While March 19th marked the one year anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq, it also marked another anniversary – the day the mainstream press addressed the blurring boundaries between Clear Channel Communications and the Bush administration.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, writing in the International Herald Tribune, examines the “close links” between George W. Bush and Clear Channel management (Clear Channel’s vice president Tom Hicks helped make G.W. a multimillionaire) and points out how “the absence of effective watchdogs” make this merger between the media and the government possible. “In the Clinton years the merest hint of impropriety quickly blew up into a huge scandal; these days, the scandalmongers are more likely to go after journalists who raise questions.”
One of the first casualties of this “close link” was controversial disc jockey Howard Stern. “As soon as I came out against Bush, that’s when my rights to free speech were taken away. It had nothing to do with indecency,” Howard Stern said on March 19, 2004. Clear Channel dropped Stern’s show from 8 of its stations, following the imposition of a $495,000 Federal Communications Commission fine.
Film critic Roger Ebert weighs in on the Stern controversy, in an essay published April 16th in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Like millions of Americans, I listen to Howard Stern on the radio in the mornings. I think he is smart, quick and funny … A listener to Stern will find that he expresses humanistic values, that he opposes hypocrisy, that he talks honestly about what a great many Americans do indeed think and say and do … I find it strange that so many Americans describe themselves as patriotic when their values are anti-democratic and totalitarian.

Ebert goes on to say that what offends him “is that the right wing, secure in its own right to offend, now wants to punish Stern to the point where he may be forced off the air.”

The reign of Howell Raines came to a bitter end

For those in the media, and perhaps for a few others, the most gripping, real-life story to emerge last year involved a series of unprecedented scandals at the The New York Times, the ‘grey lady of journalism’.
On May 1 2003, Jayson Blair, a New York Times reporter, tendered his resignation when it was revealed that he had fabricated and plagiarized dozens of articles. In the month that followed, the internal scandals at the Times became hot news.
Rick Bragg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning national reporter, resigned after he made derogatory comments about Times reporters’ use of stringers. Reporters and editors who had been upset by the imperious and autocratic leadership style of then editor Howell Raines felt emboldened to speak out.
Slightly more than a month after the scandal broke out, Raines and his managing editor, Gerald Boyd, were asked to leave the paper by Times publisher, Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. Bill Keller, the man who had been passed over for the top editorial job at The New York Times two years earlier, in favour of Raines, was then elevated to the executive editor’s position.
The trials and tribulations of the Times made for compelling reading (nothing like airing your dirty linen in public). Raines, who subsequent to leaving the Times took on teaching duties at the Columbia School of Journalism, has written a sweeping and often scorching 21,000 word essay, titled ‘My Times’, for the May issue of The Atlantic Monthly, wherein he sets about to re-write history, absolving himself of much of the blame for the travails which beset the Times in 2003.

“Two distinct and parallel cultures (existed): the culture of achievement and the culture of complaint … a large percentage of Times reporters and editors opt(ed) out of meritocratic competition within a couple of years of joining the paper, with many simply passing their time until retirement … one important mission I did not get around to was finding the kind of critics capable of becoming trademark names in every field of aesthetic or consumer interest — everything from wines to Broadway.”
“My greatest joy in newspapering came from the quarter of a century … at The Times with the most talented staff in the business. My greatest frustration was that The Times was seldom as good as it could have been, given its advantages in money and prestige.”

Raines accepts responsibility “for the failure to catch” Jayson Blair, but claims he didn’t know about Blair’s error-prone ways until the writer left the paper. He says no one told him.
Cynthia Cotts, in the Village Voice, finds Raines’ disavowal mystifying at best, disingenuous at its worst, while Jack Shafer in his article, published on the Slate website, suggests that Raines’ is a “very selective account.”
According to Newsweek’s Periscope column on the Raines essay, “Atlantic Monthly editor Robert Vanes, who edited the story, told Newsweek that Raines’s original draft was a third longer — and even meaner. ‘If anything, we worked to tone down sections,’ said Vanes.”
Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis when asked for a response to Raines’ screed, simply avers: “We wish Mr. Raines well.” Noting that Raines calls The Times “indispensable,” Mathis added, “We agree. And this is due to the inspired work of Times men and women over decades.”

“After three years of chronicling the local dating scene, one of Vancouver’s most talked-about columnists has put away her little black book — and dodged her biggest controversy yet.”

Angèle Yanor

The Globe and Mail’s Alexandra Gill bemoans the fact that Angèle Yanor no longer writes the ‘singles chick’ column for the Vancouver Sun.
For VanRamblings, the real issue surrounding the controversy involving Ms. Yanor is not that she proved to be a plagiarist (gee shucks, came as a complete surprise to me), but rather that The Vancouver Sun cynically chose to inflict her unreadable, self-indulgent wannabe ‘chick lit’ prose on an unsuspecting readership, in the first place.