May 8, 2004 - Saturday

Folks in the Pacific Northwest are reeling after the startling confession by former Oregon governor Neil Goldschmidt, who admitted to having sex with a 14-year old girl while he was mayor of Portland in the mid-1970's. The admission came in an interview with the Oregonian newspaper, but was driven by Willamette Weekly's publication of the results of a lengthy investigation into the sexual abuse, including copies of court documents. It's another instance demonstrating that free weekly papers can play a much bigger role in driving the news than they have here.

Gannett's reporters are only paid once, but the company is perfecting a system to reuse their work again and again, according to an interesting story on Gannett's corporate web site. And for more on Gannett's vision, check out this recent speech by a senior news executive.

Don't you love that Rumsfeld? The real problem, he argued yesterday, is that those photographs were illegally disclosed after the best efforts of his department to quash them. If those photographs had remained under wraps, reports of torture wouldn't have had the same traction. Although his spin is a bit warped, he properly points to the impact of digital cameras on news.

During a discussion of Rummie's testimony on the PBS News Hour last night, NY Times columnist David Brooks pointed to the "problem" of war fighting in this media age where formerly hidden details are so widely available.

DAVID BROOKS: That's a fundamental problem we have in this country, or in this age really. World War II there were atrocities, Civil War there were atrocities, Revolutionary War. Can we fight a war in media age - that's a fundamental problem. There were atrocities in every war. The atrocities don't necessarily disgrace the war or de-legitimize the war. But in this case, we have a specific problem.

Like Rumsfeld, he's right but bass ackwards. War is the problem, and the ability to bypass the government controlled or self-restrained media through digital and Internet technologies may provide a solution, if (and a big IF) people are disgusted enough by the realities of war to refuse to demand that fighting cease.

We're worried about losing another tree to erosion in the small park at the other end of Kaaawa. The outlet of the stream shifted several weeks ago and is very close to undermining at least one of the remaining trees. Several other trees have been lost in recent years.

May 7, 2004 - Friday

Congratulations to those earning awards in the Hawaii Publishers Association annual competition. Both the Star-Bulletin and Advertiser today describe their winning entries.

It must have been tough for Star-Bulletin writer Rob Perez to watch rising milk prices making headlines across the country over the last week. Late last year, Rob was digging into why Hawaii consumers pay twice the national average for milk when he was directed to drop the story by top Star-Bulletin management apparently worried about the reaction of supermarket chains (read BIG advertisers). Rob did as he was instructed, but he also dropped his "Raising Cane" column, which won top honors from the publishers group in the "editorial column" category yesterday.

I was introduced to the web site of Ridenbaugh Press, which covers political news from the Pacific Northwest, when the site's owner, Randy Stapilus, asked permission to quote my recent suggestion of what might result from covering sports the way we cover government. It's a good way to get the pulse of NW politics.

A little poem arrived yesterday from Keith Chudzik, the former United Public Workers member who had been a ringleader among the "Pilau Boys" who challenged the leadership of Gary Rodrigues (and paid a personal price for doing so). Chudzik and his family are now living in Columbus, Ohio.

The New Republican-----Guard 

We got rid of Saddam,   
Who tortured those he didn't bomb.
Those who opposed him got the rack,
Or a poison gas attack.

But now, that the brute is gone,
The torture is still going on.
Is this war a clever ruse
To inflict yet more abuse?
Will Iraq's future be
More repeats of history?
The plan for peace is deeply marred
By this new Republican Guard.

Thanks, Keith!

May 6, 2004 - Thursday

[Late note: 7:35 Hawaiian Time. The 400,000th visitor stopped by sometime within the last hour or so, and now it's on to the half-million mark.]

Wall Street has moved much more quickly than the Pentagon or the White House in response to highly publicized allegations of prisoner mistreatment in Iraq and Afghanistan. Torture for hire apparently made for a profitable business attractive to investors, but when the inside story spilled out into public view, watch out. At least that was the basic assessment of a Standard & Poor's stock analyst who reviewed the situation of CACI in a BusinessWeek online column yesterday. CACI is a publicly traded company that supplies interrogators and other "civilian" contractors.

Caci International :
Downgrades to 2 STARS (avoid) from 4 STARS (accumulate)
Analyst: Massimo Santicchia

The stock has moved sharply lower, we think, on the potential negative impact of allegations that its some of its employees may have been involved in the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. Caci has been a major beneficiary of increased spending on national defense, and we estimate that 66% of fiscal 2004 (June) revenue will come from the Department of Defense business. The potential future negative consequences of the allegations, such as loss of business with the Dept. of Defense, prompt us to apply a higher risk premium in our discounted cash-flow model, which now yields a 12-month target price of $40, cut today from $55.

The Washington Post has been following Caci's attempts to cope with the allegations, including the statement by company officials that it has received no notification of any problems from the Defense Department and continues to provide services.

Meanwhile, Titan Corp., another public company linked to abuses in Abu Ghraib prison, was touted as a "buy" yesterday by the online investment service Motley Fool (never mind the laundry list of earlier corporate misdeeds, the bribes it reportedly paid to get business in many countries, or the illegal acts by some of its foreign "consultants").

Meanwhile, indications continue to mount that these were not aberrations of policy but accurate reflections of our policy. Simply replacing hoods with goggles, as suggested by the crew from Guantanamo, won't satisfy those who want to see standards of human rights upheld.

May 5, 2004 - Wednesday

Former Advertiser editor Jim Kelly is coming back to town, this time as editor of Pacific Business News. PBN made the announcement yesterday afternoon. No mention of it in today's Advertiser online that I could find, although the Star-Bulletin includes the news as a business brief.

I had to stop at the city office building yesterday to track down a copy of the building plans for our house, which turned out to be relatively easy. But seeing the security measures, from the barriers outside to the guards at the entrances, suddenly struck me as extremely odd. Why?

Well, here's a building designed as a refuge in case of a nuclear attack. The basement is designed as a shelter where city officials would wait out the aftermath of nuclear war. The rest of us would be toast, but they would be cozy in their underground shelter. I recall going on a civil defense tour some years ago where they showed off the building's features. Now the missile threat has largely been removed, yet we're more paranoid than ever. I guess it's a lesson in this concept of asymetrical warfare.

The conservative official counter at the top of the page is nearing 400,000. The 300,000 mark was passed just ten months ago, in early July 2003.

May 4, 2004 - Tuesday

Referring to the headline I was commenting on yesterday, one reader added: "It's like saying that getting hit by a truck saves a man from his struggle with cancer."

Speaking of headlines, another reader pointed to the Political File column in yesteray's Star-Bulletin, which led with an item about City Council member Barbara Marshall:

"Marshall recovers from tumor surgery at home"

"Sounds risky to me," he added. Yup, surgery is something you shouldn't try at home.

Kidding aside, let's all wish former journalist Marshall a speedy recovery.

Every year, a coalition of prosecutors and law enforcement push for ever more draconian responses to crime, and those concerned about civil liberties and rehabilitation of offenders push back against the vision of a police state. But both the Star-Bulletin and Advertiser gave the law enforcement crowd's calls for more wiretapping authority and harsher criminal sentencing a free ride in reporting yesterday.

Early in the session, House Speaker Calvin Say was open about his opposition to granting broader wiretapping powers because of concerns about basic civil liberties.

"Where does it stop?", he asked rhetorically about wiretapping during a one-hour session with my UH Outreach College class back in February. That's certainly been the concern with the federal Patriot Act, which gave sweeping new powers supposedly to combat terrorism but which have already begun to be used more generally.

But civil liberties weren't referred to by either paper in yesterday's reporting. Instead, both papers made it sound like a consensus approach was being sidetracked by recalcitrant Democrat legislators. The reality is quite different, as this is just a small round in the long-term and ongoing struggle between the basic principals of security and freedom. There should have been some hint of this dynamic in all the ink and broadcast time given this latest press conference.

May 3, 2004 - Monday

Cursor.org's "Media Patrol" today wends its way through diverse reporting on the wreckage of U.S. Iraq policy in the wake of the disclosures of prisoner abuse.

A New York Times editorial today concludes: "The invasion of Iraq, which has already begun to seem like a bad dream in so many ways, cannot get much more nightmarish than this."

Meda immediately reacted to a headline at the bottom of the front page in yesterday's Honolulu Advertiser: "Fatal crash, murder charges end Hawaii couple's struggle". It's not what it said. It's what it didn't say.

Murder charges didn't end their "struggle". It ended the lives of a pregnant woman and her 4-year old child.

It's a headline that masked the violence of the relationship described in the story--an abusive relationship that ended with the deaths of a former Hawaii woman and her child, and murder charges against her husband, also from the islands.

The headline makes it sound like the couple could have been involved in an accident in which someone else was killed, murder charges resulted, and somehow the experience allowed them to overcome their struggles as a couple.

The headline just seems to have unintentionally trivialized both the alleged murders and the preceeding pattern of abuse. The story was obviously a challenge to deal with. Enough said.

Ms. Kili was acting funny last week while Meda was away, spending an unusual amount of time outside. So when she didn't come in the night that Meda got home, I was concerned. First thing in the a.m., right after our walk, I treked out back through the 4-acres of state-owned land looking for her. That's her favorite hunting area in the photo. Luckily, Kili responded quickly to my calls and I carried her back up to the house.

But once inside she was acting "funny". It wasn't until she climbed into Meda's lap that we discovered a drooling abcess on her right rear. She must have been bitten earlier in the week and the wound, hidden from view, became infected. Now it had broken open and looked awful. So it was off to the vet for an emergency visit and another stash of antibiotics. We've had her inside for two days now, which is not simple with eight other cats wanting to go in and out, but she's about ready to face the world again.

Did I mention that I invested in the VCA animal hospital chain after realizing how much of our money was going into their coffers? The stock trades as WOOF.

May 2, 2004 - Sunday

One thing I've run into repeatedly while teaching two classes this semester is the long term decline in government reporting. My students talked to a city council member who pointed to the lack of broadcast news coverage of the council's activities. Just a few years ago, all the local television stations and both newspapers had full time city hall reporters. Now television has departed, returning only for specific, high-profile events.

There's a similar decline in reporting from the state capitol. While the two major dailies still maintain capitol bureaus, they operate with less than half the staff formerly assigned to cover the inner workings of the legislative process. As at the city, television is largely MIA, despite the efforts of Denby Fawcett.

The coverage that remains is shaped by the prevailing industry view that people aren't really interested in government or what government officials have to say. Instead, the desired focus is on the reflections of government, glimpses of how changes at the government level impact on or are viewed by "real" people. People, definitely not "process".

It's the same story nationally--pretty much across the board cuts in government coverage. There are critics from within the journalism community but, by and large, the trend continues.

Last week I got to thinking...what if sports were covered the same way? Don't worry about the boring details, the insider strategies, the nuts and bolts. Imagine Monday Night Football where the cameras broke off just as the key play began to unfold and, instead of capturing the play itself, jumps to someone shoving microphones into the faces of people across the street from the stadium to ask how they might be affected by the outcome of the play and the game. No more instant replays--too much of that procedural stuff. No need for complex statistics. This would allow economies to be gained by cutting staff and special effects. Save money and boost profits while offering more of those "how does it feel to be watching from the end zone" stories, or "what do spouses do on game night" insights.

There would, of course, be a loud backlash from a vocal minority. But within a few years, the decline in coverage would have its impact. Fewer people would learn the inside details of the game and both attendance and participation in high school and college games would begin falling, but the total audience might actually be expanded by all the soft coverage of football's impact. A few more years, though, and the decline would start. Most people would have a hard time remembering why football coverage used to be so riveting. Without many opportunities to learn about the game, participation rates would decline. NFL final scores would still get reported, but extended coverage would shift to "real people, real football" stories about wanna be jocks and their backyard games.

I'll have to work on the vision a bit, but I think declining coverage does lead to declining public interest and involvement. And although we can probably survive less interest in football, I'm not sure the same is true of the nuts and bolts of government.

And so it goes on this Sunday morning. I'm sure I've gotten myself in trouble now. But let me know what you think--I can take it. Oh, and don't foget to glance through the April morning photos that were posted yesterday.

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