi Trib-Tackett or Sun-Times-Sweet column or so-called analysis. Nobody faults Wall St. Journal coverage, just its editorial page, as far as I know. This account of Dem strategy and strategists Schumer and Emanuel is enlightening and balanced. I can rarely say that for our local analyses.

A National Tribune?

Take on the NY Times?  Can Chi Trib do that, as this provocateur suggests? 

Damn the investors, full speed

“Civic concerns, the long-term health of the paper and journalistic values” are losing out to shareholders’ interests, complains ex-publisher of the LA Times John Carroll. 

It’s a shame they are not more altruistic, like the Chandler family who sold the paper off for $8 billion of those shareholders’ money.

What to do?

On the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides, opposite the northern tip of Scotland, lines are drawn about building a wind farm that would harness the island’s natural resource — it’s a very windy place — and help the warming world.  Or would it?  Environmentalists find themselves between a rock and a hard place:

Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and other groups back the project. Lining up against it, the Scottish Wildlife Trust, Scottish Natural Heritage and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, among others, argue that the turbines will cause incalculable damage to the flora and fauna of the moor. The RSPB, which has been particularly vocal, speaks of "bird genocide," and even the developers concede that the giant rotors are not ornithologically friendly.

Sometimes it’s hard to know what’s right.

The story is by Chi Trib’s man in the UK, Tom Hundley, and ran Friday with a wonderful color foto on p. 16 showing three residents and an ancient shepherd’s stone shepherd’s hut.  Readers of Walter Scott take notice of such a story: his The Pirate was set in the Shetland Islands, which are north of Scotland and were settled by Norwegians long before the English came.

Modest experiments

Omaha schools are segregated after decades of federally imposed admission guidelines, but there’s nothing to be done about it, says fed court.  One of their ideas, Howard Witt relates, was to

Divide the Omaha Public Schools into three new districts, one mostly black, one mostly Hispanic and one mostly white, so parents of each racial group can control their schools.

Can’t do that, of course.  Official blackdom (NAACP) and Hispanicdom (Chicano Awareness Center) won’t let it.  The courts are acceding to their wishes or at least delaying judgment in the matter.

However, one part of that catches the eye of one who thinks schools are stand-ins for parents, who have primary responsibility.  It’s a sticky wicket, yes, and day to day school workings ought normally be out of bounds.  Indeed, overall schools policy is decided by people elected by parents and other voters.  But is there something to be said for parental choice on an individual household basis?  Try this on for size.

Let parents choose on this basis: a white, black, or hispanic school.  Any parent could choose any one of the three.  What a way to see what the people want.  The choice would be for a year.  Official black or other-dom would stand back and watch.  Prediction: Howls would arise from the various -doms, who would see their power slipping away.  They would never allow it.

A few questions

Wed. Journal column is up:

MY NAME IS JAMES, AND I'M YOUR WAITER: And have some questions. How many Oak Park trustees does it take to pass an ordinance? Four. How many meetings? Don't ask.  . . .

. . . followed by more more more

Right-o

Come on.  The Sun-Times’s Mike Thomas doesn’t see Fox News as a corrective to the left– and Dem-leaning (fallen over) CNN?  Not to judge by his 10th-anniversary story with its headline that has Fox News “shooting from the lips” and asking, “Right making might?”  The story is chatty and eminently newspaper-journalistic but with head in sand.

The way critics body slam Fox News Channel, which turns 10 on Saturday, you'd think it's the spawn of Lucifer himself -- a swaggeringly jingoistic, missing-white-females-fixated, George W. Bush-toadying curse loosed upon the earth to wreak havoc. And maybe that's true

is the lede ‘graf, with a “then again” follow-up says it may have “simply found a formula that sets it apart from the pack” etc. — without giving the formula.  The formula is its willingness to depart from the Dem-lib line.  Has Thomas looked in on Lou Dobbs lately?

The story is quick to note Fox ratings are falling faster than “its cable rivals,” without saying how far behind they are:

FOX - Aug 2005 -- 1,001,000 -- Aug 2006 -- 933,000 - 7% drop
CNN - Aug 2005 -- 433,000 -- Aug 2006 -- 584,000 - 35% increase
MSNBC - Aug 2005 -- 220,000 -- Aug 2006 -- 277,000 - 26% increase

The writer asks around.

"They've found their audience," says Jon Petrovich, sector head of broadcast and electronic media at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. "The proof's in the pudding, right?"

The pudding?  “As Fox famously claims, [it’s being] Fair and Balanced.”  It’s a “much-lambasted” claim, “especially” (only? mostly?) by libs.  Example?  A glitch the other day when Mark Foley was labelled a Democrat.  That’s what drives libs nuts?  The occasional glitch?  Come on.

There’s nothing here about giving people what they want, just a sort of dancing around and mystification at success achieved by Roger Ailes, who “positioned Fox to the right of center,” per the Medill man, and thus supplied a gaping hole in coverage, say I; and in the process “poked a slumbering lion,” CNN. 

Poked a sleeping giant makes more sense, namely viewers who wanted a straighter version than is available from CNN, whose man in Baghdad, by the way, played along with Sadaam before the invasion, did he not, admitting it after the war.

Freeze rates, leave us in dark

Sun-Times talks sense about price-setting by government:

Freeze on electricity rates could leave us all in dark

Tempting as it may be to jump on the rapidly accelerating bandwagon calling for our electric rates to remain frozen, count us out. Sure, it's good politics -- cheap power for everyone!

more more more

Man bites dog in Philly

Phila. Inquirer, Frank Wilson book editor, reviews a blog:

If you're tired of negative media reporting coming out of Iraq (and, increasingly, Afghanistan), Matthew Currier Burden's The Blog of War: Front-Line Dispatches From Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan will be a welcome respite.

A first for a mainstream daily?  One of the first?

McGuire jailed after eviction from nursing home

Fr. Donald McGuire went to jail after being “evicted from a Jesuit nursing home,” according to the Wis. state Department of Corrections, says Janesville Gazette.  It was Terrace Nursing Home in Waukegan, Ill., whose “charter does not allow it to house a convicted felon.”  The home is described in part as a “religious nonmedical health care institution.”  It has 115 beds.  It is not listed on a “map” of Jesuit installations and so is probably not a Jesuit nursing home as such.  The nearest Jesuit installation is the men’s retreat house in Barrington.

McGuire's probation, which he is serving during his appeal, will apparently be in Illinois.  Sent back to Wisconsin from the nursing home, he lived at a Lake Geneva motel but then was returned to jail Sept. 25 for refusing — on his lawyers’ advice — to take a lie detector test whose results could be used in a new trial if his conviction is reversed.  They cited his Fifth Amendment right to silence.

"The only way we can protect our client's rights is by instructing him to refuse to participate or answer," reads a letter from defense attorney Steve J. Watson to McGuire's probation agent.

He has been meeting with Wis. probation officials but would not “participate fully in sex offender classes, sign related documents and take a lie-detector test,” according to a motion filed Tuesday by his appellate attorneys.

If he complied with the requirements, information from the sex-offender class or from a lie-detector test could be used against him in a new trial if his appeal is successful, the motion says.  A hearing is set for Oct. 10 to stay the probation, in addition to the prison sentence, pending appeal.  A stay would relieve him of the requirements which have led him to jail.

Suit Alleges Jesuits Sat On Sex Abuse Information

A civil suit has arrived saying Jesuits kept abuse quiet.  Fr. Donald McGuire and Fr. John Powell are named but also a Loyola Academy counsellor from 1980 to 1981 named George Lee. 

The suit claims the Chicago Province of Jesuits, Loyola University and Loyola Academy all "have information about a number of suspected child molesting agents that it has never disclosed to law enforcement or the public at large, causing people such as the plaintiffs to be harmed as children or vulnerable young adults.

. . . .
The suit alleges that the Jesuits received reports of McGuire's alleged sexual abuse of minors from 1970 through the 1990s, but they failed to report this information to the police or the public.

. . . .
The suit seeks to have the defendants release the names of any agents of the order or the two schools who have been accused of sexual abuse of minors, and to share that information, as well as any other documents that are evidence of sexual abuse of minors, with law enforcement and the public.

Lancaster Amish

The terrible, awful news from Lancaster area led me to recall what I saw of the Amish in a 2003 trip.  They were part of the scene at the Green Dragon:

. . . Back to Pennsylvania, which in its SE corner is quite traversible. Last night to a small-animal auction at the Green Dragon market near Ephreta, where Amish men and boys in straw hats, some of them black fedoras, others in usual straw, and a wide assortment of other citizens watched the chickens, doves, furry critters, etc. went to the highest bidder.

We sat in the bleachers and were careful not to scratch nose during bidding, lest we end up holding some hamsters at a price low but not low enough to justify the purchase. Mennonites and Brethren and even some apparent Yuppies there, women wearing lace beanies tied under chin, not bonneted like out and out Amish. Not Yuppies, who had their own uniforms but did not flaunt their circumstance.

Some of these Mennonites, Brethren, etc. apparently use the birth control method recommended by our family doc for many years, the late, great Gregory White MD, namely breast feeding. Yes, I know you call people using that method parents, but so what?

Much sobriety and serenity and indeed relaxation seen among all such folks I have seen on this trip. This Green Dragon market is Fridays only. There are at least three others in the general neighborhood, including Roots Market, near Manheim, to which vendors repair on their given days. We had root beer floats and (one of us) a hot dog at the round-stool winding counter where we might also have gotten a variety of hash house food.

And all over the place, families with kids, stopping at dozens of various counters for food, flea market items, antiques, clothing, you name it. It closed down about nine-thirty, with families who run booths sitting in back of theirs sampling the ice cream or pina colada drink, for instance. Friday night out in the great American boonies.

Into this idyl strode a demon.

Al Qaeda slipping, Chi Trib sleeping

“I missed this when it came out last week,” says John Hinderaker at Power Line,” referring to this from an Al Qaeda leader, admitting, “The path is long and difficult, and the enemy isn’t easy, for he is great and numerous and he can take quite a bit of punishment as well, which the PL editor notes “is very different from how al Qaeda wrote about the U.S. after the flight from Somalia.  It’s in

a new document at West Point's Combating Terrorism Center . . . a letter from a high-ranking al Qaeda officer named Atiyah, who passes on criticisms of Zarqawi that apparently originated with bin Laden, Zawahiri, or other top al Qaeda leaders. The document was found . . . in Zarqawi's "safe" house after he was terminated with extreme prejudice by an American bomb.

He shouldn’t feel too bad about missing it.  So did Chi Trib, while featuring these stories that tell how bad things are:

Frist Says Afghan War Can't Be Won

Frist says Taliban can't be defeated

CIA chief warned Rice, records show

White House counters `Denial'

You can’t blame the Trib, which knows the real news is the latest from Bob Woodward.  The heck with Al Q admitting it’s in trouble.

As for the entire Sun-Times group (your source for AP), not even the Winnetka Talk reporter has unearthed the message in Zarqawi’s house.  His bosses are busy with those screaming headlines, apparently.

Father McGuire jailed, more details

Chi Trib catches up to Janesville Gazette from Saturday, supplying a good deal more detail. Zilch, however, from entire Sun-Times Group (your source for AP):

Molester priest is jailed twice Probation violated, authorities say

A Chicago Jesuit priest convicted in Wisconsin earlier this year of molesting two boys in the 1960s has been jailed for the second time in a month for violating the terms of his probation, said a spokesman for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.

Rev. Donald McGuire, 76, violated a 20-year probation sentence by failing to "complete programming needs" set forth in the terms of his probation, John Dipko said.

Dipko declined to elaborate . . . but said the department was preparing to ask an administrative law judge to revoke McGuire's probation. If his probation is revoked, Dipko said, McGuire could face up to 30 years in prison for the violation.

. . .

The Wisconsin online sex-offender registry listed McGuire's current address as Walworth County Jail. But Barbara Blaine, a spokeswoman for Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said that until last week, the Web site had listed his address as 300 E. Main St., Lake Geneva, a Comfort Suites hotel.

Dipko said McGuire had been staying at the hotel while the county searched for housing for him. McGuire had been staying at a Waukegan nursing home as a condition of his probation. But the home evicted him in July because the nature of his conviction violated its policies, Dipko said.

. . . .

McGuire's first probation violation occurred in late August, when he came to Chicago to attend the funeral of a Jesuit priest at St. Ignatius Church in Rogers Park, according to church officials.

He attended funeral services Aug. 30 and was given permission by his probation officer to stay in Evanston that night on condition that he register with the local police department, Dipko said. But McGuire never informed police he had arrived in Evanston, thus violating his probation, Dipko said. He spent three days in the Walworth County Jail for the violation.

Rev. James Gschwend, the Jesuit province's delegate for conduct inquires, said McGuire remains a Jesuit priest, though his status is under review. The review board's decision depends on the result of McGuire's appeal.

Brown law

Mark Brown offers “man law” contributions a la the beer commercial from “Pittsburgh John,” a friend:

• If it's not broken, don't fix it (not just a law, a commandment.)

• If you can't stretch out all the way, it's not a couch.

• If you're not a professional bike rider, don't wear the shorts.

Etc.  “Let me hear from you,” he tells male readers.  Hmmm.  This is today’s column, Oct. 1.  Smart fella, Brown.  That closing request will be good for another column.  And if he doesn’t hear from anyone, he can go to Lipstick Chronicles for Sept. 22, where Rebecca the Bookseller has a bunch of suggestions from “several men from varying backgrounds and geographic locations,” with helpful commentary:

* Man Law on Food:  Regardless of weather, the grill is always the cooking appliance of first choice.  A Man from the midwest contributes: further, salmon is a fish, and not a color.  And a Navy Man serving overseas reminds us that No Man shall use a utensil of any kind to eat ribs.

Etc.  Such a deal.  Brown has his second column written already.  Rebecca asked for more laws too.  Maybe she and Brown can collaborate.  If this doesn’t work out, he can fish around in REO Horror Story: Man Law - Don’t Let Beer Cans Pile to the Ceiling, also of Sept. 22.  I’ll bet there are other places too.

Fr. McGuire in jail

Fr. Donald McGuire, the Jesuit convicted in Wisconsin on molesting charges, broke probation and is in jail.

Illinois representatives of a support group for those abused by priests were leafleting a Lake Geneva neighborhood with news that McGuire was closer to them than they might have thought.

The jail gave McGuire's home address as 30 E. Main St., Waukegan. However, according to Wisconsin's online sex offender registry, McGuire was living at the Lake Geneva Comfort Inn, 300 E. Main St., Lake Geneva.

……………

Jeff Anderson of St. Paul, Minn., an attorney representing McGuire's two victims in civil suits against McGuire, said he was informed that McGuire refused to take the periodic lie detector tests required as part of his probation.

…………..

[He had been] sentenced in July to 20 years probation with a seven-year stayed sentence, pending [his] appeal of his conviction.