Crime Falling, Yet Prisons Still Filling, Part XIX - July 28, 2003
Times Watch for July 28, 2003
Crime Falling, Yet Prisons Still Filling, Part XIX
A teaser on Mondays front
page sent Times
Watch into nostalgic reverie: Prison Population Rises - The nations
prison population grew 2.6 percent last year, the largest increase since 1999.
Researchers found the jump surprising, since serious crime had fallen.
The Times is up to its old
rhetorical tricks. Ever since a September 1997 headline that read Crime Rates
are Falling, but Prisons Keep on Filling, (as if the two trends were unrelated)
the Times has been willfully nave on the connection between more criminals
being in prison and a corresponding drop in the number of crimes being
committed. The prime offender is crime reporter Fox Butterfield, so its no
surprise to turn to page A12 and spy Butterfields byline. Butterfields back
with yet another story where hes unable to grasp the connection between putting
criminals in prison and a fall in the crime rate. The subhead to Butterfields
story reads: More Inmates, Despite Slight Drop in Crime. Butterfields actual
story focuses more on alleged racial disparity in the prison population, but
its nice to know some things never change in Times-land.
For the rest of Fox Butterfields trip down memory
lane,
click here.
FOX BUTTERFIELD
|
CRIME
|
HEADLINES
|
PRISON
Gorbachev
Still A Cold War Hero
On Saturday the Times again hails former
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev as the man who ended the Cold War. In
Gorbachev Pushes Plan to Turn Iron Curtain Into Parkland, about
Gorbachevs efforts to turn the old cold war border into a nature
reserve, reporter Otto Pohl writes: Several speakers at the
conference observed that Mr. Gorbachev - who could have rolled back
eastern Europe's anti-Communist revolutions by force as his
predecessors did - was on hand and had, in effect, made the border
park possible.
Pohl doesnt
mention Gorbachev did try to roll back revolution in Lithuania and
other Soviet satellites. In January 1991, he ordered Soviet tanks and
troops into Vilnius,
where they killed 14 Lithuanians defending a television tower.
Revisionist history also forgets that Gorbachev sent Soviet forces
into Armenia, Moldova and the Ukraine to discourage independence
movements in those lands.
For the rest of Otto Pohls story,
click here.
ENVIRONMENT
|
MIKHAIL GORBACHEV
|
LITHUANIA
|
OTTO POHL
|
SOVIET UNION
Late
Burial Deprives Hussein Brothers of Dignity
A Saturday story by Dexter Filkins,
Hussein Bodies Shown to Skeptical Iraqis hails from the U.S. just
cant win department. Searching for reaction to the deaths of Uday
and Qusay Hussein, Filkins plays funeral director for the former Iraqi
dictatorship, finding Arabs enraged that the bodies have not yet been
buried: The immediate effect of the public display of the bodies, and
of their continued denial of burial, was to prompt anger throughout
the Arabic-speaking news media. Muslim tradition generally requires a
swift burial for the dead, and Uday and Qusay Hussein have been dead
for three days. Scholars and commentators also denounced the public
display of the corpses, saying the men's dignity had come at the
expense of an American propaganda victory. Muhammad Emara, an Egyptian
scholar, told Al Jazeera television that displaying the bodies
publicly violated Islamic law. Times Watch notes that Filkins reports
little reaction from Iraqis themselves apparently, people who
actually lived under Uday and Qusay Hussein arent quite as concerned
about proper burial rights for the brothers in thuggery.
As
Andrew Stuttaford points out in the Corner on National Review
Online, such sudden concern on the part of Arabs for the niceties of
quick burial and respect for the dead smacks of hypocrisy. He points
to a September 2000 report (with
disturbing graphic photos) headlined: The Taliban use cranes to
hang two men in public. The article continues: The bodies of the two
men will remain on the cranes all day as part of Taliban's policy to
deter others. What happened to that traditional respect for the
dead?
For the rest of Dexter Filkins story on
Arab outrage over the tardy burial of brutal thugs,
click here.
DEXTER FILKINS
|
UDAY & QUSAY HUSSEIN
|
IRAQ WAR
Huge
Study Confirms Bias at the Times
The 170-page report, Government:
In and Out of the News, was conducted by The Center for Media and
Public Affairs. The study found, according to Washington Post media
reporter Howard Kurtz, that Major news outlets provided more
favorable coverage of the first year of the Clinton administration
than of George W. Bush's or Ronald Reagan's government during
comparable periods.
Though it hems
and haws a bit, reluctant to accuse the Times directly of partisan
bias, the report does say on page 89: The New York Times displayed a
tilt toward the Democrats. The Times gave more favorable (though still
mainly negative) press to the Clinton administration (33 positive
evaluations) than to the Reagan and Bush administrations, which
received only 25 and 30 percent positive comments respectively. Bill
Clinton also bested his rivals in his personal coverage, with 38
percent positive press vs. 32 percent positive for both Ronald Reagan
and George W Bush.
The difference
was even wider when it came to policy: These modest gaps widened with
regard to policy issues: Clintons policies beat out Reagans in the
good press derby by twelve percentage points (34 to 22 percent
positive) and Bushs (29 percent positive) by five points. On foreign
policy, the Clinton administration received almost twice as much good
press as did Reagans, by 38 to 20 percent positive judgments, with
Bush in between at 33 percent positive. Clintons domestic policies
received ten percentage points better press than Reagans (31 to 21
percent positive) and seven points better than Bushs (24 percent
positive).The evidence suggests that the Times tilts somewhat toward
the Democrats, particularly in its Congressional coverage, while the
[Washington] Post has been more even-handed overall.
CENTER FOR
MEDIA AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS
|
BILL CLINTON
|
CONGRESS
|
LIBERAL BIAS
|
RONALD REAGAN
