Op-Ed

Ready or not, it’s time for 'Media Jeopardy!'

        Welcome to an all-new episode of "Media Jeopardy!" This is a game that never ends, whether you like it or not.

        A reminder of the rules: First, listen carefully to the answer. Then, try to come up with the correct question.

        Today's main category is: "Overseas and Under-reported."

  • When President Clinton visited this far-off nation of 64 million people in mid-November, a New York Times article reported that he "gently nudged the country to strengthen its adherence to human rights." That was a newspeak reference to ongoing patterns of torture and murder by police and security forces.

            What is Turkey?

McKinney: it shouldn’t have happened that way

Before the Aaron McKinney trial in Wyoming gets boxed away in the national memory, we should linger on some very disturbing features of the plea agreement, starting with the successful demand by Matthew Shepard's parents, Dennis and Judy, that neither McKinney nor any members of his defense team ever speak to the press about the trial. Indeed, the state of Wyoming effectively ceded to Shepard's parents the disposition of the penalty phase of the trial. Amid Dennis Shepard's remarks to the court (where he emphasized his belief in the death penalty) came these words addressed to McKinney. They are worth quoting at some length.

"Your agreement to life without parole has taken yourself out of the spotlight and out of the public eye. It means no drawn-out appeals process, chance of walking away free due to a technicality, no chance of a lighter sentence due to a 'merciful' jury. Best of all, you won't be a symbol. No years of publicity, no chance of a commutation, no nothing -- just a miserable future, and a more miserable end. It works for me ...

Nearing global summit, WTO on high media ground

        When thousands of protesters converge on Seattle at the end of this month to challenge the global summit of the World Trade Organization, they're unlikely to get a fair hearing from America's mass media.

        Consider how one of the nation's most influential newspapers framed the upcoming confrontation as November began. The Washington Post reported on its front page that the WTO has faced "virulent opposition" -- an assessment not quoted or attributed to anyone -- presumably just a matter of fact.

        "Virulent"? According to my dictionary, the mildest definition of the word is "intensely irritating, obnoxious or harsh." The other definitions: "extremely poisonous or pathogenic; bitterly hostile or antagonistic; hateful."

        Don't you just love objective reporting?

How risky is it to be a cop?

Nabbed for speeding in my 1964 Newport station wagon ("I didn't think this old wreck would go that fast," the Highway Patrol officer said sarcastically as he wrote me up), I opted for traffic school.

Under California law, you can thus shield your rashness from the public record, provided there's an 18-month interval from your last citation. The class in Eureka was run by a former cop from San Diego, who divides his time between running a driving school and representing tax deadbeats before the IRS. He offered a torrent of statistics. The most dangerous time to drive: Friday evening, closely followed by Saturday night, closely followed by Sunday night. The safest day is Tuesday. The last 24-hour period in California in which no one was killed on the roads was on May 1, 1991 (which turns out to have been a Wednesday).

The Twain that most Americans never meet

        With the start of 2000 less than two months away, I've been thinking about a beloved American writer who stuck his neck out the last time people went through a change of centuries.

        We revere Mark Twain as a superb storyteller who generates waves of laughter with powerful undertows of biting satire. One generation after another has grown up with the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Some of Twain's essays were less palatable; his most scathing words about organized religion seemed so blasphemous that they remained unpublished for half a century after he died in 1910.

        The renowned author's fiery political statements are a very different matter. They reached many people in his lifetime -- but not in ours.

        Today, few Americans are aware of Twain's outspoken views on social justice and foreign policy. As his fame grew, so did his willingness to challenge the high and mighty.

Spinning populism in American news media

        A specter is haunting America -- the specter of populism.

        Now that Patrick Buchanan has left the Republican fold to seek the Reform Party's presidential nomination, a lot of journalists will be analyzing his denunciations of the bipartisan establishment. In the months ahead, many pundits are going to throw brickbats in his direction.

        But Buchanan is largely a media creation. During the last two decades, he gained wide visibility and national clout through the good graces of CNN and other television networks. Despite his vehement biases against gays, blacks and non-European immigrants, Buchanan's colleagues on the chat shows did little to challenge his assorted bigotries.

Does art really shock anyone anymore?

There hasn't been a good row about art since Washington went berserk over "The West as America" at the Smithsonian in 1991. That was a fight about history.

The comment books were chock-full of spirited exchanges about art and its truthfulness about America's past. In other words, the uproar had content. It's harder to find much content thus far in the hullabaloo over the "Sensation" show at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, beyond a glorious couple of weeks of grandstanding by Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Politicians are always at their most comical worrying about art, while simultaneously asserting the primacy of private enterprise.

"From what I've read, the exhibit besmirches religion," said George W. Bush, campaigning in the company of Gov. George Pataki. "It denigrates someone's religion. I don't think we ought to be using public monies to denigrate religion." Pataki wagged his head in agreement.

"That's right. When you use public money to denigrate someone's religion, I think it's wrong."

Living on Borrowed Books

From the typographical clamor raised in the New York Daily News, you'd have thought New York Press columnist George Szamuely had been caught committing satanic abuse in a day-care center. But it tured out that Szamuely's great crime was to have taken too many books -- 580 is a number that shows up in the press reports -- out of the New York University library, and been remiss in giving them back. The News and other newspapers have exultantly noted that Szamuely faces an overdue fine of $31,000, plus charges of grand larceny and possible jail time. John Beckman, described as a university spokesman, strutted through the news stories like some frontier sheriff twirling his six-gun: "Don't mess with NYU librarians."

A little realism, please, starting with the nonsense about a $31,00 fine. This vast sum is merely what the library reckons to be the cost of replacement of all the books, irrelevant to this case, since all the books are present and accounted for.

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