ATTACK ON PBS HAS BEGUN

The New York Times reports today:

“Republican Chairman Exerts Pressure on PBS, Alleging Biases: The chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting wants public television to correct what he considers liberal bias.”

“Without the knowledge of his board, the chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, contracted last year with an outside consultant to keep track of the guests’ political leanings on one program, ‘Now With Bill Moyers.’”

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/arts/television/02public.html?th&emc=th

THE GIULIANA BATTLE CONTINUES

The Wall Street Journal reports today that the U.S. Army concedes “mistakes” were made in the shooting of the Italian journalist and intelligence agent.

The Washington Post reported Saturday:

“ROME, April 29 — After a five-week joint investigation, U.S. and Italian officials announced Friday they had failed to reach agreement on the circumstances of the fatal shooting of an Italian intelligence agent by U.S. troops in Baghdad on March 5. The deadlock keeps alive a dispute that is undermining the standing of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a key U.S. ally in Iraq.

“Italian criminal investigators pressed forward Friday with their own investigation, which includes inspection of the bullet-damaged Toyota Corolla in which agent Nicola Calipari and journalist Giuliana Sgrena were riding when U.S. troops opened fire on them. Sgrena was wounded.

“‘Respect for the memory of Nicola Calipari, as well as for our national decorum, could only prevent the government of Italy from assenting to a reconstruction of the events that does not correspond with what happened that evening,’ Italy’s foreign minister, Gianfranco Fini, told reporters.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/29/AR2005042901537.html

A number of bloggers are accusing the LA Times of omitting information from a Reuters story which says the car they were in was speeding… Meanwhile, there is a new ripple in the story.

Giulia Ascoli writes from London with some new information:

“I am the postgraduate journalism student who called you from London last March to talk about the media coverage of Giuliana Sgrena’s story. I am writing you again as there is something I thought might interest you — if you haven’t already heard about it.

“Some readers of the Italian daily La Repubblica found out today that by downloading the pdf version of the U.S. report on the events of the 4 March — released on Friday and available on the website of the Multi-national Forces Iraq until this morning — and then cutting it and copying it on Word, the parts of the document which were blacked out could be read. I helped a friend with his blog entry about this today, as this morning the only media talking about it were Italian ones.”

You can read the whole story at this link:
http://www.martinstabe.com/blog/archives/2005/05/censored_parts.php

BBC picked up the story:

“Italian media have published classified sections of an official U.S. military inquiry into the accidental killing of an Italian agent in Baghdad. The 40-page report was censored by the Pentagon before being officially published on Saturday.

“Italy has refused to accept the U.S. report’s findings and is to publish its own version of events later this week. Details of the official report were published in newspapers on Sunday with censored material restored in full.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4504589.stm

The Italian press reported on one of the redacted report’s conclusions which suggests that the killing might have been avoided:

“Finally there are recommendations to improve the check-point control procedures to avoid other episodes like that involving Calipari. Among these, is ‘to take into consideration the use of further non-lethal means’, and not being in the situation where just one man is responsible for both shining the lights used to identify people and for opening fire. An admission of responsibility of sorts, or at least an acknowledgement that something more could have been done to avoid that death.”

THE MEDIA CRISIS

Marianne Means of Hearst Newspapers writes in the Salt Lake Tribune:

“The national television networks, for instance, are currently chaotically scrambling to recapture dwindling audiences lured away by new, evolving forms of media. The House and Senate press galleries have accredited roughly 7,200 journalists, an unruly mob of wildly differing outlets and interests.

“(The galleries, however, were sufficiently alert to reject the application of Jeff Gannon, a/k/a James Guckert, a Bush apologist and pseudo-journalist who visited the White House 196 times the past two years and asked soft-ball questions at press briefings.)

“A new national survey by the Missouri School of Journalism’s Center for Advanced Social Research indicates that repeated political charges of media bias from both right and left have been taking a toll on our credibility. Although 62 percent of those surveyed said they consider newspapers and TV news to be trustworthy, 85 percent expressed skepticism by claiming they detected a bias in reporting.”

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_2699619

CLEAR CHANNEL TO SPLIT

The New York Daily News reports that another huge media company is too big to sustain its business.

“Clear Channel Communications, the world’s largest radio broadcaster, will spin off its live-entertainment unit and sell shares in the billboard business after a radio-advertising slump caused the stock to drop 25% in the past year.”