Colin Powell goes from class act to class clown
W, Rummy and bin Laden walk into a bar … stop me if you heard this before …
No, that’s not a direct quote, but what if it were? Would it tickle your funny bone? What if you were a world leader? Maybe that’s the sort of thing that’s funny when war, death and all that “doom and gloom” they keep harping on in the media get you down.
Rosemary Goudreau, editorial page editor at the Tampa Tribune, wrote an editorial, “Nothing To Joke About,” that’s worth a read.
She said the first time she saw retired Gen. Colin Powell speak in 1993, she “joined a standing ovation of people who believed he could become the next American president.” (I also covered a speech Powell made at U.S. Strategic Command at about the same time. I, too, was impressed with his presence and charisma.) Then she wrote:
The last time I saw Powell speak — at the recent annual meeting of Leadership Florida — I walked out.
Why?
Powell’s remarks were “off the record.” He joked about missing his official jet and everything that came with it, and he talked “much too much” about Revolution Health, a company for which he serves on the board of directors, along with AOL co-founder Steve case and others.
But it was his joke about an airport security guard that motivated me to leave. After buying a one-way ticket and carrying no bags, Powell said he was pulled aside for screening. The security guard recognized him and apologized for the inconvenience. Given that his identity was known, Powell asked the guard why he was wasting time searching him when he should be helping to find bin Laden. Somehow it sounded funny when he said it. But with men and women dying in Iraq, it seemed untimely and undignified for Powell to fawn wistfully over his plane, promote his new business and laugh about finding Osama bin Laden.
If that was untimely and undignified — as Powell is retired now and considers himself a “private citizen” — what would we call what he did while in office?
In a July 2004 visit as U.S. Secretary of State that included a high-level meeting with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and meeting Pacific Rim foreign ministers at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Jakarta, Indonesia — stop me if you’ve heard this before – Powell and five U.S. officials performed a parody of the Village People‘s Y.M.C.A.
I guess if that’s funny, it’s not much of a stretch for a grown man to giggle about bin Laden in an airport, where any ordinary citizen would be arrested (or at least detained) for such a remark.
Posted by Becky @
1:23 pm |
Chicago reporter fired for unethical behavior
Television news reporter Amy Jacobson lost her job at Chicago’s WMAQ-Channel 5 this week after another news station released a video of her in a swimsuit at the home of Craig Stebic, the subject of a news story Jacobson was working on. Stebic’s wife, 37-year-old Lisa Stebic, has been missing since April 30, and Stebic has been named a “person of interest” in the case.
Jacobson said she was invited to Stebic’s house to discuss the case on her day off. She was on her way to take her children, ages 2 and 3, swimming. After checking with her husband and her managers at the station, she and her children went swimming at Stebic’s home. WBBM-Channel 2 (another Chicago station) videotaped the visit from a neighbor’s house.
“My kids were in the car with me,” she told the Chicago Sun-Times on Wednesday. “It was a way for me to do my work and have fun with my kids. I never get to see them. I’m always working.”
Jacobson was reportedly fired for getting too close to the story or for briefing police on her interactions with Stebic without telling her bosses, depending on who you ask. People have been weighing in on the issue, including some journalism professors, who were asked, “Did she step over the line?” Here’s what they said:
While it is true that many journalists have friendships — often unwise friendships — the magnitude of this case, where there is a missing-person investigation, possibly a homicide investigation, is not the same as somebody who is covering the Knights of Columbus or the local Big Brothers. In this case, where it’s a missing-person investigation of this magnitude, any kind of friendship with someone involved in the story seems exceptionally unwise. — Bob Steele, Nelson Poynter scholar of journalism at the Poynter Institute, St. Petersburg, Fla.
You just don’t do that. [The reporter] may be thinking she may get better material by getting close to these people … but you just don’t become part of their family, you don’t become their friend and you don’t go swimming in their pool. You don’t become part of the story — it’s unprofessional. — Joe Saltzman, journalism professor, University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communications
If getting into a bathing suit is covering the story, I guess that might be OK. She has to weigh the information she is going to get against questions that will be raised [by those] who see her behavior. I don’t know the value of the information she might get for her story. — Felix Gutierrez, journalism professor, USC
What do you think?
Posted by Becky @
12:34 pm |
Presidential candidates strike a pose on war
Before the ink was dry on the $120 billion war-funding package passed without withdrawal deadlines by the U.S. Senate and House on May 24, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., returned her focus to her campaign with this: “If President Bush does not end the war, when I am president, I will.” It has become a mantra (slogan, if you will), repeated on her blog.
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said in April, “So I make a solemn pledge to you, as president, we will be out of Iraq.”
As senator? Not so much.
Last I heard, Congress still had some power. Why are they willing to wait until 2009 (or beyond) to end a war the majority of Americans wanted to end with the influx of Democrats they voted into office last year?
In the Democratic debate on June 3, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., mentioned getting 2,500 mine-resistant V-shaped armored vehicles into Iraq by August to “save lives,” and he has pushed this idea several times since. It seemed oddly specific, so I looked it up. Those vehicles are called MRAPs, or Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles. They will not be available by August. They will not be available until 2009, at a cost of $900,000 each. The U.S. Army plans to buy 2,500 MRAPs over the next three years, at a cost of $2.25 billion. The U.S. Marine Corps plans to replace its 3,700 Humvees in Iraq, which will cost $3.7 billion. That’s a sweet $6-billion deal for some defense company. Do Biden and his colleagues want to prolong this war another two years so they can fulfill contracts?
According to The Center for Responsive Politics, the defense industry gave more than $48 million to elected officials since 2002. Two of the companies that make MRAPs are BAE Systems and General Dynamics, two of the top defense contributors. GD has given $4.5 million to elected officials, and BAE has given $2 million since 2002. Let’s look at some of the 2008 presidential candidates.
- Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., took $246,410 from the defense industry in 2006, including $20,000 from BAE.
- Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., took $96,800 in 2006.
- Clinton took $72,200 in 2006, including $8,000 from BAE.
- Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., took $53,500 in 2004, including $1,000 each from BAE and GD.
- Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., took $2,000 in 2006 and $18,000 in 2004.
- Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., took $1,000 in 2006 and $2,000 in 2004.
As for the Democrats who recently refused to end the war, the 25 senators who voted for the war funding in May have taken money from defense companies, while only 12 did not. The 66 representatives who voted for the funding taken money from defense companies, while only 20 did not.
Whose interests do they really serve?
Posted by Becky @
4:56 pm |
Covering the war
I don’t mean to diminish the South Carolina tragedy in any way, but why did this photograph bother me? It ran across the front page of my hometown newspaper — and probably countless others — on June 23, 2007. Was it an attempt to ease a collective guilty conscience for refusing to run photographs of flag-draped coffins every day that U.S. troops return home that way?
For the record, 12 troops died June 23, 2007, and 111 troops died during June. Fifteen were from California. Florida lost two soldiers on June 21, which would have been more “local” than a fire in South Carolina, but my newspaper didn’t write about either of them.
Remember this controversy? Maytag Aircraft, a military contractor and subsidy of Mercury Air Group, Inc., fired cargo worker Tami Silicio for “violating U.S. government and company regulations” for submitting a photograph of flag-draped coffins of U.S. troops to The Seattle Times, which published it April 27, 2004. Her husband, David Landry, who also worked for the contractor, was fired too. (More coverage is here.)
The Pentagon had banned the media from taking photographs of caskets being returned to the United States since 1991, and this incident did nothing to ease that ban. Even so, Silicio was not “the media,” and the only Maytag Aircraft regulations that seem to cover this issue fall under the vague blanket of “and other company regulations.”
Russ Kick of The Memory Hole filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act and posted photographs not published in newspapers.
Some politicians and editors say that publishing photographs of military coffins would be seen as an antiwar statement by the media. If I were to follow that logic, would not publishing them be considered a prowar statement?
Posted by Becky @
9:33 pm |
