The monthly magazine of U.S. journalism professors usually includes a Page 2 message from the president of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). That message is usually dull and eminently forgettable.

But in the current May issue, AEJMC President Theodore Glasser of Stanford University blasts press coverage of the Iraq War and calls the Fox Cable version "one of the crudest forms of journalism" ... typical of a new Orwellian-style reporting "where invasion means liberation, defense means offense and failure means success."

Glasser said that "day after day, minute after minute, Fox wants from its viewers what generals want from their troops: high morale."

Glasser continues, "On Fox, an anchor can say that 'objectively speaking' it is 'hard to believe things could go much more successfully'" in in-depth war reports. Also, "an anchor can (without irony) call Newt Gingrich an 'estimable scholar'" of military affairs and bring on Donald Trump to declare, "I think the market's going to go up like a rocket" with the commencement of Persian Gulf hostilities.

Hooray for AEJMC's Glasser! At last, a journalism scholar who won't tiptoe around banality for fear of offending a potential source of coin and coverage for his university. At last a scholar who is willing to point out how Rupert Murdoch's so-called "journalists" at the Fox are nothing more than pimps, cheerleaders and ideological hacks.
-Don Corrigan

Fed harassment
Less than two years ago, former graduate assistant to SJR Holly Rauch left for New York, and on Wednesday, April 9, she made The New York Times. While her byline didn't appear with the article and her name was never mentioned in the story, "Terror Defense Lawyers Say Jailers Held Them for 2 Hours" discusses Rauch's most recent run-in with prison systems.

Working with a defense team on the case of Armed Abel Satire, a man being held in relation to a terrorism case, Rauch often visits her client in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan. On several occasions, she has waited for an hour to get into the jail to speak with Satire as well as to be released into the free world.

The instance in this article occurred in mid-March. Rauch was detained 45 minutes before being allowed to see Satire and then more than two hours before being let out. She was told about 40 minutes before a prison count was scheduled that it would occur, and the counts take an hour. Saying she was finished for the day, she prepared to leave, but the lieutenant never came to let her out. Several times, her requests to be released from the isolation cell with Satire failed, and her arguments that her office building closed down at 5 p.m. met deaf ears.

No one cared that she wouldn't be able to get back into her building to gather her personal belongings, including her cash, cell phone, Metro card and purse. The guards even denied requests to phone her office to let anyone know what was keeping her.

Finally, after the count, Rauch was released at 5:15 p.m., returned to her office building-the old courthouse across the street from the jail-and begged a janitor to let her into her office to collect her personal belongings.

So, after five and a half hours without food, water or bathroom privileges, Rauch was finally released back into the free world.
-Erica Burleson

Ready to ban a bully?
After a much-publicized attack on former Kirkwood High School Principal Franklin McCallie in the Missouri Statehouse by Rep. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, a citizens' group has formed to demand the resignation of Cunningham from her post as chair of the House Committee on Education.

Cunningham attacked McCallie earlier this year, saying that as a principal, McCallie had promoted a gay agenda and anti-Christian attitudes. McCallie was in Jefferson City before Cunningham's committee to testify in support of anti-discrimination measures in Missouri school districts.

The group Citizens for Choice and Responsibility in Education (CCARE e-mail: [email protected]) says House Majority Leader Catherine Hanaway has an obligation to rescind her appointment of Cunningham, because as education chair, Cunningham has:
o voted against bans on bullying, bans on spanking in schools and against pay bonuses for teachers receiving national certification;
o supported bans on measures to promote anti-discrimination policies in schools districts; and
o supported cuts in public education, while promoting vouchers and the use of public tax money for non-public school transportation programs.
-Don Corrigan

Hall of fame
Ellen Soeteber, editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, is among five female journalists inducted into the Medill School of Journalism Hall of Fame at Northwestern University, home of the journalism school. Soeteber is a native of East St. Louis and a 1972 alumna of the university. Julia Wallace, editor of the Atlanta Journal Constitution and Margaret Sullivan, editor of the Buffalo News, are among the other new inductees. And, honored posthumously are Dorothy Jurney, former assistant managing editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Bella Stumbo, who worked as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times for 22 years.
-Joe Pollack

A win for college media
The Hazelwood restrictions on the high school press, enunciated in the landmark 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decision, do not apply to the college press. That's the gist of an April 10 federal Appeals Court ruling on a case at Governor's State University in northern Illinois.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision opens the way for three Governor's State students to pursue their lawsuit against former Student Affairs Dean Patricia Carter, charging that she violated their First Amendment rights. Carter demanded that the student newspaper, The Innovator, no longer be published by journalism students without prior approval from top administrators.

The Appeals Court ruling is just one of several in recent years that turn back attempts by university administrators to apply Hazelwood censorship to the college press. The ruling is being hailed by such groups as the Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Illinois College Press Association.
-Don Corrigan

Combat training
The war in Iraq may be over, at least for a while, but the Pentagon and the White House obviously are gearing up for another war-maybe in the Middle East, maybe in Asia, maybe on Mars, or wherever the American Empire plans its next expansion.

In any event, the media will be ready. The Army is continuing its combat training for the media, and seven St. Louis Post-Dispatch staffers-four writers and three photographers-have gone through the Arizona desert course. Bill Lambrecht and Karen Branch-Brioso of the Washington bureau, plus Ken Leiser and Philip O'Connor are recent reportorial graduates, and J. B. Forbes, Kevin Manning and Laurie Skrivan are the photographers.

Changes in the Post business section include the arrival of Gertha Coffee, former business editor of the Roanoke (Va.) Times, as assistant business editor. At the same time, Patrick Thimangu is leaving to join the St. Louis Business Journal. He is rejoining the American City Business Journals group, having come to St. Louis from its Dayton, Ohio, operation.
-Joe Pollack

Breaking weather
On the morning of May 4, a severe thunderstorm watch was in effect. During KSDK (Channel 5)'s morning newscast, John Fuller told us the watch had been discontinued. Yet 30 minutes later, KDNL (Channel 30), which has no local news, was still running information on the bottom of the screen saying it was still in effect. I'd like to think if it had a local newsroom, the information would be more up-to-date.

Well, maybe having a local newsroom to keep things current doesn't matter after all. At the same time KMOV (Channel 4)'s Joe Petrovich was giving his local weather segment, Channel 5 (airing the network news about 5:45 p.m. on this Sunday) had a severe thunderstorm watch posted on the screen. Petrovich neither mentioned it nor showed it graphically. It had been issued at 5:34 p.m.

When the weather is potentially dangerous, it is important all stations, with or without news operations, get it right. On this day, Channels 30 and 4 didn't.

On the other hand, that night, KTVI (Channel 2) was right on the money. Bringing in chief meteorologist Dave Murray to assist weekend weathercaster Chris Higgins was a smart move (Cindy Preszler, to her credit, also showed up to help Channel 5's weekend weatherman Mike Roberts-I did not see Channel 4 at 10 p.m.).

Only Channel 2 finally decided to show more concern for viewers by doing something suggested in this column (Gail Pennington's too) more than once. It reduced the size of programming in the screen and ran the weather information under-instead of over the lower part-the actual program. This is what ESPN does during games when it shows the scores at 28 and 58 past the hour. This helps viewers either see the program or the weather information separately. The maps do not block the actual program this way.

The station also had viewers in mind when, each time it interrupted the program, it picked up shows exactly where they left off. That way, Channel 2 could interrupt any time it considered such a move warranted and not tick off viewers. The station even exercised the option of breaking into commercials. When the alert was done, it simply started the commercial over. That way, the important information could be disseminated with no loss of commercial dollars. Win-win all the way.

Finally, it even kept warnings on during the commercials. That is often not done at other stations.

All in all, great work from the Channel 2 weather department when it was needed most.
-Tripp Frohlichstein

SJR boycotts Shi'ites
As readers know, boycotts of French products were organized after France opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In that spirit, SJR would like to organize its readers in a boycott of Shi'ite products.

It is readily apparent that Shi'ites in Iraq have not been appreciative of their liberation. Some have even been seen with signs reading, "Yankee go home."

This shall not stand.

Iraqi Shi'ites must be taught a lesson, and SJR believes a boycott is the best way.

We are asking our readers to make up a list of these products and not buy them.
-Ed Bishop

Letters
Conflict of interest
SJR: Why would the Journalism Review assign-or accept-a piece about Jerry Berger and Deb Peterson by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter?

Chas. Raymond

Early Edition:
News 4 U
By Ed Bishop
In between commercials, with the sound of a teletype in the background, an announcer's voice announces, "Newsbreak!" An anchorperson appears on the TV screen and says: "Today Sen. Rick Santorum said some pretty harsh things about gays." Then the anchor looks puzzled. "Funny thing is," he says, "we always thought Rick Santorum was gay."

It's the cable channel Comedy Central, and the anchor is Jon Stewart, host of the nightly half-hour news spoof "The Daily Show."

Later that evening, Stephen Colbert, the senior political "analyst" for "The Daily Show," explains that once again the liberal news media have misrepresented a Republican position. When Santorum compared rescinding laws against gays with rescinding laws against polygamy, adultery and incest, Colbert says, he wasn't disparaging gays but rather standing up for the rights of polygamists, adulterers and those who commit incest.

"You're not saying that Santorum is advocating a person having sex with his own mother, are you?" Stewart asks.

"Yes. Yes, Jon, I am," Colbert deadpans. "Sen. Santorum believes in the rights of all Americans."

But the daily target of "The Daily Show" isn't Rick Santorum or even Republicans in general. It's the Bush administration in particular, and in passing, the mainstream press which seems so intimidated by right-wing criticism that it doesn't see the surrealism of its own reporting about the Bush administration-a surrealism that is the meat and potatoes of Stewart's comedy.

For instance, after weeks of Bush-administration officials' sanctimonious pronouncements about bringing freedom to Iraq, Shi'ites celebrated their freedom by flagellating themselves during a religious festival. That night on "The Daily Show," videotape of the bleeding celebrants was aired with a Stewart voice-over saying: "For 25 years, Saddam has forbidden Shi'ites from cutting their scalps and beating themselves with heavy chains-the bastard."

Or how about this one: The night the Bush administration announced that it had awarded a major contract to Halliburton for reconstruction in Iraq. Stewart said it made him feel like the government had just taken a "dump on my chest." Then he turned to Senior Analyst Colbert and asked for his opinion.

"Well, Jon," Colbert said thoughtfully, "keeping in mind that Halliburton was a major contributor to the Bush campaign and that Vice President Cheney is its former CEO, this move by the government is extremely ... " Colbert stopped. "Nauseating?" Stewart suggested. No, Colbert said, rather it brought to mind a German word best translated as "to throw up one's hands in mute horror and in this state of paralyzing dread to realize that those you need to trust most have instead confirmed your darkest fears."

While NBC's Tom Brokaw spends precious time with President Bush lobbing softball questions about the Dixie Chicks and other TV journalists fall all over themselves trying to prove their patriotism, the response of "The Daily Show" is complete incredulity over what the administration is getting away with-a kind of shock and awe at the disconnect from reality found in the government's words and actions.

For example: Last week, Stewart said that since the Democratic Party disbanded in the autumn of 2002, it was difficult to get knowledgeable critics of the Bush administration, but "The Daily Show" finally found one: Gov. George W. Bush. Then clips of Bush talking about what the country's foreign policy should be during the presidential debates and Bush talking about what the country's foreign policy is while president were juxtaposed with Bush perfectly contradicting himself. It was hilarious. The segment ended with Stewart looking directly into the camera, his mouth open, shaking his head.

But perhaps Stewart's darkest humor is reserved for the Fox News Channel. Stewart apparently believes that Fox employs only nitwits or out-and-out fascists or both.

One night, Stewart opened the show heaping scorn on Iraqi state TV, saying: "Imagine a government that has an entire TV station to lay out its agenda." Immediately Fox footage of waving American flags and an Iraqi shouting "Thank you, Mr. Bush" appeared on the screen. When the camera switched back to Stewart, he was staring in a kind of trance, murmuring, "Must support war. Tax cuts good."

Another night, Stewart says cheerfully: "The reporting of this war truly belonged to Fox-not only did they start it, they were the only ones to report it fair and balanced."

The whole thing is reminiscent of Lenny Bruce in the early 1960s pointing out how sexually repressed the United States was and how nobody seemed to notice, at least not consciously.

But that impression might be wrong. People might be noticing. Ratings for "The Daily Show" compared to the Fox News Network in the same time slot at the height of Gulf War II shows the "The Daily Show" leading by more than 20 percent-4 million viewers over 3.3 million viewers.

Channels:
Channel 2 chases ratings
By Tripp Frohlichstein
As you read this column, we are firmly entrenched in the May Nielsen ratings. It's a key time-these ratings will help the television stations set their ad rates for the next several months. It is also a key month for the late-news battle. Can KMOV (Channel 4) hold its slim lead over KSDK (Channel 5) or was the February win a fluke?

This month is also important to KTVI (Channel 2) which has made steady gains in popularity. Can it continue to attract new viewers and change viewing habits to get more people to watch news at 9 p.m. instead of 10 p.m.? Stay tuned.

ooo

For a time on April 24, Channel 2 was the focus of the nation. Live on the air, Channel 2 was following a police chase through West County. How did I find out? I was watching the Fox News Network on cable, which was carrying the chase nationally.

Once again, Channel 2 demonstrated not only its commitment to local news but also its ability to cover it. The station's helicopter gave viewers live pictures of the chase. Given the small amount of information, anchor Tom O'Neal did a fine job of narrating the chase with help from Dick Ford in the late stages. He kept us apprised of exactly where the chase was occurring and spent some time getting more information, on the phone live, from a police spokesperson.

Only Channel 2 was able to put the chase on live, and I must admit it was interesting to watch. The police seemed to be cautious so as not to put other motorists in danger.

Perhaps the most humorous outcome was in Deborah Peterson's April 25 St. Louis Post-Dispatch column that noted that Larry Conners, doing his KMOX radio gig the day before, gave listeners details of the chase. How'd he get them? Not from his own newsroom. She said he followed the chase by watching Channel 2.

ooo

I watched several St. Louis Blues playoff games, and it struck me how lucky we are when it comes to announcers-even if not so lucky when it comes to a playoff hockey team. Ken Wilson is, put simply, superb. His play-by-play is perfect for television. He keeps viewers appropriately informed, makes it exciting and yet doesn't overdo it. He is always up with the play. And, as the excitement reaches a fever pitch, so does Wilson. I saw a letter somewhere complaining that Wilson is too much of a homer-roots too much for the home team. That's part of what makes him so enjoyable, and I hope he ignores that criticism. Given a choice between Wilson's play-by-play and the radio play-by-plays, Wilson gets my vote every time.

As for Bernie Federko, his analysis is as good as it gets. He really helps dissect plays along with player motivation. And, he does it all without the jargon we so often hear in football-I still don't understand the significance of quarterback ratings. In the first playoff game, to give you an idea, a fight was about to break out when one of the Blues players actually pulled the other player away. Federko explained why he did it and how it helped the Blues to avoid the penalty. Later, Federko talked about how one of the Blues drew a penalty, giving them-the Blues-a man advantage that resulted in a goal. He is filled with gems of wisdom.

We have been blessed with many great announcers in St. Louis from Jack Buck and Harry Caray to Dan Kelly-add Wilson to the list.

We have also had some fine color announcers from Mike Shannon to Gus Kyle-who had his own inimitable style-add Federko to that list.

ooo

A big thank you to Channel 4 for caring about the viewers during sports. I have complained in the past about how the local stations put their channel logos in the bottom right-hand corner during sports highlights. The logos cover the score at the time of the highlight and make it harder to appreciate the highlight and when in a game it occurred. During the NCAA final highlights, Channel 4 dropped its logo. It made it a much better highlight package. Keep it up. You're helping sports fans.

ooo

I was pleasantly surprised one afternoon recently when I turned on KMOX radio and heard Mike Bush doing the sports reports on the quarter hour. Bush, who is outstanding on television, is equally at ease on the radio. His reports were crisp, clear and to the point. His stories were concise, allowing for more sports information. Bush is apparently a fill-in at the station. Let's hope new station General Manager Tom Langmyer uses him more.

ooo

There is an interesting book that public relations people might want to get for advice when working with the media. It is called Feeding the Media Beast by Mark Mathis. While Mathis, a former TV reporter and anchor, is often overly simplistic-and in some cases just plain wrong-he does provide some good, basic ideas. He spends a lot of time explaining that in these days of "corporatized" media, journalism is very different than 20 or 30 years ago. He notes reporters are younger, less experienced and yet have more to do in any given day than reporters in the past.

Mathis does have some good ideas when he talks about three things that will feed the media beast: different, emotion and simple.

By different, he correctly contends that stories are sold, in part, because they are different. Look at how Fair St. Louis is covered today compared to its launch in the early '80s. There was far more coverage then but today, since not a lot has changed, there is much less. In late April, though, everyone covered the Fair St. Louis 2003 story. Why? The focus was on the things that would be different, such as having events in Illinois and opening the Eads Bridge to pedestrians.

By emotion, Mathis contends that stories that tug at the heart will always beat out factual stories. Feelings sell more than numbers. It can also help an organization stand out. In one example of this strategy, which also emphasizes "different," he notes an organization that figured out a way to put itself above the clutter. It was Christmas when there are about a zillion ballet performances. One organization stood out by focusing on one little girl. She had scoliosis and thus wore a back brace 23 hours a day. The other hour, she used to dance. Clearly, that story is both different and emotional. Needless to say, it got covered.

By simple, he means make it easy to understand. As soon as you get into too much detail, eyes glaze over and a good story may be lost. His illustration of simplicity is the old joke where the anchor reads, "Moses came down from Mount Sinai today with the Ten Commandments. Here are the top three ... "

Feeding the Media Beast will make good reading for amateurs and professionals. Just remember, there are exceptions to just about everything in the book and his flaw is using "always" and "never" too much.

ooo

Former Channel 5 anchor Stan Stovall is returning to the airwaves in Baltimore, Stovall joins the NBC affiliate WBAL as a news anchor. Stovall worked until last year at the Baltimore ABC affiliate WMAR.

ooo

Channel 2 has announced two recent newsroom additions. Sean Conroy is now a general assignment reporter. He comes from the Kansas City Fox station and graduated from the University of Missouri.

Also joining the station is Maurice Drummond as a sports producer. Drummond worked at Channel 30 in the mid-'90s-it had a news department then-along with the Golf Channel and ESPN.

ooo

Channel 5 lost Illinois Bureau Chief Vivien Leigh recently to marriage-she moved with her new husband to Portland, Maine, where she's working at one of Channel 5's sister Gannett stations. Veteran reporter Steve Jankowski, an Illinois resident, is the new Illinois Bureau Chief.

ooo

Former Channel 4 reporter and weekend morning anchor Anne State has returned to her hometown of San Diego. She was named the weekend evening anchor at KNSD-TV, the NBC station there.

Speaking of the morning, as of deadline, nothing was finalized for Channel 4's new morning news team.

ooo

Channel 4 has hired Lyra O'Brien as meteorologist for the station's morning and noon newscasts. O'Brien will provide weather reports for these weekday programs, from 5:30-8:00 a.m. and noon to 12:30 p.m. She replaces Cory Barron. For the past three years, O'Brien has been a meteorologist at WTHR-TV and its cable station, the SkyTrak Weather Network, in Indianapolis. A native of Chicago, O'Brien came to WTHR-TV from Chicago cable station CLTV, where she was a weather anchor.

"Lyra is an experienced, well-rounded, strong meteorologist," said Marty Van Housen, Channel 4 news director. "We believe St. Louisans will appreciate her professionalism and her extensive knowledge and experience with forecasting Midwest weather."

Sounds like a direct response to Channel 2's commercial for Dave Murray in which he talks about the need for experience in order to more accurately forecast area weather.

ooo

Channel 4's website has annoyed me. First of all, I don't like media websites that require me to sign on. Secondly, I hate the station's allowance of pop-up ads. I have a new browser I have been using nearly two months. I have visited scores of websites using the browser (Safari-for Mac) with the option of blocking pop-up ads. Until I tried Channel 4's website, not a pop-up was to be seen. But, at Channel 4's site, the pop-up, for the first time with the new browser, got through. Please, Channel 4. Don't do that to us.

A check of Channels 5's and 2's websites at the same time produced no pop-up ads.

ooo

Clarification: In the March, 2003 issue, there was a chart showing Channel 2's news share at 9 p.m. as higher than any other station. Those figures are deceiving in that they actually represent the 9-9:30 p.m. and 9:30-10 p.m. time periods added together compared to just half-hour share measurements for Channels 4 and 5. What you can take from the chart, however, is the continued growth Channel 2 is experiencing.

Sports Media
Too close to the story
By Joe Pollack
There have been a lot of stories about "embedded" war correspondents during the period of the recent War of Aggression against Iraq, an act which gave the Bush Dynasty a unique place in American history-the first father-son presidency in which both men ignored the process and the Congress, and led the nation into undeclared wars.

Embedding, or placing reporters in the midst of combat units in the field, was a stroke of public relations genius by someone. There were dozens of splendid stories out there for the taking (at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, reporter Ron Harris did exciting work and photographer Andy Cutraro was an ideal complement. Unfortunately, Terry Ganey got to Iraq too late to see actual combat). But as someone said, it was like looking at a parade through a soda straw-the reporter had an extremely narrow field of vision.

And the wider relationship between news sources and reporters, exemplified most in sports, but occurring throughout the newspaper, rose into view.

Embedded reporters are like sports writers who cover the same team for years and years and years. The longer they are on hand, the closer they get to the team and the farther they are from any sort of bad news about it. It probably was most true in small college towns where the sports editor followed Local U. for a generation, dined and drank regularly with coaches and athletic directors, turned a blind eye to anything except what happened between the white lines, and was rarely critical then.

It's an extremely difficult place to be, and the sports editor, or managing editor, is right in the middle. The longer the writer is on the beat, the more chance there is for him to get most stories first-stories about recruits, the coach's comments, the in-depth analysis. But the longer he is on the beat, the narrower is his field of vision. In Iraq, reporters saw individual feats by men they ate with and slept with. They may also have seen some dishonest, even evil, acts, but they probably felt constrained not to write about them.

After all, it was not the Mizzou beat writer, Bill Coats, who wrote about Rickey Clemons and his problems, or about Quin Snyder and his lackadaisical approach to checking classroom and discipline records while closely examining those of jump-shooting accuracy. And this is not a criticism of Coats, a fine reporter whose game analysis is excellent. So Vahe Gregorian, who is one of those rare reporters who seems even to understand the machinations of the U.S. Olympic Committee, worked on the story. After all, Coats may be covering the Tigers again in the coming season, and it would not help him, or the Post, if his sources dried up. For all I know, Coats may have been the first to discover the Clemons problems and went to one of his bosses to get some help, or fresh eyes, on the story. He certainly was involved, and wrote about the post-game partying activities of Iowa State basketball coach Larry Eustachy.

This problem of reporters who get too close to a story, too close to athletes or soldiers or politicians or chiefs of police or downtown real estate moguls, is a large one for many newspaper executives. Chicago sports editors used to (and may still) have a system where baseball writers changed teams in mid-season, going from the Cubs to the White Sox, or vice versa, and thereby spending a year with a team, but a year that went from July 4 to July 4. Other papers change assignments from time to time.

As a long-time theater critic, I made a point of not socializing with the people I wrote about. As far as I can recall, in some 30 years on the beat, I never even met many of them, and only once a year did I get involved in a social event. Actors and athletes, by the way, never forget negative comments. My wife was in a New York store one day and, in a conversation, mentioned that her husband was a theater critic for the Post. Suddenly, from a nearby aisle, behind a display of colanders, up popped Tony Randall. He inadvertently had heard the conversation, but was quick to identify the play and the critic from an evening that had happened five or six years earlier.

And it's a good thing that the war ended quickly, without defeats in battle or multitudes of body bags, which made producing happy and positive stories an easy affair that pleased editors, the Army, the readers and the soldiers. I'm certain the designer of embeddedness heaved many sighs of relief along the way, and that editors felt the same way.

There are times when it is easy for a reporter to tell the truth, and there are times when it is so difficult as to be well-nigh impossible. An example? Many years ago, when the first major soccer league, complete with television contract, was formed, CBS, which had the TV contract, hired Danny Blanchflower, once a great soccer player, to give the analysis. After the first couple of weeks, when the games and players were terrible, and the ratings the same, Bill MacPhail, who was running CBS Sports, called Blanchflower into his office and began a lecture about putting the action in a rosy light, instead of calling a bad play a bad play.

"But Bill," Blanchflower protested, "I thought that when you hired me you told me to tell the truth."

"I did," said MacPhail, and then added a line for the ages, "But you have to remember that there's positive truth and negative truth, and we want positive truth."

Media/Law
Case bodes ill for Post-Dispatch
By Ken Jones
A courtroom defeat for a southeast Missouri newspaper could spell trouble for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The ruling came in a wrongful death lawsuit filed against the Butler County Publishing Inc., owner of the Poplar Bluff Daily American Republic (DAR). The paper became a target after one of its contract delivery drivers was involved in an accident that killed the plaintiffs' father.

In its answer to the suit, DAR argued that it was not responsible for the actions of the driver because she was an independent contractor.

But the Missouri Court of Appeals' Southern District rejected that argument in an April 23 opinion and is sending the case back for trial.

The Southern District's ruling contradicts a May 2002 opinion by the Eastern District, which held that the Post was not liable for an accident caused by one of its drivers. In that case, Lee v. Pulitzer, the appellate court ruled that the Post did not exercise supervisory control over its drivers and, therefore, could not be charged with their conduct.

Legally, the new Southern District case has no effect on the Post; however, since it creates a split between the divisions of the Court of Appeals, the Missouri Supreme Court might decide to step in and resolve the conflict-perhaps to the detriment of the Post.

In the new case, Violet Paynter signed a one-year Major Route Delivery Agreement with DAR. Since she was working another job, her mother, Violet Brashears, agreed to deliver papers for her.

While working the route on Jan. 7, 2000, Brashears was involved in an accident that killed James Jones. Jones' sons sued Brashears and DAR for wrongful death, claiming that Brashears was the employee or agent of DAR. The Ripley County trial judge dismissed the case, finding that Brashears was an independent contractor, and the plaintiffs appealed.

As in all disputes over independent contractor status, the key issue on appeal was the extent of DAR's control over Paynter-and Brashears. DAR cited numerous facts about its relationship with Paynter that it said demonstrated a lack of control.

For instance, DAR pointed out-and the plaintiffs agreed-that:
o Paynter received no benefits, insurance coverage, or vacation.
o No taxes were withheld from her checks and she received a 1099.
o She was allowed to deliver papers of competing newspapers.
o She could do any other work provided it did not interfere with deliveries.
o Her contract prohibited any DAR slogan, trademark or logo on her vehicle.

DAR also raised certain points that the plaintiffs disputed, such as:
o Paynter was paid by commission and not by the hour or by salary.
o She did not have to work any specific hours or keep track of her time.
o She had to pay DAR for supplies.

To show DAR's control, the plaintiffs argued that DAR required new riders to get "ride-along" training and gave them a cassette tape with delivery instructing. In addition, DAR told drivers which papers to drop in a subscriber's yard and which to put in a delivery tube. Finally, the plaintiffs said over 93 percent of DAR's newspapers were delivered by drivers, which showed that the drivers were an essential part of DAR's business.

The Southern District agreed with the plaintiffs. It cited five factors showing that DAR exercised significant control over the drivers.

First, DAR placed numerous conditions on work days and hours, in addition to timeliness of deliveries.

Second, the Delivery Agreement contemplated a long-term relationship of one year. The court said: "If the time of employment is short, the worker is less apt to subject himself to control as to details and the job is more likely to be considered his job than the job of the one employing him."

Third, DAR had the right to terminate the contract without prior notice, as would be expected in an employment relationship.

Fourth, there was little skill required for the duties performed by the drivers. As the court said, "Work which does not require the services of one highly educated or skilled" indicates an employment relationship.

Finally, since the delivery drivers accounted for over 93.25 percent of all DAR's delivered papers, the drivers' work was part of the regular business of DAR.

Given these factors, the Southern District reversed the lower court's ruling and said that the plaintiffs had a right to a jury trial on the case.

Should the Post be worried about the ruling?

Perhaps. Factually, there does not seem to be much of a difference between the situations in the two cases. In fact, in the Post case, the Eastern District acknowledged that: the Post specified the times and places for the delivery and required deliveries to meet certain written performance standards; the driver did not have a distinct and separate business from Pulitzer; delivering Post papers did not require specialized skills or training; and the Post agreement was long-term. Nevertheless, the Eastern District found that there was no employment relationship.

On the other hand, it is interesting that the Southern District opinion failed to cite the Post case or a 1937 Missouri Supreme Court case holding that the Kansas City Star was not responsible for an accident involving its delivery driver. So, it could be argued that the DAR decision is an anomaly.

But, because of the disagreement, the case is likely headed for the Missouri Supreme Court, which could issue a ruling contrary to the interests of the Post.

Media/Politics
Why VNS died
By Terry Jones
The Voter News Service (VNS) died earlier this year at the age of 10. There was no funeral and precious few regrets, but we do now have an extensive autopsy. The pathologists' report is in the Spring 2003 issue of Public Opinion Quarterly, the leading journal on the subject. For polling and political junkies like myself, it is an intriguing and instructive analysis.

The beginning of the end for VNS was Election Night 2000. At 6:52 p.m.-all times are CST-it projected that Al Gore would win Florida, eight minutes before the polls had even closed in that state's panhandle. Relying largely on VNS input, NBC, CBS-jointly with CNN, Fox, and ABC-made the same prediction either a few minutes before or afterward. Slightly more than two hours later (9:16 p.m.), VNS withdrew its call. It stayed silent the rest of the evening and early morning but, again making extensive use of VNS data, all the networks then said George W. Bush would win almost simultaneously-Fox was first at 1:16 a.m., and ABC last at 1:20 a.m. Within two hours, all retracted this prediction and the long journey through chads and courts began to determine who would be the country's next president.

Florida was not VNS's only problem that night-there were also key mistakes in New Mexico and Washington State-but its attention dwarfed the others. Try as it might, VNS could not put Humpty Dumpty back together again. A system revamped for the 2002 off-year elections had both hardware and software problems on election day, causing VNS to forego making any predictions and leading its funders-the television networks plus the Associated Press-to pull the plug a few months later.

What went wrong? Why, after largely successful predictions in 1994, 1996 and 1998, did the system crash in 2000? Was it an accident waiting to happen or did something change? The answer, according to the post-mortem, is some of each.

Let's start with the risks VNS was taking, potential dangers-almost all driven by an understandable need to control costs-that it and its partners in retrospect were underestimating. The first was the small sample size of precincts where exit polls were being conducted. Although these surveys taken of voters as they leave the polling locations are only one input into the prediction process, they play a key role. In Florida, the sample had just 45 precincts. Statistically, this is cutting it close. Sampling is all about probability and, the fewer the cases, not only the larger the estimate error under normal circumstances but the greater the chance that, every now and then, the prediction will be way off.

Second is selecting a "base election" from the past, one to compare early precinct results with to determine whether a party is running ahead or behind its typical performance. The assumption, of course, is that the pattern of results across a state for this year's race will be the same as for the previous one. If the Democratic candidate received 55 percent in Precinct X in the base election and, this time, Precinct X votes 60 percent Democratic, this supposedly means that the Democrat will do 5 percentage points (60-55 percent) better elsewhere. VNS had been using just one race per state. In Florida for the 2000 prediction, that race was the 1998 gubernatorial contest. Alas, that was a poor choice for a model. If VNS had compared the results with additional predecessors such as the 1996 presidential race and the 1998 U.S. Senate election, this would have been apparent.

In addition to this thin ice on which VNS had been skating from its inception, it did not adjust to two changes. The first and most serious is a sharp increase in the number of voters using absentee ballots. They, by definition, do not participate in exit surveys and-if their preferences differ from those who go to the polls on election day-that can and will affect the projection. VNS predicted that 7.5 percent of Florida's vote would be absentee, well short of the 12.0 percent actually cast. They also estimated that the absentee votes would split 58 percent Republican/42 percent Democratic when, in fact, it was 62 percent Republican/38 percent Democratic.

Second, it is becoming tougher to hire quality interviewers and more challenging to secure respondent cooperation. Nationally, the interviewers failed to fulfill their task in one out of every six exit survey precincts. This further undercut an already modest sample size. Respondent cooperation with exit surveys-again nationally-has dropped from 60 percent in 1992 to 51 percent in 2000. This increases the chance for "nonresponse bias," the probability that the political preferences of those who refuse differ noticeably from those who participate.

All this does not mean that exit polling and election night projections have vanished forever. Inter-network competition and the American desire to know who won as quickly as possible create a demand for which someone will provide a supply. What is important, however, is that the media give the public a better understanding of the processes and assumptions underlying these projections. Kathleen A. Francovic, the highly respected survey director at CBS, wrote in the Public Opinion Quarterly analysis that "in the 12 hours CBS News was on the air reporting estimates of outcomes along with more than 30 stories using exit polls to analyze the results, the name 'Voter News Service'-which had provided all the election data-was never mentioned."

Projections are not the truth-they're simply educated guesses that can be, and sometimes are, wrong. The media should both acknowledge this and explain why it is so.

Radio History
Come in, Woody
By Frank Absher
In 1931, a young radio announcer named Woody Klose was sent on assignment to Lambert Field where his job was to be part of the first three-way conversation between pilots in flight and an observer on the ground. In a way, the broadcast was symbolic of the ups and downs of Woody's career.

He came to St. Louis at age 16 with his family, and seeking work to help pay for his education at Washington University, he ended up as an usher at the Missouri Theater. From that position he was promoted to doorman at the new Ambassador Theater, which was also owned by the Skouras Brothers.

His university work was aimed at his professional goal, which was print journalism, but Woody freely admitted that he wanted to be a professional singer. The problem was that no one thought he had enough musical talent. That didn't stop him from trying, though. He spent most of his $12 weekly income on voice lessons, and the idea of becoming a print journalist never got off the ground. He dropped out of Washington University.

One July morning he went to the KMOX studios, which were located in the Mayfair Hotel, and actually auditioned for a singing job. The station's director of programming, Katheryne McIntire, was in charge of the auditions, and she wasn't impressed. Neither was station manager George Junkin, and Woody's radio singing future crashed. A St. Louis Globe-Democrat account of that day, published later, quoted Woody: "But just as I was leaving the room, Miss McIntire called me. She told me that, although she couldn't do much for me as a singer, she thought I had possibilities as a radio announcer ... I suppose I should have been deeply gratified. Instead, I was just a bit piqued that my talent as a vocalist had not been recognized."

He went to work on the air at KMOX at the age of 18. Within a couple days, he was assigned to cover an endurance flight at what was then called Lambert St. Louis Flying Field. Sometimes there was nothing to relate, he told the Globe reporter, "Too frequently nothing but the bare recital that the boys were floating around in the heavens." At the end of the flight, he did a live report on the CBS network. It was a perfect way to celebrate his 19th birthday. Management was pleased with his work and gave him a regular, entry-level shift of early morning announcing chores, which included a daily exercise program.

Within a few months he had been promoted to other shifts and was voted the most popular radio announcer in St. Louis in one newspaper's poll. He was still convinced that he was a singer, though, and he explained to the Globe reporter how he saw a chance to impress the station's listeners. The story bears a faint resemblance to the work habits of a future station manager, Robert Hyland.

"One night," said Klose, "we were running late, 1-1:30. Local artists were the performers. It was my idea that Mr. Junkin would be in bed at that time, so I decided to slip in a song of my own. I was singing quite nobly when I happened to look out the window of the studio into the auditorium. There sat Mr. Junkin. Apparently he was not yet convinced that he had found a boy wonder. He simply grunted and told me to stick with announcing, which I did."

Woody Klose left KMOX at the age of 22 to join a local ad agency. He continued to search for the magic career, working briefly at KSD as program director and taking the job of assistant manager of WTMV when he was 25. The latter part of his career was spent in advertising.

And that big broadcast involving the pilots and ground communication-it was a bust. All the listeners heard were repeated efforts to establish radio contact: "Come in, Woody." "Can you hear me, Phil?"

AM/FM
Taking Sonderman's side
By Lynn Venhaus
Local radio personality Joe Sonderman got a raw deal. Since when is "slick" a racial slur?

People are often discriminated against in horrid ways, and those complaints are valid and should be championed. But, in this all-too-politically correct world, some people use the race card when that is not the case. Why can't people be judged on merit alone? If their work is sub-par, why can someone not only win a pile of money but also ruin a man's career in the process?

Sonderman has been tarnished by an unfortunate set of circumstances, his name released when it should not have been in a racial harassment case.

There are two sides to every story, but unfortunately, the mainstream press in this town failed in its responsibility to be fair and balanced when it blasted Sonderman as the boss who apparently mutually kidded with a subordinate, and it wound up as a lawsuit-only after the worker was fired for inferior work. Interestingly, the worker had also joined in the camaraderie.

Sonderman, who grew up in St. Louis and loves the city passionately, has worked for local radio stations for nearly 20 years, in news and as on-air talent. He deserved better treatment.

So now, I'm telling his side, since no one else has had the decency to do so.

"I am not a racist." Those are his first words. And he will have to repeat that phrase a lot considering what's happened.

After working there about eight years, Sonderman was let go from his position at Metro Networks/Westwood One after the company settled a discrimination complaint by reporter Anthony "Tony" Hicks for $150,000. Westwood One is owned by Infinity.

"I was never a party to the lawsuit or the settlement, so I never got a chance to tell my side. I only learned about the settlement when I read the paper!" he said. "The settlement agreement cited only an unnamed manager and said the manager would undergo sensitivity training and be put on probation."

The case was settled in federal court the same day the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed it. Sonderman said Hicks went to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and identified him as the manager.

"He made horrible allegations which I deny emphatically and the Post printed without caring about the effect of those words. I seek only a chance to have my side of the story heard," Sonderman said.

Had Sonderman known he would be fired and wouldn't get a chance to tell his side, he says he would have pushed for a court trial. In that way, other witnesses would have been called and could have corroborated his story.

"They didn't take the word of MODOT employees who would vouch for me, anybody who's worked with me in radio before. All they did was listen to two disgruntled employees," he said.

"I wasn't supposed to be fired," he said. "But a higher-up at Westwood One decided I had to go. I just feel like they ruined me. I'm guilty of being insensitive, perhaps, but I'm not a racist."

When Sonderman took over as Metro Bureau Chief, he inherited Hicks, who was hired when Metro was a tiny operation out of a private house. When Metro became a national network, their jobs changed.

Sonderman managed the operations in Missouri's traffic information center in Chesterfield, which checks the major highways in the region. The Missouri Department of Transportation contracts with Metro to operate the center.

"After 18 years of hard work, I now find my broadcast career in ruins. I lost my position as a manager at the Gateway Guide Center, which had proven to be my dream job. I miss KMOX and KTVI (Channel 2). I miss my friends and co-workers. I have a wife and two children and face a career change at age 40, while being branded a racist," he said.

"No one bothered to talk to employees who said they could not work with Tony any longer, who heard him use racial terms or those who had to do extra work to make up for his shortcomings," he explained.

Sonderman charges that the people who supported Hicks in his allegations were on the opposite side of a bitter union dispute at Metro and are seeking revenge. "It was a vendetta," he claims.

"The other employee who made the allegations in the paper was also fired by upper management for not doing her job. I hardly knew her," he said.

In any work environment, there is kidding going on-"I did refer to him as 'Homefries' and 'Slick' as he claims. But, I think it is an incredible stretch to call those terms racist," he said.

"I was very critical of Tony in an effort to make him improve, and may have been boorish and rude. But, I was never racist. It never approached the ridiculous level as he claims. I spent a year giving him writing lessons, and he responded by claiming I was picking on him," he noted.

"As an instructor at the Broadcast Center years ago, I told Tony he should not be in the business. I don't think he forgot that. I never said blacks should not be in the business, as he claims. What sort of horrid person would believe such a thing?" he said.

Sonderman admits that he called Hicks "stupid" and agrees that it was an error in judgment as a manager to say that, but emphatically denies that he said all black people were stupid, as Hicks claimed in the suit. He charges that Hicks twisted what was said to make it appear he's a racist.

"When someone uses racism as an excuse for his or her shortcomings, it does a great disservice to those who are discriminated against. The St. Louis American headlined that Hicks endured racial mayhem. That's absurd. Martin Luther King Jr., those who marched across the bridge at Selma and the four little girls at Birmingham faced racial mayhem. Hicks endured a tough day at the office. The American piece was incredibly biased," Sonderman said.

In the March 27 issue of the Post, the headline read: "Fired traffic reporter settles racial harassment claim for $150,000." The subhead read: "He names Sonderman as culprit." Reporter Peter Shinkle wrote that Hicks said the manager used racial epithets to insult him and "told him that people of his race are 'stupid' and should not be working there."

The other employee, Jan Hutchinson, was quoted as saying, "Joe wasn't even shy about saying these things. It wasn't even whispering or blinking. He would just blurt out mean, racist things. Anyone in the whole studio could hear it."

Robert Golterman, an attorney for Metro Networks, said the company denied the allegations but agreed to settle the case to avoid the risks and costs of taking the case to court.

Sonderman said he accepts that people are fired in broadcasting all the time. "That's the business," he said. But, now, with the "racist" label, no one will hire him. "I can't find a job," he said.

"Anyone in middle management in this business has probably faced a similar situation. I will come out of this a stronger and better person. I believe God has a plan, and I put myself in his hands. I grew up believing that if you worked hard and played by the rules, you will be rewarded. Those who use the system to their advantage have not shaken those beliefs. They have their money, but I have my self-respect. You will hear from me again," he said.

Sonderman would like to stay in the area for work. One of his kids is a high school senior and the other is 12. "I don't want to have to move," he said.

In the meantime, his book, St. Louis 365, is available at all area bookstores, and he was recently on Charles Jaco's morning show on KFTK (97.1 FM), talking about the area's rich history.

Sonderman is also not taking this lightly. He has retained an attorney, Chet Pleban, and they are determining what course of action to take. He said he has documentation, including writing samples.

ooo

Clint Hasse has returned to the fold. He joined the Infinity St. Louis team as general sales manager of KMOX on May 1. He first worked for the "Voice of St. Louis" from 1993 to 2001, serving as the GSM for the last four. He went on to sales management at Bonneville's St. Louis Radio Group, basically WIL (92.3 FM).

It's another positive move for KMOX under the new management team of Beth Davis and Tom Langmyer. Hasse had been run off by former GM Karen Carroll, but current GM Langmyer, a good friend, brought him back.

"Clint's passion for KMOX and his vast experience in radio sales management make him the right choice for this key position," Langmyer said in a released statement.

ooo

Congratulations to the cheery and comfy morning WIL (92.3 FM) team for its nomination as country radio's best for the Academy of Country Music Awards. David Craig, Elaine Everett and Monica Adams will attend the awards show May 21 in Las Vegas if they win On-Air Personalities of the Year (announced ahead of time). It's the first time a country team from St. Louis has been nominated. They're competing with deejays from Dallas, San Diego, Alabama and Texas.

ooo

KTRS (550 AM) is actually expanding its newsroom, not down-sizing, as had been rumored. News Director Kent Martin said the station added a reporter at night and on the weekends. Chris Pilcic, who worked at the radio station in Carlyle, Ill., is the weekend news shift guy. Sally Rushing, an intern from the University of Tennessee, will cover nightside this month. "They're both bright, hard-working types who have already made an impact on our team," he said.

Jim Stark and MeMe Wolff have taken on the newscasting shifts Bill Addison used to handle, and Martin is covering the afternoon drive newscasting that Bill was assigned. "We just parted ways with Bill, and he's pursuing other interests. I wish him the best," he said.

"We're also on the verge of hiring another reporter to succeed John Curtis, who left this last week to devote his time to his free-lance work. As a free-lancer, John may still contribute to our newscasts on an occasional basis, too."

ooo

KDHX (88.1 FM) is going to air a documentary series this month that will present the total African-American experience in the medium.

During the "Rhythm and Blues" segment, you will be told the history of radio stations KATZ, KXLW, KADI, KWK, WTMV, WBBR, WAMV and WESL.

Parts of live broadcasts will feature Spider Burks with Ahmad Jamal, and Leo's 5. You'll hear Lou "Fatha" Thimes, Doug Eason, Bernie Hayes, Al Waples, Scoop Sanders, E. Rodney Jones, Robert B.Q., Willa Mae "Gracie" Lowry, Donnie "Soul Finger" Brooks, Gabriel, Gentleman Jim Gates and Rod "Jockenstein" King. Interviews with Leo "The Man in the Red Vest" Cheers, Edith "Edie Bee" Boatner, Wiley Price Jr. and Ron Elz will also be part of the series.

Ads/PR
Media self-defense
By Rick Stoff
The American media seem to be catching the heat for untidy world events at an increasing rate. And without putting up much of a fight, or even holding up their gloves to deflect the blows. The media might think about paying more attention to their own public relations to protect the press' role as a necessary participant in democracy.

An impudent "Henny Penny" routine has been used by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld several times when the media dared to ask a question that he deigned not to entertain. As it turns out, however, Iraq's hospitals and major museum were being emptied even as Rumsfeld mocked media coverage of looting in Iraqi cities that had come under control of American and British military forces.

Could there have been 20 vases in the whole country? The deputy director of the Iraqi National Museum told Reuters, "They have looted or destroyed 170,000 items of antiquity dating back thousands of years." The looting reportedly continued over a period of 48 hours.

Could there have been 20 bedpans in the whole country? News reports in early April stated that "few if any" of Baghdad's 33 hospitals were still operational due to war damage and looting. According to the web site of the English Guardian newspaper, "only one hospital in the city (Baghdad) still has a functioning operating theatre."

Wrote reporter Brian Whitaker, "In what appeared to be a concerted effort to damp down media coverage of the chaos, the British government simultaneously laid into the BBC and its defense correspondent, Andrew Gilligan, accusing them of 'trying to make the news' rather than reporting it.'"

Has American news been neutered by years of relentless blasting of the "liberal media?"

Even before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush seemed to enjoy a refreshingly accommodating relationship with those evil liberal media. At a media panel discussion held in February 2001 during a United Auto Workers legislative conference, pundit Paul Begala noted the difference.

He said a Nexis database search to that date turned up 13,641 stories about Bill Clinton "dodging the draft" by attending college during the Vietnam War. Begala found just 49 stories about George W. Bush's activities during the last years of the Vietnam era, when he fulfilled his military obligation in the National Guard-sort of. One of the few stories on the subject, written by Walter V. Robinson for the Boston Globe in 2000, presented evidence that Bush had no contact with the National Guard for a year beginning in May 1972. According to anti-Bush web sites, the future president therefore had gone AWOL and in theory was a wartime military deserter.

As Michael Sorkin reported in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on April 13, the media more recently were "lambasted" by right-wing critics for pre-war coverage, even though they extended almost every courtesy to the Bush administration. Only 6 percent of 393 people interviewed on network television news shows "were skeptics regarding the need for war," according to a survey conducted in February by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Only three of the 393 sources were "identified as being affiliated with anti-war activism."

The label of "liberal," an obvious code word for "biased," has been stuck even on media that most communications professionals would consider mainstream. Isn't it about time for the media to do a better job of protecting their credibility?

"The first need is to prevent an imbalance in which the preponderant impressions on the issue are coming from the opponents," wrote public relations pioneer Philip Lesly in his 1984 book Overcoming Opposition: A Survival Manual for Executives.

"Means are needed to get balancing information into the stream from sources that the public will find credible," he wrote.

One chapter of Lesly's book was titled "Don't Let the Opponents Set the Agenda."

"The first burst of attention to a subject establishes how the public is likely to perceive it ... Activists have learned how to preempt the agenda for their causes by capturing the stage first and dictating the script," Lesly wrote.

How about branding all the media that aren't fully on our side as "liberal?"

"Time after time public issues have been forced into public consciousness and then pushed through the entire agenda of 'consideration' to a conclusion without all the facts or the true consequences being considered," Lesly said.

He recommended that organizations maintain an education and information effort to limit attacks on credibility and avoid defensive responses. It might be helpful to remind America that the founders intended that we have a free press that serves democracy by printing all the news that fits, not just the news that has been approved by one faction.

Lesly said an organization should have its facts "scrupulously researched and documented in advance" and "become the dependable source of information at the formation stage of awareness. That should help inoculate the influence centers against accepting distorted, half-baked, or simplistic assertions and provide a basis for reasoned consideration of the issue."

Another point of emphasis made by Lesly is appealing to the self-interest of the public. "You must focus on what's in it for them."

One would think the public would prefer to read and hear all the news and facts, be they good or bad, rather than know only what an activist faction approves as acceptable knowledge. There are countries where the news is sanitized in that manner, and they don't wave the red, white and blue over them.

Allowing a degrading label such as "liberal media" to be applied without challenge is another big mistake in Lesly's strategic thinking.

"By allowing opponents to establish the terms used in debate we often let them dictate the terms of the final agreement," he wrote. He cited groups who have labeled themselves as "moral majority" and "public interest group."

While his book mostly lambasted left-wing advocacy groups, some of his tactics could be turned back on today's extreme right wing.

"Their strong affinity for emotion," he explained, "can make their appeals effective, as we have seen, with most people and the media. But emotion often overrides logic in leading them to take their stand. That makes them vulnerable to a sound, carefully documented, and effectively orchestrated program that erodes supporters' sympathy by washing away their flimsy foundation."

Another thought from Lesly: "Activists, like the public, like to oversimplify. They isolate one point in highly complex situations and declare THAT is the problem. Forestalling and fending off such attacks requires preventing opponents from isolating their simple answer and getting all attention focused on it."

Holding the press accountable for all the bad events in a complex world is very simplistic, but the opinion polls suggest the tactic is as effective as a bunker-buster bomb.

Late Edition
Vigilantism runs supreme in the U.S., we must fight it, says Robbins
By Charles L. Klotzer
At first, it was my intention to comment once more on the imminent threat posed by the likelihood that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will shortly open the door to more media concentration.

Then I came across on salon.com actor Tim Robbins' response at the National Press Club to the cancellation at the Baseball Hall of Fame's commemoration of the anniversary of the release of "Bull Durham" due to Robbins' political views.

His comments, which are excerpted below, are compelling and deserve as wide an audience as possible.

Readers who like to know more about past failures of deregulation and what the FCC might enact, should go to "Showdown on the FCC" on the home page of moveon.org. Among a series of revealing articles, they will find Bill Moyers' interview on NPR of Barry Diller, founder of FOX broadcasting and present CEO of USA Networks. Diller's devastating analysis of past FCC actions and the prospects that soon everything we read, see and hear will be controlled by a few companies is must reading.

By Tim Robbins
For all the ugliness and tragedy of 9/11 there was a brief period afterwards where I held a great hope. In the midst of the tears and shocked faces of New Yorkers, in the midst of the lethal air we breathed as we worked at ground zero, in the midst of my children's terror at being so close to this crime against humanity, in the midst of all of this I held onto a glimmer of hope in the naive assumption that something good could come out of all this.

I imagined our leaders seizing upon this moment of unity in America, this moment when no one wanted to talk about Democrat vs. Republican, white vs. black or any of the other ridiculous divisions that dominate our public discourse. I imagined our leaders going on television, telling the citizens that although we all want to be at Ground Zero we can't. But there is work that is needed to be done all over America. Our help is needed at community centers, to tutor children, to teach them to read, our work is needed at old age homes to visit the lonely and infirm, in gutted neighborhoods to rebuild housing and clean up parks, and convert abandoned lots into baseball fields.

I imagined leadership that would take this incredible energy, this generosity of spirit, and create a new unity in America born out of the chaos and tragedy of 9/11. A new unity that would send a message to terrorists everywhere: If you attack us we will become stronger, cleaner, better educated, more unified. You will strengthen our commitment to justice and democracy by your inhumane attacks on us. Like a phoenix, out of the fire we will be reborn.

"With us or against us"
And then came the speech. "You are either with us or against us." And the bombing began. And the old paradigm was restored as our leader encouraged us to show our patriotism by shopping and by volunteering to join groups that would turn in their neighbor for any suspicious behavior.

In the 19 months since 9/11 we have seen our democracy compromised by fear and hatred. Basic inalienable rights, due process, the sanctity of the home have been quickly compromised in a climate of fear. A unified American public has grown bitterly divided and a world population that had profound sympathy and support for us has grown contemptuous and distrustful, viewing us as we once viewed the Soviet Union, as a rogue state. This past weekend Susan and I and the three kids went to Florida for a family reunion of sorts. Amidst the alcohol and the dancing, sugar-rushing children there was, of course, talk of the war.

The most frightening thing about the weekend was the amount of times we were thanked for speaking out against the war because that individual speaking thought it unsafe to do so in their own community in their own life. "Keep talking. I haven't been able to open my mouth."

A relative tells me that a history teacher tells his 11-year-old son, my nephew, that Susan Sarandon is endangering the troops by her opposition to the war. Another teacher in a different school asks our niece if we were coming to the school play.

"They're not welcome here," said the molder of young minds. Another relative tells me of a school board decision to cancel a civics event that was proposing to have a moment of silence for those who have died in the war because the students were including dead Iraqi civilians in their silent prayer. A teacher in another nephew's school is fired for wearing a T-shirt with a peace sign on it. And a friend of the family tells of listening to the radio down South as the talk radio host calls for the murder of a prominent antiwar activist.

Death threats have appeared on other prominent peaceniks' doorsteps for their views against the war. Relatives of ours have received threatening e-mails and phone calls. My 13-year-old boy, who has done nothing to anybody, has been embarrassed and humiliated by a sadistic creep who writes, or rather scratches, his column with his fingers in the dirt. Susan and I have been listed as traitors, as supporters of Saddam, and various other epithets by the Aussie gossip rags masquerading as newspapers and by their "fair and balanced" electronic media cousins 19th Century Fox. Apologies to Gore Vidal. Two weeks ago, the United Way cancelled Susan's appearance at a conference on women's leadership and both of us last week were told that both we and the First Amendment were not welcome at the Baseball Hall of Fame. A famous rock and roller called me last week to thank me for speaking out against the war only to go on to tell me that he could not speak himself because he fears repercussions from Clear Channel. "They promote our concert appearances," he said. "They own most of the stations that play our music. I can't come out against this war."

And here in Washington Helen Thomas finds herself banished to the back of the room and uncalled on after asking Ari Fleisher whether our showing prisoners of war at Guantánamo Bay on television violated the Geneva Convention.

A chill wind is blowing in this nation. A message is being sent through the White House and its allies in talk radio and Clear Channel and Cooperstown. "If you oppose this administration there can and will be ramifications." Every day the airwaves are filled with warnings, veiled and unveiled threats, spewed invective and hatred directed at any voice of dissent. And the public, like so many relatives and friends I saw this weekend, sit in mute opposition and in fear.

I'm sick of hearing about Hollywood being against the war. Hollywood's heavy hitters, the real power brokers and cover of the magazine stars have been largely silent on this issue. But Hollywood, the concept, has always been a popular target.

The roots of violence
I remember when the Columbine High School shootings happened, President Clinton criticized Hollywood for contributing to this terrible tragedy. This as we were dropping bombs over Kosovo. Could the violent actions of our leaders contribute somewhat to the violent fantasies our teenagers are having? Or is it all just Hollywood and rock and roll? I remember reading at the time that one of the shooters had tried to enlist to fight the real war a week before he acted out his war in real life at Columbine. I talked about this in the press at the time and curiously no one accused me of being unpatriotic for criticizing Clinton. In fact, the same talk radio patriots that call us traitors today engaged in daily personal attacks on their president during the war in Kosovo.

Today, prominent politicians who have decried violence in movies, (the "blame Hollywooders" if you will), recently voted to give our current president the power to unleash real violence in our current war. They want us to stop the fictional violence but are OK with the real kind. And these same people that tolerate the real violence of war, don't want to see the result of it on the nightly news. Unlike the rest of the world our news coverage of this war remains sanitized, without a glimpse of the blood and gore inflicted upon our soldiers or the women and children in Iraq.

Violence as a concept, an abstraction. It's very strange. As we applaud the hard-edged realism of the opening battle scene of Saving Private Ryan, we cringe at the thought of seeing the same on the nightly news. We are told it would be pornographic. We want no part of reality in real life. We demand that war be painstakingly realized on the screen but that war remain imagined and conceptualized in real life.

Where is the opposition?
And in the midst of all this madness, where is the political opposition? Where have all the Democrats gone? Long time passing, long time ago? With apologies to Robert Byrd, I have to say it is pretty embarrassing to live in a country where a five-foot-one comedian has more guts than most politicians. We need leaders, not pragmatists that cower before the spin zones of former entertainment journalists. We need leaders who understand the Constitution, Congressmen who don't, in a moment of fear, abdicate their most important power, the right to declare war, to the executive branch. And please, can we stop the congressional sing-a-longs? In this time when a citizenry applauds the liberation of a country as it lives in fear of its own freedom, when an administration official releases an attack ad questioning the patriotism of a legless Vietnam veteran running for Congress, when people all over the country fear reprisal if they use their right to free speech, it is time to get angry.

It is time to get fierce. It doesn't take much to shift the tide. My 11-year-old nephew mentioned earlier, a shy kid who never talks in class, stood up to his history teacher who was questioning Susan's patriotism. "That's my aunt you're talking about. Stop it!" And the stunned teacher backtracked and began stammering compliments in embarrassment.

Sports writers across the country reacted with such overwhelming fury at the Hall of Fame that the president of the Hall admitted he made a mistake and Major League Baseball disavowed any connection to the actions of the Hall's president.

It's up to the media
A bully can be stopped. So can a mob. It takes one person with the courage and a resolute voice. The journalists in this country can battle back at those who would rewrite our Constitution in the Patriot Act II (or Patriot, the sequel, as we would call it in Hollywood). We are counting on you to star in that movie. Journalists can insist that they not be used as publicists by this administration. The next White House correspondent to be called on by Ari Fleischer should defer their question to the back of the room to the banished journalist-du-jour. Any instance of intimidation to free speech should be battled against. Any acquiescence to intimidation at this point will only lead to more intimidation. You have, whether you like it or not, an awesome responsibility and an awesome power.

The fate of discourse, the health of this republic is in your hands, whether you write on the left or the right. This is your time and the destiny you have chosen. We lay the continuance of our democracy on your desks and count on your pens to be mightier. Millions are watching and waiting in mute frustration and hope. Hoping for someone to defend the spirit and letter of our Constitution and to defy the intimidation that is visited upon us daily in the name of national security and warped notions of patriotism. Our ability to disagree, and our inherent right to question our leaders and criticize their actions, define who we are. To allow those rights to be taken away out of fear, to punish people for their beliefs, to limit access in the news media to differing opinions is to acknowledge our democracy's defeat. These are challenging times. There is a wave of hate that seeks to divide us, right and left, pro-war and antiwar.

In the name of my 11-year-old nephew and all the other unreported victims of this hostile and unproductive environment of fear, let us try to find our common ground. Let us celebrate this grand and glorious experiment that has survived for 227 years. To do so we must honor and fight vigilantly for the things that unite us. Like freedom, the First Amendment and yes, baseball.

Features
Guiding lights
Local religious publications all over the map on Iraq war
Muslims: A wary eye
By Benjamin Israel
Anyone who thinks there is one Muslim point of view about the war in Iraq should read the American Muslim. The March-April issue of the St. Louis-based online publication came out before the onset of the war and includes four articles about it.

Founded as a print journal in 1989 in Chicago by Sheila Musaji, the American Muslim in its About Us section says the journal provides "an open forum for the discussion of ideas and issues of concern to Muslims in America from various points of view (based on Qur'an and Sunnah) representing no one school of thought, ethnic group or organization." It calls for putting its emphasis on providing "a balanced, moderate, alternative voice focusing on the spiritual dimension of Islam rather than the more often heard voice of extreme political Islamism."

The newsletters of the local mosques are confined largely to in-house news about their events. Another locally based online publication, Crescentlife.com, addresses social and psychological issues like the role of women.

One article in the American Muslim, by an Iraqi-born American, Zainab Al-Suwaij, supports the invasion. She recounts the terror of having one of her fourth-grade classmates disappear along with her family after the fourth-grader said the wrong thing in class, how, when she met her uncle for the first time after he was in prison for years, she saw his twisted feet, deformed when he was hung by his toes in his cell.

Al-Suwaij argues that the Ba'ath Party has waged war on Iraq since 1968, and that Bush's invasion would end that war by deposing Saddam Hussein.

"Liberated from the weight of Saddam's terror state, Iraqis will regain their humanity, start to speak openly and instinctively organize a civil society," she wrote.

Al-Suwaij is executive director of the American Islamic Congress, an organization that the American Muslim writes is dedicated to building tolerance and civil rights in America.

A piece from the Turkish writer Harun Yahya called "Iraq: How to Avoid a War? Saddam Must Step Down to Save Peace" is not what one might expect from the title. Yahya, believing that the Bush Administration decided long ago to go to war, invokes the Koran and calls for the Iraqi dictator to abdicate to prevent the devastation a war would cause his country. At the same time, however, Yahya invokes Old and New Testament verses to convince Bush to call off the attack. Plus, he lists all the demons that a war could unleash: civil war in Iraq, the break-up of the country, economic devastation in the entire region and a possible backlash leading to a clash of civilizations between the West and the Islamic world.

A statement from the Islamic Council of New England reiterates the same points as Yahya, but adds that the war could bring greater danger to the United States, particularly its Muslims.

"For the Arab and Muslim worlds, such unadulterated warmongering against the Iraqis with a docile acceptance of North Korea's aggressiveness would look like selective racism and a crusade against Islam, respectively. It would serve merely to reinforce the distorted agenda of extremists and reduce our hopes of eradicating the scourge of terrorism," the article reads.

"For Muslim Americans, accustomed to being targeted after the Gulf war, and vilified after 9/11, there is a sense of resignation to the fact that if Bush's war does not pan out as scheduled, they could well face an internment as the Japanese Americans did during World War II," it continues.

But most compelling, in spite of its 20-page length, is a piece from Farish A. Noor. Noor declares that by waging this war, the West would deal itself worse blows than Al Qaeda has done.

"The 'West' here refers to the great Western idea: the belief and understanding that the West represented something that was higher, nobler and more universal than itself. It is the West of the Enlightenment project, the West of Reason and Ethics, the West of international diplomacy and the rule of law. It is the West of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Leibniz, Spinoza and Emmanuel Kant," Noor wrote, adding, "Never again will the world believe that America stands for human rights and democracy, for how can one impose a democracy at gun point, and how can one serve the cause of human rights at the end of a bayonet?"

The piece criticizes tendencies within Islam itself for being "too defensive and confrontational," and dates this to 1258 when Hulagu Khan led a Mongol army into Baghdad, brought down the Abbasid Caliphate and raped and slaughtered many of its inhabitants. The Mongols destroyed the famous universities and libraries of Baghdad and with them hundreds of books on science, philosophy, law and the arts and killed or captured thousands of poets, philosophers, scientists, scribes, mystics and artisans, Noor wrote. He argued that the Mongol conquest was the beginning of the end of a golden age of Muslim enlightenment.

"From this all-consuming darkness was born a fear and contempt for the Other, and sure enough this anger and frustration soon found itself expressed in words that were persuasive and beguiling," Noor wrote. Through much of the rest of the piece, Noor argues that this fear and contempt led to many of the worst tendencies within Islamic culture. "Fearful of enemies within and without, we have become our worst enemies."

Noor opposed the invasion of Iraq, but saw it as an opportunity for the Islamic world to "re-orient our struggle and make it a truly universal one that serves humanity as a whole, and to locate ourselves once again at the center of societal advancement and progress. But this can only happen if we reintegrate ourselves into the mainstream of global politics and social currents, and take full advantage of the technological, economic and educational advances we see all around us. We need to use the tools of social science and modern technology so that the message of political Islam can be translated to a wider audience in a way that is inclusive and not divisive."

The May issue includes more about Iraq in the same vein, including one by Khalid Shah called "The Bladder Theory of Power." Shah, an American citizen born in Pakistan who lives in Fenton, uses business writer Peter Lynch's "bladder theory of cash," which says that cash-rich corporations piss away their cash reserves by "diworsefying" into businesses they cannot manage well.

Shah said that in the late 1990s the United States possessed unprecedented military, economic and moral power, and more power in the form of goodwill, but, "We are indeed pissing this power away and will have little to show for in exchange."

He goes on to say that through its "blinding arrogance," the United States ignored the protests of people around the world.

"In a democratic process, sometimes the government does have to take unpopular decisions," Khalid wrote.

"However, there is always engagement of the people in the process, their objections are heard and responded to. In contrast, the U.S. administration acted as if it did not even acknowledge this vehement objection by so many."

Note also that Shah, like other contributors to the American Muslim, used the pronoun "we" when referring to the United States. They identify themselves as patriotic Americans, as do many foreign-born Muslims.

Catholics & Protestants: Clergy vs. congregation
By Don Corrigan
The UN and its National Security Council were not the only entities deemed irrelevant by the Bush team as it took America to war in Iraq in late March. Add the Catholic Church and mainstream Protestantism to the list of global irrelevancies.

Pope John Paul II made the case that a U.S. war and subjugation of Iraq were unjustified in a number of pronouncements from the Vatican in Rome. Papal efforts to convince President George W. Bush to hold back the dogs of war, including through a special emissary visit, were fruitless.

Locally, both Archbishop Justin Rigali of St. Louis and Bishop Wilton Gregory of Belleville, who also heads the U.S. Conference of Bishops, made lengthy statements opposing war against Iraq.

"Even as our nation, through our President, sincerely proclaims the highest ideals of wiping out evil weapons and liberating our fellow human beings from a long night of suffering and tyranny, we do not know how many other evils will be triggered off, how many casualties will occur, how much the innocent will suffer or how profoundly the peace of the Middle East and the future harmony of peoples will be affected," Rigali said during a special Mass for peace on March 20.

"We do not know how much the victory of arms might even nourish permanent hatred for the United States and generate commitments to revenge," Rigali added.

The many calls for avoiding armed conflict made by Catholic leaders were not the only religious voices to go unheeded. Opposition to the war by mainline Protestant churches and by the National Council of Churches was virtually ignored. The phenomenon is particularly ironic given the amount of press devoted to Bush's supposed religiosity in national weekly news magazines just weeks before the hostilities commenced.

Bush, who grew up in a family attending an Episcopal church, was reported to have been "reborn" after a cathartic experience with the Rev. Billy Graham. Bush now attends a United Methodist church.

But even the Methodist church could not get a meeting with its most prominent congregation member. Bush would not meet with Methodist bishops who were vociferous in their opposition to an intervention in Iraq.

While Bush supporters have called for retaliation against France and other allies for their failure to support the war, it's unclear whether they will similarly call for boycotts of churches that proved "disloyal." What is clear is that in the aftermath of the U.S. subjugation and present occupation of Baghdad, there are many questions being raised about the role and relevance of religion in the new American situation.

Catholic response to war
The Rev. Michael Baxter, a theologian with the University of Notre Dame and a leader of Catholic Peace Fellowship, told SJR strong church voices against the war were muted once the bombs began to drop on Baghdad in late March.

"Once the war started, it was time to end divisiveness and support the troops," Baxter said. "Some bishops actually instructed priests not to talk about the war in church. This has caused something of a fracture between the Vatican and the church in America.

"Now that the fighting seems to be over, I think most every diocese in America hopes the debate about the war will die down-and be left to the academics," Baxter said. "But I don't think this is possible because we now live with a policy of preemptive strikes and an unrestrained superpower exercising its will upon the world. This presents moral issues that need to be confronted."

Division within the U.S. Catholic Church over the Iraq war was evident in diocese weeklies across the country. The local Catholic St. Louis Review covered the split in a page one story on March 28.

The Catholic News Service (CNS) article noted that Bishop John Michael Botean of Canton, Ohio, told his Eastern-rite diocese that "any direct participation and support of this war against the people of Iraq is objectively grave evil, a matter of mortal sin."

The CNS story reported that the head of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services, Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien, felt compelled to answer Bishop Botean after he received questions from service people about the "grave evil" Botean described. O'Brien instructed his priests that armed forces members should carry out their duties in good conscience because they can presume the integrity of the leaders who decided to go to war with Iraq.

"Given the complexity of factors involved, many of which understandably remain confidential, it is altogether appropriate for members of our armed forces to presume the integrity of our leadership and its judgments and therefore to carry out their military duties in good conscience," Bishop O'Brien declared.

Notre Dame University theologian Baxter said O'Brien's logic was absolute nonsense: "We should no more presume or trust in Bush on the need for war, than we should trust in Clinton on the need for abortion," Baxter said.

The Rev. Robert W. Finn, editor of the St. Louis Catholic Review, said it will take some time and reflection to see whether Bishop O'Brien was right to suggest that U.S. leadership was carrying out the war for justifiable reasons. He said some Review readers insisted that the Iraq war was primarily "an oil grab" by the United States, and Finn said the validity of this charge against the administration should become apparent over time.

"We got letters from our readers that were pro-war and anti-war," Finn said. "Both sides wanted the church to take a strong stand supporting their view. I don't think we got any letters from people saying they were confused about how to stand on the war because of any ambivalence in church leaders."

The Kansas City-based National Catholic Reporter (NCR) was certainly not ambivalent about the war. The national weekly denounced the Bush team as "unipolarists" itching to fight Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea and anybody else standing in the way of a new Pax Americana.

"This is a path leading to bankruptcy of U.S. ideals, to say nothing of the U.S. economy," declared an April 4 NCR editorial. "Bush and his crew of U.S. supremacists are asking us to betray our democratic traditions and go down the road of empire. They are removing hope and replacing it with fear as the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy."

Protestant leaders ignored
The Rev. Michael Kinnamon, an ecumenical religious scholar at Eden Theological Seminary in Webster Groves, said the lack of impact of church opposition to the Iraqi war presents a crisis and a challenge that cannot be ignored.

"Every major church body in this country, with the exception of the Southern Baptists, opposed this war," Kinnamon said. "It made absolutely no difference at all. The opposition was based on the 'Just War Theory' and the fact that not all the options to avoid a war had been exhausted. And that opposition had no impact."

Kinnamon noted that the press in many Protestant denominations, including his own Disciples of Christ, did not only argue against the war. Christian publications went a step further and advised service people on what steps could be taken for conscientious objector status as the conflict approached.

"I am afraid that people in the pew and in society generally think that economics and politics are separate from theology," Kinnamon said. "But the gospel is not separate from the social issues of the day. This war was opposed on theological grounds, but I believe it also was wrong on political and economic grounds."

In an effort to strengthen the voice of the religious community on issues of war and peace, Kinnamon helped organize "JusticeWorks-Renewing the Church's Social Witness," a conference held at Eden in March. More than 300 religious attended, including 100 seminarians from 30 schools in mainline Protestant denominations.

Kinnamon said there was "a great sense of frustration" at the conference as the Bush administration geared up for war in the Persian Gulf, oblivious to the objections of so many church leaders.

"I think what we've learned from the conference and the subsequent war is that that we need to witness for peace all the time," Kinnamon explained. "We cannot just react, and start talking about peace and social justice a few months before hostilities are about to begin.

"It's breathtakingly naive to think that Iraq has happened and this is all over now," Kinnamon added. "I don't think people realize yet what a dramatic change has taken place in the direction of our country. We have willingly accepted a very dangerous policy of preemptive wars and the sacrifice of our civil liberties.

"This has all been masked by the events of 9/11. We've been told we need this new direction in exchange for some sense of security," Kinnamon continued. "But real security only rests in seeking peace and caring about one's neighbors. Violence only begets more violence. Our whole approach to seeking security now is wrong-headed."

Jews: All positions, no position
By Charles Klotzer and Joe Pollack
The Jewish community, and its press, took all positions-and no position-during the run-up to the war in Iraq, much like supporters of all religions. While religious and other groups based their position on moral and general principles, the Jewish community was immobilized between its traditional commitment to peace and saving lives and its hesitancy to be critical of the American administration.

Would the U.S. administration become estranged from Israel if American Jews opposed the war?

The Jewish conservatives, led by those of Orthodox feelings, were strong in support of the invasion. But in all situations, feelings crossed all lines. Political animosity toward Iraqis, Palestinians and other fomenters of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel attitudes all played a part. The fact that the American religious right, symbolized by Congressman Tom De Lay, supported Israel with such passion, left many American Jews at least a little nervous, as did the statements of Franklin Graham (son of Billy) and Pat Robertson about visiting Iraq in search of converts. Indeed, many Jews disavow the support of the religious right for Israel, who, they feel, has adopted that position for their own theological premise.

The St. Louis metro area features no independent Jewish publication as there are on the East Coast. The Jewish Light, a weekly that calls itself "the newspaper of the Jewish community of St. Louis," depends for its survival on the Jewish Federation, the community's leading organization and fund-raising arm.

Editor-in-Chief Robert A. Cohn publishes a variety of commentaries and political opinions on his op-ed pages. In his own columns and editorials, he tends to adopt a liberal position on domestic issues, but turns very conservative on Mideast politics.

Cohn reports that he has received letters thanking the Light for showing various viewpoints from week to week, a handful criticizing the paper for running one or another view, another handful supporting a particular writer.

"We've had no real deluge of complaints," Cohn said, "but in general, the letter writers supported the President and the war. In general, over the last few years, people supporting the conservative view have been more prone to write, or so it seems."

The President now has strongly downplayed the announcement of his "road map" to an Israeli-PLO peace, because nation building was the object of scathing attacks every time Bush mentioned it during the campaign.

Since President Kennedy put to rest the notion that religious affiliation should be considered a factor in elections or appointments to governmental positions, it has rarely come up for consideration by political factions or the media. However, for various purposes, some at odds with acceptable norms of civil discourse, have introduced the Jewish background of conservatives in the current administration.

The fact that Department of Defense-based Iraqi war hawks like Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary; Douglas Feith, undersecretary; Richard Perle, member of the defense policy board; and Dov Zakheim, comptroller, are Jewish has led several conservative columnists and commentators to see pro-Israel stances in the government's rush to war, but people like Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice, among others, are equally pro-war and, at the same time, not Jewish.

Bringing religion into politics, or vice versa, is dangerous stuff, and the line between them is extremely narrow and continually shifting, but debates over the wisdom of the war have caused several splits among members of national Jewish organizations.

The most serious schism seems to be in the American Jewish Congress (AJC), whose national meeting was convening as this edition of SJR was going to press. Gail A. Wechsler, president of the St. Louis chapter, planned to raise concerns over national policy which, she said, has taken a rightward shift on domestic and foreign policy issues in the last few months, including unilateral praise offered to Bush for leading the way to war.

Several local chapters, including those in Boston, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, have criticized Jack Rosen, president of the AJC, and have changed their names to distance themselves from the national group. Support of the war, however, is only one reason for the dissatisfaction of many local groups.

But Rosen's comment to the Forward, a Jewish newspaper, took the AJC away from its traditional liberal stance and against the sentiments of most of its members: "The final statement [of the Conference of Major American Jewish Organizations] ought to be crystal clear in backing the President having to take unilateral action, if necessary, against Iraq to eliminate weapons of mass destruction."

Nationally, it appears that most Jews of the more liberal persuasion were silent, perhaps because of perceived pressure, self-censorship or a desire not to make waves in a political climate becoming increasingly regressive in terms of speaking out against the President.

Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun Magazine, is a strong social conscience for American Jews, and has spoken out against the war on the basis of conscience.

Jerome Segal, president of the Jewish Peace Lobby and a senior research scholar at the University of Maryland's Center of International and Security Studies, long has been a supporter of a Palestinian state and was solidly anti-war. His supporters include Ed Asner, Gloria Steinem and Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Interestingly, Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary and a leader of Conservative Jews, spoke out against the war and, five days later, had the seminary's press office call news organizations and ask them to banish his remarks from the record. He later told The New York Times, "I felt it was my responsibility to talk from the heart ... I had not intended that speech for the world." And the president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, head of the reform movement, declined to take a position, adding that "his constituents are too deeply divided."

The official voices of organized Jewry have either been silent or supportive of the Iraq war. Those in opposition, the more progressive sections, have been marginalized although they have a substantial following.

Conservative Christians: Tortured reasoning
By Eileen P. Duggan
Conservative Evangelical Christians in St. Louis have available to them two independent local newspapers that offer coverage on the war in Iraq-MetroVoice and Christian News.

St. Louis MetroVoice, self-described as "St. Louis' Christian news and events publication," is published monthly by Light Path Publications and MetroVoice Publishing. The free tabloid is distributed through churches, Christian bookstores and businesses throughout the metropolitan area.

With well-known conservative columnists such as Mae and Martin Duggan and William Federer, among others, MetroVoice 's editorial policy is described as non-denominational. But it views the Bible's Old and New Testaments as the infallible and authoritative word of God-the major prerequisite of congregations that fall into the "evangelical" category.

MetroVoice didn't come out with its own editorial stance on the war, but gave both sides the opportunity to speak out.

The May 2003 issue, which was published in mid-April, contains three war-related editorials: a commentary by Vietnam veteran John R. Moore opposing the use of women in combat and a point-counterpoint style layout presenting one commentary supporting the Iraqi War and one opposing it.

Historical theologian Bryan Litfin's commentary, titled "Is There Such a Thing as a 'Just' War?," presents a reasoned and comprehensive discussion of the history of the Just War Doctrine, quoting Biblical sources as well as When God Says War is Right, a book by Drew University religion professor Darrell Cole. From the latter source, Litfin derives five criteria that must all be present before a war may be justly waged: proper authority, just cause, right intention, war as the only way to right a wrong and reasonable hope of success. Cole's conclusion, according to Litfin, is that all five were present in the Iraq situation.

Going on to describe a brief history of how God has used war, Litfin concludes that "war can be waged in a God-honoring way" while acknowledging there should be room in the church for conscientious objection to war.

Litfin's article was reprinted from the January/February issue of Moody Magazine.

Adjacent to the pro-war editorial, MetroVoice ran an expanded version of a sermon by the Rev. Thomas C. McConnell, pastor of Covenant Reformed Church in Rayville, Mo.

Using Biblical references only, McConnell presents his case against the war based on just one criteria: "The Doctrine of Clean Hands." McConnell maintains that the United States is on shaky ground, beginning with the "religious zeal of President Bush, who frequently quotes scripture and calls upon the name of the Lord on behalf of our nation for a victorious outcome."

Because Bush is apparently waging war in the name of God, the United States must have "clean hands" in the eyes of God.

McConnell's anti-war position is that God's favorable outcome turns solely on the justness of the nation waging the war. The United States loses on that score, in his view, based on "a staggering list of national sins," although he expounds on only one: legalized abortion. In one sentence, much later in the article, he lists, but does not elaborate on, a few more: legalized sodomy, same-sex unions, debt-based economics, pornography, sexual perversion and religious polytheism.

Very little biographical information was provided on the two writers, leaving the reader to wonder whether the counterpoint is a fair fight. Litfin's background as a theological historian shows in his organized, well-reasoned pro-war commentary. But O'Connell, identified only as a pastor, matched an editorial with a sermon, which has different criteria for construction and tone.

Moore, who is the commander of the 1st Missouri Militia, based his editorial against women in the battlefield mostly on personal opinion and his own combat experience in Vietnam. He does not take a position either for or against the war, but presents the practical and moral aspects of the issue of women in combat. The only sources cited are a few Biblical references.

Moore concludes that the United States will see "an untold number" of young men dying in combat because of the reduced effectiveness and morale of military units due to the presence of women.

The article was written after the rescue of Army PFC Jessica Lynch and the confirmed death of PFC Lori Piestewa but before the return of five other prisoners of war from their unit.

The weekly Christian News, published and edited single-handedly by Herman Otten in New Haven, Mo., takes a strong anti-war stance in both its original editorials and news coverage and pieces reprinted from a variety of other sources. But it takes perseverance and strong reading glasses to ferret out the articles.

The 28-page issue contains at least 22 war-related articles and several letters to the editor-most of which support the editor's anti-war position. The articles are difficult to find, as Christian News accepts no advertising and the pages are jam-packed with text and photographs.

Although the 40-year-old conservative paper is aimed at a Lutheran readership, it is not an official publication of the Lutheran Church. In fact, Otten described himself in the April 21 edition as an "uncertified editor who challenges a church bureaucracy and names the liberals. There is no prestige in supporting anyone not held in high regard by church professors and officials."

Among the articles in the April 21 issue is a Newhouse News Service piece by Mark O'Keefe on how the widespread anti-war message of many religious leaders apparently has not filtered down to their flocks. O'Keefe cites a February Gallup poll that showed that two out of three Americans who attend church regularly supported the war.

One article, "The Moral Cost of Liberating Iraq," asks the question: "Is it morally right to sacrifice one group of people in order that another group may be freed from tyranny?" Writer Jacob G. Hornberger, founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation, finds the war lacking on the "just war" front.

Derrick Z. Jackson, in an editorial reprinted from the April 9 Boston Globe, refers to the war as "our jihad" and takes Bush to task for "America's one-sided prayers."

Other articles reprinted from the Associated Press and the Canadian Press relate accounts of Red Cross doctors who were horrified by civilian casualties in Iraq and of anger toward the United States of some Baghdad citizens. An article by Elaine Ruth Fletcher of the Religion News Service reports that Palestinian Christians and Muslims are gloomy over the coalition's victory in Iraq.

There's much more, but the reader must wade through a jumble of multiple headlines per page (all in different fonts) and letters, editorials and news articles on widely variant subjects all mixed on the same page. But to get a pull-no-punches view of the war and religion (and anything else for that matter) that leaves no doubt where the writers stand, it's worth the effort.

Two national publications available to conservative Evangelical Christians in St. Louis are among many that have provided coverage of the war in Iraq for members of various denominations.

World, a weekly national magazine that describes itself as "like Time or Newsweek but from a perspective committed to the Bible as the inerrant word of God," devoted its March/April special issue to critiques of the mainstream press' coverage of Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. World is not affiliated with any specific church.

A column by Joel Belz, "Running out of hands: On the one hand, on the other hand: Waiting for the Iraq War," takes the tack of Tevye in "Fiddler on the Roof." When trying to decide whether to allow his daughter to marry the poor tailor she loves instead of a wealthy butcher, Tevye goes back and forth with the pros and cons so many times, he finally laments that he's "running out of hands."

Written before the start of the war, Belz's article hashes over the range of opinions expressed by war watchers as Americans waited with a mixture of anxiety and impatience for the conflict to start. Cover stories in the three issues preceding the war, took a similar tone, bearing the titles: "The Cost of War," "Watch and Wait," and "At the Rubicon." Belz ends up on the pro-war side.

After the start of the war, cover stories and columns were generally informative with an undisguised air of approval but few overt religious and Biblical references. In one unusual twist, culture columnist Gene Edward Veith declared that, although both Bush and Caesar were "entitled to bear the sword," the church does not have authority over the state. In the details of war, he indicated, the church should butt out. But, he wrote, the church is justified in calling the government into account for such "gross moral evil" as legalized abortion.

The Lutheran, the monthly magazine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, has maintained a strong and consistent anti-war stance.

Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson has been openly critical of President George W. Bush's Iraq policy since the bishop's first statement on the issue, published Aug. 30.

"This is a time to stop the use of hostile rhetoric and verbal threats and to focus again on diplomacy," Hanson wrote then. "I believe it is wrong for the United States to seek to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein with military action. Morally, I oppose it because I know a war with Iraq will have great consequences for the people of Iraq, who have already suffered through years of war and economic sanctions."

With events moving too quickly for a print monthly to keep up, coverage switched to the online ELCA News Service in March. An article released on March 11 reported that Hanson made remarks critical of Bush while attending an ELCA Conference of Bishops in Charleston, S.C. At that time, Hanson said he was disappointed that Bush had declined two requests to meet with U.S. religious leaders who opposed the war. Hanson said the president's staff had questioned why Bush should meet with a group that opposed his policy, according to the article.

Hanson released another letter on March 17, titled "Peace Knows No Deadlines," in a continued call for diplomacy.

"War with Iraq threatens to destroy bridges that have been built between Christian and Muslim communities in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the United States," Hanson wrote.

He affirmed that he and others would continue to work for a just peace, "which is about the multilateral disarming of all nations with weapons of mass destruction, not singularly focusing on one nation and its weapons."

The day after hostilities began, Hanson released another statement reiterating that the preemptive strike "marks a sobering moment for this nation and world. I express my profound concern that the United States has chosen to take this step ... In my view, neither has the United States responsibly exercised its leadership role within the United Nations and in related diplomatic efforts to avert war, nor have our national leaders sufficiently made the case that they have pursued all reasonable avenues other than war."

He continued to call for non-violence and urged ELCA members to pray for peace, for the members of the military "and for all who come in harm's way because of this war."

On April 16, Hanson issued a statement marking the end of overt hostilities. "I am particularly thankful that many of the immediate dangers of this war have not been realized, including massive refugee displacement; use of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons or wide destabilization in the region," he wrote.

He called for prayers for the Iraqi people and urged that the "post-conflict rebuilding of Iraq must include the rebuilding of relationships between nations and the United Nations" as well as renewed efforts toward resolution of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

While recognizing that church members hold a wide range of opinions about the war and its aftermath, Hanson reminded pastors that the governing documents of the church call for them to "speak publicly to the world in solidarity with the poor and oppressed, calling for justice and proclaiming God's love for the world."

The bimonthly Lutheran Layman, published locally by Lutheran Hour Ministries, had no war coverage in its March-April issue.

Robert Banitt, pastor of St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church in Clayton, said that some individuals and individual congregations "are very outspoken in their opposition to the war." But opinion among individuals in his congregation is split, he said.

"I don't speak for everybody," he said. "It's hard to know. I think the leadership of the ELCA tends to be more hesitant toward violence, toward war. Maybe I'm wrong in that. I don't hear the opinions of everyone, many other people don't speak out. Most of the comments I've heard are, 'Oh, I hope we don't go to war.'"

St. Mark's includes the United States and other nations in prayer every time they meet, Banitt said. Some individual members have been involved in peace vigils, but the congregation has not officially sponsored any such activities, he said.

"My big concerns are not with Iraq, but with the Middle East as a whole, and that's been put on the back burner," Banitt said. "Maybe there's something brewing right now. I'm really fearful that the Palestinians are being forgotten-in that the resolution of the plight of the Palestinians is being forgotten at the expense of rebuilding Iraq."

Consultants advise flag waving
By Frank Absher
If it seemed to you there was a lot of flag waving recently in radio news, you're right. Some of it was driven by corporate edict, some by consultant recommendations, some by me-tooism and the bandwagon effect, and some was actually sincere.

At the same time, some people complained that the voices of pacifists, anti-war groups and anti-administration movements were heard all too infrequently. There were even reports that consultants had told stations to squelch news of anti-war demonstrations because such coverage was not good for ratings and to refrain from playing any music that may be considered anti-administration, anti-war or pro-peace. At least one consultant, Mike McVay, was quick to refute reports he had made such recommendations.

A Washington Post report said Frank N. Magid Associates had done a survey before the recent military action in Iraq began, and the survey showed only 14 percent of the respondents felt there should be more TV coverage of the anti-war movement. The Post also said McVay, who advises 150 radio stations, provided clients with a "war manual."

The Cleveland Plain-Dealer tracked down McVay and found he had different recommendations based of the format of the client station. Country stations were told to wave the flag. Adult contemporary stations, with their largely female audiences, were advised to project a "bring the boys home" philosophy. News/talk stations, McVay said, were to present both sides of the news.

Some stations around the country actually sponsored pro-war rallies. KLBJ in Austin, Texas, and KTEM in Temple, Texas, were both listed as sponsors on three separate rallies. Station XHRM-FM in San Diego brought listeners together to form a huge human yellow ribbon, took pictures and sent them to the troops overseas. Syndicated talk show host Glen Beck orchestrated several "Rallies for America." Reporters found that Clear Channel Communications, the company that syndicates Beck and incidentally owns about 1,200 radio stations, had its individual stations organize and underwrite Beck's rallies. So, what may have appeared to be grassroots boosterism was actually being given organizational support by a corporate giant.

New York Times reporters John Schwartz and Geraldine Fabrikant took the story to the next level. They found that Clear Channel had hired a crisis management firm when reports of the corporate-influenced flag waving became public.

The Seattle Times exposed the practice of radio station KVI, whose announcers would sic listeners on peace and anti-war demonstrations. The listeners dubbed themselves the "570th Cavalry" in honor of the AM station's frequency. Small neighborhood groups protesting for peace would incur the wrath of the station's pro-war squads.

There was plenty of controversy surrounding the decision of country stations around the United States to pull the Dixie Chicks' music from the airwaves. One of the Chicks had been critical of President George W. Bush at a concert, and stations pulled the group's music in protest of her comment. In most cases, The New York Times reported, that decision was made at the station level rather than the corporate level. In all cases, the stations milked their actions for as much publicity as they could get, and since the country music audience is traditionally made up of flag-wavers, the stations probably benefited from the publicity.

Joel Raab Associates released a statement outlining the advice it gave its radio clients: "We have suggested to our clients that they play one to two patriotic songs per hour, with a produced piece leading into the song, i.e., 'Proud to play America's Music ... KXXX.'"

In the end, it may be difficult to determine just which songs should be categorized as "America's Music" and which songs written and performed by Americans couldn't make the cut. And, if the recent performance of the nation's broadcasters is any indication, the days of balanced coverage and representation of all major opinions are part of ancient history.

New UM president settles lawsuit with Star
By Tammy Merrett
The University of Missouri system's new president has settled an open-records lawsuit filed against the system by the Kansas City Star in an attempt to access internal audits.

On April 1, the university conceded that it is indeed a public entity, making its internal records subject to Missouri's Sunshine Law that allows public access to government documents, according to the Missouri Press Association.

The lawsuit was filed by the Star in 1998 after its requests for copies of the University of Missouri-Columbia's financial audits were denied by the university. Copies of operations and legal compliance audits were also requested by the Star and denied by the university.

University officials withheld the documents, claiming that the university was not a public institution, based on a 1983 appeals court ruling. The documents had not been given to the board of curators, and, therefore, in university officials' estimations, were not public documents because only the university's board of curators was a public entity.

Boone County Circuit Judge Frank Conley ruled in October 2002 that the university is indeed a public entity and that the university intentionally violated Missouri Sunshine Law, but the university appealed the ruling in December 2002.

However, when the University of Missouri system hired new president Elson Floyd, he decided it was time to settle the case.

"When I arrived, it became abundantly clear that this was a matter that we had to get behind us. This case was being characterized as a lack of accountability. We are accountable to the public we serve, and I requested we settle the case," Floyd told the MPA.

The settlement required that the audits requested in 1998 be released to the newspaper immediately and that audits requested by the Star in November 2002 also be released to the newspaper within two weeks of the settlement, according to the MPA.

Those documents were finally received by the newspaper and used in a revealing story about the UM system that ran April 27 in the Star. Kevin Murphy reported on individual faculty and staff travel, meal and other expense reimbursements that were inappropriate on the University of Missouri-Kansas City and MU campuses.

The audits also revealed that the MU journalism school was running in major debt in the late '80s and early '90s. The Columbia Missourian was particularly in debt for salaries until the university recognized the paper as a laboratory learning experience and started subsidizing the paper in part.

Unusual supply purchases at the University of Missouri-St. Louis School of Optometry were also documented in the audits. Poor purchasing controls and methods allowed the purchase of 14,000 pencils at one time, among other things.

Various thefts totaling more than $675,000, from various points on the MU campus, during a 10-year period were also documented.

The settlement also requires that the university pay the Star $77,806 in legal costs. It is the largest award against a state agency under the Missouri Sunshine Law, according to the MPA.

Jean Maneke, an attorney for the MPA, said the settlement sets a precedent for government agencies to pay sizable legal fees should they lose Sunshine Law cases.

Erlich blasts media on Iraq war
By Daniel Hellinger
Reality has a way of interfering with the best of propaganda," says Reese Erlich, co-author of Target Iraq: What the Media Didn't Tell You. Erlich spoke at Webster University on April 15.

A veteran of the legendary, muckraking San Francisco-based Ramparts Magazine, for 35 years Erlich has contributed reports to "The World" (Public Radio International), Common Ground Radio, the St. Petersburg Times and the Dallas Morning News.

His public radio documentary, "Children of War: Fighting, Dying, Surviving," hosted by Charlayne Hunter-Gault, won the 2002 prize for best in-depth reporting (broadcast) from the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California. In 2001, he produced a one-hour public radio documentary, "The Struggle for Iran," and in 2002, he produced a two-hour documentary, "The Russia Project," both hosted by Walter Cronkite.

Erlich visited Iraq in September 2002 on assignment for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and the San Francisco Chronicle. The trip was organized by his co-author, Norman Solomon, founder of the liberal Institute for Public Accuracy. Along for the excursion was actor Sean Penn, who contributed an Afterward to Target Iraq.

The book says that a pliant media allowed itself to be used in selling the invasion of Iraq-not that Erlich has much respect for Saddam Hussein. The opening chapter depicts Hussein's rule as a totalitarian regime with little respect for journalists, even anti-war reporters, such as Solomon and Erlich, or for Penn. Fear and intimidation kept many Iraqis from speaking openly, but in private conversations a more complex picture of Iraqi opinion emerged.

Despite the suffering caused by the Baath regime, Erlich and Solomon contend that the destruction wrought by the first Gulf War (1991) and the impact of subsequent economic sanctions left the Iraqi people with little respect for America. The media largely ignored the perspective of ordinary Iraqis in the build-up to the war. The invasion of Iraq, they predicted, would inflict even greater harm and generate greater bitterness.

Was their prediction accurate? On the one hand, the strategic nature of the bombing, the relatively quick defeat of Iraqi forces and collapse of urban resistance to the invasion spared Iraq the full impact of American firepower. And, the Iraqi troops did not burn oil fields or unleash weapons of mass destruction. To some degree, then, the direct damage to the Iraqi infrastructure was not as great as predicted in Target Iraq.

On the other hand, just as Erlich and Solomon predicted, Iraqis did not greet their "liberation" with celebration. Looting and lawlessness have inflicted great harm, and already many Iraqis are pressing for a quick exit of American troops, just as Erlich and Solomon anticipated.

In addition, the civilian casualties were not slight. Erlich pointed out in his Webster talk that because of hundreds of reporters in the field, an investment of tens of million dollars in information technology and round-the-clock reporting with military experts, finding accounts of Iraqi casualties in the mainstream media was virtually impossible.

Once the war was won, reporters seemed to lose interest in claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was harboring terrorists. Now, the war is presented as a humanitarian exercise to replace tyranny with democracy. "No one wants to go back and look at all the mistaken information reported during the war because it is politically inconvenient," Erlich says.

One of the most egregious errors occurred when network anchors and analysts passed along with little skepticism military claims of having discovered a likely chemical weapons cache that later turned out to be nothing more than agricultural supplies. "Did anyone stop to ask whether it was logical that agricultural chemicals would be found at a depot located close to an important agricultural area?

Instead, the news media emphasized the proximity of the depot to a military base. Of course, it turned out later that the mysterious barrels contained materials for farming," Erlich says.

Erlich predicts that eventually American military or intelligence agencies will claim to have discovered "evidence" of weapons of mass destruction, mostly likely in the form of documents. Given the uncritical repetition of spurious evidence in the war, Erlich anticipates that most of the media will fail to put the claims under serious scrutiny. (Indeed, on April 21, less than a week after Erlich's talk, a front-page story by Judith Miller in The New York Times justified administration charges based solely on information from anonymous military investigators.)

Erlich acknowledges that the media did not march in lockstep to war. Before the war, there was substantial debate about the wisdom of going to war because of three factors: disagreements among American elites, including officials associated with the administration of George Bush I; the opposition of several important European allies; and the successful mobilization of popular anti-war sentiment, which could not be completely ignored.

Once the American attack was launched, critical assessment of its purposes disappeared, especially in the electronic media, and political debate was muted. "Once you go to war the parameters narrow. You get (quotes from) former officers, Navy Seals, and Green Berets," Erlich says. The extensive use of retired military officers resulted not only in bias but also in a shift from political and diplomatic issues to a focus on the fighting.

Although the anti-war movement was too large to be ignored, it did not receive fair coverage from the media. A good example, Erlich says, are the "human shields," peace activists who voluntarily went to Iraq to station themselves at key elements of Iraq's civilian infrastructure. Their stories became of interest only when the activists clashed with Hussein's attempts to place them at military sites or under the control of Republican Guards.

With the war over, some of the divisions over Mideast policy began to surface once again as the administration began to threaten Syria, Erlich says. Once again the media were allowing themselves to be spun by Donald Rumsfeld's agenda-setters. However, divisions within the administration, especially between the Pentagon and the State Department, meant that there was room for debate.

Erlich believes that journalists operating on their own produced much better coverage than did "embedded" reporters. These embedded journalists and their cameras could literally show only one side of war-the view from their side of the battle lines. He criticized the firing of Peter Arnett by MSNBC and National Geographic, noting that Western reporters had no compunctions about openly identifying with U.S. objectives during the war. He contended that even critical journalists find themselves self-censoring reports rather than jeopardizing their jobs or chances of advancing careers.

As a freelancer, Erlich must earn his living on selling stories to editors. The necessity of selling each story piecemeal might have an even more telling impact than the pressures experienced by attached reporters. Does he ever find himself self-censoring his own work?

"Sure, all reporters (would admit they) do, if they're honest about it. It's better to get out a piece of a story than do nothing at all."

Erlich finds himself reformulating stories to fit the requirements of different outlets. "You take the same information, repackage it as many times as you can. That's necessary to make a living but also reflects the receptiveness of media in different countries. Canadian, Australian and British outlets tend to be more open than American ones."

The presence of reporters operating independently of military units produced tensions with the military, and perhaps more deadly consequences, too. Erlich believes the artillery shelling of Al Jazeera's headquarters in Baghdad on April 8 was probably deliberate because the news outlet had provided the building's coordinates to the Pentagon to prevent a mistake.

Similarly, the shelling on the same day of the Palestine (Marriott) Hotel, which was filled with un-embedded Western reporters, was probably deliberate, judging from the video and first-hand reports.

Erlich predicts that the coming period will be difficult for the U.S. occupation. However repressive the old regime was, it offered free healthcare and education, which are likely to be regarded as matters for the market and private sectors in the new Iraq molded by the occupation authorities.

In contrast to the other Gulf states, women in Iraq enjoyed much greater freedom, including educational and professional opportunities. If conservative Islamists take control of key areas, women will suffer the most.

Commentary:
Dreaming the American empire
How the term 'Neocon' got into your daily paper
By Ed Bishop
The now famous remark was made in the early 1990s by traditional conservative Russell Kirk. "It often seems that some eminent Neoconservatives mistake Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States," he said. It was a remark that embodied the core criticism of Neoconservatives-that they see the interests of the United States and the interests of Israel as identical.

But, since Kirk was well insulated within the conservative movement-and the mainstream Republican Party-none of the Neoconservatives, or Neocons as they're called, accused him of being an anti-Semite. But his was a rare absolution. Usually, when Neocons are criticized, their immediate response is to claim-either openly or in some veiled manner-anti-Semitism on the part of the critic.

For years, this tactic kept discussions of Neoconservatism out of the mainstream press-the accusation was too often taken seriously. The fear of being called an anti-Semite kept public discussion to a minimum and helped mask a foreign-policy agenda that many Americans would have found shocking. Even among liberal Jews the tactic still has traction.

Today, though, the use of the term "Neocon" is widespread. You can barely open a newspaper or watch a cable news program without it coming up. In a sense, that's because the term is becoming obsolete.

Even Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld are sometimes called Neocons in the press. Yet both are life-long conservative Republicans who have ties to the foreign policy of Henry Kissinger and George Schultz, a foreign policy that Neocons detest because of its willingness to negotiate compromised solutions and what Neocons see as its abandonment of American ideals. Probably the only high-ranking member of the Bush administration who is never mistaken for a Neoconservative is Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Which is ironic, because Powell is a liberal on most domestic issues, and originally the term Neoconservative was applied to a small group of influential liberal Democrats who became Republicans. They switched parties because of disputes that first surfaced in the 1960s over foreign policy. Mainly academics, centered around Columbia University and New York University, the Neocons believed the Democratic Party leadership was soft on Communism and, to a lesser extent, soft on Palestinians. By 1980, most of them had become card-carrying Republicans-Irving Kristol, Ben Wattenberg, Norman Podhoretz, Elliott Abrams, Midge Decter, Nathan Glazer and Richard Perle, to name a few.

But not all of them were Jewish, and not all of them switched parties.

The most famous Neocon to remain in the Democratic Party was Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Harvard professor and U.S. Senator. It was his short and rocky tenure as ambassador to the United Nations-his insistence in that forum that Soviet Communism not only be contained but rolled back, and his determination to punish any nation that didn't fully back America's conflict with the Soviet Union-that first brought Neoconservative ideas, if not the term, to the public's attention.

Moynihan's senate seat is now occupied by Hillary Clinton, and it came with Moynihan's blessing. In fact, President Bill Clinton, a close friend of Moynihan, tried to woo the Neocons back into the Democratic Party in the early years of his administration but without much success. They had acquired too much power in the Republican Party-strongly embedded in both the State Department and the Department of Defense, as well as strongly embedded in conservative think tanks-to go over to a man they didn't trust to carry out their dreams of a New World Order.

Origins
Between 1968 and 1972, a series of events at first frightened and then spurred into action a group of East Coast intellectual Democrats who would eventually congeal into the Neoconservative movement. Fears were first raised by the alliance between the New Left and Black Power advocates, viewed by the intellectuals as anti-Semitic. Then a perceptible softening of the Democratic Party's support for Israel in the face of mounting concerns over Palestinian rights took place. Then, George McGovern was nominated by their party, a candidate many of the Neocons saw as willing to appease Communism.

These men and women were liberals when it came to domestic issues, but they were ardent Cold Warriors.

In the early 1970s, under the editorship of Podhoretz, Commentary magazine became the forum for their ideas. They loathed their fellow liberals and said so in its pages. They attacked them for what the Neocons saw as a liberal romance with Marxist revolutions. They also saw liberals as more interested in saving Israel from itself than from its hostile neighbors. And they also felt that a kind of anti-Americanism had grown up among other intellectuals, an anti-Americanism that they wanted to distance themselves from. In fact, it was the Neocons who first used the word "liberal" as a disparaging term, injecting a kind of venom into it-a usage later borrowed by Reagan Republicans.

But their most controversial ideas were about how the United States should react to Soviet Communism. They were strongly against arms control, believing it only strengthened the Soviets. And, most controversial of all, they believed that saving a nation from Communism was the greatest stand for human rights, that American ideals could only be found in anti-Communism. In other words, even the Shah of Iran or any South American dictator was preferable to a duly elected Marxist. They gave intellectual structure to a ultra-right-wing idea that most Americans had rejected up to that point. (This belief later divided Neocons when some balked at the Reagan administration's illegal aid to the Contras in Nicaragua.)

Power move
The administration of Jimmy Carter was the turning point for the Neocons. They had strongly backed the nomination of Henry "Scoop" Jackson whom Carter defeated in the primaries. Jackson was a moderate on domestic issues and a true hawk in foreign affairs. Two of his closest advisers, Elliott Abrams and Jeanne Kirkpatrick, would later play prominent roles in the administration of Ronald Reagan after most of the Neocons had switched parties.

But first the Neocons suffered through the Carter years. (They still detest the man, writing insulting editorials when he received the Nobel Prize for Peace recently.) Their core problems with the Carter administration were embodied in the person of Andrew Young, Carter's U.N. ambassador. They saw Young as a true New Leftist and hostile to Israel. Plus, Young reflected something more vague, an underlying mistrust that had grown up between Jews and African Americans.

The Neocons' heroes in the Democratic Party were Harry Truman and, to a lesser degree, John F. Kennedy. For them, Carter was neither. They started making tentative contacts with the Republican Party, convinced that their ideas would never capture the hearts of Democrats. By the time Reagan was nominated, several Neocons were on the podium with him. After he was elected, a number of them went directly into high foreign policy positions with Kirkpatrick being the most prominent-she was appointed U.N. ambassador.

At first, their greatest successes were in Latin America, although their policies would split the Neocon movement, leaving only the most ardent anti-Communists in power. But, eventually, the Neocon view of the Soviet Union itself would become triumphant in Reagan's State Department, displacing the negotiated settlements of the Kissinger wing of the party and capturing the rhetoric of the President himself, even though Reagan seemed comfortable with Soviet leadership on a personal level. The concept of containment of Soviet Communism was anathema to the Neocons; they wanted nothing short of its rollback. And they got their way. "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" came straight out of Neocon philosophy.

Today
In a very real sense, the breakup of the Soviet Union was the darkest hour for Neocons. It left them confused and disoriented. For years, many of them refused to accept their own victory, continuing to fill the pages of Commentary with pronouncements about Russia's reemergence as the great enemy of freedom and, therefore, the United States. They were on the verge of becoming a parody of themselves.

Three new voices saved them-newspaper columnist Charles Krauthammer, Defense Department guru Paul Wolfowitz and editor William Kristol, Irving Kristol's son. All three kept a wary eye on Marxists around the world, but they turned their main attention to the Middle East. Once again, questions of Israeli foreign policy being indistinguishable from American foreign policy were raised. When the three used the word "enemies," it was hard to tell whose enemies they were talking about. All three argued strenuously for military action against Iraq in the first Bush administration.

Their new idea was "preemptive action." They reasoned that since the United States was now preeminent militarily in the world, it should use its power, unilaterally if necessary, to create a world in its own image. Their special targets were the dictatorships of the Middle East and what they claimed were the innocent Muslims struggling under their yoke. Their hero in that struggle was, of course, Israel.

The new magazine, The Weekly Standard, edited by Kristol, former chief of staff for Vice President Dan Quayle, replaced Commentary as the cutting-edge publication for the Neocons. In its pages, the intellectual constructs for preemptive action were argued and massaged. Colin Powell and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were their greatest adversaries.

Throughout the Clinton administration they held back, some of them endorsing military action in the former Yugoslavia with others opposed. They were biding their time, waiting for something to happen. It did, on Sept. 11, 2001.

Today, it seems that Powell and the Pentagon have come on-board. It also seems that the intellectual underpinnings of the Republican Party's foreign policy are those provided by the Neocons. But, it's also possible, even probable, that Neocon ideas are only being used by other power centers in the Bush administration, by people who have always dreamed of an American Empire-the Great Pax Americana and the Triumph of Global Capitalism.

The real question is, however, is that the American Dream?

Who will be in charge of new Iraqi media?
By Bob Schaper
Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, the irrepressible former Iraqi Information Minister, was last seen in front of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad on April 8. "They are in a state of hysteria and haste," al-Sahhaf assured reporters, referring to the American forces that were even then advancing through the capital, block by block.

"These villains will not win."

Aside from his entertainment value, al-Sahhaf, now an Internet cult figure in his own right, served as a useful reminder of how far the formerly vital Iraqi press had slipped since the end of British rule in 1958.

"The press they have there now is just awful," says Reese Erlich, a noted foreign correspondent and co-author of Target Iraq: What the American Media Didn't Tell You. He adds, "A typical headline in an Iraqi newspaper might be: 'Lawyers send greetings to President Hussein.'"

I had the opportunity to hear Erlich last month at Webster University, where he was guest lecturing. With the Hussein regime ignominiously ended, I wondered what would become of the Iraqi news organizations left behind. "The U.S. military will control the press," Erlich answered quickly. "At least in the short term."

Severine Cazes, the Middle East correspondent for Reporters Without Borders, based in Paris, says the decline of the Iraqi press is well documented. In his February 2003 report, "The Iraqi media: 25 years of relentless repression," Cazes makes the point that the decline of Iraqi press freedoms came only gradually:

"At the end of the Ottoman Empire, as well as under the (British) Monarchy, which was overthrown on 14 July 1958, the Iraqi press was one of the freest and most vibrant in the Middle East. The Baghdad radio stations and the press played an active role in the intellectual emulation of that period, primarily by promoting Arab nationalist ideology. Their influence was so pervasive that a portion of Kuwait's Sunni merchant elite publicly petitioned, in 1938 and again in 1958, in favor of Iraq's annexation of Kuwait."

But in the chaos following the 1958 revolution, Cazes says a fractured media emerged, supporting one failed regime after another. With each government du jour, press freedoms were reduced one more notch.

At first, the pressure was non-violent. From 1959 to 1963, Cazes says, "The regimes merely questioned editors-in-chief and temporarily withdrew the license of certain publications."

But by 1968, the ruling Ba'ath Party had spared only one paper, the Al-Thawra (The Revolution), which became the Party's official publication. Tariq Aziz, the familiar deputy prime minister in the deposed regime, was its editor-in-chief for many years. In 1976, Aziz appointed himself as the spokesman of Hussein, who by then was in firm control of the country. Writes Cazes:

"At that point, there was not a single newspaper left that was not pro-Ba'athist. At the end of the 1970s, the methods used to control and intimidate journalists became extremely violent. Judicial harassment, arrests, threats, prolonged detentions and incidents of torture and executions increased dramatically. From 1980 to 1988, the war with Iran served as a pretext for a complete takeover of the Iraqi media by the state. In 1986, the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) passed an Order (number 840) signed by Saddam Hussein himself, that imposes a death penalty on any person who insults or criticizes the President, his entourage, the Ba'ath Party, the RCC, or even the government."

Recently, I asked Cazes what the role of the Iraqi Ministry of Information (MoI) had been in recent years. His answer was simple and direct: "The purpose of the MoI was to control journalists and turn them into propaganda puppets through corruption and terror," he says. "It is a question whether there should at all be a Ministry of Information. If Iraq is to become a liberal democracy, then regulations will guarantee the legal framework for a free press."

How limited was the press before the war? In his report, Cazes says Iraqis secretly claimed there were as many pictures of Hussein as there were people in Iraq (about 20 million). Hussein himself declared-perhaps jokingly, perhaps not-that should Baghdad TV stop broadcasting, Iraqis should simply place one of his pictures in front of their screen.

ooo

When it comes to rebuilding the Iraqi media, Tim Lomperis, chairman of the political science department at St. Louis University, says we've been down this road before.

"Although we thought of Saddam Hussein as a thug running a Ba'athist organization, really this was a very Stalinist regime," Lomperis says. "The fall of the former Soviet Union is an extremely useful analogy, because the Iraqis borrowed lock, stock and barrel from the Soviet system."

After the fall of the USSR, Lomperis says there was a tremendous proliferation of media outlets. The same will happen in Iraq, he believes, with the first new presses being of a religious nature. "I would imagine they'll come storming in," he says. "I think we'll see Kurdish-language newspapers arise in Kirkuk and Mosul. I think you'll see a lot of Shi'ite media arise in the south, and I have a feeling there'll be a lot of stuff from Iran. Although we've warned the Iranians to keep out, I think what they won't keep out is a tremendous media blitz."

Lomperis also predicts the Saudis will bring in their own media for the Sunni audience. "My sense is there will be a fragmented first wave of media development in Iraq," he says. "At first-until the political situation coalesces-we'll see a pamphleteering stage, a kind of Riverfront Times, writ large."

When it comes to America and its role, Lomperis is more optimistic than Ehrlich, believing that the U.S. will keep politics out of the fray.

"I think what will be broadcast will be typical American public relations, focusing on nuts and bolts issues, like so many hospitals back in place, roads repaired, buildings redone," he says. "I don't think you'll see much political stuff coming from the U.S. I don't think we'll create a Baghdad Times that will become a U.S. media outlet. That would cause a firestorm."

And although a large number of media outlets may emerge quickly, Lomperis cautions that they can also disappear. "As politics settled around Yeltsin's dominance in Russia, he also dominated the media and drove the others out of business," Lomperis says. "There really is very little private television in Russia anymore, although the print media are more diverse and there are more radio media."

Still, Lomperis thinks the fractured political scene inside Iraq might bode well for a diversified media. "One of the biggest things we're going to find as a permanent feature in Iraqi politics is a very vocal Shi'ite voice in national politics," he says. "I think in the end, the Sunnis will find a way to cut a deal with the Kurds to stake out a dominant position, but the Shi'ites are never going to be suppressed as they were under Saddam."

ooo

In the short term, many wonder what America's plans are to relieve the media mess inside Iraq. Will the world see something close to a free press there, or can we look forward to headlines such as, "Iraqi lawyers send greetings to President Bush?"

The short answer is that no one knows-and if they do, they aren't talking. In fact, if the openness of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) is any indication, the Iraqis shouldn't rush out to buy AP Stylebooks anytime soon. Just a few days before press time, I talked to Bob Reilly, director of the Iraqi Media Project under ORHA. In two separate phone conversations, I learned absolutely nothing.

"Right now, we're under a media embargo," Reilly said from Kuwait. "At some point, I presume they'll want me to do a public rollout, but I've been told to zip it until then." Reilly added that he's been waiting to hear from Margaret Tutwiler, the former State Department spokeswoman turned ambassador turned (apparently) rebuilder of the Iraqi way of life.

"But Margaret's inaccessible at the moment," Reilly said, "along with Jay Garner."

Fine. But what can't be embargoed is the sense of media chaos left behind by Saddam Hussein and his oldest son, Uday, who brutally controlled the Iraqi television and newspapers. Cazes explains that even with the regime gone, the average reporter in Iraq is in no way prepared for the responsibilities of a free press.

"In the 1970s there was an influx of journalists trained in the Baghdad universities," he says. "But their training was mainly in editorial skills, certainly not in investigation and press law. This is because journalists had only the right to be mouthpieces for the Ba'ath party and Hussein's clan."

Those who cooperated, Cazes says, were treated well. "They were the nomenklatura of the regime," he says. "But they could also at any time-and sometimes with no reason-be disgraced and lose everything."

Most reporters were members of the Iraqi Journalist Union, which no longer exists. "The future of the members of this union is uncertain," Cazes told me. "Some think they should go back to work, other political groups want to exclude all journalists who were related to the Ba'ath party or Uday Hussein."

In any event, some newspapers should be able to thrive quickly in the new environment. In the Kurdish-controlled north, Cazes says there is already fierce competition between the PDK newspaper, Al-Ittihad (The Union), and the UPK publication, Karbat. Both are vying for the printing press formerly used by Hussein's official newspaper, Al-Iraq.

The exile press is also moving in. The Azzaman, established in London in 1996, has opened offices in Mosul, Basra and Baghdad. "(Azzaman) was created by Saad Al-Bazzaz, a former high-ranking journalist in Hussein's regime," Cazes says.

And then there's the web.

"No one will be able to regulate the Internet," Lomperis says. Although Yahoo! and AOL chat rooms may touch off what he calls a "Luddite" reaction from the Shi'ites and other fundamentalists, they will ultimately fail.