Don't Ask, Don't Tell
Conservative blogger and ex-military man John Cole has done a marvelous job this week of analyzing the never-ending barrage of right-wing attacks against the mainstream media. Most recently, Cole discussed the popular perception of the press as anti-military:
The press isn't 'anti-military' per se, they're just profoundly ignorant of the subject they're covering. Ignorant of the culture, ignorant of the terminology, ignorant of the basic rules that govern the conduct of the people involved, and, worse, they don't care.
A rough analogy would be a paper that assigned a business reporter who didn't understand the distinction between a lock-out and a strike to cover a labor dispute.
I think this is the cause of most of the perceptions of bias around issues- it isn't usually out of mean-spiritedness, hatred, or any other of the malicious attributions forwarded, but out of a lack of exposure to a profoundly different values system.
Earlier this week, I expressed the opinion that journalists who do not have friends or relatives serving in the armed forces are fully capable of reporting on a war. However, Cole’s point highlights one of the primary downfalls of traditional journalism, where reporters are often assigned to cover a “beat” with little, or sometimes absolutely no, prior knowledge of the beat they’re supposed to cover. In these instances, reporters are forced to engage in quite a bit of research in order to familiarize themselves with the specific subject at hand, be it social services, sports, or politics.
When it comes to national politics, Washington correspondents are naturally more seasoned than the average reporter. Much of the war coverage seen in the major dailies is produced by men and women who began their careers covering the Vietnam War. In this respect, the most experienced, and arguably, the very best journalists in the country are working feverishly to provide us with the latest news from Iraq. Nevertheless, despite their lengthy tenure in the field, their inside sources, and their knowledge of the political landscape, it can be argued that even the most veteran reporters are not fully capable of providing their audience with the information and context necessary for understanding a war and its combatants because of a lack of exposure to both subjects.
John Cole refers to American journalists’ ignorance of their own military culture, which, while it is certainly part of the equation, is by no means where the buck stops. In my mind, just as frightening is the fact that our reporters seemingly have absolutely no working knowledge of Muslim culture or the history of recent Middle Eastern war. Right-leaning commentators are always talking about the lack of proper context in today’s mainstream news coverage regarding America’s war efforts, but yet nobody has even entertained the notion that perhaps we are being short-changed by journalists that are doing a distressingly atrocious job of offering Americans any kind of perspective on the war from Arab-Americans, for example, who may be able to provide some insight as to why this country is so despised in their motherland.
As much as right wingers and other media critics would like us to believe otherwise, the mainstream media has been remarkably stellar in exhibiting patriotic journalism during the course of the Iraqi war. From the nifty flying American flag logos to the glorification of notable war heroes, American reporters have done considerable justice to the war effort (although it’s never enough) by heralding the virtues of a free democracy and the nobility of our cause. Of course, not all journalists agree with the decision to go to war, but at the same time, they’re all doing their patriotic duty by constantly emphasizing America’s quest to rightfully spread democracy to a region that knows not what democracy is, while simultaneously portraying Iraqi resisters as sick, demented, ass-backwards lunatics that don’t know what’s good for them.
I’ll always remember a conversation I had with a friend of mine in the immediate aftermath of September 11th. One of her co-workers had died in the attack, and while describing her emotions to me, she suddenly paused, thought for a minute, and asked the $65,000 question:
“Joe, why do they hate us so much?” This is an inquiry that has resonated in my mind ever since that day, and in my opinion, the American media has contributed to my inability to formulate a reasonably educated answer. Investigative war journalists are supposed to provide perspective, even if that perspective hurts, because their purpose is not to help promote or detract from the war effort, but to help their readers understand the nature and magnitude of the conflict at hand, and why both parties believe it is worth fighting.
In responding to conservative claims that Newsweek’s false Koran desecration report served as a rallying cry for Islamic fundamentalists, John Cole offered these thoughts:
The Arab press and the Arab street may greatly exaggerate American media reports and anti-American stories, but I find it highly unlikely that the starting point for every jihadist is too much exposure to reports of abuse in the NY Times. Even if the media never covered any of these issues, the Arab propagandists would whip up false stories in their own press. The Amercian media is not an enemy in the war on terror, and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion have made the rounds of the Middle East without Michael Isikoff's help..
The problem is that most Americans are completely unable to understand why these so-called “propagandists” loathe America to the point where they will go out of their way to print false accounts of American war atrocities. Most folks I talk to come out with the standard lines of ignorance to describe anti-Americanism in Iraq, such as “Oh, all those A-Rabs hate us,” or “Who cares? They all should be bombed anyway.” Something tells me there's a more complex explanation, although we'll never know it, as the American media has done nothing to shed light on the motives behind anti-American sentiment in the Middle East. In that respect, they have more than supported the Iraqi war effort.
Granted, some reporters may cover the war more objectively than others, but one thing for sure is that they all have served as cheerleaders for the American cause, while essentially neglecting to provide any historical or ideological context that may, albeit to a small degree, better enable folks to comprehend the possible reasons why maniacal hijackers are willing to fly commercial airliners into our public buildings.
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Honest, We're the Good Guys
Yesterday, Eric McErlain cited Reason Magazine’s Matt Welch, who described a recent experience at a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball game:
Speaking of the Ravine, its transformation into the Raiders-era Coliseum is now nearly complete. Even with the extra cops, there is no control of the stands, violence always seems about one sneeze away (as we were walking out of the place, two guys were squaring off in the parking lot over the deeply relevant issue of whether one of them had tattoos or not); and everyone just chucks whatever they can find -- hot dog wrappers, cokes, flaming javelins with little screaming Darth Vader heads -- from the upper decks onto the saps below.
This pleasant account reminded me of my first experience with the Islander/Ranger rivalry in the NHL. While I’ll be the first to admit the quality of the on-ice product has drastically deteriorated in recent years, I fully believe the animosity that has existed between Islander and Ranger fans for the past 30 years is as rampant as ever. I’ve been to Red Sox/Yankee games at Fenway and the Stadium, and I can honestly say that the fan altercations I’ve witnessed at those venues pale in comparison to the all-out mayhem that unfolded during a January 30th, 2002 Isles/Ranger game at Madison Square Garden.
Some of you New Yorkers may remember that tilt, as Alexei Yashin scored a first period hat trick before breaking Tomas Kloucek’s nose in one of a series of late-game donnybrooks. The game also featured a trademark sucker-punch from my all-time favorite goon Dale Purinton on the miniature Jason Blake, resulting in a three-game suspension. It was a great game to watch, and quite frankly, it was not surprising to see the two in-state rivals duking it out in the late stages of a blow-out. However, little did I know that the on-ice fisticuffs were just an appetizer for the brutality that would follow in the stands.
Heading to my first Islander/Ranger game, I wasn’t naïve enough to dismiss the possibility that a few punches would be thrown amongst a few drunken fans. In fact, it was expected, especially considering the physical nature of the game. But what was particularly scary was that many of the brouhahas that broke out involved multiple fans, in many cases eight or ten at a time. Beer was being tossed from the upper tiers onto fans in the lower bowl, which further ignited the hot tempers. Right in front of our section, a fan in a Ranger jersey was brutally attacked by a significantly larger Islander fan, who tackled his opponent to the ground and proceeded to pummel the man’s head with shots as if they were fired out of a machine gun. The beating was so savage that a friend who had gone to the game with me jumped over the railing to get involved in the brawl, only to be thrown aside by an arena bouncer that had arrived on the scene fifteen punches too late.
Traditionally, I stay at a hockey game until the final buzzer, but I didn’t that night, as I was more concerned with getting out of the building without being the recipient of an errant right cross. On the subway after the game, the talk amongst my friends was not about the game, but about the sheer insanity we witnessed in the stands.
Indeed, there is a big difference between a hardcore sports fan and a hardcore sports fan who assaults people that root for opposing teams, but I’ve always thought that, in general, all sports fans feel a certain level of affection for their team that is akin to a parent’s relationship with his child. Last year, I wrote up a term paper on the emotional attachment to sports teams. The paper didn’t exactly abide by traditional social scientific standards, as the study I conducted consisted of a mere 90 non-randomly selected sports fans (30 women), and thus, was not representative. At the same time, it provided me with a little glimpse into the minds of my fellow sports nuts, and offered some insight to explain why in God’s name anyone would engage in a fracas with another fan over a children’s game.
Here are a few of my findings:
- When given three choices to describe how close they feel to their favorite sports team (1- not close, 2-close, but can survive without them, 3- very close), 75% of respondents claimed they had a very close emotional relationship.
- 92% of respondents claimed they are stressed/nervous when watching their favorite sports team play a critical game.
- 75% of respondents claimed they become angry/irritable after their favorite sports team loses a critical game. 63% claim they have been depressed or have cried after their favorite team lost a critical game.
- 21% of respondents claimed they have gotten into a verbal altercation with someone who taunted them after their favorite team lost a critical game.
- 93% of respondents claimed they feel a friendly connection with other fans of their favorite team. Only 21% of respondents claim they are more likely to befriend a person knowing he is found of a team they root for.
Again, these results should be taken with a grain of salt because of the small sample size, but it is worthy to note that, controlling for the other possible independent variables, gender did not have a significant effect on the level of emotional attachment. In other words, I found that female sports fans, in general, are just as emotionally attached to their teams as men in regards to being stressed during games, becoming angry or irritable after critical losses, and feeling a strong connection with other fans. On the other hand, not surprisingly, men were more likely to allow their frustration over a loss to adversely affect their behavior, as no women I surveyed had engaged in physical violence as a result of anger generated by a sporting event (an equal, yet small, percentage of each gender had engaged in verbal altercations with opposing fans).
Of course, my interpretations of the data I gathered were heavily influenced by many detailed responses I received from my respondents. One person who claimed he had gotten into a verbal battle with an opposing fan after a game defended his actions by saying, “(Part of being a fan is) sticking up for your team even when you know you are wrong.” Interestingly, I got many similar responses, which is why I earlier likened a sports fan’s relationship to his team to that of a parent with his child. The few folks who had taken part in verbal pissing matches seem to defend their teams passionately and forcefully, and often after provocation. In fact, many people who said they had not vehemently defended their team from criticism noted that they likely would do so if provoked. These findings indicate that sports fans feel that insulting their team is the equivalent of a personal insult.
The most intriguing part of my study showed that, while all 90 of my participants claimed they feel happiness/relief when their favorite team wins a critical game, approximately 70% said they feel anger or depression when their team loses a big game. This leads me to believe that only a minority of sports fans, because of their emotional attachment, are able to completely dismiss an important loss by their favorite team without suffering some kind of emotional distress, be it for a minute, a day, or a week – or sometimes even longer (ask Red Sox fans after the 2003 ALCS).
The friendly connection that most respondents said they feel with other fans of their favorite team is a further indication of the emotional investment folks have in their club and the feeling of camaraderie that develops with fellow fans. One person described this connection as “a support group with a common goal,” a group with which to celebrate victories and console after losses. This finding seems to explain why some fans believe that their team deserves to win, no matter what, as it can be argued that association with fellow fans reinforces the idea that the home team consists of the “good guys,” who not only represent themselves, but their legions of fans.
Just the other night, my brother and I attended the Providence Bruins playoff game against Philadelphia. The P-Bruins won the game in overtime, and after the winning goal was scored, the benches emptied and several fights broke out (it still happens in the A). One of the Providence players took a pretty good beating, which resulted in a severe cut. My brother, being one of those vocal types, bellowed “You just got your ass kicked, buddy!” To my amazement, two guys in front of us turned around and lashed into my brother, one of them saying “Are you a Providence Bruins fan or what? What the hell is wrong with you?” The urgency in the man’s voice was chilling and the maniacal look on his face, coupled with the sweat dripping off his brow, was reminiscent of Jack Nicholson peeking through the axed-bathroom door in The Shining.
My brother is as big a P-Bruins fan as any Rhode Islander, but quite frankly, that was beside the point. The player in question had visibly gotten his lunch handed to him in the fight, yet this one gentleman was so taken aback that a fellow P-Bruins fan would say anything insulting about a hometown player, he seemingly regarded the act as a form of treason. My efforts to calm the man down were fruitless, and we ended up walking out of the building with a sour taste in our mouths, something that shouldn’t happen after your team skates away with a thrilling, fight-filled overtime playoff win.
When it comes down to the final analysis, I wasn’t able to come to any definitive conclusions regarding my findings, but one thing I learned for sure was that the majority of sports fans seemingly watch sports for reasons that go beyond sheer entertainment. When given a list of six choices from which to select the primary reason they watch sports, a little over half my respondents claimed that the emotional rollercoaster that accompanies following a sports team was their top incentive (i.e drama/theater).
On the surface, sporting events should be nothing more than topics of water cooler chatter, but the fact that watching professional athletic competition often results in irritability, anger, depression, and more frighteningly, violence, speaks volumes for how highly we regard drama and how much human beings yearn for success – even if it isn’t their own.
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Impossible Realities
In this morning’s Philadelphia Enquirer, columnist Trudy Rubin responds to conservative charges that the mainstream media is anti-military:
(Newsweek) was dead wrong to run such a controversial item based on one unnamed source who later changed his story. But many who excoriate Newsweek seem to believe any writing about mistreatment of prisoners is the work of traitors. You should see some of the vicious e-mail I get.
No thanks, Trudy. I get enough of it myself.
It’s absolutely stunning to see how an honest, yet careless mistake by a veteran reporter has resulted in a stream of relentless attacks on the integrity of the news media as a whole. It’s almost as if the anti-Old Media horde was just waiting for the next opportunity – with Rathergate being the first - to label traditional news outlets as being liberally-biased and out of touch with most American citizens.
It’s one thing to make claims of liberal bias, but it’s another thing entirely to question the professional character of a man who has spent the last 25 years of his life trying to establish and maintain a reputation as a fair and responsible investigative journalist. Worse yet, to categorize a foolish ethical reporting error as anything more than bone-headed is a real stretch, as it is safe to say that Mike Isikoff wouldn’t be willing to sacrifice his hard-earned reputation on penning a false Koran desecration bit that likely took him three minutes to write.
The reason mainstream reporters have jumped to the defense of Mike Isikoff is because most of them understand that they could have just as easily made the same journalistic gaffe that he did. More times than not, reporters take the proper ethical measures to ensure that their stories are legitimate, but unfortunately, there are times when the overwhelming desire to break a hot story encourages journalists to skip a few steps on the ethical news ladder. David Shaw of the Los Angeles Times talked about the magnitude of this desire a few weeks ago:
Overweening ambition — the appeal, the irresistible lure of this fame and fortune — must be at least partly responsible for some of the journalistic malfeasance we've seen of late. I'm no psychiatrist, but I certainly think it played a role in the serial fabrications committed by Stephen Glass at the New Republic and Jayson Blair at the New York Times, to name just two.
What separates the 25-year-veteran writers from the Jayson Blairs is that the old guys rarely, if ever, make glaring ethical slip-ups. They have too much pride in their work – pride that goes well-beyond accepting a weekly paycheck. A reporter realizes that a magnificent journalistic gaffe may very well spell the end of his career, or at the very least, will forever tarnish his name on a national scale. At the same time, because of their humanity, reporters are prone to making mistakes every now and again, as much as they normally guard against such occurrences.
A lot of folks think Newsweek should have accepted Mike Isikoff’s resignation last week. As much as I think keeping Isikoff on board is risky, I can understand why he was retained. What I can’t understand is why the anti-media hit parade has used this episode as an excuse to tee off on the supposed ulterior motives of the mainstream press. Inarguably, the Newsweek reporter screwed up, but media critics seem to ignore the fact that he acted alone, instead choosing to attribute his blunder to an inherent culture of liberalism within American newsrooms. Jim Geraghty of the National Review is among those critics:
Newsweek isn’t just skewed or biased. It pages are mostly brief and fluffy skewed and biased news nuggets…
Those of us who don’t espouse the mainstream media conventional wisdom have a responsibility to set a better standard. Let them sink into their echo chamber, and write for the audience that prefers to believe the disproven lie to the uncomfortable truth. This would be the same readership that audaciously calls itself the “reality-based community” and dismisses those who disagree as the easily-fooled rubes of “Jesusland”, then applauds the line, “only a Sith deals in absolutes.”
And what exactly is the uncomfortable truth? Only time will tell if legitimate news stories begin to surface detailing Koran desecration, but one thing is for certain, as noted by Tech Central Station’s Ryan Sager:
The (Newsweek) story certainly seems to have been a mistake and a careless one at that. But the notion that the story was somehow not-to-be-believed on its face is ludicrous. If, in this war -- where U.S. service men and women have been photographed smiling and giving the thumbs up over the corpses of abused prisoners -- there has not been one instance of desecration of the Muslim holy book, this reporter will eat one text from each of the major religions.
I remember getting into a heated argument with a friend of mine who tried to convince me that her favorite hockey team was the victim of bully treatment from every other team in the league. She said her team members were the recipients of constant, unprovoked cheap shots by opponents, and that, conversely, her team always played by the rules. I’ve played and watched hockey long enough to know that every team takes liberties against their adversaries, without exceptions. Hockey teams do everything they can to gain a psychological edge on their opponents, and they’ll do absolutely anything – especially break the rules when the officials aren’t looking - to gain that edge.
It can be argued that the same can be said of prison interrogators, regardless of which country they represent.
Not very comforting, is it?
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Wrong Is Right
Tom Benjamin has a great commentary about the irrelevancy of playoff hockey predictions. The piece was written in response to a column by National Post reporter James Mirtle, in which he asked readers to “cut him some slack” if his pick for the CHL’s Memorial Cup – the Kelowna Rockets – failed to pan out:
I don't have any problem with (Mirtle’s) pick and I don't have any problems with National Post pundits or hockey bloggers making predictions. Half the fun in following any sport is answering the question "Who is going to win?" before the fact.
I do wonder, however, about how seriously any of us should take the exercise. Out on a limb? Cut him some slack? James surely has his tongue in his cheek to some degree here. It isn't like anyone will think less of him if Kelowna falls flat. Nor will anyone pin a medal on him if the Rockets win. Nobody will notice, just like nobody notices how consistently poorly everyone does with hockey predictions.
Tom’s assessment is right on the money. Usually the only person that keeps track of the accuracy of an “expert’s” pre-playoff selections is the expert himself, who, for some reason or another, is looking for any reason to prove how much smarter he is in comparison to his peers. Just as a hockey team needs luck to win in the playoffs, the same can be said of a person’s playoff predictions, as upsets are commonplace, particularly in ice hockey.
Puck pundits are always quick to pat themselves on the back when the team they picked to win a playoff series comes through. In fact, James Mirtle himself was tooting his horn when it became clear that his predicted Manitoba Moose upset against Rochester was going to come to fruition. However, you rarely see these same reporters talk openly about how wrong they were, something that is usually done indirectly when reporters write about the number of supposed upsets that occurred en route to the championship round.
It’s kind of like the guy who brags about how he won $500 at the casino last week, but leaves out the part about how he lost $2,000.
In my years as a hockey fan, I’ve always made pre-playoff predictions, along with my friends. It's fun to be able to look back at my picks after the playoffs and say, “Boy, I didn’t see that one coming.” Interestingly, I’ve noticed in years past that a few of my friends, who normally pride themselves on rooting for underdogs, would always seem to pull for the team they picked to win, regardless of the team’s seeding. It’s like they see playoff predictions as some kind of competition, even though they have absolutely no control over the eventual outcome.
What is even more maddening is that, as Tom notes, on many occasions, folks who make playoff predictions are weighing in on matchups between teams they’ve never even seen. That’s quite often the case in the AHL, where most Eastern Conference reporters don’t see any teams from the West, and vice versa, because of league travel constrains. Yet, this disadvantage doesn’t prevent writers from tossing in their two cents, even though their opinion bears less credence than that of a golden retriever.
Inevitably, there is absolutely nothing wrong with making predictions on sporting events, as long as there is no pride riding on the accuracy of those predictions. When it comes to playoff picks, hockey writers are wrong all the time, which is a good thing in the sense that is solidifies hockey’s position as the most unpredictable game on the planet. Everyone knows that reporters aren’t oracles, and they’re not supposed to be. The problem is that some of them think they are, and they never hesitate to remind everyone when they’re right.
Perhaps these little reminders wouldn’t be necessary if reporters were right more often.
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The Dramatized Media
I once wrote a column on this website discussing the ways in which politics and ice hockey are intertwined. As painful as it was to write (and read), the point of the article was to emphasize how politics play a role in virtually all aspects of life, both personal and professional.
As a young journalist, I’ve always wondered why media bias claims have become so prevalent recent decades. Undoubtedly, it has a lot to do with years of research indicating that the majority of journalists are politically liberal, which is consistent with a just-released UConn report that revealed nearly 70% of surveyed newspaper reporters voted for John Kerry last year. John Leo of US News and World Report supposedly knows the reason for this phenomenon:
In all my years in journalism, I don't think I have met more than one or two reporters who have ever served in the military or who even had a friend in the armed forces. Most media hiring today is from universities where a military career is regarded as bizarre and almost any exercise of American power is considered wrongheaded or evil.
I’d love to know where Mr. Leo has worked over the years, because not only does it sound like he doesn’t get out much, but his brave, grossly inaccurate assumptions frighteningly reek of the same political agenda that he is lashing out against. Personally, I’m not aware of many people, never mind journalists, that don’t know an acquaintance, a friend, or a relative that is currently serving in the armed forces. Furthermore, since when does not having a friend in the military disqualify a journalist from covering a war? That’s like saying a writer who has never played hockey or who has never personally known a hockey player has no right to cover professional puck.
Leo is insinuating that journalists lack the empathic accuracy to properly write about the American military, a convenient and unsubstantiated excuse that is becoming all too popular is conservative circles. Even though the claim holds as much credence as a Jayson Blair article, reporters have been backpedaling like mad ever since the Newsweek fiasco began, trying desperately to defend themselves against the verbal onslaught against their credibility. Kathleen Parker of the Chicago Tribune sounds particularly frazzled:
(W)e should resist the urge to overreact as some have in suggesting that the press should be restricted or stifled. Although imperfect, a free press is one of our nation's highest expressions of freedom and the thing that separates us from the same right-wing, authoritarian, extremist forces that we condemn. Yet, an alarming number of Americans, their faith in journalists damaged by recent scandals, have lost sight of the meaning and importance of a free press.
Parker is half right in the sense that more Americans are losing faith in journalists, but it has nothing to do with their losing sight of the importance of a free press. The bottom line is that reporters are screwing up with higher frequency, and it’s jeopardizing the credibility of the entire news-reporting industry. Conservative columnist David Limbaugh seems to take much enjoyment in the anti-Old Media barrage that has highlighted the past week, and he apparently has the solution to the media’s problems:
Instead of waxing so indignant over criticism of their fellow Old Media dinosaur, it would be better if these elitists would dismount their high horses and acknowledge they too are fallible and that a healthy dose of scrutiny and criticism of their bias-driven, damaging reporting is in order.
And, since they asked, yes, it would be nice if just once, one of these brontosauruses would do a story on the greatness of America, the American military and democracy, including in the Middle East. They might emphasize the contrast between Saddam's (and the terrorists') brutality and the magnanimity of the current Iraqi regime.
I’m a young guy, and consequently, there’s not much I know for sure about life. But I do know two things: 1) No matter how adamantly you try to silence your critics, you’ll never fully succeed, and 2) You will not see many feel-good front-page stories in major publications, a principle that applies to the American military just as much as anyone else. Newspapers are in the business of reporting bad news because that’s what sells in this country, and even more disconcerting is the reality that bad news is in abundance. By the same token, the New York Times could publish a year’s worth of individual profiles of military personnel and it wouldn’t be nearly enough to pacify right-wingers and the anti-media crew.
To be quite frank, the media’s tendency to focus on the violence in Iraq has little to do with reporters’ lack of familiarity with the American military, and it has even less to do with media bias. It does, however, have a lot do with an inherent inclination to provide readers with the latest trials, tribulations and controversies surrounding the war effort because that’s what sells – at least, traditionally. Interestingly enough, nobody has offered this opinion to explain the Newsweek debacle, and it’s probably because it doesn’t fit into the political motives of conservatives, and similarly, it certainly wouldn’t be prudent for reporters to admit this naked truth to their readership.
When Mike Isikoff helped break the Monica Lewinsky scandal in the late 90’s, he obviously wasn’t nailed to the cross by conservatives. In fact, quite the contrary, as it was liberals who were accusing Isikoff of trying to unceremoniously cut short Bill Clinton’s second term. Now the tables are turned, and everyone on both sides of the political spectrum are trying to figure out Isikoff’s motives. Unfortunately, dare I argue, the fact that most politicians and most Americans in general have had absolutely no experience in journalism renders them relatively unable to understand the true nature of Isikoff’s foul-up. He wasn’t trying to cut down the Bush tree. He wasn’t trying to insult our armed forces. And he certainly wasn’t trying to ignite a series of terrible riots overseas.
What the veteran reporter was trying to do was continue the intense national drama that started on September 11th. After all, without drama, there is no news. And without news, there’s no need for Newsweek, is there?
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