Bahari at an Aug. 1 "news" conference staged by Iranian authorities while he was being held. (Fars News Agency/AP photo/Hossein Salehi Ara)
By Mark Memmott
"You shouldn't do their job for them. If they want to execute you, they should do it themselves."
That's one of several compelling moments in a conversation scheduled for Weekend Edition Sunday.
It's filmmaker and Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahari talking with NPR's Jacki Lyden about the times he contemplated suicide during the four months he spent in Iran's infamous Evin Prison -- where Bahari was tortured and threatened with execution for allegedly being part of a foreign conspiracy behind the protests that followed Iran's presidential elections last summer.
After repeated threats of execution, says Bahari, he considered the possibility of breaking his glasses and using the shards to slit his wrists. But he thought about his family. And he decided that killing himself would just make things easier for the authorities:
As we said, his conversation with Jacki will be on Weekend Edition Sunday. Click here to find an NPR station near you. The entire interview will also be posted on NPR.org this weekend.
The incredible shrinking newspaper industry continued its retrenchment Tuesday with the Washington Post's announcement that it is closing its last remaining national bureaus in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles.
In a memo to staffers, Marcus Brauchli, the paper's executive editor, explained:
Today we have informed our news colleagues in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles that we are closing the offices in those cities, effective Dec. 31.
The reporters in those bureaus are being offered new roles here in Washington. Regretfully, the three news aides, who have been dedicated colleagues and are friends of many here, will be let go.
At a time of limited resources and increased competitive pressure, it's necessary to concentrate our journalistic firepower on our central mission of covering Washington and the news, trends and ideas that shape both the region and the country's politics, policies and government.
We will continue to cover events around the country as we have for decades, by sending reporters into the field. We have a strong tradition of bringing understanding and authority to our coverage of politics and issues that matter, wherever the stories take us. The evidence is visible daily in The Post: our deeply reported narrative series on the human consequences of the economic downturn; our insightful coverage of the healthcare debate, from the efficient hallways of the Mayo Clinic to the raucous townhalls of last August; even the ongoing coverage of the Ft. Hood shootings or the impending 2010 midterm campaigns.
Might former CNN host Lou Dobbs run for the White House in 2012?
Dobbs, who split ways with CNN earlier this month over his commitment to "advocacy" journalism, told former Tennessee senator (and, briefly, 2008 GOP presidential contender) Fred Thompson yesterday that he just might mount an independent bid for the presidency.
As Politico says, Dobbs' answer "fueled already rampant speculation about his political future."
Last week, NPR's Political Junkie blog asked its readers "what's the FIRST thing Lou Dobbs will be doing now that he's left CNN?" Sixty six percent said "join the Fox News Channel."
When we asked last week if Two-Way readers would like to see Dobbs run for president, 68% said no.
Carl Kasell, who has been on the air with NPR since 1975 and has brought listeners the news of joyous events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and tragedies such as the 9/11 attacks in 2001, is planning to give his final newscast on Dec. 30.
In case you can tune in, it's scheduled for 11 a.m. ET that day.
He tells me the most memorable day on the job was that Sept. 11. "Events were happening so fast and furious," Carl says.
Carl, 75, will continue to serve as official judge and scorekeeper on NPR's Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!. "I'm just changing jobs," not disappearing, says Carl.
The biggest change in his life may be not having to wake up at 1:05 in the morning in order to be ready for the network's 5 a.m. ET newscast.
"Folks always asked why I didn't just get up at 1 a.m.," Carl jokes. "I said I wanted to sleep in."
"Microsoft has had discussions with News Corp. over a plan that would involve the media company being paid to 'de-index' its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry," The Financial Times reports.
As the FT adds:
Microsoft's interest is being interpreted as a direct assault on Google because it puts pressure on the search engine to start paying for content.
News Corp. -- the global giant run by Rupert Murdoch -- includes The Wall Street Journal among its holdings. At the Journal's website this morning, it's being reported that the company "has held discussions with Microsoft Corp. about a partnership that could result in News Corp. removing its newspaper content from Google Inc.'s search engine while continuing to feature it on Microsoft's online properties, according to people familiar with the matter."
At another News Corp. publication, Barron's, the Tech Trader Daily blog wonders whether Murdoch just figured out "how to save the newspaper industry".
Boing Boing's Rob Beschizza writes that "it's easy to believe that (Microsoft) may spew senseless riches into publishers' pockets, radically distorting the news market, just to spite Google."
(Microsoft search engine) Bing can't buy all the news, it can only buy certain brands. If Bing can somehow become the only place you can find news results and working links to the Wall Street Journal and other top papers such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the LA Times, for instance, that would be a big reason to switch for a lot of folks. But it's not clear how much Bing would have to pay the news companies of the world for them to give up all the traffic Google sends them in return for a fraction of that traffic and some cash.
Just a week after being called out by Comedy Central's Jon Stewart for using old crowd footage that made a conservative rally at the Capitol Building look larger than it was, Fox News Channel has again been spotted using old video in a fresh report.
This time, as The Swamp writes, it was video from a 2008 campaign rally that made its way into a fresh report about former Alaska governor Sarah Palin's current book tour.
As you can see, anchor Gregg Jarrett says Palin is "continuing to draw huge crowds" -- as the old video rolls:
The Swamp got this comment from the cable news network:
"This was a production error in which the copy editor changed a script and didn't alert the control room to update the video,'' Michael Clemente, senior vice president of news at FOX, sad this evening. "There will be an on-air explanation during Happening Now on Thursday."
It doesn't seem as if Palin needs help in making the case that her book tour is drawing enthusiastic crowds. Politico reports that her stop in Grand Rapids, Mich., yesterday drew thousands of people.
NPR's David Schaper was there, and found Palin fans who had waited more than 12 hours to see the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee:
Staffers of the defunct Washington Blade plan to publish their own newspaper. (Nicholas Kamm / AFP/Getty Images)
By Frank James
The staff of the 40-year old Washington Blade, the nation's oldest gay newspaper, which was shuttered by its parent company Sunday, plans to put out a new publication for the gay community in the nation's capital.
Kevin Naff, who was editor of the Blade, disclosed the plan Tuesday in a conversation with NPR's Melissa Block, an All Things Considered host.
MELISSA: What happens to the Blade? Is it going to rise again?
NAFF: The Blade will not but the staff will. We have already met to lay plans for anew publication. I can't announce the name just yet.
MELISSA: Oh, please
NAFF: (Laughs) But we're working on it. Reporters have their assignment. Photographers have their assignment. Salespeople are making calls. And we are very much actively working to launch a new publication with the same staff intact. We met today and we will be putting out a modest publication this Friday.
It's not often that you see a guest on the Larry King Show scold the host for asking a question the guest doesn't like, then remove her microphone and threaten to walk off the set.
But Carrie Prejean, the former beauty queen who made headlines with her anti-gay marriage answer during the Miss USA 2009 pageant, did exactly that to the CNN host after he asked her for details about her legal settlement with pageant officials.
After repeatedly telling King that his questions were inappropriate, when he took an audience member's call, she took off her lapel microphone as though she intended to leave the set.
Prejean, who has become a celebrity of sorts in conservative circles, didn't leave and got mic'ed up again. It all made for some fairly awkward and weird TV.
Needless to say, her approach to an interview is a little different than what we're used to seeing although it apparently works for her.
John King is to get the 7 pm ET time slot on CNN that was just vacated by Lou Dobbs.
King, who earned a well-deserved reputation as one of the best political reporters in the nation's capital, has been the host of CNN's Sunday program State of the Union. Many viewers will recognize him as the youthful though grey and white-haired journalist who's able to get CNN's electronic "magic wall" to do all kinds of nifty tricks to display scads of useful demographic and electoral information.
Jon Klein, CNN/US president, underscored in his announcement the reason why King will take over the key evening time slot and why the uber-opinionated Dobbs is history:
"The program will reflect what CNN is all about: straight facts from our anchors and the widest range of opinions from across the political spectrum," said Klein. "John has enthralled CNN viewers with his vast political knowledge, and he has spent the past year reporting from beyond the Beltway on pressing policy issues and the real people they impact. Every night, he'll share his passion and his insights about what is really going on in Washington and across America."
Lou Dobbs, the last of the original anchors at CNN, is leaving the news network where he has spent most of the last 30 years.
CNN's Lou Dobbs is leaving the network to pursue other opportunities. (KAREN BLEIER / AFP/Getty Images)
In a surprise announcement, Dobbs said Wednesday evening's Lou Dobbs Tonight program would be his last for the network.
Dobbs, who has been controversial because of his hard-line position on illegal immigration and government spending, left the impression that his departure was of his own choosing.
Dobbs said:
Over the past six months it's become increasingly clear that strong winds of change have begun buffeting this country and affecting all of us. And some leaders in media, politics and business have been urging me to go beyond the role here at CNN and to engage in constructive problem solving as well as to contribute positively to a better understanding of the great issues of our day. And to continue to do so in the most honest and direct language possible. I've talked extensively with Jonathan Klein, Jon's the president of CNN and as a result of those talks Jon and I have agreed to a release from my contract that will enable me to pursue new opportunities.
Dave Folkenflik, NPR's media reporter, reports that Dobbs didn't tell the whole story. There had been tensions between the anchor and his bosses for months:
Dobbs was one of the few figures left from CNN's founding -- he was a financial news anchor but became a populist pundit opposed to illegal immigration and government expansion and more recently against President Obama.
That caused conflict within CNN. The network, a ratings laggard, has been trying to distinguish itself from its more openly ideological cable news rivals by promoting what it says is unbiased journalism. CNN has now released Dobbs from his contract.
Jon Stewart and his Daily Show crew happened to notice something a little strange about video Fox News' Sean Hannity used to illustrate an interview with Rep. Michele Bachmann about last week's Capitol Hill health-care protest by conservatives.
As Stewart points out, some of the video Hannity used appears not to have been recorded at last week's event but in September when a far larger crowd of Tea Partiers converged on the nation's capital. Glenn Beck used the same video two months ago to illustrate just how large the crowds of protesters were. Interesting...
(Warning: Stewart stops just short of using a common expletive in this video. Still, you can tell what he's saying; it's the kind of language we tell our kids never to use. But Stewart's Hannity catch is good enough to override my disappointment over his potty mouth.)
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is at war against Google. He's fed up with Google's search engine is serving up the journalistic content of his new outlets without any compensation.
So he is talking increasingly about blocking Google searches once his newspapers go behind a pay wall.
In an interview with Sky News Australia, the mogul said that newspapers in his media empire -- including the Sun, the Times and the Wall Street Journal -- would consider blocking Google entirely once they had enacted plans to charge people for reading their stories on the web.
In recent months, Murdoch his lieutenants have stepped up their war of words with Google, accusing it of "kleptomania" and acting as a "parasite" for including News Corp content in its Google News pages. But asked why News Corp executives had not chosen to simply remove their websites entirely from Google's search indexes -- a simple technical operation -- Murdoch said just such a move was on the cards.
"I think we will, but that's when we start charging," he said. "We have it already with the Wall Street Journal. We have a wall, but it's not right to the ceiling. You can get, usually, the first paragraph from any story - but if you're not a paying subscriber to WSJ.com all you get is a paragraph and a subscription form."
There was a dust-up in the newsroom of The Washington Post last Friday, when a Style section editor, Henry Allen, apparently got very offended by something said by one of the reporters, Manuel Roig-Franzia.
Macy's probably has Yankees ads ready too. (David J. Phillip/AP)
By Mark Memmott
At least it was an ad -- not a story in the sports section:
Editions of The Philadelphia Inquirer today include a Macy's ad that congratulates the hometown Phillies on being "Back to Back World Series Champions."
The only problem, of course, is that the Phillies trail the New York Yankees three-games-to-one in the fall classic. Game five -- which could give the Yankees the championship -- is scheduled for tonight in Philadelphia.
The three-quarter page ad on the back of Tuesday's front section features a T-shirt emblazoned with the Phillies logo, the Commissioner's Trophy and the phrase "Back To Back World Series Champions." ... Confident fans still anticipating a Phillies win may need to temper their purchasing expectations, however. The ad contains a small disclaimer at the bottom: "Advertised items may not be at your local Macy's."
By this morning, the survey in that post had attracted nearly 750,000 votes and the post had more than 1,100 comments.
I wrote earlier this morning in an update to that entry:
Thanks to all those who were inspired to vote. As Raw Story explains, the poll touched off a competition. That's a good thing, in my opinion. These kinds of surveys aren't meant to be scientific. They're intended to stimulate discussion and give folks another way to express themselves. We certainly accomplished that.
Now, can I make a small request? Perhaps some who came here to vote and comment could come back to The Two-Way on occasion and contribute again to the discussions? We value your input.
As you can see, there are now more than 1.1 million votes on the survey and 2,100 comments with this post.
We've also received several hundred e-mails. Here's a representative sample:
-- Chuck Parker: "Conservatives should be allowed to have one Network on their side, that being FOX since the libs have ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC acting as unpaid mouth pieces for Obama."
-- Wendy Glenn: " WE LOVE FOX. They tell it like it is and we make up our mind. It is a REAL news station. From loyal patriotic Arizona Ranchers!"
-- Paul Ingram: "NPR should be more objective instead of being a mouthpiece for the Obama administration, What a great opportunity you have of education and spreading truth to the population , taking neither side in any political dispute. Just the unvarnished facts."
-- Lyn Underdahl: "Fox News provides the opportunity for its listeners to be informed about all the issues. President Obama wants it 'His way or the highway'. Fox News has taken in on the 'high way' by encouraging Americans to get involved in what is being said, what is happening and those in charge who dictate what will become law. The talent of the News staff @ Fox is very credible. Hats off to all of you at Fox News! You make a difference in our World. Thank you for caring about about your listeners."
Many e-mailers wanted to make sure we knew that there had been an online effort, fueled by e-mail chains and blogs, among Fox News fans to "win" the poll. John Plotkin said he had received an e-mail from conservative "friends," urging that he vote in the survey. "If you think your poll results are accurate, think again," Plotkin added.
As I noted on Saturday, this isn't a scientific survey. It's an online poll that successfully got folks talking about a very interesting story.
Thanks again to all those who've taken part. We hope to keep hearing from you.
Those of us who've read and/or worked at newspapers for many (many!) years understood the news wouldn't be good. Here's the grim summary from the Associated Press:
Figures released Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations show that average daily circulation dropped 10.6% in the April-September period from the same six-month span in 2008. That was greater than the 7.1% decline in the October 2008-March 2009 period and the 4.6% drop in the April-September period of 2008.
Editor & Publisher has the facts on the nation's top 25 dailies. As it also notes, this blogger's old employer -- USA TODAY -- lost the No. 1 spot to The Wall Street Journal.
Also last week it was NPR's David Folkenflik reporting that "the White House is taking direct aim at Fox News, the news organization that is the home to the most potent collection of its conservative critics."
Update at 8:50 a.m. ET, Nov. 2: Another update on the response to this post.
As you can see, there are now more than 1.1 million votes on the survey and 2,100 comments with this post.
We've also received several hundred e-mails. Here's a representative sample:
-- Chuck Parker: "Conservatives should be allowed to have one Network on their side, that being FOX since the libs have ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC acting as unpaid mouth pieces for Obama."
-- Wendy Glenn: " WE LOVE FOX. They tell it like it is and we make up our mind. It is a REAL news station. From loyal patriotic Arizona Ranchers!"
-- Paul Ingram: "NPR should be more objective instead of being a mouthpiece for the Obama administration, What a great opportunity you have of education and spreading truth to the population , taking neither side in any political dispute. Just the unvarnished facts."
-- Lyn Underdahl: "Fox News provides the opportunity for its listeners to be informed about all the issues. President Obama wants it 'His way or the highway'. Fox News has taken in on the 'high way' by encouraging Americans to get involved in what is being said, what is happening and those in charge who dictate what will become law. The talent of the News staff @ Fox is very credible. Hats off to all of you at Fox News! You make a difference in our World. Thank you for caring about about your listeners."
Many e-mailers wanted to make sure we knew that there had been an online effort, fueled by e-mail chains and blogs, among Fox News fans to "win" the poll. John Plotkin said he had received an e-mail from conservative "friends," urging that he vote in the survey. "If you think your poll results are accurate, think again," Plotkin added.
As I noted on Saturday, this isn't a scientific survey. It's an online poll that successfully got folks talking about a very interesting story.
Thanks again to all those who've taken part. We hope to keep hearing from you.
Update at 7 a.m., Oct. 31: I would like to say thanks to all those who were inspired to vote. As Raw Story explains, the poll touched off a competition. That's a good thing, in my opinion. These kinds of surveys aren't meant to be scientific. They're intended to stimulate discussion and give folks another way to express themselves. We certainly accomplished that.
Now, can I make a small request? Perhaps some who came here to vote and comment could come back on occasion and contribute again to the discussions? We value your input.
What should be the queen of all media's first question for the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee?
-- Will you run for president in 2012?
-- Why did you resign as governor?
-- Have you spoken to Sen. McCain lately?
Feel free to use the comments thread to offer other suggestions.
And we wonder what you think about the Palin-Winfrey sit-down (which, if it goes on as planned, comes just a day before the former governor's memoir hits bookstores):
Yesterday, Rush went after the "scum" in the news media who have used a quote about slavery that's been attributed to him when reporting about the Rams bid. Rush says he never said it (the gist of the alleged quote was that slavery had its "merits").
Let's go along for the full ride and believe that it was all a horrible "fabrication."
So what are we left with?
Well, essentially, I think we just threw a deck chair off the Titanic.
There is still a huge pile of polarizing, bigoted debris stacked up on the deck of the good ship Limbaugh that he can't deny or even remotely distance himself from.
Bloomberg L.P. has agreed to buy BusinessWeek magazine from McGraw-Hill Cos. The sales price wasn't disclosed.
Tom Koller, who lost his accounting job in December, reads BusinessWeek as he stands in line with hundreds of others seeking jobs in March in the Miami, Fla. area. (Joe Raedle / Getty Images)
But it probably wasn't a lot, relatively speaking, since the magazine has been losing money as the result of the collapse in the advertising for many print publications and the inability to find a business model to make money on the Internet.
An excerpt from a press release from the buying and selling companies:
"I am very proud of the tremendous contributions BusinessWeek has made to The McGraw-Hill Companies throughout its rich history. It is a truly outstanding franchise and the best source of business reporting in the world," said Harold McGraw III, chairman, president and chief executive officer of The McGraw-Hill Companies. "We are pleased that we have reached an agreement for BusinessWeek to be acquired by Bloomberg, which shares the same high standards for editorial independence, integrity and excellence that have long defined
BusinessWeek."
"BusinessWeek will be a powerful addition to our portfolio of leading news and information services," said Peter T. Grauer, chairman of Bloomberg L.P. "BusinessWeek is one of the business world's most recognized and trusted sources of news and insight, and we believe that it will be highly valued by our customers worldwide."
Just hours after Britain's The Guardianpublished a very unusual story about how it had been "prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights," the gag has been lifted.
"The existence of a previously secret injunction against the media by oil traders Trafigura can now be revealed," The Guardian now writes.
It appears the legal firm representing a company accused of dumping toxic waste in Ivory Coast has withdrawn its objection to The Guardian reporting that a member of parliament wants an explanation for why information about the dumping case was being suppressed.
As The Guardian notes:
The right to report (on) parliament was the subject of many struggles in the 18th century, with the MP and journalist John Wilkes fighting every authority -- up to the king -- over the right to keep the public informed. After Wilkes's battle, wrote the historian Robert Hargreaves, 'it gradually became accepted that the public had a constitutional right to know what their elected representatives were up to.' "
Horia Cretan, the Romanian immigrant store owner who went up the fire escape of a burning Bronx tenement building certainly deserves credit for helping to rescue a four-year old boy who was overcome by smoke.
It makes for great TV. CNN has been showing the video much of the day, for instance.
But in the rush to lionize a new citizen hero, some of my media colleagues appear to be neglecting the role played by the New York Fire Department. It was, after all, a firefighter wearing a respirator who was inside the apartment and found the boy and brought him to the window.
As the Associated Press reported:
A firefighter handed him a limp, unconscious 4-year-old. Using a curtain as a shield from falling debris, Cretan carried the boy to safety.
Cretan was on Good Morning America today where, in another dramatic move, he proposed to his girlfriend. She accepted. What else can you do on live TV?
Anyway, this is clearly a feel-good story, with the child recovering at a hospital.
There's a saying: never let the facts get in the way of a good story. This is one where the fact that a firefighter was actually the rescuer may be getting in the way of this particular feel-good story.
It's arguably less dramatic to have the firefighter be the rescuer since that's his job. But it appears that's what happened.
Cable TV giant Comcast Corp. calls reports that it has agreed to buy NBC Universal for $35 billion "inaccurate," Reuters says.
As the wire service adds, though:
Comcast stopped short of quashing speculation it was interested in NBC Universal, which is owned 80% by General Electric Co. and 20% by French media group Vivendi SA.
NBC Universal, which owns TV networks including NBC, USA and CNBC, along with local TV stations, Universal Studios and theme parks, is valued at between $21 billion and $23 billion, according to a recent report from research firm Sanford C. Bernstein. Another analysis, from J.P. Morgan, pegs NBC Universal's value at $30 billion to $35 billion, valuing Vivendi's investment as high as $7 billion.
The news outlet that has laid claim to the "exclusive" news about the purported deal is still pumping the story. The Wrap, which reports on the entertainment and media businesses, broke the story yesterday afternoon.
Timothy Joseph Russert, father of the late Meet the Press moderator Tim Russert, died Thursday night from natural causes at the age of 85. A statement from the family said he passed away peacefully with relatives by his side.
As the Buffalo News writes, the younger Tim's 2004 book Big Russ & Me: Father and Son -- Lessons of Life was a bestseller that "chronicled the life of the man who Tim Russert said steered him through life with his scrappy South Buffalo wisdom and salt-of-the-earth Irish Catholic values."
A heart attack killed NBC's Russert two days before Father's Day in 2008.
He was a son of privilege, the heir to a family fortune, a man whose life, in other hands, might have been measured in dollars and cents.
Instead, Frank Batten forged a legacy not on what he made but what he created.
From errand boy he rose to publisher of The Virginian-Pilot and its afternoon sister, then parlayed his newspapers into an adventuresome media company with global reach. He helped lead the fight for integrated schools in Norfolk, midwifed Old Dominion University into being, commanded The Associated Press and its far-flung correspondents, and defied a legion of doubters to create The Weather Channel.
According to the AP, Batten died after a "prolonged illness." The wire service also writes that:
In the late 1950s, when Norfolk closed its schools rather than integrate them, Batten (then the Virginian-Pilot's publisher) and other community leaders ran a full-page newspaper advertisement urging city officials to reopen them. Virginian-Pilot editor Lenoir Chambers won a Pulitzer Prize in 1960 for a series of editorials on the situation.
Newsman Walter Cronkite is being remembered this morning at New York City's Lincoln Center with a memorial service that will include tributes from President Barack Obama and former president Bill Clinton.
The longtime CBS Evening News anchor died on July 17. He was 92.
The Hartford Courant's publisher apologized Friday for what appears to have been the wholesale plagiarizing by his newspaper of local stories from other Connecticut papers.
Here's the message from Richard J. Graziano in its entirety:
The Hartford Courant is America's oldest continuously published newspaper. We've been in business for 245 years. We've earned a reputation for integrity and we take it very seriously. Throughout our history we have served the community by highlighting wrongdoing and violations of ethics when we find them. It is only right that we focus the same light on ourselves when we are wrong.
So, it's incumbent upon me as publisher to tell you that we failed to meet our own standards and, as we would with anyone else, we are flagging it, calling it wrong and taking action.
In short, after an extensive internal review, we have determined that over the last several weeks The Courant plagiarized the work of some of our competitors. This was not our intent, but it is in fact what happened. We are taking corrective action to prevent it from happening again. We have also disciplined the individuals involved.
It has not been an easy decision to make. This has been my professional home for almost 35 years. And I love this news department, and all who work in it, to the depths of my soul.
It looks like the New York Postbroke the news. As it notes:
Sawyer, 63, now becomes the second woman to anchor an evening newscast-- joining Katie Couric, who's been anchoring the CBS Evening News since September 2006.
Gibson, 66, has anchored World News since May 2006, when he replaced Elizabeth Vargas and Bob Woodruff, who'd been severely injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq four months before.
As TVNewser faithfully reports each week, the old-guard TV network news shows' ratings go like this: NBC's Nightly News at No. 1; ABC at No. 2; and CBS at No. 3.
"We were firmly back inside China" when North Korean soldiers took them into custody, Current TV reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee say in their first extended account of the events that led to their five months of captivity in the North.
According to the reporters, their guide led them across a frozen river last March 17. Fearing that they were about to cross over the border from China to North Korea, the women say, they turned around:
Feeling nervous about where we were, we quickly turned back toward China. Midway across the ice, we heard yelling. We looked back and saw two North Korean soldiers with rifles running toward us. Instinctively, we ran.
We were firmly back inside China when the soldiers apprehended us. Producer Mitch Koss and our guide were both able to outrun the border guards. We were not. We tried with all our might to cling to bushes, ground, anything that would keep us on Chinese soil, but we were no match for the determined soldiers. They violently dragged us back across the ice to North Korea and marched us to a nearby army base, where we were detained. Over the next 140 days, we were moved to Pyongyang, isolated from one another, repeatedly interrogated and eventually put on trial and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor.
The Associated Press notes that "Lee and Ling said that while they were in detention, they swallowed their notes, damaged their videotapes and made other efforts to protect the identities of their sources."
The women were released last month after former president Bill Clinton made a trip to Pyongyang and met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. They made this video to thank those who had worked for their release:
Here's a YouTube video you're likely to see go viral. CNBC's Maria Bartiromo, one of the financial news channel's star anchors and its original "money honey," apparently needs to bone up on Medicare. Seems she didn't know this basic fact: that it's for Americans over 65.
In a debate with Rep. Anthony Weiner, a New York Democrat on MSNBC today, she interjected while he was defending the government run health care program for seniors:
BARTIROMO: How come you don't use it? You don't have it. How come you don't have it?
WEINER: Because I'm not 65. I would love it.
For the record, Weiner's birthday is just days away, Sept. 4. He will be 45 years old.
According to Stars and Stripes, a private contractor has provided the American military with profiles of journalists in Afghanistan. The newspaper also says that The Rendon Group gave the Defense Department daily ratings of their coverage, and that the military uses the information to decide who gets interviews, and who is allowed to embed with troops in the field.
NPR's JJ Sutherland, one of our Pentagon reporters, talked to a military spokesman today, who told him that "the profiles are not used to determine whether a reporter gets an interview or an embed with U.S. forces. Rather, they're to familiarize commanders with whom they're talking to."
This week, perhaps more than any other, the president is pretty easy to track down: He's on Martha's Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts, with his family and a handful of friends. (On an island, he can't stray too far.)
Usually, it's not so easy to figure out where President Obama is, what he's doing, and who he's talking to. He could be traveling, meeting with foreign leaders, or grabbing a burger with the vice president.
The Washington Post has made it easier to follow the president's schedule, if you're interested. With "POTUS Tracker," you can "track how Obama is spending his time, what issues are getting the most attention and who is influencing the debate." You can sort events by date, subject matter, attendees and location.
You could argue that this sort of exhaustive focus on the White House exacerbates the widespread belief that the president is more powerful than he actually is. And, as with all large amalgamations of data, it??s important not to be too impressed by the sense of comprehensiveness or certainty it conveys. Still, a dose of quantitative, data-oriented thinking can be a helpful corrective to our subjective impressions about Obama??s priorities.
This week we learned that Jayson Blair, the one-time New York Times reporter who rocked the "Gray Lady" when it was discovered in 2003 that as a journalist he invented stories wholesale and plagiarized, has re-invented himself as a certified life coach.
Jayson Blair in 2004. (Jennifer Szymaszek / AP Photo)
Blair, 33, has been living quietly in the Washington, D.C. suburbs and working in his current role for two years.
Blair, who reportedly suffers from bipolar disorder and has had substance abuse problems, was fortunate to find someone who has given him a second chance despite of his notoriety.
Michael Oberschneider who runs Ashburn Psychological Services in Northern Virginia, threw Blair a lifeline.
"He can relate to patients just beautifully," said Michael Oberschneider, the psychologist who hired Blair and urged him to become a life coach. "Sometimes you just meet people in life who have these electric personalities. Well, Jayson is now using his talents for good."
Oberschneider, director of Ashburn Psychological Services, took an interest in Blair after seeing him lead a support group for people with bipolar disorder that Blair founded in his hometown of Centreville after being diagnosed himself.
CBS News is reporting only a headline right now on the death of Don Hewitt, the creator of 60 Minutes, one of television's most successful programs ever. He was 86 years old and died of pancreatic cancer.
He was one of the most influential people in modern TV. Along with Walter Cronkite who died last month, Hewitt helped define CBS News during what many would call the golden age of network TV journalism.
An excerpt from his bio on CBSnews.com. Also, the Archive of American Television has a very informative interview with him on YouTube.
Hewitt is best known for 60 Minutes, the groundbreaking news broadcast he created in 1968 and stepped down from as its executive producer in June 2004. It remains the most popular television program in history, making the top-10 list for an unprecedented 23 straight seasons - a record five of them as the number-one broadcast. It is still the number-one news program.
For these contributions to television news, Hewitt was honored with the Edward R. Murrow Award from Washington State University in 2007 and the second annual Lifetime Achievement Emmy presented by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in September 2003.
Hewitt is credited with creating the newsmagazine format, a successful and much-copied style of news broadcast for which 60 Minutes was the prototype. For this innovation and for his years of leadership on 60 Minutes, he was awarded the Founders Emmy by the International Council of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 1995. When presenting this award to Hewitt, then-ABC News President Roone Arledge said: "His real monument is 60 Minutes. He is truly an innovator in this business. I still believe Don deserves the credit for it [the idea of the newsmagazine format]; it is an innovative format no one had done before. It's been copied all over the world, including several times by us. He's been a leader in our industry. He has inspired all sorts of people."
Maybe if reporters went to more of the town halls being held around the country by members of Congress they would see that not every one ends with "pushing, shoving and yelling" over health care reform, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said today.
It was the second day in a row that things got a bit testy during Gibbs' daily briefing on the subject of the town halls and whether the news media are presenting a complete picture of what's happening at them -- Gibbs thinks not.
As you can hear, the exchange ends with Gibbs advising New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg to "attend a couple" town halls next week -- to which she responds that her plans next week are to be traveling with the president:
There hasn't been much good news about the newspaper business in the past couple years. Staffs have been shrunk. Bureaus have been closed. Some papers have simply folded.
As NPR's David Folkenflik reported on Morning Edition, at Columbia University's journalism school, news executives have been gathering to share their troubles and hopefully learn from each other:
But for those who still love newspapers there is a hopeful story to pass along today. As The New York Times reports, out in Seattle there's a newspaper turning a profit. The Seattle Times has prospered since the March closing of the Post-Intelligencer and is now, according to its chief executive, in the black. According to the NYT:
The Times has improved its prospects by picking up most P-I subscribers and managing to keep them so far. It says its daily circulation rose more than 30 percent, to more than 260,000 in June, from about 200,000.
The day after a teen drowned in the treacherous riptides off Rockaway Beach, this lifeguard appeared totally oblivious to the dangers there -- wearing iPod headphones on the job yesterday in clear violation of city Parks Department rules.
The story has officials promising an investigation.
While most of the so-called mainstream news media have scaled back their operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and just about every other place in the world, the University of Alaska at Fairbanks' journalism department this week is sending three students and a professor to "embed" with U.S. troops northeast of Baghdad.
As The Chronicle of Higher Education puts it, "the journalism department at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks will soon have more reporters in Iraq than many major American newspapers."
At The Daily Eagle in 1971. From left to right: Sports Editor Lawrence "Poody" Walsh, reporter John Merwin, city hall reporter Georgia Croft, Women's Page Editor (this was before the term "lifestyles" took hold) Gayle Goddard, and Managing Editor Arthur "Archie" Mountain. Art Silverman/Daily Eagle reporter-photographer
By Art Silverman
A newspaper died today after a long illness -- the same one afflicting newspapers everywhere. But some self-inflicted wounds certainly hastened its demise.
The National Eagle was born in Claremont, N.H., in 1834. It later became the more modest and more realistic Daily Eagle. Since the 1970s it had been known as the Eagle-Times.
On its deathbed, the paper was attended by some 8,000 readers who depended on it to report on city council meetings, fires, club meetings, police reports.
It was not a great newspaper, but it was at one time pretty good. And to the community it served on both sides of the Connecticut River that separates Vermont from New Hampshire, it was a necessity.
To the people, such as myself, who worked there, it was a calling and a training ground. The current staff found out about the end in a short, terse e-mail yesterday afternoon. "We're filing for Chapter Seven Bankruptcy protection. Turn in your keys. Don't come back."
Like most eulogies, this one will, of course, be as much about myself as the deceased:
The online videos and tweets coming out of Iran the past two weeks have proved again that "citizen journalism" can be powerful.
Want to join the world of online reporting?
There's a new place on the Web designed to help would-be citizen journalists learn how to do that. The YouTube Reporters' Center went live today. Here's the mission and a short video about it:
The YouTube Reporters' Center is a new resource to help you learn more about how to report the news. It features some of the nation's top journalists and news organizations sharing instructional videos with tips and advice for better reporting.
Among those veteran journalists sharing their expertise is NPR's own Scott Simon, of Weekend Edition:
Washington pundits watch the politicians but who watches the pundits?
That question has a new answer, thanks to a new feature by Politifact, the Pulitzer Prize winning web site run by the St. Petersburg Times.
For instance, Politifact looks at a statement by Fox News celebrity Bill O'Reilly related to Dr. George Tiller, the physician killed in Wichita, Ks. allegedly by a man opposed to the doctor's providing late-term abortion services.
Politifact sums up his statement: "Says he didn't call Dr. George Tiller a baby killer, as liberal groups charge, but was merely reporting what "some prolifers branded him," and says it is "false." It adds "O'Reilly's statements indicate it was his opinion, not that of others."
Like many NPR correspondents, I often hear from listeners.
This ranks among the most unusual responses:
A New York artist, Kenneth E. Parris III, says he was inspired to create something called the "Interrogation Pillow Series" by a series we did last year about a secret World War II interrogation camp in Northern Virginia.
Parris says he was tired of all the gruesome images from Abu Ghraib, but still wanted to get people thinking about torture. He was struck by the more benign methods WWII veterans said they used with great success on German prisoners brought to the U.S. in the 1940s.
The veterans told NPR they sometimes got their best information just by being nice. They even took the prisoners out to dinner and made sure they had the latest magazines.
So Parris created nine pillows, each depicting an "interrogation" technique mentioned in the NPR series.
For example, one pillow shows a man playing tennis and the words: "Interrogation Method #1 'Challenge the prisoner to a tennis match.' " Parris says he sold the series at an art show in New York this spring for $7,000. He wants to do more, but he has to find someone to make the pillows.
His mother sewed the first set and isn't keen on doing it again.
One of the hottest debates in the blogosphere since the murder Sunday of Dr. George Tiller has been about the things that Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly has said regarding the doctor and the late-term abortions Tiller performed over the years.
Liberal blogs, such as Booman Tribune, say that O'Reilly's rhetoric about Tiller over the years was irresponsible and stoked the anger aimed at Tiller. Conservative blogs, such as Pajamas Media, say the liberal side is guilty of "massive hyprocisy and lazy, subjective reasoining."
On last night's O'Reilly Factor, Bill said that "clear-thinking Americans" should condemn Tiller's murder and that he "knew that pro-abortion zealots and Fox News haters would attempt to blame us for the crime." Here's his commentary, in which he adds that "every single tthing we said about Tiller was true":
Looking to get its message out in a bid to offset Taliban and al-Qaida propaganda and reach a wider audience without the "filter" of the news media, the U.S. military in Afghanistan has launched webpages on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
Already, the USForces twitter page has been used by officials to announced the death of a U.S. soldier (from non-combat injuries) and to post such news as the killing of four militants by Afghan and coalition forces in Wardak Province. Col. Gregory Julian, public affairs officer for U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, has a Twitter page of his own as well.
There's similar news at the USFOR Facebook page, along with reports about rebuilding projects and messages from friends and relatives of U.S. personnel serving in Afghanistan.
And then there's the U.S. Forces-Afghanistan YouTube page. It's new and hasn't gotten a lot of traffic yet. Among the handful of videos there, the most popular so far is Drug bust, Afghanistan-style, with about 150 views so far:
Julian tells the Associated Press that the military recognizes that "there's an entire audience segment that seeks its news from alternative means outside traditional news sources, and we want to make sure we're engaging them as well."
Maybe the following story is just another example of the trouble that can occur when schools fail to teach students history or critical thinking:
WARREN, Pa. (AP) - A northwestern Pennsylvania newspaper is apologizing for running a classified advertisement calling for the assassination of President Barack Obama.
Warren Times Observer Publisher John Elchert says the ad appeared Thursday. It read, "May Obama follow in the steps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy!" The four presidents were all assassinated.
Elchert tells The Associated Press that the newspaper's advertising staff didn't make the historical connection. He says the newspaper turned information over to police and that
the Secret Service is investigating the person who placed the ad.
A note in Friday's paper says the newspaper "apologizes for the oversight."
How could anyone in the advertising office have seen this ad and not connected the dots? It's a truly astonishing mistake for a newspaper staff to make. It goes without saying it shows a real weakness in quality control. It almost takes your breath away.
This is NPR's news blog. It's a place to come for breaking news, analysis and for stories that are just too interesting — or too entertaining — to pass up.
It's also a place for conversation about the news; we're counting on you to keep us honest. But please read the discussion rules before diving in.
