Getting the Word Out Amid the Hotbed of News
Date: 26 December 1993
By Diane Ketcham
Diane Ketcham
IT had been one difficult day for Jennifer McLogan, the new Long Island correspondent for WCBS-TV News. "It was Pearl Harbor day," Ms. McLogan recalled. "So we went up in antique planes with Long Islanders who fly over the Statue of Liberty and drop roses. We were almost to the statue when the pilot says, 'I have some bad news for you.'
Full Article
Ruling That Limits Post-Trial News Interviews of Jurors Stirs Legal Fight
Date: 26 December 1993
By Charles Strum
Charles Strum
At the close of most high-profile trials, a judge can be expected to turn to the jurors and do two things: thank them for their service and warn them about the tenacious reporters who will immediately seek them out for post-mortems. Although there are no official rules or guidelines, judges in Federal and state courts customarily tell juries that they are under no obligation to reveal details about their deliberations, though they are not expressly prohibited from doing so.
Full Article
Wars of Words, About Journalists
Date: 27 December 1993
By William Glaberson
William Glaberson
Some of the top editors in business journalism are really angry about what Dean Rotbart says. Dean who?
Full Article
Ted Turner Earns Top Sports Honor
Date: 27 December 1993
By Stuart Elliott
Stuart Elliott
Ted Turner, the chairman and president of Turner Broadcasting System Inc., who also owns the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks, has been named the most powerful person in sports in 1993 by The Sporting News. In the publication's fourth annual list of the 100 most powerful people in sports, to appear in its Jan. 3 issue, Mr. Turner rose to first place from third on the 1992 list. Philip H. Knight, the chairman and chief executive of Nike Inc., a big advertiser who was No. 1 in 1992, dropped to ninth in 1993.
Full Article
THE YEAR IN THE ARTS: Television/1993; Women Gained Fast, But PBS Held Its Lead, And the Old-Timers Won in a Walk
Date: 26 December 1993
By Walter Goodman
Walter Goodman
Honeymoons -- Hillary Rodham Clinton, Janet Reno and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were treated with gallant deference by much of television news; it was sort of reverse sexism. Let's hope that as such estimable women become more familiar presences on the screen, they will invite the journalistic skepticism other public figures must endure. Worm Turns -- Ross Perot, whom television carried to prominence, took a prime-time beating from Vice President Al Gore in their debate over Nafta. The surprise was not that Mr. Perot showed his nasty streak but that Mr. Gore seemed almost animated.
Full Article
Topics of The Times; Reporter First Class
Date: 26 December 1993
An old actor's adage holds that tragedy is easy, but comedy is hard. In journalism, by the same token, war reporting is simpler, but covering labor disputes is hard. The labor reporter confronts an eruption of passion, a fog of conflicting claims over arcane details, self-serving leaks from closed-door negotiations and real or perceived pressure from potent antagonists. To write fairly and clearly about a bitter strike requires persistence and tact, analytical skill and a safecracker's nerves. A. H. Raskin displayed those qualities during his many years as labor reporter for The New York Times. Though invariably writing against deadlines, Mr. Raskin, who died Wednesday at 82, rarely sinned against fact or fairness. It was a feat that became his trademark, beginning with his coverage of the Great Depression in the 1930's and continuing until his final years as assistant editor of this page in the 1970's.
Full Article
British Retail Sales Up
Date: 27 December 1993
By Bloomberg News
Bloomberg News
British retailers, struggling to recover from the worst recession since World War II, recorded their best Christmas in years, The Observer newspaper reported this weekend. It quoted Harrods department store officials as saying pre-Christmas sales were up 15 percent over last year.
Full Article
No to Offer At Shurgard
Date: 27 December 1993
By Bloomberg News
Bloomberg News
Shurgard General Partner Inc. said Friday that it had rejected an offer by Storage Equities Inc. to buy seven of its storage-center limited partnerships. Instead, Shurgard will stick to its plan to consolidate all 17 of its partnerships into a publicly traded real estate investment trust called Shurgard Storage Centers Inc., the company said.
Full Article
French Bank To Get Funds
Date: 27 December 1993
By Bloomberg News
Bloomberg News
Compagnie de Suez S.A., as part of a wide-ranging effort to put its house in order, is ready to inject 150 million French francs ($25.9 million) into its banking unit, Banque Monod, a Monod executive said Friday. The unit was bled dry by bad loans to small companies and the real estate sector, he said. Under the terms of the agreement, Monod would make a capital increase of 150 million francs on Thursday, which Suez, once France's fastest-growing financial holding company, would fully subscribe, its chairman, Pascal Georges-Picot, said. In addition, Suez would take over all of Monod's capital by buying the 10 percent stake held by Financiere de l'Atlantique, a financial holding company.
Full Article
Time for U.S. to Relent on Haiti and El Salvador
Date: 26 December 1993
To the Editor: "My worst fears are realized," William Walker cabled from the United States Embassy in El Salvador in 1990. Thanks to documents released on United States activities in El Salvador we know that the Ambassador reported to Washington that United States military advisers had for some time been training the Salvadoran civilian financiers of the death squads -- in his words, "gun-toting Soldier of Fortune-magazine-subscribing, rich young extremists" -- at United States expense. As you report (front page, Dec. 14), Mr. Walker stopped the training, over our military's objections. After the sordid disclosures of a dozen years of United States policy in El Salvador, his indignant tone rings slightly off-key. Indeed, embarrassed Pentagon officials wondered aloud if Mr. Walker had not read their memos informing him that United States advisers were providing weapons and training to those they agreed were "pretty much" as the Ambassador described them. Who, let alone the United States Ambassador, could be surprised that our tax dollars supported private war games with Salvadorans known to bankroll death squad activities? Or amazed that, as you report, the United States military defended its wealthy students because they merely paid others to kill, and resisted Mr. Walker's attempt to halt the training, so as not to insult the military sponsor of the trainees, himself among the worst human rights offenders? Outrageous? Certainly. Astonishing? Not really. The Reagan Administration conceived of, financed and trained the Salvadoran army's "elite" Atlacatl Battalion, which made El Mozote a household name in human rights circles by massacring an entire town of 700 civilians in 1981. The Bush Administration was still training the Atlacatl on Nov. 13, 1989, three days before its commandos marched into the Jesuit university residence to murder six priests and two women. In the Jesuit case, and other instances when embarrassed by Salvadoran clients, United States officials, including Mr. Walker, offered denials, followed by limited admissions in the face of mounting proof and, ultimately, questionable accounts of what they knew and when they knew it. Successive administrations provide the American public with new examples of official credulity tinged with cynicism. Most recently, Clinton Administration officials intoned their respect for the professionalism of Haiti's military leaders, despite rampant officially sponsored terror, only to express shock and outrage when military henchmen scared off United States ships carrying military trainers and then shot the Justice Minister, Guy Malary, to death on the streets of Port-au-Prince. As a Nov. 14 front-page article disclosed, United States officials have reasons to know better. Senior members of a military intelligence and counternarcotics unit, formed and paid by the Central Intelligence Agency, ran drugs, engaged in political terror and threatened to kill the local Drug Enforcement Agency chief. For many Haitians, including the martyred Justice Minister and likely the exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the damage is irreversible. New death squad killings in El Salvador offer the United States an opportunity to restore some squandered credibility on human rights by pushing for investigations and prosecutions, regardless of where the evidence leads. In Haiti, United States diplomats must insure that the military's aggression is not rewarded, as some fear, with a blanket amnesty, an infusion of foreign funds and a pliant civilian government in exchange for a face-saving exit for United States policy. As Haiti and El Salvador slide into news media eclipse, only public attention will police our leaders. In a sense, those United States trainers of death squad patrons have done their country a service. They have reminded all of us beyond any lingering doubt that our Government cannot be trusted to police itself. ROBERT O. WEINER Coordinator, Americas Program Lawyers Committee for Human Rights New York, Dec. 15, 1993
Full Article