News Cut: September 16, 2008 Archive

The 'we matter' index updated

Posted at 8:15 AM on September 16, 2008 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Politics

Sarah Palin is coming to Minnesota on Friday, just a few days after the Minnesota poll found the race here is a dead heat, making Minnesota another battleground state. A rally will be held at the Anoka-Blaine airport.

2008, however, still badly trails 2004 in candidate visits.

Comment on this post

Do a crime victim's political beliefs matter?

Posted at 10:55 AM on September 16, 2008 by Bob Collins (22 Comments)
Filed under: Media

The two major daily newspapers in the Twin Cities played the story differently of a delegate to the Republican National Convention who was allegedly drugged and robbed by a woman he took to his room.

The Star Tribune played it straight, although it left out a key element -- the man was single -- that might've prevented a leap to the assumption that it was just another family values guy cheating on his wife and family.

However it also included this salient point: there is no indication the crime had anything to do with prostitution.

In other words, Gabriel Nathan Schwartz, 29, was the victim of a crime in Minneapolis, same as 203 others in Minneapolis at roughly the same time.

The difference? Their political beliefs weren't the story. In the St. Paul Pioneer Press this morning 14 of the 31 paragraphs in the story were about Schwartz's politics.

A paragraph in which Schwartz said he didn't want to comment on the theft "because the case is still under investigation" was followed by one which said, "During the convention, Schwarz wasn't shy about talking to the media."

The headline in the morning paper, "Republican by day, Romeo by night, robbed in the morning," was changed online (the online version initially used the original headline) to "GOP delegate's hotel tryst goes bad when he wakes up with $120,000 missing," a somewhat milder, less judgmental approach.

The story also cited a video of Schwartz saying the U.S. should "bomb the hell out of Iran," that protesters in St. Paul should "get a job" and that he donated $2,300 to John McCain.

Clearly Schwartz's views set him somewhat at odds with a number of Minnesotans (they're hawkish enough where you almost wonder if the guy was pulling the interviewer's leg) , but what was the takeaway: that getting drugged and robbed served him right?

If so, the paper's readers got the hint. A sample comment attached to the story said...

To me, anyone who walks around with $60K of bling is asking for it. My guess is that he chatted up his "friend" by making sure she knew how much everything cost... and he probably told her that he had lots more where that came from. And then she went to work doing to him what he clearly wanted to do to her.

...but not everyone bought into it.

I've never seen so much biographical information about a crime VICTIM in my life! The next time some woman gets raped, will the PioneerPress investigate who she voted for in recent elections, or what jewelry she might have been wearing? I'll admit the guy sounds like an overly outspoken jerk, but does that make him deserving of the ridiculous tone of the article? Wow.

The Associated Press, which distributed the story after rewriting it from the Pioneer Press, removed all references to the man's political beliefs.

Messages to the editor and reporter on the story have not yet been returned but I'll post their perspective when it's available.

Update David Hanners was kind enough to send along his thoughts in an e-mail this afternoon:

As I'm in the Minneapolis office, the only discussion I'm personally aware of was between my editor and myself, and I believe it is generally inappropriate to speak publicly about such in-house conversations. I don't know what discussions, if any, may have taken place between my editor and his superiors.

That said, I wouldn't agree with the supposition that it is "unusual" to see a crime victim's politics mentioned in an article. It depends on the article and the facts at hand. Every situation is different, and there are situations where it is wholly appropriate to make reference to the victim's politics.

In this case, the guy was in town because of the convention, and he spoke to the media while here. While the crime itself may not have been politically motivated (the public portion of the police report is silent on that matter) he was in town because of his politics. He seemed an interesting person.

Sometimes, we do articles on extraordinary events that happen to Average Joes, or we do articles about routine events that happen to noteworthy people. The size of the theft here was extraordinary, and he was somewhat noteworthy because of politics. Those circumstances added up to a story.

Update Thom Fladung, the editor at the Pioneer Press responds:

1. The reported loss of $120,000 in the robbery. That doesn't seem like a typical Twin Cities robbery to me. And as the Minneapolis police sergeant put it, such a loss is "very, very, very rare." Your story notes that Schwartz was the victim of a crime "same as 203 others" in Minneapolis around the same time. If some of those were robberies or burglaries that resulted in losses of $100,000-plus, I'd like to see us do stories about those, too. And did these other crimes involve convention delegates?

2. The victim was a delegate to one of the highest-profile events ever in the Twin Cities. As such, it seems to me, that further separated him from other crime victims.

3. A person who reportedly loses this kind of money at an event like a national political convention under these circumstances would then naturally seem to be an interesting person. We reported more about him, and his political positions and public statements about politics were part of that reporting. What's the relevance of his politics? That they added more background about the person. We also reported that he was single and an attorney. I certainly didn't have any "takeaway" from the story that he deserved to be drugged and robbed for his political views.

Update 4:04 p.m. According to the Associated Press, the victim has released a statement:

"It's embarrassing to admit that I was a target of a crime," Schwartz said in a statement Tuesday. "I was drugged and had about $50,000 of personal items stolen."

Schwartz said news reports that he had been taken for as much as $150,000 were inflated and based on an inaccurate police report.

"As a single man, I was flattered by the attention of a beautiful woman who introduced herself to me. I used poor judgment. If there is any good that can come from this humiliation, it is to caution others that date rape drugs can be used on men, too," he said.

Comment on this post

Blaine setting for Palin speech highlights a difference with McCain

Posted at 1:09 PM on September 16, 2008 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Politics

It's significant, perhaps, that Sara Palin's visit to Minnesota on Friday is occurring at a general aviation airport -- Anoka Blaine Airport. If there's one area where she and her running mate disagree, it's on the biggest issue facing general aviation : user fees.

Complicating the issue even more is that the "aviation community" leans heavily Republican.

For the last 2 1/2 years, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, the largest lobbying arm of general aviation, has been opposing a Bush administration proposal to finance the Federal Aviation Administration with user fees, similar to how Canada finances its aviation services. (Full disclosure: I am a member of AOPA, however I lean toward a user-fee system.)

It says the surplus in the Aviation Trust Fund, paid for by taxes on general aviation fuel, airline passenger tickets, and cargo, should be used instead, and argues that the skies will be less safe because pilots won't use air traffic control and other services designed to keep flying a relatively safe exercise.

The nation's airlines want more of the cost of the system transferred to business and general aviation. Business and general aviation interests say it's the airlines that are the biggest users, and should be the biggest funders.

The plan has plenty of supporters. "General aviation should pay more; the FAA says it provides only 3 percent of the financing for the air-traffic control system, yet it accounts for roughly 17 percent of its use," the Rocky Mountain News editorialized at the height of the debate in 2007.

Sen. John McCain has leaned toward the airlines' view, voting against an amendment to eliminate the Bush administration's proposed $25-per-flight user fee on general aviation.

As chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, McCain had a testy exchange when he tried to block the appointment of the AOPA president to a council that advises the FAA on aviation issues, partly because of the organization official's opposition to user fees .

"I wanted to get at, which we should get at, the wealthiest people in America who are flying corporate jets around this country and not paying an extra penny for doing so, while average citizens, average middle income, lower income American citizens are paying, again, an increase in their cost of air tickets, while your fat cat friends pay nothing. "

McCain stressed that user fees would only apply to business aircraft. The general aviation interests insist that a user fee-funding system would only expand.

Who favored eliminating the user fee? Gov. Sarah Palin. She signed a resolution in Alaska in 2007 that opposed "the enactment of the provisions in the Next Generation Air Transportation System Financing Reform Act of 2007 that impose user fees, increase aviation fuel and aviation gas taxes, reduce airport funding, and reduce Congressional oversight of the Federal Aviation Administration."

Obama's position? According to Evan Sparks, who writes about aviation policy, "As far as I can find, he's not on record endorsing user fees, and the FAA reauthorization bill never came up for a final vote in the Senate."

Comment on this post

I (heart) my PDA

Posted at 1:36 PM on September 16, 2008 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Surveys and trivia

A new survey says 35 percent Of BlackBerry And PDA users would choose their device over their spouse, according to CBS.

Here's what else the survey from Sheraton Hotels found:

84% check their PDAs just before they go to bed and just after they wake up.
84 % feel that technology gives them more quality time and flexibility with family and friends.
77% say their PDA helps them enjoy life more.

Comment on this post

Study: Video games do not turn people into misfits

Posted at 3:49 PM on September 16, 2008 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Surveys and trivia

Video games do not turn people into socially isolated creatures. So says a new study from Pew.

Here's the full report. It comes just a few weeks after an MIT professor debunked 8 myths about video games.

In other news, video games have been blamed for a fiery motorcycle crash, a sex attack, and a satanic sword killing.

Comment on this post

Safe or not?

Posted at 4:26 PM on September 16, 2008 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Health

What we have here... is a failure to communicate.

Today, the first major study of the effect on humans of BPA -- a common ingredient in plasticware and baby bottles -- showed that among 1,455 U.S. adults, those with the highest levels of BPA were more likely to have heart disease, diabetes and liver-enzyme abnormalities than those with the lowest levels.

Says The Washington Post...

Dr. David O. Carpenter, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany in New York, noted that he has shown that these very same diseases are associated with PCBs, dioxins and chlorinated pesticides.

"I have a strong suspicion that BPA is doing exactly the same thing," he said. "I have been arguing that BPA should be banned for a long time just on the basis of its effect on endocrine systems. The industry reports that argue that it has no adverse effects are simply wrong," he said.

So what are we supposed to do now? The Food and Drug Administration is sticking with its position that the plastics are safe, according to FDA official Laura Tarantino...

"We have confidence in the data that we've looked at and the data that we're relying on to say that the margin of safety is adequate..."

On the other hand...

"There are things you can do if you choose to reduce your level of bisphenol A..."

Alright, then.

"... but we have not recommended that anyone change their habits or change their use of any of these products because right now we don't have the evidence in front of us to suggest that people need to."

I see.

Canadian health authorities have announced plans to ban some products. The U.S. National Toxicology Program has "some concern" it may harm development of the prostate and brain.

Studies have shown that BPA is in the urine of more than 90 percent of people in the United States.

Comment on this post

Back to bailouts

Posted at 8:25 PM on September 16, 2008 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

That line in the sand that the feds drew on Monday, deciding to let big banks fail rather than provide a government bailout, turns out to have been drawn in the sand.

The feds bailed out the giant insurer AIG Tuesday evening to the tune of an $85 billion loan.

AIG is the world's largest insurer.

"It's a dramatic turnabout for the federal government, which has strongly resisted overtures from AIG for an emergency loan or some intervention that would prevent the insurer from falling into bankruptcy," the Wall Street Journal noted.

The company was so sure it was headed for bankruptcy, that it hired a law firm to draw up the papers, the New York Times reported.

AIG fired its CEO, Martin Sullivan, this summer for failing to warn investors about the company's big losses in the derivatives market, tied to the failing mortgage industry.

He reportedly got $47 million to take a hike, according to Portfolio.com.

Comment on this post