Unretouched photo of Katherine Harris

Detail from a 'Colorized' photo of Katherine Harris

Makeup queen Katherine Harris, the Cruella DeVil bad cosmetics poster girl, now says it was all an illusion. See, the mean liberal media “colorized” her photos to accentuate her blue eye shadow in order to make fun of her during the 2000 presidential recounts.

The fact that no pictures with the aforementioned eye shadow can be found is just part of the plot. Really. And the idea that most people actually saw Harris on TV rather than in print is just a distraction, or maybe CNN employed legions of kids with crayons to mark up the live video feeds as they went out. Or something.

Anyway, everyone should just forget all about Katherine's makeup challenged past and no one should pay any attention at all to any color pictures of Ms. Harris, because the nerdy kids who edit the yearbook are obviously out to get her.

On Monday, on a conservative radio talk show, Harris, now a congresswoman from Longboat Key running for the U.S. Senate, hit back, blaming newspapers for the criticism and charging that some - without saying which - altered her photographs.

``I'm actually very sensitive about those things, and it's personally painful,'' Harris said when host Sean Hannity asked about her image problems from 2000.

``But they're outrageously false, No. 1, and No. 2, you know, whenever they made fun of my makeup, it was because the newspapers colorized my photograph,'' Harris said.

She didn't explain what she meant by ``colorized.''

Asked Tuesday to point to an altered photograph, Harris and her staff could not.

Her response to the question, said spokesman Adam Goodman, was, ``I haven't worn blue eye shadow since the seventh grade when I was in the Girl Scouts.'' She didn't name a newspaper that showed blue eye shadow.
......

Most newspapers, including the Tribune, forbid changing photographic images.

``Manipulating an image in any form is not allowed'' by The Associated Press, which distributes photos to newspapers nationwide, said David Ake, AP national deputy photography director. ``We're pretty adamant about that. We have terminated people for it.''

Ake was AP photo editor in Florida during the 2000 recount, ``and I can tell you we did no manipulation whatever,'' he said.

Some political experts say Harris' charge makes little sense because most Americans got their visual image of Harris from television.

At least two Harris news conferences in November 2000, detailing her decision to enforce a deadline and forbid recount results, got national TV coverage.

``Of course it wasn't newspapers, it was television,'' said Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. ``I can remember watching her and thinking she learned all the wrong makeup lessons from Al Gore in the debates.''

There�s a move afoot to complain to the FCC about this episode, though the FCC has no real power over cable.

When a headline in a mainstream newspaper screams "Drugs found in more than 6,700 Florida autopsies in 2003," the vast majority of readers are going to assume that most of those deaths were caused or abetted by the consumption of illegal drugs, because , as we all know from our �Just Say No!� brainwashing, drugs are bad! Most people will glance at the headline, give a little �tsk tsk,� and assume that illegal drugs are causing tons of early deaths.

But read the press release that is reprinted under the headline, and lo and behold:

Alcohol was the drug most commonly found, showing up in more than 3,400 bodies, according to an annual report compiled by medical examiners. After alcohol came tranquilizers or sleeping pills...

So, the most common drugs found in people whose deaths were suspicious enough that they led to an autopsy were legal drugs available over the counter or through prescription. But these were just substances found in the body. It turns out that if you just count deaths caused by the ingestion of drugs, the numbers are in the hundreds, not the thousands.

Oh, and in the history of the world, marijuana has never killed anyone. Ever.

Here�s an idea: instead of buying into the false hype of the drug war, why don�t we, as a society, spend money on education and rehabilitation. Real education, not �All drugs are bad, and oh, yeah, so is sex, so don�t do drugs and don�t have sex or you�ll end up miserable and diseased if not dead...�

The Vaults of Erowid - reliable information on drugs.

Drug WarRant - information on prohibition.

It is a belief of mine about the movies, that what makes them good or bad isn't what they're about, but how they're about them. The point is not the subject but the form and purpose of its expression. A listener to Stern will find that he expresses humanistic values, that he opposes hypocrisy, that he talks honestly about what a great many Americans do indeed think and say and do. A Limbaugh listener, on the other hand, might not have guessed from campaigns to throw the book at drug addicts that he was addicted to drugs and required an employee to buy them on the street.

But listen carefully. I support Limbaugh's right to be on the radio. I feel it is fully equal to Stern's. I find it strange that so many Americans describe themselves as patriotic when their values are anti-democratic and totalitarian. We are all familiar with Voltaire's great cry: ''I may disagree with what you say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it.'' Ideas like his helped form the emerging American republic. Today, the Federal Communications Commission operates under an alternative slogan: ''Since a minority that is very important to this administration disagrees with what you say, shut up.''

Lately, Stern ha really turned against W and his cronies. He has pledged to register thousands of his listeners and encourage them to vote Democrat. He is gleefully exposing W�s lies and hypocrisies and he can energize a lot of people who have been apolitical or Republican leaning to get out and vote this November. His fan base is loyal, and if they see him as being under attack, they will turn out en-masse to support him and send our current pResident back to his stage-set ranch.

Of course, even if none of this were true, we would still be obligated to follow Voltaire�s pledge for both Howard and Rush.

As reported here on BlogWood, The Tampa Tribune published an article on Nov. 19 that is remarkable for it�s bias. In a nutshell, a Sheriffs Deputy went before a government board to represent MADD, but testified in full uniform and misled those to whom he was speaking. The Trib story reads like a propaganda piece from MADD and reports the officer�s misleading statistics as fact.

There seems to be a new reporter assigned to this story, which leads me to the following questions:

Why are the original reporters off this story?
Were they ever at the Commission meeting they were reporting on? They either missed many many little details, or they or their editor intentionally spun the story.
Do any of the original reporters or their editor have ties to MADD?

Anyway, today�s article is obviously a correction, but it is done without admitting the original mistake. Most readers will remain blissfully unaware that their paper printed an article that was designed to fit MADD�s political agenda. Casual readers of the original article are not going to pick up the fact that Officer Wallace was actually representing MADD (despite the fact that he was in full uniform!) because this is not disclosed until the second to last paragraph.

I emphasized this buried information in BlogWood, and apparently the Trib has now had time to read their own reporters� notes, because the new article features this disclosure prominently.

The very end of the original is also the only place in the whole article where you will find anyone with anything good to say about the relaxed Blue Laws. Readers who slog all the way through the misleading piece can see 17 words from a restaurant owner who benefits from the earlier sales.

Another glaring error, or intentional distortion, was the Trib�s original reporting of the statistics that Wallace spewed.

The facility processed 6,785 DUI cases in 2002 and already has processed more than 5,300 this year, Wallace said.

"The statistics are scary. Hillsborough County has a problem," he said after the meeting. "Two more hours to drink - what good can that have?"

Word has it that the Trib reporter who wrote today�s article owns a calculator, but he is MAD (no pun intended) because The Tribune refuses to reimburse him for this expense. Their argument is that fingers and toes are more than sufficient for most Tribune reporters� math needs. Nevertheless, today�s article fleshes these numbers out a little, while still giving the Sheriffs office a fighting chance to close the gap toward the end of the season:

Wallace told the board the blood-alcohol center processed 6,785 DUI cases in 2002 and already this year has processed more than 5,300 cases.

But this is November, just six weeks from the end of the year. If the pace continues, the projected number of DUI cases will total about 700 fewer than last year. That doesn't take into account the holidays, however, when the number of DUIs tend to rise a bit.

On BlogWood, I was not so kind:

Oh, good! Now we have some numbers to back up Wallace�s testimony that DUIs are increasing. Let�s see, it�s November, so we can knock 2 months off of our 365 day year, do a little math, and see that Wallace�s division is processing about 17 DUI cases each day. Wow. They�re pretty busy, all right. Why, last year they only processed a little over 18.5 cases each day. That�s an increase of... uh, wait... let�s see... Well, I�m sure Officer Wallace can shed some light on this apparent discrepancy:

"The statistics are scary. Hillsborough County has a problem," he said after the meeting. "Two more hours to drink - what good can that have?"

Hmmm... that�s a pretty scientific observation. I don�t think I can fault his methodology at all.

Which brings us to the whole �scary� thing. Today�s article has Wallace "before the board" talking of a "scary" situation. The original article, quoted above, has him saying this to a reporter after the meeting. His choice of words obviously had an impact:

Platt was persuaded and cast the deciding vote in a 4-3 ballot to rescind the 1-month-old law.
......

"He was there in uniform," Platt said. "He said, 'I'm saying we have a problem in Hillsborough County. The statistics show we do. The stats are scary.' "

Regardless of when he actually uttered the word, statistics seem to show that the only thing scary about a mere 2 extra hours to drink on Sunday is the probability of Deputy Wallace�s pants catching on fire. From today�s article we learn that Wallace is either a liar or a coward. (I�m leaning toward the former, though I suppose it could be both...):

Before the board stood a Hillsborough County sheriff's deputy - in full uniform - saying the county was in a "scary"' situation; that thousands of suspected drunken drivers parade through the jail each year and this year is no different. Even though it's two fewer hours a week that alcohol can be purchased, it would make a difference, the commission was told.

Which would seem to run counter to what his boss said later:

(Sheriff Cal) Henderson said he wouldn't have done it (spoke to the commission) without a more complete picture. He said the DUI statistics do not appear to be affected by "two hours on a Sunday morning."

And it looks like the Trib took that money they saved on calculators and sprung for a phone call so that their reporter could hear some real numbers:

Hillsborough sheriff's Sgt. Steve Hawkins, who heads up the department's DUI task force, said his squad follows trends that say most drunken drivers navigate highways between midnight and 5 a.m. on Sundays, not after 11 a.m.

"During the morning hours, from 8 a.m. on until early afternoon, it's sporadic,"he said. "Fewer people are engaged in drinking at that time. Our enforcement effort is geared to the database that says [between midnight and 5 a.m.] is where we need to put the majority of our eggs."

Since August, the department has averaged 3.5 DUI arrests on Sundays, after 11 a.m., he said, and he hasn't noticed a spike in arrests after county businesses started selling alcohol at 11 a.m. on Sundays. He doesn't plan to alter his enforcement efforts.

Finally, in today�s article, the Trib lets on that even the commission itself might be aware of at least two sides to this story:

The commission now will schedule a public hearing to flesh out the numbers and hear all sides of the argument. Platt has asked Sheriff Cal Henderson to bring official DUI statistics. She hasn't made up her mind one way or the other, she said.

(emphasis mine)

UPDATED to fix stupid errors :~)

Note to self: no more blogging after a night of candy and wine....

From CHARLIE REINA: So Chris Wallace says Fox News Channel really is fair and balanced. Well, I guess that settles it. We can all go home now. I mean, so what if Wallace's salary as Fox's newest big-name anchor ends with a whole lot of zeroes? So what if he hasn't spent a day in the FNC newsroom yet?

My advice to the pundits: If you really want to know about bias at Fox, talk to the grunts who work there - the desk assistants, tape editors, writers, researchers and assorted producers who have to deal with it every day. Ask enough of them what goes on, promise them anonymity, and you'll get the real story.

The fact is, daily life at FNC is all about management politics. I say this having served six years there - as producer of the media criticism show, News Watch, as a writer/producer of specials and (for the last year of my stay) as a newsroom copy editor. Not once in the 20+ years I had worked in broadcast journalism prior to Fox - including lengthy stays at The Associated Press, CBS Radio and ABC/Good Morning America - did I feel any pressure to toe a management line. But at Fox, if my boss wasn't warning me to "be careful" how I handled the writing of a special about Ronald Reagan ("You know how Roger [Fox News Chairman Ailes] feels about him."), he was telling me how the environmental special I was to produce should lean ("You can give both sides, but make sure the pro-environmentalists don't get the last word.")

Editorially, the FNC newsroom is under the constant control and vigilance of management. The pressure ranges from subtle to direct. First of all, it's a news network run by one of the most high-profile political operatives of recent times. Everyone there understands that FNC is, to a large extent, "Roger's Revenge" - against what he considers a liberal, pro-Democrat media establishment that has shunned him for decades. For the staffers, many of whom are too young to have come up through the ranks of objective journalism, and all of whom are non-union, with no protections regarding what they can be made to do, there is undue motivation to please the big boss.

Sometimes, this eagerness to serve Fox's ideological interests goes even beyond what management expects. For example, in June of last year, when a California judge ruled the Pledge of Allegiance's "Under God" wording unconstitutional, FNC's newsroom chief ordered the judge's mailing address and phone number put on the screen. The anchor, reading from the Teleprompter, found himself explaining that Fox was taking this unusual step so viewers could go directly to the judge and get "as much information as possible" about his decision. To their credit, the big bosses recognized that their underling's transparent attempt to serve their political interests might well threaten the judge's physical safety and ordered the offending information removed from the screen as soon as they saw it. A few months later, this same eager-to-please newsroom chief ordered the removal of a graphic quoting UN weapons inspector Hans Blix as saying his team had not yet found WMDs in Iraq. Fortunately, the electronic equipment was quicker on the uptake (and less susceptible to office politics) than the toady and displayed the graphic before his order could be obeyed.

But the roots of FNC's day-to-day on-air bias are actual and direct. They come in the form of an executive memo distributed electronically each morning, addressing what stories will be covered and, often, suggesting how they should be covered. To the newsroom personnel responsible for the channel's daytime programming, The Memo is the bible. If, on any given day, you notice that the Fox anchors seem to be trying to drive a particular point home, you can bet The Memo is behind it.

The Memo was born with the Bush administration, early in 2001, and, intentionally or not, has ensured that the administration's point of view consistently comes across on FNC. This year, of course, the war in Iraq became a constant subject of The Memo. But along with the obvious - information on who is where and what they'll be covering - there have been subtle hints as to the tone of the anchors' copy. For instance, from the March 20th memo: "There is something utterly incomprehensible about Kofi Annan's remarks in which he allows that his thoughts are 'with the Iraqi people.' One could ask where those thoughts were during the 23 years Saddam Hussein was brutalizing those same Iraqis. Food for thought." Can there be any doubt that the memo was offering not only "food for thought," but a direction for the FNC writers and anchors to go? Especially after describing the U.N. Secretary General's remarks as "utterly incomprehensible"?

The sad truth is, such subtlety is often all it takes to send Fox's newsroom personnel into action - or inaction, as the case may be. One day this past spring, just after the U.S. invaded Iraq, The Memo warned us that anti-war protesters would be "whining" about U.S. bombs killing Iraqi civilians, and suggested they could tell that to the families of American soldiers dying there. Editing copy that morning, I was not surprised when an eager young producer killed a correspondent's report on the day's fighting - simply because it included a brief shot of children in an Iraqi hospital.

These are not isolated incidents at Fox News Channel, where virtually no one of authority in the newsroom makes a move unmeasured against management's politics, actual or perceived. At the Fair and Balanced network, everyone knows management's point of view, and, in case they're not sure how to get it on air, The Memo is there to remind them.

From MATT GROSS, assistant editor, New York magazine:
As a former editor at Foxnews.com -- and therefore clearly a disgruntled ex-employee -- let me just say that the right-wing bias was there in the newsroom, up-front and obvious, from the day a certain executive editor was sent down from the channel to bring us in line with their coverage. His first directive to us: Seek out stories that cater to angry, middle-aged white men who listen to talk radio and yell at their televisions. (Oh, how I'd love to stick quotation marks around what is nearly a direct quote.)

What followed was a dumbing-down of what had been an ambitious and talented news operation. Stories could be no more than 1,000 words, then 800 (I heard it was reduced further after I left, in March 2001). More and more effort was devoted to adapting FNC "scripts" into Web stories, which meant we were essentially correcting the errors of FNC "reporters" who couldn't be bothered to get the facts.

To me, FNC reporters' laziness was the worst part of the bias. It wasn't that they were toeing some political line (though of course they were; see the embarrassing series on property rights from 2000), it was that the facts of a story just didn't matter at all. The idea was to get those viewers out of their seats, screaming at the TV, the politicians, the liberals -- whoever -- simply by running a provocative story.

The bizarre and sad part of this was that, at the Website, most of the reporters, editors, and producers were liberals -- and not only liberals but young, energetic, ambitious, talented journalists. Some of my friends still work there, and some of them no doubt wish they could leave for a better job elsewhere. Why don't they (and why didn't Charles Reina)? Well, despite the Bush administration's clear success in revitalizing the U.S. economy, the job market for journos is still pretty poor, especially if your portfolio is full of badly reported 600-word clunkers. (Sorry, guys.)

But what do I know? I haven't worked there in two and a half years -- I haven't voluntarily watched FNC since then -- so maybe things have changed. But from what Reina wrote, and what I experienced, it doesn't sound like it.

FCC BATTLE STILL RAGES: CALL TO PRESSURE CONGRESS Common Cause is seeking to mobilize pressure on Congress: "Last Thursday, the Senate Commerce Committee responded to the call to overturn the FCC decision. It took the first step by approving Senate Bill S.1046, and added several amendments, including one addressing the consolidation of radio that, if approved and passed into law, could address the creation of a more independent and less monopolized media. You answered our cry to upend the FCC and flooded the Senate with messages and we won this first step. We'll keep you informed as the legislation moves through the full Senate after the July 4 recess. But right now, we need your help to build momentum in the House. Please urge your Representative to listen to the American people by supporting legislation similar to S.1046. Contact your representative in the House by clicking here: http://causenet.commoncause.org/afr/mail/oneclick_compose/?alertid=2651106

Common cause adds: "Whatever the end result of the legislation approved by the Senate Commerce Committee, a new era has begun. More than ever, the American public is aware that a diverse and independent media is integral to a healthy democracy."