With Enemies Like O'Reilly, We're Doing Just Fine

I once wrote -- in what must surely have been an unconscious appropriation of someone else's great thoughts -- that you judge a journalist by the enemies they make.

Using that yardstick, the St. Petersburg Times joined the big leagues following Fox News Channel gasbag Bill O'Reilly's decision to place us in second place on his Nixonian media enemies list.

Though his web site doesn't explain how we earned this distinction, anyone who has watched his show for more than two days knows O'Reilly has a serious jones for the Tampa bay area in general and the St. Pete Times in particular.

He hates us for our coverage of Sami Al-Arian. He hates us for our coverage of accused child killer John Couey. He hates us for our coverage of Hillsborough County's struggle to deal with religious holidays in its vacation schedule (why a national talk show host with 3 million viewers nightly cares about that, remains a mystery). He's denounced me as a "a dishonest, racially motivated correspondent writing for perhaps the worst newspaper in the country.")

Indeed, O'Reilly has featured segments mentioning the Tampa Bay area 20 times in the past six months -- a level of obsession with Florida goings on that is just plain creepy from a guy based in New York City with no apparent ties to this area.

O'Reilly needs enemies. And every conservative yahoo with a microphone rails about the New York Times.

He says we "traffic in defamation" and "false information spread by far left websites." I say we keep saying things he doesn't want to hear, on subjects he doesn't want to talk about.

Sounds like the classic definition of good journalism to me.

Debating Indecency: Who Speaks for Me?

I've been thinking a lot about indecency and Harry Potter.

(Martin with former MPAA head Jack Valenti at Senate hearing Tuesday)

Indecency is back in the news, thanks to new FCC chairman Kevin Martin, who told a Congressional committee Tuesday that the cable industry needs to offer customers ways to choose which standard cable channels they will access, or the commission may attempt to regulate cable and satellite TV indecency the way they regulate broadcasters.

Such a challenge seems an empty threat. Cable providers swear the economics of their business require spreading costs over all non-premium channels -- so those who buy cable for Disney, CNN or ESPN can help pay for the Golf Channel or Black Entertainment Television as well. And since consumers can block access to individual cable or satellite channels within their own home, it seems the FCC would stand on shaky legal ground trying to regulate content nationwide to shield children.

Televangelists are opposing Martin's notion because they fear their channels would also go away under such a system. The advocacy group TV Watch, which seeks to limit government control of broadcasting, released a survey Monday which found -- surprise! -- that only 9 percent of parents want government to increase control of network TV and 91 percent of parents use some tools to control their children's TV viewing. The Senate is considering various forms of indencency legislation, just as the FCC is preparing to rule on 40 to 50 indecency complaints from earlier this year.

And I'm still wondering why its taken until less than a year before the 2006 midterm elections before Republican legislators and a Republican FCC chairman would bring up indecency again.

Here's where Potter comes in: While watching the latest film with my kids, I knew we would be seeing something darker. But I wasn't prepared to see one character cut his own hand off and a teen classmate of Harry's killed during the action. If even Harry Potter movies bow to such creeping violent content, I thought, what hope is there for other mainstream entertainment?

I'm hardly a prude, but I am a father of four concerned about the coarsening state of mainstream entertainment. And every advocate in the current public debate on this issue -- from Republican legislators courting conservative votes to strident advocacy groups seking more political power -- seems to have other, practical reasons for advocating content crackdowns which have nothing to do with the actual issue.

So when will we get an honest broker in this debate -- someone who might actually help address parents' concerns without totally trampling the First Amendment? And can a parent criticize some risque content in media without turning into a tool for some culture warrior's political agenda?

Right now, the odds of finding that kind of leadership on this issue seems likely as stumbling on Potter's legendary goblet of fire.

New Nightline, Same Old Song

As expected, last night's first-ever Koppel-less Nightline was a back-to-the-future move, which saw ABC presenting a live, late-night newsmagazine suspiciously similar to all the other news-lite programs filling cable TV and network primetime.

Hosted mostly by Cynthia McFadden from ABC's glitzy Times Square studios, the program nevertheless had a shut-in feel, with McFadden stuck behind a desk sitting beside a logo like every other TV news show.

(co-hosts Martin Bashir, Terry Moran and Cynthia McFadden)

As legend has it, Koppel recently resisted hosting Nightline live -- reasoning it would be tough to get big-name guests to stay up late, and the benefits of live broadcasting would be negligible. Monday's show proved him right, as McFadden stumbled over an interview with two no-name Catholic priests over the Vatican's new policy barring gays from ordination and seminary, with no perceptible advantages from the live setting.

Granted the first edition of any new program will be rocky. And certainly the first night's lineup of subjects -- Terry Moran's interview with the U.S. ambassador to Iraq in Baghdad, a discussion on gay men barred from the priesthood and tabloid news king Martin Bashir's look at a winning football team at a school for the deaf -- probably looked good on paper.

But this new Nightline -- delayed beyond midnight on the East Coast by Monday Night Football -- seems the worst of all worlds. Rushing from story to story, there was no time to find the in-depth substance of a given topic. The story of one gay priest who must struggle with a religion who demonizes him is a compelling half hour; a two-minute debate between two unknown priests is a segment on Scarborough Country.

Here's hoping the new production team has more up their sleeves -- like breaking some news and telling us stuff we didn't already know or need to know. Otherwise, Koppel's farewell prediction of an entertainment show taking that time slot may come sooner than anyone thinks.

What do you think -- particularly if you saw last night's show?

Another Taste of Brownie

Former Federal Emergency Management Agency head Michael Brown spent a lot of his final days in the job complaining about inaccuracies in press coverage of his history.

You may recall I wrote a story a few weeks ago showing that one of the major provable inaccuracies -- that he was a college friend and college buddy of his predecessor, Joseph Allbaugh -- was spread by Brown himself.
(credit: AP)

News agencies across the country ran corrections once Allbaugh began distancing himself from Brown by calling around and insisting they met sometime after college. But the notion that they were college pals -- a convenient way to demonstrate the cronyism which got Brown his old friend's job in the first place -- refuses to die, even in newspapers which corrected the original inaccuracy.

Case in point: A recent Washington Post blurb about Brownie's new consulting business, in the same suite as Allbaugh's company, makes the college chums reference. As they say in the newspaper biz, sometimes you gotta RTFN (let your imaginations work on the meaning to that acronym).

Conflicted Journalists: Does it Really Matter?

Like the rest of the media world, I've been thinking a bit recently about conflicts of interest among journalists.

(credit: AP)

The CIA leak case has most recently put the issue on the front burner, with ethicists clucking over Washington Post institution Bob Woodward deciding to hold back news that he had been told of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity before any other publicly known journalist; a decision he says he made both to avoid a subpoena and to keep his sources confidential.

But it raised the criticism Woodward often faces, which is -- if you're considered an editor at one of the nation's largest newspapers and you find out newsworthy information on something like, say, the bumbling attempts to gin up the case for war with Iraq, shouldn't you get that into the newspaper right away?

Along the way, the New York Times presented an interesting story on conflicts of interest among one of the top journalists covering Woodward's conflicts -- Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz, who also hosts a show for CNN, which he covers in the Post's pages.

As a media critic myself, I know there's an inherent conflict in trying to write about media issues when you work for a media outlet. But Kurtz maginifies that problem by hosting a show on media issues for a cable network he often covers.

As the Times story points out, Kurtz is so good at his job that it is tough to criticize his coverage. There are those who would disagree -- including lefty media writer Eric Alterman, who alleged the critic reflected CNN's efforts to ingratiate itself with conservatives -- but I think many of those criticsms are quibbles.

However, I also think his case and Woodward's case illustrate a couple of things about journalism's recent troubles that bear exploration. First, is the way in which some Washington journalists seem to enjoy being players rather than observers.

What strikes me upon considering the saga of Judith Miller and Woodward, is that these folks may have been seduced by the influence they could wield with the nation's political establishment. One of Woodward's books was on the Bush re-election campaign's recommended reading list, and Miller had a golden rolodex with names such as vice presidential chief of staff Lewis Libby. Thinking like an insider instead of an outsider can be dangerous for a journalist.

Secondly, stars such as Woodward, Kurtz and Miller can't earn the kind of incomes to match the luminaries that they cover without other, outside work. This is something I've seen at the New York Times, where top TV industry reporter Bill Carter kept his day job while writing a screenplay for his book The Late Shift for HBO and Monday Night Mayhem for TNT. Former pop music critic Neil Strauss kept his gig while ghostwriting the autobiography of shock rocker Marilyn Manson and another book by Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Dave Navarro.

(l-r, Rubin and Amanpour)

There is also the culture of Washington, where the town has come to accept uncomfortable combinations of activities. CNN's international correspondent Christiane Amanpour married Jamie Rubin in 1998, while he was spokesman for the U.S. State Department (the reliably conservative Washington Times commented on the conflict here). NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell is married to Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. Each of these journalists have explained their own conflicts and insist their marriages do not affect their work.

So media outlets indulging uncomfortable conflicts of interest among their stars are nothing new. But the travails of Miller and Woodward should come as a fateful warning: rules about conflicts exist to keep journalists from falling into situations that might even appear to be questionable. And it is sometimes tough see the implications of allowing a crossing of lines until the institution's crediblity has been damaged.

What do you think? Do journalists make too big a deal about conflicts of interest. Or do we pretend to care about the small stuff, while letting the big stuff go on, unaffected? I'm particularly interested in what non-journalists think about this stuff.

Making a Difference, Post-Nightline

In tomorrow's Floridian, you can read my wide-ranging profile of exiting Nightline anchor Ted Koppel, who I have interviewed many times and always found to be a curious mix of down-to-earth realist and cocksure, supremely confident anchor.

But in this space, I wanted to take a little time to talk about another Nightline alum who I spoke with in fleshing out my piece on Koppel; former executive producer Leroy Sievers.

Usually, when high-ranking TV producers lose a job, they land somewhere else in the industry -- starting a consulting business or jumping to another program or network. But Sievers deided on a different path when he left Nightline after 14 years in November 2004 -- trekking to Uganda and Rwanda with Non-Government Organizations and volunteering with the Red Cross to help in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

"Covering Rwanda was the seminal moment of my professional life...it's haunted all of us who were there," said Sievers when I called him at his Maryland home, initially intending just to ask him about his years working alongside Koppel. "I know my team was often the last thing people saw...we were taking pictures while they were dying. I wanted to find a way to make a difference rather than just sit back."

After a semester spent teaching at the University of Southern California, Sievers headed to Uganda for Human Rights Watch, shooting footage to show the legacy of the country's civil war for children there. (Hear his engrossing NPR essay on the work here.)

Later, when a trip to Rwanda for the anti-war International Crisis Group was delayed, Sievers volunteered with the Red Cross in Biloxi, Miss., handing out food and learning how much that scene mirrored the Third World nations he'd covered in 25 years as a globe-hopping TV news producer. (His NPR report on that experience is here.)

Then he traveled back Rwanda. In 1994, he had led a team of journalists from Nightline there to cover the genocide. Now, 11 years later, he was traveling back to help a Non-Governmental Organization track down the perpetrators of the brutalities there. (Here's an NPR essay on that experience).

"I turned 50 this summer, and all these years you say to yourself, 'If only I had time, I could do this or that,' " said Sievers, who is still attempting to decide whether to work more extensively with non-profits or return to journalism, with one eye on the declining state of TV news. "Well now I have the opportunity, and I don't want to make a bad decision. This sounds painfully naive, but I really want to make a difference...and it really is something a lot of my other colleagues are struggling with."

He has nothing but wonderful things to say about Koppel, who he says "doesn't take any handling...he's happy sleeping on the ground, eating (Meals Ready to Eat military rations) working around the clock." And despite the fact that ABC jettioned a succession plan that would have had him run Nightline after Koppel's departure, Sievers sympathizes that, regardless of what the new guys try, they will be criticized for not being Koppel's Nightline.

"It's like finding out your ex is dating someone else," he said, of watching ABC develop a new vision for the show. "Nightline was my life for 14 years, literally, from Monday morning to Friday night. It's hard to give that up."

Another Journalist Down

It feels like a death in the family.

Late last night, I learned that my good friend Ken Parish Perkins has resigned as TV critic at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram newspaper amid charges he plagiarized several passages of past stories.

For those who don't know Ken's work, that's like hearing that Picasso ripped off other painters or Shakespeare lifted lines from a no-name contemporary. As we got to know each other during several years side-by-side covering the Television Critics Association's summer press tour, Ken developed a reputation as a quietly intense, brilliant writer -- someone who would hardly need to use other people's words in his work.

Quite simply, I always felt he was one of the best arts critics in the country. And it was particularly inspiring that he was a black man asking the same questions about race, culture and entertainment that I was.

With so much going on that is demoralizing in journalism -- Judith Miller's shenanigans, Bob Woodward's lapse, Mary Mapes' blame-shifting -- the news about Ken has hit me particularly hard. Last year, I saw another promising young black arts journalist felled by plagiarism problems -- Greg Fields of the Macon Telegraph, who I mentored briefly. And Bob Betcher, longtime TV critic at the Stuart News, recently passed away. So it feels as if my friends are slowly falling away.

My attitude wasn't helped by the Star-Telegram's explanation of the nature of the transgressions they found, which they said involved long sentences or phrases taken from other publications without attribution: "Almost all of the questionable content involved a sentence or two of background material found far into the story. But the evidence represented a clear pattern to Star-Telegram editors that Perkins was violating our ethics policy on attribution of material that was not original. "

Plagiarism is, of course, a serious offense for a journalist. But I want to believe in my friend, and I can't help wondering if this wasn't some horrible mistake -- a bad habit that went on too long or an oversight allowed to stand for too long.

UPDATE: Former Chicago Tribune TV critic John Cook has posted his own blog item on Ken, alleging he left that newspaper's TV critic job amid charges he had fabricated material in some stories. See John's item here.)

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: Richard Prince has the first post-resignation interview with Ken, in which he says he "can't take the lies" about his career and explains that the offending paragraph was a piece of research which he forgot to rewrite in the story.

More than ever, journalism is starting to feel like a precarious profession.

Woodward Slips Off His Pedestal, Pulling Down the Rest of Us

As CNN was endlessly replaying clips Wednesday of Washington Post legend Bob Woodward downplaying the CIA Leak scandal on Larry King Live, I was trying to rationalize the hysterical condemnations sure to follow.

Yes, Woodward had sat on news that an administration official had told him about Valerie Plame's CIA status back in 2003. Yes, he had talked down the importance of the leak investigation on TV without disclosing he was a reporter who had been leaked to. Yes, he preserved his high-powered access to White House officials at the expense of informing even his own editors.

Surely the guy who helped put Richard Nixon on a slow boat to Yorba Linda had a good explanation, right?

But now, in the flood of reports on his mistake, it seems obvious the hero of investigative journalism has let himself be co-opted by the politicians he is supposed to be watching over. And by letting himself become a Washington institution in their eyes, he betrayed the example so many of us journalists looked to for our own inspiration -- and used to explain our craft to others.

I'm not ashamed to say I first decided to be a journalist after watching Lou Grant, the TV drama based on the Woodward/Watergate-era Washington Post. I loved the idea of seeing an event in person and creating a story on that same experience hours later -- which seemed like a miracle to my 8th-grade sensibilities.

And I loved the idea of smart, well-meaning talented people working hard to bring the truth to a community, day after day.

Which makes it even sadder to see that the reporter we once all used as an example of the best in all that exposed as a hoarder of official secrets and protector of his own journalism franchise. Some researchers even say his work exposing Watergate reversed public opinion on journalists' credibility.

Once again, as legal proceedings and the modern-day news cycle expose how some of our most famous journalists have done their work, the results are not too pretty -- or trustworthy.

Thank God public attitudes about our credibility are already at rock bottom levels. Because when the hits keep coming like this, it helps to know there's no way to go but up.

Tomlinson Taken to the Woodshed -- Finally

It's SOP for the GOP. (Standard Operating Procedure for the Grand Old Party, for those of you who don't do acronym-speak).

The strategy: Take over a government agency you oppose by installing leaders who previously worked against the agency or its traditional goals. Use those leaders to make the institution as ineffective or controversial as possibe. Then underfund the office.

Some of these tactics were laid bare Tuesday by the release of a report from the inspector general's office of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which says former chair Ken Tomlinson repeatedly broke federal law in his efforts to counter a perceived liberal bias in public broadcasting.

As many pundits noted when Tomlinson's actions first came to light, the CPB was initially created to insulate public broadcasting from political pressure -- a significant concern, given the level of funding which comes from Congress.

Instead, the IG's report concludes Tomlinson violated the law through actions such as being too involved in the creation of a PBS show featuring the Wall Street Journal's reliably conservative editorial board and imposing political standards on the search for CPB's president (a job which eventually went to former Republican National Committee co-chair Patricia Harrison). The report also criticized Tomlinson's move to hire a White House employee to help draft a plan for creating independent ombudsmen for CPB and secretly hire an analyst with conservative ties to monitor PBS programs for bias.

Tomlinson, who resigned from the CPB board following closed-door meetings where a draft of the IG's report was discussed, released a statement with the report denying its conclusions.

But anyone who has monitored the odd story of Tomlinson's clumsy efforts to intimidate public broadcasting programmers recognizes the truth in this recounting. It only highlights the futility of conservatives' attempts to dismantle public broadcasting -- which remains a popular resource with the people and has evolved new revenue streams to reduce dependence on the government.

Given the growing unpopularity of the Iraq war, a coming fight over Samuel Alito's Supreme Court nomination, ongoing efforts to recover from Hurricane Katrina and the looming midterm elections next year -- along with the public drubbing Tomlinson has taken from the IG -- hopefully, Republicans will conclude they have enough pressing concerns without taking on Kermit the Frog and Jim Lehrer.

SHORT TAKES - LOCAL STYLE

The Weekly Planet has dished extensively on the September departure of its circulation director, saying Zarko Bajsanski was fired amid speculation he was inaccurately reporting the number of copies of the free weekly returned each week. Until recently, both the circulation director and assistant circulation director received financial incentives to keep returns below four percent, says a story posted on the newspaper's web site.

The questions left: Despite assurances from Planet management, will this affect their official circulation numbers, which are assembled by an independent auditing company? And will this breach of trust affect how advertisers feel about the Planet? Or other free weeklies, such as tbt?

Perhaps readers will find out in tomorrow's Weekly Planet print edition.

And the Orlando Sentinel has announced plans to cut a "limited number of positions," following circulation figures revealed last week showing an 11 percent circulation weekday ciruclation drop from 2004. Dramatic proof of the kinds of staff reductions the industry feared would follow disappointing circulation figures.

Jennifer Porter and Race: Can Media Make a Difference Now?

It was a scene that seemed depressingly familiar.

Packed into the Hillsborough NAACP's small headquarters in Tampa Monday night, a crowd of 50 or so people watched officials from local and regional arms of the civil rights group denounce seeming disparities in justice meted out to black and non-black people who have committed the same crime.

Seven cameras from an array of local TV news outlets watched as NAACP officials ticked off the crimes and punishments:

William Thornton IV, a first-time offender, was told by a public defender to plead no contest to vehicular homicide charges in a crash that killed two people. In September, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

(Meus in report on WTVT-Ch. 13)

Jean Claude Meus, an immigrant from Haiti, was driving a truck which crashed near Wauchula, killing a mother and her 8-year-old child. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison, despite the fact that he didn't leave the scene, called police and two sisters of the woman killed believe Meus' claim that he was not impaired or asleep during the accident.

And, of course, Tampa dance teacher Jennifer Porter was recently sentenced to house arrest and probation after fleeing the scene of an accident in which she killed two children. Despite the fact that her car was cleaned of evidence and she waited days to come forward, she received less than the three years maximum prison sentence made possible by a plea deal drafted by her attorney -- one of Tampa's best criminal attorneys, Barry Cohen.

Meus and Thorton are black. Porter, who is part Cuban, is widely perceived to be white.

"The initial response is outrage, naturally," said NAACP vice president Curtis Stokes, a fomer probation officer who now works as a bank executive. "Race does matter - I think."

But while local media reports emphasized their complaints about the Porter case, several local NAACP officials expressed resignation about her sentence, given that the killed children's mother signed off on Porter's plea deal and did not respond to their early efforts to contact her.

Instead, the group hopes to enlist the national NAACP to help Thornton and Meus -- publicity savvy attorney John Trevena, now handling Meus' case, was front and center with the trucker's fiancee and the victim's sister Monday. They've also scheduled a town hall meeting for Dec. 1 at Beulah Baptist Church, 1006 W Cypress St., Tampa, FL .

Sensitive to the anguish on all sides and wary of sparking a seismic wave of comunity outrage, I think local outlets have held back a bit in commenting on the Porter case' implications (indeed, it took us a week to write an editorial condemning the light sentence, and North Suncoast columnist Andrew Skerritt has offered our most pointed commentary so far).

Contrast this to the furor that erupted following the handcuffing of a black elementary school student in St. Petersburg, and the ironies of media coverage emerge once again. While that media madness sparked worldwide headlines which obscured and obliterated the real issues, these cases -- which could have benefitted from a little national attention -- have received little notice outside the Tampa Bay area.

As rumors swirl that Geraldo Rivera and Al Sharpton may get more involved, I couldn't help wondering whether much of this was too little, too late. Meus has already lost an appeal -- a petiton to the governor seems his last resort -- and Porter's slap on the wrist was written when her plea deal was approved.

Unfortunately, without the kind of galvanizing footage which placed a 5-year-old on TV screens across the country, these issues probably won't get the kind of widespread examination they deserve.

Journalism's Sausage Factory Under Serious Scrutiny

Details of the Watergate break-in. The CIA's practice of whisking suspected terrorists to countries which allowing interrogation through torture in a practice called rendition.

The news that FBI investigators use national security letters to secretly probe the online use, library activities and telephone calls of U.S. citizens who are not themselves suspected of terrorism -- to the tune of 30,000 letters a year.

These are all important stories involving government activity which may have required conversations with journalists about secret or classified material to complete. And, as Washington Post Media critic Howard Kurtz reports today, the government is pressing a prosecution which could increasingly criminalize such conversations.

In the case Kurtz writes about, two pro-Israel lobbyists are under prosecution for calling journalists to discuss a story tip which came from a Pentagon analyst -- calls law enforcement taped using wiretaps. Suddenly, as the dust from the CIA leak case continues to swirl, journalists once again face the possiblity of being called to testify about sources whom they may not even have included in a story.

While it does raise important questions about whether journalists have the right to discuss classified information with secret sources without incurring the wrath of prosecutors, it also highlights another important point.

At a time when journalists seem under more scrutiny than ever before, our methods matter nearly as much as our results.

It's something that struck me weeks ago while listening to a co-worker of Judith Miller's explain what she is now saying in public -- that she would never have actually referred to Scooter Libby as a "former Hill staffer" in a news story, and only agreed to the attribution to hear what he had to say.

How do we know this? Well, she says so.

New York magazine columnist Kurt Andersen said something similar in a June column titled Welcome to the Sausage Factory, noting that journalists sometimes have to use what he called "unattractive journalistic techniques" such as extensive use of anonymous sources, excessive flattery or badgering sources to get information for stories.

He's right, of course. But I'm convinced the lassez faire, what-can-you-do-about-it? attitude displayed in his column will come back to haunt journalists if widely displayed. Because our audiences have a quickly shrinking tolerance for dubious methods, and courts are giving us less wiggle room than ever.

It's a dynamic I saw back in August, when Bill O'Reilly highlighted portions of former St. Petersburg Times reporter Jim Harper's conversations with indicted former USF professor Sami Al-Arian. Harper seemed to be speaking sympathetically to Al-Arian to get him to open up, but a transcript of the conversation -- recorded by law enforcement through a wiretap -- made the reporter look a bit too friendly.

Now, more than ever, journalists must realize such ethical lines don't just ensure accurate information . It may sound naive or pollyannish to some, but such standards also allow consumers to trust what they're reading, because they can know our methods are as ethical as our results.

Tampa Bay Odds and Ends

As a tribute to my online pal Jim Lamb, who has decided to take a hiatus from his fine Tampa Bay Media blog, I'll drop a little knowledge on some local stuff.

ANOTHER PORTER-STYLE INJUSTICE
For those of you who still can't believe Jennifer Porter won't spend a day in jail for killing two black children with her car and hiding for days, check out a story aired Thursday by WTVT-Ch. 13 investigative reporter Doug Smith, who found a black truck driver serving 15 years in a Florida prison for an accident in which two white people were killed.

(trucker Jean Claude Meus as featured in Smith's report)

According to Smith's story, this truck driver had the misfortune of having his accident in Wauchula, an isolated central Florida town known for its backward race politics. Despite the fact that he immeditely called police and had evidence he wasn't under the influence of anything or sleepy, he was convicted of vehicular homicide and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Partly inspired by Meus' case and partly by dismay over the Porter case, NAACP chapters in St. Petersburg, Tampa and Clearwater have joined forces with officials from the National Bar Association to present a press conference and community discussion on sentencing disparities.

CORRECTION: My first blog posting had an incorrect address. The event is scheduled for 6 p.m. Monday at the Hillsborough NAACP's branch office in Tampa, 308 E. Dr. Martin Luther King Dr.

Seems it is long past time for the community to start talking about who ends up in prison, who doesn't and why.

The St. Pete Times published the first installment of its exhaustive look at the Porter case, crafted by Pulitzer winner Tom French, feature writer Chris Goffard and news reporter Jamie Thompson. Read The Hard Road here.

TWO TRIBUNE ZONED EDITIONS ENDING
Tampa Tribune executive editor Janet Weaver confirmed to me Friday that the newspaper will soon discontinue both its Pinellas and Central zone editions. The Central zone, which encompasses parts of downtown, Ybor City and even west toward the Fairgrounds, ends next Saturday, Nov. 20, while the Pinellas zone's final edition is Nov. 21.


(Trib editor Janet Weaver)

Weaver emphasized at least four times that this doesn't mean the newspaper is walking away from coverage of the areas served by the zoned editions. Instead, reporters and editors will be reshuffled to get more Central zone material into the South Tampa zone and more Pinellas stories into the main metro and A sections.

"We've got to make sure these stories don't disappear from the newspaper," Weaver said Friday. "Newspapers in many cases relegate certain kinds of coverage to the zone editions and say, 'We're done with that.' But if you're not doing those stories in metro or 1A, or places where readers can see it, you're only doing 35 percent of the job."

What this seems to me, is the local manifestation of a national trend; with newspapers anticipating huge increases in newsprint costs next year, more outlets are focusing on subscribers who make them the most advertising revenue, while finding ways to cut down on newsprint usage.

The Tribune's struggle will be to convince readers that they haven't sacrificed coverage of Pinellas to save cash, and convince Central zone residents -- especially the poorer black folks who have seen Media General's committment to Hispanic readers amped up in recent years -- they haven't scaled down coverage of their communities to focus on the wealthier residents of South Tampa.

MORE DEGGANS THAN YOU CAN STAND

In case this pitiful stuff isn't enough for you, I made three other media appearances where you can check my wit and wisdom:

Friday morning, I appeared on Ed Gordon's NPR show News and Notes on a roundtable which included New York Daily News columnist E.R. Shipp and former Emerge editor George Curry.

Thursday night, I was a guest on Tampa Digital Studio's Media Talk, a podcast/webcast/rad o show on media issues hosted by Janet Scherer and Michael Piotrowski.

And the good folks at Stuck in the '80s let me get a little serious, talking politics and social change during the Reagan Years during their podcast this week (thanks Gina and Steve!). After 20 minutes trading stories on Reaganomics and Willie Horton, and I was ready to dig up the ol' Gipper and take him out again....

Odds and Ends: Lots of Little Stuff Gets My Goat These Days

If you want to know why an otherwise rational public body might lose its mind when deciding how to schedule school holidays, blame one force:

The media.

Not so much the local and national news services who carried stories on the Hillsborough School District's original decision to put some distance between its schedule of school holidays and religious observances.

But the shrill braying of the conservative-oriented media echo chamber, which seized on the story of the board's vote and cast it as a God-vs-heathens debate which eventually shamed this hapless body back into tying school vacation days to specific religious holidays.

My old pal Bill O'Reilly, in particular, featured the issue at least four times in the last 2 1/2 weeks on his Fox News Channel show, The O'Reilly Factor -- complete with shrill appearances by Hillsborough County commisioners Brian Blair and "Help Me" Ronda Storms.

O'Reilly seems to have a thing for the Tampa Bay area, featuring commentary about issues, events or newspapers here about 20 times in the last six months (many times, I'll admit, he has complained about the St. Petersburg Times -- from our insistence that Sami Al-Arian get a fair trial, to our contention that prosecutor Mark King should follow the law in determining whether to charge John Couey's roommates with a crime in the Jessica Lundsford case)

What is disappointing about these diatribes is the insistence that public institutions should turn their direction themselves over to the will of a presumed majority. Forget about protecting the rights of all citizens or considering subtlety in public policy. And pundits such as O'Reilly, well aware of the power that comes from making their audience feel like a victimized group, know how to generate controversy and viewership by bullying public officials into seeing things their way.

O'Reilly even took on the Tampa Tribune, hardly considered a liberal bastion, because columnist Dan Ruth had the nerve to challenge his assertion that a school board member was pressured not to appear on his show, when the official said she chose to attend her daughter's soccer game (Ruth, unfortunately, had to eat a little crow after the newspaper ran a correction to his assertion that O'Reilly was a "serial sexual harasser," when the Fox News anchor settled the one sexual harassment allegation against him without admitting wrongdoing.) This, despite the fact that the Tribune editorial pages opposed the school board's action in the first place.

Without doubt, Hillsborough school officials handled the situation clumsily. And now that the School Board has caved to the pressure, viewers are left with a public debate which was clouded, not clarified, by a component of the national media whose success depends on inflaming hot-button social issues nationwide. A troubling trend, indeed.

DON'T HATE THE COOP-STER, HATE THE GAME
I have a tough time understanding why all the long knives are out for newly-ascendant CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. To hear certain critics and letterwriters tell it, a no-talent hack with blue-eyes just pushed out God's gift to TV journalism when Cooper unseated Aaron Brown to become the new face of CNN.

I understand that reaction. As someone who interviewed Brown several times, I liked him personally and really liked his obvious respect for and consumption of newspapers. But Brown also wasn't willing to do the kind of globe-trotting, always on camera coverage that has increasingly become CNN's strategy. And a little of the introspective, overly-intellectualized reporting that was Brown's trademark (along with fellow ABC refugee Jeff Greenfield) goes a long way in any medium.

The fact is, casting Cooper's rise as the victory of a callow superficiality over a real journalist disrespects the solid reporting Cooper has done over the years at CNN, gives Brown too much leeway for his own shortcomings and shortchanges the logical decision to make the face of CNN fit the focus of its coverage and target audience.

CRITIQUE THIS
If the nation's TV writers want something to complain about, consider MSNBC's decision to hire Maury Povich and Connie Chung to host a weekend morning talk show (although, considering the fact that the last two people to have such a gig were wrestler-turned-politician Jesse Ventura and talk radio racist Michael Savage, perhaps the decision wasn't so bad, after all)

To get a sense of what viewers may be in for, consider recent topics for Povich's syndicated talk show Maury, and Chung's now-canceled CNN show, Connie Chung Tonight.

Povich topics: "Paternity Tests Revealed -- Cheaters Exposed"; "I Had Sex with Two Cousins: Who's My Baby's Daddy?"; "She Let Her Looks Go...Make My Wife Sexy Again!"

Chung topics: Jehovah's Witness members accused of child abuse; Substance from human joints used to eliminate wrinkles; Overweight fliers sue Southwest Airlines for forcing them to buy two tickets.

Of course, when Chung was canceled after nine months on air, her CNN show was attracting about 1 million viewers. Her successor, Fox News refugee Paula Zahn, attracted about 791,000 recently, compared to O'Reilly's 3.1 million viewers.

Sigh.

BASSACKWARDS TV INDUSTRY
Want to know how screwed up the TV industry is? Poor ratings have forced Fox to cancel its creative family sitcom Arrested Development, while ABC has handed a full season's worth of shows to Freddie Prinze Jr.'s mind-numbing comedy, Freddie.

I've become convinced that, in a sea of mostly-middling product, success comes down to canny scheduling and public relations more than anything. How else to explain the hit status of ABC's mediocre drama about a female president, Commander-In-Chief, while NBC's smart, bold reinvention of its White House drama, The West Wing, can't catch a break?

Yes, I know lots of critics carped about West Wing's live debate episode, but I think those know-it-alls have got it wrong. What did they expect from an hourlong episode centered on a debate? A guest appearance by George Clooney as a madman assassin? Instead, we got two actors with presence and energy delivering the kind of fantasy debate we wish our real-life leaders had the guts to present on live television. Alan Alda, in particular, showed his stage chops, performing so well a Zogby poll showed he turned around an audience skewed mightily against him before the episode aired.

West Wing is attempting a courageous makeover -- changing lead characters in midseason while following an election storyline which has allowed them to dramatize contemporary events, such as the CIA leak case. And the same critics who constantly complain about the lack of smart TV programming now have the gall to keep taking shots at the show.

That's better....got lots off my chest. Anything you'd like to get off yours?

A Tale of Two Journalism Albatrosses

(Miller and Mapes: The M&Ms of journalism scandal)

The New York Times finally made official what many predicted weeks ago; that Judith Miller would not have another Times byline anytime soon.

Actually, that isn't exactly true. Miller, who spent more than two weeks negotiating her "retirement" from the newspaper, will have a letter published tomorrow in which she answers her many critics (actually, she doesn't answer them very well, but that letter and other rebuttals are contained on her web site, found here. The upshot: her former editor Jill Abramson, the team who assubled the 6,000-word analysis of her situation and many others have lied or distorted her explanations for her many transgressions. Riiight).

This critic can't help seeing a parallel between Miller and another journalistic pariah trying to redeem herself in the media this week, former CBS News producer Mary Mapes.

The two both have impressive career achievements (Miller was part of a team which won a Pulitzer in 2002 and has written four books; Mapes helped uncover the Abu Ghraib torture scandal in Iraq). Both are highly driven women with oddly close relationships to powerful men (Miller/Scooter Libby; Mapes/Dan Rather). Both seem to have been undone by excesses bred from the journalistic lattitude their achievements earned them.

And neither seem able to admit the true depths of their mistakes.

Mapes has been making the journalistic rounds this week -- with ABC News, the Washington Post and the Buffalo News, among other outlets -- flogging her take on the Memogate scandal to push her new book, Truth and Duty.

In such interviews, she seems to act as if merely denying the impact of her actions -- failing to fully vet the source of controversial memos regarding President Bush's National Guard service -- is enough.

"I don't think I committed bad journalism. I really don't," she told ABC reporter Brian Ross. Later, she noted, "I think the media's had more fun beating itself up in the last five years than it has asking hard questions of the administration or government officials, and I think that's wrong."

In other words, blame other reporters, blame a clueless public, blame CBS News and Viacom executives -- blame everyone but her.

Miller offers a similar lack of remorse in her comments about leaving the Times: "I have chosen to resign because over the last few months, I have become the news, something a New York Times reporter never wants to be," she says in a story posted today on the Times' Web site. In that piece, she also notes that even before going to jail, she had "become a lightning rod for public fury over the intelligence failures that helped lead our country to war." She said she regretted "that I was not permitted to pursue answers" to questions about those intelligence failures.

In other words, blame my editors, blame other reporters, blame a clueless public. Anyone, it seems, but her.

Unfortunately, the rest of journalism world must live with the consequences of their hubris. From Miller, we have recent court decisions undermining the ability of journalists to keep sources secret and flawed reportage in the country's most powerful newspaper which made the case for war in Iraq. Mapes helped conservatives attack the mainstream media for liberal bias, distracted the public from legitimate questions about Bush's service record on the eve of a presidential election and severely wounded the crediblity of CBS News as it was preparing for Rather's inevitable departure.

A friend of mine once diagnosed such insolence, calling it "a glorious lack of shame." Indeed, neither Mapes nor Miller seem willing or able to apologize for the damage they have done -- particularly, to those whose reputations were damaged by defending them -- invoking everything from corporate politics to sexism in a shameless attempt to avoid culpability.

There are some who have blamed Miller's and Mapes' missteps on laziness or shortcuts. I don't buy that for a moment. Both women were legendary workaholics known for going the extra mile to nail a story. But both also developed that peculiar tunnel vision which can be the downfall of so many investigative reporters, in which they "know" the truth of their reporting, regardless of whether their evidence proves it (fellow NYT investigative reporter, longtime Miller friend and former St. Pete Times reporter David Barstow sort of defended his pal at a talk in Utah here).

With a glitzy Web site for her book, a much-needed makeover and a slick agency handling her speaking engagements, expects to see much, much more of Mapes in the weeks to come (she's due on the O'Reilly Factor Thursday night). Ditto for Miller, who faced rumors of a book deal the minute she emerged from prison, has made a handful of public appearances to advocate a Federal Shield law for journalists and is scheduled to appear on Larry King Live Thursday night.

In a world of relentless, continuous media exposure, the impact of these journalistic outcasts will be felt for some time to come.

Numbers Tell a Sad Story for Florida Newspapers

Sometimes knowing bad news is on the way doesn't prepare you much for when it arrives.

Industry experts expected the latest circulation figures for newspapers to be awful: attrition continues from readers gravitating to online news sources (or no news sources), and the hurricanes which keep battering Florida haven't helped.

Still, it was jarring to see newspaper circulation figures for the six-month period ending in September that showed an overall daily circulation decline of 2.6 percent among the top 789 newspapers. For 621 papers analyzed on Sunday, the decline was 3.1 percent. (See numbers for the top 50 papers, daily and Sunday, here.)

(among the big papers, The New York Times saw a gain of .4 percent, or 5,133 subscribers, the Star-Ledger of Newark increased .01 percent or 50 subscribers, and USA Today only lost .5 percent, or 13,518 subscribers)

Among top newspapers in Florida, the news wasn't any better. Significant daily circulation declines ranged from 3 percent at Mother Times to 11 percent at the Orlando Sentinel. Sunday declines ranged from the times' 2.5 percent to nearly 9 percent at the Sentinel.

The total daily circulation decline for Florida's top five newspapers was 64,117 subscribers from the same period last year, including 28,654 lost at the Sentinel, 15,745 lost at the Miami Herald, and 10,497 disappeared at the St. Petersburg Times.

Sunday circulation losses in Florida totalled 73,703 households, including 32,599 at the Sentinel, 15,343 at the Herald, 14,241 at the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel and 10,179 at the Times.

The newspaper with lowest changes: the Tampa Tribune, which only saw daily declines of .07 percent (1,661 subscribers) and Sunday losses of .04 percent (1,341 subscribers).

These figures come at a time when the state's population is surging -- up 1.4 million from 2000 to 2004, according to the U.S. Census.

So why aren't the state's daily newspapers connecting with more of its new residents?

Given the reader reaction to my last newspapers-in-crisis column, I'm sure some may say the performance of the editorially conservative Tampa Tribune may indicate reader reaction to liberal bias elsewhere -- specifically, at the Times. But the Tribune has also aggressively courted new residents moving into the exploding Hillsborough suburbs, so that is also a likely factor (losing less than the other guys made the Times the largest newspaper in Florida, so the Tribune's current numbers are notable).

What do you think? Can newspaper companies turn the tide of sinking circulation? And if so, how?

Happy Birthday To Me -- I Think

Yours truly turns the big 4-0 today. And because I write for a major newspaper I get to grouse about it in print. Check it out here.

This anniversary also marks 10 years working at the St. Petersburg Times. And every time I read another headline about the bloodletting at newspapers owned by public companies, I thank goodness I heard about a music critic gig in the Tampa Bay area after turning down overtures from the Florida Times Union. (If you want a look at my very first Times column, see it here)

I expect to have a great day today -- 24 hours before the Audit Bureau of Circulations delivers more bad news for the newspaper industry. Have some cake for me, wherever you are today.

The Boss and Me: Another Springsteen Story

Reflections on Bruce Springsteen can be a tiresome affair in newspapers.

Because most of us newspaper writers are of a certain age, we all remember either his mid-'70s heyday or his mid-'80s resurgence (seemed like every other dorm room my freshman year at Indiana University had the Born in the USA album cover tacked to their beer-stained walls).

Still, today's Floridian features a great collection of stories on staffers' first brush with The Boss in concert -- in honor of Springsteen's gig in Tampa tonight.

But my former compatriots in Floridian forgot to ask me. You see, before I came to the Times, I was pop music critic for Springsteen's hometown newspaper, the Asbury Park Press. In that time, I scored the first exclusive interviews with Springsteen the paper had published in 20 years. And the story of how I landed that interview makes a pretty good yarn by itself.

Bruce had a longtime grudge with the Asbury Park paper, partially because the guy who was managing editor in the '70s hated rock 'n' roll and refused to put him on the cover of the paper -- even after he appeared on the cover of Time and Newsweek on the same month. The Press also did dumb newspaper stuff like publish the address of his neighbor -- telling readers Springsteen lived next door -- thereby ensuring swarms of fans would show up on his doorstep.

(Crystal's holding the guitar here)

When I took over as music critic in 1993, however, I had an in. Crystal Taliafero, the woman who took Clarence Clemons place in the band Springsteen assembled after dissolving the E Street Band in the early '90s, was a friend and former bandmate. So when I saw Bruce for the first time backstage at a Southside Johnny concert near the Asbury boardwalk, I made a little small talk about Crystal and a show I saw of theirs in Pittsburgh before leaving him alone -- to his visible relief.

(rock legend Dion, murder suspect /producer Phil Spector and The Boss)

Months later, he was sitting in with Dion at a hole-in-the-wall club in nearby Long Branch N.J., and the "Bruce Kooks" -- as we used to call rabid fans -- had already run out to pay phones to get their friends to come down. Turns out, I was friends with the drummer and bass player in Dion's band, who I knew from my time playing with blues bands in Pittsburgh. So when the gig was over, I hung out with my boys trading stories and Bruce walked by, saying, "Hi Eric.''

Cool. The Boss knew my name.

So more months pass. And those guys who were playing with Dion wound up in the studio with Bruce as part of Pittsburgh singer/songwriter Joe Grushecky's backing band, The Houserockers. Springsteen had always liked his work and decided to produce a record for him. When it was done, they held five record release concerts across the east coast, starting with a gig in nearby Sea Bright N.J. That day, I hung out with the band and watched sound check with no idea of what was coming.

Former E Street guitarist "Miami" Steve Van Zant stopped by to sit in, as did former drummer Max Weinberg. Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins were there, trying to persuade Springsteen to write some music for the film that would be "Dead Man Walking." (I still remember how Robbins leaned away from me, when I tapped his shoulder to ask him a question during the raucous concert). Eventually 20,000 people came to a club built to hold 2,000, shutting down the only major road in or out of the town and trapping me inside the building with no way to file a story.

(If you could pan left a few degrees, you would see me in this photo, begging Tim Robbins for the time of day)

Since I had missed deadline, I hung out awhile after the show was over, and my friend, Houserockers drummer Joffo Simmons, came out and excitedly said, "Bruce wants to talk to you, man!" So, he ushers me into the cramped backstage area, past a skeptical Robbins and Sarandon, through Van Zandt and Weinberg (who I had written about a while ago) and to The Man himself.

The only place we could talk was the bathroom, so I let him have the seat of honor (I believe my words were, "You're the king, so why don't you take the throne?") and we talked about why he was helping Joe, where he was in his career and why it was so important for rock's middle-age artists to stick together.

(Joe and Bruce a few years later, at the legendary Stone Pony nightclub in 2000)

"Joe is a grown man making grown-up rock 'n' roll -- so if it pushes you to the margins in the industry, what can you do?" said Springsteen, who also seemed to be talking about himself -- perhaps seeing Grushecky's struggle as the way things might have been in a luckless universe. "You get guys who are Joe's and my age (he was 45 then), and it gets a lot tougher in this business. I've been in this business for a while -- and I'm not sure what the (industry) bases its decisions on."

I tell this story all the time during journalism classes to show the power of persistence and respect for sources. Springsteen and I talked a couple more times after that and then I left for the music critic's job in St. Petersburg.

But I never forgot how cool it was to have a superstar rocker call me by my first name like a friend.

The Power of Diversity in Media and In Life

I sit here typing this one hour after completing one of the most satisfying experiences in recent memory. I helped present the Tampa Bay Association of Black Journalists' Griot Drum Awards.

Some of you may be thinking: Why another journalism awards contest? Others may carp: Why isn't there a Tampa Bay Association of White Journalists? My response is simply that diversity in media is an important goal -- especially here in the Tampa Bay area where it seems so difficult for people to talk honestly across race lines. And tonight, for three hours at the Poynter Institute, we gathered to honor those who have excelled in such conversations -- handing out 17 awards to area journalists and $1,300 to students of color pursuing journalism degrees.

I serve as TBABJ president, so I'm not the least bit objective on this subject. But I remain convinced that by celebrating great work, you can also encourage more of it. So here's a list of the winners from tonight's contest. Keep your eye out for their bylines, and encourage them to keep up the good work.

Features, Photo/Graphics – Carrie F. Pratt, St. Petersburg Times, “Splash Down.”

Spot News, TV – Rod Carter, Katy Hennig, WFLA-Ch. 8, “Right to Vote.”

Non-Deadline Reporting, TV (tie) – Nancy Johnson, WTSP-Ch. 10, “In Their Own Words.”; Denise White, WTVT-Ch. 13, “Manhattan Casino.”

Investigative/Series, TV – Yolanda Fernandez, Jim Webb, WFLA, “Johnny Long.”

Community/Public Affairs, TV – Joy Petit, WFTS-Ch. 28, “Achievement Gap.”

Sports News, TV – Dave Reynolds, Bob Hansen, WFLA, “John Cruz.”

Spot News, Radio – Mark Antokas, WMNF-88.5 FM, “Zephyrhills Rescinds MLK St.”

Feature, Radio – Bobbie O’Brien, WUSF-89.7 FM, “Maxwell Maxims.”

Documentary/Series, Radio – Mark Antokas, WMNF, “Zephryhills/MLK Street Series.”

Public Affairs, Radio – Bobbie O’Brien, WUSF, “Negro League: Final Payback.”

Features, Print (above 100,000 circ.) – Ron Matus, Denise Watson Batts and Cathy Wos, St. Petersburg Times, “The Price for the Heights.”

Community Affairs, Print (above 100,000 circ.) – St. Petersburg Times Staff, “Reading, Writing Race.”

Sports Features, Print (above 100,000 circ.) – Dave Scheiber, St. Petersburg Times, “Bubba’s World.”

Features, Print (below 100,000 circ.) – Eric Snider, Weekly Planet, “Blues Cruise (Highway 61 Revisited).”

The New Face of CNN...

...Is Anderson Cooper.

Which is no surprise to those who saw Cooper's zeal to dive into big stories, his reputation-making turn covering Hurricane Katrina and his impish appearances beside old school curmudgeon Aaron Brown on what has always supposed to be the channel's flagship program, the 10 p.m. show NewsNight.

Indeed, one might say the last, belated casualty of Katrina has turned out to be Brown himself.

CNN a few hours ago made official what had been rumored for days, that starting Monday Cooper will helm an expanded, two-hour Anderson Cooper 360 airing at 10 p.m. (perhaps taking advantage of the reruns which start on some competing cable newschannels at 11 p.m.) Wolf Blitzer's made-for-satire Situation Room moves an hour down to 7 p.m., also airing from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays.

This game of musical chairs has left the 56-year-old Brown without a seat as the music stops, pushing him out the door after four years at CNN.

Certainly, part of this is the ongoing transition between old and new-school anchors. Brown was always the overly intellectual curmudgeon, looking over his spectacles at the day's news events, while Cooper was the puppydog-eager talent who would get up to his elbows in a story, sometimes before he really knew what it was.

Brown held up newspapers to show off the next day's headlines; Cooper surfed the Internet over his on-set laptop. Brown affected a detached, molasses-slow approach to coverage, Cooper offered lots of stories with equal portions journalistic focus and wry interpretation. In an internal memo, CNN president Jon Klein kissed off Brown with the typical "leaving to spend time with his family" line -- as if forcing him to work with Cooper on NewsNight didn't put the writing on the wall weeks ago.

(Klein later told me that their "tentpole" strategy of programming -- featuring Blitzer and Cooper over five hours of programming each weekday -- "didn't leave that many options open for Aaron; we mutually agreed the best decison was to part ways.")

But this is also about CNN having the smarts to replace a guy who sometimes treated his job like it was a bit of an imposition -- could you imagine Coop missing coverage of the Columbia shuttle disaster to play in a golf tournament? -- with an enthusiastic presence who embodies most everything the new CNN is trying to be. Coop is youthful middle age, journalism smarts, boundless energy and an appropriate level of charm/humor.

There are those who will decry his now-official status as the It Anchor. But Cooper is the guy who writes columns for Details magazine and appears everywhere from Oprah to Late Night with David Letterman. And to get viewers just like him to stop lapping up Greta Van Susteren on Fox, CNN needed to go with their best guy. And at a time when the old guard has already pretty much left the building at NBC, CBS and ABC, it makes sense CNN would go through the same transition now.

Best of all, he's not Ryan Seacrest. Yet.

Mary Mapes Makes a Mess -- Again

I have just finished reading Vanity Fair's excerpt of former CBS producer Mary Mapes' new book on her role in the infamous Memogate stories which cost four CBS News staffers their jobs and pushed Dan Rather prematurely out of the anchor chair. And I am pissed.

Not at CBS, which is cast as the ultimate corporate weasel in Mapes' 11-page story.

But at Mapes, who offers a self-serving, illogical, insulting diatribe which mostly blames others besides herself and Rather while subtly proving many of the criticisms leveled at her and the story by an independent investigation.

For those who haven't got the stamina to wade through Mapes' self-pitying monologue, I'll hit the troubling high points here:

Mapes and Rather's story for 60 Minutes Wednesday centered on memos supposedly written by a man who was George W. Bush's commanding officcer in the Vietnam War-era Texas Air National Guard, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian. These memos expressed Killian's dismay over the preferential treatment Bush was getting as the son of a then-Congressman. Turns out, Mapes received the memos from Bill Burkett, a man she admits in her book "was generally viewed by the press as an anti-Bush zealot."

Burkett had been forced out of the National Guard in Texas and was angry at Bush. But when Burkett hands her the smoking gun to a story journalists have been chasing for years, Mapes admits she didn't initially press him for details on how he got the documents. Later, he named another guardsman as the source, but Mapes failed to find him before the first story aired -- almost immediately sparking doubts about the memos' authenticity.

In her excerpt, Mapes describes a horrifying conversation set up by CBS News president Andrew Heyward with himself, Rather, Mapes and CBS News executive Betsy West with Burkett as criticism was mounting against the story. In that call, Burkett admits initially lying to Mapes about where he got the memos, saying that a woman named Lucy Ramirez provided them by a third party delivered to him at a Houston livestock show.

"I looked around the room and saw that Betsy and Andrew were openmouthed, blinking, blinded by their sudden exposure to the weirdness that is and always will be Texas," Mapes writes, refusing to believe the pair might be astonished by the line of BS Burkett was feeding them. Or dismayed that the man who handed them the central evidence in the most-criticized 60 Minutes story in recent years was now admitting he lied to them about the source of the documents -- saying they came from a woman he doesn't know and can't produce.

Or maybe they just realized their careers were over.

Mapes also admits in her book that only two of the four document experts hired by CBS authenticated the documents. What she doesn't mention is that the only expert to see all six documents CBS obtained from Burkett, handwriting analyst Marcel Matley, later said he only authenticated Kilian's signature on two documents, not the contents of all six mem