Rocks and Hard Places
USA
Today and the Washington Post lead with a federal appeals court ruling
that Secret Service agents are not relieved from testifying before Kenneth
Starr's grand jury by any so-called "protective function" privilege. The story
is also the New York
Times 's off-lead. The USAT headline--"Secret Service Staff Must
Testify"--couldn't be straighter. The NYT 's adds mention of the Lewinsky
case. And the Post 's highlights the political angle--"Starr Wins An
Appeal on Privilege." The Los Angeles Times , in its front-page story on the
decision, high up and succinctly describes the significance: moving Starr "one
step closer to obtaining testimony from perhaps the last impartial and credible
witnesses in his investigation." The NYT goes with the death, after
suddenly taking ill while meeting with U.S. envoys, of Nigeria's most prominent
political prisoner, Moshood Abiola. The Nigerian government has promised a full
and prompt autopsy. The story is the WP 's off-lead. The LAT leads
with the conviction of a 19-year-old Ukrainian immigrant gangbanger for the
murder of Bill Cosby's son. The Cosby story also grabs the "talker" slot on the
USAT top front, and runs above the NYT fold. The WP puts
it inside.
The LAT runs the Cosby story big, including a front-page picture of
defendant Mikail Markhasev looking back at the Cosby family members who were in
court (Bill Cosby wasn't there) as his fate was announced. The story also has
the most details from the trial evidence, such as running quotes from
Markhasev's jailhouse letters to another inmate, in which he says that he went
to kill a drug dealer who wasn't home and then came upon Ennis Cosby fixing a
flat tire, and details about how the informant who turned Markhasev in to get a
$100,000 National Enquirer reward testified that the defendant told him
he'd killed Cosby. The NYT says the informant testified that "Markhasev
had said he shot a black man," while the WP says the testimony was "I
killed a [racial epithet]." The LAT renders the confession thus: "I shot
the n-----."
The Wall Street Journal reports that the new $217 billion
federal highway program may have a problem: with the construction trades
already stretched tight, new workers to carry it out may be hard to find.
Another problem, noted by USAT in its front-page "cover story," is that
new highway construction is apt to raise to "epidemic" proportions an already
high accident rate among rock quarry workers. This could be avoided, the paper
notes, by a few hours of training for new hires. But there's a catch: federal
law prohibits enforcing safety training rules at quarries. (This brute fact is
reminiscent of the paper's recent story about how you can't sue your HMO.) The
provision has been kept in place, says the story, by a stone industry that
gives millions to congressional campaigns.
The WSJ flags its Motorola earnings story with "Motorola Surprises
Analysts, Posting Slim Operating Profit," while the WP goes the other
way with "Motorola Reports Earnings Plunge/2nd-Quarter Operating Profit
Negligible."
"Today's Papers" is sentencing itself to the Dept. of Corrections for two
recent infractions. 1) Yesterday's column asserted that since running a story
about a Pakistani claiming to have inside knowledge of his country's nuclear
war plans against India, USAT has not revisited the story even though
both the NYT and WP have reported that the man is likely a fraud.
In fact, the paper has run two stories reporting on the erosion of the man's
credibility. The stories ran inside, but during a visit to the USAT
newsroom, "Today's Papers" was assured that if and when the paper issues a full
retraction, it will appear, as per USAT policy, on the front page where
the original story ran. 2) Last week, TP stated that Bill and Hillary have
never owned a home. Several real estate-oriented readers have pointed out that
this is not true--for a few years in the early 80s they did.
Yesterday, the NYT editorialized that it was inconceivable that Roy
Rogers and John Wayne ever appear in the same movie. Today the paper admits it
is conceivable, because it's actual: the two starred together in "Dark
Command."
