Generals and Their Privates
The Washington
Post leads with a report that cocaine and marijuana seizures in the
southwestern U.S. and along Mexico's Pacific coast have escalated dramatically
in the past two years. The story states that the increase reflects more
smuggling into this country and also increased drug production in Mexico and
Colombia. The New York
Times reports that President Clinton will sign a bill today permitting
the U.S. to provide food to Christian rebels in Sudan who've been fighting
Moslem authorities there for 16 years. This would be, the paper says, a
reversal of current U.S. law that prohibits food assistance to combatants
before they demobilize. The move is stirring up fears in and out of government
that the U.S. is becoming more interventionist and that it is violating a
fundamental principle of international humanitarian assistance--that food
should not be a weapon. The story makes it clear that there is heartfelt
disagreement about this within the administration by quoting by name government
officials on both sides. The Los Angeles Times leads with the uncovering by state and FBI
investigators of "a giant rip-off" of California's state-federal program
providing health care to the poor. The scam involved phony storefront medical
supply businesses being reimbursed by the state for providing supplies that
never were purchased for patients who didn't exist. The paper says the false
claims paid may total more than $1 billion. So far, 35 supply business owners
have pleaded guilty. Most of those charged, says the LAT , have Armenian
surnames. USA Today
leads with a bullish report on retail sales over the Thanksgiving weekend. The
Internet sales figures the paper passes along for the period include:
Yahoo--orders up 5 times over last year, Amazon--3 times. None of the leads is
even fronted by anybody else.
The WP story about drugs is consistently buttressed by appeal to
U.S. law enforcement sources, but it could sorely use some independent expert
voices, because it never really comes to grip with the seeming indeterminism of
its data. In other words, the piece suggests that more seizures equals more
production. But it's just as easy to imagine that more seizures equals better
law enforcement vs. the same level of production. And indeed, the WP
further confuses on this point by also claiming that Mexican opium and heroin
production are way up while seizures of Mexican opium and heroin are way
down.
And does the NYT lead really have the current law about food aid
right? If so, the paper should have explained how it squares with past U.S.
support for Afghanistan forces against the Soviets and for contras against the
Nicaraguan government, or for Israel against various Arab countries, etc. Are
we to understand that these aid packages didn't include food? And is it really
true that guns are OK, but not butter? When did this law go into effect?
Both the LAT and NYT front stories about women in the
military, but look at the topic differently. The LAT emphasizes that
women consistently leave the service at higher rates than men. The NYT
focuses on the difficulties mothers have getting to the highest rank--general
and admiral. The closest the LAT comes to mentioning the latter is its
26th paragraph, about the special obstacles for women's' military careers posed
by their "family issues." And the NYT doesn't get to the problem of
asymmetrical attrition until its 21st graph.
It seems that the LAT has got hold of a national problem, while the
NYT story, while interesting, is more of a curio. After all, according
to the LAT , in the Army the difference in the attrition rates for men
and women is 19 percent, while by the NYT 's own lights, there are only
37 women generals or admirals. But the LAT story still has some
problems. It waits till its seventh paragraph to notice that across the
services, the gender difference in attrition is only 5 percent and till the
24th paragraph to mention that unmarried women can get pregnant and still get
out of the service with an honorable discharge, and even then never pauses to
wonder how closing this loophole might change the situation.
Challenge to all papers doing stories about trends in the military: Try
doing your next one without quoting Charles Moskos, military sociologist of
Northwestern University. This is apparently impossible.
An editorial in last Saturday's WP about the Taliban's harboring of
Osama bin Laden exemplifies some of the pointlessness of this hidebound genre.
The editorial wraps up thus: "Now that they control most of the national
territory and are responsible for affairs of state, the Afghan authorities have
to take more seriously their responsibility to rein in terrorism. The new
Pakistani government has to reevaluate, too. Pakistan has supported the Taliban
as part of its military's longtime reach for an active regional foreign policy.
But Pakistan needs a quiet policy that will allow it to rebuild at home. So
does Afghanistan." Who exactly is this editorial directed at? Does anyone at
the Post think Afghanistan, or Pakistan, or perhaps bin Laden himself
will just put down this sterling prose and change?
The WP reports that the Baltimore Sun has fired a music critic
for lifting a paragraph from a music reference book. Today's Papers recalls
that the Sun also fired an obituary writer last summer for making up
quotes. Which makes Today's Papers wonder--Why no official reaction to its item
last week noticing an identical paragraph in WP and NYT
obituaries of the same man? Why are these two papers willing to let the
Sun be the most ethical paper in America?
