CJR.ORG — October 31, 2005
In the flow of bad news engulfing the Bush administration last week was the coincidental fact that the 2,000th military death in Iraq happened to fall on exactly the same day as the Iraqi constitution was officially passed.
The constitution story, though appearing on many front pages, paled in placement and headline [...]
Entries from October 2005
October 31, 2005
On Bad News and Good News From Iraq
October 28, 2005
Rove is Dead; Long Live Rove!
CJR.ORG — October 28, 2005
If you’re wondering whether special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald might still be going after Karl Rove, our nation’s papers aren’t going to help you out.
Here’s what the New York Times headlined its breaking news bulletin on its Web site (emphasis ours):
October 28, 2005
Seeing Red
FORWARD — October 28, 2005
When the Chinese Communist Revolution finally came to eat one of its most devoted and passionate children, Israel Epstein, on a spring night in Beijing in 1968, the transplanted Russian Jew and prolific propagandist was suddenly, for the first time, pricked by doubt.
Sitting in a tiny jail cell as the Great [...]
October 26, 2005
When a Number Isn’t Just a Number – and When It Is
CJR.ORG — October 26, 2005
Yesterday’s announcement of the 2,000th military casualty in Iraq brought with it the predictable news accounts of the number. And where the press saw itself highlighting an important marker in the Iraq war, many conservatives saw it as obvious politicization of an arbitrary figure (made all the more acute by the [...]
October 25, 2005
Getting It Right on Rosa Parks
CJR.ORG — October 25, 2005
There’s probably no civil rights figure whose story was more clouded by myth. Rosa Parks, who died yesterday, has been interpreted and reinterpreted over the years. Maybe this was because her role in the movement was both as a human and as a symbol, a woman remembered for one defiant act [...]
October 24, 2005
The Rebirth of Body Counts
CJR.ORG — October 24, 2005
During the war in Vietnam, one of the signs that the government wasn’t leveling with the public was the exaggerated body count produced daily by the military high command in Saigon. When, after years of inflated enemy death tolls, the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong caught U.S. forces off-guard in [...]
October 21, 2005
Michael Kirk on Torture, “Frontline” and Rumsfeld
CJR.ORG — October 21, 2005
Last Tuesday, the much-acclaimed PBS show “Frontline” debuted a new documentary, “The Question of Torture,” which took a comprehensive look at how the rules of interrogation and prisoner treatment have shifted since September 11th, a reality made obvious in the infamous photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison that emerged two [...]
October 20, 2005
Fitzmas Frenzy
CJR.ORG — October 20, 2005
As we enter “Fitzmas” Season — yes, that’s the word mostly lefty bloggers are using to describe the early Christmas they expect once Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald announces his indictments — the blogosphere is a frenzy of accusations, rumors, finger-pointing, and more rumors. In other words, everything the Internet was [...]
October 19, 2005
Saddam Hussein? Or Body Double?
CJR.ORG — October 19, 2005
All eyes today were on a courtroom in Baghdad where behind a barrier of white metal bars sat Saddam Hussein, in what he called “his best clothes,” his hair as jet black as always (are they still letting him dye it?). Despite the dramatic setting, nothing really happened aside from the [...]
October 18, 2005
It’s Not Just What You Know, It’s How You Know
CJR.ORG — October 18, 2005
If sometimes it seems like pundits and politicians can see what they want to when looking at Iraq, either fledgling democracy or catastrophic failure, it has to be at least partly due to the murkiness of even the most basic news reports from the region.
This morning offered a perfect example of [...]
