This year's parade was marred by the very public arrest of Bob Jamerson, who showed up in a mini-dress, Calvin Klein underpants and his trademark fishnet stockings-all ready to twirl his baton.

The Hibernians ordered him out of the parade and had him arrested because Jamerson was a disgrace to good family values. He seemed to be touting licentiousness, transvestites and homosexuality at a parade sponsored by a Catholic organization, according to the Hibernians.

On his morning radio show, KMOX's Charles Brennan questioned whether Jamerson's arrest wasn't mean-spirited and unwarranted. Listeners pounced.

One scolded Brennan and said that as Catholics, they had every right to remove someone who was so obviously flying in the face of Catholic values.

When Brennan asked why the Catholic Church doesn't seem so quick to call for the arrest of clergy suspected of pedophilia, the discussion hit a dead end.

Nevertheless, the Hibernians were within their rights to have Jamerson cuffed and marched out of Dogtown. In 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in a Boston case that St. Patrick's Day parade sponsors could exclude homosexuals or others. A parade is a form of free speech, reasoned the justices, and its organizers can choose the content of their message.

Perhaps the Hibernians need to be clearer about the parade's message next year. And, they better get the message to Mike Wild, president of the bicycle brigade, who invited the baton-twirling Jamerson to the parade in the first place.
-Don Corrigan

Donna Savarese says ...
It's pretty safe to assume that celebrity endorsements have been around ever since someone realized people were gullible enough to believe what celebrities said. And, while it's hard to fathom some Shakespearian actor espousing the virtues of a particular mattress, it's equally hard to fathom people today actually believing some of the tripe spewing forth from the mouths of pseudo-celebs.

Hollywood has-beens, retired jocks and B-listers from all walks of life show themselves to be nothing but mercenary when it comes to trading whatever honor they may have had for the dollars dangled in front of them by questionable marketers. It's one thing to appear on a commercial, but how can these people endorse a product and still expect us to hold them in high regard?

Does the appearance of a known person in an advertisement imply endorsement? Let's ask Donna Savarese. When she was a weekend anchor for KHWB-TV in Houston last year, she appeared in a print ad for Village Builders. Quoted later in the Houston Press, Savarese contended she'd done nothing wrong: "It isn't a problem. I haven't been fired. If you saw the picture, I was not doing anything risqué."

All over the United States, radio announcers have been extolling the virtues of a snake oil that purportedly causes people to lose weight while asleep. We know the people are lying, and they are paid handsomely to do it. We heard their first-person accounts of weight loss, and some listeners were persuaded to fork over an obscene amount of money to buy the junk.

If a so-called "journalist" does the endorsing, does it make the claims any more believable? Should these "journalists" even be allowed to make commercial endorsements? Maybe we, as members of the general public, should stop considering these people "journalists." If they are going to sell out to anyone who comes along waving money in their faces, we should stop conferring the title of "journalist" and begin calling them what they are, borrowing the term "news reader" from the British. After all, a real journalist wouldn't risk the loss of credibility for money, right?
-Frank Absher

Lott a baloney on guns
Former St. Louis Mayor and ex-Police Chief Clarence Harmon was fond of telling the press that if guns make you safer, St. Louis should be one of the safest cities in the world.

Harmon knew from experience that armed citizens do not make a city safer. St. Louis has many more gun deaths within its borders than many countries with tens of millions of people. Those countries benefit from restrictions on gun ownership.

Never mind the police chief. Never mind the statistics on gun deaths. Never mind the vote of Missourians against concealed weapons. The Missouri Legislature is once again at the service of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and is moving a concealed weapons bill from the House to the Senate for approval.

House Speaker Catherine Hanaway, R-Warson Woods, has ignored the sentiments of her constituents, who voted against concealed weapons when such a measure was put to a state vote. In her newsletter, she points out that the bill was vigorously debated for nearly two hours before receiving the rubber stamp in the House.

Gun advocates once again tout the supposed scholarship of John Lott Jr., who maintains that guns in the hands of civilians reduce crime. Only one problem: Lott and his research have been discredited. A recent exposé has revealed that Lott fudged his data, and he also created false identities who have supported his work in various publications.

So much for the straight shooting of the gun lobby's favorite researcher.

Unfortunately, this state legislature will not allow the facts, the testimony of police chiefs or the vote of the people to get in the way of repaying the NRA for past campaign favors.
-Don Corrigan

Letters
CIA funding denied

SJR: This is in reference to Mr. Daniel Hellinger's article "Media mayhem: Violence in Venezuela sparked by press" in your February edition.

In his article, Mr. Hellinger describes the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) as being "aided by funds provided by the CIA." Nothing could be further from the truth. The IAPA has never received government money or any kind of related funding. All IAPA funding comes directly from annual dues from our 1,380 members and grants from journalistic foundations, such as the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, in Miami, Fla., and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, in Chicago, Ill.

Our records are completely open for examination, and we invite Mr. Hellinger to come to our headquarters in Miami to review any and all documents that may help to correct this gross mistake.

I ask that you print a correction in the St. Louis Journalism Review to set the record straight.

Diana Daniels
Chairperson, IAPA Executive Committee
Vice president, secretary and general council, the Washington Post Company

Early Edition:
Not so ancient history
By Ed Bishop
What I'm going to say isn't news. In fact, it's more than a decade old and it was widely reported at the time. Still, I think it deserves a fresh airing.

Unlike Gulf War II, Gulf War I was fully debated in the U.S. Senate. A sizable minority of Americans was against the war back then and the resolution authorizing force barely passed in November 1990. Several senators said they voted for the resolution because of the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein's army in Kuwait, specifically the murder of Kuwaiti babies who were torn out of hospital incubators so that the incubators could be sent back to Iraq.

The infanticide story was first reported in September 1990 by the Daily Telegraph in London and two days later it was picked up by a number of big American dailies. The report was attributed to Reuters. But there was no other attribution. In fact, there were no photographs of dead babies nor pictures of grieving mothers. Eventually it was learned that the story was placed by an organization called Citizens for a Free Kuwait.

In the United States, Citizens for a Free Kuwait-which was actually the government of Kuwait in exile-hired the giant public-relations firm of Hill and Knowlton to plead its case. The firm's CEO was Craig Fuller, a former Bush One chief of staff. In October, Hill and Knowlton arranged for a congressional committee to hear a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl describe how Iraqi soldiers took the infants from their incubators and threw them out windows. Choking back tears, she said that at least 100 babies had been killed. The congressmen were visibly shaken. For weeks afterward, President Bush One constantly referred to the story as an example of the evil of Saddam Hussein. Even Amnesty International lent its weight to the story.

Trouble was, none of it was true.

Eventually the source of the story was traced to a Dr. Ali Al-Huwail, a Kuwaiti supposedly living in hiding, who disappeared after talking one time off the record to the London newspaper. But the teary-eyed young girl who testified before Congress was identified. She was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. Hill and Knowlton had groomed, scripted and taught her what to say right down to when to cry. It was all made up and Hill and Knowlton more or less admitted it.

Oddly enough, though, no one was ever charged with contempt of Congress. Several decades before, 10 Hollywood writers and directors were sent to prison for refusing to tell the House Un-American Activities Committee the names of their friends who attended meetings arranged by the American Communist Party at a time when the Soviet Union and the United States were strong allies, but in this case of out-and-out lying to Congress everything was dropped.

(The implications are that refusing to rat on your friends is un-American but lying to Congress, if you're a friend of the president, is American.)

But incubator stories were only the tip of the iceberg. Dozens of bold-face lies were told by government officials and army officers to journalists during Gulf War I.

Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf told reporters that the Patriot anti-missile system was 100 percent successful in knocking out Iraqi Scuds. It turned out later that the Pentagon couldn't confirm a single Scud kill by a Patriot missile.

Then there were all those "smart" bombs. Reporters were led to believe that technically advanced munitions allowed for "surgical strikes"-and the Pentagon had the pictures to prove it. Unfortunately the number of those bombs was exaggerated and "dumb" bombs killed thousands of Iraqi civilians and even some American soldiers.

Most journalists reported all of this as if it were true, so afraid of looking unpatriotic that they meekly accepted lies.

After Gulf War I ended, Barry Zorthian, who had been a Pentagon spokesman during Vietnam, gleefully told the National Press Club: "The Gulf War is over and the press lost."

So, has the reporting improved during Gulf War II? Who knows? It will take years to figure out what is now happening with the mainstream American press.

What I do know is that not only are American journalists "embedded" in military outfits, but American journalism outlets are "embedded" in giant corporations that stand to make billions from this war and any war that follows as we build the American Empire.

Channels:
Police-state tactics
By Tripp Frohlichstein
Where were you on the morning of March 26? If you were KTVI (Channel 2) reporter Elliott Davis, you were being arrested along with photographer Larry Washington, in Hillsdale, Mo. Davis says Washington was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of failure to comply while Davis was charged with interfering with police-while they were making an arrest.

Davis explained that he and Washington went to the Wellston School District office in Hillsdale to get information he had requested through the Freedom of Information Act. Davis had previously reported the superintendent had been given a big raise to more than $180,000 a year and had a luxury car, yet the students didn't have enough books. He returned to Wellston to find out what other members of the school district staff were earning. That's when the trouble started.

A sign was posted outside the district offices saying no cameras were allowed inside. Davis said that he felt it was a public building and they had a right to bring in cameras, so in they went. When asked to leave, Washington refused and was arrested and handcuffed. Davis said he questioned the officer about the arrest and then he, too, was arrested and handcuffed. Davis said he was in handcuffs with his hands behind his back for two hours after police said they lost the key.

Davis thinks what happened is an effort to get back at him for previous stories he has done on the Hillsdale mayor and school board. The mayor, Dorothy Moore, is also the Wellston school-board president.

Davis said their car was towed and camera confiscated. Later, after Channel 2's lawyers contacted the Hillsdale police department, the tape was returned. They got their car back too.

Davis acknowledges he has done many stories critical of both the Hillsdale mayor and police chief. Still, he was upset with the methods used. "They are using police-state tactics to prevent us from reporting the news," Davis said. "It is an effort to persuade us to discontinue our investigation. This is the first time in 30 years I have been arrested for doing my job-trying to find out how taxpayer money is being spent." Davis also said it was an effort at repression. "It has a chilling effect on the gathering of information." Davis said he was also concerned because this type of incident might dissuade other journalists from doing their jobs.

Channel 2 news director Brad Remington bailed his employees out to the tune of $100 each. Remington said on Channel 2 that night, "This is an abuse of police power."

When I called to ask about the incident, a person in the mayor's office said Moore had nothing to do with it and referred me to the police department. Detective Robert Kelly, spokesperson for the Hillsdale Police Department, refused to comment about the incident.

To be fair, this incident could have been avoided if Washington had simply left the building and Davis stayed to get the information he requested. He then could have consulted with station lawyers to challenge the "no cameras in the building" sign.

ooo

Local stations appear to be coping well with the early stages of the Iraq war. I missed the first few days because I was out of town. A spot check of stations shows, as expected, an extensive effort to localize the war, meaning airing stories that show how our area affects or is affected by the war.

That means stories ranging from the one about the company making boots for our troops, to area servicemen and women shipping out, to local precautions against terrorism.

All three network affiliated stations did well-I did not see KPLR (Channel 11)-bringing the war home.

Special kudos to Channel 2. Although the station promotes itself as primarily local, it was very attuned to what was going on in the Middle East. It would carry live news conferences from the battle region during its newscasts while other stations were staying with local news. I admired them for that because they were trying to determine what their viewers, at the time, would be most interested in. Good decisions in times like this will ultimately be rewarded as viewers will want to watch stations they trust are making choices in the best interests of the audience.

Channel 2 did another really neat thing. They superimposed a map of Iraq over the Midwest, putting St. Louis in the spot where Baghdad sits. It gives a wonderful perspective on how large the country really is and what we face there.

Nice work.

ooo

A Jeff Small report on the impact of the Iraqi war on travel on a KSDK (Channel 5) 10 p.m. newscast in March suffered from poor editing. The story had travel agent John Heimberger saying you should know whether your travel insurance is through your airline or cruise line or a third party provider. After he said that, we saw that his lips kept flapping but Channel 5 killed the sound, leaving us wondering WHY we need to know where the insurance comes from. That was important information left out.

Very sloppy.

ooo

On the same broadcast, Cordell Whitlock was introduced by Dan Gray saying Whitlock was reporting on a "record drug bust." But Whitlock, as he ended his story, said it "may be" the largest drug bust in East St. Louis history.

Big difference.

ooo

On March 11, Channel 2 proved once again that live-for-live's sake can look really stupid. It was pouring down rain but Nancy Pasternak was outside somewhere downtown (it was never more specific than "downtown"). Her topic? Air travel and the effect the impending Iraq conflict might have on it. Don't these people know when to come in out of the rain? Why the heck didn't they send her to the airport? If they didn't have time, bring her to the studio or let someone else introduce the package. It was an embarrassment to Channel 2 News.

Rather dumb.

ooo

Jennifer Blome has signed a new multi-year contract with Channel 5. Blome, the morning and noon co-anchor, started way back in December of 1979 as a weathercaster and environmental reporter. In case you care, the Channel 5 news release announcing her signing notes, "Blome says the question she's asked most often is 'What time do you get up in the morning?' The answer: 2:30 a.m.!" Were there any important details like the length of the contract or salary? Nope.

Speaking of Jennifer Blome, she apparently doesn't read this column so let me again give her some advice. If the station is going to use stockbroker Juli Niemann as a regular interview subject on the noon show, it either has to teach her to speak in English or Jennifer Blome owes it to her audience to ask her to explain many of her terms and colloquialisms.

The following examples are from just one broadcast. When I asked people what they thought she meant, they had no idea. So imagine what this is doing to viewers when she refers to "Uncle Al." Is that Al Goldman of A.G. Edwards, Al from "Happy Days," Allan Cohen, KMOV (Channel 4) general manager or Alan Greenspan, head of the Federal Reserve?

She also talked about stagflation. Huh?

Then she discussed traders making "war plays." Is that a card game?

Niemann then said discussing gas prices, "We were at 38 last week and we are at 32 this week." What is she saying? There was no context given as to what those numbers represent (price of a barrel of oil, I would surmise).

ooo

Channel 5 is currently seeing its lead eroding. It would be helpful if we could at least understand the information it is delivering.

Channel 5 news director Mike Shipley agreed the station needs to be clear. "It is something we have to pay more attention to," he acknowledges. "There is a segment of the audience that is very knowledgeable about the kind of stuff she talks about. Part of what we have found in forming these segments around these reports is that we are talking to a fairly savvy audience. Do we dumb down the whole broadcast or do we speak to the audience that is interested? Frankly, there is a middle ground we need to do a better job of reaching."

Based on what I have seen as a media trainer, the savvy group is a small minority and the station needs to pay lots more attention to the rest of us.

Let's hope.

ooo

The 2003 regional Edward R. Murrow awards have been announced and several are coming to St. Louis. The awards have been given out by the Radio-Television News Directors Association since 1971 to honor outstanding achievements in electronic journalism. The award is named after Murrow who helped set high standards for the broadcast industry.

Last month, 22 radio and television news managers from various sized markets across the country spent three days judging the entries. Regional winners automatically become eligible for the national awards competition, which will be judged in early June. St. Louis stations were eligible to win in the large market category.

Channel 4 won three regional (Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska) Edward R. Murrow 2003 Awards. The station won more awards than any other station in the area, winning a third of the nine large market awards for the region.

"Herky" was a series focusing on lead contamination in Herculaneum, reported by Craig Cheatham with photographers Gary Womack and Mark Hadler. It won for continuing coverage.

"Girl Bull Rider" which profiled a 15 year-old female bull rider from Illinois and reported by Craig Cheatham with photographer Jon Davis, won for sports reporting. It is interesting a news reporter won the sports award.

"Travel Expenses," reported by Jamie Allman with photographers Steve Harris and Gary Womack, raised the issue of questionable spending of state money used for the Missouri education conference. Reporter Jamie Allman uncovered hotel fees and transportation paid with state funds by people not attending the conferences in winning the investigative reporting category.

Channel 2 picked up two of these awards. Both award winners were reported by anchor Mandy Murphey.

The station won Best News Documentary for "The Mind of a Serial Killer," a look at accused local serial killer Maury Travis and the disturbing self-narrated videotapes he made of his victims inside his own home. Murphey was the producer and Wade Smith was videographer/editor.

The other winner was for Best News series for "Emily's Transplant," an in-depth portrait of 10-year-old cystic fibrosis patient Emily Johnson's struggle as she underwent a double-lung transplant. The photographers were John Ross, Steve Meyers, Dave Sharp, Rickey Davis. The series was produced by Scott Costa and edited by Editor Tom Gregory.

Channel 5 won only one award but it was a biggie. It was for overall excellence in the region (for large markets).

Nice work.

ooo

Correction: Last issue, I complained about Channel 2's revealing that Nan Wyatt was killed before the police were officially okayed to release her name. Actually, Channel 5 first revealed her name as the victim of the crime about seven minutes before 9 p.m. (KTRS also revealed her name).

This is wrong on everyone's part. Stations need to wait until they get the okay from police to release names. The reason for this is obvious. It is important that officials notify family or friends to inform them of the tragedy. Would you like to find out your parent or sibling was killed by watching the news? Of course not. Stations need to put people first over being first with the story.

'Nough said.

Sports Media
A natural history of sports reporting
By Joe Pollack
Sports writers used to wear their hearts on their sleeves almost as a matter of course. The decade or so between the end of World War I and the beginning of the Great Depression was known as the Golden Age of Sports, and it was described in purple prose by Grantland Rice, the all-time leader, and his many followers.

Rice wrote about the Four Horsemen, created in apocalyptic legend but narrowed to describe the Notre Dame backfield of 1927-Harry Stuhldreher, Jim Crowley, Pete Miller and Elmer Layden. It was a time of hyperbole and alliteration, of references to Greek heroes, of nicknames like the Iron Horse, the Sultan of Swat, the Manassa Mauler, Big Red. The writing style, enthusiastic as all get-out, was known as "Gee Whiz!"

The Thirties produced a stand-off between the cynic and the hero-worshipper, and a time when many writers added a cynical political or social slant, like Westbrook Pegler's vicious satirical columns that skewered Nazi policemen patrolling the streets of Garmisch-Partenkirchen during the 1936 Winter Olympics, or Red Smith's description of a Harvard-Yale game at which "the fans rose as one raccoon." It also was a time when sports writers were like drama critics; they saw the game, analyzed it, formed opinions and wrote about it. Cheering in the press box was a sin, and semi-fraternal organizations of writers were formed to keep the cheering to a minimum because it interrupted a train of thought. Later, Chicago's great Jerome Holtzman combined a collection of columns in a book, "No Cheering in the Press Box."

Visiting a locker room was unimportant, except perhaps for an afternoon paper guy looking for an expanded second-day angle. Turning a manager or a coach into a daily spokesman was considered a waste of time, because it was as rare then as it is now that he will say anything truly analytic or meaningful about the game. The constant repetition-even if a correct analysis-becomes boring very rapidly; writers are far better able to create sentences than are athletes or managers. The best example of this is Yogi Berra, who said few of the things that were credited to him.

The view from the press box probably was better than the view from the sideline or the dugout, and both manager and writer could easily juggle a few statistics to make a point. But today's editors, knowing that many fans have watched television, think that their sports writers will find new insights by talking to players in a locker room. It has turned sports writers, usually the most imaginative of writers, into transcribers looking for new ways to phrase a managerial canard.

A change in writing style, and in attitude, came in the days following World War II. Baseball expanded to California, television made its first tentative steps onto the field, airplane travel replaced overnight trains and both athletes and writers began to deal with a new landscape. The reportorial Rubicon apparently was crossed during the 1962 World Series. A New York Newsday writer named Stan Isaacs asked Yankee pitcher Ralph Terry if his wife had watched the game (Terry was the winning pitcher). Terry reported she had been home nursing a new baby. "Breast or bottle?" asked Isaacs, and a new school of sports writing was born.

St. Louis generally has been a hotbed of innocence. Bob Broeg and Bob Burnes, who held the lead newspaper columnist positions for many years, were fans who rarely wrote anything harsh. Broeg, who has had a lifelong love affair with his alma mater (and mine), the University of Missouri, wrote both columns and game stories, and many books. Burnes produced his Benchwarmer column seven days a week and pioneered sports call-in shows on KMOX. Today's columnists write two or three a week (sometimes four) and spend far more time in front of radio and television microphones than they do before their computer screens. That seems to be where the money is.

I think both St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnists, Bernie Miklasz and Bryan Burwell, are good, though Burwell has not been on board long enough to receive even a semi-definitive judgment. Miklasz often has had unkind words for Mike Martz or Tony La Russa, but he's basically a fan, a position never more solidly taken than on the day after the Missouri Tigers' overtime loss to Marquette, 101-92, in the second round of the NCAA tournament.

The Golden Eagles were phenomenal in the overtime. When the pressure was highest, they were perfect, connecting on three of three three-point field goal attempts and six of six free throws. It was an awe-inspiring five minutes.

Mizzou played pretty well. The Tigers let their opponents take the lead through much of the game, as they did all season, then rallied for a last-minute tie. Miklasz saw them as "inspirational in defeat," a concept that baffles me, just as the oxymoron "moral victory" does. I saw them, through much of the season, as lazy and careless in the early going, playing flat-footed most of the time, then using their exceptional skill for a comeback that was successful about half the time. Quin Snyder is a fine coach, a better recruiter, but he's careless in checking the backgrounds of kids he signs and then has to back and fill and figure out what he really meant, or why his research was insufficient or misguided.

And then Miklasz went on about the character and leadership of the team's best players that day, Arthur Johnson and Rickey Paulding. Meanwhile, in a separate story, Bill Coats (whose Mizzou game coverage has been excellent all season) pointed out that neither of these two great leaders may be back next season. All depends on the NBA draft and the sweet talkers who represent the monied interests.

Media/Law
Whipping the Tribune
By Ken Jones
I like to collect legal cliches. A couple of my favorites are: "I'm not going to try this case in the press," or "This lawsuit is not about money but about sending a message."

Another good one comes from the mouths of defendants who just settled a civil lawsuit: "We're not admitting liability by settling, we just want to save legal expenses. We would have won in court."

That was the public position of the Columbia Daily Tribune after resolving a libel suit filed by a school board candidate. Privately, officials at the paper may have had doubts about their chances at trial-judging by a rather groveling apology printed in the paper's March 20 editorial page.

The case arose out of plaintiff Jack Lane's unsuccessful candidacy for the Columbia school board in 2001. At a candidate forum Lane said he advocated the use of corporal punishment to maintain discipline. The Tribune then ran an editorial cartoon that depicted Lane as saying in the first frame, "I'm Henry Lane and I'm running for the school board to bring back spanking." In the next frame Lane says, "Not that I'm necessarily into that stuff"-while dressed in women's underwear, gloves and high heels and holding a whip.

Lane argued that the cartoon depicted him as a sexual deviate, which, under traditional Missouri law, is defamation "per se"-meaning that damages were presumed because the statement was so offensive. The three other categories of defamation "per se" included false statements that someone was guilty of a crime or was afflicted with a loathsome disease, or false statements that concerned someone's ability to engage in an occupation or business.

A Missouri Supreme Court case 10 years ago did away with the "per se" rule-now in all cases plaintiffs have to prove they were actually damaged before they can recover-but the charge of sexual deviancy still has great resonance with juries.

Most likely, fearing the wrath of conservative jurors and also subscribers in Boone County, the paper settled Lane's case for a confidential amount and removed the cartoon from its electronic archives. In addition, the Tribune printed an apology that was approved by Lane.

The apology, signed by publisher Henry J. Waters III, read in part: "The cartoon was offensive to some people and was not intended to represent anything about Mr. Lane's sexuality. It was a spoof, not intended as legitimate news. A number of readers said at the time the cartoon went beyond the bounds of common decency and good taste, was unfair to Mr. Lane and should never have been published.

"We apologize to Mr. Lane and truly regret the emotional pain and suffering the cartoon has caused him. We are sorry he believes the cartoon damaged his election chances and his reputation. Mr. Lane's participation is good for the local political process, and I am glad he continues to be involved. His reaction to this cartoon reminds us to be thoughtful when lampooning local citizens."

In a story that appeared the same day as the apology-and which apparently was intended as "legitimate news"-Tribune president Jack Waters said, "We didn't confess to anything. We didn't say we erred in any way." Added managing editor Jim Robertson: "You know, I think there is no winner or loser really. It is just a cessation of hostilities. I think we would have prevailed in the end, but this (settlement) seemed like the best thing to do."

According to the article, Robertson said the cartoonist, John Darkow, "would not be restricted in any way."

Lane's attorney, Leonard Frankel of St. Louis, told SJR: "I hope this case will make newspapers a little more sensitive. This was really in bad taste and was humiliating for Mr. Lane." Frankel said that "at the time this was published the Tribune was inundated with letters to the editor and e-mails. People were saying, 'Whether we agree with Mr. Lane's politics or not, what you did was in extremely bad taste.' The paper ran columns afterwards claiming First Amendment protection, but this was not a First Amendment issue."

In the Tribune's March 20 story about the case, Lane said, "I'm told by my attorneys we can't talk about the details. Anyway, I'm very happy with [the settlement]. I guess in summary I got everything I wanted." Maybe the publicity will help him get elected this year-Lane is running for school board again. I wonder if there will be any Tribune cartoons about him.

Media/Politics
MSD reporting as a role model
By Terry Jones
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has been all over the St. Louis Metropolitan Sewer District's (MSD) case the past several weeks, but as good as the coverage has been, it also points out just how little region-wide attention multi-county special purpose governments normally receive.

The Post's March 9 Sunday edition story was exceptionally thorough. Starting on the front page and then jumping to two additional pages in the first section, it touched several bases: the political quagmire, the financial challenges, the public health consequences and-complete with excellent figures-explaining how the system does and could handle storm water and waste water.

Three days later, investigative reporter Carolyn Tuft revealed that, despite a December 2001 salary study showing that MSD was paying competitive salaries, the agency had recently awarded hefty raises to many of its employees. This added further ammunition to the charges that all is not well, buttressing Mayor Francis Slay's and County Executive Buzz Westfall's decision to change five of the six MSD trustees.

Suspicions about scandal and mismanagement usually attract a media crowd, but one might ask, where is the routine coverage that could provide a chronicle about and possibly some early warning signs for such problems. To mention just one example, the Post did not report the results of the compensation study when it was released. Had it done so, it might have put the MSD trustees on notice that the public, through its press, was monitoring their actions.

Moreover, when it does print MSD stories, more often than not, they are in zone editions rather than the metropolitan-wide ones.

Increasingly, region-wide decisions are made by multi-county governmental or quasi-governmental units. Organized in the mid-1950s, MSD was one of the first of this breed, but now it has many siblings. Major examples include the St. Louis Junior College District (early 1960s), the East-West Gateway Coordinating Council (late 1960s), the Zoo-Museum District (early 1970s and then subsequently expanded), the Regional Arts Commission (mid-1980s), the Convention and Visitors Commission (mid-1980s), and the Metropolitan Park and Recreation District (2000).

Despite their prevalence and importance, however, the Post still tends disproportionately to look for news among general purpose governments with only a occasional foray into the multi-county arena. On Oct. 31, 2002, for example, Linda Tucci's business column in the Post noted that "the Metropolitan Park and Recreation District-charged by the taxpayers with creating a necklace of parks and trails for the region-has kept a fairly low profile since its founding two years ago (but) that seems about to change." She noted that it would be making some important decisions and seeking more public input, but despite these comments from within its own ranks, the Post has not carried a single subsequent story about the district.

When stories about these units do appear, there is no consistent pattern about where they are printed. On March 1, all the Post's readers had the opportunity to learn about the East-West Gateway Coordinating Council's trial balloon to have the next light rail line link Clayton with Overland and the West Port Plaza area. That's fine and appropriate. But just nine days earlier, the mayors of four large municipalities (Chesterfield, Creve Coeur, Maryland Heights, and Town and Country) had spoken to this same topic, urging East-West Gateway to assign top priority both to the route to West Port and then extending it to Chesterfield Valley. That story only appeared in the West and North Post zones.

Even though these mayors collectively represent more than 100,000 area residents, the Post did not see fit to give their views on a clearly regional issue-where the next light rail line should go-a metropolitan-wide airing. In contrast, on March 11, it ran an eight-paragraph story in the Metro section on former City of St. Louis Alderman Melinda Long's decision to seek to win back the seat she had lost in a recent recall election. Ms. Long, when she was in office, had fewer than 15,000 constituents. Why, one puzzles, would anybody outside the City think he or she had a stake in this matter? Would the Post have given similar prominence to this item if, say, Ms. Long had been an alderperson in Chesterfield?

More often than not, the Post covers the St. Louis region as it once was, a central city surrounded by residential suburbs, rather than how it now is, a metropolitan web with numerous concentrations of offices, stores and residences. In doing so, it fails two key media criteria-accuracy and relevance.

Radio History
Hotel radio
By Frank Absher
If you have a chance to tour a radio station today, the odds are pretty good the studio will be part of what might be called a radio "assembly line," thanks to the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Since huge corporate owners now cluster multiple radio stations in single locations, it's common to see hallways lined on either side by different radio stations, as many as seven stations in a building. Throughout the history of radio, though, there have been some very interesting single studio locations in the St. Louis area.

Hotels have been the most popular location for local radio studios. KFVE was in the Missouri Hotel at 11th and Locust in the '20s and then relocated to the 3rd floor of the Chase Hotel in 1927. KMOX started out as one of the first tenants of the new Mayfair Hotel in 1925. KSTL began broadcasting from the mezzanine level of the American Hotel at 7th and Market in 1948. KWIX-FM occupied the penthouse on the roof of the Ambassador Hotel, 707 North 6th in the '60s. KWK was on the 9th floor of the Chase Hotel in 1930. WTMV, which became WBBR and WAMV had studios in the landmark Broadview Hotel in East St. Louis. WIL moved through several hotels: the Arcade level of the Missouri Hotel; the 16th floor of the Melbourne at Lindell and Grand; the 9th floor of the Chase Hotel; and the Coronado, at Spring and Lindell. Even WSBF, owned by a downtown department store, spent a short period of time at the Warwick Hotel at 1428 Locust.

Private homes have also housed radio studios here. The market's renowned public station, KDNA, broadcast from an old home at 4285 Olive in what was then Gaslight Square. KSHE began in the basement of its owner's home in Crestwood at 1035 Westglen Drive. WEW once broadcast from the basement of a West County home at 1323 Autumn Wood Drive after fire destroyed their studios. The station is now in a house at 2740 Hampton. WRTH was in a prefabricated rural home near Wood River.

Some stations' homes were in logical, if unorthodox sites. A gymnasium at 5539 Page was the site of KFQA, the Principia station. The first studios of KFUO were on the roof of a building of what was then Concordia Seminary on South Jefferson at Winnebago. WCK and later WSBF were located in Stix, Baer & Fuller department store, which owned the stations. WGNU began in trailers at the transmitter site near Granite City before moving to the 13th floor of a Central West End high rise. WMAY was in the Kingshighway Presbyterian Church near Cabanne because the church owned the station. WMRY was on the grounds of Our Lady of the Snows shrine. That station was owned by the religious oblates.

When KFVE went on the air, it was located in the Egyptian Building at 6830 Delmar in University City, which had been part of the complex built by magazine entrepreneur E. G. Lewis. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat wrote in June 1949: "The old Egyptian Building was enough to give anybody the shudders. It was a long, windowless affair ... and the interior was soberly decorated with choice replicas of the ancient art of the pyramids."

Three stations shared quarters with local newspapers. KSD, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch station, signed on at 12th and Olive in the newspaper's office building. KXOK began life in the Star-Times building a couple blocks north on 12th. For a couple years starting in 1925, the St. Louis Star housed WIL on the top floor of its office building.

And there were a couple studio locations that were downright odd. WEW's studios were once housed in the basement of the current Busch Stadium downtown. KFVE shared space with the Baldwin Piano Company at 1111 Olive. KMOX was temporarily housed in the old Anthony & Kuhn's Brewery complex at 906 Sydney. WIBV had studios at the Green Mill Restaurant on West Main Street in Belleville. KXOK temporarily shared space with the Regional Justice Information Service in the West End. KDHX occupied an old bakery building in South St. Louis. KCFM temporarily broadcast from the top floor of Boatmen's Bank at 324 North Broadway. Later, KCFM relocated to a building that housed the owner's music shop at 532 DeBaliviere. Then, after the station was sold, it was relocated to another bank building, Cass Federal Savings and Loan at Graham and Dunn Roads in Florissant. Other stations spent some time in the Missouri Bank Building, which had originally been the Post building at 12th and Olive: KATZ-AM and FM and WIL-AM and FM. KTRS put its studios in a commercial mall.

Perhaps the biggest irony in terms of facilities belongs to KWK. In the station's infancy, owner Thomas Patrick Convey spent money to develop the transmitter site in Kirkwood, where he lived. He turned the land into a "country club" for the station's employees. Many years later, after the station had fallen on hard times, the studios were located for a while in a shack at a junk yard in north St. Louis.

AM/FM
Baghdad calling: War on the radio
By Lynn Venhaus
The unprecedented media coverage of the war against Iraq, with military access and technology enabling play-by-play on a whole new level, has allowed us to tune in around the clock.

Locally, the undisputed king of all media this go-round is, naturally, Charles Jaco. With his CNN credit from the Persian Gulf War, Jaco is the go-to guy on his astute morning show on KFTK (97.1 FM) and as a KTVI (Channel 2) correspondent, providing an insight that is unmatched regionally, and arguably one of the best nationally. His guest list has been impressive, and his Rolodex is deep. The Emmis brass seized the moment with their fledgling FM talker, which is getting the biggest bounce of all from Operation Iraqi Freedom. (Who says people don't want hard news?) Now only if its signal was stronger ...

Not to be outdone, KMOX (1120 AM) is coming on strong, with three war updates an hour on "Total Information AM," heightened coverage and a nightly hour round-up with Jon Grayson Monday through Friday.

News Director John Butler is keeping as up-to-date as possible. "This is a TV war. The ability to get live reports from the front, and everything almost instantaneously is unheard of," Butler said. "It's pretty unbelievable to cover a war by being right there."

KMOX has three expert correspondents on the payroll, he said-Ivan Scott, a Pentagon correspondent with the latest news from the Department of Defense; Perry Smith, a military analyst and retired general, who will break down military strategy; and Elaine Cobb, a Middle East correspondent who tracks the latest news. "They're giving regular updates, and they're there," he said.

Locally, the station has focused on politicians, analysts and the military reserve units. "We've reached out and touched the local experts," he said. They also are carrying all the Pentagon and White House briefings.

KTRS was prepared to hit the ground running as the first word of battle surfaced, news director Kent Martin said. Newsman Bill Addison saw the bulletin cross the AP wire after 8:30 p.m. March 19, and then ran into the studio to get the first word on the 550 AM dial. Then, ABC kicked in with its 24/7 war clock.

Since then, KTRS uses ABC updates, as frequently as every 10 minutes, and they've broken into regular programming to carry briefings and updates. The station's also enlisted Baghdad correspondent Peter Arnett, Jaco's Gulf War colleague, who was giving outstanding daily dispatches. Correspondent Dawn Tamir, a CNN reporter and ABC-TV news producer, is also aiding in Tel Aviv, for coverage of Israel. KTRS has also brought out the local experts to supplement its national coverage.

At KWMU (90.7 FM), National Public Radio's always outstanding coverage is presented while local newspeople Tom Weber, Kevin Lavery, Hillary Wicai and Matt Sepic cover the local angles.

ooo

After jockeying around the St. Louis radio dial, veteran "jack of all trades" Rick Sanborn feels at home at the Bonneville-owned WSSM Smooth Jazz (106.5 FM), where he's been hosting the morning show for several months.

Previously, Sanborn had co-hosted the KTRS morning program for two and a half years. He likes the break from all-talk, and has been enjoying the music. "Smooth Jazz has come a long way in three years. They had morning shows that never really clicked. I believe I can make a difference and that appealed to me," he said.

"I'd done a variety of music forms before I was doing news-talk, so I was ready to play some new things."

Sanborn likes that he is able to do music-related interviews, such as Lionel Ritchie and Smokey Robinson. "It's more showbizzy than newsy, and that suits me," he said.

But they're not abandoning news entirely, particularly with the world situation these days. "I deliver news updates twice an hour, but I try to do them more like a conversation. I think they were looking for that."

He also likes working for Bonneville, especially at the "Palace on Ballas," the company's state-of-the-art headquarters in Creve Coeur. "I'm just blown away by the place-all the details the engineers have put together. The rooms are all interactive, and we have access to all the computers," he said, also noting that "all the wires are bundled neatly." (Those of us who've worked at dumpy offices can appreciate that!)

Smooth Jazz is a format often listened to in offices, and is relatively new in the St. Louis market. "It's nice to find something that has challenge in it, rather than falling back on doing the same thing," he said. "Since I came here in 1987, most stations I worked at were all on the path to bettering themselves."

He arrived as part of the popular morning team, Chase & Sanborn, on the late, great country station KUSA (550 AM), where he and John Chase developed a decent following. After that, he teamed with his brother Scott and worked mornings for three years on Sunny 101.1 FM, an easy listening station back in the day. Scott's now a TV news anchor in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. They grew up in Pittsburgh, and a weekly bit was calling their mom back home every Friday.

As a newsman, Sanborn did two stints at KMOX, from 1995 to 1996 and from 1997 to 1999, also providing news readings for KLOU (103.3 FM), then owned by CBS. In between, he worked at a news-talk station, WLAC, in Nashville on the morning show for 13 months before being asked back by Tom Langmyer, then KMOX program director (PD).

Sanborn returned to music radio to host the morning oldies show on KLOU as Rockin' Ricky, paired with MeMe Wolff.

In 2000, he headed to KTRS after KLOU hired J.C. Corcoran and his team for a change in direction. He had filled in for Frank O. Pinion and George Noory on the 550 AM airwaves, too.

As for his tenure at KTRS, he says diplomatically that he's proud of the work he did with Dan Buck and Jean Jackson, and thought they were successful at doing what they perceived a morning show should be. He describes his forced exit as "a difference in philosophy of what the morning show should be, pretty much between me and the owner of the station. They wanted a more serious, almost clonish KMOX-type show," he said.

Sanborn said he liked to mix up the news with lifestyle, pop culture and sports. "I like the USA Today approach-you've got your front-page news, life section and you get sports, too, but that went against the grain," he said.

"KTRS has been a revolving door for some very talented people," he commented.

The move to Smooth Jazz has been fortuitous, and he's working with people he admires-David Myers as PD and John Kijowski as the station boss. "I'm so enthusiastic about this team. I'm in real radio instead of back-biting, small-time stuff."

One of his favorite assignments is doing a live remote from Patrick's in Westport for Sunday brunches from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. "We have 400 people show up. It's very gratifying to put faces to listeners. It's fun," he said.

Sanborn said he's been working in radio since he was a teenager. "There's not a whole lot that I haven't done," he said, chuckling. He appreciates having longevity in the market. "I love the city. I think it's similar to Pittsburgh, both river cities, the people are similar, so are the neighborhoods. I've bounced around to Florida, Alabama, Virginia and Indiana, and I hadn't had the same feeling of home 'til I got here."

ooo

More up-the-ladder moves have been made at Infinity St. Louis [KMOX, KYKY (98.1 FM) and KEZK (102.5 FM)]. With Beth Davis as the market manager and Tom Langmyer, the new general manager, two of the company's loyal men have also been rewarded. Former program manager Steve Moore is the new program director at KMOX, and is responsible for developing daily programming strategies and managing the programming and sports departments. Smokey Rivers has been promoted to VP/Programming of Infinity St. Louis and retains his operations manager duties at soft rock KEZK and current hits/adult contemporary KYKY. He'll work on market research, finding talent and special projects, along with looking for cross-branding opportunities between the three Infinity stations.

Moore joined KMOX in 2000 after working as PD at KTRS, KFNS (590 AM) and the old KSD-AM in St. Louis. Before that, he was PD at KFRU-AM in Columbia, Mo.

Rivers joined the company as PD of Y98 in 1993.

ooo

KTRS has made some personnel moves. MeMe Wolff and Jim Stark are anchoring evening and weekend newscasts, along with Bill Addison, who's now on nights and weekends. Darryl Lloyd has an expanded role at A.G. Edwards now and has left the station's rotation. And helicopter reports with Paul Ford are now broadcast during morning and afternoon drive newscasts.

ooo

KMOX News Director John Butler says KMOX is conducting a national search to fill the vacancy created when Nan Wyatt, news reporter and "Total Information AM" co-anchor, was murdered in February.

"We want someone with a deep résumé," he said. "Someone who's been a foreign correspondent, in major market radio, done some traveling and is worldly," he said.

Ads/PR
Mobs and public relations
By Rick Stoff
Mob psychology, the intolerance of human society for a dissenting point of view, has made it difficult and often dangerous for a man to plead for a new or unpopular cause," wrote one of the great thinkers of public relations. "When an argument on an abstract question engages opponents they often desert the main line of argument in order to abuse each other. How often this is true can be seen from the congressional records of controversies in which the personal attack supersedes logic."

This writer hadn't listened to talk radio or watched condescending, bow-tied television pundits ridicule and shout down opponents to make opposing viewpoints seem "unpopular." Edward L. Bernays, often referred to as the father of public relations, wrote these views in 1923 in the book Crystallizing Public Opinion.

Bernays, who died in 1995 at the age of 103, was one of the first communicators to consider psychology as a tool of public relations and, by extension, public affairs. He wrote 80 years ago that group affinities, emotions and the innate need for superiority had to be considered before launching a case based on a logical presentation of facts.

"Public opinion is a term describing an ill-defined, mercurial and changeable group of individual judgments ... The mental equipment of the average individual consists of a mass of judgments on most of the subjects which touch his daily physical or mental life," Bernays wrote. "The reader will recall from his own experience an almost infinite number of instances in which the amateur has been fully prepared to deliver expert advice and to give final judgment in matters upon which his ignorance is patent to every one except himself ...

It is axiomatic that men who know little are often intolerant of a point of view that is contrary to their own."

Bernays cited a contemporary but timeless debate in Congress-a congressman argued for a particular tariff by publishing "long vindictive statements, in which he tried to confound the character and the disinterestedness of his opponents. Logically his discussion should have been based only upon the sound economic, social and political value of the bill as presented."

Bernays' book quoted other written works of the time that surveyed communications as a psychological undertaking. One of the books, Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, was written by William Trotter. Bernays described the book as a comprehensive study of the social psychology of the individual.

According to Trotter, the average man carries "a vast number of judgments of a very precise kind upon subjects of very great variety, complexity and difficulty. The bulk of such opinions must necessarily be without rational basis, since many of them are concerned with problems admitted by the expert to be still unsolved, while as to the rest it is clear that the training and experience of no average man can qualify him to have any opinion upon them at all."

Everett Dean Martin, author of The Behavior of Crowds, defined a crowd as "the peculiar mental condition which sometimes occurs when people think and act together."

Crowds, wrote Martin, create logic-proof compartments which block other points of view that could threaten the existence of the groups.

"Every crowd 'boosts for' itself, gives itself airs, speaks with oracular finality, regards itself as morally superior, and will, so far as it has the power, lord it over everyone. Notice how each group and section in society, so far as it permits itself to think as a crowd, claims to be 'the people.'"

The crowd mindset is not limited to the ignorant or uneducated, Martin said. "Any class may behave and think as a crowd."

Bernays did not use the current term "demonization" to describe a tactic for marginalizing opponents, but he did cite Martin's views that a good enemy can save a weak argument.

According to Martin, "even the verifiable facts and figures" of the other side are labeled "by that dread name propaganda."

Bernays acknowledged that "propaganda" already had achieved negative connotations, but he argued that it was a neutral term that should apply to any public communications. In his 1928 book, called Propaganda, he wrote, "Whether ... propaganda is good or bad depends upon the merit of the cause urged, and the correctness of the information published."

Crowd psychology must be understood in shaping further public thought, Bernays wrote. The public relations counsel should understand that "the cause he represents must have some group reaction and tradition in common with the public he is trying to reach.

"Propaganda is a purposeful, directed effort to overcome censorship-the censorship of the group mind and herd reaction. The average citizen is the world's most efficient censor. His own mind is the greatest barrier between him and the facts. His own 'logic-proof compartments,' his own absolutism are the obstacles which prevent him from seeing in terms of experience and thought rather than in terms of group reaction," Bernays wrote in the 1923 book.

Making a new opinion seem like a product of the old group was recommended. A small part of Bernays' wisdom may have been proven wrong by modern events-the part in which he wrote, "It is seldom effective to call names."

Late Edition
CENSORSHIP: A two-front war
By Charles L. Klotzer
Censorship is being fought on two fronts: coverage of the Iraqi War and at home. While it can be argued that the American public is better informed about Iraqi War II than they were about Iraqi War I-thanks to the embedded reporters with the coalition forces-the forces for openness at home are being routed at every level of government.

Let's look at the war coverage first.

We seem to know what is happening on the front. We see battlelines and hear reports from the front several times a day. But what we learn is still filtered through western eyes, projected with official permission, and is subject to self-censorship in order not to offend viewer sensibilities.

ABC News, considered by the media community among the most balanced, declared that it would be careful to screen out unnecessary gore.

Al-Jezeera, the Arabic news channel, no doubt, thrives on it. (Please note "thrives" is my biased and loaded description, which the station would resent, "it happened, we show it," they would probably claim.) Fox News is known for its one-sided coverage, which is called their "commitment to boosting the war effort" by the New York Times (March 30). "It is the definition of patriotism that cleaves Fox from other newsrooms. Fox embraces a passionate partisanship. ABC and others view impartial reporting as their contribution to the national good."

While the degree of openness of this war, of course, will be written well in the future, it is obvious that compared to Grenada, Panama and the first Gulf War, the flaks at the Pentagon have learned that too many restrains will ultimately backfire. Moreover, the accessibility of the Internet shortcuts any attempt to suppress unwelcome news.

o o o

At home, the situation is going from bad to worse. Let's review what type of censorship we are facing. There are many kinds.

The most prevalent one is practiced by good people, liberal and conservative, every day in every city: it's called editing.

The next most prevalent one is self-censorship. That form has many causes. Fear of economic repercussions. Ignoring deeds or misdeeds by friends or parties, to whom you may feel beholden. Even ignorance or laziness to check out issues and situations properly, is a form of self-censorship.

Thirdly, we have institutional censorship by private interests. We have all read about withholding negative information after medical or pharmaceutical trials. No need here to talk about corporate accounting practices.

Fourthly, we have censorship by government, local and national. The first three have always been with us and we can, nevertheless, maintain a somewhat democratic and reasonably civil society. The fourth, and the most invasive form of censorship, is the most ominous because its practitioners carry guns in their holsters.

The current administration has taken secrecy to a new level. It has put a much tighter lid on information than any recent presidents. Where we are heading can best be demonstrated by the following examples, all reported in recent months.

o The administration has closed public court records.

o It has kept secret the Vice President's minutes and attendees of its energy task force.

o Late in 2001, Ashcroft announced a new policy on the Freedom of Information Act of 1966: to reject all requests if there is any legal basis to do so. That policy was conceived before 9/11. The previous administration told its departments to find ways to release documents as long as it did not impair national security.

o In the year ending Sept. 30, 2001, 260,978 documents were classified secret, an increase of 18% over the previous year. Three new agencies (EPA, Dept. of Agric., and Dept. of Health and Human Services) received authority to stamp documents "secret."

o On March 23, 2001, Mr. Gonzales, the White House Counsel, ordered the National Archives not to release 68,000 pages of records from Ronald Reagan's presidency. Even more restrictions were added on Nov. 1, 2001. After a storm of protests by scholars, the Reagan papers were later released.

o Proceedings held for hundreds of immigrants have been closed not only to the public and the media but also to relatives.

o Libraries, to qualify for federal funds, are required to black out access to pornographic web sites, although these sites are constitutionally protected according to court decisions. The Children's Protect Act is the first law ever to impose free speech restrictions in libraries.

o A Feb. 7 Justice Dept. draft this year flatly bars FOI Act efforts to gain information about detainees.

o The Homeland Security Act criminalizes leaks of unclassified critical infrastructure information.

These infringements on our Bill of Rights are just the beginning. Extra, the magazine of FAIR, reports that Attorney General John Ashcroft and his staff are drafting a "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003" or "Patriot Act II" legislation.

According to the Center for Public Integrity, the draft would, among others, authorize a DNA database which would include anyone associated with "suspected" groups; it would nullify most consent decrees that limit law enforcement's ability to gather information about groups that seek to curtail policy abuses; it would permit government to "expatriate" a U.S. citizen under certain conditions even if the citizen has broken no law.

And about a week ago, it is reported, President Bush signed an executive order that keeps classified millions of documents dating from 1978 or earlier. The order "treats all material sent to American officials from foreign governments-no matter how routine-as subject to classification"; it enables the CIA to stop declassification (a first); and it gives Vice President Dick Cheney the power to classify information (another first).

Former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan critiqued that "Secrecy is a formula for inefficient decision-making." Not only that, but as a judge recently told America, "Democracy dies behind closed doors."

This litany of restrictions is out of character for an open and democratic society. But as threatening as they are, the more long-term impact may be decisions by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The above can be undone by later administrations. The result of FCC decisions cannot.

o o o

At this time, companies are still blocked from buying a newspaper and TV station in the same city or from owning more than one TV station in the same market. The FCC wants to relax those rules, which would reduce a diversity of outlets. Isn't that censorship? Continued concentration of the media is as destructive to an open society as are Ashcroft's policies. Since the rules of radio ownership were relaxed, Clear Channel went from 43 radio stations only eight years ago to more than 1200 now. (Recently, the company has been accused of pushing its own pro-administration policies.)

The FCC has received many thousands of legal briefs concerned about its intent to review the rules of media ownership. FCC's decision, said Senator John McCain, "will shape the future of communications forever." The threat of further consolidations; the reduction of independent media; enforcement of editorial policies by absentee corporate headquarters; enthroning the balance sheet as the determining factor as to how the public will be served, will all be determined by five unelected appointees.

Features
Langmyer talks
New GM discusses future of KMOX
By Frank Absher
After five years as general manager of KMOX radio, Karen Carroll surprised staffers recently by announcing that she was stepping down. Her replacement is Tom Langmyer, who has been at the station for 10 years. His work has been concentrated in programming, although he recently moved up to operations manager. Langmyer faces many challenges, not the least of which is the perception among some that the station is on a downward slope in terms of its audience share and the quality of its programming.

In mid-March, I, myself a veteran of KMOX 20 years ago, sat down to conduct separate interviews with Langmyer and news director John Butler. In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that I serve as the unofficial (and unpaid) historian for KMOX. SJR: During the 10 years that you worked on the programming side of KMOX, the ratings dropped. What's your explanation?

Langmyer: KMOX performs extremely well. It's the No. 1 station in the top 20 markets, and we're proud of that. The reality of it is, in all businesses and in all radio stations, the markets have compressed to a degree based on other competitive forces that didn't exist 30 years ago. They exist now, and we still are the No. 1 radio station and doing extremely well. We're very proud of our success.

SJR: Bringing in the Rush Limbaugh show dramatically cut your local commercial inventory during those three hours.

Langmyer: And the audience in that particular day part grew. SJR: Has there been an offset factor in terms of the amount of money you could be making with all those additional commercials you could sell with a local program in his place?

Langmyer: At this point, we think Rush Limbaugh is a positive programming piece on KMOX. He has brought a lot of audience to the station.

SJR: How can you justify having three solid hours of only one political philosophy without programming three other hours to present the other side's viewpoints?

Langmyer: The other programs on the radio station represent all kinds of points of view. People also need to understand that there are over 30 radio stations in this market, and there are all kinds of alternatives to KMOX programming. It's not like it was 30 years ago. People have a choice now, and that particular three hours on the radio station delivers a great audience. If it didn't deliver a great audience, it wouldn't be on.

SJR: But shouldn't KMOX listeners reasonably expect their station to provide a balanced viewpoint every day?

Langmyer: Sure. But they get that.

SJR: You provide three solid hours of liberal programming?

Langmyer: No. They get 24 hours of varied opinions.

SJR: Then why spotlight Limbaugh's one-sided views for three hours a day and then maybe at 10 o'clock at night we'll have an hour with another viewpoint?

Langmyer: The reality of it is that the radio station is based on customer needs, and we are a commercial entity. Obviously there's a large audience that wants that program on the air, and that's why it's on KMOX.

SJR: What are your plans for programming?

Langmyer: I'm no longer program director of the station, so the new corporate set-up will focus on the audience and what their needs are and having people in place who will fill those needs.

SJR: How are the organizational changes, appointing a market manager and a market program director, going to affect what we hear on KMOX?

Langmyer: We'll have a strong cabinet of experienced radio broadcasters working and sharing resources among all three of our stations here. Beth Davis and Smokey Rivers bring to the table an ability to leverage our stations to better serve our clients. It only stands to reason that we will continue to grow.

SJR: There was recently an evening presidential press conference, but KMOX listeners didn't hear it. Instead they got spring training baseball. What was behind this decision?

Langmyer: You'll have to ask Steve Moore, who's the program director.

(Moore told SJR there was a communication problem. The KMOX producer was told to carry the president's statement followed by questioning, with instructions to cut away when things became repetitive. The producer, says Moore, dropped coverage as soon as the president finished his statement.)

SJR: Do you still want to be known as "The Sports Voice of St. Louis?"

Langmyer: Yes. That's a very important part of what we do. When there is news from the sports world, you'll hear it on KMOX. We have the market's premier sports talk host in Bernie Miklasz, and we've grown our sports department in terms of the number of reporters, contributors and hosts.

SJR: And, will the St. Louis sports fans continue to see you this way even though several St. Louis teams' play-by-plays are heard on other radio stations?

Langmyer: Those rights haven't really changed that much. We never had Rams' football, for instance. And for three hours every Sunday during football season, I want to make sure, since we don't have the Rams' broadcasts, that our radio station is doing the best job it can covering the Rams. That's a big part of being the Sports Voice.

SJR: Will KMOX go after any more play-by-play rights?

Langmyer: We'll always look at opportunities, and they'll have to make sense for the station and for our listeners.

SJR: How will they "make sense?"

Langmyer: They'll make sense if we can do it without creating conflicts. A lot of it has to do with the teams themselves. KMOX only has one signal, so if there are three teams playing at the same time we could only carry one of them. We'd be willing to pursue other opportunities, but the teams have a say in it, too, since they have their own goals in how they are positioned on a station.

SJR: You have billboards around town, "Showdown with Saddam." Sounds like an adventure show on TV.

Langmyer: That's how CBS is positioning its coverage, and we are a CBS station.

SJR: How much more will we see of this kind of corporate imaging as a part of the KMOX approach?

Langmyer: I think in the cases where it makes sense to promote our relationship with our parent company, we'll do it, but not at the expense of our own image and identity. What's important is that we have a great history and heritage with CBS, so we feel that this has always been a strong part of who we are. We need the listeners to know that CBS is still an integral part of KMOX.

SJR: Now that you're in a position where your wishes carry a lot more weight at the station are we going to notice any changes in programming philosophies?

Langmyer: You'll see a very strong effort to improve the quality of our hosts, guests and our news product and our work in the community. I want to increase the visibility of our on-air staff. My goal is to build on the strong people we have, but we need to add to our staff in areas that I deem necessary.

SJR: Adding to staff takes money. Has somebody loosened some purse strings?

Langmyer: The company has a new management team, and it is committed to giving us the support we need to make KMOX as strong as it can be.

SJR: How will you go about finding qualified talent to strengthen your position in the market?

Langmyer: We'll obviously advertise in all the publications, and when people see KMOX, they'll know who we are. We also have a vice president of programming here, Smokey Rivers, and Steve Moore is our new program director. They're responsible for seeking out talent. We have great contacts at the network level, not only with CBS, but others as well, so we can get a good handle on where the best talent is.

SJR: Is your search for new talent going to be similar to the way you conducted the search that brought Wayne Hagen to the Cardinals' broadcast booth? You were looking for a personality match for the market.

Langmyer: Exactly. We're currently looking for a broadcast journalist to co-host "Total Information AM," and we are using a very similar approach and aiming very high. They don't have to be from St. Louis, but they'll have to "become St. Louis." That's key. I will also target people at the network level. This job is better than many radio network jobs. It can be more fulfilling, and it often pays more than someone who's reading a script at the top-of-the-hour on a network newscast makes.

SJR: What is the possibility that we'll see some changes in the programs on KMOX?

Langmyer: We're assessing all the shows we have on the station. We'll be looking at the specific goals we have for the show, have a plan and then achieve those goals. Each program has a mission statement. They don't operate under the same rules.

SJR: Is it the goal of KMOX to give listeners what they want or what they need?

Langmyer: It's actually both what they need and what they want, as determined by the listeners. When I took the position of general manager, I put a letter on our website asking our listeners-our customers-to give us feedback. That's one way of doing it. We also employ focus groups. We don't operate the radio station in a vacuum. Programming is determined by listener needs as opposed to doing it on a whim. And, I also talk with lots of people, from community leaders to people on the street.

SJR: That's good for the people who are listening, but what about the people who no longer listen?

Langmyer: If you put together a research project, you'll obviously include people who are no longer listening. People use the radio differently from the way they did 30 years ago, so we need to set our goals based on what's going on in 2003. The challenge with a station like this, which has a lot of different elements, is to make sure that those elements are mixed together in a way that provides the best service to our target, adults 35-64, as we possibly can. The early 30s is the age where people grow into the need for a station like KMOX.

SJR: What sort of time frame have you been given by corporate to show operational improvements?

Langmyer: They say they're pleased with the ratings and revenue performance of the station, and like any other business, they want to see plans for both ratings and revenue development.

SJR: What kind of personal goals do you have in your new position?

Langmyer: When it comes to the station, I want to live up to the quality product that I believe KMOX should be: the premier information source and "back fence" for people in the St. Louis area.

SJR: Will corporate give you the wherewithal to do that?

Langmyer: They "get" KMOX, and they understand what it takes to keep a station like this successful. They've developed a plan to help us put our resources to better use. We'll be able to use the power of the Infinity news/talk stations to get bigger guests. This makes us competitive with the CNNs of the world. Corporate also knows that each of these stations represents something a little bit different to their communities. KMOX is important to the community, and that's something that's important to me personally.

Butler's two cents

SJR: Now that new management is in place, will you be taking a different approach to news?

Butler: Well, now we have a programming person who is vice president and general manager of the station. Many times you have sales people promoted from the ranks. It's nice to have somebody who understands what you have to do to make the product good.

SJR: How will that translate into what we hear?

Butler: You're going to see a lot of things happening. As soon as the economy turns around I think you'll see an increase in staff. I think you'll eventually see more airtime devoted to news product, not that we haven't done that already. We've always devoted a lot of time to news and information here. I think it's an opportunity to grow the station, even more than in the past. We're doing long form stuff now in the afternoon between 6 and 6:30.

SJR: Are you going to see a change in your budget now that management here has changed?

Butler: I think so. It's so refreshing to have Beth Davis heading up our market operation. She comes in, listens to what you have to say, is interested in your ideas and acts on ideas. Combine that with Tom Langmyer, and it's going to make a difference.

SJR: How would you describe the philosophy that guides the KMOX newsroom now?

Butler: I don't think it's changed: High journalistic standards. You have to be ethical. You have to be fair. If there is a controversial story, you've got to present both sides of the story. Despite a reporter's political philosophy, that can't come out in the on-air product. It always has to be right down the middle. That has not changed, and it won't change.

SJR: Some have said you gear your news to listeners in the Highway 40 corridor and West County. How do you respond?

Butler: That's bull. We cover the City of St. Louis just like anybody else does. We cover the good and the bad here. We're down there at the Board of Aldermen covering the follies that take place there. Sure, we've expanded our coverage area and we'll continue to. I've got to increase my coverage in Jefferson County because that's another area that's just exploded. We cover St. Charles as best we can, and we cover St. Louis County, too.

SJR: Say Tom Langmyer comes to you and says, "Tell me which areas you need to improve and we'll budget for it." What would you go for?

Butler: More people. My philosophy is, the more people you can put on the street, the stronger your department is, the stronger your product is. I'd want to put two more people on the street. I'd have a bureau in St. Charles and stringers in Jefferson County and Belleville.

SJR: Why don't you just use your co-owned news operation at Metro?

Butler: That's not us. That's not KMOX. I have no need for Metro right now.

SJR: They're more bodies.

Butler: Yeah, but are they as good as our people? I don't think so. Look at the experienced staff we have. Metro isn't KMOX. The public doesn't expect us to get our news from another source in town. We make personal contact with news sources. That's what separates us from the rest of the pack. I don't have to come on at the end of my newscast to credit someone else, "Portions of our newscast provided by ... "

SJR: How do you, as a news director, feel when many people who deliver news here are also heard on commercials?

Butler: I've got real mixed feelings about that. As a journalist, you can't sit back and say it's all right for a news person to do a commercial, but times are changing. In a news/talk station or an all-news station in radio, who else can you turn to to voice your commercials? It's not like we have 20 people back in the production studio who do nothing but voice work. It's done all over the country today, but if it was my choice, I'd say, "Uh-uh. You can't do that." If there were ever a conflict where a person on a commercial has to do a news story about the advertiser, we'll pull the person off the story.

SJR: KMOX has three hours a day of Rush Limbaugh, whose political philosophy is blatantly conservative. As a news director here, do you think it affects the image of KMOX as a non-partisan source for journalism?

Butler: No. Perception is in the minds of listeners. We're all considered the liberal media, and we can't get away from that, no matter how hard we try. Rush is an entertainer, and he's the strongest thing in radio mid-days across the country, and if he wasn't on KMOX, he would certainly be on another station in this market. Now, do we balance that with a liberal view? That's not my job. I'm a journalist. Rush falls within the purview of programming.

Peterson tells all!
Post-Dispatch's new Jerry Berger is a columnist for the 21st century
By Michael D. Sorkin
She calls herself Jerry Berger's "younger, hipper, taller, cuter, little sister." It's a good line, combining the best of reporting and press agentry.

Deborah Peterson is the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's new Jerry Berger: a new gossip columnist for the 21st Century.

She hopes the names and phone numbers in her Palm Pilot soon will rival those in Berger's phone book.

Unlike Jerry, a press agent who says he had no formal journalism training, Deborah has been a reporter for the Associated Press, the Kansas City Star and the Post, an editor, home interiors writer, movie reviewer and feature writer. She also had a brief stint as an editorial page writer. She may be the only gossip columnist ever to share in a Pulitzer Prize for reporting-for helping cover the collapse of the Kansas City Hyatt Hotel skywalks in 1981.

Colleagues describe her as tough but say her biggest assets are her smile and an ability to win friends-and get them to tell all about themselves.

Veteran reporter John McGuire recalls how Deborah interviewed a waitress at Hooters and got the young woman from a small town in Illinois to admit how she'd leave home in the morning disguised in a restaurant outfit with long sleeves and slacks. When she got to Union Station, where the restaurant is, she'd go into a restroom and emerge in her revealing Hooters garb.

"I've always gotten a kick out of the way colleagues make pilgrimages to tell Deborah their tales of woe and glee," says business reporter Judy Vandewater. "It was as if she had hung out a shingle. She asks personal questions in a way that is not prying or threatening. I think she sees and feeds the life spark in people."

Vandewater recalls that when a mutual friend used to regularly give parties, Deborah's late husband, Mark (1999), often stayed home with their three children, but Deborah never missed a party.

Deborah also is a devoted mother; for most of her 18-year career at the Post, she worked part-time, always remembering that her kids come first. Friends remember her grace under pressure after Mark's sudden death, and how she went to work full-time, continuing to raise her three teen-age children.

Of her new job, Chicago native Deborah, 49, says she wants to learn what Jerry knows. "I want the master to teach me who's who and what's what in St. Louis," she says. "And then I want to make up my own list of people in the Bold Face Crowd and make sure their names get in our paper."

She'll go to Friday night fish fries in Illinois and bold face the names of the cooks and crew who fish up the cod. She'll go to Bunko nights on the Hill and tell you who won the door prize and who went home a loser. She'll hit the monster truck pulls and the Affton Fourth of July baseball tournament. She plans to hit Washington Avenue, the Delmar Loop, the Halo Bar inside The Pageant, City Museum, the Chocolate Bar and the beauty salons.

She'll have to do all that to match Berger's tireless energy. For years, Jerry has been known as the hardest working journalist in town and his column is a must-read. To Jerry, retirement means having to write just two columns a week.

Berger's will run Sunday and Wednesday. Beginning this month, the Post adds Deborah's column on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.

How does Jerry do it? "I've always considered my column the backyard fence, the cracker barrel," he answers. "I'd cover a garage opening if I knew it would yield fodder for the column."

Berger turns 70 in June and says he'll continue to work 18 hours a week for as long as he feels good. "It's time," he says of his retirement decision.

If Deborah weren't a reporter, she'd probably be in the advice business. She loves to give it and even complete strangers seem to crave it. Sometimes, they'll approach her in the ladies' room to ask for help. In my case, she gives dating advice. (Is it her fault I'm usually too shy to take it?)

No profile of Deborah is complete without a discussion of the most important part of her anatomy: her hair.

McGuire describes it as "out of control, like a bed of kudzu." (That's the wild, green plant that grows all over telephone poles and the sides of buildings.)

Ellen Futterman is a colleague and longtime close friend whose favorite story involves Deborah going to New York to have her hair cut by the curly hair guru Lorraine Massey:

Deb had interviewed Massey last May when she came to St. Louis to promote her book, "Curly Girl."

According to Massey's book, girls/women with curly hair should never ever use shampoo. Conditioner yes, but never shampoo. Anyhow, Deb was totally awed by Massey, an adorable British-born hair artiste with her own salon in SoHo, and apparently the admiration was mutual. Massey told Deb, after the two of them had spent an afternoon "outing" curly girls in the greater St. Louis area with Massey screaming "no-poo" and instructing them never to shampoo their hair again, that Massey would be glad to cut Deb's corkscrew curls whenever she came to New York.

Fast forward to November. Deb earns a fellowship to attend the prestigious Age Boom Academy, sponsored by The New York Times in New York. The minute she learns this news, her first call is not to her children, her boyfriend or friends, but to Massey's Devachan Salon in SoHo to schedule an appointment.

Deb decides not only should she get her haircut by Massey, but she should get it colored at the salon, too. She doesn't ask how much any of it is-when it comes to Deb's hair looking good, money is clearly no object. On the day of the scheduled appointment, she goes to the salon. She figures the whole thing will take three hours to color and cut her hair. Five hours later, the salon is ready to close, and they're still not done with Deb. God knows how many processes she sat through and how long it took to cut each individual corkscrew curl so it would have a "that naturally chaotic, fashionable look" but apparently the end result was a lot of time. She actually had to go back a second day for another three hours. Deb Peterson is the only person I know who requires a two-day haircut appointment.

Of course at the end of this, she could have written a book on Massey's life. Deb found out that her two sons and daughter had different fathers and that she had a new boyfriend, half Jewish, half Spanish and was living in New Jersey. As far as the cost of all of her hair stuff; well, she has sworn me to secrecy (and she has too much dirt on me to dish) but let's just say we're talking plane ticket to Hawaii.

Here's Deborah on Deborah:

SJR: How is your column different than Jerry Berger's?

Deborah: I'm hoping to do a lot of news. I want the juicy news items that don't take 20 to 30 inches to tell. They also need to involve people and, to that end, I'm hoping to cultivate a new A-list-maybe the kids of the current A-listers and then some. I'm not sure. I'm currently heading out into the community to find out what's going on and who these people are.

The thing is, these people have never been talked to and don't know I'm searching for them. And they aren't all conveniently holed up at the same spot so I can go in and figure out who they are immediately. If they could all wear name tags for the first six months of my job, I'd be very happy.

I'd also like to focus on geographic, economic and racial diversity. I don't think it's only the $$$ people who are doing interesting things.

Consider me Jerry's younger, hipper, taller, cuter little sister.

SJR: You already know a lot of people, so you aren't starting from scratch. Where-and how-are you searching for others?

Deborah: Oh, you mean aside from the huge billboard I've put up on all the major highways begging people to contact me?

I am asking people to introduce me to others. I am going out with Jerry as often as possible. I have plans to go out clubbing with some younger folks so they can show me what that scene is like. I am going around to community groups introducing myself. I think I need to get on the list of lots of PR people. Also, a lot of people are contacting me via e-mail, by phone and by letter.

I'd also welcome any suggestions for contacts that I haven't figured out yet.

I don't know-I've never done this before. I think I would look for them to give me times, dates and the who and what of events. I would think accuracy would be high on the list of desirable attributes for a PR person. But I doubt I will be looking to them to provide me with news tips or items.

SJR: That sounds unusual-a gossip columnist who doesn't look to PR types for news tips.

Deborah: I'm thinking of myself as a news/gossip columnist. I'm certainly not going to turn away from PR news tips but I bet I'll get more from other sources-lawyers, doctors, regular folks-on what I would consider news. I'm sure it will be the PR types who will tell me about new company openings and that sort of thing. But I doubt they'll be eager to dish about their clients.

SJR: So news is your priority over more traditional gossip?

Deborah: I hope to mix it up. I do not intend to focus on society gossip, if that's what you mean by traditional gossip.

SJR: You have a strong hard news background-you may be the only gossip columnist to win a share of a Pulitzer. How will that background shape your column?

Deborah: Same answer as above. I know news and know how and where to find it. I also know that one of my strengths-which I think is something I share with Jerry-is a great memory. Once I learn where all the bodies are buried, I won't forget.

SJR: Tell us a bit about how you'll operate. We understand you'll be filing on a handheld computer and you'll have a camera. It sounds like you'll be out of the office even more than Jerry.

Deborah: Absolutely. I doubt I will be in the office much at all. You can't find news inside.

SJR: How can you avoid taking a free drink or meal when you're out working a party?

Deborah: Isn't the ethical standard (for Post news employees) anything that can be consumed in a sitting is O.K.? I'll abide by that.

SJR: For that matter, how do you avoid having Richard Callow write five or six items per column?

Deborah: I will write my own columns, thank you.

SJR: Tell us about your hair? Half the stories we hear are about Deb and her hair.

Deborah: Ach, my hair. The bane-and I guess the glory-of my existence. Curly as can be. When I was a kid, kids used to tease me and ask whether I'd stuck my finger in a light socket. I've learned to love it, however. Or at least to let it win all the battles. In other words, the curls rule and I don't.

SJR: Sources tell us you are not really taller than Berger-you just claim to be.

Deborah: It's just that Berger's ego is bigger.

The untold story of how the Post-Dispatch put Peterson on trial
By Michael D. Sorkin
Before Deborah Peterson was a features writer and then columnist, she was a news reporter at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She and I were once investigated-in effect, put on trial-by the editors for writing a story they themselves had asked for but which drew the ire of then-Mayor Vincent C. Schoemehl Jr.

Although we were found "innocent" by virtue of being right, the trial had a profound effect on us as well as the newspaper.

Deborah never did another major investigation. My reward for being right was to be sent to suburban zones for a month. The paper never seriously investigated Schoemehl again.

In 1986, the editors assigned reporters Louis Rose, Robert Koenig and me to look into how the mayor was awarding City Hall contracts. The result of an eight-month investigation was the Mayor's Money Machine, a six-part, front-page series documenting how Schoemehl gave tens of millions of dollars in city business and other financial benefits to firms and individuals who gave more than $1 million to his political war chest.

It was one of the best projects the paper has published during my two decades here, and it bore striking similarities to the recent investigation into corruption allegations against then-Secretary of State George Ryan in Illinois.

During a three-hour interview in room 200 at City Hall, Schoemehl first denied the allegations, then, faced with overwhelming documentation, admitted them, saying: "So what?"

When the stories were published, he attacked us as "Nazis."

The stories were not just bullet-proof, they were so-well documented they were bomb-proof.

Nevertheless, Editor William Woo, who had tried to kill the series, agreed to the mayor's demand for a front-page rebuttal-signed by the mayor but written by his press aide. As later became his practice when he had to make unhappy decisions, Woo left town, leaving Managing Editor David Lipman to strip the mayor's response at the top half of the Sunday paper.

Under fire, Woo abandoned his reporters as well as his paper. Woo wrote a lot about courage but this was as cowardly an act as any of us had ever seen. The three of us and our editor should all have resigned. In our naivete, we didn't.

After it was done, Woo and Lipman wrote more than 20 editors across the country asking if they had done the right thing. They promised to share the responses with us but never did. How could they?

Then, realizing how they would look if the paper never followed up on the series, they ordered us to produce more.

We should have known better.

Deborah joined me a year later in producing a story documenting how a developer who got a no-bid city contract for a cargo complex at Lambert Airport agreed to give a monopoly worth $750,000 a year to a friend and major contributor of the mayor.

It was all documented in public records but Schoemehl once again threatened lawsuits and other reprisals. What we couldn't know then was that the paper later would endorse him in his unsuccessful bid for governor.

Lipman left the paper on a Friday after announcing that he would not even read our story. He told Jim Millstone, the paper's late chief news editor, that he could publish the story on his own authority.

Jim didn't.

To her credit, weekend news editor Carolyn Kingcade ran the story on Monday-just barely. It was a single-column head at the front-page fold.

After publication, with Schoemehl breathing down his back, Woo appointed five newsroom employees to investigate how the story got into the paper and whether it was fair. One of the five, Millstone, agreed to do the investigation alone, without he said, Woo's kangaroo court.

For two weeks, we met daily at Deborah's house and went over our story with Millstone line by line and word by word. Jim was tough but fair. He wrote a report clearing us and our story. He wrote it on his typewriter because he feared it might become public if he used the office computer system.

Woo later was fired after Michael Pulitzer inherited control of the paper. Lipman was fired from his newsroom job, given one on the corporate side and now is retired.

Deborah and I went on to other assignments.

For his part, Schoemehl still gets endorsed by the Post, which now has not won a Pulitzer Prize for news reporting in five decades.

Jane Cunningham wants to destroy public education in order to preserve it
By Don Corrigan
I hit him between the eyes." That's how Missouri state Rep. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, characterized her verbal assault on educator Franklin McCallie when he testified before her committee on House Bill 239.

That kind of rhetoric should not be surprising in a legislature intent on giving gun advocates the right to pack concealed weapons in their communities. However, it is not quite the language one would expect from the chair of the House Education Committee as she describes how she treats those giving testimony at public hearings.

McCallie testified against a proposal that is co-sponsored by Cunningham, a bill that looks like an attempt to write an anti-gay bias into state law. House Bill 239 would prohibit school districts from adopting policies protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination, with the rationale that it will shield districts from financial liabilities that might be posed by such anti-bias measures.

Retired Kirkwood High School Principal McCallie testified about the harassment he realized that gays and lesbians were experiencing at his school in his last years as principal. He said Bill 239 would make it harder to insure the security and safety of these children.

When McCallie got up to leave, Cunningham ordered him to sit back down. She bragged to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that McCallie "sat up there and acted like Mr. Tolerance with a capital T. I said, 'You are not so far from St. Louis that your public involvement the last 15 years working against Christians is not well-known.'"

Cunningham blasted McCallie for opposing "stealth" school board candidates during a 1993 election that focused on teaching creationism in public schools. Cunningham lost in her race for the Ladue School Board that year, and attributes that loss, in part, to McCallie.

The outburst by Cunningham drew a slew of letters denouncing her actions to the local weekly in the Kirkwood school district. Many of the writers, whose children were taught under McCallie's tenure, stacked his reputation and background in education against Cunningham's. It was hardly a contest.

Carol Virden of Glendale said it was frightening that Cunningham harbored a decade of resentment, and Virden added in an open letter: "No less discomforting is the reality that you are the chairperson of the House Education Committee."

John Olsen of Kirkwood said it was enlightening to know now what Cunningham stood for, and wrote: "Assuming that your colleagues in the Missouri House do not remedy the colossal misjudgment which placed you in the chair of the House Education Committee, your constituents will surely do so in the next election."

Cunningham responds
Cunningham responded to letter writers with a complaint that, as a conservative, she could hardly expect "an unbiased account" from the Post regarding her treatment of McCallie in the statehouse.

She did not dispute anything particular in the Post story but did charge that McCallie had been guilty of promoting unhealthy lifestyles and undermining parents' values by allowing a student Gay/Straight Alliance club at the high school while he was principal.

"When Franklin McCallie was a principal, he led a group to the Capitol to lobby for gay rights on a school day," Cunningham noted. "It is amazing to me that we banned smoking lounges in schools a decade ago for health reasons, yet many of our schools are allowing and encouraging gay clubs when an Oxford University study showed that homosexual men lose seven to 20 years off their lives."

Students with area high school Gay/Straight Alliance clubs deny Cunningham's assertions that they are promoting a lifestyle or that they lobby for gay rights. They contend their mission is to end the verbal harassment and bashing of gay students and to support legislation banning hate crimes.

Cunningham argues that schools need to get back to academic basics and out of social conditioning of pupils. She added, "It is no more fair to have compulsory attendance at a school with a gay and lesbian club, than it is to require attendance at a school with prayer and Bible study."

Cunningham said the statehouse confrontation was basically an example of the cultural war going on in America. She said there is no compromise between the two sides, and that the only option is to give parents an alternative to the public schools.

The Chesterfield legislator is joined by a number of conservative Republicans elected to the new state legislature, who contend that public schools allow gay clubs to teach sodomy, while refusing to allow the Genesis story to be part of the curriculum.

Cunningham said she finds hope in "Parental Choice in Education, a growing educational reform as well as an answer to the cultural war being waged in our legislatures, (and) in our public schools."

State education leader?
Cunningham's critics say they find it ridiculous that Cunningham has been appointed as the state's leader in education in the House. They argue that the chair of the House Education Committee should be finding ways to support public schools in the state-and Cunningham appears intent on finding ways to tear them down and dismantle them.

With state lawmakers debating draconian cuts in the state budget for education this year and next, critics of Cunningham are alarmed to find that the House Education Committee appears to be actually hostile to the state's public schools. In March, a group of 23 organizations joined in Jefferson City to form People for Public Schools.

Legislators are looking at as much as $60 million in cuts to secondary and elementary education in the 2003 fiscal year and an additional $111 million for fiscal year 2004.

"Our current House Education Committee head, Jean Cunningham, is an odd choice for that job," said Peggy Cochran, executive director of the Missouri National Education Association. "She seems to have no conviction that state public schools need support.

"Things look bad for fiscal year 2003, and even worse for the years following," Cochran added. "If we lose 15 percent of our funding next year, we're looking at schools cutting arts, physical education and other programs that some consider as frills. If we don't see revenue enhancements for education, we are going to have some dire consequences."

Among the groups forming People for Public Schools are: Missouri Parent Teacher Association, Missouri Interfaith Alliance, St. Louis Clergy Coalition, Missouri Pro-Vote, People for the American Way and the Missouri Federation of Teachers and School-Related Personnel.

"With the increase of legislative threats to Missouri's public school system, the need is clear for people to come together to protect our public education system and ensure that it continues to serve our state by offering free, quality education to every child," said the Rev. Sammie Jones, president of the Inter-Faith Alliance.

Participants at the meeting took special aim at voucher and tuition tax credit proposals in the legislature that they said would further drain money from public schools at a time when the state budget was already in a crisis situation.

Singled out for criticism were House bills 345, 398 and Senate bill 497 which were described as "back door" voucher proposals under the guise of tuition tax credit initiatives.

"We've got a legislature that seems increasingly hostile to public schools," Cochran said. "Instead of dealing with a budget crisis, legislators are intent on various voucher schemes, public funding for transportation to private schools, tax credits, anything to divert even more money from the state's public education system."

Privately owned news media embedded in government
By Dan Hellinger
In countries where governments directly control media, propaganda loses much of its persuasive power because citizens understand that the editorial process lacks independence. Hence, it is of great advantage to capitalist societies that we envision media and the press as part of "civil society" because they are privately owned.

The skepticism of citizens about the fairness of news organizations is based not on the notion that they are mere mouthpieces for government, but on the notion that journalists form part of an elite counter-culture tolerated by the ruling circles.

Although well-funded conservative think-tanks would have us think otherwise, disparities of social influence and wealth serve to discipline the most influential media outlets. To achieve this discipline, liberal capitalist societies (it is worth remembering capitalist societies are also at times ruled by dictatorships) rely more upon market forces, economic power, conservative social values and ultimately the power of ownership to influence news.

Propaganda is usually associated with the state. Totalitarian states monopolize the means of communication in an attempt to brainwash the citizenry. The state in capitalist society leaves those functions to the private sector. Propaganda and public relations are distinguishable less by their techniques than their purposes.

War-time propaganda directed at the home audience requires systematic collaboration between media and government, but the messages are more convincing when they appear to emanate from the media itself, not the state. As Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky famously put it in Manufacturing Consent, "In countries where the levers of power are in the hands of a state bureaucracy, the monopolistic control over the media, often supplemented by official censorship, makes it clear that the media serve the ends of a dominant elite. It is much more difficult to see a propaganda system at work where the media are private and formal censorship is absent. This is especially true where the media actively compete, periodically attack and expose corporate and governmental malfeasance, and aggressively portray themselves as spokesmen for free speech and the general community interest."

The best media system for capitalism is one neither blessed with total autonomy nor cursed by state control, but endowed with relatively autonomous media. Such a media delivers enough information that elites can manage their affairs without providing information that raises fundamental issues about the social consensus. A capitalist media system also needs to be sufficiently open to bring simmering discontent to the surface before it explodes, with more serious consequences for elites. And, of course, it must be profitable, which means it must generate an audience to sell at the smallest cost.

War time offers government and the military the advantage of an apparently clear "community interest:" supporting the troops and winning the war. But there are disadvantages as well. Military and government influence over the content is more transparent.

Honing the message
We now know that as early as 1998 the key military and national security advisors in the administration of President George W. Bush had, as a group, urged an attack on Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 provided the opportunity to build support for the current war. A review of how George the First generated public support for the Gulf War of 1991 provides some indications of how his son's minions may have gone about converting the events of 9/11 into a rationale for a new war.

After Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990, polls found that no more than 25 percent of the American public regarded the action as a matter of importance for America. Forty percent of the public believed simultaneously that the United States would be justified in attacking Iraq in retaliation, but a majority also believed that American lives were too high price to pay. As with the current conflict, just before the onset of war polls showed the public almost evenly divided between attacking Iraq or giving international sanctions more time to work.

The administration of Bush the Elder went to work. From Aug. 22 until two days after beginning the air war on Jan. 16, the Wirthlin Group (run by Richard Wirthlin, pollster for both Reagan and Bush in the 1984 and 1988 elections) conducted 100 to 200 interviews per night that enabled the administration to track public opinion. Meanwhile, the public relations firm of Hill & Knowlton was provided more than $10 million by the ruling al-Sabah family of Kuwait to conduct a campaign in support of war. Wirthlin results were funneled to H&K.

Wirthlin's polls and focus groups revealed that the American public rejected arguments that war was necessary to defend democracy (Kuwait failed the democratic litmus test) or to preserve control over oil (too crass). What Wirthlin discovered was that the line resonating most strongly with the public was one that portrayed Saddam Hussein as a ruthless dictator. Subsequently, H&K, which had previously been contracted to provide a facelift for the Salvadoran military regime, undertook a public relations campaign to increase public sympathy for Kuwait and vilify Hussein.

Given the abysmal human rights record of the al-Sabah regime, the first objective was not easy. The ignorance of the general public about Middle Eastern politics eased the task. Only a quarter of the public was aware that Kuwait was a monarchy, not a democracy.

The second task was easier. Hussein's record of human rights abuse approached pathological dimensions. All that was necessary was to keep the public focused on consequences for Kuwait and distracted from the long history of U.S. support for the Iraqi dictator. That connection went back a long way, to the initial coup of 1968 that brought the Baath Party to power, and it continued through the 1980s, when Hussein was fighting Iran.

The Rendon Group was hired to do almost continuous polling in order for Bush I to hone a war message that the American people would accept.

President George W. Bush would have us believe that his administration does not rely on polls to shape foreign policy. This is pure fantasy. Through the Republican National Committee and contracts with individual poll firms, the administration spent close to $1 million in 2001 on a variety of polls. Where the Bush II administration differs from recent Democratic and Republican regimes is in how low-key the GOP's keeper of the polls, Jan van Lohuizen (Voter/Consumer Research), and its focus-group expert, Fred Steeper, have kept themselves.

While Clinton insisted on reading polls, Bush II relies upon Matthew Dowd, his chief of polling at the Republican National Committee, to analyze data from van Lohuizen and Steeper. Dowd, in turn, reports to Karl Rove, the administration's chief of staff. Rove's relationship with Lohuizen goes back to the years when George the Younger was part of an ownership that used polls to shape a campaign to win public financing of a new stadium for the Texas Rangers, of which Bush was part-owner.

This task of building support for the war using poll results has largely been left to Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, with an assist from Condoleeza Rice, the national security advisor. This leaves the "good cop" role to George W. Bush, who repeatedly claimed that military intervention would only be a last resort, employed after diplomatic means had failed. This image of restraint is paired with the high-minded goal of ridding the world of evil.

Alan F. Kay, a Bush pollster, predicted in June 2002 that to keep momentum toward war going without the aid of new large terror attacks, the Bush administration would have to transfer the personification of evil from Osama Bin Laden to Hussein. He also anticipated that Bush would need to portray the loss of support from allies as minimal and try to keep in the forefront the "high-minded goal" of rooting out evil. As long as the media do not question this strategy, the Bush administration will continue prosecution of wars until it is otherwise deterred.

Certainly, the media never ceased presenting the "decision to go to war" as one that had not been made by Bush until the final moments before he unleashed the initial air attacks. Only the diplomatic opposition of Russia, China, Germany and France disrupted the strategy.

Managing war coverage
In Gulf War I, Bush the Elder's generals utilized media pools, an innovation developed for the invasion of Panama in 1989, to discipline coverage. The tactic worked in part because media corporations depend on access to combat and to the soldiers themselves to provide the images and accounts needed to give news narratives their dramatic appeal. Those denied access for lack of compliance with government rules necessarily suffer poorer production values in comparison to their competitors.

During Gulf War I, reporters for the regular media were dogged by military escorts. However, television crews for H&K were given free movement in the theater of battle. Soldier of Fortune magazine was allowed to post a correspondent on an aircraft carrier, but The Nation was denied a similar request. Clearly, outlets regarded as friendly coverage were favored over more critical ones. Those who broke the rules faced consequences; those who complied were rewarded.

When a longtime stringer for NBC, Jon Alpert, returned from Basra in 1991 with disturbing footage of civilian casualties and damage, NBC president Michael Gartner not only vetoed any airing of the footage, but he vowed Alpert would never work for the network again.

Network editors showed "smart bombs" unerringly hitting their targets in footage provided by the Pentagon, but the Defense Department later admitted that only 9 percent of the ordinance actually hit its intended target.

After the war, both CNN and ABC produced "documentaries" about the war with White House and Pentagon collaboration.

For Gulf War II, the military planners took a somewhat different approach. The Pentagon decided to "embed" 300 reporters into units actually doing the fighting. This decision on the one hand reflected the Pentagon's confidence that the fighting would go well for the U.S. side, but on the other hand it reflected confidence that reporters and the media would employ self-discipline.

Early in the war, the decision seemed smart. First, Western reporters in Baghdad provided stunning video of the aerial campaign. With the experience of Pentagon lies about the performance of precision weapons and Patriot missiles informing their perspectives, journalists were careful to qualify assessments of the effect of the bombing. Nonetheless, the precision of the attack was emphasized, along with the Pentagon's preferred vocabulary for the attack, "Shock and Awe." The goal of the bombing, it was said, was to hasten regime collapse by demoralizing the Iraqi people and leadership. The word "terror" was carefully avoided.

When a few reporters at home asked if such a campaign were not reminiscent of the fire bombings of World War II, Pentagon officials denied the claims. These were reinforced by "analyses" provided by various military experts, many of them veterans of Gulf War I. Hence, while the press showed sufficient autonomy to raise an uncomfortable question, it failed outside the context of the press conference to remind its audience of the comparison.

As in 1991, reporters in Gulf War II had to sign agreements not to reveal information of military value and accept military discipline. The strategy of "embedding" reporters has given the military confidence to include some news outlets that have generally been unfriendly toward the policy. For example, a reporter from the Village Voice is among those "embedded" in the forward military unit. The gamble here is that such "embedded" journalists were going to be reporting primarily positive stories and images of Iraqis celebrating their liberation, reinforcing the running theme of "Operation Iraqi Freedom."

Dutifully, many media outlets reported fallen villages and cities as "liberated." However, absence of celebrations and the fighting will of some Iraqis ruined the script. Reporters found themselves unexpectedly reporting "resistance," a term historically associated with those fighting to preserve freedom.

After American military officials criticized Iraqi treatment of POWs, a few reporters dared to ask whether the United States had not also violated the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War. At this juncture, the "distinction" between the media in civil society and state-run media was invoked. The official answer was that Iraqi media are government-controlled, but U.S. media are not.

Could not the military have exercised same pressure on the American media establishment as it did when it convinced the networks not to rebroadcast footage from Al-Jazeera showing American dead, wounded and POWs?

The anti-war movement and the news
The interlocking interest of government and corporate media were never more manifest than they were in February when a major cable network refused to run ads featuring opponents of the war during CNN's coverage of the State of the Union. The network claimed that the ads, which were to run on Larry King Live and on the night of the State of the Union address, carried unsubstantiated claims. Specifically, the spots claimed that the war was illegal because it failed to have UN endorsement. "We must decline to run any spot that fails to substantiate certain claims or allegations. In our view, this spot raises such questions," a spokesperson told Ad Age.

Anti-war groups believe that the refusal of several cable networks to run anti-war ads has more to do with regulatory relief they have received from Bush appointees on the Federal Communications Commission, especially FCC chair Michael Powell, son of the Secretary of State, who defended the decision of Comcast cable network not to accept the ads. Comcast has been a significant beneficiary of these policies. With the recent acquisition of AT&T cable, Comcast now has 70 percent of subscribers in the top 20 markets.

A leader in the movement to suppress dissent is Clear Channel Communications. Clear Channel, which owns 1,600 radio stations across the country (six in St. Louis) has organized pro-war demonstrations in several cities. Several of its country music stations launched a boycott of the Dixie Chicks after the group's lead singer, Natalie Maines, expressed regret to a London audience that President Bush is a native of her home state of Texas.

If the post-war period is marked by instability and strife in Iraq and the Middle East, reporting will probably take on a more critical character. However, it may be too late by then for the news media to recover their credibility. The most powerful tool of consensus in a capitalist society, the relative autonomy of the media, has already been compromised.

War toys: Reporting the news in the 21st century
By David Cohen
If you've ever seen the TV series "Breaking News," you can view it as an introduction to the war in Iraq. The series, which was produced two to three years ago for the TNT cable network, has had a limited run on the Bravo cable network.

In the series, reporters head into the field with small, consumer-style digital camcorders, edit their footage on laptop computers and send it into the network by cell phone or e-mail.

In the war against Iraq, reporters are sent into the field-embedded with the troops-with small consumer-style digital camcorders, edit their footage on laptop computers and send it into the networks by satellite phone or e-mail.

Who knew?

Everything a war correspondent uses to file stories has gotten smaller and easier to use, from telephones to cameras, from night scopes to satellite uplinks.

While satellite phones have been around for some time, indeed CNN used one during the 1991 Gulf War, this time everyone has one, and like most electronics, they have gotten better and much smaller, and somewhat less expensive. Twelve years ago, the satellite phone required a fixed position, plenty of extra batteries and lots of crossed fingers. Today's satellite phones are the size of a large cell phone, have good batteries and can be used while crossing the desert in an armored vehicle at 50 miles per hour. You can also connect a video camera to the phone, to generate a live picture.

Broadcast television cameras have remained about the same size for 20 years. But there has been a huge improvement in professional consumer video cameras. Even palm-sized digital camcorders generate an acceptable broadcast picture for around one percent of the cost of the broadcast camera. While no one will mistake their capabilities for what broadcast cameras provide, they perform exceedingly well. And, instead of large machines to edit the footage, connecting a cable from the camera to a laptop computer turns that machine into anything from a basic edit bench to one that can be comparable to fancy editing systems. And, the output of those computer-editing systems can be converted to a digital file and sent to the network by e-mail or via the satellite phone. It takes time to do it this way, but it has been done many times during the early stages of the war against Iraq.

Satellite uplinks are also now smaller and more mobile. In the 1991 Gulf War, the "flyaway" satellite uplink came in 10 cases and weighed in at around 500 pounds. Today's version is down to two cases that come in at less than 100 pounds.

And while no journalist can go to war without batteries, all of this equipment can be plugged into a vehicle's electrical system to provide power to operate the gear or to charge the batteries.

The technology is really amazing, and, so far, it has been used to provide us with what have been called "slices" of war. It has enabled us to see at least pieces of the war up close, sometimes in "real time" or a lot sooner than we would have just a few years ago. It is a good thing, but as with all technology improvements, we must be careful to remember it is the story we tune in for and not the toys that bring it to us.

Post-Dispatch tries to bust union
By Benjamin Israel
About 500 people braved two hailstorms and unseasonably cold weather Saturday, March 29, to cheer Pulitzer employees and boo the company's new labor policies at both the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Suburban Journals. The rally took place just south of the Post building on Martin Luther King Drive and Tucker Boulevard.

Reporters mixed with union members wearing jackets from United Auto Workers Local 110, Sprinkler Fitters Local 1268, Graphic Communications International Union Local 505, Electrical Workers Local 1 and a busload of presidents of American Postal Workers Union locals in St. Louis for a conference.

Linda Foley, national president of the Newspaper Guild, defended the union's right to keep the dues check-off and union shop provisions in the Guild's contract with the Post, led the crowd chanting, "Union busting is disgusting."

Since the 1930s, the Post has been a union shop with all employees in its bargaining units paying dues to a union, while its editorial page has championed the union cause. But if management has its way, that will change with the next contract it signs with the St. Louis Newspaper Guild.

Less than a month after a Nov. 17, 2002, Post editorial headlined "Mr. Bush's Union Busting" about the President's efforts to privatize much of the federal government's unionized workforce, negotiators for Post management proposed a contract to its employees that Guild President Tim O'Neil said would bust the union.

The company proposal submitted in a bargaining session Dec. 10 would eliminate the dues check-off and allow employees not in the bargaining unit to perform the union members' jobs.

"When you put an open-shop proposal before us, we must assume you're trying to do us in," O'Neil said.

"That's not exactly the way I see it," said Post publisher Terry Egger. "There are major newspapers that have open shops and strong unions. There are provisions that employees have a choice and the freedom to choose, which is as American as it can be."

At the rally, Foley said to the cheers of the Post employees there, "It's our choice that we have a union at the Post-Dispatch."

Egger said management has four goals for the next contract:

o Increase wages. "They haven't had a raise in a long time," Egger said.

o Deal with the rising cost of medical insurance. "The reality of it is, it is going to cost the employees more," Egger said. (In fact, management's proposal would give it the ability to change health- and dental-care coverage and retirement plans and their cost to employees at will.)

o "To be able to give employees a choice" by implementing the open shop.

o Gaining the "flexibility to be able to get the work done." (Egger declined to give an example of how current work rules have not been flexible enough.)

Other contract changes that management asked for that the Guild opposes include:

o The ability to hire students at apprentice rates and to hire interns "in whatever capacity and whatever rate it deems appropriate."

o The ability to assign Guild members "in classifications and on job assignments other than their own."

o The ability to fire employees who have transferred to new classifications and are not performing well rather than transferring them back to their old jobs.

o Ending the limitation on the number of hours the company can assign an employee to work per day or week, while guaranteeing overtime for more than 37 and a half hours a week, except that "Outside sales persons and professional employees shall not be entitled to overtime pay."

o Reducing unpaid maternity leave from six to three months. The union wants paid maternity and paternity leave.

o The ability to choose which employees to lay off regardless of seniority.

o Increasing the probationary period of new employees from six to nine months.

Speakers at the rally supported the 15 employees from the Warrenton/Wentzville Journals as well as the 600 Guild members at the Post. A bare majority of reporters, editors, photographers, graphic artists and advertising employees at the Wentzville/Warrenton Journals voted to join the Guild June 13, while similar employees narrowly voted against the union that same day at the North County, South County and Jefferson County offices.

Linda Meyer, recording secretary of the bargaining unit and the only reporter in the Wentzville office, spoke at the rally. Here's how she described the negotiating process:

"While we come to the table with an open mind, it's interesting who doesn't come to the table from the side of management. They refuse to send a senior management representative with decision-making authority to negotiation meetings. Instead, we have a mid-level manager who just sits there and takes notes while a high-price lawyer makes accusations about employees' performances, tells long irrelevant stories and questions almost every word in Guild contract proposals."

But that doesn't mean that the bargaining unit hasn't scored any victories.

When Pulitzer decided to change medical insurance coverage for Suburban Journal employees, the workers at the Warrenton/Wentzville offices were the only ones able to say no. Under federal labor law, when workers vote a union in, wages and working conditions are frozen from the date of the election until the two sides sign a contract.

In addition, when the Journals banned union members from attending the quarterly meetings of all Journal employees, the National Labor Relations Board cited the Journals for an unfair labor practice.

Meyer told SJR that the Journals offered reporters $9.13 an hour and advertising employees $8 an hour, which would be a wage cut, Meyer said. The union asked for $600 a week for reporters, editors and graphic artists, which would be about $15 an hour.

Although union supporters at the Warrenton and Wentzville Journals have seen no progress, Meyer said, we are hanging tough.