Beware of falling snow

The impeccable nytimes City Room blog recently wrote about a truly horrendous snowstorm of 1969, killing 42 and injuring 288. I'm still trying to figure out how that happens. Falling trees? Slipping on ice? New Yorkers snowed-in, starve to death because they can't eat out?

My guess: Lack of heat=hypothermia? Impassable streets=zero medical attention?

Anyway, then Mayor of the New York City John V. Lindsay failed abysmally in snow removal, providing an abject lesson for most of his political ilk:

There were no buses, taxicabs or delivery vehicles, and no trash or garbage collection for days. “As far as getting to the United Nations is concerned, I may as well be in the Alps,” Dr. Bunche wrote. “This is a shameful performance by the great city of New York, which should certainly condone no second-class borough.”

Mr. Lindsay traveled to Queens, but his visit was not well-received. His limousine could not make its way through Rego Park, and even in a four-wheel-drive truck, he had trouble getting around. In Kew Gardens Hills, the mayor was booed; one woman screamed, “You should be ashamed of yourself.” In Fresh Meadows, a woman told the mayor, “Get away, you bum.”

Mr. Lindsay’s predecessor, Robert F. Wagner, had spent an enormous amount during the last major blizzard, in 1961, but the Lindsay administration was wary of going over budget. And there were rumors that sanitation workers — still angry about the Lindsay administration’s heavy-handed actions during their strike in 1968 — had deliberately ignoring Queens to sabotage the mayor.

Dr. Cannato reveals a fascinating episode. During the mayor’s walk through Fresh Meadows, a woman called him “a wonderful man,” prompting the mayor to respond, “And you’re a wonderful woman, not like those fat Jewish broads up there,” pointing to women in a nearby building who had criticized him.

The comment was recorded on tape, but The New York Times, The Associated Press and WNEW radio declined to run with the story.

Hmm... wonder what the reasoning was there.

A number of other mayors have followed Linday's diastrous lead (though I don't think you can really say that Lindsay lost re-election because of this one event... the blogpost doesn't really hold up to scrutiny, but it's a fine story, even as it folds back in on itself... either one too many or one too few rewrites with this one.)

O, Proud District! You'd never fail us like Lindsay did Queens? Right?

And then there was Mayor Marion S. Barry Jr. of Washington, who somehow survived his mishaps with bad weather. In 1987, Mr. Barry was in southern California attending the Super Bowl — getting a manicure and playing tennis at the Beverly Hills Hilton — when a winter storm buried the District of Columbia. The nation’s capital became the butt of ridicule. In 1996, Mr. Barry — who was elected to a fourth, nonconsecutive term in 1994 after serving a federal sentence on cocaine possession charges — was excoriated by residents after it took nearly a week to clear the streets of snow.

First he had to clear the snow out of his nose. ZING!

Long form journalism

Cover story: One Saturday night on patrol with university campus special police.

Iraq v. Old timey media

When there's no news, make something out of nothing.

Or rather, throw out Western standards without bothering to contextualize the situation. Hey, it worked for the Bush administration in transplating the American democratic model to Iraq... oh, wait a minute...

The nytimes presents an article about how Maliki's government is pledging to fulfill a demand of the powerful journalism union in Iraq: give the journalists land. In terms of column inches, the issue is balanced, but not in the presentation.

The headline sets the situation up as a conflict: For Iraqi journalists, Free Press v. Free Land.

Not so. The article freely discusses the dangers of working as a journalist, the minimal compensation, and the history of the profession under Hussein. One outspoken opponent overstates his case a bit:

Ziad al-Ajili, the manager of a Baghdad-based advocacy group, Journalistic Freedoms Observatory, said of the land giveaway: “I would not take it even if I have to live in a tent. As soon as you do, it will be the end of Iraq’s independent journalism.”

He acknowledges the difficulties Iraqi journalists face; his organization keeps a tally of arrests, killings and beatings of journalists, as well as government violations of press freedoms. But the best way to address these problems, he said, is through more journalism, not government handouts.

“They’re not thinking about the future,” he said of his colleagues. “If they think about the future as independent journalists, we can do lots of things.”

In the list of things to think about, involving the future for a target of murder in a warzone, I would put survival near the top of my list. Say, food--oh yes, and shelter. As in land.

Gaza and Obama

The nytimes runs down Obama's options for dealing with Gaza. If he does nothing...

Mr. Obama’s aides ... pointed to statements Mr. Obama made during the campaign, in which he said he supported Israel’s right to defend itself from rocket attacks.

That stance has thus far been interpreted in the Arab world as a tacit assent to the Bush administration’s Middle East policy — the very policy that Mr. Obama criticized during the campaign as too divisive, and which he vowed to change.

So far, pretty bad.

"For Mr. Obama, there are risks in being viewed in the Arab world as Bush 2."

Wow, I guess even the nytimes is losing copyeditors left and right. Who let this through? The sentiment is logical but factually inaccurate (more like Bush 3!)... plus this doesn't really reflect how he's viewed in the Arab world. It doesn't matter who the president is, a perceived bias predates the soon deposed invader of Iraq.

Hmm... so if Obama could (have) represented a clean break, perhaps this was Israel's intent?

Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, argues that by attacking Hamas in Gaza just days before the new administration takes over, Israeli leaders may have calculated that it is best to establish to the world, early and emphatically, that when the chips are down, Mr. Obama — and any American president — will stand by Israel over all others.

“There are some who argue that this forces Obama to side with us,” said Mr. Levy, director of the Prospects for Peace Initiative, a joint project of the New America Foundation and the Century Foundation. “In a way, that’s very brazen, this calculus that he might as well get himself washed in this from the start.”

Yikes.

Joe the Plumber/War Correspondent to the World: No Need for War Correspondents

To be honest with you, I don’t think journalists should be anywhere allowed war [sic]. … You make a big deal about it, it's asinine. I liked back in World War I and World War II, when you’d go to the theater and you’d see your troops on the screen and everyone would be real excited and happy for them. Now everyone’s got an opinion and wants to down soldiers — our American soldiers, our Israeli soldiers. I think media should be abolished from reporting. You know, war’s hell, and if you’re gonna sit there and say ‘Well look at this atrocity’ — well you don’t know the full story behind it half the time. So I think the media should have no business in it.

Joe Wurzelbacher (link to video on nytimes lede blog) is amazed at the "Israel people" -- or "our Israeli soldiers," as he put it -- and their resilience in the face of overwhelming condemnation from the world, for protecting their own.

And me? I'm speechless.

Journalism: Fair(ly) (Un)Balanced

I was watching CNN coverage of the Israeli invasion of Gaza, which really drove home how useless the practiced objectivity of the media can be sometimes.

In one corner, we have the Israeli Ambassador, who feigns regret at civilian casualties while subtly propagandizing, reinforcing the need for invasion and its justness.

In the other corner, we have some crazy statement from a Hamas spokesperson about the end of Israel, or whatever he usually says.

In the middle, we have the anchor, careful not to step on anyone's toes, lest they lose access--or worse, the Ambassador refuses to come back on the program.

Perhaps cliche, perhaps apocryphal, but still a funny notion: no matter how popular or great an initiative may be, the journalist must find the one nut who objects, and puts in their opinion, to give it balance. (Was that in the last season of the Wire?)

Should the news just keep on presenting (or pretending to present) "both sides" of the story, to let us decide? Does this really remove bias? Consider: the presentation of the news and the inherent selection involved--i.e., what is considered news and what is not--which allows significant room for bias.

At what point does purported objectivity become self-defeating?