Scrapbook
The Media and the Snipers Lots of whining last week about the sniper case and the excesses of 24hour media coverage. Sure. Fine. Okay. No doubt Columbia's journalism school will host 50 panel...
...No doubt Columbia's journalism school will host 50 panel discussions featuring news directors in orgies of self-flagellation...
...The verdict...
...Please...
...To see such dangers is to begin to understand the possible political consequences of war" (December 14, 1990, New York Times...
...A land assault against their positions could be like Flanders Fields...
...Maybe Stark, Cohen, and Gallagher will get invited to the journalism-school discussions, but don't bet on it...
...If we bomb it apart, are we going to be wise enough to put it back together...
...More relevant than his conversion to Islam, his reported defense of the September 11 attacks, and his sympathies with al Qaeda...
...If U.S...
...Bad media...
...MSNBC was typical: "A former soldier and a teenager arrested in connection with the sniper hunt were expected to be arraigned Thursday, as sources told NBC News the evidence against them included a rifle of the same caliber as the gun used in the killings and a car modified to make for easy shooting...
...Reporters John Stark, Aubrey Cohen, and Mary Lane Gallagher found the Rev...
...It would be a war with enormous casualties and with destabilizing effects beyond calculation" (November 23, 1990, New York Times...
...Have Mr...
...According to the Herald, Archer was concerned that Muhammad was a terrorist and called the FBI in October 2001 to alert them...
...But here, as in Vietnam, so many things could go wrong...
...As damning as anything, the report includes an admission by Bellesiles that he had intentionally excluded evidence that would have increased the number of guns he found for the years 17741776...
...One thing that won't be covered— THE SCRAPBOOK is taking bets—is bias...
...Further proof of this was not needed, but the report ably supplies it anyway...
...As I read [a Times profile of Paul Wolfowitz], I kept thinking of one thing: Vietnam...
...No clearer, more mainstream, more respectable proof could be required for the conclusion that Bellesiles deserved all the exposes his work provoked...
...While the New York Times and the networks were desperately seeking Muhammad's ties to neonazis, in Washington state, the Bellingham Herald pursued a different angle...
...The Washington Post on Thursday carried this headline—"Police Looking for Former Soldier for Questioning in Sniper Case...
...NPR that same morning used only Muhammad's previous name, John Allen Williams...
...THE SCRAPBOOK wonders who else will remain defiant with the release of this report...
...Although it appeared in the "Washington Final" edition of the paper, that report has been dropped from the version of the piece on the Times website...
...Archer says he told the FBI that Muhammad has "connections somewhere with somebody who's got money...
...Possibly...
...Harjeep Singh, who knew Muhammad from the local YMCA, worried about "anti-American statements" and said Muhammad spoke of vague plans for violence...
...Not that Bellesiles is willing to admit defeat...
...Another Vietnam...
...Every aspect of the work in the probate records is deeply flawed," the committee reports...
...And again: "A ground attack on Iraqi forces in or around Kuwait could produce ghastly American casualties...
...But that was just for starters...
...Although the committee could not actually prove that Bellesiles "invented" nonexistent records from San Francisco, as some critics have suggested, they found that his account of when and where he examined those records does not hold up at all...
...Toujours Vietnam Anthony Lewis, former liberal stalwart of the New York Times op-ed page, has gazed into his crystal ball for the New York Review of Books, in a cover piece entitled "Bush and Iraq...
...Archer was suspicious in part because Muhammad flew around the country while staying at the homeless shelter...
...oops...
...Oh yeah, from the pen of Anthony Lewis: "If all this means what it says—war [with Iraq]—then George Bush is taking his country and the world into a tragedy of appalling dimensions...
...Wolfowitz and his fellow sunshine warriors calculated the effects of an American war on feelings among Arabs and other Muslims...
...Bellesiles was at best an incompetent researcher and at worst a dishonest hack...
...In his letter of resignation (also posted on Emory University's website), the historian calls the controversy just "a scholarly disagreement...
...Where have we heard these sorts of things before...
...Bad media...
...The committee focused on the personal property records from 1765 to 1860 that Bellesiles used to argue for a much lower incidence of gun ownership than previously believed...
...Is the "former soldier" part of Muhammad's personal history relevant...
...How about columbia University, which gave Bellesiles the once-prestigious Bancroft prize...
...Then Israel would retaliate, inevitably and unnecessarily...
...The Iraqis are well dug in, and they are experienced in defense tactics...
...Iraq is a large, modern, heavily urbanized country...
...And the whole political complexion of the gulf crisis would change...
...Other people who knew Muhammad say he passed out "pro-Islamic fliers" in Bellingham and seemed more interested in politics and religion after September 11...
...And then there's the Nation, which showed up late to the party only a couple of weeks ago to circulate pro-Bellesiles spin in a completely credulous article by Jon Wiener, a historian from the University of California at Irvine...
...Here, as in Vietnam, the advocates are sure that American power can prevail—and sure that the result will be a happy one...
...Would it be possible to keep the Saudis, the Syrians, and other Arabs in the anti-Saddam coalition...
...They found that Bellesiles had presented "seemingly randomly gathered information" in Vermont as a complete account of all the guns owned there and that he was guilty of imprecision and "exaggeration" with respect to Providence, Rhode Island, records...
...When Anthony Lewis repeats himself, it's farce both times...
...Specifically, why did journalists focus more on the military background of John Allen Muhammad than on his conversion to Islam...
...In their October 24 article, Times reporters Francis X. Clines and David Johnston claimed that federal officials were interested in talking to the two men about possible involvement in "skinhead militia" groups...
...Al Archer, who directs the Lighthouse Mission, a homeless shelter where Muhammad occasionally stayed...
...planes attack, there is every reason to fear that Saddam Hussein would strike at Israel, trying to rally Arabs to his cause...
...On Thursday afternoon, websites for each of the major news networks prominently reported Muhammad's status as an Army veteran while ignoring or burying his conversion to radical Islam...
...As it has been for the last quarter century, Lewis's crystal ball is tuned to the all-Vietnam, all-the-time station...
...It's not in the Nexis version, either...
...Ready, Aim, Fired Last Friday afternoon, Emory University announced it was accepting the resignation of history professor Michael Bellesiles, the author of the anti-gun history Arming America, which won the prestigious 2001 Bancroft prize...
...Said Archer: "I felt like he was part of an organization...
...Bellesiles's friendly New York Times reviewer Garry Wills...
...He says he'll continue his "research" into guns while he works on his next book, though he "cannot continue to teach in what I feel is a hostile environment...
...The school also released a 40-page report, composed by a committee of three outside scholars who had reviewed Bellesiles's use of evidence in his award-winning book...
...Perhaps the most egregious example, first noted by weblogger Diane Moon, comes from the New York Times...
...The tender feelings of the Arabs...
...I felt like he had some connection with terrorists...
Vol. 8 • November 2002 • No. 8
