October 2003

There were 103 posts published in October 2003 (this is page 2 of 18).

A Cause We Can All Get Behind

I shouldn’t poke too much fun at this. It’s for a good cause and I’m not presently in marathon-running shape. But if nothing else, the site name is a bit comical.
I looked at the Diddy training log and it seems to me that he doesn’t have enough training recorded to prepare for a marathon. Just speculating on that–I’m a recreational jogger and have never trained for a marathon myself.

Talking Points Memo

I’m not sure how much to make of former Fox News Channel producer Charlie Reina’s letter without further evidence corroborating his claims, but it is an interesting read:

The fact is, daily life at FNC is all about management politics. I say this having served six years there – as producer of the media criticism show, News Watch, as a writer/producer of specials and (for the last year of my stay) as a newsroom copy editor. Not once in the 20+ years I had worked in broadcast journalism prior to Fox – including lengthy stays at The Associated Press, CBS Radio and ABC/Good Morning America – did I feel any pressure to toe a management line. But at Fox, if my boss wasn’t warning me to “be careful” how I handled the writing of a special about Ronald Reagan (“You know how Roger [Fox News Chairman Ailes] feels about him.”), he was telling me how the environmental special I was to produce should lean (“You can give both sides, but make sure the pro-environmentalists don’t get the last word.”)
Editorially, the FNC newsroom is under the constant control and vigilance of management. The pressure ranges from subtle to direct. First of all, it’s a news network run by one of the most high-profile political operatives of recent times. Everyone there understands that FNC is, to a large extent, “Roger’s Revenge” – against what he considers a liberal, pro-Democrat media establishment that has shunned him for decades. For the staffers, many of whom are too young to have come up through the ranks of objective journalism, and all of whom are non-union, with no protections regarding what they can be made to do, there is undue motivation to please the big boss.
. . .
[t]he roots of FNC’s day-to-day on-air bias are actual and direct. They come in the form of an executive memo distributed electronically each morning, addressing what stories will be covered and, often, suggesting how they should be covered. To the newsroom personnel responsible for the channel’s daytime programming, The Memo is the bible. If, on any given day, you notice that the Fox anchors seem to be trying to drive a particular point home, you can bet The Memo is behind it.
The Memo was born with the Bush administration, early in 2001, and, intentionally or not, has ensured that the administration’s point of view consistently comes across on FNC. This year, of course, the war in Iraq became a constant subject of The Memo. But along with the obvious – information on who is where and what they’ll be covering – there have been subtle hints as to the tone of the anchors’ copy. For instance, from the March 20th memo: “There is something utterly incomprehensible about Kofi Annan’s remarks in which he allows that his thoughts are ‘with the Iraqi people.’ One could ask where those thoughts were during the 23 years Saddam Hussein was brutalizing those same Iraqis. Food for thought.” Can there be any doubt that the memo was offering not only “food for thought,” but a direction for the FNC writers and anchors to go? Especially after describing the U.N. Secretary General’s remarks as “utterly incomprehensible”?
The sad truth is, such subtlety is often all it takes to send Fox’s newsroom personnel into action – or inaction, as the case may be. One day this past spring, just after the U.S. invaded Iraq, The Memo warned us that anti-war protesters would be “whining” about U.S. bombs killing Iraqi civilians, and suggested they could tell that to the families of American soldiers dying there. Editing copy that morning, I was not surprised when an eager young producer killed a correspondent’s report on the day’s fighting – simply because it included a brief shot of children in an Iraqi hospital.
These are not isolated incidents at Fox News Channel, where virtually no one of authority in the newsroom makes a move unmeasured against management’s politics, actual or perceived. At the Fair and Balanced network, everyone knows management’s point of view, and, in case they’re not sure how to get it on air, The Memo is there to remind them.

I wonder how much of the Memo is fed directly from the RNC.
Via Eschaton.

Disaster Evacuation Checklist

My SoCal friend, who I mentioned earlier, has apparently survived the California fires unscathed. But a fire did get close enough to his duplex to prompt him to prepare for evacuation.

This lead him to pose an interesting question: If you only had a few minutes to pack your belongings, what would you take?

Good question–one I haven’t given much thought to. I heard that in some instances California evacuees had as little as 10 minutes warning to flee. Presumably, they knew in advance that they might have to leave, but in a worst-case scenario you might not. So it’s good to plan accordingly.

If I had 10 minutes to flee the house, I would ideally grab items along the following priorities:

  1. Cat.

  2. Important personal documents (e.g., birth certificate).
  3. Family photo collection.

  4. Financial documents (e.g., bank statements).
  5. Trumpet.

  6. Cash.

  7. Personal computer files.

  8. Research documents.

  9. Work-related computer files.

  10. Work-related documents.

  11. Clothing.

As I said, this is an ideal list. Because as it stands now I couldn’t even find all these things in 10 minutes, much less get them out the door. Nonetheless this is an important question to contemplate and plan for, because you never know when disaster might strike.