A Little Too Hidden, If You Ask Us

CJR.ORG — September 30, 2005
Two weeks ago we wrote about our concern that little media attention was being paid to a massive hunger strike that had been taken up by over a quarter of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, demanding, among other improvements in their condition, proper legal recourse. At the time, 16 days ago, [...]

Product Placement: It’s Everywhere, It’s Everywhere

CJR.ORG — September 29, 2005
So we were sipping our Starbucks macchiato, sitting in front of our Dell computer, a bottle of crystal clear Evian at our side, when we came upon this headline in the Christian Science Monitor today: “Product placement pushes into print.”
Already, you can’t watch a movie or TV show without seeing some [...]

Setting the Record Straight

CJR.ORG — September 27, 2005
As if the horror of a hurricane sweeping away an American city wasn’t awful enough, in the days after Katrina barreled through New Orleans the press was filled with a man-made story almost as dramatic: the total breakdown of social order. And much of it was centered on the Superdome and [...]

Who Were Those Guys Behind the Curtain?

CJR.ORG — September 26, 2005
Saturday afternoon’s mass anti-war rally in front of the White House was big news in the papers the next day. The Washington Post carried it as the off-lead, while the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times gave it significant, albeit inside, play. And rightly so, for a protest that [...]

But Does It Work

CJR.ORG — September 23, 2005
As part of his address to the nation last week, President Bush, sleeves rolled up in an eerily lit Jackson Square in New Orleans, announced the creation of a Gulf Opportunity Zone as one of the centerpieces of post-Katrina reconstruction. “Within this zone,” he said, “we should provide immediate incentives for [...]

Where Stories Go to Die: Page A23

CJR.ORG — September 22, 2005
Okay, you tell us if this isn’t big news. Look at this lede from the back pages of the Washington Post today:
“The Pentagon has no accurate knowledge of the cost of military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan or the fight against terrorism, limiting Congress’s ability to oversee spending, the Government Accountability Office [...]

Intrepid Scribes Seek Out Signs of Life in Crescent City

CJR.ORG — September 21, 2005
How does one know that civilization has returned to a city that has been all but submerged for weeks? A city where, just last week, corpses littered the streets and starving people were still stranded in waterlogged houses?
Why, when the strippers come back to town, of course!
Or at least when one [...]

Alas, There Were Precious Few to Check

CJR.ORG — September 20, 2008
President Bush announced today — over the protests of disgruntled Democrats — that Francis Fargos Townsend will head an internal White House investigation into the fiasco of the government’s initial response to Hurricane Katrina. Townsend’s job, as the president has put it, is to find out “what went right and what [...]

Katrina Revives an Old Debate

CJR.ORG — September 19, 2005
One of the beauties of the Internet is having, just clicks away, radically divergent views on any given issue. With the reconstruction of New Orleans looming larger every day, the hope — or the specter, depending on your political persuasion — of a New New Deal has commentators producing proliferating punditry.
William [...]

It Must Be True. They Told Us So.

CJR.ORG — September 16, 2005
It’s hard to think of a more unreliable source of information on teenagers’ sex life than — well, than teenagers themselves. Come on. We were all there. The strange brew of low self-esteem, peer pressure and raging hormones doesn’t exactly lend itself to a frank discussion about sexual habits.
Yet today’s papers [...]