By: E&P Staff
In today's links, the parents of slain journalist Daniel Pearl work full-time now to help mend fences between Muslims and Jews, critics respond to the controversial new ABC drama series about 9/11, and Slate's Jack Shafer notes that newspapers' sudden plans to sell ads on the front page and section fronts are not exactly a new phenomenon.**
9/11 Drama Throws Poor Light on All Gov't OfficialsJack Myers Media Village: Yes, "Path" is more unforgiving in its re-creation of the Clinton years than it is in its depiction of the Bush presidency, but that's a function of the story itself, which spans eight years of Clinton's presidency and only eight months of Bush's time in office. But if the Clinton administration comes off as maddeningly ineffective, perpetually bungling opportunities to thwart, capture or compromise al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, the Bush team is presented as inexplicably inert, ignoring and/or failing to act on intelligence that might have prevented the deaths of almost 3000 people in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania five years ago. In short, nobody in a position of true federal authority comes off well.
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A False Version of HistoryJoe Conason in Salon: It would be uplifting to believe, as the producers of ABC's "The Path to 9/11" have claimed, that the network spent $40 million on its anniversary docudrama to educate the American people and improve the nation's defenses. And it would be reassuring to believe, as the producers have insisted in recent days, that "our ambitions and our goals and our standards were all about accuracy." But it is impossible to believe, after viewing their somewhat cheesy, sometimes incomprehensible and severely distorted version of the events leading up to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that they acted in good faith on either of those motivations.
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New Service From Amazon Offers Downloadable FilmsNew York Times: Amazon.com, the leading purveyor of goods online, has started selling digital products, offering movies and television programs that can be downloaded and watched on a computer or portable video player. The move, which was expected, is the first major effort by Amazon, the Web?s largest retailer, to sell downloadable entertainment. Amazon has at times moved toward offering music downloads but never introduced a music service. It does, however, offer some free promotional music files.
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News Corp. Provides Murdoch a $50,000-a-Month ResidenceWall Street Journal: New York media conglomerate News Corp. is paying $50,000 a month to rent an apartment for Chairman Rupert Murdoch, the company disclosed in a regulatory filing, even as Mr. Murdoch's combined salary and bonus reached a high of $25.7 million in the year ended June 30. The apartment is a penthouse in the Trump Park Avenue building in New York, a person familiar with the situation said. Mr. Murdoch, whose family owns a roughly 30% voting stake in News Corp., recently sold his apartment in Manhattan's Soho neighborhood and is renovating a penthouse on the Upper East Side that he bought from Laurance S. Rockefeller for $44 million two years ago.
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Front Page for Sale: Newspapers Go back to the Future.Jack Shafer in Slate: So hidebound and dimwitted are U.S. newspapers that it's predictable that their idea of breaking all the rules is something newspapers were doing a century ago. The latest example is running ads on Page One and section fronts, as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal now do, with more papers to follow.
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Parents of Slain Journalist Daniel Pearl Work to Improve Jewish/Muslim RelationsNewsweek: Among Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl's last words was the statement, ?My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish.? Those words marked the end of Daniel Pearl?s life and the start of a new one for his parents. Through the Daniel Pearl Foundation, which they run mostly out of Danny?s childhood bedroom in their home in Encino, Calif., the Pearls bring Muslim journalists from around the world to work as fellows in U.S. newsrooms and at Jewish papers. As a tribute to Danny?s musical talents?he was an accomplished violinist?they coordinate and sponsor hundreds of concerts each year as part of their World Music Days celebration, and their World Youth News project trains high-school students to be future journalists. This is their new life?s work. It is all they do anymore, and they say they?ll do it until they die.
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Florida Journalists Took Money From GovernmentMiami Herald: At least 10 South Florida journalists, including three from El Nuevo Herald, received regular payments from the U.S. government for programs on Radio Mart? and TV Mart?, two broadcasters aimed at undermining the communist government of Fidel Castro. The payments totaled thousands of dollars over several years.
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