Like many of the important issues facing society, climate change
involves a complex intersection of science, culture and politics, and a
huge array of consequences impinging on a wide range of
vulnerabilities. Yet on all sides, people are bombarded with simplistic
slogans, misleading headlines and soundbites shorn of the caveats that
make them valid.
The US media's most esteemed institutions - the New York Times, Washington Post,
Associated Press and TV network news divisions among them - have a
small but significant problem with the English language. They are
unable to call torture by its true name.
I remember as a young deputy city editor at The Daily News attending my first "sked meeting," a large gathering of editors held every afternoon to consider which stories would go into the next morning's paper and how they would be played.
I was sitting at the far end of a conference table from the editor who was conducting the meeting. The News had very seldom had a black person at those gatherings. Mine was the only black face in the room.
I usually enjoy 60 Minutes and expect some decently produced segments. Who doesn't love Andy Rooney? "America's New Air Force"
is the worst story by 60 Minutes that I have every seen. It's more
military propaganda and a commercial for the contractors of the
Predator drone, than investigative journalism. How did 60 Minutes get
so hoodwinked?
An Iranian appeals court this morning announced
that it was reducing the sentence and ordering the immediate release of
Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, who was convicted by an
Iranian court in January of spying for the U.S. and sentenced to eight
years in prison. Saberi's imprisonment became a cause celebré
among American journalists, who -- along with the U.S.
There's been a major editorial breach at The New York Times today, in this obituary of an American fighter pilot who was captured by the Chinese:
Harold E. Fischer Jr., an American Flier Tortured in a Chinese Prison, Dies at 83. . . .
