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Sat 19 Feb, 2005 12:19 pm
OK, you gotta newspaper? Let's do some second-guessing the editors.
What was on the frontpage in the newspaper today?
And what do you think should have been on the frontpage?
This might even be a good way to concretisize the whole liberal/conservative media bias discussion - how does it show up (or not) in the lead stories they chose, versus what you thought was the prime news? Enough with the general assertions - lets look at how it actually works!
Plus, this could be an interesting way to kinda map the different stories that get on the front page in different countries ...
Anyone want to try/join? Different countries, POVs?
OK, I'll start. I have a test subscription to the liberal Christian newspaper Trouw for two weeks, so that'll be my primary reference for now (normally I read the left-leaning Volkskrant or the centrist-liberal NRC in the cafe).
Today on the front page, the main headline is:
Hirsi Ali and Wilders protest
Threatened MPs demand a house of their own with sufficient protection
Story is about how Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in protest, yesterday disclosed where she and Geert Wilders were living now, in hiding from the extremist Muslims who threatened to kill them: she on the navy basis in Amsterdam, and Wilders in Camp Zeist, where he actually resides in the former prison cell of the two Lybian Lockerbie terrorists. Inhumane, Hirsi Ali calls Wilders' situation. The threat is not going to go away, and so they should be given secured houses like threatened persons in the UK, Spain or Israel get.
Below that, a big picture of Nepalese pro-democracy demonstrators being arrested by the police:
King versus population
Comparing the other stories in the paper, I agree with the headlines ...
Oh, you folks dont need to explain like I did ... just say what the headline was, and what you thought it should have been ... very curious!
from the ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL Albuquerque New Mexico. "DEVILISH DECALS RAISING HELLFIRE" a story about a young man in a smaller city across the state who has decals on his yellow Ford Focus depiciting "lusty,bare-breasted she-devils" "police say the stickers, which appear to depict the characters engaging in sex, violate a little-used state law prohibiting the distribution of harmful, sexually otiented material to children" essentially because his car was parked at busy parking lot frequented by kids (say the prosecutors).
While the newspaper seems to deem this story fit for the front page (irony?) I think it indicates an empty front page needing to be filled. BTW in the tiny lower right hand of the front page is this very tiny note "Catholic bishops report more than 1,000 new claims of sex abuse in past year" and I do mean tiny print. (maybe no one will notice?)
Oh, I totally forgot about this thread, just never followed up, how embarassing. OK, what was in the paper today? It was a very trad Dutch edition, actually, like one of long ago! "Fierce snowfall ravages Netherlands", the main headline is, and the other one (picture): "Snowploughs on the [Schiphol] polder runway".
Perhaps because its the (liberal-christian) Trouw, page three continues with very 1950s sounding news. There's "Christian-Democrats fail to deliver the fourty potatoes", a reference to a parliamentary motion the Christian-Democrats proposed last year to compensate the poorest pensioners with an annual extra of 108 euro - a motion that was already derided at the time as merely symbolic, "fourty potatoes per week extra" - turns out the party's own ministers in the Cabinet are refusing to come through even with the 108 euro. There's also a smaller item on "Staphorst refuses to give subsidy to Sunday amateurs", a story about the soccerclub Ijhorst which had applied for subsidy to cover the renovation of the field and dressing room; but the town's council, in which the orthodox Christian Union and State Reformed Party have the majority of seats, "is against community support for a club that plays on Sundays". (The CU and SRP have a marginal support of 3-5% nationally, but dominate in the protestant "Bible Belt" that stretches through the country from southwest to northeast.)
An amazing and outrageous report on page two focuses on a new scandal in Britain, where some jokers in the government apparently decided it was a good idea to privatise asylum-seeker centers: "Sneakily humiliating asylum-seekers". As could have bloody well been expected, it turns out the private owners cut costs on employment and showed little concern for the humanitarian aspects of the work: "Recruiting interested personnel has apparently not been the greatest concern of Global Solutions." Global Solutions is the company that ran the Oakington asylum centre in Oxfordshire, and a secretly filmed BBC documentary exposes how guards there talk about those "bastards" (Romanians) and "secretive fuckers" (Chinese) and boast to each other about how many faces they've smashed and teeth they've knocked out. "The trick is", they explain each other, "to take it out on asylum-seekers without being caught by security cameras or superiors". A counsellor describes in the documentary how he would grab women asylum-seekers by their tits: "that was a laugh".
Asylum-seekers have really become the lepers of today's Europe. Never mind that many of them are severely traumatized people already.
Interesting item on page 9: "Uzbekistan refuses visit by British deputy minister of foreign affairs". Bill Ramell had announced he would talk about the human rights situation in the country on his visit, and was promptly refused entry. Last year the British ambassador in Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, had openly spoken about the torture of political prisoners and persecution of opponents of President Karimov, and was thereupon immediately recalled by the British government, which apparently at the time still considered such open criticism inopportune. According to Amnesty International there are at least 6,000 political prisoners in Uzbekistan, in wretched cicrumstances, many of whom are tortured.
Back to more pedestrian Trouw-type reports: "Zwolle votes against gambling hall". Soccer fans and Christian groups squared off in a referendum in the town yesterday: the city council's plan to build a new gambling centre that was supposed to cover the costs of an expansion/renovation of the local pro soccer team's stadium was defeated about 3 to 1, with a 42% turnout. And there's trouble at one of the public broadcasters: "Course in protestantism causes uproar at NCRV", nominally protestant of denomination, after the chair of the association asserted that employees needed to be protestant respectively follow a course in protestantism, and the director immediately denied such a turn in policy.
(Just so you know its not all drugs & prostitution here in Holland).
Page 9 has news from Luton, north of London, where "British Muslim girl can go to school in djilbab". She won a court case in appeal against her school, which had forbidden her to wear the cotton wrap-around shawl that covers both hair and neck and is worn with a long dress. The school, 79% of whose students is Muslim, feared allowing the djilbab would create a "hierarchy of piety".
In an odd juxtaposition of items, by the way, the article right next to it reports that "Belgian girls want more beautiful breasts": three out of four young Belgian women would have an "esthetic" operation if they had the chance, on their breasts, buttocks or nose.
On page 11, "Doubts about 'resolution' Gongadze murder"; Gongadze was the critical Ukrainian journalist who was found beheaded in a forest a few years ago. Tapes that turned up soon after featured then-President Kuchma ordering to have Gongadze silenced; protest demonstrations, then still unsuccessful, followed. Post-Orange revolution, the new President Yushchenko ordered the case reopened and last Tuesday the Justice department announced the arrest of two former high-ranking police officials - a colonel and a general. Gongadze's car was found yesterday. The presidential bodyguard who 'outed' the Kuchma tapes and Gongadze's widow, both now in the US, still expressed scepticism about whether those who ordered the murder would be punished too, however; the former, Melnichenko, is refusing to return to testify because he fears for his life.
However, of all the day's stories, none of which really is head and shoulders over the rest, I'd myself have given a small frontpage place for a page 12 headline, not just because its relevance post-Hairiri, but for the sheer unusualness of it (a new era, indeed?): "Washington and Paris in Unison Against Syria".
and 
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