NQ First Responders: Ghosts Ships; White Men Can’t Represent; Muckraking doesn’t need the MSM; 12 year old dies in childbirth
By LisaB on September 15, 2009 at 3:01 PM in Current Affairs
1) Think the financial crisis is slowly abating and things will be back to normal soon? The Daily Mail (UK) has a few pics for you. A “ghost armada” haunts the waters off Singapore. Nearly 500 ships sit high in the water with no crew, no cargo and no where to go.
The biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history lies at anchor east of Singapore. Never before photographed, it is bigger than the U.S. and British navies combined but has no crew, no cargo and no destination - and is why your Christmas stocking may be on the light side this year
Do not tell these men and women about green shoots of recovery. As Briton Tim Huxley, one of Asia’s leading ship brokers, says, if the world is really pulling itself out of recession, then all these idle ships should be back on the move.
‘This is the time of year when everyone is doing all the Christmas stuff,’ he points out.
‘A couple of years ago those ships would have been steaming back and forth, going at full speed. But now you’ve got something like 12 per cent of the world’s container ships doing nothing.’
So, will the shelves be adequately stocked, overstocked or understocked this holiday season? May be an opportunity for “made in the USA”.
2) NYT has a story about Memphis politics. A heavily AA district, currently represented by Rep. Steve Cohen – a man not AA – is being told Cohen cannot represent their concerns adequately because of his race.
A Congressional race in Tennessee has become freighted with racial overtones almost a year before the election, with a prominent black politician saying the white incumbent cannot properly represent black voters.
The black candidate, former Mayor Willie W. Herenton of Memphis, has argued that Tennessee needs a black voice in its currently all-white delegation. He is running a blistering campaign against Representative Steve Cohen, a fellow Democrat with a precarious hold on the majority black district.
“To know Steve Cohen is to know that he really does not think very much of African-Americans,” Mr. Herenton said in a recent radio interview on KWAM. “He’s played the black community well.”
————
“This seat was set aside for people who look like me,” said Mr. Herenton’s campaign manager, Sidney Chism, a black county commissioner. “It wasn’t set aside for a Jew or a Christian. It was set aside so that blacks could have representation.”Mr. Cohen, 60, is a well-known Memphis liberal who considered joining the Congressional Black Caucus, wrote a national apology for slavery and the Jim Crow laws, and received an “A” rating from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
————–
“This Congressional race, you know what it’s going to be about?” Mr. Herenton said in a radio interview. “It’s going to be about race, representation and power.”
Got to hand it to Herenton. At least you know where he’s coming from. Better the bigot you see, I guess. He’s also got a strong sense of entitlement. What will those voters do?
3) WaPo has a piece by Howard Kurtz about the Glenn Beck / Van Jones brouhaha. Kurtz says Beck didn’t need the MSM at all to oust Jones.
By the time White House environmental adviser Van Jones resigned over Labor Day weekend, the New York Times had not run a single story. Neither had USA Today, which also didn’t cover the resignation. The Washington Post had done one piece, on the day before he quit. The Los Angeles Times had carried a short article the previous week questioning Glenn Beck’s assault on the White House aide. There had been nothing on the network newscasts.
“Where is the press on this?” Beck asked in late August during one of several rants against Jones. But it turned out the Fox News host didn’t need the big news organizations to claim his scalp.
————In the Jones case, there is little question that the traditional media botched the story of an Obama administration official who, wittingly or otherwise, lent his name to those who believe that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney deliberately allowed thousands of Americans to be slaughtered. Some conservatives accused journalists of liberal bias; it is just as likely that their radar malfunctioned, or that they collectively dismissed Beck as a rabble-rouser.
New York Times Managing Editor Jill Abramson told readers online that the paper was “a beat behind on this story” and that while the Washington bureau was short-staffed during a holiday week, “we should have been paying closer attention.”
The followup news pieces focused on the administration’s failure to vet Jones’s background. Perhaps the media bloodhounds should be just as curious why they failed to sniff out a story that ended with a White House resignation.
The rest of the article takes a bead on various stories covered or not-so-well covered by MSM. But I think Kurtz’s explanation for why the Van Jones affair didn’t get MSM coverage is a bit disingenuous, even if he did not intend for that to be the case. By saying Beck didn’t need the MSM to get the job done, Kurtz implies that the MSM didn’t actually fall down on the job at all. Muckraking got done. No harm, no foul.
Of course, for a profession aligning itself with dissemination of “truth,” that willingness to pass the buck on a story like Van Jones’ is an existential threat. And the excuses for why the story did not get covered are lame and meaningless. Who cares if NYT was “a beat behind,” or “short staffed” over a holiday? Couldn’t or wouldn’t. It’s all the same when the truth is buried.
4) CNN reports yet another story about a young girl forced to marry at 12 who recently died in childbirth. After being in labor for three days.
A 12-year-old Yemeni girl, who was forced into marriage, died during a painful childbirth that also killed her baby, a children’s rights group said Monday.
Fawziya Ammodi struggled for three days in labor, before dying of severe bleeding at a hospital on Friday, said the Seyaj Organization for the Protection of Children.
“Although the cause of her death was lack of medical care, the real case was the lack of education in Yemen and the fact that child marriages keep happening,” said Seyaj President Ahmed al-Qureshi.
Born into an impoverished family in Hodeidah, Fawziya was forced to drop out of school and married off to a 24-year-old man last year, al-Qureshi said.
Here we call that statutory rape, people. But hey, it’s a cultural thing, right? And aren’t all cultures equal? Well, unless you’re a 12 year old girl / wife.
by Ronald Scott
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