“INVESTIGATING” THE SHOOTING OF GIULIANA

U.S. bars Italians from examining victim’s car

Recall the promises of a joint Italian US investigation into the killing of that Italian intelligence agent and the wounding of Giuliana, the Italian journalist. Remember all the emails I had saying that the bulletholes in the car exculpated the US soldiers. A few weeks later, AP reports:

“ROME — The U.S. military command in Iraq has blocked two Italian policemen from examining the car in which an Italian intelligence agent was shot to death in Baghdad, a newspaper said Wednesday.

“Corriere della Sera said that the policemen were about to leave when the Italian Embassy in Baghdad received an order from the U.S. command on Monday to abort the mission for security concerns.

“The embassy in Baghdad reportedly alerted Rome authorities, who called off the trip.

“The car, a Toyota Corolla, is reportedly still in American hands, at Baghdad airport where it was originally rented.

“The Foreign Ministry in Rome declined comment on the report, while officials at the Italian Embassy in Baghdad could not immediately be reached. The U.S. military in Baghdad had no immediate comment….”

http://www.gnn.tv/headlines/1613/US_bars_Italians_from_examining_victim_s_car

Will the renters be held liable for the damage to the car?

ASKS FAIR: WHERE ARE THE FEMALE PUNDITS ON TV

“In recent weeks, criticism of the shortage of women’s bylines on newspaper op-ed pages has roiled the media waters, prompted by syndicated columnist Susan Estrich’s attack on Los Angeles Times op-ed page editor Michael Kinsley for his failure to bring more women onto the Times’ op-ed page.

“This issue certainly deserves discussion, but the problem extends beyond newspaper op-ed pages and into television. An upcoming FAIR study has found that on television, as in print, female pundits are in short supply.

“FAIR looked at Sunday morning talkshow panels, where two to four journalists (political reporters as well as columnists) often join the shows’ hosts to discuss the week’s big political stories. The study examined six months (9/1/04-2/28/05) of NBC’s Chris Matthews Show and Meet the Press, ABC’s This Week and Fox News Sunday. (CBS had no consistent panel feature on analogous shows.)

Surprisingly, NBC’s Chris Matthews Show came out almost exactly even on gender, with 51 men and 49 women. Unfortunately, the show is unique in its gender balance: This Week and Fox News Sunday hewed more closely to the print media’s unspoken “quota of one” for female pundits, featuring 2 percent and 25 percent women respectively. Meet the Press˜which occasionally included more than one woman per panel and once (2/20/05)

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2473

CALL TO ACTION

“Please join the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) in asking ABC News President David Westin to drop Wal-Mart immediately as a sponsor of Good Morning America’s “Only in America” series.

“This series purports to cover people who have contributed to the welfare of this country.

“Wal-Mart, in glaring contrast, is responsible for sending more jobs overseas than any other American corporation. Wal-Mart systematically drives down wages in our economy, exploits the work of immigrants, discriminates against women, violates child labor laws, breaks up small businesses and their communities, and denies workers their legal right to organize.

“Wal-Mart gives the phrase “only in America” a bad name. Please take 60 seconds to do something about it.

“Tell ABC News what you think:
http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/abcnews

“Read the UFCW’s press release:
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=44719

CNN “COVERS” THE WAR

Mike Tronnes of Cursor.org studied CNN’s anniversary of the war coverage:

“Here’s a link to an analysis that I did of CNN’s coverage of the second anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war versus its coverage of the first. You probably noticed that “NewsNight,” the most likely venue for any reflection, was pre-empted twice last week] for Ashley Smith-related stories. And on Friday night, the eve of the anniversary, it ran a rerun on Iraq from last December, after leading with an interview of the owner of one of the five cars said] to have been hijacked a week earlier by Brian Nichols. Earlier in the week the program ran a segment on a Marine who used to play for “coach K” at West Point. That was the extent of “Newsnight’s” coverage of Iraq in the week leading up to the second anniversary.”

http://www.cursor.org/stories/cnngoesnative.html

GUESS WHO MAY PLAY BOB DYLAN?

Diversity.com carries a report that “Bob Dylan is finally going to allow a movie about him to be made. His decision is reportedly based on the unconventional choice of actors to portray him, reports The Times of London. Seven people, six men and one woman, will portray Dylan during different stages of his 43-year career, beginning with his 1960s hit “The Times They Are A-Changin.’”

One of the candidates: BEYONCE! Yes, the times they are a changing.

EDITORS HATE NEWS PORTALS

For years, news organizations have had a love-hate relationship with Web sites like Google News that aggregate articles from many sources. Newspapers and television stations like the traffic they get when such sites link to their online stories, but they don’t like playing second fiddle to the Internet companies as a news destination. Now, the relationship is growing more complex. Three big newspaper companies, Gannett Co., Knight-Ridder Inc. and Tribune Co., have jointly purchased a majority stake in Topix.net, a Web site that aggregates headlines from more than 10,000 sources, including news sites and blogs.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/0,,SB111151985359286597,00.html?mod=todays%5Ffree%5Ffeature