It wasn't Libby and Rove's fault. . .

Jack Kelly, columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writes on the Real Clear Politics web site about who actually revealed Valerie Plame's identity -- and it wasn't Libby or Rove.

Here's a Slate article on the Plame outing, and who was responsible.

The future of newspapers

The Economist's cover story this week was on the future of newspapers. More to come. . .

Tiger-funded trip?

Here is an interesting story about Illinois Congressman Danny Davis' trip to Sri Lanka, allegedly paid for by the LTTE (Tamil Tigers).

Fundraising by the Tigers is common in places where there are relatively large populations of Tamils. And giving money to them isn't always voluntary either, particularly if you have family or loved ones in Sri Lanka.

And, with the role that the Tigers play in the north and northeast of Sri Lanka, both defending the area and building it up, contributing to healthcare, education and other social welfare efforts, the line between contributing to the Tigers, and contributing to the welfare of Tamils in the region becomes somewht blurry. And so does the line between what contributions are coming from a bonafide Tamil organization and what's coming from the Tigers.

After the tsunami, there was much concern in Sri Lanka that the government was not properly distributing relief aid to Tiger-controlled areas in the northeast that were hardest hit. Davis traveled to Sri Lanka to investigate. Whether his trip did any good is a different story. And so is whether he should have accepted the junket.

But, when he says that he didn't know the money came from the Tigers, he should be believed. Because, while there are many bonafide independent Tamil expat groups around the world, there are others that are little more than thinly-veiled fronts for the group. And it is often difficult to distinguish between the two.

And this incident should not discourage visits by other foreign politicians and diplomats, particularly with the recent withdrawals of Sweden, Denmark and Finland from the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, which was helping hold together the fragile peace there, and with the escalating tensions.

If the world withdraws because of such incidents, the fate of the innocents dying daily there will only get worse -- after all, it was partly because the eyes of the world rested on the island for a bit that the ceasefire itself managed to last for as long as it did.

How low can the Sri Lankan government go?

In its latest efforts to see how far it can go in murdering its own citizens, the Sri Lankan government has justified its bombing of a school in the country's east, claiming that the children inside were terrorists.

The International Herald Tribune, in an article, quoted a military spokesman, Atula Jayawardana, as saying, "If the children are terrorists, what can we do?" When I read that quote, I sat there, staring at the screen in stunned anger for a while -- not only because of the false claim that they were terrorists, but because of the audacity with which the government is defending the murder of 61 innocent children, whose short lives had been none too pleasant to begin with.

The government of Sri Lanka has never even pretended to protect its citizens in the north and north-east, instead pointedly excluding them when formulating plans or policies for the country, engaging in blatant racial profiling and targeting them in raids and attacks. Its specialty has been to impress upon the Tamil minority, which makes up 18% of the population, that they are outsiders in their own country, often treated much better in other countries where they have fled as a result of the war.

The government has been more preoccupied with pandering to the whims of corrupt Buddhist monks who, contrary to what their religion teaches, abhor the very idea of peace, because it would mean a decent life for the Tamils.

But with the latest act, the Sri Lankan government has stooped to a new low, even for the callous brutes that are part of it. It has the audacity to openly defend the murder of 61 schoolgirls, who UNICEF has said were NOT child recruits for the LTTE (the rebel group fighting for a separate state for the Tamil minority in the country's north) as the govenrment claimed, but simply school children gathered for a first-aid class.

The LTTE has engaged in the shameful practice of recruiting children -- nobody denies that. But, while international organizations have been working on censuring the rebels, getting these children out and trying to help them make decent lives for themselves, what does the Sri Lankan govenrment do? It BOMBS them on the pretext that they're child soldiers.

The presidents of Sri Lanka, from as far back as I can remember, have all taken office for one reason -- to promote their own well-being at the expense of the country and its citizens. (I attended a talk by former President Chandrika Kumaratunga last year, just before she handed over her position, in which she congratulated herself on her "efforts" to bring peace to the country, and blamed the LTTE completely for the fact that it hadn't been achieved -- I almost laughed out loud; the woman is defintely an entertaining story teller.)

No party in the escalating ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka is doing/has done anything to be proud of. But by killing 61 innocent children, and then, instead of apologizing profusely and trying to make amends, painting them as terrorists, the government has stooped to a new and absolutely despicable low.

Fake photos

A fascinating series of "fake photos."

How much reform is good for the UN?

The UN has had a tough few years -- the oil-for-food scandal, allegations of UN peace keepers raping women in the Congo, humanitarian crises in Darfur, Rwanda, East Timor, and the US overriding the UN in going to war with Iraq, all of which have served to raise doubt about the value of the organization. John Bolton's vociferous demands that the UN either "reform or die" haven't helped, let alone the fact that this ambassador from the UN's biggest contributor has little faith in, or respect for, the organization.

With good reason, some would say. Reform is absolutely crucial if the group is to win back some of the credibility it has lost over the past few years. However, in such a large organization, with so many stakeholders with varied agendas, the path of reform, if not carefully chosen, can also be dangerous.

The International Relations Center recently released an article in its Foreign Policy in Focus newsletter on UN reform, arguing that the U.S. version of this phrase is basically a call to cater to Washington's wishes in the way things are run at the UN.

The problems the UN has had in the past few years are not much more than what a governmental body or municipality faces -- including the U.S. government, the author points out. But bringing these problems under the spotlight makes it easier for the U.S. to push the UN to seek reform -- of the kind that Washington approves of. And now that the UN has let itself be convinced of its need for reform, it can't go back.

The UN does clearly need reform. But whether it is the reforms that Bolton thinks it needs is a different question. For example, last year, Bolton made 750 changes to the UN reform plan, including eliminating a clause calling for the five Security Council members to not veto action that would halt genocide. He also took out all mentions of the Millennium Development Goals, measures which seek to cut global poverty by half by 2015. Fortunately, these "reforms" didn't pass. And the UN -- at least in theory -- promised to not turn a blind eye to genocide and poverty, like it has in the past.

Other notable achievements are the the formation of the new Human Rights Council -- even if its membership - which the US declined -- leaves much to be desired; and most recently, a ceasefire negotiated somewhat successfully in Lebanon.

President Bush is pushing to have Bolton stay on as U.S. ambassador to the UN. He might do some good there, shaking up the organization as he has done. But the new secretary general, to be elected in January 2007, will have the tough task of walking the line between moving forward on reform, without caving in to pressure from the U.S. to do things its way.

Media manipulation

Here is a sad case of what seems to be media manipulation in Lebanon, following the bombings in Qana. Admittedly, the media and photographers should know better.

Here is a play-by-play from another blog.


But, horrifying as this is, and I am aware that there are many media organizations that will buy something like this for the sake of sensationalism, there are several that will absolutely not. And all of traditional media cannot be painted with the same brush -- just as all bloggers cannot.

Is blogging the new journalism?

The column by Columbia J-school dean Nicholas Lemann in the New Yorker, Journalism without journalists has stoked a lot of fires in the blogosphere. In the article, Lemann claims that, while Internet, particularly citizen, journalism has made it easy to express and access opinions, put out personal stories and extremely local coverage and distribute what's already been covered by traditional media and other bloggers, it is not a substitute for "real" journalism.

This has bloggers like Jeff Jarvis up in arms. Jarvis claims in his response that Lemann pits bloggers against journalists, instead of espousing the view that they work together, a view that Jarvis, at least in theory (although apparently not in practice) seems to hold.

But not really. Lemann's argument, rather, is that there are different roles for bloggers (those who are citizen journalists anyway) and for the traditional media. The blogosphere today functions mostly as an open forum for expressing opinions on every imaginable topic -- including the traditional, or main stream, media. Few bloggers break stories. Even "Reutersgate" and "Rathergate" were reactions by the blogosphere to what had been put out by the MSM, which became news in themselves.

On the rare occasions in which bloggers do break stories, it is often bloggers who are/were connected to the mainstream media at some point. And, Lemann argues, even when bloggers or citizen journalists do break stories, such as the photographs taken by commuters after the London bombings, the stories are then carried forward by traditional media, who have the sources and resources to follow them. At this point, bloggers become a sort of editorial board and a means of circulation -- disseminating the story and their own opinions along with it.

The blogosphere also functions as an editorial board in another way -- holding traditional media to account, where their own editorial boards have failed, as was obvious in the latest Reuters blow-up. For many decades, the MSM has admittedly been somewhat lazy in adhering to strict standards of accuracy in reporting, not necessarily because of any inherent bias, but simply because of a lack of effort to check and double check their information. Now, with the blogosphere ready to pounce on any mistake, traditional media have to be much more vigilant.

And with the proliferation of opinionated "journalism" in the form of blogs, traditional media also cannot hide behind the excuse of "unbiased" reporting to not bother to dig deep and be adversarial, if needed. As Lemann points out, "Only by going into opposition. . . could the press really tell the story. . . That notion simply hadn't been discussed in mainstream newsrooms, which had always been able to limit debate about what is and isn't the job of the journalist. But now that amateurs have joined pros in the press zone, newsrooms couldn't afford not to debate their practices."

What the mainstream media cannot afford to do is pretent like the blogosphere doesn't exist, as many seem to. Bloggers are quick to call traditional media on their mistakes, but blogs make their own mistakes -- many of them. And, while the role of the MSM is not to police the millions of blogs out there, it should at least hold the leading bloggers to account for the information and opinions they're disseminating when it's needed. As Lemann says, "The more that traditional journalism appears to be an old-fashioned captive pres, the more providential the Internet looks."

Jarvis takes exception to Lemann's "them and us" view. But at this point, the relationship between the blogosphere and the mainstream media is somewhat adversarial, and Lemann is simply calling it like it is. All you have to do is take a look at Jarvis', and several other blogs, to see that. But I also agree with him that the two worlds need to converge, and work together -- while, at the same time, holding each other accountable.

In support of Reuters

Criticism of Adnan Hajj, the freelance Lebanese photographer for Reuters who staged a photo of smoke pouring out of a burning building in Southern Lebanon, is rife in the blogosphere. But the fact that Reuters fired him and removed all 920 of his photos from its gallery seems to have done little to ease the scorn of bloggers.

There is no excuse for what Hajj did -- that much is clear, and the blogging world is right in jumping onto it and holding him accountable. But, at least as clear is the fact that Reuters is taking this incident very seriously, and is doing everything it can to preserve its integrity. As such, the extent of the criticism, particularly by bloggers, who have little or no standards to live by when it comes to their own writing and photography, except for watchful readers, seems a little over the top.

A Newsbusters blog post reads: “Last night's report Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs that a "Beirut burning" photo that was clearly and clumsily doctored with Photoshop editing tools had made it way onto the wires from Reuters has morphed into what must be considered a full-blown scandal that should, by rights, shake the news service and other "Mainstream" Media outlets to their very foundations, and force them to reexamine how they conduct and control their photojournalistic efforts around the world."

This from the same world of blogs that hardly has a reputation for accuracy and fact-checking themselves. There are countless examples: Blogs spread untrue rumours about Circle Group Holdings CEO Greg Halpern. While they did a good thing in spreading the word about Kryptonite bike locks that could be unlocked in three minutes with a ball point pen, but they also spread other rumours, e.g. that all Kryptonite locks were susceptible, that it only happened with Kryptonite locks, among others. And several bloggers posted press releases word-for-word from Wal-Mart without attributing them, leading readers to believe that they were unbiased posts -- or at least written by the bloggers.

The fact that blogs have taken on a watch dog role in keeping main stream media in check is admirable. But, blogs also tend to go overboard in criticizing the main stream media, even when the organization in question takes every measure possible to rectify the situation.

Questions about many other photos taken by Hajj have surfaced following the one that got him fired. And Reuters should have realized sooner that something was wrong. Just like the New York Times should have realized sooner what Jayson Blair was up to. And Washington Post should have realized what Janet Cooke was up to.

Bloggers have not been kind to Reuters. And neither should they be. But they should realize that Reuters as an organization wasn't complicit in what Hajj did, and that Reuters' mistake was not faking the photos, but not catching it before it moved on the wire.

Coke, Pepsi found to contain pesticides

The Indian state of Rajastan has banned the sale of Coke and Pepsi soft drinks until the manufacturers disclose the ingredients that go into their beverages, the AFP has reported. This development has come almost exactly three years from the day the Center for Science and the Environment reported the results of its first study showing higher-than-allowed levels of pesticides in soft drinks.

The Center recently published a new study, which tested 57 samples of 11 Coca Cola and PepsiCo brands from 25 manufacturing plants in 12 states found three to five pesticide residues in every sample -- including DDT, lindane, chlorpyrifos, malathion. A bottle of Coke from Calcutta, for instance, contained 140 times more than the allowed levels of the pesticide Lindane. While the average fell from 34 times the amounts allowed to 24 times, between the 2003 study and the recent one, amounts found in bottles in some cities, including Calcutta, Nainital and Ghoragpur had risen to higher levels.

These pesticides cause several serious conditions, including liver, kidney and immune system damages, cancer and even death.

Critics of the two companies have condemned them for taking advantage of the lack of regulations in India to lower their production standards. Several news outlets, however, have reported the Indian Softdrink Manufacturers' Association as saying that soft drinks manufactured in India comply with stringent international standards.

The manufacturers came under fire in 2003, but so did the CSE. In the latest issue of Down to Earth ,the CSE team protests vigorously against the way they were treated, both by the companies and by the Indian government after releasing their findings in 2003, which included questions about the study's veracity and its methodolgy. The CSE, however, managed to vindicate itself, when the Joint Parliamentary Committee assigned to look into the matter, backed the Center.

The companies seem to be pointing the finger at the CSE again. But this time, one party at least, has taken the CSE's side. The state government of Rajastan has called for the companies to reveal exactly what's in their beverages if they want to keep its customers in the desert state. Interestingly enough, it seems to be the only state to have done so. Are the others waiting to see what the Central Government will do? Are they waiting to see if enforcement of the rules created after 2003 will take place? Or do they subscribe to the arguments of Coca Cola and PepsiCo that customer interests come first, and that, as long as there's demand for their products, they'll keep selling them?

Welcome!

Welcome to The Musings of Nichola, the tiny corner of the blogosphere where this freshman journalist holds court. This is a forum where I discuss subjects I may or may not know much about with an audience that may or may not exist.

It is also a place where I record various goings-on in the world, as a quiet onlooker, a removed observer, without feelings or opinions. It is basically an attempt to pry my eyes and brain open, to take in what's happening in the world, and to try to make some sense of it -- or at least to borrow from the sense that others have made of it.