Does AP stand for Agenda Pope?

There's an epiphany in "Philip's Code" where the central character realizes the wire service he works for is so powerful it is "the Vatican of news," meaning it has the last word on, well, words. The coverage of the Sonia Sotomayor trek to the Supreme Court serves as a good example. Sotomayor was billed as the "first Hispanic" on the court, a term the Associated Press ran with, which meant just about all news outlets followed. But, hold on. Is a news reformation going on? Bloggers brought up the name of Benjamin N. Cardozo, named to the court in the 1930s. Was he the first Hispanic? Pretty much depends on how one defines "Hispanic," which set off a lively, and interesting, debate on the Internet. Some insisted Cordozo qualified because his ancestry could be traced to Portugal, which butts up against Spain. Others said no way. Cardozo probably never heard the word "Hispanic." I'll bet he thought of himself as an American who was Jewish. Which brings up another interesting point. Cardozo was appointed at a time, which is in living memory, when religion played an import part in selections for the court. There were "Jewish seats" and "Catholic seats." Little noted, except by bloggers, is the fact that Sotomayor gives the court six Catholics. Not an issue - if the Catholicism of other nominees hadn't been controversial.
The AP could have noted the blog disputes, not with some meaningless sidebar, but, briefly, in its main story. What we need is a news counter-reformation instead of a reformation - one in which trust is established. Otherwise we will continue to see individual interpretation of the news.

Obama: The road to Morocco wasn't smooth

Bush was bashed for calling the fight against terror a "crusade," but Obama gets away with trying to rewrite the Marines Hymn. That's pretty much what he did in his speech in Cairo when he said Morocco was "the first nation to recognize my country" and then pointed to the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796. Sounds like Morocco was a good guy, not a nation backing pirates and forcing us to pay tribute and ransom. A few years later we would be at war with these pirates and the Marines could sing about the shores of Tripoli. Someone in the news media should have wondered about this. Guess it's the Clinton years again when it comes to history. A book called "On Bended Knee" recounts how the press was dazzled by President Reagan to the point of genuflection. I think I will write a similar book about Clinton. The title, of course, would be "On Bended KneeS."
Obama also said "Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance" and went on to add that "we see it in the history of Andalusia and Cordoba during the Inquisition." We could all use a history lesson on that. What about before the Inquisition?
The line that bothered me the most, however, was the reference to Al Qaida, which "claimed credit for the attack" on Sept. 11. "Credit?" A first-year journalism student knows the term is "claimed reponsibility."

Should I sue over "State of Play?"

I just saw "State of Play," the suspense movie about the fictional moribund Washington Globe, like so many newspapers on life support, kept alive by a few dedicated reporters. Anyone know a good lawyer? Just kidding, but the parallels with "Philip's Code: No News is Good News - to a Killer" are difficult to ignore. Yes, I know I'd be in line behind the BBC. Nevertheless, I had the feeling as I watched the movie that someone behind the credits read my book.
In both, the reporter is personally involved. In the book, there's the death of the main character's son. In the movie, the reporter "shagged" a source's wife. Both get major breaks from the coroner's office, both deal with technological changes, and both use reporter's tricks to get information. I expected Russell Crowe to use lines from the book - "Truth is the sum of the Facts," "NEWS is the important part of newspaper" or "news is what the newspapers say it is." Not only that, there are main characters who are military vets who lost faith and hope.
And, of course, there are the surprise endings. I may be biased, but the book's is better.

Is Obama Getting a Press Pass?

Looks as though Obama has been issued the same kind of press pass Clinton was, at least when it comes to history. The latest slip came in the President's first interview, the one with Al-Arabiya, which broadcasts to the Arab world. Obama said he wanted a return to "the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago." Those wonderful days brought us the Iranian hostage crisis, the Beirut Marine barracks bombing, the Pan Am flight 103 bombing, etc. etc. etc. Respect??? We backed the Shah in Iran. Nuff said.
I saw very little media reaction to his seeming lack of knowledge about history. Perhaps today news outlets lack enough reporters to go after all angles. I'd buy this, except the watchdog press was licking itself during the Clinton years as well as the Obama-Biden campaign, (See earlier postings.) All of this would matter little except for the fact that Dan Quayle became the national punching bag for misspelling potato. Not to mention Bush's pounding, which spilled over to TV comedy. (BTW, when will we see Obama's initials in headlines a'la Bush?)
I guess this is the coverage we can expect when we are down to one major wire service. Is "liberal bias" the problem? I'm not so sure. I think it's possible to be have liberal bias and still do the job. That's the problem - professionalism, or lack of. Come to think of it, the reason is that there is no spell check for history.

Lousy Coverage - Whether you like it or not!!!!

The build-up to the vote on Proposition 8, the California initiative designed to limit marriage to a man and a woman, gave readers another reason to divorce newspapers. From the start, the debate was limited to same sex marriages or mixed marriages between a man and a woman. The stage was set when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom defied state law and performed the marriage of two people of the same gender. Count 'em - two, as in a traditional marriage. All that was needed to enlarge the debate was for a reporter to ask if he would officiate at the marriage of any consenting adults, which would include plural marriages. I saw one TV reporter ask this and Newsom replied with something akin to "I heard it all. Even about marrying your horse." Those who back his stand often answer that "the issues are separate." Not when the subject is "marriage equality."
Newsom's flip remark came despite the fact that America almost went to war over polygamy and the Mormon church had to change its teaching before Utah was allowed to enter the Union. The book, "Under the Banner of Heaven," estimated that thousands of couples still live in such non-traditional arrangements. The book also said polygamists hoped to link up with homosexuals in a campaign for legality. Fat chance of that unless reporters did their job. Not only was there the Mormon factor, an increasing number of immigrants came from nations that practiced plural marriages. All his reminded me of Animal Farm, the book in which all animals are equal but some are more equal than others.
Later, news stories cited the 1948 case that got rid of a law banning marriages between races. Almost all reports danced around the fact that the case involved freedom of religion. The couple wanted to wed in the Catholic Church but the law prevented this. If anything, the ruling was closer to polygamy than gay marriages. The law banned marriage between races. There is also a law against polygamy. There is no law against gays marrying. Newsom attempted to change a law, not get rid of it.
Are there lessons to be learned? Many. First, while papers were silent, the Net had a lot of talk about this, meaning dissenters no longer have to feel powerless and isolated. That said, it also demonstrates that the slope doesn't become slippery until the media greases it. It also provides more evidence that the government no longer takes action because it has a compelling interest, but because it is compelled to show interest.

MSM can run, but it can't hide - anymore

This just in!!!! Stop the presses!!! The San Francisco Chronicle finally reported Joe Biden's big goof about history, one that puts him in Bill C'linton's class for getting a press pass, meaning the press gives you a free pass (see earlier Clinton entry). None of this would matter except for the savaging Dan Quayle took about his spelling of potato.
The Chron's Joe Garofoli on Oct. 2 mentioned briefly that Biden said on television a week earlier that FDR appeared on TV when Wall Street crashed in 1929 and reassured the public. Hoover, not FDR, was president then and national TV was decades away. The Chron, and, I suspect, other papers, sat on Biden's miscue even though it was all over television and the net. Garofoli's story came after a letter to the editor complained.
The Chron has also been silent on another subject a lot of people are talking about: Nancy Pelosi's statement on TV about the Catholic teaching on abortion. The San Francisco archbishop, in a front page story in Catholic San Francisco, challenged her.
The lesson for today is: Newspapers are not the only game in town and now can be caught with their pants down. NEWS is the important part of newspaper, not PAPER.

Palin must make Emily pissed

I don't think I'll vote for Sara Palin, but I have a crush on her for the way she upset feminist who wanted a strong woman, meaning one who agrees with them. During my 40 years, I watched as feminists flexed news media power to the point that "choice" became limited to one subject. I think one of the main reasons this happened was simply that many male reporters embraced feminism in order to embrace feminists. Another reason was a successful sex discrimination suit against the AP, which had a near monopoly on news gathering and distribution - the latter thanks news consumer allowing UPI to be reduced to working out of a broom closet in Washington.
The list of power points - the old kind - is a long one. With the possible exception of William Safire, no one asked a simple question during the initial media beachhead over Ms. Mrs. or Miss. Why were men limited to Mr.? Or why did women have "courtesy titles" to start with?
Then there was Emily's List, the fundraiser designed to elect women to office. What reporter had guts enough in those early days to ask "what kind of women?" I can remember standing on the steps of City Hall in San Francisco at a news conference by a list official and asking if she would back an anti-abortion woman. "We aren't that ready to step out of the mainstream," she said. I never saw the exchange in print.
Earlier, the purge of anti-abortion feminists from key NOW posts went virtually unreported, even though it made me recall the Night of the Long Knives in Hiitler's Germany.
Add to this, the media's forked tongue on the terms used in the abortion debate: pro-choice can stand alone but not pro-life (although this situation has cleared up a bit since the Internet joined the game.)
And, please see my July 1, 2007 posting on Title IX, which, thanks to a lapdog media, is one of the great stealth laws of all time.
I think movies have been better about capturing this than reporters. My favorite line is in "Mona Lisa Smile." A student asks a teacher, who is constanly pushing her students to be strong and independent thinkers, something like this: "You want us to make choices and then condemn us for making ones you wouldn't."