*INVESTIGATING A DISASTER

*WAR PLANS; FULL STEAM AHEAD

*REALITY TV: ANYTHING BUT

The grieving is all over the tube as the search for parts of the fallen shuttle and the astronauts continues. NASA’s investigation could take a long time. There will be memorial services on Tuesday with the President expected to speak again. Will he use the occasion to beat the drums of war even more loudly?

The Administration has wasted no time to reassure us that the war plans are on, and that there will be no delay in Colin Powell’s case for Iraqi perfidy and the need for War Even as the chief weapons inspectors agreed to return to Baghdad for meetings on February 8, the clock keeps ticking. Yesterday the New York Times pictured adminstration officials scrambling to put their best case forward–the way college students cram for finals or write their final papers in flurry of last minute intensity.

LOTS TO INVESTIGATE

What should strike us about the shuttle disaster is how quickly NASA announced an immediate and INDEPENDENT investigation. What a contrast with the aftermath of the 9/11 disaster! That one has taken more than a year to field an inquiry and no one knows how independent it will or can be. As a rule, media have have little patience for long investigations because they want the facts “Now!”What happened? What went wrong? Can it be fixed? We want the answers, often without realizing that it takes time to get them. In this case, there are technical factors that can’t be boiled down into sound bytes. Was this a case of NASA not spending enough time at TILE CITY, or is there more to it?

I would opt for the latter prospect. Yesterday’s Washington Post aired some of the dirty laundry: “Experts Warned Of Budget Cuts, Safety Concerns by R. Jeffrey Smith, Joby Warrick and Rob Stein “The thunderous explosion of Columbia over central Texas yesterday was presaged by a drumbeat of warnings by government auditors and experts who voiced concerns about lapses in oversight and deferred safety improvements for NASA’s aging fleet of space shuttles.”

TIMES: CRITICISMS SUPPRESSED

The New York Times also seemed alarmed about what we are not being told, suggesting that safety concerns had been overlooked. 60 Minutes did the same with a last minute piece of stitched together interviews. William Broad and Carl Hulse report:

“When an expert NASA panel warned last year that safety troubles loomed for the fleet of shuttles if the agency’s budget was not increased, NASA removed five of the panel’s nine members and two of its consultants. Some of them now say the agency was trying to suppress their criticisms.

“A sixth member, a retired three-star admiral, Bernard M. Kauderer, was so upset at the firings that he quit the group, NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, a group of industry and academic experts charged with monitoring safety at the space agency….

“Members of Congress who heard testimony from the panel last spring said yesterday that they would re-examine whether budget constraints had undermined safety, but several said they doubted it. The Bush administration said that it would propose a $470 million increase in NASA spending today, and that the increase was planned before the Columbia’s destruction.”

CNN: A YEAR AGO

Read that again. “The increase was planned before the Columbia’s destruction.” Is that true? Not if you go back a year to February 5, 2002, this month, last year, and reread what Richard Stenger of CNN reported at the time.

“(CNN) — The proposed 2003 budget for NASA would scale back spending on the international space station and space shuttle but promote the development of nuclear technology in space. Unveiled Monday, the Bush administration proposal offers $15 billion to the space agency, $500 million more than 2002. Most NASA missions would receive slightly larger budgets in the new fiscal year, with two major exceptions….

“The space shuttle program, which Bush administration budget documents scold for inefficient safety upgrades, would receive about $65 million less than its $3.3 billion last year. In fact, the White House plan would consider outsourcing many shuttle jobs to private contractors, and even sell off some of the shuttle hardware.”

REPORTERS: READ THY CLIPS

Why is it so hard for journalists to read their own clips, or in CNN’s case, to review its own stories? Are we not talking here of a turn towards more science experiments in the great beyond, but the further militarization of space? Nuclear technology, indeed. Here’s how that piece ended: “Taking a politically risky position, the Bush plan would push the development of nuclear power and propulsion for future missions into space.

“The move could give a boost to troubled deep space projects that have yet to find technologically feasible propulsion systems or enough juice to conduct long-term studies on the surface of other planets like Mars.

“But it could also set of storms of protests from activists who called into question the safety of past nuclear probes, citing the risks of accidental crashes should something go wrong at launch.”

WHY NO “STORMS OF PROTEST?”

Most of the coverage has been adoring, focused on those that died and a nation in mourning. Perhaps the tragedy is too fresh to expect more critical coverage. All of the networks are building coverage around NASA press conferences and pro-space program boosters who argue that the patriotic thing to do is to keep the program going, even pour more money into it. Last night on NBC Tom Brokaw closed his Dateline special with this this sentiment, all set to John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

At least Newsweek had the guts to publish a dissenting perspective in a piece by Glenn Esterbrook, who says it is time to stop the space show. (Many experts acknowledged over the weekend that “manned” part of these missions was really a lobbying device to win public support and squeeze more money from Congress.) Here’s Newsweek:

“Unfortunately, the core problem that lay at the heart of the Challenger tragedy applies to the Columbia tragedy as well. That core problem is the space shuttle itself. For 20 years, the American space program has been wedded to a space-shuttle system that is too expensive, too risky, too big for most of the ways it is used, with budgets that suck up funds that could be invested in a modern system that would make space flight cheaper and safer. The space shuttle is impressive in technical terms, but in financial terms and safety terms no project has done more harm to space exploration. With hundreds of launches to date, the American and Russian manned space programs have suffered just three fatal losses in flight — and two were space-shuttle calamities. This simply must be the end of the program.

“Will the much more expensive effort to build a manned International Space Station end too? In cost and justification, it’s as dubious as the shuttle. The two programs are each other’s mirror images. The space station was conceived mainly to give the shuttle a destination, and the shuttle has been kept flying mainly to keep the space station serviced. Three crew members — Expedition Six, in NASA argot — remain aloft on the space station. Probably a Russian rocket will need to go up to bring them home. The wisdom of replacing them seems dubious at best. This second shuttle loss means NASA must be completely restructured — if not abolished and replaced with a new agency with a new mission.”

THE ROMANTICIZATION OF SPACE

Them is fighting words to all the boosters of the Space program, many of whom have trained in space journalism programs provided by NASA over the years and are totally caught up in the romantic mystique of the astronauts as, in Bob Herbert’s words, “powerful symbols of the most admirable aspects of American life.”

ONLINE MEDIA DID WELL

Incidentally, while most of us were mesmerized by the endless and repetitive TV coverage of the disaster (”If you are just joining us, let us recap.”), online was the place to be. The New York Times reported: “the Internet has proved to be an invaluable news source in time of disaster. But yesterday’s events showed something else about the power of the Net.

“Not only does it give people access to the news and to one another but it also gives them vast amounts of information and the ability to synthesize and disseminate it.”

Cyberjournalist.net explained: “Online news sites reacted rapidly and robustly to the space shuttle Columbia’s crash on Feb. 1. Nearly every major site blew out the top of their site, devoting the top screen — or more — to the story. Several chose layouts they rarely use, to create additional dramatic impact. Most of the sites surveyed also posted original material online, in addition to wire reports, and put together slide shows of the tragic images.

“One particularly interesting approach came from Florida Today, which posted continual updates to its “Columbia landing journal,” a temporary Weblog of the failed landing and aftermath,,,, The journal nicely complemented the site’s comprehensive coverage, including its exclusive close-up video of the Columbia launch, showing debris possibly hitting the wing. Spaceflight Now’s site also ran Weblog-like updates as news broke, in a feature called “Mission Status Center.”

DISSENT IN ISRAEL

Coverage of the astronauts and their families was everywhere, especially coverage of Ilan Ramon, the Israeli fighter pilot who clearly received lots of airtime, far more than Indian-born Kalpana Chawla. Perhaps that was because the cable nets had correspondents in Israel and could go there live. I only saw a few seconds of footage from India on Saturday.

The Israeli media had turned Colonel Ramon into a national sensation with adulatory coverage, perhaps because he is a “war hero” and comes from a family that survived the Holocaust. He was a part of mission that bombed Iraq’s nuclear power plant in June l981, a fact that President Bush might just reference when he speaks tomorrow. (ed. note: Ramon himself preferred not to mention that mission because he feared for the safety of his family. The story came out when the shuttle blew up and conspiracy theories began circulating. Security on this mission was a priority and was much tighter than normal.)

There is a bit of flap in Israel over a dissenting article about the Ramon hooplah that appeared before the shuttle went down and caused furious condemnations after his death. It was apiece by Gideon Levy in Ha’aretz. Jack Englehard, an American who fought as a volunteer in the Israel Defense Forces and who writes about Israel, cited it as an example of left wing insensitivity. You can sense his rage: “As Col. Ilan Ramon was lifted up into space to the cheers of millions of Israelis, you chose to publish a columnist who snickered at this special moment of Jewish pride. No big deal, wrote this columnist. I won’t name this man in order to avoid the sin of disgrace. But you know who he is and he knows who he is. I made a note of his name, and a very Jewish name it is, but nothing else about him seems to be Jewish.”

The author was Gideon Levy. Here is part of his column:

“As the Israeli media were busy whipping to a frenzy the national carnival that accompanied the launch (”Fly, Ramon, cut through the skies,” “A great step for Israel,” “Touching the sky”), they made no mention, as usual, of the travails of those who only want to move around a bit here on earth.

“The festival surrounding the launch of Colonel Ilan Ramon into space only demonstrated acutely the gap that exists all the time between false enchantments and the cruel reality most Israelis turn their gaze away from. More than ever before, the Israelis’ ignoring of the Palestinians’ suffering is reaching dimensions that are difficult to comprehend. Here, their existence is remembered only when they come to spread death….”

THE IRAQ ATTACK

On the war front, the Mail and Guardian of South Africa reports that a former top official of the apartheid regime (who reportedly once considered me a “media terrorist” and who has done a political about-face) is on his way to Iraq to see what he can do to restrain Saddam:

“Former Foreign Affairs Minister Pik Botha will visit Iraq to warn President Saddam Hussein that he is making a serious mistake by not co-operating fully with United Nations weapon inspectors, according to former President Nelson Mandela. Mandela blasted Bush and Cheney the other day, opposing the war. Th South African government says it will be asking other African countries in the African union to join them in demands for no war. (The only troubling note in Mandela’s speech was the suggestion that President Bush is against the UN because Secretary General Kofi Anan is black and from Africa. I think if he was from Mars, the US position would be the same.)

Tom Englehard notes today in TomDisapch.com, a column which also quotes your news dissector quoting someone else, that “The New York Times today (Sunday) offers the Nth leaked, bona fide, certified Pentagon ‘war plan’ (all somewhat different), this time including plans for the unleashing of 3,000 precision-guided bombs and missiles within 48 hours of war’s beginning. (Other reports have spoken of 800 cruise missiles in those two days.) With it, the Times included an impressive map of ‘The Forces in Place to Strike,’ and under the rubric ‘Dark of Night,’ the phase of the moon for each day from February 16th to March 17th. The darkest of moonlit nights, for those checking off their calendars, fall right at the beginning of March.

Tom also reminds that war with Iraq may just be the beginning.

By the way, let’s not think that, just because the president has dropped the term “axis of evil” for the moment, the third of the trio has actually been dropped as a target. In the January 21st issue of the New Yorker, reporter Seymour Hersh ended “The Cold Test,” a long piece on the administration, the North Korean nuclear program and the Pakistani connection with the following disquieting paragraph:

“One American intelligence official who has attended recent White House meetings cautioned against relying on the day-to-day Administration statements that emphasize a quick settlement of the dispute. The public talk of compromise is being matched by much private talk of high-level vindication. ‘Bush and Cheney want that guy’s head’ — Kim Jong II’s — on a platter. Don’t be distracted by all this talk about negotiations. There will be negotiations, but they have a plan, and they are going to get this guy after Iraq. He’s their version of Hitler.’”

REALITY TV INSULTS REALITY

Yesterday’s Daily News calls reality TV a “Dangerous obsession” and suggests that a “Shameless lust for fame and the spectacle of public humiliation drives reality TV.

Wayne Robbins’ report quotes your ND: “Danny Schechter, a veteran TV producer who refers to himself as “news dissector” and editor of New York-based MediaChannel.org, finds the current TV climate ‘a surreal environment, where language itself has been inverted.’

‘Schechter and his partners produced a documentary series called “Rights and Wrongs.” He describes it as “a highly compressed tape of Rodney King-type videos, of human-rights violations all over the world.” It was turned down, he says, by one syndicator, who told him: “Sorry, we only do reality programming.”

KISS-KISS

The European Journalism Center reports that “The former head of the UN’s peacekeeping force in Bosnia has warned against too much kiss-kiss between the media and the military in times of conflict, ahead of the expected war in Iraq. General MichaelRose, who has voiced reservations about going to war, criticized the media for accepting what the military told them at press briefings. ‘NATO had far too easy a ride during Kosovo and I expect the press to be far more rigorous in covering what they see in the future,’ Mr Rose said. However, he insisted the military did not spread propaganda. ‘Propaganda and lies come back to haunt you and soldiers are taught not to indulge in it or they will be caught out,’ Mr Rose said. ‘It’s going to be very difficult to cover any war in Iraq because it’s going to be very short,’ said foreign correspondent Anthony Loyd of the Times of London, who covered the war in Bosnia. ‘Journalists will get no favors from the Americans and British forces there, who have honed their skills in handling the media.’”

Some good news from Mozambique, as leaders there hail a court decision giving long jail terms to the killers of my friend and a great journalist, Carlos Cardoso. According to press reports Mozambicans have hailed a court here for sentencing six men to long jail terms for murdering a top investigative reporter, saying “the verdict will restore confidence in the country’s judicial system.”

WRITE ON BILL MOYERS

Finally, a tip of the dissector’s keyboard to Bill Moyers, who skillfully dissected media coverage of the Iraq crisis and its coverage with Rick MacArthur, publisher of Harpers. At the close of the weekly show, Moyers, once a presidential press secretary for LBJ, was very outspoken about the current White House commenting:

“Watching Mr. Bush grow intense and animated and eloquent as he made the case for war and hearing the exuberance that filled Washington and the pundits’ chatter afterward . I was reminded of a speech by Abraham Lincoln back in 1848.

“He was Congressman Lincoln then, he voted against war with Mexico, and he lamented the coming of that ‘attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood, that serpent’s eye that charms to destroy.’

The price of Mr. Bush’s war is yet to be reckoned.”

MOURN, MEMORIALIZE, BUT DONT BE MISLED

And so on this day that we will also hear about the size of the U.S. deficit, projected to be the largest in history, our eyes are facing the heavens as footage of the disaster is still being recycled but clearly we need to keep our feet on earth, looking far more closely at what’s happening here on the blue planet. Share your comments and suggestions with me by writing dissector@medichannel.org. Also sign your friends up for the email edition of this weblog.