Media Nation

The Sadr solution?

Maybe it’s because it seems as though Moktada al-Sadr is going to win anyway, but I’m intrigued by Bartle Breese Bull’s op-ed in the New York Times, “An Enemy We Can Work With.”

Sadr is certainly not going to bring liberal democracy to Iraq, but we’re long since past that notion. In Sadr’s favor: he and his family were bitter enemies of Saddam Hussein’s regime, and his father was killed by Saddam; Sadr’s movement of the dispossessed has far fewer ties to Iran than does Iraq’s Shiite elite; and, at least according to Bull, Sadr has privately, though grudgingly, lent his tacit support to the American occupation.

There is not going to be a good outcome in Iraq. Bull points the way to a possible least-bad outcome that we could live with.

Funding crisis hits MediaChannel

The MediaChannel, a nonprofit watchdog organization founded seven years ago, is in danger of going under by the end of June.

The organization was begun in 2000 by two former Boston journalists, Danny Schechter and Rory O’Connor. Schechter recently released a new documentary, “In Debt We Trust.” O’Connor is a founder of NewsTrust, a social network that rates news stories and organizations.

Here’s an excerpt from MediaChannel’s fundraising appeal:

“It is sad to have to shut down an important service in the public interest because our not-for-profit site can’t attract sufficient resources to support a very small staff or to pay necessary bills including rent, server fees and utilities,” said Danny Schechter, co-founder of the international web platform that launched February 1, 2000. “The ultimate irony is that MediaChannel has never been better — its traffic is up and its impact strong, as is the quality of its timely and diverse offerings, which include original reports, blogs, videos, features and media news from across the world.”

MediaChannel may not get as much attention as Media Matters for America, which also analyzes the media from a left-of-center point of view, but with a more partisan political edge. But it does good work, and it would be a shame if it disappeared.

Also banging the tin cup: Christopher Lydon’s excellent public radio program, “Open Source,” which lost its funding from UMass Lowell last year. Clea Simon has the update in Wednesday’s Globe.

Mr. Fussy writes a correction

With apologies to Alex Beam, by way of Roger Hargreaves.

The Globe today publishes a correction that is superfluous bordering on confusing. It reads:

Based on incomplete information on a congressional website, a graphic with a Page One story about a plaque commemorating the origins of gerrymandering wrongly said Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry and state Senator Israel Thorndike attempted to keep their Republican friends in power. They were members of the Democratic-Republican Party, also known as the Jeffersonian Democrats. The Republican Party was not founded until the 1850s.

But as anyone who’s studied American history should know, the Democratic-Republican Party, founded by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, was universally known in its early days as the Republican Party. This Wikipedia entry gets it right despite being from, you know, Wikipedia. And hand it to Wikipedia again, which correctly notes that the Republican Party started to be called the Democratic Party around the time of Andrew Jackson’s presidency.

If the Globe’s editors thought they needed to clarify this at all, instead of calling it a “Correction” they should have trotted out an old standby from years past: “Amplification.” Mr. Fussy really would have liked that.

Multiple choice on evolution

When it comes to evolution, Republican presidential candidate Sam Brownback‘s not going to say one thing to one audience and a different thing to another audience. No, sir. He’s going to say many different things to the same audience, as he does today in his New York Times op-ed. Brownback doesn’t believe in evolution. Except that he does. Sort of. I guess.

Hot air over a Cape Wind book

Has WGBH‘s Cape Cod radio station, WCAI, been suppressing news about a new book that takes a favorable view of Cape Wind, the controversial proposed wind farm? It’s a claim that’s been rattling around for the past few weeks. Now the Phoenix’s Adam Reilly takes a look. And though he finds no definitive proof, he does dig up some interesting tidbits about power, money and potential conflicts of interest.

You want conflicts of interest? Well, you’ve come to the right place. I’m a paid contributor to another outpost of WGBH, “Greater Boston with Emily Rooney.” The editor of Cape Cod Today, Walter Brooks, who’s pro-wind farm and who first alerted me to this story earlier in the month, is a friend of Media Nation. Walter and I have appeared together on WCAI to talk about online journalism.

So it’s just as well I’m taking a pass on this. Read Adam’s story and decide for yourself.

A libel case is dropped

If you’re trying to make sense of the news that the Islamic Society of Boston has dropped its libel suit against the Herald, WFXT-TV (Channel 25) and several other defendants (Globe story here; Herald story here), I suggest you read this backgrounder from November 2005, written by Mark Jurkowitz when he was with the Phoenix.

The shorthand version: The Herald and Channel 25 reported that the Islamic Society, which is trying to build a mosque and cultural center in Roxbury with an assist from city officials, has had some uncomfortably close connections with certain Islamist radicals who are, at the very least, soft on terrorism. The Islamic Society denied the allegations.

The Globe was not named as a defendant even though columnist Jeff Jacoby has written several columns on the subject, the latest of which appeared on April 25. It’s a must-read.

This is a pretty convoluted saga, involving not just a suit but also a countersuit, which was also dropped this week. The case also encompassed some angry rhetoric between members of the Islamic and Jewish communities. Even though the libel case has been dropped, we almost certainly haven’t heard the last of this matter.

The winner here is the First Amendment. Libel suits should not be used to squash discussion of important public issues. Perhaps the reporting on this matter fell short of perfection, but, as my man Louis Brandeis liked to say, the solution to alleged bad speech is “more speech, not enforced silence.”

Correction of the day

From the New York Times:

An article last Wednesday about a decision by the Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz, to remove at least five members of Community Board 6 who oppose the Atlantic Yards development project — which Mr. Markowitz supports — misstated the reason for the absence of a response by Mr. Markowitz. At the time the article was being reported, Mr. Markowitz could not be reached by his aides because he was on a ship at sea, had no telephone access and was not regularly checking his e-mail messages. He did not “refuse” to comment.

Dr. Shaughnessy is in

Why does he do this? In his Globe column today, Dan Shaughnessy insinuates that the Red Sox were lying — or at least blowing smoke — about what was really wrong with Josh Beckett between May 13, when he hurt his finger, and last night, when he made a successful return. Writes Shank:

He appeared to be bound for a start in the All-Star Game in San Francisco before suffering an “avulsion” on his right middle finger while throwing a pitch against the Orioles in what turned out to be the most memorable game of this young season (a.k.a. the “Mother’s Day Miracle”). Remember, boys and girls, this was not a blister — it was an avulsion.

Shaughnessy, of course, presents no evidence. But reports have been pretty consistent that Beckett did not get a blister, a problem that plagued him pretty consistently when he was younger. For instance, here is what the Globe’s Amalie Benjamin reported on May 17:

Beckett suffered an avulsion — a torn piece of skin below the pad on his right middle finger — in the fourth inning Sunday against the Orioles. He has experienced similar skin problems in the past, though the Sox are careful not to characterize the injury as akin to the blisters he developed with the Marlins.

Medline Plus defines “avulsion” as “a tearing away of a body part accidentally or surgically.” That doesn’t sound like a blister, either.

A small matter, obviously. You just wonder what’s rattling around Shaughnessy’s brain when he types this stuff.

Will Kerry save Edwards?

Only John Kerry can save John Edwards now. Will he? It depends on who is telling the truth.

I am not an Edwards fan. However, I admire the way he has resolutely refused to exploit the death of his son Wade. Now a new book by Democratic political operative Bob Shrum tells an ugly, ugly tale. My former Phoenix colleague Michael Crowley of The New Republic finds (sub. req.) the relevant excerpt, involving the period when Kerry was considering Edwards as his running mate:

Edwards had told Kerry he was going to share a story with him that he’d never told anyone else — that after his son Wade had been killed, he climbed onto the slab at the funeral home, laid there and hugged his body, and promised that he’d do all he could to make life better for people, to live up to Wade’s ideals of service. Kerry was stunned, not moved, because, as he told me later, Edwards had recounted the exact story to him, almost in the exact same words, a year or two before — and with the same preface, that he’d never shared the memory with anyone else. Kerry said he found it chilling, and he decided he couldn’t pick Edwards unless he met with him again.

Crowley does point out that there is some circumstantial evidence to suggest Shrum’s devastating tale may not be true, writing, “When I asked one person close to Edwards about it, he argued that Shrum’s account makes no sense because Edwards had publicly recounted similar versions of the funeral home story before — and thus wouldn’t possibly have claimed on either occasion that he was telling it for the first time.”

Fair enough. But what gives this legs is that Kerry — who, after all, isn’t running for anything — now has the power to make or break Edwards. If Kerry denies it in firm, straightforward language, then the Edwards campaign survives, and Shrum will henceforth be known not just as a loser, but as a liar as well. But if Kerry confirms it, or refuses to discuss it, then Edwards might as well pull out.

By the way, if Kerry does confirm it, why on earth did he go ahead and put Edwards on the ticket?

Oh, and another thing — Edwards may not be all that big on gays and lesbians, either.

Web pioneer Holovaty goes solo

This is big news. Adrian Holovaty, one of the most important journalists you’ve never heard of (or maybe you have), has quit washingtonpost.com to strike out on his own after winning a Knight grant to experiment with hyperlocal journalism. His project will be called EveryBlock.

Holovaty, who’s in his mid-20s, is the master of the mashup, in which datastreams are merged to create something new and useful. Using publicly available data from the Chicago Police Department, he created ChicagoCrime.org, which automatically sorts crime information and plots it on Google Maps. (If you’d like to see such a feature in Boston, forget it — although the Boston Police deserve credit for their innovative blog, they do not make crime data available in a form that would allow an outside programmer like Holovaty to make sense of it.)

Another Holovaty special: The Congressional Votes Database at washingtonpost.com.

I saw Holovaty speak last summer at the Media Giraffe conference at UMass Amherst. I thought his most interesting comments were in response to a question as to whether he considers himself a journalist. His answer: absolutely. He laid out the differences between an electronic journalist and a traditional journalist like this:

Gathering news: A traditional journalist calls sources and conducts research. An electronic journalist writes programs to fetch data.
Distilling the news: A traditional journalist decides what’s worth including in her report for print, online or broadcast. An electronic journalist decides which data queries are worth showing to readers.
Reporting the news: A traditional journalist writes or broadcasts news stories. An electronic journalist puts together Web presentations.

Do young people who want to pursue careers in journalism need to become programmers? Well, it’s certainly a promising field for those with the inclination and talent — but it’s not absolutely necessary. In fact, the Congressional Votes Database depends on contributions from traditional journalists, who do old-fashioned tasks such as deciding which are the key votes and describing them. At best, such journalism is a skillful amalgamation of old and new.

You can watch a video of Holovaty demonstrating ChicagoCrime.org here. And here is an excellent Q&A with Holovaty posted in the Online Journalism Review.