CHIEF MOOSE SEEKS HIS FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS
Charles Moose, chief of police of Montgomery County, Maryland, is laying the groundwork for what could be a legal action against the county for trying to stop him from writing a book about the sniper episode last fall. Moose has asked a circuit court for its opinion of the country ethics board's action denying him permission to write the book.
The ethics board ruled that the book would violate a county ordinance prohibiting country officials from "profiting" from their offices. Moose is expected to earn at least $100,000 from the book, to be published by Dutton.
Moose was head of an inter-jurisdictional task force investigating the shootings, which began in Montogmery County but soon spanned the District of Columbia and Virginia. Moose. Two men were arrested and are awaiting trial in Virginia.
Montgomery County is a wealthy, liberal community with a squeaky-clean image. The ethics board says the book project would be a violation even if Moose wrote it for free, and has threated him with a jail term and a fine.
Moose is right to challenge the ethics board decision. Ethics codes like MoCo's are intended, or should be intended, to punish public officials who let the promise of remuneration affect their work or their decisions -- i.e., graft and corruption. Moose is just trying to write a book and make some money on his own time. The county is making a fool of itself, and putting pressure on Moose to quit his post, by harrassing him over the book.
Moose was not available for comment. He is a member of the National Guard and was recently called to active duty. Perhaps he will wonder what he is doing defending other people's freedoms while Montgomery County is denying his.
Tuesday, April 15, 2003
Monday, April 14, 2003
CNN ADMITS HIDING TRUTH ABOUT SADDAM
CNN has finally admitted that that its news operation in Iraqi was extremely limited in its reporting as lraq as long as the Saddam Hussein regime was in power. Chief news executive Eason Jordan wrote in an op-ed column entitled "The News We Kept to Ourselves" in the New York Times on Friday (4/11/03) that he knew of numerous atrocities committed by the regime but permitted the network to remain silent about them. He said CNN suppressed the truth in the interest of keeping open its bureau in Baghdad. Apparently CNN never seriously considered closing the bureau, retreating to another country, and doing a blockbuster story based on what its reporters claimed they knew.
Running a news operation in a totalitarian society is always tricky. William Shirer wrote a book ("Berlin Diary") about his difficulties in reporting from Nazi Germany. But he encountered mainly interference by the propaganda ministry, not the outright atrocities that Jordan claimed to know about.
CNN has a history of chummying up to dictatorships. Ted Turner himself sponsored the "Goodwill Games," an Olympic knockoff featuring athletes from the U.S. and the old Soviet Union. Also, CNN carried a 24-part documentary on the Cold War that was widely criticized for an attitude of moral equivalence between the U.S. and the USSR.
Jordan's article was remarkable, though, in acknowledging that CNN hid what it knew to be the truth about the Iraqi dictator -- that the regime routinely threatened, tortured and brutalized its own people. This would probably not be very newsworthy to American audiences, but might be a revelation to CNN's non-American audience. The network's foreign channels have been even more standoffish about the war than the domestic channel.
"I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me," Jordan wrote. "Now that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about the decades of torment. At last, these stories can be told freely."
Can be told . . . but will they be told on CNN? Or will the network drop them down the memory hole and get on with the job of criticizing the "U.S. miliary occupation," as some people are already calling it? We'll see.
CNN has finally admitted that that its news operation in Iraqi was extremely limited in its reporting as lraq as long as the Saddam Hussein regime was in power. Chief news executive Eason Jordan wrote in an op-ed column entitled "The News We Kept to Ourselves" in the New York Times on Friday (4/11/03) that he knew of numerous atrocities committed by the regime but permitted the network to remain silent about them. He said CNN suppressed the truth in the interest of keeping open its bureau in Baghdad. Apparently CNN never seriously considered closing the bureau, retreating to another country, and doing a blockbuster story based on what its reporters claimed they knew.
Running a news operation in a totalitarian society is always tricky. William Shirer wrote a book ("Berlin Diary") about his difficulties in reporting from Nazi Germany. But he encountered mainly interference by the propaganda ministry, not the outright atrocities that Jordan claimed to know about.
CNN has a history of chummying up to dictatorships. Ted Turner himself sponsored the "Goodwill Games," an Olympic knockoff featuring athletes from the U.S. and the old Soviet Union. Also, CNN carried a 24-part documentary on the Cold War that was widely criticized for an attitude of moral equivalence between the U.S. and the USSR.
Jordan's article was remarkable, though, in acknowledging that CNN hid what it knew to be the truth about the Iraqi dictator -- that the regime routinely threatened, tortured and brutalized its own people. This would probably not be very newsworthy to American audiences, but might be a revelation to CNN's non-American audience. The network's foreign channels have been even more standoffish about the war than the domestic channel.
"I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me," Jordan wrote. "Now that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about the decades of torment. At last, these stories can be told freely."
Can be told . . . but will they be told on CNN? Or will the network drop them down the memory hole and get on with the job of criticizing the "U.S. miliary occupation," as some people are already calling it? We'll see.
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