For once, well-reported, smartly written stories of import grace the covers of the Big Three newsweeklies — no more “What Would Jesus Eat?” at least for the time being.
Newsweek provides a Social Security primer, Time tells us how A.Q. Khan “Sold the Bomb,” and U.S. News & World Report questions whether or not Iraqis are ready to take charge of their country.
Try to resist your natural urge to flee in terror at the words “Social Security.” Instead, go read Allan Sloan’s Newsweek piece, which deftly cuts through the rhetoric. (Sloan takes pains to be very clear, almost as though he’s writing for an audience of precocious eighth graders, but that’s one reason he’s such a good economics writer. And, on a story as complicated as Social Security, we don’t mind the kid gloves.) “Bush’s private accounts don’t make Social Security financially sound — the benefit cuts do,” he writes. “The private accounts are something Bush insists on, not something Social Security needs to regain its long-term financial footing.” Both Republicans and Democrats are lying about the issue, Sloan writes, but the president is leading the charge: “If he can sell this one, the Marketing Hall of Fame should start planning his induction ceremony.”
Alas, there’s nothing essential in the solid U.S. News cover package, unless you haven’t read the paper in a week or so. By contrast, Time‘s A.Q. Khan cover piece is a chilling must-read — the story of a former national hero, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, who sold Muammar Gaddafi, Kim Jong Il, Iran’s mullahs and others the technology and equipment they needed to produce nuclear weapons. He “did more to destabilize the planet than did many of the world’s worst regimes,” write Bill Powell and Tim McGirk. Why did he do it? For money, of course, but also for God — Khan came to believe that Islam would return to greatness if Muslims had nuclear weapons. Khan, who is now under house arrest, even had a jasmine bush at his house trimmed into the shape of a mushroom cloud.
In The New Yorker, Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism (and who, full disclosure, has occasional involvement with CJR Daily) writes about the increasing and increasingly vitriolic attacks on the mainstream media from all corners.
Lemann spoke to editors incredulous at the incensed complaints they now receive from livid readers, some of whom objected to something as ostensibly benign as a photo that included an Arab man with his legs crossed and his foot pointed towards President Bush (readers said such a posture was a sign of disrespect in the Muslim world — and evidence that the Chicago Tribune is anti-Bush). Editors have always been magnets for attacks from aggrieved readers (see Journalism in Tennessee by Mark Twain, circa 1871), but the invective editors now receive daily is increasingly ideological and venomous. (We’d show you our own mail, if we thought you could stomach much of it.)
“There is no law saying that [inquisitive and intellectually honest journalism] must exist forever, and there are political and business interests that would be better off if it didn’t exist and that have worked hard to undermine it,” Lemann concludes. “This is what journalists in the mainstream media are starting to worry about: what if people don’t believe in us, don’t want us, anymore?”
Finally, The Atlantic‘s Joshua Green brings us word of “j-school for jerks” — a program that prepares people for appearances on cable shoutfests so that they’re ready to go toe-to-toe with the Carvilles and O’Reillys of the world. One can aspire to “politely assertive,” the default choice for non-partisan reporters, or “partisan jerk,” for “aspiring cable-TV mainstays.” What does it take to really nail the latter? Sit up straight, look directly into the camera, put your message into a sound bite, and keep it below the eighth-grade level. (It only gets more complicated from there: advanced tactics include “strategically dispensing obsequious praise to co-opt an opponent …”)
Oh, and always carry your own base powder, in case you show up too late for make-up.
–Brian Montopoli
Brian Montopoli is a writer at CJR Daily.