Author: Dan Kennedy

Not Carter versus Dershowitz, which might have been worthwhile.

A day after the Boston Globe published an op-ed by Jimmy Carter whining about the treatment he and his new book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” have received, the paper comes back with a piece by Alan Dershowitz whining about Carter’s refusal to debate him at Brandeis (and whining about Carter’s whining).

It’s as though the Globe were letting Carter and Dershowitz edit the opinion pages, when it ought to be the other way around.

This shouldn’t have been difficult. Not many people are going to read Carter’s book. And not many people are going to read Dershowitz’s review of it on Frontpagemag.com (hat tip to Steve for the link). The Globe should have told Carter that if he wanted to write an op-ed, he should use it to make two or three key points summarizing his book. And then Dershowitz should have been told to respond. The op-eds could have run the same day or on succeeding days.

The Globe had a chance to educate its readers about an important subject in the news. Instead, it published 1,500 words about not much of anything. It was a lost opportunity.

Last Saturday, the Boston Globe editorial page criticized Jimmy Carter for refusing to debate Alan Dershowitz at Brandeis University over Carter’s new book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” The editorial said in part:

Some of the fury Carter has provoked is so overwrought that it appears to confirm his own overstated contention that any criticism of Israel is treated like heresy by the mainstream media. But it is precisely because of the hyperbole of his critics, and the seriousness of the issues he wants to raise, that Carter should agree to debate that inveterate defender of Israel, Alan Dershowitz.

I agree. So I was a little surprised today when the Globe ran an op-ed by Carter in which he both flogs his book and whines about the way he’s been treated. Carter writes:

[T]here has been a pattern of ad hominem statements, alleging that I am a liar, plagiarist, anti-Semite, racist, bigot, ignorant, etc. There are frequent denunciations of fabricated “straw man” accusations: that I have claimed that apartheid exists within Israel; that the system of apartheid in Palestine is based on racism; and that Jews control and manipulate the news media of America.

Actually, the Carter op-ed isn’t a surprise. It’s the lack of a counterbalance from Dershowitz or anyone else — not necessary under normal circumstances, but necessary because the Globe just got finished applauding Brandeis for insisting on a debate rather than a monologue.

Coming tomorrow?

New York Times: “Since he was last seen 16 years ago in ‘Rocky V,’ this two-time former heavyweight champion, now pushing 60 (Mr. Stallone’s age), has evolved a philosophy of the ring that befits an older, slower athlete.”

Boston Globe: “‘Rocky Balboa’ is about a 50-year-old boxer’s last shot at glory, but it clearly represents the 60-year-old Sylvester Stallone’s attempt to climb back in the ring after a career that has dwindled into inconsequence in the past decade.”

Three or four times a year, the Boston Herald comes up with an easy answer to the arduous question of what to put on the front page. The editors follow a formula, reliable, predictable and simple. Just fill in the blanks:

___, the city’s/state’s (pick one) czar/czarina (pick one) of ___, has been running up exorbitant tabs at posh resorts and swank hotels in the Caribbean/ Hawaii/ Austria (pick one) instead of attending to taxpayer business.

During a stay at the ___, according to public records, ___ spent $110 wining and dining ___, head of the ___. The menu features such chi-chi fare as fire-roasted lobster with pine nuts and scallop-encrusted steak. Even a cheeseburger costs $24.95.

___ justified the trip by claiming ___ has promised to open a ___ in the city that would generate $__ million of economic activity every year. But ___, dragging her two/four/six (pick one) toddlers through a local Burger King yesterday, voiced outrage.

“Why should ___ get to travel to ___ when I’m stuck here?” she demanded. “Let him/her (pick one) see how the rest of us gotta live. Ya know?”

Put together a front page featuring the word “JUNKET.” Bake for 15 minutes. Serve when ready.

Today it’s Julie Burns, the city’s “$100,000-a-year arts and tourism czarina,” who, reporter Michele McPhee breathlessly tells us, “has traveled to Austria, Taiwan, Chicago and Philadelphia, but has yet to ink a deal due to her globe-trotting.” Burns has been on the job for only eight months. And, gee, why on earth would a tourism “czarina” be traveling, when she could, you know, be signing documents or something.

Then there’s this: according to McPhee, “most” of Burns’ junkets haven’t cost the taxpayers a dime, since they’ve been paid for by private groups. But hey, she traveled while on city time.

There’s also the matter of a proposed Montreal-to-Boston bicycle tour, which isn’t a done deal, but which was the subject of her trip to Austria. McPhee gleefully reports that Burns is worried the bike tour won’t happen if the Herald were to reveal it. And City Councilor John Tobin, who ought to know better, helps out by saying Burns should be bringing movies to Boston rather than cyclists. (Hey, John: Why not both?)

All of this is wrapped up with the front-page headline “PAGING JULIE JUNKET!”

This is the very definition of a non-story, fueled mainly by class resentment and the hope that readers are too stupid to understand why a tourism “czarina” can’t do her job holed up at City Hall all day. Enjoy.

My reservations about former ambassador Joseph Wilson aside, at least no one tried to stop him from writing his celebrated op-ed piece for the New York Times in July 2003. The principle that internal critics of government policies must be allowed to speak out is an important one, especially when those critics no longer work for the government. To muzzle them at that point is the very definition of censorship.

So it’s pretty disturbing to learn that two former government officials have been barred from writing a Times op-ed that criticizes the Bush administration’s refusal to hold talks with Iran. The reason, supposedly, is that the op-ed would reveal classified information. But there is circumstantial evidence to suggest that’s not true.

The Times itself covers the story today. Rather than rely on the Times reporting on itself, though, I’d rather look at this account, which was published yesterday in the Raw Story. In the article, Brian Beutler reports on a talk given by former CIA agent Flynt Leverett, co-author of the op-ed along with his wife, Hillary Mann, a former official with the National Security Council and the State Department.

What is the evidence that Leverett and Mann’s article does not, in fact, contain classified information? Consider:

• Leverett told Beutler: “Up until last week with regard to this particular op-ed at this particular time … they have cleared on the order of thirty drafts that I have sent them in three and a half years out of government.” And: “Until last week they never asked to change a word.” Assuming that Leverett is being candid, this is clearly a man who knows what he can write about and what he can’t.
• Beutler writes: “Leverett contends that the op-ed in question is based on a larger paper that passed the same oversight process without a change made to a single word, and that people who work on the review board have told him that the piece would have been approved — were it not for intervention by the White House.”

That paper, according to the Times account, is called “Dealing with Tehran,” and it was published by the Century Foundation. You can download a PDF of it here. (If you’re interested in reading it, you might want to save it right now.)

This Washington Post account is worth reading as well.

A statement by Leverett appears on the TPM Café. It includes this:

There is no basis for claiming that these issues are classified and not already in the public domain.

For the White House to make this claim, with regard to my op-ed and at this particular moment, is nothing more than a crass effort to politicize a prepublication review process — a process that is supposed to be about the protection of classified information, and nothing else — to limit the dissemination of views critical of administration policy….

Their conduct in this matter is despicable and un-American in the profoundest sense of that term. I am also deeply disappointed that former colleagues at the Central Intelligence Agency have proven so supine in the face of tawdry political pressure. Intelligence officers are supposed to act better than that.

You can watch Leverett’s talk yesterday here.

The Leverett story is breaking just as the administration has decided to back down from an attempt to force the ACLU to turn over all copies of a memo it had obtained on government policy regarding the photographing of detainees. The ACLU has posted the memo here.

The Bush administration’s continued efforts to conduct its dubious foreign policy in secret boggles the mind. The only good news is its remarkable ineptitude — we keep finding out anyway.

After the Boston Globe, there is no more important a news organization in Greater Boston than WBUR Radio (90.9 FM). But though its mix of NPR programs and its own shows, such as “On Point,” “Here and Now” and the late, lamented “Connection,” is consistently good, the station has had a greater presence nationally over the years than it’s had locally.

Yesterday the station went a long way toward bolstering its local image by hiring a genuine bigfoot — David Boeri, a veteran reporter with WCVB-TV (Channel 5). The move reunites Boeri with Paul La Camera, who, before becoming WBUR’s general manager in 2005, was president and general manager of Channel 5.

Earlier this year I wrote an article for CommonWealth Magazine about La Camera’s goal of building WBUR’s local presence.

How can ‘BUR grow while every other media institution is slashing? It’s the ownership model. WBUR is a public station whose license is held by Boston University. Contrary to what conservative public-broadcasting critics would have you believe, public radio stations receive very little money from the government; it could be eliminated entirely without doing much harm to the product.

Instead, the real key is that public radio is built on a foundation of listener contributions and corporate underwriting (i.e., advertising, although no one likes to call it that), with a nonprofit model that guarantees revenues will be plowed back into the news rather than used to enhance the bottom line for Wall Street’s benefit.

It’s a model that bears watching — and that might have some relevance to the newspaper business as it gropes its way toward an uncertain future.

No, that’s not a typo. Looking back over the past few days, I see that I’ve put up a string of horrendously self-referential posts. Unavoidable, perhaps, given the circumstances. But that should be pretty much the end. Keep reading Media Nation for posts about things other than Media Nation.

Kevin Whalen, the co-host of “Pundit Review Radio,” has invited me to sit in with him tonight on WRKO Radio (AM 680) from 8 to 9 p.m. Please tune in.

Friends of Media Nation who are wondering about my sanity: not to worry. It’s kind of funny at this point. In that spirit, I want to share with you some casual slime that has been brought to my attention at the Daily Kos.

The Kos is one of several national blogs that are obsessed with the continuing fallout over the “Greater Boston” blogging episode of Dec. 8. I learned of this Kos post through Bob of Blue Mass Group, who thinks it absolutely kicks ass. After quoting from a few commenters, Bob ends with this: “And believe me there is plenty, plenty more, including a fair amount of back and forth about our very own frequent contributor Professor Kennedy.”

So I got myself over to the Kos and started reading. Soon I came across this, from one Jennifer Poole:

Dan Kennedy, media “critic” of the Boston Phoenix? one of the “liberal hawks” who totally believed Colin Powell’s speech about WMDs at the U.N.?

I remember emailing Kennedy at the time, telling him he hadn’t read the news he needed to understand that Powell’s “testimony” to the U.N. was not, in fact, all that convincing at all — with links.

I got a snarky email back re: “Oh you think there’s a cover-up?”

has Dan Kennedy admitted yet he was wrong to support the Iraq invasion, and to say that nobody serious could remain unconvinced by Powell’s testimony?

Not sure what the deal is with all those question marks, but I think a few of them are Firefox anomalies.

Anyway … did I write a snarky e-mail to Poole? Probably. Did I believe Colin Powell’s testimony at the United Nations? Yes, at least for a few days. Did I support the war in Iraq? No. Never. More in a moment. But first, a few words from Poole’s fellow commenters:

Chumley writes: “What a hack this Kennedy is. He should be cleaning toilets at Burger King, NOT a media critic. Better yet — get his ass over to serve in Iraq, and let him media criticize his way out of that.” (Make it Wendy’s, Chumley, and you’ve got a deal.)

Left in Lowell: “This Iraq lapse, I’d have to look back at what he said but he definitely has shown pigheadedness at times.” (Lynne! Come on! We survived the UMass Amherst cafeteria together last summer. Why not ask me where I stand on the war before making fun of my pigheadedness?)

Mogolori: “Kennedy’s self-correction seems to come in his April 16-24, 2004 Boston Phoenix book review of John Dean’s ‘Worse than Watergate,’ Ron Suskind’s ‘The Price of Loyalty,’ Hans Blix’s ‘Disarming Iraq’ and Richard Clarke’s ‘Against All Enemies.’ … [H]e sidesteps his own duping, which is so succinctly recounted in his email to you.” (Follow the logic: Because I was against the war in 2004, I must have been for it in 2002 and ’03.)

The truth, as I’ve already said, is that I’ve always been against the war. And I can prove it. Jennifer and friends, please pay attention:

Boston Phoenix, Nov. 28, 2002: “Yes, Iraq will fall if we invade. The gravest danger American troops may face is getting trampled by surrendering Iraqi soldiers. But after that, Iraq is ours, for a generation, if not longer. As a recent Atlantic Monthly cover story put it, Iraq will become, in effect, ‘the 51st state.’ Is that what we want? Can we really transform Iraq into another Japan or Germany? Or are we going to make the entire country — as opposed to just Saddam and his henchmen — despise us, and seek revenge for our arrogance and hubris?” (Gee, that stands up pretty well, doesn’t it?)

Boston Phoenix, Jan. 30, 2003: “More than anything, what Bush has failed to explain is why Iraq represents a real threat to us at a time when it is beleaguered by no-fly zones in the north and south, economic sanctions, and a couple of hundred weapons inspectors scurrying about the countryside. Containment has worked, but it’s not good enough for Bush, who is about to sacrifice the lives of Americans and Iraqis in order to accomplish his goal of regime change. With few exceptions, the media have let him get away with it.”

Boston Phoenix, March 20, 2003: “[A]fter the victory (raucous welcome from flower-tossing Iraqis optional) comes the hard part: the long occupation of a country whose people — no matter how happy they are to be rid of a dictator who models himself after Stalin but who seems equally inspired by Vlad the Impaler — will soon begin to resent us, then to hate us, then to demand that we get our hands off their land and their government and their oil and get out…. Just as the 1991 Gulf War led to the permanent US presence in Saudi Arabia that convinced the then-unknown Osama bin Laden to declare jihad against the United States, so will this war create monsters that don’t yet have a name.”

Boston Phoenix, July 25, 2003: “The Bush administration justified the rush to war by arguing that waiting was too dangerous — that Saddam’s terrorist ties and weapons of mass destruction represented an imminent threat. The result of Bush’s fear-mongering: chaos in Iraq; an open-ended commitment that is claiming American lives nearly every day, and that is costing some $1 billion a week; and no evidence of weapons.”

Jennifer, have you had enough? Can you bring yourself to take it back? To apologize? We’ll see.

Monday morning update: Sco08 put up a link to this item on the Kos last night, and Jennifer acknowledges her error, sort of, although she says her “main point stands.” Which is?

Former Phoenix political reporter Seth Gitell, who did support the war, weighs in with a reality check, and says it’s time for the media to start scrutinizing blogworld as closely as they do politics, business and sports. “I hope the bloggers enjoy this next stage of development,” Seth writes. I don’t think he means “enjoys” like, you know, “having a good time.”

The Outraged Liberal comes to my defense with a good old-fashioned “Quod erat demonstrandum.” Too bad I’m too stupid to know what it means. Oh, wait — it’s Q.E.D. spelled out, and I kind of know what that means.

Over on Blue Mass Group, Sabutai explains why I should be a blogger:

Bloggers don’t have to fact-check. While you’re expected to go over the New York Times and fact-check them, we can make stuff up about you in whole cloth. By the way, if you want to write again about the War in Iraq, we’d encourage you to fly over there to see for yourself that a war is actually happening, or indeed that such a place exists. Because if it turns out that you’re wrong about anything held to be common knowledge, it will nonetheless be your fault.

Funny stuff, but I am a blogger. I just think blogging ought to be about more than making stuff up about people.

Lisa Williams reports that GateHouse Media — the Fairport, N.Y.-based chain that bought more than 100 community newspapers in Eastern Massachusetts earlier this year — has jettisoned traditional copyright protection in favor of Creative Commons.

In a guest post on Jay Rosen’s PressThink blog, Williams writes that the Creative Commons model, which allows third parties such as bloggers to copy and paste content for nonprofit use as long as they provide proper credit, is part of GateHouse’s aggressive move into the post-print, mostly-Web future.

A big part of that is Wicked Local, whose aim is to combine professional and amateur content. Currently available only in the Plymouth area, Wicked Local is expected to be the model for all of GateHouse’s community Web sites. I find this both promising and dangerous — promising because building community journalism around the idea of a conversation between professional journalists and the public is a compelling model for What Comes Next; dangerous because it’s potentially a way for media corporations to build their Web sites on the cheap. Williams quotes me to that effect in her article.

GateHouse went public earlier this fall, and Williams says the run-up in its stock price has already been so impressive that it is now the most valuable newspaper company in the United States. Williams’ conclusion: “GateHouse’s move towards open source, open licensing, and open conversations is the biggest experiment to date in whether a media company with open source ambitions can walk hand in hand with Wall Street.”