The latest in Sri Lanka

Yesterday, the Sri Lankan Army killed one of the most senior leaders of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE -- yes, a group designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., EU and India), S.P. Thamilchelvan, in an airraid, the BBC reported.

The first reaction of those who don't know much about the situation there would be that this is a good thing. If the forces in Afghanistan kill a senior member of the Taliban, don't we celebrate that as a good thing?

But this killing is anything but good news. Thamilchelvan was not just a senior leader of the LTTE, he was also the chief negotiator, communicating with international envoys in their efforts to reach an elusive peace agreement between the Government of Sri Lanka and the Tigers. With his death, that peace agreement has now moved even further away. The GOSL is, as usual, playing on the world's paranoia about "terrorist organizations" to justify this killing, and promises that more will follow. Little do outsiders know that, as far as terrorist organizations go, the GOSL is no better, if not worse, than the LTTE. I in no way condone the means by which the Tigers go about achieving their goal of a separate Tamil homeland. I absolutely don't. But the government uses the very same means, and yet, the President, Mahinde Rajapakshe (who, incidentally, runs the country as a family business, with his relatives in key ministry posts), sits on his high horse and points his finger at his opponents. And naive outsiders buy it.

The government knows that Thamilchelvan's killing will only step up the kidnappings and brutal killings on both sides. And that is exactly what it wants -- to provoke the LTTE, so that the GOSL can then continue to feed on the world's "terrorism" paranoia, and justify its own actions as retaliation, its noble efforts to deal with terrorism . . . all while innocent civilians are stuck in the middle, their loved ones lost, their lives ruined.

For a taste (and it is only a very small taste) of what goes on Sri Lanka, click here. Most people live under the illusion that the capital "Colombo" is a safe place, but, while there is no outright fighting there, the surreptitious kidnappings and killings make it anything but.

Update

Interesting globalization facts

I came across this story today in The New York Times, about the results of a survey of more than 45,000 people in 47 countries on what they think about globalization. There were several tidbits I found very interesting:

• Despite the increased focus on illegal immigration in the U.S., and individual states implementing their own measures to clamp down on illegal workers, the number of Americans supporting tighter immigration curbs has declined. So did the number in Britain, France and Germany. Jordanians, however, want stricter immigration policy, to stem the tide of Iraqis flowing into the country since the war started in 2003 (from 48 percent in 2002 to 70 percent).
• 55 percent of Americans believe their culture is superior. . . the only other Western country to display such self-confidence was Italy. (What exactly is "American culture?") The Swedes, Brits and French, however, seem in need of an ego boost -- only a fifth of Swedes and less than a third of the other two think their culture is superior. (The French have self-esteem issues?!?! Who'd a thunk??!?!?!)
• In most countries, the strength of people's religious belief falls as their wealth increases. The U.S. appears to be the only country where the opposite is true. Lots of religious rich people there!
• Fewer than half of Americans, Japanese and Israelies believe homosexuality should be accepted.
• Germans and Spaniards appear to be the most peace-loving people -- only a tenth of them said military force is needed to maintain order. This is compared with over a third of Turks and Americans, a fourth of French and Italians and a fifth of Brits. (I'm inclined to believe Japan would be similar to Germany and Spain, because of its general anti-war sentiment and its constitution, which Abe tried in vain to change).
• The percentage of Russians using mobile phones is higher than the percentage of Indians. . . and Russia had a higher level of adaptation -- from 8 percent of Russians owning mobiles in 2002 to 65 percent today, compared with 12 percent of Indians in 2002 to 60 percent now.
• South Korea has the highest degree of computer ownership in the world -- 93 percent!
• Germans are the biggest news junkies -- 80 percent "follow international news closely most of the time."

An aside. . .an article on morphine scarcity in Sierra Leone

Note: Will return to photos of my trip in the next post

I across this article and watched this slideshow in today's International Herald Tribune, and wanted to share it.

*If anyone read the earlier version of this post, I apologize. I deleted it because it was basically a rant (of sorts) and, while in keeping with my whole malcontent theme these days, there are good reasons behind why I am where I am right now. And when God decides the time and circumstances are right, I will hopefully be able to do the kind of work this reporter has done. But in the meantime, I will stay here and appreciate and enjoy my life as it is.

Help Rizana Nafeek

Some of you may have heard of the case of the Sri Lankan teenager who has been sentenced to be beheaded in Saudi Arabia on charges that she murdered a four-month old baby left in her care. The baby allegedly choked to death while the girl, Rizana Nafeek, 19, was feeding him. Here is an article about the recent developments.

My heart goes out to the family of the baby who died. . . I truly believe that there's nothing worse for a parent than the death of a child. But taking the life of someone who made a heart-breaking mistake won't undo the tragedy and the wrongs that have already happened.

Please add your voice to calls to the baby's family and the Saudi government to pardon Rizana and spare her life. The east of Sri Lanka has already been ravaged by the war and tsunami and much loss and suffering. This is a heart-breaking fate to befall someone who wanted a better life for herself and her family.
An Amnesty International letter with addresses to send to.

A letter drafted by the Asian Human Rights Commission asking the baby's family to pardon her.

An online petition.

Houdini to be exhumed after 81 years!

Anyone care to wager that the great stuntsman has skipped out? After all, nothing could contain him when he was alive. . . why should anything be different after death?

Story Highlights• Houdini's great-nephew wants to exhume Houdini's body for testing
• There is suspicion that Houdini may have been poisoned
• There are inconsistencies on death certificate and suspicious circumstances
• Internationally known forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden interested

NEW YORK (AP) -- For all of his death-defying stunts, Harry Houdini could not escape the Grim Reaper. The unparalleled performer, age 52, died on Halloween 1926, taking with him many of his trade secrets. Rumors he was murdered, however, soon took on a life of their own.

Eighty-one years later, Houdini's great-nephew wants to exhume the escape artist's body to determine if he was poisoned by enemies for his efforts to debunk their claims of contact with the dead.

A team of top-level forensic investigators would conduct new tests once Houdini's body was disinterred, a relative told The Associated Press.

"It needs to be looked at," said George Hardeen, whose grandfather was Houdini's brother, Theodore. "His death shocked the entire nation, if not the world. Now, maybe it's time to take a second look."

The circumstances surrounding Houdini's sudden death were as murky as the rivers from which he emerged unscathed, escaping from chains, locks and wooden boxes. The generally accepted explanation of Houdini's death is that he suffered a ruptured appendix from a punch in the stomach, leading to a fatal case of peritonitis.

But no autopsy was performed, and when the death certificate was filed on November 20, 1926, Houdini's body -- brought by train from Detroit to Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal -- was already buried in Queens.

Within days, a newspaper headline wondered, "Was Houdini Murdered?" A new biography, "The Secret Life of Houdini," raised the issue again and convinced George Hardeen and others that poisoning was a real possibility.

A Friday morning news conference was scheduled for details on the exhumation plans. Prominent New York lawyer Joseph Tacopina is assisting the family in clearing any legal hurdles to the exhumation.

The likeliest murder suspects were a group known as the Spiritualists, which became Houdini's nemesis in his final years. The magician devoted large portions of his stage show to exposing what he said were fraudulent seances by the group. The movement's devotees included Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle.

Houdini will 'get his just desserts meted out'
In the Houdini biography, authors William Kalush and Larry Sloman detail a November 1924 letter from Doyle that smacks of Professor Moriarty-style malevolence: Houdini, it said, would "get his just desserts very exactly meted out. ... I think there is a general payday coming soon."

Two years later, Houdini -- by all accounts an extraordinary physical specimen -- was dead before his 53rd birthday. Kalush and Sloman noted that "the Spiritualist underworld's modus operandi in cases like this was often poisoning" -- possibly arsenic.

The biography additionally detailed the injection of "an experimental serum" into Houdini by one of his doctors at Detroit's Grace Hospital.

While Houdini took the Spiritualists' repeated death threats seriously, he traveled without the security trappings now de rigeur for celebrities -- no bodyguard, no entourage, often just his wife Bess.

"If someone were hell-bent on poisoning Houdini," the authors wrote, "it wouldn't have been very difficult."

The team working on the exhumation includes internationally known forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden, and Professor James Starrs, a forensic pathologist who has studied the disinterred remains of gunslinger Jesse James and "Boston Strangler" Albert DeSalvo.

Baden, who chaired panels reinvestigating the deaths of President John F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., pointed out a pair of oddities in Houdini's death certificate: It noted his appendix was on the left side, rather than the right. And the diagnosis of appendicitis caused by a punch was "very unusual."

Starrs said he was long familiar with the story of Houdini's death, and believed the fatal injury was the result of an accident. Details contained in the Houdini biography convinced him otherwise.

"My eyebrows went up when I read this book," Starrs said. "I thought, `This is really startling, surprising and unsettling, and at bottom, suspicious in nature."'

The exhumation plan received support from a surprising source: Anna Thurlow, the great-granddaughter of "medium" Margery, whose husband Dr. Le Roi Crandon was one of the Spiritualist movement's biggest proponents -- and one of Houdini's most virulent enemies.

During a 1924 seance, Margery "channeled" a "spirit" named Walter who greeted Houdini with a threat: "I put a curse on you now that will follow you every day for the rest of your short life."

The prediction of a short life was all too real, and Thurlow believes there may be a connection.

"With people that delusional, you have to question what they're capable of,"' she said. "If there's any circumstantial evidence that Houdini was poisoned, we have to explore that."

Bloggers v. journos

While doing some research for a story, I came across some references to the time when Wal-Mart sent out "blog releases" written in the informal language of blogs, to bloggers. Some bloggers posted these releases on their blogs without attributing them to Wal-Mart.

In the ensuing drama (it is Wal-Mart, after all), those supporting what the bloggers did said they did nothing wrong, as they had no duty to reveal their sources, just like journalists don't have to reveal their sources. And my first reaction was "What?!?!?"

Who said journalists don't have to reveal their sources? And even if journalists can hide sources, who said they don't have to reveal the sources of press releases?!?!?

We see a lot of anonymous sources used in stories, but at most publications worth their salt, journalists have to make every attempt to get something on the record, and can use anonymous sources if all else fails, i.e. 1. when the information they are getting is a fact, not opinion 2. when nobody in the know is willing to speak on the record and 3. when it can be verified by a number of (at least 3) other reliable anonymous sources.

If a journalist is sent a press release from a company, there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY he/she can use it without saying where it came from. In most publications, a journalist cannot even use a release word for word, unless he/she makes it clear it is a direct quote and attributes the quote. And definitely not without getting other, maybe opposing, voices into the story.

The bloggers in the Wal-Mart case were simply propogating Wal-Mart's side and hiding the fact that they were doing so. They had no reason to withhold the source of the information, but they did, in the process misleading their readers. But, the thing is, bloggers have minimal responsibilities and standards, unless they are self-imposed, so they can get away with doing so. Journalists can never do the same thing that these bloggers did, unless they work for a complete rag. So to compare these bloggers to journalists who use anonymous sources is farfetched and misleading.

It's my genes' fault!

Today's New York Times had an article titled "That Wild Streak? Maybe It Runs in the Family". It was about. . . you guessed it. If you have urges to go climb mountains. . . or to smoke cigarettes. . . or throw yourself off a cliff, it's because of your genes.

As I read it, I found myself shaking my head. Because, while I'm sure there's some truth to it, it just seemed to me a way of science giving us naturally lazy humans an excuse to continue our bad habits guilt-free. If I'm overweight, it's because of my genes, and so I don't need to feel bad about it. If I drink too much, it's my parents' fault. If I can't quit smoking, it's because my parents, and their parents, and their parents, were smokers too.

It might not even stop with those aspects that could be affected by genes. The excuse-making could spill over to every part of our lives -- I can't get a good job because of my genes, I make other people's lives miserable because of my genes, I don't wash the dishes or clean my apartment because it's in my genes.

There's a flip side to this as well -- we start to think that we can't take credit for our success -- because we were genetically programmed to succeed, our achievements have nothing to do with our own efforts or accomplishments.

What a sad world it would be if these tests were commercially available -- the lazy ones blaming their DNA for their failings and the hard working ones letting their genes take the credit for their hard work.


Note: This post is somewhat tongue-in-cheek -- because I do realize that, for some people, no matter how hard they work towards a certain goal, e.g. quit smoking, it's much more difficult than for others, because of their genetic make-up.

The death of objective journalism?

The New York Times ran an article about Lou Dobbs, an anchor on otherwise subdued CNN (which cut the debate show Crossfire, because its viewers want facts and not opinions), who expresses his opinions in no uncertain terms. Slate points to Anderson Cooper whose ratings rose after he gave Louisiana senator Mary Landrieu a tongue-lashing for not doing enough after Hurricane Katrina. And Robert Fisk, British journalist and author, said in a talk at Columbia last year that journalists would be better off shedding the veneer of objectivity, and pointed out that papers on the other side of the Atlantic are already adopting this approach, successfully.

The American media has come under much criticism for being too credulous of the current White House and for leaving holes in the reporting of several issues related to this administration. The argument is that the majority of the media didn't look hard enough, didn't examine the statements made by the government closely enough, because doing so would have made them seem opposed to the administration, instead of passive observers. All too often, journalists do hide behind the excuse of objectivity to avoid hard-hitting journalism.

In the Columbia Journalism Review, Brent Cunningham argues that "objectivity" leads journalists to become passive recipients of news, rather than active analysers. For example, he writes, when Bush announced divident tax cuts, because he said people shouldn't be taxed on the same income twice, most of the media covered the story, but reported pretty much just what he said. Very few actually went deeper to find that there are several other taxes that could also apply to the same income, and actually questioned why he was proposing cuts only on dividend taxes and not on other taxes.

Cunningham points out that, often, editorials are much better researched because the editorial writer has to know and understand the subject well to be able for form an opinion. Thus, if this need for objectivity didn't exist, then journalists would be forced to examine the issues they write about in greater depth, and thus raise more potent questions. http://www.cjr.org/issues/2003/4/objective-cunningham.asp

I think the answer to this problem lies in the approach a journalist takes. When starting out, and when reporting a story, the reporter should approach it with no bias, with no preconceived notions. They must ensure that every angle is covered, and every side has a say. Then, when they are fully educated about the subject and understand it clearly, and begin the writing process, the opinion - well-researched and educated - can come in.

Particularly with the onslaught of blogs and other non-traditional media, news media do need to change the way they operate to compete effectively. These new forms of communication are changing the way people view and receive news, and makes them more receptive to opinions in their news. In fact, I think the way mainstream media can compete with bloggers and other sources today is to use their vast resources and already-established credibility (which relatively few blogs still have) to offer well-researched stories that do offer some well-informed opinion. But they also need to beware of leaning too far to the other side, and become vehicles of rants for or against an issue.

An update on the UN Human Rights Commission

This was a story put out by UPI today on progress on the HR Commission. Nayma, sorry it took me so long to follow up on my previous post.

Analysis: U.N. reforms will move forward
By WILLIAM M. REILLY
UPI U.N. Correspondent

UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 21 (UPI) -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and General Assembly President Jan Eliasson say that even though there are deep differences among member states they expect real progress in reform of the world organization.

A formal proposal for a Human Rights Council to replace the disgraced Human Rights Commission was expected to be presented later in the week, U.N. officials said Tuesday.

The main differences stem from members of the 191-member assembly fearing a power grab by the 15-member council, particularly by its five permanent, veto-wielding members: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.

Annan and Eliasson met to discuss "the need to move forward with the whole reform agenda."

"We live in a world of turmoil, and we must keep in mind that we have work to do in so many areas," the assembly president said Monday, reminding reporters at U.N. World Headquarters in New York of pending issues such as the Economic and Social Council, new development initiatives, management and the proposed Human Rights Council.

"This is the year of reform, and we are pressing ahead," Annan said. "Between the two of us we are in touch with many of the member states, individually and in groups and I am really hopeful that we will see real progress on human rights this week."

He is also expected to press ahead with management reform, the review of mandates, discussions on fighting terrorism and the terrorism convention.

"Of course the development issue, which is of great concern to many of our members is very much on the table, and we have made good progress, and I hope we can put that to bed, as well as the strengthening of ECOSOC," the secretary-general added, referring to the Economic and Social Council.

When asked about members of the Non-Aligned Movement, states which consider themselves not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc, which have grown fearful of becoming marginalized by the Security Council, Annan said, "Yes, there is some suspicion that some organs are reaching out for a power grab," the secretary-general said. "There is unhappiness with the Security Council, particularly.

"There is some mistrust among the membership on the whole issue of reform, and the reasons behind the reform, but I think from my discussions with member states almost all of them realize that reform is necessary, and would want to see the (United Nations) reformed and strengthened," Annan said.

The secretary-general continued that when the general membership sees issues they believe should be discussed in the General Assembly being discussed in the Security Council, "again it leads to tensions."

He said the two bodies should be able to "find a mechanism for discussing an issue of great interest" to all the members.

"Peacekeeping, procurement, sexual abuse, are issues that should be of concern to all of them, and we should find a way of discussing them openly and publicly, and not fight over which forum should have it," Annan said, referring to scandals under investigation by the Office for the Internal Oversight Services.

Eliasson agreed, saying: "I share the concern that, if there is an encroachment of the functions and power of the General Assembly that are on the agenda of the General Assembly, we need to deal with that, and I have discussed this matter with the president of the Security Council," a post filled this month by Ambassador John Bolton of the United States.

"I think it is important that we respect each other's functions and powers, and we will of course prove this point that the secretary-general has just made... that the General Assembly is accepting this responsibility to take very important reform decisions," Eliasson added. "I would hope also that we would increase that sense of respect and that importance of dialogue, so that we bring down these tensions."

To publish or not to publish?

The Prophet Mohammed cartoon issue has been on my mind lately, as it has on several others, I'm sure. And I've been debating how I feel about this issue. On the one hand, there is the press' right to freedom of expression, which I strongly believe in, for obvious reasons. This is also why Jyllands-Posten published the cartoons, media reports say - to show that they will not be cowed by religious dogma and fundamentalism. As such, I think that they should stand by their right to express themselves freely. For, if they give in now, they will only help spread the belief that, if sufficient pressure is exerted, the press can be controlled and moulded the way the powers-that-be want.

However, I do think this newspaper, and the others that reprinted the cartoons, acted rashly and without thought to the consequences of their actions. Because, Islam across the world is in a volatile state today. With fundamentalism reaching heights above what it has been for a long time, and with the West's tenuous standing in several Muslim countries, any action that appears, even remotely, to be spurred by anti-Islamic views can stoke the smouldering embers and start a flame that could very quickly spread out of control.

And that is what is happening now. As rioting and violence spreads across the world, the question, from a practical point of view, is "Is it really worth it?" All this to prove a hazy point about freedom of expression? That too in Denmark, where the press' freedom hasn't really come under any real test in the first place.

Or perhaps this whole reaction has proven a point. That maybe freedom of expression is not completely unequivocal, and the press can't get away with saying anything under this protection. Perhaps there are some things that are more important than freedom of expression.

I have also been thinking about how I would react if the depictions had been of Jesus. I would have been furious as well. Journalist or not, I am a Christian first, and my loyalty to Christ comes before my loyalty to my career and even my rights. So, I can see very clearly where the anger is coming from. I would definitely have written some angry letters, maybe even protested, and exercised my own right to freedom of expression. But I would not go so far as to riot and use violence, simply because that would be hypocritical and dilute the very point I'm trying to make. And this is what the rioters themselves are doing. By resorting to violence, they are going against their own religion, the very religion that they claim they are trying to protect - they are being hypocrites.

And there are others trying to fan the flames -- such as those who have publicized cartoons that weren't even in the original publication, including one of Mohammed with the face of a pig. Others are printing cartoons desecrating experiences that, while not always religious, still hold strong, poignant significance for other groups -- such as that of Anne Frank in bed with Hitler, published by the Arab European League. And in Iran, newspapers have announced a contest for cartoons mocking the Holocaust. In the latter two cases, those responsible are exercising their own right to freedom of expression. But again, at what cost? What are they really proving? That they can be as irresponsible and offensive as the European newspapers?

So, when I said that I strongly believe in freedom of expression, I do. But, I also think that it is up to the media to be responsible about how far they take this right, and to decide that, in cases like this one, where the publication of the cartoons was gratuitous, they should relinquish this right for the greater good. But, now that the deed is done, giving in will only give the impression that, under sufficient pressure, the press can be manipulated, which will have strong implications for the future of free expression.

Any thoughts, my phantom readers?!?!?

Is J-school - and journalism itself - worth it?

A disillusioning view of journalism and a disparaging commentary on my beloved school (sniff sniff!) by Hugh Hewitt in the Weekly Standard. Should I be thinking, "What was I thinking?"?!?!? Or should I brush this off, and say (or hope that), "This too shall pass" ?

The Media's Ancien Régime
Columbia Journalism School tries to save the old order
by Hugh Hewitt
01/30/2006, Volume 011, Issue 19



New York
To enter Columbia University's graduate school of journalism is to enter the highest temple of a religion in decline. A statue of Thomas Jefferson guards the plaza outside the doors, and the entry room is suitably grand. Two raised platforms proclaim the missions in bold gold letters: "To Uphold Standards of Excellence in Journalism" and "To Educate the Next Generation of Journalists." The marble floor tells you that the school was endowed by Joseph Pulitzer and erected in 1912 in memory of his daughter Lucille. A bronze quotation from Pulitzer's 1904 cri de coeur in the North American Review is on the wall:


Our republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve the public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. . . .
There is a new high priest in the dean's office on the seventh floor--Nicholas Lemann, veteran writer for the New Yorker, and before that the national correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly, where he spent 15 years after stints at the Texas Monthly, the Washington Post, and the Washington Monthly. Lemann began his scribbling for a New Orleans alternative weekly, the Vieux Carré Courier, while still a high school student, covering everything from boxing to city hall to the private school network of the region. Upon entering Harvard in 1972, he immediately "comped" for the Crimson, only to be rejected in his application to join the editorial board of the greatest brand in undergraduate newspapers. "Harvard is filled with this sort of humiliation," Lemann told me in a conversation last fall that capped a two-day visit to the school. He reapplied for a position as a reporter, and the second time was successful, rising through the ranks to become the paper's president in the 1975-76 academic year. Now 51 and two years into a new career, Lemann will need the same persistence if his legacy as dean is to be something other than a footnote in the history of the decline of American media power.

On my first day at Columbia's graduate school of journalism (CSJ), the poster boy for all that has come to plague elite American media--former CBS anchor Dan Rather--took to the podium at Fordham Law School to denounce the "new journalism order." On day two, the New York Times Company announced a cut of 500 employees from its already pared down workforce of 12,300. (The company employed 13,750 as recently as 2001.) On that same day Knight-Ridder slashed its Philadelphia papers' editorial staff by 75 positions at the Inquirer and 25 at the Daily News. "I get 50 calls a day about the crisis in journalism," Lemann deadpanned when I posed the "crisis" question. "Only 50?" I thought.

The story of what is going on at CSJ cannot be separated from the collapse of credibility of the mainstream media, also known as "elite media" and "old media" among its detractors. The fortunes of the big five papers--the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and the Wall Street Journal, as well as the old TV networks and big weekly newsmagazines--are visibly in decline. The upstart blogosphere is ever at the ready to "deconstruct" the work product of the old media's old guard. The very best investigative reporting is being done not by big names at the big papers, but by people like the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies' journalist in residence Claudia Rosett, who almost singlehandedly unraveled the U.N.-Saddam Oil-for-Food scandal, with much of her work published online. Dan Rather's CBS, eager to impugn George W. Bush's service in the Texas National Guard, got duped by fraudulent documents it took months to obtain and only hours for bloggers and readers to shred.

This story in its small way partakes of the seismic shift underway. Its origin is an email request from Lemann last spring: Would I be willing to be the subject of a New Yorker profile? I agreed, on the condition that I could have reciprocal access to Lemann and the Columbia Journalism School for this piece. Hedged with some qualifiers--he could not commit any of his faculty to talk to me or guarantee access to classrooms, though everyone proved to be very welcoming--Lemann agreed. Reactions to his profile of me varied among family and friends, but I thought it complete and fair. Before I sat down with Lemann I had read everything he'd written for the New Yorker and was impressed with his profiles of Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. (The Cheney profile earned Lemann some animosity among colleagues, who thought him too gentle with the only man the left fears as much as Rove.) The scorn on the center-right for the "objectivity" and "professionalism" of the mainstream media is deep and sincere. I went to Columbia to see if Lemann was the exception that proves the rule, and to test the rule itself.

What's the rule? That the elite media are hopelessly biased to the left and so blind to their own deficiencies, or so in denial, that they cannot save themselves from irrelevance. They're like the cheater in the clubhouse, whose every mention of a great round of golf is met with rolling eyes and knowing nods.

PULITZER'S ACOLYTES at Columbia undoubtedly believe that they are members of an "able, disinterested, public-spirited press," and not a "cynical, mercenary, demagogic" one. But the widespread perception in the country is that the prestige newsrooms are filled with the latter pretending to be the former. "Public attitudes toward the press, which have been on a downward track for years, have become more negative in several key areas," the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press reports. It is beyond argument that Pulitzer's dream of the press preserving public virtue has been abandoned, but Lemann is on a mission to help restore credibility to a "profession" without licensing or standards or governing bodies of any sort.

The first person I met on campus, Bruce Wallace, is a student enrolled in the school's traditional program, intended to result in a Master of Science degree after an intensive year of studies. Lemann has also instituted an ambitious new Master of Arts course of study, which has provoked deep suspicion in many of the school's alums and among the faculty. But with 205 students in the M.S. program and 27 in the M.A. division, there is no doubt that the training of front-line reporters is still the core mission. "How to cover a fire in Brooklyn on deadline" is one catchphrase I hear repeated. It is difficult to picture Pat Buchanan, Newsweek's Rick Smith, CBS's Susan Spencer, or writers Mitch Albom and James McBride--CSJ grads, all--covering fires in Brooklyn on or off deadline. But the M.S. program is in essence a 10-month education in the details and practice of that craft.

Wallace is a native of Baltimore who left his job as the manager of the classifieds at the San Francisco Guardian, an alternative weekly, to hone the skills that he hopes will take him to a daily to do local political reporting. The 1999 graduate of Kenyon College had done a little campus radio before heading off to tend bar in Alaska. In San Francisco he got hooked on city hall gossip, and though he was no fan of Mayor Willie Brown, or of "corporate power allied with politicians" generally, he's certain he'll be able to bring fairness to his future job as a political reporter. When I trot out my list of "parameter" questions I use to test for basic ideological disposition--Wallace doesn't own a gun; he favors same-sex marriage--there are no surprises.

Soon Mike Hoyt, executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, arrives. With Michael Shapiro, Hoyt team-teaches the class "Advanced Reporting," into which Wallace and 15 other students are headed, and introduces me to Shapiro, who quickly welcomes me to observe the hour. Shapiro is a gifted teacher who, three weeks into the term, already knows all of his students' names and engages them with ease and good humor. The first half of this hour is given over to outlining a large assignment--a profile of some recently deceased person or the reconstruction of a crime. Shapiro is clearly hoping the students will go for the profile, and spends considerable time instructing his charges on how they might go about selecting their subject. He fences his instructions with cautions about engaging the bereaved ("You need to know, but you can't be a vampire") and tips on tracing the details of the life to be profiled. Hoyt contributes key bits of experience, and the students are curious and attentive to these practical lessons. "You need to make your first phone call today," Shapiro insists. "Tomorrow becomes the next day, which becomes next week. Good reporters make the first call on the first day."

The 16 students are not evenly split--there are 14 women and just two men. Two-thirds of the M.S. class this year are women, a reflection of what Lemann calls the "feminization" of journalism programs across the country. Robert Mac Donald, the assistant dean for admissions and financial aid, ran down the demographics for me: The average age of an M.S. student is just shy of 28, the mean is 26, the youngest is 20, and the oldest is 63. Whites make up 69 percent of the new class; 11 percent are African American, 7 percent Hispanic, 6 percent Asian, 3 percent Middle Eastern, and 4 percent South Asian. The school doesn't yet keep stats on religious background, though Mac Donald believes there has been a significant increase in Muslim students post 9/11. A fifth of the students are from the New York area, and between 37 to 40 percent are from "the corridor"--from Boston to Washington. Another fifth are from the west coast, and 10 percent are foreign. It is a pretty "blue" student body, and willing to pay handsomely for the privilege of their credentials. A year at CSJ--tuition, living expenses, incidentals--comes to $59,404 according to Mac Donald, though 85 percent of the students receive some financial aid, with packages ranging from $1,000 to $50,000. The average scholarship is $5,200, which means that these students are putting a lot of money into the program.

The "blue" nature of the student body is further confirmed by my polling of the class I attended, done with the permission of Shapiro. Six of the 16 were English majors, two studied history, and the balance spread across the humanities. No one had a background in the physical sciences. No one owned a gun. All supported same-sex marriage. Three had been in a house of worship the previous week. Six read blogs. None of them recognized the phrase "Christmas Eve in Cambodia"--though Shapiro not only got the allusion but knew the date of the John Kerry Senate speech in which he made the false claim about his Vietnam war experience. Three quarters of them hope to make more than $100,000 as a journalist, 11 had voted for John Kerry, and one for George Bush (three are from abroad and not eligible, and one didn't vote for either candidate). I concluded by asking them if they "think George Bush is something of a dolt." There was unanimous agreement with this proposition, one of the widely shared views within elite media and elsewhere on the left. The president's Harvard MBA and four consecutive victories over Democrats judged "smarter" than him haven't made even a dent in that prejudice.

The intake valve at the elite media's equivalent of the Army's war college isn't pulling in many conservatives. In fact, it isn't pulling in many moderates. After the class, a few students linger. Their backgrounds are interesting. Rachel Templeton is from Alaska, graduated from the University of Washington, and has spent a few years at the Henry Jackson Foundation. She's moving to Israel after this year, where she hopes to pick up freelance work. Bree Nordenson is from Freeport, Maine, a graduate of Minnesota's Carleton College, and is transitioning from her work as a psychiatric counselor in Boston. Andreea Plesea is from Rumania and her Facebook entry announces her goal is to "become a top notch investigative reporter" and to "pursue a degree in law." Stina Lunden is from Sweden, and spent her last year as a Washington Post intern in France working for Keith B. Richburg. Lanie Shapiro was in PR for Simon & Schuster and Random House. Sophia Chang, originally from Texas, has been a reporter for the past four years.

These six want to pursue the idea of "objectivity," and most had read Lemann's profile of me, which included my very skeptical assessment of the objectivity of the mainstream media. Lunden is particularly animated. "You can't draw conclusions that our opinions will influence our reporting," she says, launching into a familiar defense of the ability of journalists to put aside their points of view. Shapiro stresses that all of her professors have been teaching "the value of objectivity," but Nordenson isn't buying it. "It is dangerous to think you are objective." Plesea is cynical: "You don't get truth in political reporting," an opinion she didn't confine to the countries of the former Soviet Union, with which she is familiar.

I am not here to debate the proposition, but find it interesting that the three-week wonders are already committed to the defense of their new profession's reputation for objectivity. With a faculty that does not appear to count among its number even one prominent name from the center-right, but does include respected voices of the left such as Todd Gitlin and Victor Navasky, it is difficult to see where they will acquire any useful skepticism about their own craft's motives and abilities.

THE WORST MOMENTS in recent history for the mainstream media--Rathergate, Jayson Blair's fabrications at the New York Times, the slander by CNN executive Eason Jordan that the U.S. military in Iraq was targeting journalists for assassination--were all still in the future when Columbia president Lee Bollinger was presented with an opening in the deanship by the retirement of Lemann's predecessor, Tom Goldstein. Bollinger, a First Amendment expert, former president of the University of Michigan, and former dean of its law school (I took media law from him in the spring of 1983, and the quiet, brooding, and even moody Bollinger hasn't changed much in 22 years, according to reports) seized the moment. He launched a controversial top-to-bottom look at the journalism school, empaneling a committee that met a dozen or so times to debate the future of the school. Lemann was among the panel's members, and delivered a paper to the group in the spring of 2003 that urged the one-year M.S. degree be replaced by a two-year Master of Arts program. Bollinger obviously warmed to some part of the Lemann pitch, and offered him the deanship.

Lemann quickly realized that alumni and faculty would unite to kill any idea of a uniform two-year degree at CSJ. "Of 24 or 25 faculty," he told me, "I'd have had maybe two votes." But there are other ways to pursue change and reform. After another year of meetings with industry types, he launched a second degree track: a year-long Masters of Arts program open only to practicing journalists, aiming to enhance and deepen their skills. Lemann is clearly hoping that the best and brightest of the M.S. grads will be willing to stay a second year and also go for the M.A. This year a pool of 70 applicants yielded a class of 27. The goal is a class of 60 drawn from 250 applicants.

My second classroom experience is in an M.A. class, "Evidence and Inference," which includes all 27 students. It is the meta-class for the new track, and is co-taught by Lemann and associate dean Evan Cornog, as well as a series of academic and media guest-lecturers. Today marks the third in three lectures by the former director of the U.S. Census Bureau, Columbia's Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs Kenneth Prewitt, on the use of race as a classifying device. Prewitt's lecture is a fascinating look at the introduction of racial categories into the census and the evolution of those categories, as well as the limits of the utility of that data. An interesting and provocative 90 minutes later, though, I am left wondering how much the Prewitt lecture will do for these students unless they are fortuitously assigned some future story on the census or a related topic having to do with, say, racial classifications in university admissions.

Lemann's hope for this course is to cultivate in his students a capacity to discover and analyze data. He repeatedly uses the term "power skills," and he has in mind a deeper appreciation, and use, of more sophisticated research and analytical skills than most journalists bring to the table. "Regression analysis is the best example," he tells me. "Every social science study in the United States depends upon regression analysis, but almost no reporters understand it. You can't read and understand these studies if you don't know how regression analysis works. I taught myself how to do it, and we are going to teach the M.A. students, equipping them to go beyond their ordinary reliance on dueling experts interpreting studies."

That, in a nutshell, is Lemann's grand plan for salvaging the profession: Teaching reporters new skills that will make them more competent amateurs in the worlds of other professionals. The school's newsletter, 116th & Broadway, carried a letter from Lemann on its front cover for the summer '05 issue. Lemann noted that the spring of 2006 would see the school of journalism confer its first new professional degree in 70 years. He was eager that alums understand what the M.A. program was all about. Among other points, he wanted to emphasize:


* The M.A. program will accept not only holders of the Journalism School's M.S. degree, but also journalists who can demonstrate to us that they are already working at a level of skill commensurate with that of M.S. holders.
* For the first couple of years, the program will be tuition-free to students for whom paying tuition imposes a financial difficulty. . . .
* The program involves greatly deepening the ties between the Journalism School and the rest of the university, mainly by bringing academic faculty people here to teach in partnership with the journalists on our faculty, so as to marry deep substantive knowledge to journalistic practice.
If ever a class is given on the elegant insertion of the thin edge of a wedge, this would make a fine piece of assigned reading. The M.S. holders are assured of the status of their credential; the applicant pool sees a hint of tuition deals; Columbia faculty are given their props; and the industry gets a promise of "deep substantive knowledge" on the way. In that last phrase is the figure in the carpet, the grand design for saving journalism. And also an admission of great significance about all that ails the craft today.

LEMANN'S PROJECT is either a masterful flanking of the dominant critique of the mainstream media--thoroughgoing left-wing bias among its practitioners--or an irrelevant and doomed exercise in beside-the-pointism. The big battle in American journalism is over the very idea of objectivity. Lemann assumes that objectivity is possible, but that the skills of reporters need burnishing if their reputation for disinterestedness is to be recovered.

The genuine enthusiasm for a new program's launch is always difficult to gauge, but one measurement that simply does not lie in the world of academia is donor support. CSJ's associate dean of university development and alumni relations, Jeffrey H. Richard, briefed me on Lemann's work as change agent and chief fundraiser. Three $5 million gifts do not a conclusion render, but are more than a good start. David and Katherine Moore have given a $5 million gift to endow a faculty position to cover government and public affairs in both the M.S. and M.A. programs. David is the grandson of Joseph Pulitzer, so that sounds to an outsider like a crucial endorsement of the innovations underway. Another $5 million is arriving from Leo Hindery, formerly of the YES Entertainment Network, and the father of a CSJ grad--another category of endorsement crucial to the school's constituencies. This gift is available for scholarships, an underfunded and pressing need for new and old programs alike. The third of the big three came to found a Center for Investigative Journalism, and came via a big name in that business, Toni Stabile, whose reporting on the cosmetics industry in the '60s and '70s set a high bar for future practitioners of the craft.

"Fundraising," says Richard, "is about relationships, about earning people's trust. They sense the excitement about what we are doing here." Lemann "has a vision," he adds, and "there's a general consensus that having journalists who better understand what they are doing is needed." Richard expects that corporate America will welcome--and fund--the emphasis on more sophisticated skills, but is careful to underscore that no gift from industry can be accompanied by any hint of compromise or strings attached.

"Authority is a construct," Lemann tells me on my second day at the school. And the "authority" of journalism with the American public is clearly at a modern low point. Lemann intends to reconstruct journalism's shaky reputation via an infusion of specific and measurable skills--either you can or you can't do regression analysis; either you can or you can't follow a case citation sequence or decode an annual audit report--and thus ignite a demand among editors not for the bright young reporters from campus newspapers, but for really smart alums of graduate schools of all sorts who can be tempted into the field despite its pay and present status somewhere near the carnival barker's.

This objective is both large and novel. Joseph Pulitzer wasn't a skills man, though his detour from reporting to law school suggests at least a hint of Lemann's recognition that reporters are often overmatched by the complexities of the stories they are assigned. Pulitzer was very much a crusader, though, and his 1904 North American Review article "The College of Journalism," which Lemann points me to, is almost hilariously optimistic in its aims for the profession:

There are many political reformers among the clergy, but the pulpit as an institution is concerned with the Kingdom of Heaven, not with the Republic of America. There are many public-spirited lawyers, but the bar as a profession works for its retainers, and no law-defying trust ever came to grief from a dearth of legal talent to serve it. Physicians work for their patients and architects for their patrons. The press alone makes the public interests its own.

"What is everybody's business is nobody's business"--except the journalist's; it is his by adoption. But for his care almost every reform would fall stillborn. He holds officials to their duty. He exposes secret schemes of plunder. . . . He brings all classes, all professions together, and teaches them to act in concert on the basis of their common citizenship.

The Greeks thought that no republic could be successfully governed if it were too large for all the citizens to come together in one place. The Athenian democracy could all meet in the popular assembly. There public opinion was made, and accordingly as the people listened to a Pericles or to a Cleon the state flourished or declined. The orator that reaches the American democracy is the newspaper. It alone makes it possible to keep the political blood in healthful circulation in the veins of a continental republic. . . . Virtue, said Montesquieu, is the principle of a republic, and therefore a republic . . . is the hardest of all to preserve. For there is nothing more subject to decay than virtue.

This vision, from which the quotations in the school's entrance lobby are excerpted, can hardly be read with a straight face these days. And it has very little in common with Lemann's project. Pulitzer wanted reporters to push for virtue. Lemann endorses, first and emphatically, "truth-seeking." They are very different projects, proceeding from very different ideologies. Virtue, as Pulitzer understood it, was not so difficult to figure out. Truth is elusive.

Lemann also recommends to me the 1920 Walter Lippmann essay "Liberty and the News," but curiously not Lippmann's better known 1922 opus, Public Opinion, which opens this way:

There is an island in the ocean where in 1914 a few Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Germans lived. No cable reaches that island, and the British mail steamer comes but once in sixty days. In September it had not yet come, and the islanders were still talking about the latest newspaper which told about the approaching trial of Madame Caillaux for the shooting of Gaston Calmette. It was, therefore, with more than usual eagerness that the whole colony assembled at the quay on a day in mid-September to hear from the captain what the verdict had been. They learned that for over six weeks now those of them who were English and those of them who were French had been fighting in behalf of the sanctity of treaties against those of them who were Germans. For six strange weeks they had acted as if they were friends, when in fact they were enemies.

You can put Lippmann's book down after page one, his 1920 essay, and Pulitzer's vision statement for his school as well. Lippmann's world, Pulitzer's world, even Nicholas Lemann's world of the Harvard Crimson from 1972 to 1976--they are all gone. Every conversation with one of the old guard citing the old proof texts comes down to this point: There is too much expertise, all of it almost instantly available now, for the traditional idea of journalism to last much longer. In the past, almost every bit of information was difficult and expensive to acquire and was therefore mediated by journalists whom readers and viewers were usually in no position to second-guess. Authority has drained from journalism for a reason. Too many of its practitioners have been easily exposed as poseurs.

Lemann understands completely what has happened. I think he regrets it. He is certainly trying to salvage the situation. And there is simply no way he can succeed.

What is true tolerance?

I've been thinking, over the past few days about tolerance, after reading an article in the Opinion Journal about how the West is heading towards extinction. Although the writer, Mark Steyn, discusses a lot of issues, one sentence in particular, stuck with me. He mentions a statement made by British barrister and Queen's counsel Helena Kennedy, that "our tolerance of our own tolerance is making us intolerant of other people's intolerance, which is intolerable."

And it got me thinking. Having attended an ultra-feminist, liberal women's Catholic college (where, in my, and several others opinions, the Catholic part was mere decoration), I've often found Kennedy's statement to be true. I found a great deal of tolerance and acceptance - and claims that all are welcome - there. . . as long as it was towards those with a similar mindset. As soon as the tolerant encountered any form of intolerance, the tolerance went out the window.

I looked up the definition of tolerance, and the definition that would fit our purpose was this: Willingness to recognize and respect the beliefs or practices of others. It does not say "willingness to recognise . . ." as long as they fit with the beliefs of the person claiming to be tolerant. Tolerance does not allow for exceptions. Tolerance is not tolerance if it does not tolerate intolerance.

The brand of tolerance practiced by those who claim to be extremely tolerant is this: as long as you agree with us, we will be tolerant; but the moment we encounter any sort of intolerance - towards homosexuality, towards abortion, towards certain religious practices, - away with our tolerance. Then we will just be right, and you wrong.

But, if they were truly tolerant, they would be tolerant even of views with which they don't agree, wouldn't they? Even of extreme views, which most people would find difficult to tolerate. Are they not being as hypocritical as they are claiming that their opponents are, by claiming to be universally tolerant and accepting, and then picking and choosing what they are tolerant towards?

U.N. Human Rights Commission by December

Jan Eliasson, the president of the U.N. general assembly announced on Nov. 23 that the new Human Rights Commission will be formed by the end of the year, and will be ready to be functioning by the next Summit in September. Eliasson and the team that is working on hashing out the details of the new Human Rights Council expect to start meeting next week to negotiate the details of the new body, and expect these to be finalized by the end of the year.

But herein lies the problem. The U.N. General Assembly, when it had its Summit in September, was unable to agree on the council’s size and on the criteria for membership. These critical negotiations were left to a later date, and still have not been resolved. What’s more, even Mark Malloch Brown, chief of staff to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has warned that the design of a new council needs to be finalized by December if it is to be ready by Eliasson’s time line.

Despite Eliasson’s affirmations that this is possible, drawing up the details and achieving consensus are near impossible by the deadline he has set. Expectations for the new Human Rights Council are so different, based on whom they are coming from, that lengthy negotiations must be undertaken before the terms are agreed upon. John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. wants to replace the 53-member commission with a council with no more than 30 members. The members of the new Council should also have a solid human rights record, he has said.

Such a council faces opposition from several countries, particularly the human rights violators Bolton and Eliasson have made clear will not be welcome on the new Human Rights Council.

Yet Eliasson and his team believe that by December, they can draw up the details of the Human Rights Council and bring about consensus within U.N. members on these points. Whether it happens or not remains to be seen.

The Plamegate saga continues. . .

The Judith Miller/Valerie Plame saga is really turning into a circus now. Bob Woddward, of Watergate and Deep Throat fame, has now stepped into the ring, proclaiming that another "senior Administration official" had informed him of Plame's identify before Miller knew about it, i.e. before Scooter Libby told Miller about it. This certainly comes at an opportune time for Libby.

I am all for protecting anonymous sources, when necessary, but I think Judith Miller went a little too far - she was protecting someone who was extremely media savvy, who knew how to use and abuse the media, and who revealed to her information about someone out of a desire for revenge. Being an experienced reporter, Miller, in the first place, should not have promised anonymity to Libby, knowing full well his intentions for revealing Plame's identity to her. And even after having promised him anonymity, she should have made a much greater effort to convince him to release her from her promise to him. Instead, what does she do? She goes to jail, to make herself look like a martyr.

At first, when Woodward stepped into the picture, I was afraid that Miller's decision to remain mum about her source will look even more legitimate. But then, reading a bit more, it seems as if he's going to go down the same route as Miller. For one, it was his source, and not him, who went to Fitzgerald to tell him that the source had told Woodward about Plame even before Miller knew about it through Libby. I think it's pretty clear that, left to himself, Woodward would have continued his silence on this, and would have kept insisting that there was nothing significant about this entire episode.

Woodward is coming under increasing fire for remaining mum throughout all the hoopla about Miller's anonymous source. Despite his almost untouchability, thanks to his role in breaking Watergate, the fact that he kept quiet all this time about who leaked Plame's name, makes him, and by default, the Washington Post, look very bad. He has apologised for not coming forward earlier, but is it too late?

Miller has already left the New York Times, where she was becoming a liability, but with a hefty book deal under her belt, I'm sure. But things just seem to be getting worse. And Woodward, like Miller, certainly considered himself above it all. Miller found out that she wasn't - and possibly still came out the winner. Will Woodward go the same way?
More on this

Why do people boycott elections?

Sri Lanka held its presidential election yesterday, and only 0.014% of Tamils in Jaffna, the capital of northern Sri Lanka, voted, according to the BBC. This figure was typical of Tamil turnout in most other places in the north and east, which are dominated by Tamils. This is compared to 19% of voters who turned out in the 1999 elections, which, while appalling, seems to be a gold mine compared to the turn out this year.

Tamils are disillusioned by both current Prime Minister Mahinde Rajapakshe, and former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe, who was replaced by his rival. But there is some slight support for Ranil from Tamils, who seemed keen to work out a peace agreement between the government and the Tamil Tigers when he was Prime Minister. Apparently, though, this little support is not enough for them to come out and vote for him, which means that it is now likely that Rajapakshe, with the support of Singhalese nationalists and Buddhist monks - who are vehemently against the Government coming to any agreement with the Tigers - will probably win.

Why do these people do this? There was a similar situation in Iraq when Sunnis boycotted the elections, and then realised their mistake when they had such little voice in the creation of the Constitution. People need to realise that boycotting elections is not the way to make their voices heard. In fact, it accomplishes the opposite - it takes away what small voice they have and leaves them without even the little power they had before.

If Rajapakshe comes into power, the fact that he has the blessings of Sinhala nationalists speaks volumes about the kind of president he will be. With Wickramasinghe, even if he doesn't accomplish much, at least he won't be in the pockets of the monks and nationalists as much as Rajapakshe.

In this case, it is a matter of choosing the lesser of the two evils. But, by boycotting the election, the Tamil people have relinquished the power to put into power the person who will do the most for them - or at least, the person who will do them the least harm. They have sealed their fate, and by their inaction, will probably put into power the greater of the two evils.

George. . . yummy as ever! And smart to boot!

I went to the screening of George Clooney's new movie today. Now, this is not your typical Cloon-man flick, with casinos and romance and adventure and all the rest. This is a documentary - and, what's more, a black and white one - on Edward Murrows, a CBS broadcast journalist, who contributed to the downfall of Senator Joseph McCarthy, known for his aggressive actions against those, particularly in the US army, that he suspected of being allied with Communists.

Clooney, who directed the film, played the character of Fred Friendly, a producer at CBS, who later became president of the company, and was also a broadcast professor at Columbia University. Although I was a wee bit wary when I heard it was black and white, I was very impressed with the movie. It was worth the half hour wait for tickets, and then to get in (of course, this had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the fact that George Clooney was part of the panel that was discussing the film afterwards!)

Anyway, the movie portrayed the dilemnas of the staff at CBS in running the episodes about McCarthy on Murrow's show, See it Now; the nervous tension with which they awaited the reviews and responses to the shows (they had both positive and negative ones); and the justification of their efforts when McCarthy was questioned and then officially censured for his aggressive efforts to label people communists, often without evidence.

The panel after the movie consisted of Clooney, and three others, including a historian, a broadcast journalist, and one of the other writers of the film (too lazy to look up their names). I was very impressed with George Clooney, who had a very good grasp of both politics and journalism, and very informed opinions, and was able to answer questions eloquently and clearly. In fact, he was probably as interesting as the historian, who was the only other worthwhile speaker on the panel, unfortunately. He was also funny and cheerful, and kept the conversation going easily.

What was also cool was that two characters in the movie, Joe and Shirley something, who both worked at CBS, and were secretly married (because CBS had a policy against hiring married couples) were both in the audience, and Clooney was as surprised as the rest of the audience when they spoke up.

Despite the title of this post, I'm not really that big a fan of George Clooney's. But I was sufficiently impressed with his performance tonight, and was star-struck enough that I just might turn into one!

All's as it should be in Iraq. . .

Last week, I attended a talk by Jalal Talabani, Iraq's new president. It was, on the whole, a winning talk, aimed at convincing the audience that the US did the right thing by going to Iraq. He is quite a personable man, and I could tell that the (somewhat undiscerning) audience took to him immediately. Which, for my journalistic - in other words, excitement-craving - instincts, proved a little disappointing.

"You are our partners in our liberation from tyranny," he told the audience. "Now, we struggle side by side to fight facism and terrorism in Iraq." He highlighted the mass graves of women and children that were discovered in Iraq, one of the products of Saddam Hussein's regime, as one of the many reasons for the US and Iraq to continue to fight the "war on terror" together.

To those who opposed the US' involvement in Iraq, he said: "Please come to Iraq and see the mass graves with hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people."

"The forces of darkness want to take us back to our terrible past," he said. "They showed no remorse to any human suffering." An example, he said, was the exchange of congratulations between members of Al Qaeda after Hurricane Katrina.

Responding to calls by several Americans to the US government to withdraw from Iraq,or at least to set a timetable for withdrawal, Talabani said that doing so would prove to be a set back for the war effort. The presence of the UN and multinational forces is vital for democracy in Iraq and the Middle East, he said, until Iraq can stand on its own feet.

To those calling for a timetable for a pull-out, he said: "The US should set no timetable for withdrawal. It will encourage the terrorists, [lead them to conclude] that they can defeat a superpower. Withdrawal now or in the near future could lead to victory of tyranny in Iraq."

Speaking about the new Iraqi Constitution, Talabani addressed the conflict and troubles that Iraq has had in its drafting. The outcome of the drafting process is that nobody is entirely happy with the new Constitution, he said, but insisted that this is a good thing. "If anyone was completely happy, there would have been others who were completely unhappy, and it would have been a failure," he argued.

Talabani also said that it has taken longer to build a government in the new Iraq than it would have in the old Iraq. This is because the new Iraq is "a state based on the principle of inclusion, not exclusion," he said. "There must be no victors and no vanquished."

And in conclusion: "To the terrorists, I say, 'You will never win. Freedom will win in Iraq'."

His talk was a veritable journalist's dream, at least as far as succulent quotes and sound bites go. But it was obvious that it was a carefully crafted speech, designed to win over an American audience with mixed feelings about the US' role in Iraq.

Throughout Talabani's talk, it was clear that he was trying to soothe troubled waters, to convince the audience that things in Iraq are going well, despite all the problems and conflict still rife in the country. I think that, for the most part, his talk succeeded in at least moving the audience a little closer to acceptance of the view he presented. But whether they remain convinced as events continue to unfold in Iraq remains to be seen.

Talabani's ascendancy to the presidency of Iraq is clearly a victory for Iraq's Kurds, long marginalised under Saddam Hussein. The fact that he has been voted into such a position of power in Iraq also signifies a mandate for change in Iraq. And thus, when the US does get out of Iraq, it will, I imagine, leave with at least some of the credit for uniting a nation that has had several internal divisions, both in the north, with the Kurds, and in the south, with the Shiites.

But precisely because of this acceptance of Kurds in Iraq, relations between Iraq and Turkey, which still refuses to recognise Kurdistan, have soured considerably after Talabani came into power. That this hostility is present on both sides was very clear from a comment that Talabani made in response to a Turkish student's question. The student showed his own bias when, referring to a comment Talabani made about Kurdistan, he asked Talabani what he exactly he had meant.

Talabani's sharp retort: "I didn't create Kurdistan. God created Kurdistan. Just because you don't accept Kurdistan doesn't mean it doesn't exist."

It was amusing to see his diplomatic veneer slip ever so slightly, and that little bit of tension somewhat appeased my aforementioned need for excitement in an otherwise tame presentation.

Choice of words

Yesterday, we had an interesting discussion in one of my classes about the use of the word "refugees" in describing people displaced by Hurricane Katrina. The professor asked if the news media should be using that word to describe them, as the word has two definitions. According to the dictionary definition, it applies to anyone seeking refuge from anything. But according to the general UN definition, and the way it is used in the media worldwide, it means someone who has come to one country for fear of persecution in his or her own country.

The professor asked various students to comment on whether it was appropriate to use the term refugees for people displaced by the hurricane. Several people stuck to the basic dictionary definition, and said that, yes, technically, they are refugees, so it is ok to use that word. Others said it was not ok to use it, as the people it refers to are American citizens, and as such, they are not refugees.

When I was talking to a couple of others in a small group later on, one of them said that the word refugees has been used in the American media to describe people fleeing natural disasters in other countries, e.g. after the Dec. 26 tsunami. One of the others in the group, a lawyer in a former life, who has done several fascinating things, including serving on a few election monitoring missions in the Middle East, pointed out that the media in other countries hadn't been calling those affected by the tsunami refugees.

My question is. . .why the need for this debate at all? The appropriate term for those who have been displaced by Hurricane Katrina is "evacuees". Not refugees, not internally displaced, as someone else suggested. While people can't be faulted for choosing to use the word refugees according to its dictionary definition, journalistically, it is inappropriate. The media does anything but operate in a vaccum, even a vaccum called the United States. While local media who don't know better might get away with using the word "refugees", national publications, such as the New York Times, cannot afford to stick to dictionary definitions. Because the New York Times is, in many ways, an international paper too, and if it veers away from the internationally accepted definitions of words and chooses to endow on certain words meanings that are not recognised internationally, it could lead to a great deal of confusion. And the whole point of the news media is to clearly and accurately inform people of the truth.

Predictable politicians

On Wednesday, I went to listen to yet another speaker: this one, the president of my own country, Chandrika Kumaratunga. She had come to New York for the UN summit, and was gracing the Asia Society with her presence, so I decided to shell out 15 big ones to go listen to her!

It was a pretty mediocre performance. I think her objective with the session was to leave her presidency (which is coming to an end soon, as we are going to have elections within the next few months) with a bang. She went on about how hard her government had worked to achieve peace in Sri Lanka, and to keep peace talks with the LTTE going, even though the LTTE petulanty keeps reneging on its cease-fire agreement.

Not quite true, because, although there have been isolated incidents and internal conflicts among the LTTE itself, it has, for the most part, adhered to its promise of not returning to full-fledged war.

She claimed to have tried hard to redevelop conflict-affected areas in the north and eest of the country, sending ministers there to lead redevelopment efforts, whom the LTTE have promptly killed. This might well be true, but she made no mention of the several Tamil areas still occupied by the Sri Lankan army, which refuses to let Tamils back into their land and their homes, saying they are high-security zones.

She also called for transforming the LTTE from a "dictatorial, brutal force to a political one that doesn't use violence to make its voice heard." Which might be a noble goal, but the last time I checked, it wasn't only the LTTE that was a "dictatorial, brutal force".

I am, by no means, under the illusion that the LTTE is some sort of saintly force that is trying to fairly and accurately represent all Tamils. The internal struggles that it has been dealing with over the past year itself are evidence that this is not the case. Yet, Kumaratunga's claims that she has done nothing but good for the country, while the evil LTTE does everthing possible to foil her saintly efforts, made me feel slighty sick.

Overall, it was a disappointing and somewhat predictable evening. But, as my International Reporting professor commented when I told him so afterwards, "What did you expect? Politicians are always predictable."

"I shook hands with Mary Robinson!!"

On Tuesday, after my long day on my beat, I decided I still have a teeny weeny bit of energy left to go to a forum on the UN on the eve of the UN Summit. My tentative plan for my master's project is that it will be on the UN (it's a VERY tentative plan!), so I thought going to this forum would help me crystallise that plan into something more specific.

It was a very different experience from any I've had so far in New York, just in terms of the dialogue and discussion. It comes as no surprise to most of the world that the US is a pretty insular place, for all the pies it has its fingers in (apologies for the cliche!).

So, the forum was a very refreshing experience. Featuring such well-known names as Shashi Tharoor (UN Undersecretary general for public affairs and author), William Pace of the World Federalist Movement, Luis Inacio de Silva, president of Brazil (on tape, presented by a member of his staff), Jose Antonio Ocampo, UN undersecretary general for economic and social affairs (ECOSOC) and Erkki Tuomioja, foreign minister of Finland.

The last session, on the Millenium Development Goals and UN Reform, was the only one I was able to attend, and the discussion proved very educational, if somewhat predictable (with the US- and Bush administration-bashing that seems to characterise any dialogue on anything these days).

All called for putting civil society (NGOs), rather than governments, at the centre of the UN agenda for change. Most called for ECOSOC to have a larger role in the UN, with financial institutions such as the World Bank and IMF reporting to this agency.

Gina Vargas, of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty Feminist Task Force, pointed to the reason for her organisation's demand for UN reform. The five permanent members on the UN Security Council have 80 percent of armament trade in the world, she said. "They are not capable of defining what are situations of imminent/latent threat or danger," she said. The Millenium Development Goals are insufficient, and they cannot be reached without far-reaching UN reform, she said.

At the end of the session, my friend Anits and I debated whether to stay for the "political and cultural event" that was to follow. With speakers including Mary Robinson, Jesse Jackson and Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai, it was very tempting. Anits was eager to hear Mary Robinson, among whose claims to fame are her presidency of the Republic of Ireland and her role as Human Rights High Commissioner of the UN for five years.

We decided to stay for Mary Robinson's talk. And we were glad we did. She reminded the audience that, at the turn of the century, the UN's goal had been to ensure that globalisation would work for all the world's peoples. However, with the emphasis on fighting terrorism following Sept. 11, globalisation and the role of human rights in globalisation got shoved to the back burner. She pointed to the fact that human rights issues have been removed from the UN summit's agenda this year, and called for change.

She also cautioned against settling for a weak UN reform plan. "It's important that we don't get into the kind of mood where we think that something's not so bad, because it used to be so much worse," she said.

After her talk, Anits and I slipped out of the church where the forum was being held. As we exited the building, we spotted Robinson standing by herself on the sidewalk. Anits studied human rights in undergrad, and to her Robinson was an idol, one of the leading figures in the field. So, we had to go speak with her. We approached her, introduced ourselves, and thanked her for her talk. Anits, who's a lot more informed about human rights issues than I am, then chatted with her about the need to bring human rights back into the UN agenda, while I gawked.

As we walked away from Robinson, Anits was in heaven. "I shook hands with Mary Robinson!!" she exclaimed jubilantly. "I feel like a child who's seen Madonna or someone for the first time! No one's going to touch this hand!!"

Anyway, as we walked away, what struck me the most was my own ignorance about the UN, and all the roles it plays. Listening to the talks, I realised how little I knew about the Millenium Development Goals, the UN reform agenda, the agencies that make up the UN, everything. My knowledge about the UN barely skims the surface.

So, I've decided. . . I'm going to read up on as much as I can about the UN over the next few weeks. So ask me in a few weeks!!