Al Qaeda on CNN


August 23, 2002


BROOKE GLADSTONE: From WNYC in New York this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. Last Sunday CNN began showing some of the Al Qaeda tapes it had recently acquired from an unnamed source. They show terrorists making do-it-yourself TNT bombs, offering instruction in ambushing and kidnapping, and testing poison gas on a dog. By Monday, ABC and NBC were running CNN's footage, and CBS was running some tapes it itself had purchased. Al Qaeda video, once discouraged on TV news by the Bush administration, was suddenly screened around the clock.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:It's horrible stuff. Horrible. CNN news anchor Aaron Brown said that himself after presenting a long and thoughtful explanation for the decision to run the videos at all. Brown said: "Could we have edited the tapes differently? Yes, absolutely. They would have been less sickening. But by sanitizing them they also would have had less impact and the impact matters. And one more thing on this before we move on, and this may sound self-serving -- it is a risk we have to take. I know some of you think we're running this stuff simply because we believe we'll get good ratings. You are wrong. I find them so repulsive I rather suspect many of you will not watch them at all." That preamble diffused much of the criticism CNN surely anticipated, but some questions remain, and I'm pleased to say Aaron Brown has agreed to consider them. Welcome to the show.

AARON BROWN: Thank you.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So first I have to ask: if showing these tapes isn't at least in part about ratings, why spread them out over a series of reports over an entire week? Why not do a one day special edition? Why run the disturbing clips again and again?

AARON BROWN: Let me make two points about it. The, the piece I wrote that you quote on Monday, I was talking about, specifically about the gassing of the dog and the reaction of some people that it was-- essentially the equivalent of, of running a train wreck. It's the kind of thing that people can't somehow resist watching. And I found it and I find it still kind of ridiculous to think that we would put something like that on simply because we thought we could get great ratings out of watching a dog tortured. And, and so that's what the piece referred to. It is, it would be incredibly disingenuous to suggest that we are not in the business of having people watch us. Of course we want people to watch us. So no one should think what I was saying is we're not trying to get people to watch; we are. But what we weren't trying to do is put on the most disgusting piece of tape we could find in hopes that we would find the lowest common denominator viewer to watch us -- somebody who simply wanted to watch a dog die!

BROOKE GLADSTONE:You told us on Monday also that out of a concern for public safety CNN had shown the tapes to appropriate government authorities. Did CNN share the tapes with the government before airing them or after?

AARON BROWN: Both.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And did the government express an opinion about the contents of the tape or CNN's decision to air them?

AARON BROWN: I am unaware that anyone in government said to us we should not run the tapes. I, I do not know that that happened. I have no reason to believe that that happened.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:White House press secretary Ari Fleischer --CNN played this clip on Monday night -- said that the tapes were "just one more troublesome sign about the type of enemy we face and why it's important for us to pursue this war on terror." It seems the government isn't displeased with the running of these tapes. The Bush administration has had strong views all along about which Al Qaeda tapes are meant for public consumption and which aren't. By airing these tapes, isn't there a danger that CNN is playing into a government agenda to promote support for the war -- that there is a whiff of propaganda about some of this?

AARON BROWN: We have been criticized by people who see this as Al Qaeda propaganda -- that by showing the tapes we have made the terrorist organization seem more frightening than it already is. And I suppose there are also people who will say that by airing the tapes we are playing into the government's agenda. In an odd way both might be true but neither is the point, and I, I can't honestly control, nor do I think I'm expected to, people's reaction to the tape if they play into some political agenda or another.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Despite your efforts on Tuesday night's show to explain CNN's decision to pay for the tapes, a lot has been made of why CNN failed to initially disclose the fact that it paid for the tapes and why CNN still won't disclose who it paid for the tapes. We know we don't want to endanger the lives of any reporters, but there are many people who feel that the provenance of the tapes allows people to judge its credibility better.

AARON BROWN: It was, it was not a simple transaction. It's not a transaction I'm going to talk about. And that's just not a risk that we can take.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: How about the mixup over whether or not CNN paid for the tape?

AARON BROWN:I'm not clear, honestly, on how the mixup occurred in the Monday New York Times piece, but I have no question, you know, Judith is a terrific reporter and I'm sure she heard it the way she heard it. I tried to give it a context that it is not especially unusual for us or any news organization to buy video; we paid a whole lot more for video of the trade center towers being hit, for example.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Yes, and it's certainly quite routine for news organizations to pay for tapes or photographs to illustrate a story, but of course when they pay for interviews, that's called "checkbook journalism" because the cash incentive could affect what the subject says. But in this case, the video is like the interview subject -- it is the story, which is why without revealing anything that would endanger anybody's life or work the provenance of the tape, the credibility of the tape, hinges on the source.

AARON BROWN: I, I would beg to differ on the question of the credibility of the tapes. The tapes themselves speak very loudly on their own, and they don't need, I don't believe, any more sourcing. It's very clear what they are. I don't think anybody disputes the credibility of those tapes; the legitimacy of those tapes. So what we come down to is a discussion, a kind of inside-baseball discussion about how we got them, how the transaction was made, how many people were involved, where the money went -- that sort of thing. And while we are incredibly confident that the money certainly did not end up in the hands of "bad boys," we just -- we can't talk about it! It's just something we will not talk about.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Okay. Aaron Brown, thank you very much.

AARON BROWN: You're very welcome. It's nice to talk to you.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: CNN News Night Anchor Aaron Brown. World Press: America vs. Iraq?


August 23, 2002


BROOKE GLADSTONE: As we watch in horror as Al Qaeda gasses dogs, the world's press seems to be recoiling at the prospect of a U.S. war with Iraq. Here with a summary of the global opinion pages is Alice Chasan, editor of the World Press Review. Welcome back to the show.

ALICE CHASAN: Thank you, Brooke.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So in what ways does the debate as reflected in the world's press compare to the way we're talking about this potential war over here?

ALICE CHASAN: I would say that the primary difference is that most of the European publications, many of the publications in the Middle East, some of the Latin American publications emphasize the question of what they see as U.S. exceptionalism -- what Oslo's left wing Klassekampen calls "America's divine right" to call the shots in whatever policy it wishes to carry out. The Europeans are interested in negotiation and arranging for the United Nations weapons inspectors to re-enter Iraq whereas their perception is that the Bush administration really has no interest in the weapons inspectors going back in and intends to oust Saddam Hussein through force.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Now we always expect Britain to be our allies, and yet when I was reading the Financial Times and the Daily Mirror and The Observer, papers with different perspectives usually, they seem unanimous that the Bush administration is being over-hasty in its pursuit of Saddam Hussein.

ALICE CHASAN: That's true, Brooke. There seems to be growing sentiment in Britain that Tony Blair has followed Bush too faithfully as his lap dog, and the editorialists seem to want to push their prime minister to take a stronger and more independent position and they're highly skeptical that the Bush administration has mounted a cogent enough case for ousting Saddam Hussein and they're very, very unhappy with the idea that Britain might be assisting in this operation.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:What about the German press? I know that there was a flap earlier this month when the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, said that he would not be, quote, "available for adventures" like a war in Iraq. Then the Bush administration chided Schroeder and, and this has gotten heavy play in Germany, hasn't it?

ALICE CHASAN: Yes, it has, but the truth is that for months now the German press has been ridiculing the Bush administration's stance. Several months ago already Der Spiegel did a cover on which it depicted George Bush as Rambo. More recently you have a centrist publication like Munich's Suddeutsche Zeitung saying that the rest of the world is in an arm wrestle with the United States over Iraq. Since Schroeder is in an election campaign now, he is perhaps taking his cue from popular opinion as it's reflected in the press.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: As you survey the papers throughout Europe, what do you sense most? Outrage? Contempt?

ALICE CHASAN:What we see is consternation -- country after country whether in Asia or Europe or Latin America asks the following questions: Singapore's Straits Times asks -- Who will remain to pacify Iraq the day after the campaign ends?

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Have you found in any of those publications any pockets of support?

ALICE CHASAN:Well there was a piece by Andrew Sullivan last week [LAUGHTER] in the Times of London in which he was wearing his British hat -- as opposed to the American hat he wears when he writes for American publications -- and he was explaining to his fellow Britains why Americans are justified in worrying about Saddam Hussein and why the British should also worry about him. Of course there are reports let's say in the Israeli press that Sharon -- the government of Ariel Sharon -- is encouraging and pushing the Bush administration to attack Iraq sooner rather than later, and perhaps Ariel Sharon and Andrew Sullivan are of one mind on this, but one sees few other perspectives that are anything but skeptical and highly concerned.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: What about the rest of the Middle Eastern press?

ALICE CHASAN:Throughout much of the region there is a great preoccupation with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They are still focused on Bush's speech a month or so ago in which he declared that there had to be a regime change in the Palestinian Authority as well. Egypt, however, has chastised the United States for what it considers a rash and highly dangerous campaign and the Gulf States are also very concerned about the possibility of an attack because they fear that their own sovereignty might be threatened and they're also concerned that Iraq could be carved up and part of it could come under the aegis of Iran which is apparently very worrisome. In Bahrain, for instance, Akhbar Al Khaleej, one of the Gulf newspapers, says that this would certainly threaten the unity of the Gulf countries if Iraq were to be carved up.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Earlier this week the Bush administration suggested that they would be working toward a regime change in Zimbabwe on top of all this talk about Iraq. How did that go over?

ALICE CHASAN: It simply gave more fuel to the rhetorical fire at the disposal of editorialists and commentators around the world that the United States apparently believes it has the prerogative to decide when and where a regime change is necessary.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Alice Chasan, thank you very much.

ALICE CHASAN: Thank you, Brooke.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Alice Chasan is the editor of the World Press Review. [MUSIC]

BOB GARFIELD: Coming up, charges of bias against the Grey Lady and against the coverage of the baseball strike. Also, movie Indians get real.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is On the Media from NPR.
New York Times’ Dove Campaign


August 23, 2002


BROOKE GLADSTONE: We're back with On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. What if the New York Times were slanting the news to reflect its political agenda? About half the public would say, "Duh. Tell me something I don't know," as the notion of liberal media bias is pretty much a conservative article of faith. But some conservative Republican pundits think they have found the smoking gun in the Times' recent coverage of the debate over war with Iraq. And so does Democratic pundit Mickey Kaus of Slate.com. He joins us now. Mickey, welcome back to the show.

MICKEY KAUS: Thanks, Bob.

BOB GARFIELD: So set the stage for us. How has the front page at the Times differed from, say, the Los Angeles Times or the Washington Post this summer?

MICKEY KAUS: The front page of Times has, for the last couple of months, has featured a steady drumbeat of stories that seems designed to build opposition to a war in Iraq, to vent discontent with that course, starting with a story that it was going to cost, you know, 40 billion dollars or billions and billions of dollars. Then there was a story about how we had aided the Iraqis in the Iran/Iraq War and that they had used poison gas. There was a very, very biased coverage of the, of the hearings that Senator Joe Biden had where only the, the generals that were saying well this is going to be more costly than we thought were given voice, and the fairly compelling witness that said well, Hussein is closer to developing weapons of mass destruction than you may think -- his voice was completely ignored -- and culminating in a story which was basically accurate that there was dissent among Republicans about the Iraq policy -- all told it amounts to a, a William Hearst, almost, -like campaign against the war. And we haven't seen that for a while in, in the New York Times. We've seen it, a little of it in other journals, but you didn't find it in the Washington Post or the L.A. Times.

BOB GARFIELD:The United States is headed on a path towards war as announced by the administration, and it's a contentious issue, and is it not the job of the press and the New York Times, perhaps foremost among the newspapers of America, to raise the difficult questions and put the issues right out in front for the American people to judge?

MICKEY KAUS: Yes, it totally is, and I think the Bush administration brought some of this on themselves, cause they've sort of given these hints that we're going to war with Iraq without laying any groundwork with the public or the press. They're just sort of confident that when the time comes they can whip everybody up into pro-war sentiment, and that invites a strong reaction from doubters, including myself, who say wait, wait, wait -you know - since when do we invade and attack countries that haven't attacked us yet? It's a new principle in war and Bush hasn't laid the groundwork for it and-- the press should show the other side, but they should show both sides, and that's where the Times campaign falls down. The smoking gun in this was the Biden hearings. People who attended the hearings were dumbfounded to read in the Times that it was only doubts about the war. There was one sentence about oh, some people, you know still supported the war. The L.A. Times reported it straight.

BOB GARFIELD:Now that's one smoking gun. The other prominent smoking gun in the accusations that the Times is biased was its characterization of a mounting insurrection among, among Republicans not eager to go to war with Iraq, and they cited Dick Armey, they cited Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft and others and came then an editorial in the Wall Street Journal which said no, that's not happening. This is entirely invented by the New York Times and Krauthammer has weighed in, and so has George Will and the Weekly Standard saying you know they're, they're just basically making this up out of whole cloth!

MICKEY KAUS: Well they're certainly not making up the fact that there's dissent within the Republican party and that it's a big deal if Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger who were two leading foreign policy guys in the administration of the current President Bush's father -- if they say we shouldn't have a war with Iraq; that there's no justification that they've seen, that's obviously a big story, a legitimate story. The, the legitimate objection is to the sort of blanket characterization that includes people like Henry Kissinger who generally seems at least to be for the war with a few caveats as to how it's presented. But there's no doubt that there was a legitimate story there.

BOB GARFIELD:It's certainly been a charge against the important media in this country for a long time that there is a liberal bias and that the New York Times and others are just constitutionally unable to keep their liberal opinions off the front page. And if this is a smoking gun about so doing, that's damaging not only for the Times but for, for all of the media. Do you think that this is an issue that's larger than the particulars of the Iraqi war debate?

MICKEY KAUS: It's very damaging to the Times. I don't know if it's damaging to all the media. It doesn't bother me if bias seeps into news pages as long as you can tell that it's sort of honest bias -- that the reporter says -- look - this is my argument - I think this is wrong - here, here's the facts and gives both sides. And that's why this is sort of a new step. Usually the Times has only slanted the news. Here the Times is sort of almost suppressing the negative news which is really damaging to their credibility I think.

BOB GARFIELD: Mickey Kaus, thanks very much.

MICKEY KAUS: Thanks very much, Bob.

BOB GARFIELD: Mickey Kaus writes the Kaus files column on Slate.com. Baseball Strike


August 23, 2002


BOB GARFIELD: You've probably seen the picture -- a little boy in the bleachers forlornly displaying a sign that reads: Please Don't Strike. The photo has been in practically every newspaper in the country, and so has the sentiment behind it. Opinion columns and news coverage alike have been as one note a proposition as we can recall. The consensus: for the sake of the game, the players should make big concessions to the owners. We ourselves don't disagree but we wonder if such naked advocacy represents, among other sins, a conflict of interest. Joining us now is syndicated columnist and ABC News commentator George Will, an author of a book about baseball, a fan, and a member of baseball's Blue Ribbon Panel on Economics. Will is also no stranger to the question of journalistic conflict. He once took heat for pundicizing on ABC about a Ronald Reagan speech he had helped the president prepare. George Will, welcome to OTM.

GEORGE WILL: Thank you. Glad to be with you.

BOB GARFIELD: There have been a lot of complaints lately about the New York Times using its news column to flog a dove-ish position on a war with Iraq. But nobody seems to have noticed a far more widespread bit of editorial slanting against a baseball strike.

GEORGE WILL: Obviously the sports pages of the country don't want their main subject in August of each year to disappear, and that would be the baseball season. It's a particularly good season, and it's very hard for the people in the media, I understand completely, to find a reason of a dimension sufficient to justify a strike.

BOB GARFIELD:Now there clearly are structural problems in the game, and let's just for the sake of context talk about what the two positions in this potential work stoppage are. The owners believe that the ability of large market teams with vast local and regional cable revenues to essentially buy winning teams has destroyed the competitive balance in the game and put small market teams in competitive and financial jeopardy. So they're looking for mechanisms in a new contract to address this rich team/poor team imbalance.

GEORGE WILL: It's almost a paradox here. The union is fighting strenuously in defense of the status quo and particularly in defense of the Yankees' revenues and the right of the Yankees to spend however much they wish -- the Yankees particularly and a few other comparably blessed teams. The owners are advocating a more egalitarian economic arrangement -- more revenue-sharing and a competitive balance tax assessed on the very highest portions of the very largest payrolls of the very richest teams.

BOB GARFIELD:Let's go back to looking at the coverage. There just seems to be unanimity of opinion that in any event a strike could be catastrophic for baseball. What if it isn't? If there were a settlement, for example, the way there was in 1994 that basically perpetuated the status quo, it would just keep this issue alive and festering until we have to face yet another possible work stoppage. Isn't it possible that a strike, like a forest fire, will have some sort of cleansing effect?

GEORGE WILL: Well remember the major league attendance is not yet back to the 1994 levels, if you subtract the effect of new ballparks and some new franchises. It seems to me clear that baseball can no longer take for granted that fans will be as tolerant of work stoppages as they have been in the past.

BOB GARFIELD:Humor me and accept for a moment my proposition that maybe a strike to end all strikes would ultimately serve baseball by getting these problems out of the way once and for all. If this were a political matter and the coverage were as similarly uniform, and full of advocacy, wouldn't your blood pressure be going up?

GEORGE WILL: I suppose it would. On the other hand, there is no reason -- zero -- to believe that this 9th work stoppage in 30-some years would produce what the other 8 have not, which is a rational economic system.

BOB GARFIELD:As long as I'm holding people's feet to the fire, I may as well grab your shoes as well. You set forth your arguments on this subject, but you were speaking as someone who yourself served on the commissioner's blue ribbon panel to investigate the future of baseball and the labor situation and now you're arguing the case in your column. Should I be queasy about that?

GEORGE WILL: No, I think what you've detected is that George Will agrees with George Will, and that's really not a news bulletin. Having spent 18 months studying baseball's economic and coming to completely independent conclusions on our own with no guidance whatsoever from major league baseball, it would be peculiar if, having done that, I now changed my mind!-- and the, the other 3 members changed their minds! We meant what we said then and now.

BOB GARFIELD:Yeah, I understand that, but for example--although I presume you, you know, you voted for George Bush -- you wouldn't have worked on his campaign would you?

GEORGE WILL: I fail to see the-- connection. I was not working for major league baseball. We were told to go out and come to an independent judgment and we did. Got it?

BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS] I reckon I got it. All right, well listen, thank you very much. I appreciate it. [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

GEORGE WILL: You're welcome.

BOB GARFIELD: George Will is a syndicated columnist, a former member of baseball's blue ribbon commission and a commentator for ABC News. [MUSIC]
Hollywood’s Native Americans


August 23, 2002


BROOKE GLADSTONE: This summer's major studio release of the film Windtalkers told a tale inspired by a real story of World War II's Navajo Indian Code-Talkers whose native language was employed as a code that the Japanese never did crack. Now Windtalkers' place in the history of Hollywood's depictions of Native Americans is being weighed against other independent releases in which Indians tell their own stories. OTM's Paul Ingles reports. [SOUNDTRACK FROM FILM WINDTALKERS PLAYS]

ADAM BEACH AS PVT. BEN YAHZEE: Listen, Enders. I'm a Code-Talker. It takes me 2 and a half minutes to do what used to take an hour.

NICHOLAS CAGE AS SGT. JOE ENDERS: Remind me to tell me [sic] when you got bullets flying over your head.

PAUL INGLES: In Windtalkers, Nicholas Cage's character Sgt. Joe Enders struggles with his secret orders to kill Navajo Code-Talker Pvt. Ben Yahzee played by Adam Beach if it appears Yahzee could be captured by the Japanese. Historians say in reality such orders were never given, and only a few bodyguards were assigned to code-talkers to protect the Indians from being mistaken for the enemy by their own troops. Most film critics were dismayed with this fictional plot device that places another white man in front with an Indian on his hip. This of course wasn't the first time that's happened in the movies. [SOUNDTRACK/THE LONE RANGER & TONTO PLAYS]

THE LONE RANGER: [MUSIC UNDER] [SHOUTING] Hi-yo Silver! [HORSE, SILVER, NEIGHS]

DREW LACAPA: I wonder if he ever fell off, trying to act all bad... Whoa! [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]

PAUL INGLES: While a clip from The Lone Ranger & Tonto plays on the screen above them, comedian Drew Lacapa and filmmaker Chris Eyre, both Native Americans, provide a running commentary from a couch on stage, an audience packed into this warehouse theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico is witnessing a work in progress called The Talking Couch.

CHRIS EYRE: Come on, Tonto. We'll stay at that KOA we love so much. [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]

PAUL INGLES: Not unlike Cable TV's Mystery Science Theater, Lacapa and Eyre lampoon a series of film clips typical of how Hollywood has stereotyped American Indians as either faithful sidekick to the white man, wild savage threatening the white man or noble spiritual being inspiring the white man. This performance was part of last week's second annual Native Cinema Showcase that in part considered the history of Native American portrayals on the big screen.

JASON SILVERMAN: I think they were largely caricatures that replicated themselves.

PAUL INGLES: Jason Silverman is the showcase director who along with Eyre and Lacapa created this Talking Couch event.

JASON SILVERMAN: Someone saw one western and thought that's how Native Americans behaved and so they made another western where they similarly. And all of this was fed by pulp fiction in, you know, through the late 19th Century too, so there's this whole continuum of how we envisioned the west or re-imagined the west, and Native Americans have been central to that -- figures in it -- but not central in terms of creating it.

DUSTIN HOFFMAN AS LITTLE BIG MAN: But why do you want to die, grandfather?

CHIEF DAN GEORGE AS GRANDFATHER: Because there's no other way to deal with the white man, my son.

PAUL INGLES: When 1970's Little Big man comes on the screen at the end of the Talking Couch event, LaCapa and Eyre leave the stage. There's nothing for them to joke about in this sympathetic, sensitive portrayal of Indians by director Arthur Penn. It stars Dustin Hoffman as a white frontier boy adopted by the Cheyenne, referred to throughout the film as "the human beings." The film depicts the advance of white civilization ravaging a compassionate native culture personified by actor Chief Dan George.

CHIEF DAN GEORGE AS GRANDFATHER: Whatever else you can say about them, it must be admitted, you cannot get rid of 'em. There is an endless supply of white men. But there always has been a limited number of human beings. We won today. We won't win tomorrow.

PAUL INGLES: Writing in a special edition of the journal Film & History in 1993, a host of scholars noted several films that moved away from hurtful portrayals of Native Americans, from the 1950 Broken Arrow starring Jimmy Stewart to 1990's Dances with Wolves with Kevin Costner, the cited films replaced the "savage" stereotype with the "noble redman" stereotype. All still are written and produced by whites, leading those scholars to all hope for a future when Native American writers and directors would tell their own stories, get Indians out of just westerns and into today's world. In the 10 years since, it's started to happen.

CHRIS EYRE: The stories I feel passionate about bringing to the screen are stories about contemporary Native America and they aren't using Indians as vehicles for politics or spirituality.

PAUL INGLES: Cheyenne-Arapaho filmmaker Chris Eyre who in recent years doesn't seem to have spent much time on any couch. His 1998 feature, Smoke Signals, that won awards at Sundance is about two Coeur D'Alene Indians who take a road trip to retrieve the ashes of one character's father. [SOUNDTRACK FROM THE FILM SMOKE SIGNALS PLAYS]

ADAM BEACH: Don't you even know how to be a real Indian?

EVAN ADAMS: I guess not.

ADAM BEACH: You gotta look like a warrior. You gotta look like you just came back from killing a buffalo.

EVAN ADAMS: But our tribe never hunted buffalo! We were fishermen!

ADAM BEACH: What?! You want to look like you just came back from catching a fish?! This ain't Dances with Salmon you know!

PAUL INGLES: From a story by Native American writer Sherman Alexie and with a Native cast, Smoke Signals has done about 6 million dollars worth of business since its release -- not huge when compared with blockbusters, but a successful landmark in a burgeoning Native filmmaking movement. At the Santa Fe Showcase, filmgoers could see many Native American-driven films including Chris Eyre's latest, Skins, set to open nationally this fall; the story of brothers on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Eric Schweig plays a tribal policeman. Graham Greene plays his older brother, an alcoholic. [SOUNDTRACK FROM SKINS PLAYS]

ERIC SCHWEIG: Give us the ball Mo.

GRAHAM GREENE: Okay. Make me.

ERIC SCHWEIG: Quit screwing around, Mogie.

GRAHAM GREENE: Yeah, how come you always gotta act like such a big man every time your friends are around? Showing off is not a Lakota virtue.

PAUL INGLES: Chris Eyre is clearly leading a creative surge among Native filmmakers, but getting wide distribution to theaters is another challenge all thing.

CHRIS EYRE: It's either American audiences don't really care about contemporary Native American movies or the movies aren't that good. I don't know which it is. You can't generalize. You know? Some of the movies are great and don't have distributors; some of the movies I don't think are very good and don't deserve to have distributors.

PAUL INGLES: One of this year's biggest Native film surprises seems to have the quality, a distributor and a buzz that's getting it more screens every week including a run here in Santa Fe. It's 3 hours long, shot on digital video in the Canadian Arctic by a first time director with a cast and crew made up almost entirely of Inuit Indians speaking only their native tongue. [CLIP FROM THE FILM THE FAST RUNNER PLAYS] [DIALOGUE BETWEEN A MAN & A WOMAN IN INUIT]

PAUL INGLES: It's The Fast Runner, an epic tale of an ancient native community's struggle with an evil spell by Inuit director Zac Kanuk. It's won international awards and has been universally praised. Elizabeth Weatherford who heads the film and video division of the Smithsonian Institute's Museum of the American Indian points out that The Fast Runner didn't just come out of the frozen north by itself.

ELIZABETH WEATHERFORD: It's made possible in a way because in Canada there have been some dedications, specific dedication of funds to indigenous or, or Native American production. There is a television system in Canada that it has a broadcast studio, a television studio that's run by aboriginals, Aboriginal Public Television. So the sense of where you can get support to continue is very serious.

PAUL INGLES: At a panel discussion during the Santa Fe Showcase, the idea of tapping Indian gaming tribes for film funds came up, and while director Chris Eyre said he wouldn't mind getting a half million dollars from an indian casino for a film, others cautioned that issues like creative control, profitability, cooperation among tribes and lack of good scripts could still bog things down out on the reservation, just like they do inside Hollywood. For On the Media, I'm Paul Ingles in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

BOB GARFIELD: Coming up, the consequences of journalism, three case studies -- the good, the bad and--the ugly.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is On the Media from NPR. Tax Loophole Reported, Closed


August 23, 2002


BOB GARFIELD: We're back with On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. This summer a couple of stunning journalism successes. Reporters from South Florida's Sun Sentinel tracked down 9 kids lost by the state's child welfare system. They said it really wasn't very hard. And then up north a New York Times reporters identified a tax loophole for the very rich and got it closed in a mere 18 days. So it seems that despite the budget cutters rampaging through the nation's newsrooms, investigative reporting is not dead -- yet. We thought we'd take a look at the tax loophole case, and so we invited Times reporter David Cay Johnston. Welcome to the show.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Thank you.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So this is a very ingenious loophole. Basically the very rich -- we mean people with more than 10 million bucks, usually much more -- were buying life insurance at inflated prices with the intention of passing that wealth on to their heirs and bypassing the 50 percent tax on inheritance at that level.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: You guy insurance at one price, and for the purposes of the gift tax, you declare a different price, and then you assign that portion of the gift to your spouse -- there's no gift tax between spouses -- and through this confidential mechanism the details of which we never were able to learn, the gift tax was made to go away. And this allowed you therefore to pass enormous amounts of wealth forward, completely going around the, the gift and estate tax system.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Why was this loophole devised to begin with?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON:When the income tax came into eff--into effect in 1913 there was an exemption for life insurance so that the widows and orphans of industrial workers killed in, in accidents wouldn't have to pay taxes on the one-time windfall they might get. But over the years, the life insurance loophole has been stretched and, and pushed out of all proportion so that today the primary beneficiaries are the very, very wealthiest Americans.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Tell me how you came upon this story. First of all, how did you get the lawyers and tax mavens to talk to you about it and, and even seem rather pleased with themselves? Where did it start?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Oh, it started with a tip, and that tip didn't particularly go anywhere, but then I got a second tipster who was outraged about this, and that tipster came back to me again and again when he wanted to with in--more information to help me understand this. And then I went from person to person. I looked up some government records, and eventually went to the, one of the creators of this plan, Jonathan G. Blattmachr who is an estate attorney in New York of great renown. He's a legend in his own time among his peers. And understandably he wasn't particularly eager to talk about this, but as other lawyers would fill me in on little details of this, there came a point when Mr. Blattmachr realized I had enough to do a story, and then he did something that was unusual but I, I would think very smart -- he decided that if we were going to write a story that he believed would result in his-- in this loophole being shut down, he was going to look smart! And he was somewhat more cooperative, and talked to us a number of times.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: How much money do you think was lost to the treasury because of this device?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON:Every lawyer that I talked to said they believed there had been billions of dollars put into these policies. So we're talking tens of billions of dollars possibly. Certainly we're talking about billions of dollars.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: What did the IRS official say to you when you explained it to him?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON:The lawyer who I talked to at the IRS was mystified by this. He, he didn't grasp it at all and it was clear that he was very familiar with insurance and tax avoidance devices but not this one at all. Now after our story ran, Pamela Olson who is the chief tax policy official in the Treasury Department put out a statement saying that any scheme -- any scheme -- to understate the value of benefits for income and gift tax purposes won't be respected.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Does this happen to you a lot? Do you write stories and then suddenly boom, the government acts to correct whatever it is you've exposed?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: You know that's all over the ballpark. I, I've written stories where the government immediately stood up and did something and others where, where it did nothing, and there are a number of businessmen whom we've named in the New York Times who don't pay taxes, don't withhold taxes from their workers' paychecks. We've named a couple dozen of them. In one court filing the government's admitted there are 1500 of them. In another document there, it suggested there's 7500 of them -- and not one of these people has been prosecuted.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:And so-- I mean how do you feel standing on the sidelines when you see something like that? Do you think what does a person have to write before they get off the dime in Washington?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well I, I think I look at it a little more systemically. Why is the government treating enforcement of the tax laws differently than other laws? If I had written a story in the New York Times that said here are the names of a group of drug dealers and the street corners they operate on who say there's no law against selling drugs, I am sure the cops would have been on those guys in the morning the story appeared, before you'd finished your coffee, reading the story.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Do you see this as your mission as a journalist to get these kinds of results on a regular basis?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON:Well I see it as my job to bring things to public light. I think the, the system is: I bring it to people's attention -- things they don't know. Then it's up to either the government to act or people to say they want the government to act or for people to say nah, thanks a lot -- we're not interested and go on about their way.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:David Cay Johnston covers taxes and pensions for the New York Times. He won the Pulitzer Prize for beat reporting in 2001. Well thanks again.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Take care. Article Stirs Up Firestorm


August 23, 2002


BOB GARFIELD: Death and taxes. We just heard about a reporter's impact on the latter. Now a story about the former. Could there be death by journalism? Yes, contends the author of a recent book called Death by Journalism that documents a new story and its effect on a small North Carolina town. The original reports and the book's account caused such a stir that the reporter of the stories has never spoken on tape about his work -- until now. From member station WFDD in Asheboro, North Carolina, Larry Schooler has this report.

LARRY SCHOOLER: In 1998 a press release touting an upcoming adult education class caught the eye of Ethan Feinsilver, then a reporter for the Greensboro News & Record who was based in the smaller nearby town of Asheboro. The course's title immediately interested him. North Carolina's role in the war for Southern independence, a course sponsored in part by a group called The Sons of Confederate Veterans.

ETHAN FEINESILVER: They said to me: the people teaching this class have a bone to pick with the traditional way that the Civil War has been taught. You know, a hypothesis. And then when I showed up on the first day of class, at least that orientation was confirmed for me.

LARRY SCHOOLER: The course's instructor, Jack Purdue, an amateur historian known for his meticulous research and preparation, introduced the class with a prepared speech that included the following lines that Feinsilver later read in print.

ETHAN FEINSILVER: It's time to remove any racial overtones from the War for Southern Independence and portray it for what it really was -- a war over the rights of a state to secede and a people for self-determination.

LARRY SCHOOLER: Feinsilver's interest in the class grew when he learned that one class session would be devoted to exploring the wartime experiences of African-Americans and Native Americans. Feinsilver couldn't make it to the class itself, but a handout he obtained from that session gave him the hook for his story. The guest instructor, Reverend Herman White, cited a collection of slave testimonies from the 1930s which suggested that, quote, "More than 70 percent of ex-slaves had only good experiences to report about their life as a slave in the South," end quote. Feinsilver says he was surprised when both Jack Purdue and Herman White essentially confirmed that they had taught such material in the class.

ETHAN FEINSILVER: For instance saying something like you know so it sounds like you're saying that these slaves were really -- they had no problem with being slaves? I was sort of sounding a little incredulous, but really I wanted to make sure that I wasn't taking something out of context as Jerry Bledsoe says that I did -- I mean I wanted to make sure that what I was going to put in the paper was something that these guys stood behind. And they did stand behind it, very firmly.

LARRY SCHOOLER: Feinsilver led his story on the class with the following: "A course at Randolph Community College teaches that most black people were happy under slavery and that tens of thousands of black men fought for the Confederacy because they believed in the Southern cause."

JERRY BLEDSOE: His first story was almost completely false --so many incredibly, as the tapes prove, so much of it was absolutely false!

LARRY SCHOOLER: Author Jerry Bledsoe wrote a book entitled Death by Journalism on the community college course, Feinsilver's reporting and the aftermath. Hardly a day after Feinsilver's story first appeared in the News & Record's Sunday Metro section, CNN, the BBC and Good Morning America joined hundreds of other media outlets seeking comment from Purdue, the college and others involved in the class. Randolph Community College officials ultimately canceled the class saying they needed more time to study what had been taught. After months of intense media scrutiny and the cancellation of the course, Instructor Jack Purdue died of a heart attack, giving Jerry Bledsoe the title for his book. Bledsoe held both Feinsilver and the News & Record partly responsible for Purdue's death at the age of 60 because, he says, Feinsilver's reporting bordered on libel.

JERRY BLEDSOE: There's not a class probably being held anywhere in the world today that somebody couldn't go into, take one or two lines out of context, somehow - that might seem sensational - and twist those to make them definitely sensational -- and then go out and destroy the, the teacher with them. And that's what happened here.

LARRY SCHOOLER: Specifically, Bledsoe, who reviewed videotapes of all the class sessions says Reverend Herman White was not suggesting that slaves were happy. That was Feinsilver's paraphrase, one later abandoned by the News & Record in subsequent articles. Bledsoe says the context of White's remarks is critical; in this case White was trying to demonstrate that not all slaves had been abused by their masters and some had in fact fought for the Confederacy.

JERRY BLEDSOE: If they had reported that Herman White had reported the survey and how he tied it in to the class and all that, nobody would have read it! It simply wouldn't have been read. You could have reported that and that would have been fine! And journalism is not horseshoes. There are so many people now who seem to think well if we sort of hit around the stop, you know, it still counts. Well, it doesn't. It doesn't. In journalism you have to throw ringers every single time.

LARRY SCHOOLER: Bledsoe couldn't convince Ethan Feinsilver or anyone else at the News & Record to comment on the record for his book. For his part, Feinsilver says he was shocked by the international reaction to the piece and by the local uproar. A group of outraged readers even took out a newspaper ad personally attacking Feinsilver and accusing him of race-baiting. Through it all, Feinsilver stood by his reporting.

ETHAN FEINSILVER: I don't think it's the job of the media to always measure what the outcome is going to be before they report what's happening!

LARRY SCHOOLER: But Feinsilver concedes that he wishes he had better measured how a Southern town might react to an issue that had been so volatile for so long -- the legacy of the Confederacy.

ETHAN FEINSILVER: But on the other hand of course, newspaper is part of the community; newspaper can be part of a solution or helping a situation, just like it can be part of exacerbating a situation. So you do have the competing principles. But I just think you have to always kind of have both in mind, and I don't think we really had -- I didn't really have the second thing in mind when I was doing the story.

LARRY SCHOOLER: Feinsilver won't take responsibility for maliciously and deliberately harming course instructor Jack Purdue as author Jerry Bledsoe suggests; and even Bledsoe can't pin Purdue's death on the reporting of his class. But Roy Peter Clark who analyzes media ethics for the Poynter Institute says journalists must still ask themselves a series of questions about a story's ultimate effects before and after publication or broadcast.

ROY PETER CLARK: What's the journalistic purpose of my publishing this? What good will it effect in the community? Can I foresee the consequences of publication? Are any of them harmful? What are my alternatives in terms of how I play it; where I play it? I think journalists who ask those kinds of questions routinely are going to make the best kinds of judgments no matter how difficult the story is.

LARRY SCHOOLER: Since the publication of the original stories in 1998, Ethan Feinsilver has left journalism, though he says he may return. Jerry Bledsoe's book has sold sluggishly, perhaps in part because many North Carolinians want to forget this chapter of history. For On the Media, I'm Larry Schooler in Asheboro, North Carolina. [MUSIC] Sunburn Sheriff


August 23, 2002


BROOKE GLADSTONE: Remember the legal case that became the very model of the nuisance suit -- the woman who spilled hot coffee in her lap and sued McDonald's for damages? In its initial decision, the jury awarded her 200,000 dollars in compensatory damages and 2.7 million in punitive damages. What a joke, right? But consider this: McDonald's sold its coffee at temperatures between 180 and 190 degrees --established burn levels. The woman in question suffered third degree burns over 6 percent of her body, requiring a hospital stay and skin grafts. And it was discovered that McDonald's had received more than 700 complaints from people burned by its coffee over the previous 10 years. We were wondering about another burning story in the media. This week's report of a sheriff who threw a mother in jail for exposing her kids to sunburn. It generated headlines of the Can You Beat This? variety all over the world. We called Jefferson County, Ohio Sheriff Fred Abdalla who, let's face it, has been made a bit of a joke, and he's on the line. So tell me, how did you like your 15 minutes of fame?

SHERIFF FRED ABDALLA: Well I didn't look for any 15 minutes of fame. AP called me and wanted to know about this, and I briefly told him; I figured it'd just -they took it out of our local newspaper. And then at 4 o'clock Tuesday evening of this week the floodgates opened up. I mean the news media called from all over the world, okay? So then I explained everything to 'em, and then all of a sudden what I'm seeing is Sheriff Throws Woman in Jail for Her Children Being Sunburned! That's not the way it was!

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So tell me what really happened.

SHERIFF FRED ABDALLA:The fair started last Tuesday. The temperature was 95 degrees with high humidity. About 8 o'clock a registered nurse out at the fair with her children spotted this woman pushing her 3 children -- a 2 year old girl and twin boys that are 10 months old. What got the attention of the nurse was the fact that the one boy's face was so red, and as a nurse and as a mother she went up to the--woman and asked her is this child okay? Why is the child's eyes rolled back in his head like they are? She says oh, well-- they're, they're always like that when the boy's sleeping. Well the kid wasn't sleeping. Just at that point in time with a minute or two my female officer, Deputy Kalfa came along, and noticed the children and escorted 'em over to the emergency area where the ambulances were. I come to the ambulance. I looked in. I saw these children. The one little boy's face looked like it was dipped in red paint. The pictures that you've seen on the airwaves does not reflect the damage to those little children. And she told the ambulance personnel that the ten-- one ten-month-old boy has a collapsed lung! The mother's told them that. Now that became a concern to me. I'm thinking whoa - a collapsed lung?

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well why didn't you just send them for treatment? Why put the mother, Eve Hibbits, in jail?

SHERIFF FRED ABDALLA:Well, she didn't go to jail that day. The children went to the hospital in the ambulance with the mother, and the hospital said they were second degree burns. And based on what she told us, the child had a collapsed lung.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: It turned out it was an under-developed lung from a premature birth. So how did, how did she end up in jail?

SHERIFF FRED ABDALLA:I have nothing to do with charging anybody. I bring the case to the prosecutor. He was going based on what the hospital was telling him. Now this woman was being -- she was camping at the fairground. Her husband was a carnival worker for the week. So had I not did anything on Tuesday, and she's back out there on Wednesday with these children in the sun again, they would have gotten worse and maybe this little boy -- and the medical doctors told me if the child has a collapsed lung or if it's undeveloped, that child could die because of the heat!

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So has it -- all of this changed your view of the news media?

SHERIFF FRED ABDALLA:Oh, no, not at all! Listen, I don't have no problem with the news media. If you're going to report it, what I'm saying is report it right. Put everything in there. Don't come in and just take tidbits and then run with it without getting the full story. Now had I done nothing, Brooke, and that child would have died the next day or got seriously injured or seriously ill, then you would have reporting [sic] a sheriff's being hung in Jefferson County.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And your reaction to the way you were portrayed for the action you took -- doesn't matter to you?

SHERIFF FRED ABDALLA:Oh, it doesn't matter. I mean-- hopefully the, the -- maybe through you and some of these other talk shows that have talked with me, maybe they'll get the full story out.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And what if the full story never really gets sufficiently out. What if you stay-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

SHERIFF FRED ABDALLA: Then I have to live with it.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: You just stay The Sunburn Sheriff and to hell with it.

SHERIFF FRED ABDALLA:What else can I say, kid? [LAUGHTER] But you know what, Brooke? I can sleep good at night and I can get up in the morning and look in the mirror real well, and don't have a problem. I wouldn't have been able to go to bed at night if I hadn't done anything and one of these children would have been killed or, or died rather. I would, I, I, I just couldn't live with myself.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: It was a pleasure talking to you.

SHERIFF FRED ABDALLA: It was my pleasure. Thank you, ma'am.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Fred Abdalla is a sheriff in Jefferson County, Ohio. [THEME MUSIC]

BOB GARFIELD:That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Janeen Price, Katya Rogers, Sean Landis and Megan Ryan; engineered by Dylan Keefe and Irene Trudel, and edited-- by Brooke. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Mike Pesca is our producer at large, Arun Rath our senior producer and Dean Capello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the program and get free transcripts at onthemedia.org and e-mail us at onthemedia@wnyc.org. This is On the Media from NPR. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield.