Muhammad Ali famously taunted George Foreman during the "Rumble in the Jungle." After absorbing a flurry of Foreman punches, Ali retorted in the ring "That's all you got George?!?" The latest report in the UN Oil-for-Food "scandal" is out. All the supposed malfeasance on the part of Kofi Annan and his son are mysteriously absent. The best Paul Volcker and his committee came up with was Annan's "inadequate inquiry into his son's employment with the Swiss-based Cotecna firm, hired by the United Nations to verify goods coming into Iraq." That's all you got Paul?

Fields Report is a huge sports fan. And without NHL hockey, March Madness is even more important. Interestingly, some bad mainstream news habits are seeping into sportscasters' and sportswriters' analysis. As I watched two very close overtime games today, one thing was clearly evident to me -- these two games which featured the favorites (Illinois beating Arizona and Louiville beating West Virginia) coming from behind to win in overtime -- constructing a good story took precedence over stating the honest truth. In these cases the honest truth was that both "underdogs" were in control and blew the games. I would say due to poor coaching, but that's debatable. What is not is that these teams lost because they choked and not because of brilliant play by the eventual winners. Yet read the coverage:

Trailing 75-60 with four minutes left, Illinois showed why it was No. 1 most of the season.

or

Almost every road to a championship takes at least one unexpected twist, though, and none was more astonishing than the second-half rally the Cardinals staged Saturday to earn a 93-85 overtime win and a trip to college basketball's biggest stage.

Neither characterization is correct. Both wins were due to the collapse and poor decision-making of Arizona and West Virginia -- the losing teams. Is it impolite to say that? It doesn't seem so in a profession that thrives on negatives and featuring self-destructive behavior. But the headlines read better I suppose if the heroes triumph in the end.

A similar dynamic is observed with the non-sports reporting in the U.S. mainstream media. And no example is more egregious than the coverage of this president. Has he been lucky in the Middle East with Iraqi elections, the imminent Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, and Palestinian elections? Or as the preferred narrative says, is this George W. Bush's bold vision in action. It's not even close, but the bold vision story is so much more enticing. Hey mainsteam news media. Keep your bad habits to yourself.


UPDATE: Slate's Robert Weintraub agrees with me on atrocious coaching down the stretch.

The poverty of television news. This morning a CNN anchor led off by saying "it seems all the news is coming out of Florida." I couldn't think of a better line to exemplify the depths that television news has sunk to. Today hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese protested China's anti-secession law. Kyrgyzstan is trying to restore order. Insurgents killed 17 Iraqis working with American forces. Three American soldiers were killed in Iraq. Yes, indeed. Florida.

Kyrgyzstan? Want to know what's going on? Click here for background from the BBC. Question: Why don't more U.S. media sites have background analyses like this? You can find them for just about every pressing international issue on the BBC's website.

A month ago I wrote about an article in Foreign Policy, in which Josef Joffe tries some counterfactual reasoning to envision a world without Israel. I wrote that “This is a great premise, but Joffe doesn’t deliver the goods. There is a fair amount of straw manning and very weak counterfactual arguments.” This month Foreign Policy printed six responses to Joffe’s piece from students of Middle East politics. Five were negative and Fouad Ajami’s was generally positive.

So check out Brian King's response here, Juan Cole's here, Fouad Ajami's here, Anatol Lieven's here, and Ilan Pappe's here.

Here's a taste of Brian King's

In the first place, if a writ of habeas corpus were served upon him, it is unclear who Joffe would produce as the analogue to the anti-Semite. Who, in other words, holds the extreme anti-Israel view that Joffe is attacking, the view that Israel is the “root cause” of whatever ails the Middle East, such that the region would be completely trouble free if Israel had never existed or if it vanished into thin air? I dare say there are people who hold this ludicrous view; but they include none, or nearly none, of those whom Joffe mentions by name; certainly not Anatol Lieven or Tony Judt. The object of his attack is a kind of identikit figure, a composite of different critics of Israel with widely divergent opinions. In short, a straw man.

...

Furthermore, instead of laying all the blame for the failures and antagonisms of the Middle East “on the doorstep of the Jewish state,” Joffe places it—all of it—squarely on the shoulders of the “Arab-Islamic world.” He derides “single-cause explanations” and the simple-minded denigration of Israel. Yet he is unremittingly derogatory about the rest of the region. We hear about “the sheer venom oozing from the pages of the Arab-Islamic press,” “the political pathologies of the Middle East,” “the dysfunctionalities of the Arab world,” and “the civilization of clashes” that is “the hallmark of Arab political culture.” As if no interventions from the outside had ever injured the region, he speaks only of the “self-inflicted wounds of the Arab-Islamic world.” Thus, Joffe’s position is a mirror image of the one he attacks.

CJR Daily has a great, GREAT take on the Terri Schiavo matter. I only mention it because in this extremely personal and emotional case, and far be it from the media to be objective, informative, and forthcoming and do their homework. And this is the problem with so many complex issues that face us today. We rely on the media to help us to navigate these issues, and they are increasingly failing more and more miserably. Read the CJR Daily piece in its entirety. Here's an excerpt

For honest reporters, the Terri Schiavo case is something of a nightmare. (Not so for ratings-obsessed cable news directors, of course, who must be delighted with the timing: they can shift from the lives and deaths of Scott and Laci Peterson to the life and death of Terri Schiavo without missing a beat.)

Real reporters and editors, by contrast, have to decide how much, or even whether, to anchor their reports in a larger context -- a tricky decision when reporting about an issue that inflames cultural and political passions. And they know that media bias warriors are scrutinizing every sentence, ready to attack at the first sign of reporting that doesn't square with their worldview.

Example: Most everyone in Washington (and, for that matter, elsewhere) believes that grandstanding politicians are using the issue for political gain. But should that information be included in every story, or should news consumers come to their own conclusions? One option is to simply put forth incontrovertible facts -- say, by including in each story quoting a Republican lawmaker the fact that a one-page memo from the GOP was leaked last week calling the Schiavo case "a great political issue" that would appeal to the party's base and potentially result in the defeat of Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida. That's not to say that there are not genuine values at stake for congressional Republicans, for whom maintaining a "culture of life" approaches an overriding political belief. If their actions are cynical, they aren't completely so, and reporters would be doing a disservice by suggesting as much -- just as they would be by ignoring the memo all together.

There is one bit of context, however, that seems particularly salient, and it involves a six-month old boy named Sun Hudson. On Thursday, Hudson died after a Texas hospital removed his feeding tube, despite his mother's pleas. He had a fatal congenital disease, but would have been kept alive had his mother been able to pay for his medical costs, or had she found another institution willing to take him. In a related Texas case, Spiro Nikolouzos, who, because of a shunt in his brain, is unable to speak and must be fed through a tube but who his wife says can recognize family members and show emotion, may soon be removed from life support because health care providers believe his case is futile.

The Hudson and Nikolous cases fall under the Texas Futile Care Law, which was signed into law by then-governor George W. Bush. Bush flew from Texas to Washington early this morning to sign legislation authorizing federal courts to review Schiavo's case, because apparently he felt that the Florida courts, which had reviewed the case several times over the past seven years, had failed in their duty. "In cases like this one, where there are serious questions and substantial doubts, our society, our laws and our courts should have a presumption in favor of life," said Bush.

As Mark Kleiman, who brought the Texas cases to our attention, points out, "an argument of some sort could be made for the Texas law, based on some combination of cost and the possibility that an impersonal institution will sometimes avoid mistakes that an emotionally-involved relative would make." But, he adds, "what I can't figure out is how someone could be genuinely outraged about the Schiavo case but not about the Hudson and Nikolouzos cases."

What a surprise

In an effort to increase pressure on North Korea, the Bush administration told its Asian allies in briefings earlier this year that Pyongyang had exported nuclear material to Libya. That was a significant new charge, the first allegation that North Korea was helping to create a new nuclear weapons state.

But that is not what U.S. intelligence reported, according to two officials with detailed knowledge of the transaction. North Korea, according to the intelligence, had supplied uranium hexafluoride -- which can be enriched to weapons-grade uranium -- to Pakistan. It was Pakistan, a key U.S. ally with its own nuclear arsenal, that sold the material to Libya. The U.S. government had no evidence, the officials said, that North Korea knew of the second transaction.

Pakistan's role as both the buyer and the seller was concealed to cover up the part played by Washington's partner in the hunt for al Qaeda leaders, according to the officials, who discussed the issue on the condition of anonymity. In addition, a North Korea-Pakistan transfer would not have been news to the U.S. allies, which have known of such transfers for years and viewed them as a business matter between sovereign states.

George F. Kennan, architect of the Cold War containment policy is dead.

This strangely written WaPo obituary seems to be written by someone who hasn't a clue as to the historical importance of Kennan to U.S. Cold War policy. It takes six paragraphs for it to mention the word "containment."

There's a great article in the current Foreign Policy about President Bush's foreign policy team, mainly the national security council. Here's the opening blurb

September 11, 2001, was a catalytic event that revealed the core character of the Bush administration’s national security team. As rival factions fought for the president’s ear, the transformative ideals espoused by the neocons gained ascendancy—triggering a rift that has split the Republican foreign-policy establishment to its foundations.

It's a nice article and not just because it's somewhat unflattering to the Bush people. Here's a nice nugget from the article

Those who know the president well suggest that George W. Bush’s decisiveness might be attributed, in part, to a higher power. [Former national security adviser Brent] Scowcroft was quoted late last year as saying, “It’s possible that the transformation came with 9/11, and the current president, who is a very religious person, thought that there was something unique if not divine about a catastrophe like 9/11 happening when he was president. That somehow that was meant to be, and his mission is to deal with the war on terrorism.” But, as Scowcroft also notes, the problem with absolutist beliefs “is that they can get you into traps in which the ends justify the means. It can be dangerous to believe that one’s motives are so noble that therefore anything we do becomes okay because we are doing it for a good cause.” The paradoxical implication is clear: From undercutting traditional relationships with allies to Abu Ghraib, the less moral ambiguity you have in your worldview, the more of it you can justify in your actions.

Another problem with this approach, according to Scowcroft, comes from the fact that “if you believe you are pursuing absolute good then it is a sin to depart from it.” Which means that absolutism either creates dangerous policy handcuffs or, alternatively, it leaves the United States open to charges of hypocrisy. “For example,” Scowcroft observes, “we advocate the export of democracy and yet we find ourselves embracing a number of leaders who are anything but democratic in order to advance other policies or even the spread of democracy elsewhere. You can not argue for absolutes and then practice pragmatism without opening yourself up to criticism.”

Also be sure to check out the "Two degrees of Henry Kissinger."

Finally, a year or so late, an article in a major newspaper discovers a potential problem with the Iran nuclear situation

In their public statements and background briefings in recent days, Mr. Bush's aides have acknowledged that Iran appears to have the right - on paper, at least - to enrich uranium to produce electric power.

The Bush people haven't just figured this out and this NYT article should have made that clear, but nevertheless finally some reporting on this sticky point. Not to worry though, this administration is not constrained by things like treaties.

This article represents finally stems a disturbing trend in reporting on Iran. So many articles make vague statements like "Iran claims it has the right..." I don't know whether this is journalistic laziness or general ignorance of the nonproliferation treaty, but it should read "Iran has the right to civilian nuclear technology." Yes, that can be used for weapons purposes, but that's a different story (if you want to get into the enrichment issue, then do so. But don't be so vague about it).

So what are the Bushies gonna do?

Mr. Bush went on to say, "We cannot allow rogue states that violate their commitments and defy the international community to undermine the N.P.T.'s fundamental role in strengthening international security.

"We must therefore close the loopholes that allow states to produce nuclear materials that can be used to build bombs under the cover of civilian nuclear programs."

Yet the article goes on to say the administration has no patience for reworking the treaty. Hmmm, they might actually have to get serious about diplomacy. Uncharted territory.

Check out two nice articles from this past week by the always insightful Fred Kaplan of Slate. In one he cautions against comparisons of Lebanon to the tumbling of the Berlin Wall

[T]he events sparking excitement in the Middle East today don't bear the slightest resemblance to those that swept through Eastern Europe in 1989.

This is not historical nitpicking. The differences between the two phenomena explain why the current tumult may not evolve the same merry way, or toward the same peaceful end, as the democratic rebellions of 16 years ago. Maybe things will end up fine; I certainly hope so. But it will take more than dreamy rhetoric and stern pulpit warnings for the march to wend its way to freedom.

In the other he laments the Bush administration's selection of serial exagerrator John Bolton to be permanent representative to the UN

Just as it looked like George W. Bush might be nudging toward multilateralism, he goes and appoints John Bolton as his ambassador to the United Nations. There could be no clearer sign that the contempt for the international organization, which was such a prominent feature of Bush's first term, will extend into his second term with still greater force and eloquence.

John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations?!? Are you kidding me?

This story is unbelievable

U.S. troops opened fire Friday evening on a car rushing an Italian journalist just freed by kidnappers to the Baghdad airport, wounding her and killing an Italian security agent who had helped negotiate her release, officials said.

Giuliana Sgrena, who had been held captive for a month, underwent surgery in a nearby American military hospital to remove shrapnel from her shoulder and was expected to survive, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said in Rome. Reports indicated that one or two other intelligence agents with Sgrena were also wounded.

Even more unbelievably sad and telling is that I read this story via various Internet sources and turned on my television to see some visuals and hopefully learn more (I know, why bother) and CNN of course is all over the Martha Stewart "story"; Headline News -- well who knows what that new look is about, but it's not about news; CNBC/MSNBC: all Martha, all the time. I haven't watched network news in years and I'll bet the house I didn't miss anything. The end is near.

I don't do domestic politics by I can't resist this one.

A new CBS News-New York Times poll found that most Americans are uneasy about Bush's plans for Social Security and believe personal accounts are not a good idea. With Bush and his top aides about to launch a 60-day national campaign to promote the administration's plans, GOP leaders scrambled to put a better face on the situation.

Oh, but remember this president doesn't look at polls or focus groups. Remember?

That means when we say we're going to lead, we do, without hesitation, without fear of a political poll or a focus group. If we say we're going to be steadfast and strong, we must be steadfast and strong. And I will, as the President.

As usual, the Bush people govern by hoping no one is paying attention.