Department of Offense
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 29, 1999, at 7:06 AM ETThe Los Angeles Times leads with "an ominous turn" in the Indian Airlines hijacking: the terrorists' escalation of their demands to a $200 million ransom and the release, not of the previously reported one Pakistani guerrilla, but of 35. They also want the exhumation and return from India of the body of a dead comrade. USA Today leads with a report that because of the general reluctance to fly this coming New Year's Eve, America's domestic airspace will be nearly empty--only 45 airliners will be aloft--when the next millennium hits. The Wall Street Journal front-page business news box flags its story reporting that in part because of the major airlines' lower flight volumes, analysts are cutting their earnings estimates. The New York Times' top non-local story is Act II of its lead yesterday about an ultra-religious party's possible defection from Israel's coalition government. Today the Times explains that Prime Minister Ehud Barak coaxed the party to stay by pledging more funding for its state-subsidized religious schools. The top non-local story at the Washington Post is the latest stage of its presidential candidate psychling tour: Al Gore, Part 6. Save for the NYT's fronting of the hijacking, none of the fronts runs anybody else's top story.
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StumbleUponThe WP chronicles Gore's 1969 internal struggle over the military draft. The paper says he decided to enlist in the Army primarily because he didn't want to doom his anti-war father's Senate re-election bid and because he wanted to preserve his own political viability. The story reveals Gore turned down a relative's offer to get him into the Alabama National Guard.
The USAT front-page "cover story," upon reviewing some 1,500 personnel decisions made at the Department of Defense, concludes that the Pentagon regularly grants security clearances to civilian employees of defense contractor companies who have prior criminal convictions and/or long histories of financial irresponsibility or substance abuse. Recent grantees include, says the paper, a convicted murderer, a man convicted of sex offenses against a minor, and a man who participated in a scheme to defraud the Navy of $2 million.
The LAT front reports that many Asian-American computer entrepreneurs in Los Angeles complain that their companies are being unfairly singled out by the IRS to pay "ozone tax," a levy on items made with ozone-destroying chemicals. The story says that even though many of these local small shops have been forced to pay up, some of the region's biggest corporations--Mattel, Sharp Electronics, and Atlantic Richfield, for instance--have never been ozone-audited. And, says the paper, Microsoft hasn't either. The story quotes a Microsoft vice president saying he'd never heard of the ozone tax.
The papers all go inside with the decision of Seattle's mayor to cancel the city's planned gala millennium celebration. The main reasons cited: the city's WTO-inspired unrest and the recent capture at the Canada-Washington border of a man trying to smuggle in materials for large bombs.
The NYT and USAT report inside that a man and his wife were arrested Monday on child abandonment charges after they left their severely disabled son in a Delaware hospital ER with a note saying they could no longer afford to care for him. The father, the papers report, is the CEO of a chemical company. The Times says the company does $500 million in annual sales while USAT says $380 million.
The WP editorializes against a provocative new procedure being implemented by the Fairfax County, Va., police: The department is planning to hand out cards to crime victims and witnesses advising them that they have the right to refuse media interviews.
Today's Papers is refreshed by the periodic unflacked appearance of Lowell Bergman's byline in the NYT. (He's in the paper today with a workaday story of an arms dealer's arrest.) After all, Bergman, a contract player at the Times, is portrayed by Al Pacino in The Insider and a lesser outfit would have plugged that fact to the (Mira)max.
Clayton Moore, who played TV's "Lone Ranger" in the '40s and '50s, died yesterday. It's a measure of boomer media dominance that Moore is given a lengthy obit at the NYT and a front-page one at the LAT.
Disclosure: Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co. Don't understand Today's Papers jargon? Check out the Today's Papers glossary. Get Today's Papers free in your mailbox. Having trouble receiving Today's Papers?
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Highlights from the Fray:
While it is interesting to learn that only 45 airplanes will be aloft at the turn of the calendar to 1/1/00, it would be much more interesting to know how that number compares to a prior New Year's Eves or to a typical night. Is 45 half the normal amount? One-tenth? The raw number tells us nothing.
--rwells
(To reply, click here.)
I'm not an insider like the writer of this paragraph. I don't know the definition of "contract player" in the context unless it's meant the NYT pays him by the word for his work. I generally like the Slate's style but certainly not when basic journalistic fundamentals like giving the reader the "who, what, when., etc." are forgotten for cutesy nonesense.
--Bruce Simkins
(To reply, click here.)
Where is the usual healthy skepticism of Today's Papers? Yes, the WP article "reveals" that Al Gore turned down a relative's offer to get him into the Alabama National Guard. Pardon me for harboring slight doubts about this heart-warming story, but the only sources supporting the tale are Al Gore, notorious for his memory of his role in events, and the two relatives. All have every incentive in the world to keep up the story that Gore's service in Viet Nam was noble, while Bush and Bradley's service was somehow inferior.
And isn't the relative's story just a wee bit overblown? To quote Mr. Byrne, who supposedly secured the offer: "[He] said he "almost felt little for having offered it to him. Like this guy is operating on a higher plane, and I feel bad that I even suggested it to him."
Other candidates who served in the Guard or Reserves had reporters crawling all over old soldiers to find out if preferential treatment was offered. Couldn't the Post have at least tried to confirm the story? And doesn't it strain credulity just a bit that one phone call magically opens up a slot in the Alabama National Guard for a Tennessee boy whose Dad opposes the Viet Nam War?
Today's Papers failed to comment on the earlier revelation in WP's Gore series: The Vice-President claimed he all but wrote Hubert Humphrey's 1968 acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination. When the reporters checked out the claim and reported back to Gore, he backed off.
--Will
(To reply, click here.)