Media

A Seattle forum on "Fixing Radio" focused on the fallout from Janet Jackson's exposed breast and Clear Channel Communications' suspension of Howard Stern. (Clear Channel executives were shocked, shocked to discover that Stern's show features sexually explicit talk.) But panelist Bruce Wirth of KBCS 91.3 FM commented, "What I think is really indecent is that we're focusing on this and Janet Jackson's (breast) ...

According to New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney,"Senator John Edwards said yesterday that his proposal to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, a pact he has repeatedly blamed for economic distress, would not significantly cut the flow of jobs abroad." As Zachary Roth observes in on the Columbia Journalism Review's campaign weblog, that's not what Edwards said.

"The New York Times offered a sharp editorial Tuesday critiquing the indisputable role of the White House in distorting the intelligence on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, and in stampeding Congressional and public opinion by spinning worst-case scenarios -- 'inflating them drastically' -- to justify an immediate invasion last March to repel an alleged imminent threat to the United States.

"In recent months, US news organizations have rushed to expose the Bush administration's pre-war failings on Iraq," notes Michael Massing. "Watching and reading all this," he says, "one is tempted to ask, where were you all before the war? Why didn't we learn more about these deceptions and concealments in the months when the administration was pressing its case for regime change -- when, in short, it might have made a difference? Some maintain that the many analysts who've spoken out since the end of the war were mute before it. But that's not true.