A new pet peeve

Last updated on: February 2, 2004 at 3:32 pm By Fred Clark

The Washington Post, like several other newspaper sites, runs banner ads on their printer-formatted pages. The purpose of having pages formatted for printing is, of course, to allow the readers to print out the article in question without having to also print out the masthead, navigation bars, links, etc. The printer-formatting allows readers to print the page without wasting time, paper or toner/ink. Therein lies my gripe with the vertical banner ads on the WaPo p-f pages. The current crop... Read more

“Never — not once — did it say …”

Last updated on: September 5, 2012 at 3:34 pm By Fred Clark

19 Comments

If you're Kenneth Pollack or David Kay, it makes sense for you to point out now that you were not alone in vastly overestimating Iraq's alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein's alleged capacity for making more. But once again they seem to be, well, overstating their case. It is true that most intelligence agencies believed Saddam Hussein had something — but they also were continuously shocked by the specificity and extremity of the claims the Bush... Read more

Empire Nation Building

Last updated on: June 26, 2012 at 11:18 am By Fred Clark

3 Comments

Josh Marshall's long-awaited "empire" review essay is in this week's New Yorker. You can read it online here. Marshall uses terms like "imperial" descriptively, not pejoratively and not as a dismissive epithet. It is simply the case that the United States now possesses unrivaled military might and, in various ways, functions rather like an imperial power. Marshall's essay examines the responsibilities and opportunities that arise from this situation. For those keeping score at home, he portrays Chalmers Johnson's The Sorrows... Read more

A patriot, therefore angry

Last updated on: January 30, 2004 at 4:26 am By Fred Clark

3 Comments

Brad DeLong is usually a level-headed, temperate fellow. But now, he says, he finds himself increasingly bitter and angry. He is angry, in part, because he is an economist and therefore sees with greater perception and acuity the utter recklessness and foolishness of the current administration's economic policies. He is angry, in part, because he believes in fiscal sanity, and ours has quickly become a time of fiscal insanity. But most of all, he is angry because he is a... Read more

Bad habits

Last updated on: June 26, 2012 at 11:28 am By Fred Clark

15 Comments

Two recent stories illustrate how some of journalism's conventions can result in distorting the truth. 1. Two Sides to Every Fact. This story by USA Today's Peronet Despeignes offers an example of how the two-sides-to-every-story notion of balance can end up twisting fact into opinion: The federal budget deficit will reach $477 billion this year, the biggest shortfall ever in dollar terms, the Congressional Budget Office said Monday. Over the next 10 years, cumulative deficits are likely to add almost... Read more

Tony Blair: An Honest Fool

Last updated on: June 26, 2012 at 11:27 am By Fred Clark

32 Comments

Patrick Tyler, reporting in The New York Times, avoids misusing the word "vindication" in the way that I just heard reporters on NPR abusing the term. The Hutton inquiry has cleared Tony Blair of deliberately misleading the public, which can only mean that the Prime Minister misled the public accidentally — out of his own incompetence and gullibility — hardly a resounding "vindication." The undisputed facts, even before Lord Hutton began his investigation, were these: 1. During his campaign to... Read more

“The damn law is ludicrous”

Last updated on: January 27, 2004 at 12:16 pm By Fred Clark

5 Comments

That's James H. Dillard II of Fairfax, Va., describing President Bush's signature education measure, the "No Child Left Behind Act." Dillard is not some knee-jerk Bush-hater. He's a Republican state legislator, chairman of Virginia's House Education Committee. Like every other Republican in his state's House of Delegates, Dillard voted for a resolution seeking to exempt Virginia from NCLB: By a vote of 98 to 1, the House passed a resolution calling on Congress to exempt states like Virginia from the... Read more

It happens every winter (part 3)

Last updated on: June 26, 2012 at 11:26 am By Fred Clark

7 Comments

LIHEAP — the Low-Income Housing Energy Assistance Program — seems like it should be a natural for President George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism." The federal program provides financial assistance for poor households to allow them to pay their heating bills during the winter. "Financial assistance for poor households" may not seem like a high priority for President Bush, but consider the ultimate destiny of this money. It simply allows households who otherwise would not be able to do so to... Read more

It happens every winter (part 2)

Last updated on: June 26, 2012 at 11:25 am By Fred Clark

2 Comments

In the previous post, I defend "soft" stories on winter weather as a comforting ritual. But having said that, such soft stories can also be the boring output of bored journalists, following a boring routine. These stories practically write themselves and — whether from boredom or laziness — reporters and local desk editors often seem content with the generic, cookie-cutter winter story: 1. Passive voice introduction: The region was hit/struck/blanketed … 2. Quote from pedestrian/dog-walker: It's really cold out here... Read more

It happens every winter (part 1)

Last updated on: June 26, 2012 at 11:24 am By Fred Clark

1 Comment

Newspapers engage in an odd ritual whenever it snows or gets really cold. The weather becomes the big story on A1. Sure, lousy weather is something that directly affects everyone in the region — but is it really news? These stories always seem more like small talk than like journalism. Passages like this are standard fare in these weather stories: "The last three years it hasn't been so cold," Logue said as he walked his shivering schnauzer, Boogie Woogie, along... Read more

What did Jesus ride into Jerusalem on?