Occupational Hazards

Being a journalist can be dangerous. Al Kamen reports:

Reporters covering President Bush’s trip to Africa are dropping like flies. The latest victim was Jon Ward of the Washington Times, who somehow ran through a plate-glass window at the Liberian executive mansion yesterday while trying to keep up with the president. Colleagues say he has cuts on his right hand but is in surprisingly good shape, our colleague Peter Baker reports.

Somehow, I wish that had happened to Dick Cheney. After all, Bush chose him as his running mate, didn’t he? And anyway, what’s Bush doing in Liberia?

What About Management?

We can debate ideology and policies and rhetoric till the cows ring the doorbell, but one necessary quality that the next US president must have is good management skills. On this issue it’s fair to ask of Hillary Clinton: If she’s making such a mess of running her campaign, how will she run her country.

Right now, she’s wasting money given voluntarily by donors to her. As President, she’ll have control over funds forcibly taken from taxpayers. It’s remarkable that she earlier positioned her management skills as a selling point. Heh.

Also read: Clive Crook’s Battle Of The Two Obamas. Echoing the sentiment expressed here, he writes:

I would be less concerned if I thought that Obama’s economic positions were simply a matter of pandering to the Democratic electorate. All politicians pander. In a way, it is a tribute to Obama that this truth would come as such a disappointment in his case. And a desire for straight talk would hardly be a reason for preferring Clinton or even, for that matter, John McCain. But what if Obama thinks that new trade barriers, much higher taxes on the well-paid, new regulations and incentives to steer companies’ decisions on where to locate are all wise policies? That would worry me more.

In the meantime a controversy’s broken out over John McCain’s past that relies on hints, allegations and things left unsaid rather than any concrete proof. The New Republic tells us how the New York Times put the story together. It seems to have rebounded on the Times, and might even be helping McCain. I agree with Michael Gerson:

If this is all the Times has—sexual innuendo and anonymous sources—it really is a scandal.

Quite.

(First link via email from Mohit.)

Cut To Obama

This sentence says it all:

As Mrs. Clinton was speaking, Mr. Obama appeared on stage at a rally in Texas, effectively cutting her off as cable television networks dropped her in midsentence, a telling sign of the showmanship power of a front-runner.

How she must have fumed!

To Die For

The WTF reportage of the day comes from Rediff:

“Twenty years from now, men will be ready to die for me, but not for you.” This is what a cadet at the National Defence Academy in Khadakvasla, Pune, tells his friends pursuing engineering when they discuss how much money they will make in their careers compared to him.

It is an explosive response for someone who is just 21 but that is not what makes it so staggeringly impressive. It is the belief with which it is said that gives it gravitas.

Staggeringly impressive? Hello? This is staggeringly delusionary, and I feel worried about the man who measures career satisfaction by such a dangerous yardstick. I’m not dissing the armed forces—they keep our borders and engineers safe—but there are better reasons to feel proud of being an army man than the power you have over people’s lives.

The other profession marked out by such lust for power is politics. How staggeringly sad.

The Private Treaties of the Times of India

Reader Bhushan Nigale writes in:

I was expecting you to link to the hard-hitting Mint story (incidentally published on the 15th of January) on ‘Private Treaties’, BCCL’s yet another innovation that compromises journalistic and ethical values. Instead, I found your post on ‘Classical Liberalism and the Times of India’. This amused me no end.

I refuse to believe that the newspaper can stand for anything, except for protecting and furthering the interests of its ‘private treaties’ and ‘MediaNet’ clients. It stands for violating the trust of its readers, by selling news for money and equity.

Fair point, and had I noticed the Mint story, I would certainly have blogged about it. I have no respect for some of the practices of the Times of India, as regular readers would have noted. If their edit pages do end up improving, that won’t absolve them of their business practices—but it is still worth commenting on.

Update: Devangshu points me to an earlier story on private treaties in Business Standard:

The Times of India publisher Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd must be doing something right with its three-year-old Private Treaties division.

Otherwise newspaper groups such as HT Media Ltd, Dainik Bhaskar and Dainik Jagran would not be eager to duplicate their arch rival’s business plan.

Read the rest here.