Media dodged Key Parts of Obama speech. Ditto Saddam terror study.

Old dogs can learn new tricks. So can old reporters. I listened to Obama's speech on race and thought his comments about "white resentment" would get a thorough going over by the news media. It didn't. I dug out the text of his remarkable speech to make sure I heard right. I did. He acknowledged that working whites had concerns over affirmative action, making me wonder if the SF Chronicle dodged this one because of its shameful handling of the fire department's "swastika incident" and the near obliteration of the Zebra murders from city history.
I had a similar experience recently when I heard a television anchor report that a new study found no link between Saddam and al-Qaida. That was about the extent of the report. I asked my wife,"What else is new?" I then read the report by Institute for Defense Analyse. which had a great deal more to say, including Saddam's financial support for suicide bombers in Gaza and the West Bank as well as helping develop car bombs and explosive vests. The report said "captured Iraqi documents uncovered that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism."
My guess is that someone got an advanced look at the report summary, which mentioned lack of al-Qaida and ran with that. Then "lemming journalism" went to work. Twenty years ago that would have been the end of the story. Today, it is just the start because the net can hold reporters and editors accountable - in minutes.

About time: Some attention to Zebra killings

At last the series of racial slayings in San Francisco known as "the Zebra murders" is getting the media attention it deserved. No animals were harmed during the murders of at least 14 people who were killed simply because of their race. If real zebras had been the victims animal rights organizations would have made sure the story never died. The street killings in the 1970s might as well have never happened for all the attention that was paid by the press in the decades that followed. Now, big names will guarantee that the horrific racial crime gets the spotlight. Former San Francisco police Chief Earl Sanders has written a book, "The Zebra Murders," and a movie is in the works that will star Jamie Foxx.
I hope the movie is called "Resurrection," because that is what is involved here. Fairness is being raised from the dead. If ever there was a double-standard in reporting, it was this case. All the victims were white and the perps black. It's hard not to wonder what the coverage in the ensuing years would have been if the reverse were true. Another reason to regard the press as just another interest group. Read all about it in "Philip's Code: No News is Good News - to a Killer."
I doubt that today reporters and editors could get away with such ineptness. The Internet, particularly now when there are papers with "comment" postings, would catch on and bark at the watchdog - as my book forecasts. I hope postings under reviews of Sanders' book and movie point to past neglect. The Internet can help journalism by making journalists accountable
I wonder if postings are paying off on other fronts. The AP series on school sex abuse is a case in point. (See that blog entry.) I had an eerie feeling recently when Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown brought in state help to fight crime in East Palo Alto. Did he read my book, in which similar action by Gov. Pete Wilson got little attention by the media in the 1990s? Brown got good press. I hope Oakland took note - just as in "Philip's Code."

AP Teacher sex series too much and too late

The AP finally did a series on sex abuse by teachers in public schools. A real scandal - and I don't mean the teachers. That it took this long for the world's largest gatherer and distributor of news to put the problem on its agenda is a disgrace to journalism. The handling of the teacher abuse and the Catholic priest scandal is gatekeeping journalism at its worst. Once the church scandal was news, all institutions were fair targets.
There were plenty of alarm bells. In 1998, Education Week did a fine series called "Passing the Trash" that dealt with moving teachers suspected of abuse from school to school. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette did an outstanding series in 1999. There were many reporters doing their job, but, mainly, the stories weren't picked up by the national press. As soon as I retired in 2000 I did an expose about the double standard coverage for Catholic San Francisco, followed by an article for America magazine and another for New Oxford Review in 2005. "Philip's Code: No News is Good News - to a Killer" has a few pages about the contrasting coverage.
I doubt such unfairness could happen today. The mainstream media was the only game in town when the clergy scandal first hit in the 1980s with a seres in the San Jose Mercury News. Now there are lots of watchdogs watching the watchdog.
The AP series is all over the Internet, including sfgate, the San Francisco Chronicle's 'net version. My sources tell me that AP copy feeds on to sfgate automatically. As of today, however, the series hasn't been in the print Chron, and, I don't think, the Merc. Embarrassed? They should be.
And, please, will a reporter with some guts ask SNAP when it will start suing over school abuse. Does the group's alphabet not go to T, as in teacher?
Follow the money!!!!

"Buying the War" came cheap

I watched Bill Moyer's "Buying the War" for the second time today. My reaction was the same as it was during the first viewing: more proof of "lemming journalism," in which reporters follow the leader in a mad rush to keep up. It was great to see The New York Times take it on the chin. Moyers proved how easy it is to leash the press. I hope he reads "Philip's Code" because that is what the book is about. What other stories have the Times and other media fed into the news chain where they were accepted without question? For example, try to fathom the ramifications of limiting "choice" to one subject.
Still, I had the feeling Moyers set out not to find the truth, but to marshal enough facts to prove his point. I have, however, a question. Why didn't the eve of battle statement issued to our military dwell on WMDs? I am looking at the statement as I type. WMDs are mentioned only in the past tense. The crimes of Saddam are listed. Remember, the invasion was called Operation Iraqi Freedom, not Find Those WMDs..
Perhaps the news media's hesitation to highlight Saddam's brutal reign has to do with the pacts news organizations made with him that allowed access to some parts of Iraq in exchange for not reporting about horrors taking place in others. It's in "Embedded." I wish Moyers had included that fact.

My space debate: Talk radio birth redux

The Democratic candidates debate, in which My Space users asked questions, was a redux for me. I had the same reaction decades ago when I first heard Rush and his ilk: what guts to ask those questions. Talk radio impressed me more. It was a real breakthrough because it came when news media power was nearing absolute. UPI had one foot and more in the grave and our nation was nearing a news monopoly, where it is today when it comes to gathering and distributing news. Comment is another matter. Thank the net for that. With that nod to technology made, it was still obvious that the major news media sets the agenda, even though it is more difficult to limit it. We saw two women ask if they could be married (Can the president change that situation?). No one asked what reporters should have asked when the mayor of San Francisco married same sex couples: Does "marriage equality" mean an end to anti-polygamy laws? On Iraq: because of our military limitations (no draft because we don't believe in ourselves anymore. '01 wasn't '41) can the present situation be seen as positive for American interests?
Overall, there was a certain "look-at-me" quality about those who finally got through the screeners. At least no one asked, as that girl did of President Clinton, what kind of underwear they wore. Now that I think of it, I wonder if Hilliary wears granny pants?

How do you spell Tet in Arabic?

Will be interesting to see how the media handles the latest outrage in Iraq, the suicide bombing of 100 people that U.S. General David Petraeus said may have been an attempt to "grab" headlines and create a "mini-Tet." The coverage of the Tet offensive in Vietnam remains one of that war's more controversial chapters. The AP gave America a history lesson in its dispatch about Saturday's death toll when it said the general referred "to the 1968 offensive that undermined public support for the Vietnam War in the United States." You bet it did. It also "undermined" support for the news media. If truth is the first casualty of war, will newspapers and network TV news be the last casualty of the Vietnam War?
Critics shouldn't be too hard on the reporters who covered the Vietnam War in the field, guys like Joe Galloway of UPI. Covering a war must be the ultimate challenge for a journalist. The editors in the safe havens of time are a different matter. They let too many unquestioned assumptions stand. Westmoreland certainly asked for it by insisting in the pre-Tet days that the war was going in favor of the allies. His intelligence was faulty. Sound familiar? Why, however, does the media allow its own intelligence to go unquestioned? Today we have heard WMDs repeated so often we forget the invasion was called "Operation Iraqi Freedom," not "Find the Damn WMDs." I find it fascinating that when it refers to the war's rationale the media never uses the words conained in the "eve of battle" statement issued to our troops prior to the invasion, which barely mentions WMDs, and then only in past tense.
I doubt the Internet would let the news media get away with what it did in 1968 when it allowed the fighting to become a major American defeat, instead of a draining of Viet Cong powers. Or that the people failed to raise up, or that the ARVN, in a real surprise, fought well. No, what was burned in our minds was the siege at the Embassy, the words of the aging Walter Cronkite who gave his imprimatur to a stalemate, and the street execution of a Communist insurgent. I doubt few people recall much about these incidents other than the pictures. If there is a lesson here, it is that print surrendered the journalistic high ground to photos. The pen was no longer a reporters best tool. Today, even less so.
Saddest of all was the reporting of the Communist massacre at Hue during Tet. Not that it wasn't reported initially. But years later the public recalls only one massacre - My Lai.

Thanks to media, Title IX was a "stealth law"

Much hoopla over the 35th anniversary of Title IX. A 35th anniversary? Usually we get hyped over a 25th or 50th. The media must be making up for lost time because it was truly a quiet lapdog when the legislation made its way through Congress. Title IX is one of the best examples of a "stealth law," something that becomes law without you knowing it. In "Faces of Feminism," Sheila Tobias notes that there was little opposition to Title IX when it was debated in Congress. Nevertheless, she writes that "Rep. Edith Green (D-Ore.) "discouraged feminists from lobbying too publicly for the bill, lest attention be drawn to its wide-reaching powers. She was right to do so."
Today those "powers" are of concern to backers of men's sports that have been dropped at some schools, but when Green put the lid on many people thought Title IX meant women could not be barred from a team. After all, the newspapers carried many stories about girls who were good enough to play on boys teams or how a girl was discriminated against when she was barred from a boys team. There were occasional stories about boys being kept off a girls volleyball team or something, but they received little coverage and cries of "boys will take over" were accepted without much comment.
Now it is taken for granted that equality of money is the main issue. However, I find it odd that "separate but equal" is never used in stories about Title IX. I wonder if Green would get away with her tactic in today's Internet world. The MSM can set the agenda, but it can no longer limit it.