SUNDAY,  FEBRUARY 17,  2008

•   It's always a pleasure to report journalists behaving well.  It's so rare.  Associated Press photographer Don Mell taught the BBC, once a news organization, a few things about journalism this week.  The BBC seemed to equate the assassination of Rafik Hariri, a revered leader of Lebanon, with the recent killing of Imad Mughniyeh, a world-class terrorist.  Mell called them on it.  And, incredibly, the BBC backed down.  This is good stuff.  Read the story to find out why Mell felt so strongly about what BBC did.  A taste:

In an uncommon act of journalistic contrition, the BBC has apologized for equating former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri and Hizbullah terror chief Imad Mughniyeh as "great national leaders."

The BBC took the unusual step after Don Mell, The Associated Press's former photographer in Beirut, lambasted the parallel, drawn by BBC correspondent Humphrey Hawkesley in a BBC World report last Thursday, as "an outrage" and "beyond belief."

American journalist Mell was held up at gunpoint by Mughniyeh's men as his colleague Terry Anderson, AP's chief Middle East correspondent, was kidnapped in Beirut in March 1985.

The BBC has about 536 apologies to go before it can be considered respectable again.

•   Speaking of people who use microphones for a living, The New York Times shockingly raises the issue of whether PBS - the Public Broadcasting System - is still needed. (Forgive me, Moyers, for I have sinned.)  There's some fascinating data here:

Lately the audience for public TV has been shrinking even faster than the audience for the commercial networks. The average PBS show on prime time now scores about a 1.4 Nielsen rating, or roughly what the wrestling show “Friday Night Smackdown” gets.

On the other side of the ledger the audience for public radio has been growing: there are more than 30 million listeners now, compared to just 2 million in 1980. “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered,” NPR’s morning and evening news programs, are the second and fourth most listened to shows in the country. Go figure. Who would have guessed 40 years ago, when public broadcasting came into being, that the antique medium, the one supposedly on its way out, would prove to be the greater success and the one more technically nimble. You can even download NPR broadcasts onto your iPod.

Right.  Well, let's see, I suspect the PBS audience is shrinking because the importance of its shows has declined, and TV viewers are particularly sensitive to liberal bias, which it has in abundance.  Its recent "America at the Crossroads" series was unique in making sure that no terrorist was upset. 

I never cared much for the pretentions of NPR, whose bias is just as bad.  I guess the John Kerry crowd found a home on the dial, and gathers as one.  I suppose the damage won't be too great.  And if they pay attention to the road, and not the radio, that's even better.

•   Frankly, there isn't much to report today on the Democratic nomination battle.  The candidates are fighting over the role of super delegates, which, I'd assumed, had been settled by party rules.  But what do rules mean to a party that couldn't accept the electoral college result in the 2000 election?  Clinton:

MILWAUKEE, Feb. 16 -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Saturday urged the Democratic Party's unpledged delegates to make their own decisions about whether to support her or Sen. Barack Obama, predicting that the battle for the Democratic nomination will continue into the summer.

"Superdelegates are a part of the process. They are supposed to exercise independent judgment," said Clinton (N.Y.), who wants to put into play hundreds of the unelected delegates, as well as large contingents from Michigan and Florida, where the candidates did not campaign.

Obama:

Obama, who holds a narrow lead in two recent polls, won the last eight Democratic primaries and caucuses, but he trails Clinton in superdelegate endorsements. He contends that superdelegates should back the candidate who wins the most pledged delegates.

Look, there's no point in having super delegates if they can't exercise some judgment.  And yet, if one candidate is overwhelmingly ahead in primary victories, could super delegates deny that person the nomination?  It seems to me that their role is most important in a very close contest.  I lean a bit in Hillary's direction on the issue.  But there is a looming presence in the room this year, and its name is race.  Even if Obama leads by only five votes in the elected-delegate count, going into the convention, and super delegates put Hillary over the top, there'll be many neighborhoods in America that will be, uh, displeased. 

•   I didn't know they felt so strongly.  When the Democratic Party had more in common with the United States, the following story would have been a blessing to any Democrat running for president.  Pravda has launched a strong attack on Hillary Clinton.  In better times, she could have worn it as a badge of honor.  But with the base of the party being, well, what it is, I don't know.  The Ruskie reporters do not mince words:

Hillary Clinton made it a point to promise voters that health care would be a priority for the Clinton administration. At mid point in her husband’s presidency, when he was running for re-election again, the promise was made that they will do these things if only her husband gets another 4 years in the White House.

And so he was re-elected only to become one of the most notorious and murderous war criminals in recent history. The bombing of Serbia and the shedding of innocent blood is a stain that can never be wiped from the legacy of the Clintons in the White House.

When the Clintons left the White House there was NO health care for US citizens. Now she is back making the same empty promises. Why should voters believe she will keep her promises this time? Why should voters believe she is even remotely capable of delivering on her promises?

She has made the most spurious and deceptive statements regarding her opponent, Senator Obama, claiming that his words are empty while her track record clearly proves her promises and her words are nothing more than empty lies and she will do anything, say anything and stoop to any level in order to get elected. When one sees her saying these things it tends to elicit the gag reflex.

Why has no one from the corporate elitist media confronted her about her blatant and despicable hypocrisy? She certainly failed to respond when questioned by Pravda.

Gee, I wonder why she failed to respond.  I mean, they're obviously warm and generous folks.

I hope the corporate elitist media carries the story. 

•   But word mincing is definitely in order elsewhere.  There's rioting in Copenhagen.  It's about the recent reprinting of those cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

GANGS of rioters set fire to cars and garbage trucks in northern Copenhagen after demonstrators evicted from a youth centre earlier in the year tried to occupy a new building.

Five youths were arrested in the capital after 28 cars and 35 garbage trucks were burned, Copenhagen police duty officer Jakob Kristensen said.

Danish media said arrests in other towns brought to 29 the number of people police were holding.

Scores of cars and several schools have been vandalised or burned in the past week.

And then...

Police arrested two Tunisians and a Dane of Moroccan descent on Tuesday for planning to kill a cartoonist who drew one of the cartoons printed in a Danish newspaper two years ago that roused a storm of protest in Muslim countries.

The social workers are on the case:

Social workers said the arrests, the reprinting of the cartoon and protests against its appearance might have fuelled the riots.

Yeah, I would think so.  But maybe Sherlock Holmes should be called in just to be sure.

What really gets me is the headline on this story:  "Suspected Danish Cartoon Rioters Torch Cars."

Suspected?  Fellas, if you don't know why they're doing it, you shouldn't be in journalism.  Or you should be working for the BBC.  Or carrying Christiane Amanpour's make-up cases.

•   Finally, there's a story that should get us thinking.  We depend so heavily for our national security on technical experts.  But we never consider what would happen if we didn't have them.  Consider:

Two leading U.S. scientific groups warned yesterday that, in the next 15 years, as many as half of the nation's relatively few experts in identifying smuggled nuclear materials and detonated-bomb components may retire.

The pipeline of young researchers who could replace the nation's 35 to 50 nuclear specialists is almost empty, the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science said in a new report at the association's annual meeting in Boston. They called for an invigorated program of university-research funding, more graduate school and laboratory positions in related disciplines, and new incentives for industry support of university positions.

We only have 35 to 50 nuclear specialists?  That's stunning enough.  And half may be gone within 15 years.  Talk about vulnerability.  We should demand that Congress get on this.  Yeah, right.  I can just feel Nancy's great interest.

And I'll be back later.

Posted on February 17, 2008.