TUESDAY, MARCH 8, 2011
I N T E R N AT I O N A L
US public media pays millions for probes WASHINGTON: America’s national and local public broadcast stations are hiring more journalists and pumping millions of dollars into investigative news to make up for what they see as a lack of deep-digging coverage by their forprofit counterparts. Public radio and TV stations, funded by audience contributions, foundations, and some tax funds, have seen the need for reporting that holds government and business accountable increase as newspapers and TV networks cut their staffs and cable television stations have filled their schedules with more opinion journalism. “Where the marketplace is unable to serve, that’s the role of public media,” PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger said last year at a summit on the future of media at the Federal Communications Commission. “PBS exists to serve the people, not to sell them.” In the past three years, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has invested more than $90 million in federal funds on new journalism initiatives. That includes a $10 million local journalism initiative that is paying for the creation of five regional centers that will help local PBS and National Public Radio (NPR) stations cover news that affects wider geographic areas. Also, a $6 million grant from the group expanded the PBS investigative series “Frontline” from a seasonal series with a summer break to a year-round program. Meanwhile, NPR has started an investigative reporting unit supported by philanthropic funds - including $3.2 million donated in the last year. The need for such probing journalism was highlighted by a 2010 study by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism. It noted the “old model” of American journalism that supported watchdog reporting - by valuing stories based on their significance over their individual popularity - is breaking down. In new models driven by the Internet, revenue is more closely tied to individual stories and how popular they are, leaving less incentive for civic news. Newsroom staffs also continue to shrink, the study found. Still, the prospect of tax dollars going toward public stations’ journalistic efforts has already drawn criticism. Their push for more news reporting also comes as conservatives seek to cut all federal public broadcast funding as part of their budget proposal. It’s a threat public broadcasters take seriously, though similar efforts in the 1990s and 2005 did not succeed. Randolph May, president of the Rockville, Maryland-based Free State Foundation, argued at the FCC summit that government-funded media should not be involved in shaping public opinion. “In an age of information abundance, we do not need, and should not want, governmentsupported media acting as a filter or a megaphone,” said May, whose group is nonpartisan but advocates for libertarian principles. Patricia de Stacy Harrison, the head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, said she can take the heat for using public dollars for probing journalism, because it’s an important public service. “Doubtless, if all of these people do the jobs they’re supposed to do, our phones will be ringing, e-mail will be coming in,” Harrison told The Associated Press. The corporation is the primary conduit for federal funds distributed to public media, and Harrison described it as a firewall between Congress and nonprofit stations so they aren’t government media. She’s a former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee and a State Department official under President George W. Bush. In 2010, Congress appropriated $420 million for public broadcasting, primarily for local stations. Many stations rely on that for more than a quarter of their budgets, while also seeking donors. To increase its news content, PBS has created a show called “Need to Know,” and it has revamped the nightly “PBS NewsHour.” The network also is hiring journalists to coordinate local and national news content to expand its audience online. At the same time, a federally funded digital platform will allow local stations to share content with national public outlets. In San Diego, public grants allowed KPBS-TV and Radio to hire two journalists to cover the US.-Mexico border. They’re among nine hired at stations in Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico, who are creating a joint bureau called Fronteras: The Changing America Desk. Senior News Producer Natalie Walsh said the effort is paying off with investigations and long-form pieces, including a recent story about an increase in Mexican cowboys in rodeos and their challenges in that arena. “I think we have a place at the table,” and more respect, Walsh said, “now that we have the boots on the ground to back it up.” Walsh said that as bigger outlets in the area have cut staff and reduced coverage of the border, her staff has been able to step in. At NPR, the radio audience has grown substantially over the years as it increased its emphasis on news. The network recently marked the first anniversary of its investigative reporting unit, which has eight full-time journalists. NPR investigations have included revelations about mine safety, the military’s handling of brain injuries and a series that aired this month on problems in US morgues. Many of the projects were done with nonprofit partners, including ProPublica, the Center for Public Integrity and PBS’ “Frontline.” Last week, two public broadcast projects with ProPublica earned George Polk awards, one journalism’s most prestigious honors. Susanne Reber, whom NPR hired from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to head its investigative unit, said she is asking reporters to flex muscles that they already have -namely good sources - in a different way. “They’ve been asked to do a certain kind of reporting, and most of the reporting on any radio ser vice is fast turnaround,” she said. While other networks have cut back on international coverage, NPR maintains 17 foreign bureaus. It is also preparing to launch an effort to cover state capitals. — AP
Muslim US lawmaker to testify on radicals ‘Muslim Americans part of solution, not problem’ WASHINGTON: A Muslim US lawmaker said Sunday he would testify at controversial hearings on American Muslim radicalization, as religious leaders blasted the congressional inquiry as Islamophobia. In the run-up to the hearings, US authorities have sought to stress their growing partnerships with Muslim communities, with a senior White House official telling worshipers at a large mosque that “being religious is never un-American.” Representative Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the US Congress, said he would appear before the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee. “You’ve got to offer an alternative view. And I do plan on saying that I challenge the basic premise of the hearings,” he told CNN about the hearings that have been derided as discriminatory. Ellison welcomed a congressional investigation into radicalization, but said that focusing on Islam alone was like looking into organized crime and talking only about the Russian community or focusing only on Irish gangs. “I just think it doesn’t make sense to narrow in on a discrete insular group that has already been the target of a certain amount of discrimination,” he said. The panel’s Republican chair Peter King has drawn heavy fire since announcing the hearings, to be held Thursday. He defended his move on CNN, saying “there is an effort to radicalize efforts within the Muslim community.” In New York’s Times Square, several hundred people turned out under heavy rain to protest the planned inquiries, including religious leaders and a legendary hip hop figure. “I am a Muslim but I love this country as much as any Christian loves his country,” Imam Shamsi Ali, head of the New York Islamic Cultural Center, told the crowd from a stage draped in a huge Stars and Stripes. Participants waved flags and placards decrying what protesters said amounted to a collective attack on Muslims. “No to Anti-Muslim Bigotry and War!” one placard read. As the hearings near, the White House has taken increasingly public steps to engage the Muslim community and help prevent violent home-grown extremism. “Muslim Americans are not part of the problem, you’re part of the solution,” Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough told Muslims at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society of Virginia, one of the largest mosques in the United States. “There is no one easy profile of a terrorist,” he said, while stressing that Al-Qaeda has increasingly sought to recruit and radicalize American youth. US authorities have arrested “dozens” of Americans on charges of con-
NEW YORK: Protesters gather at the “Today, I Am A Muslim, Too” rally to protest against a planned congressional hearing on the role of Muslims in homegrown terrorism, Sunday, March 6, 2011. — AP
spiring to commit terror, but some have gone on to conduct attacks, McDonough added in calling for a bolstered “partnership” with mosques and MuslimAmerican communities to stop radicalization. US authorities are “actively and aggressively undermining that (Al-Qaeda) ideology,” he added. “We’re exposing the lie that America and Islam are somehow in conflict.” King stressed that Americans inspired by Al-Qaeda pose a unique threat to public safety, more so than rightwing extremists opposed to President Barack Obama or left-wing environmentalists. “We’re talking about the affiliates of Al-Qaeda who have been radicalizing, and there’s been self-radicalization going on within the Muslim community, within a very small minority, but it’s there,” the New York Republican said, hinting that violence by those extremists was not equivalent to that of others. US Attorney General Eric Holder “is not saying he’s staying awake at
night because of what’s coming from anti-abortion demonstrators or coming from environmental extremists or from neo-Nazis. It’s the radicalization right now in the Muslim community,” King added. The Newsday newspaper in King’s home state of New York reported last week that witnesses at the hearings will include two US Muslims with family members who became radicalized, as well as an American Muslim who has criticized community leaders for not working closely enough with US law enforcement. But Japanese-American lawmaker Mike Honda blasted the plans as “deeply troubling,” tying King’s hearing to the World War-II era detention of Japanese-Americans in internment camps. “An investigation specifically targeting a single religion implies, erroneously, a dangerous disloyalty, with one broad sweep of the discriminator y brush,” Honda wrote in a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed. — AFP
Prince Charles seems like forgotten man at wedding LONDON: Prince Charles could be forgiven for feeling a bit grumpy these days. Close to many people’s retirement age, he’s still waiting for the job he was groomed for: King of England. And he’s preparing for the wedding that will make his eldest son William and Kate Middleton the fresh new faces of a monarchy sorely in need of renewal. That leaves Charles, who once cut a dashing figure himself, something of a forgotten man. He is sandwiched between his mother Queen Elizabeth II, treasured for
LONDON: In this file photo, Britain’s Prince Charles attends Australia Day celebrations at Australia House. — AP
her steadfast dignity and devotion to duty since her coronation in 1953, and Prince William, who carries a hint of the late Princess Diana’s glamour wherever he goes. “He’s in a very tricky position,” said Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty magazine. “By next year his mother will have been on the throne for 60 years, she’s the only monarch many of us have ever known. When she came in, she was very young with two small children and there was huge empathy for her, but Charles won’t get that when he comes to the throne.” He said the failure of Prince Charles’ marriage to Princess Diana - and the role that his current wife, Camilla, played in that doomed union - has given the public too much information about the man who would be king. “We’ve heard his private telephone conversations,” Little said, referring to embarrassing intimate calls that were intercepted and published, giving Britons a glimpse into Prince Charles’ fantasies. “The mystique is well and truly gone, so he will come to the throne with all that baggage. Charles has always been rather
eclipsed, by Diana, and now by his older son, who is about to marry a beautiful bride. Charles just accepts that for the foreseeable future the spotlight will shine on William and Catherine, as we’re going to have to start calling Kate.” Prince Charles’ problems with Princess Diana are ancient history, and Camilla’s tattered image as “the other woman” has to a substantial degree been repaired, but there has been lasting damage to the prince’s reputation. He looks and sounds tired, generating little excitement with his public appearances. The 62-year-old prince even seemed a bit out of sorts when Prince William and Middleton happily announced their engagement in November, commenting that it was about time since the young couple had “played house long enough.” It is hard to remember the halcyon days when he was seen as a stylish young bachelor linked to some of the most beautiful women in Europe. He dated a series of young aristocratic women and fashion models before proposing to Diana Spencer - whose elder sister he had dated - in 1981. The British press dubbed Prince Charles “Action Man” because of his zest for challenging, even dangerous, sporting pursuits. He was known for steeplechasing, polo, scuba diving, parachuting, piloting helicopters, skiing, sailing and wind-surfing back when that sport was new. He was known as a skilled foxhunter and angler who fished for salmon each summer in frigid, fast-flowing rivers. Now he is viewed by some people as slightly potty - a stooping man who talks to his plants and goes on about the virtues of organic food while relying on a retinue of loyal aides to handle life’s more tedious tasks, like putting toothpaste on his toothbrush. This view, reflected in polls that consistently show most Britons would prefer that Prince William become the next king, does not take into account the serious work Prince Charles has undertaken, said Noel Cox, a law professor and royal scholar at Aberystwyth University in Wales. He said the heir to the throne has no defined constitutional function but that Charles has used the position to champion organic farming, traditional architecture and environmental causes. “The position of the heir to the throne is always difficult because you don’t have a role until your parent dies,” Cox said. “From his earliest years, he recognized he had the choice of either being just a figurehead, with no particular function, or to carve out a niche and do something worthwhile, and I would say Charles has actually been quite successful in combining his personal interests and making it into a role.” Cox said Prince
Charles, who has had a rocky relationship with the news media, may actually enjoy being out of the limelight while the media focus on Prince William and his photogenic new wife. Prince Charles has been largely successful in persuading the British public to accept his marriage to Camilla, who in the aftermath of Princess Diana’s 1997 car crash death was blamed by many for the royal breakup. One of his tactics was to make it clear that Camilla would not take the title of “queen” even when he became king, a concession that mollified some of her critics who had wanted Princess Diana to have that honor. But Prince Charles seemed to backtrack slightly in late November when he told an American television network that Camilla
“could” become queen when he becomes king, a statement that made headlines throughout Britain. The question of Camilla’s title really won’t be decided until events bring Prince Charles to the throne. Prince Charles’ primary function on his son’s wedding day is to host a Buckingham Palace dinner and dance par ty for Prince William and Middleton and many of the young couple’s closest friends. He will be expected to provide the food and the wine and to make a heartfelt toast - and then make himself scarce so the kids can have a good time. It’s a role thousands of parents play at their children’s’ wedding receptions each year, and one Prince Charles may find himself playing for some time to come. — AP
Berlusconi has 4-hr surgery ROME: Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi underwent face surgery for four hours yesterday to repair damage he suffered when a man hurled a statuette at him in 2009. The 74-year-old Berlusconi was operated on with general anesthesia in Milan, said a statement from his office that quoted his personal doctor, Alberto Zangrillo. Berlusconi suffered a broken nose and two broken teeth when a man hurled a miniature statue of Milan’s cathedral at him at close range at the end of a political rally in Milan on Dec 13, 2009. The attacker had a history of psycho-
logical problems. The operation yesterday “became necessary to restore the anatomy and jaw function that had been gravely compromised” in the attack, said the brief statement. Without detail, it said the operation involved a bone transplant and an implant. Berlusconi spent about a month out of public view after the attack. Photos of his bloodied face and shocked expression made the frontpages of newspapers around the world at the time. The premier also had heart surgery in the United States in 2006 to install a pacemaker. — AP
ARCORE: This file photo shows Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi waving from his car as he arrives at his home after being attacked by a mentally ill man at a political rally. — AP