Time and Newsweek, July 29
(posted Monday, July 22) Newsweek and Time offer nearly identical packages on TWA Flight 800: Both reconstruct the flight and crash; profile the victims; speculate on likely suspects (consensus: Middle Eastern terrorists); investigate lax American airport security; and question whether the FAA is sacrificing safety for convenience (sound familiar, ValuJet?). Time's account of how U.S. airlines have resisted expensive new security measures is especially good. Also, Newsweek retains its status as the (Almost) Official Newsweekly of the Olympic Games with four stories, and Time publishes a comprehensive profile of Bosnian Serb strongman Radovan Karadzic that chronicles how he flitted from ideology to ideology until he found one--violent nationalism--that could catapult him to power.

The newsweeklies duel over the Joe Klein-is-"Anonymous" revelation. Serial liar Klein plays the victim in his Newsweek column, writing that the media scrutiny has made his last few months "pretty awful," but insists that his conduct is "justifiable." In Time, columnist Margaret Carlson indicts Newsweek editor Maynard Parker for his active role in the cover-up. (Parker approved a "Periscope" item about Primary Colors that he knew was false.) She also paints Klein as a hypocrite by citing a column from early 1996 in which he castigated the Clintons for their "lawyering, fudging, misdirection, obfuscation, and generally slouch behavior" in the face of tough questioning.