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The AP story we ran Saturday is still in the news, with apparently no resolution.
"The Associated Press said in its story yesterday that Mr. Hussein “has been a regular source of police information for two years and had been visited by the AP reporter in his office at the police station on several occasions.� The military, meanwhile, seems to suggest that Mr. Hussein is not a police officer, nor a civil servant in the employ of any Iraqi agency.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to make 2007 the year of healthcare. The Sacramento Bee has a blog dedicated to hearing from experts about solutions. It's moderated by the dean of California political blogs Dan Weintraub
One fee too much.
Iraq: civil war or sectarian violence
What do you call a problem like escalating sectarian violence in Iraq?
“A civil war,� said Matt Lauer on the Today show on Nov. 27. NBC brass had discussed it, he told viewers, and had come to the bold and publicity-generating—if not exactly jaw-dropping—conclusion that democracy is maybe not flourishing quite the way we planned.
The other two broadcast networks, equally boldly, have not followed suit.
“It was their decision to make and their process,� said Jon Banner, the executive producer of ABC’s World News. “We constantly discuss editorial matters here—all the time, every day. How that decis ion got made there I have no idea, nor do I want to guess.�
“To be honest with you, I think it’s a political statement, not a news judgment,� said Rome Hartman, the executive producer of the CBS Evening News. “We deal with the events of the day, and we decide the best way to describe those events based on the news of the day, not by—never mind, I’m not gonna go there.�
Then he did.
“It should be noted that the day that this pronouncement—and who makes pronouncements anyway? But that’s what it sounded like—was a quiet day, relatively speaking, in Iraq,� he said.
CNN’s official statement on th matter is: “CNN will continue to report on what is happening in Iraq on a day-to-day basis. And we will also report on the ongoing debate in academic and political circles about what constitutes a civil war.�
It perhaps goes without saying that the Fox News Channel has not leaped onto the civil-war bandwagon. Fox anchors will join most of their colleagues in television news in anticipating their own Cronkite Moments.
It's been a major discussion in the blogosphere.
"They then blasted open the front of the mosque, dragged six worshippers outside, doused them with kerosene and set them on fire. This account of one of the most horrific alleged attacks of Iraq's sectarian war emerged Tuesday in separate interviews with residents of a Sunni enclave in the largely Shiite Hurriyah district of Baghdad." (via Patterico)
No offence, but hearing about the whining and gloating of the rooms that the people paid to be built is just a little irritating.
I've been a bit late on this story about Mariel Garza, a columnist for sister-paper Daily News, and her students class project to obtain public documents from the LAPD.
As soon as I find the link to the original story, I'll put it up.
Update: Her story is on the jump....
By Mariel Garza
Staff Writer:
OVER the years I've encountered many thoughtful, helpful, courteous and decent Los Angeles police officers.
But I've also encountered incidents that point to a dark side of the Los Angeles Police Department, one of institutionalized obstructiveness and a collective disdain for the public it serves. Unfortunately, it's also one that makes it easy to believe that ugly arrests -- such as that of William Cardenas on Aug. 11 -- occur on a regular basis.
A 19-second cell-phone video of the arrest, which has been circulating on the Internet, shows two LAPD officers atop a prone man. One has his knee on the man's neck, then punches him several times in the face for no apparent reason.
Throughout my journalism career, I have covered police departments of various sizes, from the tiny Beaumont, Calif., Police Department to the LAPD. And without exception, I've noted that the larger the police department, the more disconnected it is from the community. And that all too often translates into a distrust and hostility that turn routine arrests into a potential for violence.
I see it in the big blow-ups, as this video arrest appears likely to be. But also in the small, everyday interactions such as those experienced by a handful of CSUN students last week.
I teach a journalism class at California State University, Northridge. Recently, I asked my students to go on a public-records hunt. One of the acceptable documents for the assignment was the daily crime log of a local police department, something specifically noted as available under the California Public Records Act.
I should have warned them about the LAPD. But sometimes a bad experience is a better teacher than a happy one.
The students who chose to go to LAPD stations -- which included Devonshire, Mission and West Los Angeles -- had, every one, frustrating experiences. None was given access to the public record requested; some were even told they didn't have a right to it. Worse though, was that in most of the cases, my students reported unprovoked hostility by the desk officers to their simple, and righteous, requests.
It's true that these are secondhand reports. But over the years, I've had enough similar experiences that I wholly believe them. As well, I called up Media Relations to find out what the department's policy was on these public records, and was told that they would only be released with an official public record request. Not exactly a policy designed to be citizen-friendly.
My students were genuinely shocked by the antagonistic treatment from the desk clerks at the LAPD stations, and they should be. If this is how unassuming college journalists armed with a copy of the California Public Records Act are treated with reasonable requests, imagine what a somewhat less-savvy citizen might experience.
There was a time, not too long ago, when citizens were not treated like criminals just for asking for information.
I suspect this daily sort of contempt for the public -- not to mention the regular helicopter patrols of some L.A. neighborhoods -- has more to do with the public distrust of the LAPD than the occasional video of a rough arrest. Police Chief William Bratton would be wise to spy on the daily interactions between his representatives and citizens for a better understanding of the department's lack of community relations.
This is not a police state where everyone is under suspicion. But the policy of the LAPD doesn't always seem to recognize that.
"The Associated Press is standing by its report that six Sunni men were burned to death in Baghdad Friday by Shiites, even though U.S. military officials have accused the wire service of relying on a source who "is not who he claimed he was," an Iraqi police captain.
Military officials also say they cannot confirm that the incident took place and have asked AP to retract or correct the story, which was repeated by media around the world and cited as a grim example of Shiites taking revenge for a deadly bombing that killed more than 200 people a day before.
"The attempt to question the existence of the known police officer who spoke to the AP is frankly ludicrous and hints at a certain level of desperation to dispute or suppress the facts of the incident in question," AP International Editor John Daniszewski said in a statement e-mailed to On Deadline this afternoon.
The story that came out of Iraq Friday that six Sunnis were burned alive now is being questioned.
"The U.S. military said Saturday that Iraqi soldiers securing Hurriyah found only one burned mosque and were unable to confirm residents' and police accounts that six Sunni Arabs were dragged from Friday prayers and burned to death."
A blogger is also questioning the identity of a man who is frequently quoted in stories, especially about violence, coming out of Iraq.
I don't believe anyone willfully prints inaccurate information and Iraq has to be the toughest place to report on. It does give pause though about taking everything you read without a critical eye.
UPDATE: Associated Press is standing by their story and will be releasing another one with more detail today.
If law enforcement truly needs to find out who committed a crime, they have no other choice and a compelling reason, I can see the argument backing suponeas against journalists. But the onslaught of legal attacks lately against reporters should concern everyone. The problem is that we are undersiege at a time when we appear to have few defenders.
"Years of journalistic mis- and malfeasance have left many people thinking the Fourth Estate could use a little oversight, regardless of where it comes from."
Editorial dicusssions for the front page sometimes center on what stories readers want as opposed to information they need. One former editor of mine said a paper's mantra should be "tell them something they don't know but need to know." Most times the story fits both, but occasionally the choice isn't all that clear. Crime stories are usually the most read but the information they relay is not always that important. The biggest worry for some is that if we decide our stories in a popularity contest we become a tawdry gossip rag or, as politics editor Gary Scott says, fetish-based journalism. I don't agree with Jeff Jarvis that news has already gone tawdry, but I thought the numbers that show what the BBC wants us to read as opposed to what we want to read is interesting. The NY Times also has an interesting popular story page as well.
Stealing someone's else work and calling it your own is one of the worst sins in journalism. The death of Gerald Boyd, former managing editor of the NY Times, starkly makes the case. Though he was not the one who plagiarized or just plain made stuff up, his obituary puts front and center the stain that destroyed his career nevertheless.
While there a lot of good stories that can and should be done on the racial and ethnic division in this country, we should be careful of stretching certain events and saying they expose racism. As a Latino and first-generation American, I'm not ignorant of the poor educational system and income disparities that affect minorities. One radio commentator this morning mentioned an all-important yet unreported fact: Thanksgiving week is usually a slow news week, so we may be talking about this more. Too bad.
Trolling around online, looking for interesting stuff from the San Gabriel Valley, I came across a Web cam that apparently looks over the Westfield Mall in West Covina. I think I see the Washington Mutual Bank that stands
in front of Barnes and Noble. I have no idea why it exists, but they have it.
As part of a continuing move toward more online interaction, the newspaper has put comment links on the bottom of stories. Other newspapers have also dipped in this pool, sometimes without success. Ventura County Star eventually went back to giving comment links. I think it gives our online readers one more reason to become engaged.
In the past month, we have had the uneviable task of publishing stories about the death of soldiers killed in Iraq. Friday, reporter Jennifer McLain was at Ontario International Airport where Sgt. 1st Class Rudy Salcido was brought home. Some might question whether we should be covering these stories, but no matter what side of the war you are on, the deaths of San Gabriel Valley natives need to be acknowledged. Most families have welcomed us, some have not, and we take a family's feelings into account if we do cover the story. But I do think there needs to be a way of publishing stories about the soldiers who are over there now, and not wait until they are brought home to be buried. I'll be working on that in the next several weeks.
This post is not about who holds anti-or pro-war sentiments that was a major element in the elections but about accurately portraying events. The LA Times and NY Times had photos tying it to Veterans day, set aside for all who have battled wars. LA had a picture in Santa Barbara and NY had a photo in Santa Monica. Both said it was a memorial for fallen soldiers by Veterans for Peace. What neither noted was that the group has been strongly anti-war and opposed the 2003 invasion. Once again, it's not about the group's stance but giving readers' context.
I have a card that shows the state law that allows me, as a journalist, the right to get on to school grounds. Districts that have stopped me usually gave me the exemption "for safety reasons or disruption of class." It's an occasional fight against some administrators who forget the public pays their salaries. Bob Sipchen, from the LA Times, has a interesting read today about the hassle getting into a Halloween party. As he rightly puts it, "aside from parents' narrow experience with their own children, reporters are the only eyes, ears and noses people have to alert them when something smells - which may be why the urge to keep journalists in the dark runs so deep."
- It's also in Spanish.
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The Times has another story about a state Supreme Court decision limiting access to police hearings now being used as a cover for others. It's a fight the legislature should take up, but doubt if they will.