Bill Keller's First Year as Editor-What Some Outside Experts Think - August 6, 2004 - TimesWatch.org
Times Watch for August 6, 2004
Bill
Keller's First Year as Editor-What Some Outside Experts Think
Last week marked the first
anniversary of Bill Keller's run as executive editor of the New York Times,
replacing the high-caffeine liberal activism of Howell Raines. Times Watch asked
a couple of Times critics if anything's changed at the paper under Keller's
watch. Here's what they said:
Donald Luskin (website:
The
Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid):
Under Howell Raines, the New York Times stood naked,
and all the world could see its liberal agenda. Under Bill Keller's more careful
and crafty leadership, the liberal agenda is still there-but it has been hidden
behind a fig leaf.
A key example is the hiring of "public editor" Dan
Okrent in December 2003. Okrent's criticisms of the Times have been so careful,
limited and elliptically worded that they can scarcely be called criticisms at
all. When asked "Is the Times a liberal paper," he answers "Of course it is."
But it turns out that it all depends what the meaning of "is" is. Okrent can't
bring himself to speak the obvious truth that every news story on the
presidency, politics, the war and the economy is slanted left. He has reserved
his harshest criticisms for the Times' pre-war treatment of intelligence on
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction-the one tiny example of the Times agreeing
with the Bush administration. In other
words, in that one case, the Times wasn't liberal enough.
Robert Cox (website:
The National Debate):
It is perhaps telling that the most significant,
positive changes at The Times during the "Keller Era" have nothing to do with
Keller-the implementation of recommendations contained in the Siegal Commission
report which includes the hiring of Dan Okrent, the paper's first-ever
ombudsman. In my opinion, the problems at The New York Times are systemic,
business strategy problems that have nothing to with Bill Keller and everything
to do with publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. The paper has made a business
decision to increase its "relevance" by being more aggressive and contentious in
its reporting at the cost of a general decline in journalistic standards. That
decline reached its current nadir several weeks ago when Keller put Elisabeth
Bumiller's story about a rumor concerning Vice President Cheney being replaced
on the GOP ticket on the front page, above the fold. I would like someone at The
Times to explain how that is different than Matt Drudge running a story about an
"intern problem" for John Kerry. So far my inquiries to The Times have gone
unanswered.
Alessandra
Stanley Messes With Texas
TV reporter Alessandra Stanley previews three Texas
documentaries appearing on the Trio cable channel. "Let's mess with Texas," she
says of the documentaries, and she does, or rather, she sniffs at it with
condescension.
"Each documentary takes a
shot at debunking the Texan myth. Yet most are European or American-European
co-productions, and they are a bit seduced by Texas' vestigial cowboy image.
Even the harshest, 'Business, Texas-Style,' a dark German look at the collusion
of business and government in the president's home state, cannot shake a
grudging Sergio Leone fascination with the state swagger. Only 'Fat City,' a
deadpan look at obesity in Texas, has a firm grip on the sedentary, suburban
nature of the Texas way of life. 'Texas: America Supersized' on Sunday is an
introductory tour, sampling everything from high school football to rodeo, gun
nuts and Border Patrol."
Note how Stanley casually
drops in the phrase "gun nuts," as if it's second nature to her.
She actually finds "Texas:
America Supersized" disturbing: "The most disturbing moment in the film is an
interview with a Daughter of the Republic of Texas, an Alamo tour guide in a
frontier bonnet and a calico dress. She cries as she describes the battle site
as sacred ground to Texans and proudly recalls that on Sept. 11 her colleagues
kept the shrine open, defiantly refusing to give in to the terrorists with the
words 'The Alamo will not close.'"
She then lazily refers to
the state's alleged obesity "epidemic," as if obesity actually were a contagious
disease: "'Fat City,' also on Sunday, takes the fabled Texas of tall hats,
rattlesnakes and assault rifles for granted. It zeroes in on the obesity
epidemic, which may well have its center in Houston, a city that has been dubbed
'the fattest place on earth' by Men's Fitness magazine for the last three years.
Two-thirds of Texans are overweight, the film says, and one-third are obese.
Most interestingly, many have no interest in slimming down. Diane Roscoe, who
weighs 625 pounds, cannot walk and gets around by wheelchair with the help of a
home-care assistant. But she is militantly content with her size. 'I'm not going
to change myself for society,' she says".There is still plenty to learn from
these films. It's a small world, but Texas is a big state, and Trio tries to cut
it down to size before the Republican Party puffs it up again for the
president's convention celebrations."
While she faults one
anti-Bush documentary, "Business, Texas Style," for a lack of balance, Stanley
(who was born in Boston and has lived in D.C. and Europe) comes off as a bit
European herself with her Texas-sized condescension.
For the rest of Stanley on
the Texas documentaries,
click here:
"
George W. Bush | Campaign
2004
Europe
Doesn't Believe Bush's Terror Warnings
The Times liked "Europe Takes New Alerts With Grain of
Salt" (which first appeared in the International Herald Tribune, the NYT's
international edition) so much they reprinted it, making sure American readers
know how little Europe respects the Bush administration's terror warnings.
Katrin Bennhold's Friday story relays a German's
suspicions on Bush's political timing: "In a measure of how little the latest
alerts raised concern in Europe, the European Union's counterterrorism director,
Gijs de Vries, remained on vacation. 'If there were a crisis, we would adapt our
security situation, but for the moment that is not considered necessary,' said
Isabel Schmitt-Falckenberg, a spokeswoman at the German Interior Ministry".Some
European counterterrorism experts have said that a highly publicized threat
three months ahead of the presidential elections on Nov. 2 needed special
scrutiny. Rolf Tophoven, director of Germany's Institute for Terrorism Research
and Security Policy, said: 'You shouldn't forget that there is an election
campaign and that in times of crisis people tend to rally around the incumbent
government. This is not a bad thing for Bush.' Mr. Tophoven criticized the
'inflation of terror warnings' in the United States, saying it risks
desensitizing Americans at home and distracting the world from more imminent
terrorist targets elsewhere. 'You have to ask how credible and serious this
latest threat really is,' he said. 'The danger is that repeated warnings are
counterproductive in terms of people's sensibility to terrorism. And the U.S.
must watch out so as to not miss the real terror hot spot.'"
For the rest of Bennhold's story,
click here:
"
George W. Bush | Terrorism
A
"Polarizing" Disney Channel Movie
Anita Gates reviews the Disney Channel movie "Tiger
Cruise." The premise: A Navy carrier is undertaking a tiger cruise, what Gates
calls "the naval equivalent of Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day." But
this one sets sail on Sept. 9, 2001, and two days later the ship is on high
alert.
Gates finds some parts of the movie polarizing;
specifically, the parts that remind her of Bush: "Speaking of weapons of mass
destruction, it's sad that not quite three years after the terrorist attacks,
'Tiger Cruise' feels polarizing rather than patriotic. When Chuck says of the
people who attacked the United States, 'I think we should go after them with
everything we've got,' it takes a minute to remember that he means Osama bin
Laden and Al Qaeda, not Saddam Hussein and Iraq. When, at the end, the children
unfurl a giant American flag on deck, it should be a moment of pride. But it's
hard not to think of another banner on an aircraft carrier, the one that said
'mission accomplished,' more than a year ago."
For the rest of Gates on "Tiger Cruise,"
click here:
"
George W.
Bush | Anita Gates | Iraq War | Television | Terrorism | "Tiger Cruise"
"Searing"
Anti-Bush Scenes from "Fahrenheit 9/11"
David Halbfinger and Neela Banerjee conjure up Michael
Moore for Friday's story from the campaign trail, "Kerry Pitches Energy Plan in
Missouri."
"Mr. Kerry's railroad tour, which ends Monday in
Kingman, Ariz., began after he detoured to Washington by airplane to address a
national convention of minority journalists, where he was asked what would he
have done had he been president on Sept. 11, 2001, if he was reading a story to
a group of schoolchildren when an aide told him that the United States was under
attack. 'I would have told those kids, very politely and nicely,' Mr. Kerry
said, 'that the president of the United States had something that he needed to
attend to.' This was no hypothetical, of course: one of the most searing scenes
in Michael Moore's polemical film 'Fahrenheit 9/11' shows President Bush
continuing to read a story to a class of Florida youngsters for seven minutes
after his chief of staff informed him of the attacks."
For the rest from the Kerry stop,
click here:
"
Neela Banerjee | George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | "Fahrenheit 9/11" | David
Halbfinger | Sen. John Kerry | Michael Moore | Terrorism
