MediaBloodhound

NYT Front|Back: Porn Plots vs. Detainee Rights

NYT Front|Back, a MediaBloodhound feature that showcases The New York Times' intermittent yet longstanding penchant for placing a supremely unnewsworthy story on its cover while burying a vital one in its back pages, rarely makes an appearance on this site anymore. It's brought back from mothballed hiatuses only for the most egregious and absurd examples.

Like this one:

FRONT:

In Sex Film Industry, Some Long for a Real Plot

No, this isn't satire. It's a cover story on our nation's paper of record. The critical issue at hand (pardon the expression)? The article opens:

The actress known as Savanna Samson once relished preparing for a role. “I couldn’t wait to get my next script,” she said.

There’s no reason to look at them anymore, she said, because her movies now call almost exclusively for action. Specifically, sex.

The pornographic movie industry has long had only a casual interest in plot and dialogue. But moviemakers are focusing even less on narrative arcs these days. Instead, they are filming more short scenes that can be easily uploaded to Web sites and sold in several-minute chunks.

Two wars. Jobless rate at nearly ten percent. Healthcare in crisis. And if that weren't enough to bear, now there are dwindling plot lines in our pornography! I believe it was Patrick Henry who originally said, "Give me liberty and intricately plotted pornographic entertainment, or give me death." Of course, that was before the edit (fortunately for Henry, he wasn't living in the dawn of blogging). 

Some more excerpts from this earth-shattering piece of journalism:

“The feature is not as big a part of the industry today,” [Wicked Pictures president Steve] Orenstein said. But he says he still plans two to three bigger-budget releases each year, including the recently shot “2040,” which is about the pornography business of the future. Mr. Orenstein described the movie as “an almost Romeo-and-Juliet story between an aging porn star and a cyborg.”

In lieu of plot, there are themes. Among the new releases from New Sensations, a studio that makes 24 movies a month, is “Girls ’n Glasses,” made up of scenes of women having sex while wearing glasses.

[...]

Ms. Samson, for example, said she took her acting seriously and used to prepare studiously for her roles, like the character she played in the 2006 movie “Flasher.”

She said she played a psychotic who, because of the way her mother treated her, “had an obsession with flashing and doing things in public.”

“I used to have dialogue,” said Ms. Samson, whose given name is Natalie Oliveros, and who is one of the industry’s biggest stars.

“Getting it on in one hardcore scene after another just isn’t as much fun,” she added.

BACK (page A18):

In Senate, Debate on Detainee Legal Rights

Apparently the Times thinks Americans are, as the kids say, so over the issue of detainee rights that the dearth of pornography plots trumped this story by 18 pages.

Intro:

Obama administration lawyers said Tuesday at a Senate hearing that detainees prosecuted by military commissions should have some of the same constitutional rights as American citizens tried in civilian criminal courts.

Republicans on the Armed Services Committee argued that foreigners now detained on terrorism charges at the American detention center at Guantanamo Bay Cuba, did not deserve those constitutional protections.

“So you are saying that these people who are in Guantánamo, who were part of 9/11 or committed acts of war against the United States are entitled to constitutional rights of the Constitution of the United States?” Senator John McCain of Arizona, the senior Republican on the panel, asked administration officials at one point.

Aside from this article's banishment to the back pages, the story fails to include a substantive factual rejoinder to Senator McCain's misleading statement. Scores of detainees have already been released by the U.S. after being held for years with no charge and incurring what the Times calls "brutal" interrogation techniques but the rest of the world calls "torture."

The Bush administration's process that swept up these detainees, ignored due process and embraced, as Dick Cheney famously said, "the dark side" -- which actually meant perpetrating systematic cruel and inhuman treatment of prisoners -- should have no foundation of credibility in a country calling itself a democracy.

The closet the article comes to noting the inherent mendacity in McCain's statement is relegated to a sentence in the second-to-last paragraph (incidentally, is this a new Times editorial decision -- "harsh interrogations or torture"?):

Lawmakers and administration officials have already agreed that statements taken through harsh interrogations or torture would not be allowed in a commission prosecution, but several witnesses suggested that the standards still needed to be clearer.

What should be stated clearly in this story, however, is that the exact number of detainees who confessed during torture remains unknown. So claiming these detainees are guilty of crimes without yet knowing if the confessions were obtained through torture is preposterous. A concept about which Kafka was well versed.

Glaringly absent from this article as well is the fact that the Bush administration's sanctioning of torture has endangered the lives of Americans and directly led to this legal predicament, in which some detainees might actually want to kill Americans, but since their confessions were coerced through torture they may go free.

It remains unclear what Constitutional rights will be afforded detainees tried in military commissions. Though the closing paragraph might give you an indication:

Vice Adm. Bruce E. MacDonald, the Navy's top lawyer, said at the hearing that evidentiary rules should not bar statements taken by soldiers from witnesses questioned under gunpoint on a battlefield. But, he said, those accounts should be weighed differently from statements taken from a detainee six months after his capture.

Key phrases: "battlefield" and "questioned under gun point." Remember all those "dangerous terrorists" rounded up on the "battlefield" during the Bush administration who turned out to be completely innocent, in some cases boys and old men, including this geriatric jihadist, a 71-year-old nearly blind man -- he may have been as old as 78 -- who had to shuffle around Gitmo for nearly five years in a walker before being released in August 2006?

Such context is nowhere to be found in this article either.

NYT Front|Back: A Rock vs. Iraq

Since the inception of NYT Front|Back, MediaBloodhound has captured a slew of Onion-like examples of stories The New York Times has seen fit to print on its front page (for those of you new to MBH, some personal favorites are here, here, here and here.) The feature even got some press in Editor and Publisher after I emailed the excellent Greg Mitchell regarding his article "Before 9/11 Changed Everything," in which he said, "Oh, for those days when the Times was criticized for running soft news on Page One! If we could only turn back the clock." I pointed out to Greg that regardless of the changed world, our paper of record never altered its practice of placing soft news (mixed with serious of course) on its cover, which was precisely what inspired this ongoing series (however sporadic new items for it are posted). (Needless to say, Greg, as opposed to many in the mainstream, not only took criticism in stride but sent it to his managing editor to publish in E&P's letters to the editor.)

After a long hiatus, here's another entry (some days The Onion really has nothing on The Times):  

FRONT:

Between States, Hard Feelings Over a Rock's Place

What can one really say about this? Long story short, Ohio and Kentucky are fighting over who owns a rock. Literally. Did the world screech to a halt at some point during the last 24 hours that might have caused The Times to run out of viable news, let alone stories deserving of the cover?

Intro and excerpts:

An eight-ton rock rested for generations at the bottom of the Ohio River, minding its own business as time and currents passed. It favored neither Ohio to the north nor Kentucky to the south. It just — was.

[...]

Some Ohioans say the rock is an important piece of Portsmouth history and should be put on display. Some Kentuckians say the rock is an important piece of Kentucky, period, and should be returned. And some in both states say: I’ve been distracted by war, recession and a presidential campaign, so forgive me. But are we fighting over a rock? [You left out: And are you featuring this story?]

Last month the Kentucky House of Representatives passed a resolution demanding the rock’s return to its watery bed, with one of its members suggesting that a raiding party to Portsmouth might be in order. Not to be outdone, the Ohio House of Representatives is considering a resolution that asserts the rock’s significance to Ohio, and its speaker has said he is ready to guard the boulder with his muzzle-loading shotgun.

BACK (page 8):

Car Bombing Outside Market in Iraq Kills 23

Glowing reviews of the "surge" notwithstanding, the daily bloodbath in Iraq beats on. Though news of it is often shoved to the side, even, in The Times' own words, when it comes to "one of the deadliest" terrorist car bombings of the year.

Intro:

At least 23 people were killed Sunday after a car bomb exploded north of Baghdad at a checkpoint run by the police and citizen patrols of Iraqis who have turned against the insurgency, Iraqi officials said.

Amid a steep overall reduction in violence here over the last several months, the blast, near a market outside of Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad, was one of the deadliest this year. At least 40 people, most of them civilians, were wounded, the hospital in Balad reported.

This report also reveals the ever-changing narrative on the ground. If it's to be believed, Iraqi citizen patrols, also called "Awakening groups," are making inroads against Sunni Arab extremists (while paying a big price).

NYT Front|Back: Fairytale HS Football vs. Nightmare Military Courts

FRONT:

A Football Power in a Small Kansas Town
Between the size of its photo and accompanying text, this all-American, feel-good story about a beloved high school football team in Smith Center, Kansas, devoured two-thirds of above-the-fold real estate on Friday's New York Times cover.

It's the kind of story normally reserved for the final segment of a local or national news broadcast. Those confection pieces that make the hard news easier to digest and allow the anchor to sign off on a cheery avuncular note. A journalistic aperitif. (Never mind that adults shouldn't need such saccharine coddling, especially when much of that hard news is so watered down.)

Intro:

Their photos are on the cards traded over at the elementary school, and their exploits are on the lips of the old men who gather at the Second Cup Cafe each morning. They are the sons and grandsons of this north Kansas town, and for 30 autumns now, the Smith Center Redmen have puffed up the chests of folks here.

They are a high school football team, a superb one that has won 51 games in a row and three consecutive state championships, and has outscored opponents this season, 704-0. They are more than that, however, to the 1,931 people here who all know one another’s names: The Redmen are proof that hard work and accountability still mean something.

Gee whiz! Really? Do you promise? This sounds ripped from the headli...TV scripts of The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. Has Times reporter Joe Drape, the author of this piece, ever viewed these two wildly popular satirical news programs? Does he not understand that Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and a parade  of fake correspondents have, for good reason, mercilessly skewered this type of reporting for years?

Do Drape and his Times editors not realize that the greater the cognitive dissonance and contextual irony - i.e. America's current abysmal reputation as a rash, lazy and arrogant imperialistic nation that condones torture - the funnier the piece? In other words, how can they not see how unintentionally hilarious this story is, even more so because, in sync with George Bush's America, it embarrassingly and inanely bullied its way onto the front page of our nation's paper of record. 

BACK (Page A23):

Decks Are Stacked in War Crimes Cases, Lawyers Say
Speaking of America's tarnished reputation in the eyes of the world...

Intro and excerpts:

The administration’s problem-plagued military commission system started up here again Thursday, but it began with contentious new claims that the war crimes cases are unfairly stacked against detainees.      

Military defense lawyers said that on the eve of the hearing, military prosecutors told them for the first time of a government witness who might be able to help a detainee, Omar Ahmed Khadr, counter the war crimes charges on which he was arraigned Thursday.

Mr. Khadr, the only Canadian detainee at Guantánamo, has been held here since he was 16. He is now 21.

“It is an eyewitness the government has always known about,” said Lt. Cmdr. William C. Kuebler of the Navy, Mr. Khadr’s chief military lawyer, who questioned why the military was only now informing the defense. Mr. Khadr is charged with the murder of an American soldier, spying, material support for terrorism and other charges.

[...]

The controversy over the witness emerged after the hearing was completed. Defense lawyers said the new disclosures by prosecutors in closed-door meetings showed that the system was not intended to be fair.

Michael J. Berrigan, the deputy chief military defense lawyer for the Guantánamo cases, told reporters that defense lawyers had been told Tuesday night of the existence of a witness who could provide information that could help Mr. Khadr.

“How we can have newly discovered evidence is beyond me,” since prosecutors have been pursuing charges against Mr. Khadr for years, Mr. Berrigan said. The lawyers said they could not describe the witness because prosecutors told them the information was classified.

“Every time you all come down here you see the problems in this process,” Mr. Berrigan said. Spokesmen for the military said prosecutors turn over information that could help a defendant when they learn of it. The military prosecutors declined to answer questions from reporters.

In response to defense assertions that military commission participants are under pressure from superiors to get war crimes cases moving quickly, a spokeswoman for the Office of Military Commissions, Lt. Catheryne Pully, said, “Our interest is in making sure the process is done correctly, not quickly.”

Commander Kuebler used the courtroom session to mount a strenuous challenge to the military judge hearing the case, Col. Peter E. Brownback III of the Army.

Commander Kuebler noted that the judge had barred the defense from raising challenges at this stage of the case to the constitutionality of the military commission system. He added that the judge had told him in a closed-door meeting that he had “taken a lot of heat” after issuing one of the rulings in June that stalled the commission cases. Pentagon officials and a White House spokesman said they disagreed with the June rulings.

Colonel Brownback, clearly irritated, said he had not intended Commander Kuebler to disclose that conversation but said, “I never said anyone who had any influence over me said anything."

Well, that's convincing.

Nothing to see here. Move right along. Hey, how 'bout those Smith Center Redmen, huh?

NYT Front|Back: Plight of Multi-Millionaires vs. Ease of Vote Manipulation

FRONT:

In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don't Feel Rich

From reports on those who lament their struggle to sit at the billionaires' table to the weighted concern about the welfare of socialites to corporate-slanted interpretations of housing development deals and Census Bureau reports to obsessive coverage of the monied elites' prized racehorse, this site has already noted several instances of The New York Times' penchant for presenting the world through gilded glasses.

On Sunday, The Times continued to reveal its socio-economic-biased hand with another splashy above-the-fold cover story about the woes of the wealthiest 1 to 2 percent of Americans.

While millions of our citizens struggle to pay their bills and often must choose between food or healthcare (many without the luxury of either), with one in eight living below the poverty line, I'm not sure what could be less newsworthy or more galling than those with multi-millions of dollars whining about their billionaire envy.

Note to The Times: Enough already with these stories. At the very least, relegate them to the Style or Business sections (or a newly created Appallingly Wealthy and Shameless page). And when you place them there, please stop hyping them on the cover as if they were deserving of widespread attention.

You're supposed to be the Paper of Record, not the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous or The Fabulous Life Of... or Cribs.

If, on the other hand, this is the direction you want to take your paper, please make your editorial change official so that your readers are more aware of your objectives. Or, you would do well, and your readers a service, to change the name of your newspaper.

Let's see...the "Wall Street Journal" is taken. Though, who knows, Murdoch might be willing to sell you the name for the right price. Well, I'm sure you'll think of something.

Intro:

By almost any definition — except his own and perhaps those of his neighbors here in Silicon Valley — Hal Steger has made it.

Mr. Steger, 51, a self-described geek, has banked more than $2 million. The $1.3 million house he and his wife own on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean is paid off. The couple’s net worth of roughly $3.5 million places them in the top 2 percent of families in the United States.

Yet each day Mr. Steger continues to toil in what a colleague calls “the Silicon Valley salt mines,” working as a marketing executive for a technology start-up company, still striving for his big strike. Most mornings, he can be found at his desk by 7. He typically works 12 hours a day and logs an extra 10 hours over the weekend.

[...]

Silicon Valley is thick with those who might be called working-class millionaires — nose-to-the-grindstone people like Mr. Steger who, much to their surprise, are still working as hard as ever even as they find themselves among the fortunate few. Their lives are rich with opportunity; they generally enjoy their jobs. They are amply cushioned against the anxieties and jolts that worry most people living paycheck to paycheck.

Leave it to The Times to coin the phrase "working-class millionaires."

BACK (page A18)

California Restricts Voting Machines

At least one U.S. public servant is taking immediate, substantive action to limit the use of our nation's easily hackable voting machines and, in doing so, is calling greater attention to the ongoing vulnerability of our elections to manipulation and fraud.

Intro:

California's top election official on Friday decertified three voting systems widely used in the state but said she would let counties use the machines in February’s presidential primary if extra security precautions were taken.      

The official, Debra Bowen, the secretary of state, said she made the decision in response to studies showing that the machines could be hacked.

In a sense Ms. Bowen’s decision amounts to barring the machines, then reapproving their use under strict new conditions.

[...]

Ms. Bowen took her toughest action against touch-screen machines, in which a voter’s ballot is generated by a computer. She said the machines made by Diebold Election Systems and Sequoia Voting Systems could be used only in early voting and to meet voting-access requirements for the disabled.

Another touch-screen model, made by Hart InterCivic, can be used more broadly, she said. But all three of the systems can be used only under rigorous security procedures, including audits of the election results.

Of course these machines should be replaced altogether. The corporatization of our election process is inarguably anti-democratic. Absurd and insane. Our Founding Fathers would be apoplectic at the thought of such an act. With the general ease of potential collusion between big business and government, and, more specifically, with the criminal track record of the Bush administration, the signers would surely see this for what it is: a contemporary tool that provides the ability to quietly but efficiently null and void our citizens' votes. Or worse. To have their votes manipulated in the service of electing a candidate they voted against.

But at least Bowen took a first step to rid her state, and hopefully our nation, of these secret machines. Machines in which our votes are cast into a shadowy ether of corporate oversight - counted, or miscounted, within a digital environment that remains "proprietary information," viewable only to its product's owners.

After three national election cycles - following the horribly misguided, misleading and aptly Orwellian-titled Help America Vote Act (HAVA) - and closing in on another presidential election, our citizens' votes continue to be tallied in secret, with no paper trail, by corporate coffers of this conservative - or, rather, right-wing extremist - leadership.

Ah, but fear not. Here's how their owners explained away the latest failure (in a long line of failures) to prevent hackers from breaching their impenetrable machines:

But industry executives complained that the tests had not taken account of security precautions, including surveillance cameras and log-in sheets, that limit access to the machines in most counties and could prevent hacking during an election.

Surveillance cameras?

I'm no computer expert, but how many hackers have you ever heard of who were thwarted by surveillance cameras? Doesn't hacking, by its very definition, preclude the usefulness of such devices to counter it?

What's next? Guard dogs? 3D glasses? A trip-wire?

How about a color-coded system that warns of voting intruders? Or maybe we should just rely on Diebold's gut feeling.

Queasy yet?

NYT Front|Back: Failed Fitness Coach vs. "Doomed" Iraq Reconstruction

FRONT:

Yankees, Hurting, See Culprit: The Fitness Coach
The New York Yankees, suffering more injuries than usual this year, decide to fire their fitness coach. Uh, that’s the story, folks. Read all about this front–page news.

Intro:

With one misstep on Tuesday, Phil Hughes, a Yankees rookie pitcher, lost his chance for a no-hitter. On Wednesday, Marty Miller lost his job.

Miller was not the manager. He was not even on the playing roster. He was the first-year strength coach, and he became the Yankees’ latest casualty in a dreary 10-14 start to the season that includes four hamstring injuries to pivotal players.

BACK (bottom of page A14):

Iraq Reconstruction Is Doomed, Ex-Chief of Global Fund Says
Think Iraq looks grim? Add to this tragic nightmare the billions of taxpayer dollars wasted on an ill-conceived reconstruction effort, one that not only helped to fuel the insurgency, but in doing so sealed its fate.   

How did it all go so wrong?

While the United States initially donated $10 million to the fund, which now totals about $2 billion, Mr. Bell [former chairman of the International Reconstruction Fund Facility for Iraq] said that it had shown no sign of giving more. He said many programs paid for directly by the United States appeared to have foundered because of a tendency by American officials to keep control.

“They go in and tell their guys how to do things,” he said. “It’s a microcosm of what the Bush administration has tried to do with the intervention. But you can’t impose mind-sets.”

Who could’ve predicted this? Though warning signs existed years before, here’s a flashback to an article in The Washington Post, “Despite Billions Spent, Rebuilding Incomplete,” from November 12, 2006:

Yet those inside the reconstruction effort say security concerns were hardly the only problem. Poor planning and coordination by U.S. officials meant that even successful individual projects failed to do the job; for example, health-care centers were built at great cost but had no water and sewer service. Poor work-site management by contractors meant that some projects went awry. And now that the United States is handing over reconstruction efforts to Iraq, many involved with the process worry that the Iraqis don't have the training or the money to keep U.S.-built facilities running.

This was not how the rebuilding of Iraq was supposed to go. In the fall of 2003, six months after the U.S. invasion, President Bush promised Iraq "the greatest financial commitment of its kind since the Marshall Plan." Top administration aides said they considered that plan, which helped rebuild Europe after World War II, to be a model for Iraq. Congress soon passed a spending bill that, while offering less money than the Marshall Plan, was expected to be enough to get Iraq back on its feet.

Riding through the streets of the northern city of Mosul three years later, taxi driver Sattar Khalid Othman has barely noticed.

"What reconstruction?" Othman said in an interview last week. "Today we are drinking untreated water from a plant built decades ago that was never maintained. The electricity only visits us two hours a day. And now we are going backwards. We cook on the firewood we gather from the forests because of the gas shortage."

Yesterday, once again, The Times bumps a damning Iraq article from its cover in favor of journalistic candy. Today, five more U.S. soldiers died in Iraq, with eleven others wounded.

Sure hope another Yankee doesn't pull a hamstring tonight.

NYT Front|Back: Rising U.S. Billionaires vs. Fallen U.S. Troops

FRONT:

Top Hedge Fund Managers Earn Over $240 Million
What news matters most to the average American, or even to the average citizen of the world? That’s right: the burgeoning obscene wealth of hedge fund managers. Or, as they’re referred to in this article, “the hedge fund elite.”

At a time when the divide between the haves and have-nots has never been greater - in this country and across the globe - what could be more unseemly and less newsworthy than this: front-page focus on the divide between those who, tragically, fall short of making $240 million a year and those who are close to joining, or are already members of, the “billion-dollars-a-year club.”

While traditional news outlets struggle to staunch their hemorrhaging audience share, continued prominent focus on such truly marginal stories - not to be confused with vital ones often deemed marginal by establishment editors and pundits - will only perpetuate their slide. These choices also beg the question: Just how out of touch can these people be? A cover story about the wealthiest of the wealthy jockeying for position at the billionaires' table? With everything going on in our country and the world? It's simply a disgrace.

Maybe one day Brian Williams will realize that traditional news' dwindling audience has less to do with competition from "a guy named Vinny in an efficiency apartment in the Bronx" than it does with these kinds of vacuous stories and egregious editorial choices.   

Intro:

James Simons, a 69-year-old publicity shy former math professor, uses complex computer-driven mathematical models to make bets on stocks, bonds and commodities, among other things.

His earnings last year were $1.7 billion.

As one of the leading hedge fund managers, Mr. Simons makes a sum that dwarfs that of the top chiefs on Wall Street. The highest paid on the Street, Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, earned $54.3 million in salary, cash, restricted stock and stock options last year. (Unlike the total for Mr. Simons, Mr. Blankfein’s reported compensation does not include gains on investments.)

And Mr. Simons, the founder of Renaissance Technologies, is not the only member of the billion-dollars-a-year club.

Two other hedge fund managers, Kenneth C. Griffin and Edward S. Lampert, each took home more than $1 billion last year, with George Soros missing the hurdle by a hair, give or take $50 million, according to an annual ranking of the top 25 hedge fund earners by Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine, which comes out today.

BACK (page A14):

9 U.S. Soldiers Killed in Suicide Bombing in Iraq
Back on planet Earth, our soldiers are being killed at an alarming rate. In fact, the death rate of American troops and Iraqi civilians has increased since Bush's "surge." Something the mainstream media seems hard-pressed to highlight.

Most appalling about the placement of this article (bottom of A14!) is this tidbit of information: "It was one of the most lethal suicide bomb attacks on American troops in Iraq."

With Bush's war policy once again on the ropes, had The Times not only placed this story on its cover but also either led with the above line or incorporated it into the headline, the networks would've certainly been more compelled to focus their broadcasts and roundtables on this exceptionally deadly day. Thus, thrusting a more substantive dimension into the current battle between the White House and Congress on funding and timetables. Burying this story in the back pages, on other hand, has aided the Bush administration's current propaganda blitz to portray Democrats as playing politics with our troops.

It is April 25, 2007, over four years into this war of choice, and The New York Times is still providing cover to, and pushing talking points for, the Bush White House. (Incidentally, when you click on that link it leads to today's Times cover story: "Bush and Cheney Chide Democrats on Iraq Deadline." And so it goes.)

Intro  and excerpts:

A devastating suicide car bombing on Monday killed nine American soldiers and wounded 20 others near a patrol base in Diyala Province, the military announced early today.

…

It was one of the most lethal suicide bomb attacks on American troops in Iraq. Another occurred on Dec. 21, 2004, when a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest walked into a mess tent on an American base in Mosul and detonated his charge, killing 14 United States soldiers.

In the past six months, Diyala Province, where several Sunni Arab insurgent groups are active, has become one of the most dangerous places in Iraq for American soldiers.

…

[And in other news in Iraq...]

On Monday, an American soldier also died in Muqdadiya when a roadside bomb exploded, the military said in a news release.

Today, two car bombs exploded in a parking lot in front of the Iranian embassy in Baghdad, wounding four people, a day after two bombs exploded in the same area, news services reported. American officials accuse Iranians of fueling Iraq’s sectarian conflict by supplying weapons and training to Shiite militias.

On Monday, five car bombs exploded across Iraq, killing a total of 22 people, and a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest walked into a popular restaurant near Baghdad’s fortified International Zone, formerly known as the Green Zone, and detonated his explosives, killing six people.

Ten people were killed in northern Iraq when a suicide car bomber struck a Kurdish Democratic Party outpost on Monday.

In Baquba, in Diyala Province, a suicide car bomber attacked a group of police cars parked at an intersection, killing six policemen and a seventh, who was injured, later died, according to a government official in Baquba.

In Hilla, a suicide car bomber attacked a restaurant, killing two people.

In Falluja, two suicide truck bombs exploded near the Huriyah neighborhood, killing three people, according to a statement from the United States military.

NYT Front|Back: One Dead Horse vs. 50,000+ Wounded Soldiers

FRONT:

After 8 Months Filled by Hope, Setback Ends Barbaro’s Battle
Say it ain't so, Barbaro.

And so it ends here: the mainstream media’s obsession with…a horse. Don’t get me wrong. Barbaro’s struggle and eventual demise is a sad story, as far as horse stories go. And smart money says someone is already feverishly typing up the script over which movie studios, with the masses pre-saturated by all that equine emoting, will be salivating.

Godspeed, Barbaro. The mainstream media will miss your front-page swagger.

Intro:

In eight months of waiting for Barbaro’s shattered bones to heal, the horse’s owners and his veterinarian said they had not seen the Kentucky Derby-winning colt become so uncomfortable that he would refuse to lie down and rest. Until Sunday night.

So on Monday morning, the owners, Roy and Gretchen Jackson, and the veterinarian, Dr. Dean Richardson, decided enough was enough. At 10:30 a.m., Barbaro was euthanized, ending an extraordinary effort to save the life of a remarkable racehorse whose saga had gripped people around the world.

BACK (Page A17):

Agency Says Higher Casualty Total Was Posted in Error
A war of choice with no exit strategy. Insufficient body armor. A delusional and inept defense secretary. Endless troop rotations. An evolving assignment as mediators in a civil war.

You’d think the least the Pentagon could do is make an accurate accounting of the number of U.S. troops wounded in Iraq. But, as noted here previously, the Pentagon only counts combat injuries when doing the math. What’s more than curious, however, is that this formula is not applied when calculating counts for soldiers killed. (Incidentally, this fact is noted in the article but only matter-of-factly, as if one has no relevance to the other.) Of the over 3,055 troops killed in Iraq, 600 are listed as non-combat related. That’s 20% of all deaths. A sizable number.

So how many wounded soldiers does this formula eliminate from its count? Try 31,922. Just shy of 30% of all wounded soldiers.

This purposely distorts the toll of this war. The mainstream media has done a lousy job pointing out the great number of wounded soldiers for years now. When people hear 3,000 soldiers killed it sounds terrible of course. But if the American public regularly heard that 50,000 plus U.S. troops are now missing arms, legs, eyes, hearing, are severely burned, and are suffering from PTSD and brain damage, then imagine how much stronger opposition to this war would be. 

Intro:

For the last few months, anyone who consulted the Veterans Affairs Department’s Web site to learn how many American troops had been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan would have found this number: 50,508.

But on Jan. 10, without explanation, the figure plummeted to 21,649.

Which number is correct? The answer depends on a larger question, the definition of wounded. If the term includes combat or “hostile” injuries inflicted by the enemy, the definition the Pentagon uses, the smaller number would be right.

But if it also applies to injuries from accidents like vehicle crashes and to mental and physical illnesses that developed in the war zone, the meaning that veterans’ groups favor, 50,508 would be accurate.

A spokesman for the veterans’ department, Matt Burns, said the change in the count was made simply to correct an error. Mr. Burns said the department posted the higher figure by mistake in November, when an employee who was updating the site inadvertently added noncombat injuries listed by the Defense Department. The Pentagon Web site had the correct total all along.

The previous total on the Web site was 18,586, strictly for combat injuries. Apparently, no one noticed the sudden leap.

NYT Front|Back: Studying Gay Sheep vs. Facilitating Endless War

FRONT:

Of Gay Sheep, Modern Science and Bad Publicity
Iraq. Afghanistan. Darfur. Gay sheep.

Mark your calendars, people. Remember January 25, 2007. Tell your grandkids so that they may pass it on to their grandchildren. At a time when newspapers are struggling to maintain profit margins, The Times has looked deep within its soul, observed its competitors, consulted with its bean counters and come up with an admirable answer to stem the bloodletting: gay sheep.

I've been writing these NYT Front|Back features for some time now. I'm regularly checking for any story that lands on the front of our Paper of Record that has no reason being there. I've seen a lot. The popularity of hand sanitizer on the campaign trail. The impact of a gym's rigid no-grunting rules. The troubling demise of petite sizes.

But gay sheep?

Is The Times trying to kill satire? Is this a pre-emptive satirical strike by its editors? We'll show them! Getta load of this, you snarky bastards. Ha! That's right. Front page: gay sheep. Beat that. Whaddya gonna do? "Gay Sheep Clubs Rise in Popularity"? Don't think so. "Bloomberg Refuses to March in Gay Sheep Parade?" Fat chance. "Same Sex 'Shouples' Demand Benefits Provided to Heterosexual Sheep." You're livin' in a dream world, pal! No one's gonna buy that...not even as satire.

Excerpt:

Dr. Roselli, a researcher at the Oregon Health and Science University, has searched for the past five years for physiological factors that might explain why about 8 percent of rams seek sex exclusively with other rams instead of ewes. The goal, he says, is to understand the fundamental mechanisms of sexual orientation in sheep. Other researchers might some day build on his findings to seek ways to determine which rams are likeliest to breed, he said.

BACK (Page A11):

U.S. Conducts Somalia Airstrike; Envoy Urges Talks With Islamists

How many Americans do you think are aware that we're conducting airstrikes inside Somalia? Why you ask? Commenting on the second airstrike yesterday, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said, “We’re going to go after Al Qaeda and the global war on terror, wherever it takes us.” What wander(blood)lust.

That's right. Terrorism has been around since antiquity, yet we're somehow going to defeat it. To paraphrase Gore Vidal, The War on Dandruff continues.

Keep scratching, George.

Excerpts:

The United States and other countries are pushing on diplomatic and military fronts to help the newly empowered Somali government build on the gains it made in the war, which enabled it to enter the capital for the first time since it was organized in 2004. On Wednesday, the American ambassador to Kenya, Michael E. Ranneberger, met with an Islamist leader, Sheik Sharif Ahmed, who had fled Somalia and is being held by Kenyan intelligence agents in a hotel on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

...

Even with a still strong Ethiopian military presence in Somalia, attacks continue in Mogadishu. The latest one struck the Mogadishu international airport, witnesses said. A hospital official said five people, including a 10-year-old boy, had been injured. Many blame Islamist remnants for a series of similar attacks .

NYT Front|Back: One Man's Juice vs. Fate of the World

FRONT:

Steroid Cloud Stops McGwire From Entering Hall
This earth-shattering lead story takes up two columns and the most textual space on the cover. It's a sports page story, and not a very scintillating or surprising one at that. Mark McGwire, the symbol of the steroid generation of baseball players, the Godfather of Juice, if you will, failed to garner enough votes for induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame on his first bid. For those baseball purists who see this as a victory for preserving the records of past greats, at least for the moment, congratulations. For the baseball players who might be deterred from injecting poison into their veins because of the current trend of cracking down on steroids, well, maybe that's fewer athletes in the world needlessly shrinking their cajones and putting their health at risk. For McGwire: payback's a bitch. End of story.

Intro:

Cal Ripken was the ironman who played in 2,632 consecutive games, Tony Gwynn was the hitting machine who won eight batting titles, and yesterday both were elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in near-unanimous votes. But their achievements were overshadowed by the voters’ rejection of Mark McGwire, a slugger who seemed like a modern-day Paul Bunyan before he fell into disrepute because of suspected steroid use.

BACK (Very Bottom of Page A16)

Agency Affirms Human Influence on Climate
Yesterday marked the first time the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) unequivocally declared that humans are influencing global warming. For some time now, NOAA has been strong-armed by the Bush White House to blunt or scrub such links from reports and announcements. Now that Bush and Co. has reluctantly green-lighted this for prime time, how grateful it must be that The Times then buries it.

What's worse is the article's whitewash of the Bush administration's prior transgressions in subverting and hiding information that could affect millions of lives, at home and around the world. Though reporter Andrew C. Revkin notes that "climate trends and human activities" were "played down or trimmed when drafts of documents went to the Commerce Department and the White House for approval," he chalks up the impetus and reversal to "the government’s scientific bureaucracy" needing "time to catch up."

Talk about downplaying or trimming information. Revkin and The Times not only smother this news, which is also a victory for truth and a story of defeat for this exasperatingly criminal White House, but they provide cover for what was really behind the delay of the release of the correct global warming data.

Hot air, indeed.

Intro:

A lot of government scientists have said it.

But until yesterday, it appeared that no news release on annual climate trends out of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under the Bush White House had said unequivocally that a buildup of greenhouse gases was helping warm the climate.

NYT Front|Back: Noisy Gym Grunting vs. Putin's Quiet Dictatorship

FRONT:

No Grunting, They Said, and He Was at the Gym
Man grunts too loudly in gym. Gym management throws him out. And, well, that's pretty much it. A story unworthy of your local free weekly's police blotter. Nevertheless, The Times manages to pump more mileage out of this piece of piffle than any of us deserve - 22 paragraphs of the journalistic equivalent of Pop-Tarts. At least The New York Post, holy rag as it is, would've opted for brevity with this one.

Excerpt:

“I said to her, ‘I’m not grunting, I’m breathing heavy,’” recalled Mr. Argibay, 40, an energetic man with the hulking appearance of a pro linebacker. “I guess she didn’t like the fact that I challenged her, because she said to me, ‘Meet me up front; I’m canceling your membership.’”

BACK (Page A9):

Russia: Lawmakers Move to Abolish Voter Turnout Rule
Bush's old friend "Pootie-Poot" has been steadily dismantling his country's once budding, albeit struggling, democratic institutions. Welcome to another foreign policy debacle by the Bush White House.

The latest? New laws to keep voter turnout low and "a ban on criticizing one’s opponents or even encouraging a vote against them." Sounds fair. If only Bush had slipped that provision into the Military Commissions Act, Republicans may have retained Congress.

Meanwhile, in addition to this story landing on the back pages, The Times didn't feel it warranted more than a one-paragraph blurb under the "World Briefing" section.

Oh, and don't miss the use of "critics have said" in the opening line. Those darn critics and their distaste for tyranny.

Together, it's enough to make you want to grunt. Loudly.

Intro (which is the whole piece):

Parliament’s lower house gave final approval to new election laws that critics have said would further erode democratic competition and shore up parties loyal to President Vladimir V. Putin in advance of parliamentary elections next year. The new amendments would abolish the minimum turnout requirements — now 25 percent for parliamentary and local elections and 50 percent for presidential elections — and allow the authorities to bar candidates deemed to be extremist or those with criminal convictions. Among other provisions are a ban on criticizing one’s opponents or even encouraging a vote against them. The changes, supported by the pro-Kremlin majority, still need approval by the upper house and Mr. Putin’s signature.