Incomplete Sentences
USA
Today and the New York
Times lead with the passage of a major IRS overhaul. The Washington Post goes with Big Tobacco's negotiations with
numerous states in an attempt to settle their claims, which remain in the wake
of Congress' failure to pass comprehensive tobacco legislation. The LAT leads
with the California Supreme Court's ruling that women may not sue Dow Chemical
Co. for any alleged harm caused by its breast implant subsidiary Dow Corning
Corp. The paper points out this limits implant plaintiffs to a share of the
pool of money in the Dow Corning settlement announced Wednesday. None of the
other leads even makes the Los Angeles Times 's front--hey, it's the Silicone
Valley.
Both IRS leads supply the bill's basic facts: it establishes an outside
board designed to trim the agency's powers and shifts the burden of proof in
tax cases from the filer to the IRS. And both have the tacked-on provision
shortening the holding period required for the optimal tax treatment of capital
gains (although only USAT mentions that this will cost $13 billion over
the next decade.) The NYT gets into details about the organizational
overhaul that USAT does not. On the other hand, who do you think gave a
clearer account of the president's Gumbyesque history with the bill? The
NYT says, "Although the administration had opposed the bill in its early
stages last year, the measure built up unstoppable momentum after a series of
hearings in the Senate Finance Committee laid out horror stories from
taxpayers..." while USAT puts it thus: "Clinton, who initially resisted
the overhaul, now says he looks forward to signing the bill."
The tobacco/states talks broke up Wednesday, the WP reports, over the
states' demands for an up-front payment of about $20 billion, twice the amount
the companies offered in last year's negotiated settlement, left in limbo by
the failure of the Congress to implement it. But, the paper points out, there
is certainly pressure to continue talking: in the form of more bills in the
making that could hit the cigarette companies with a large tax surcharge.
Yesterday Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson were respectively sentenced to 2
® and 2 years in connection with the death of their newborn at a Delaware
motel. Compare the two front-page headlines on the story: WP : "Pair
Whose Baby Was Left in Trash Get Short Terms" and NYT : "Teen-Agers Get
Terms in Prison in Baby's Death." Doesn't the Post headline better
communicate the gravity of the action and the incommensurability of the
sentence?
The NYT runs an AP story inside reporting that a Miami executive was
charged with soliciting $20,000 in foreign contributions to Democratic election
campaigns. The story doesn't mention what the Post tips in the headline
of its version and plays high up in the body: that the man is a friend of Al
Gore.
The Wall
Street Journal "Washington Wire" reports that three separate suicides
by Navy officers in and around Washington in recent months have the service
rattled.
"Today's Papers" wants to make a clean breast of the mistake it made
yesterday, when it guessed that the WSJ had not made a fuss about the
Dow Corning implant settlement because the news broke after the paper went to
bed. Actually, the paper didn't have to make a fuss--it had the story the day
*before.*
At yesterday's afternoon Page One meeting, the editorial top guns at the
NYT were rightly wowed by the stellar photograph that graces the top
front this morning. It's a geometrically pleasing and emotionally charged
picture of two sons at their firefighter father's funeral. After all the
expense and complications the Times has experienced putting color
pictures on the front page, it might be a little difficult for the brass to
admit that the picture has something else going for it: its main colors are
blue and white, giving it the moody feel of...B&W.
