News Is a Harsh Mistress
Date: 16 January 1994
By Stephan Salisbury
Stephan Salisbury
Mort Rosenblum, a veteran Associated Press correspondent based in Paris, poses a vaguely sinister question for the title of this anecdotal and often entertaining guidebook to foreign news and reporting. But the real questions underlying WHO STOLE THE NEWS? Why We Can't Keep Up With What Happens in the World and What We Can Do About It (Wiley, $24.95) are a bit more mundane: what is news, and why doesn't anyone seem to care much about anything beyond the immediately domestic? Americans are infamous around the world for being uninterested in things foreign -- a foolish attitude on a planet whose nations are more and more interlinked, Mr. Rosenblum argues. Television and the profit motive are the primary culprits keeping the population mired in ignorance, he contends. News organizations forgo foreign news because there is scant consumer interest. No surprises there. Yet given the low priority assigned most foreign events by news media executives, it is still possible for citizens to obtain the information necessary to make informed judgments. Readers must simply hunt it down in newspapers, magazines and journals. Much, of course, depends on the quality of reporting itself, and here is where Mr. Rosenblum is most interesting. He laces his argument with numerous examples of the trials, woes and infelicities endemic to reporting abroad. His devastating portrait of American military censorship during the Persian Gulf war and of the timidity and smugness of the press during that conflict is particularly noteworthy. The fact is that no one stole the news. The news is there; it just has to be claimed, a point Mr. Rosenblum makes rather well.
STEPHAN SALISBURY
Full Article
Newspapers Race for Outlets In Electronic Marketplace
Date: 17 January 1994
By William Glaberson
William Glaberson
The rapid development of electronic information technologies has placed the American newspaper industry at a crossroads. New methods of delivering information to desktops and living rooms are threatening the economic foundation of the $45 billion newspaper industry, historically one of the most lucrative and influential of American businesses. Newspaper companies are racing toward electronic media of all kinds in an attempt to pre-empt the competition.
Full Article
NEWS SUMMARY
Date: 17 January 1994
International A2-8 SYRIA UPBEAT ON TIES WITH ISRAEL After talks with President Clinton, President Hafez al-Assad of Syria held out the prospect of normalizing relations with Israel soon and said he was committed to reaching Middle East peace this year. A1
Full Article
NEWS SUMMARY
Date: 16 January 1994
International 3-15 CHINA PLEDGES RIGHTS EFFORT China's President told an American Congressional delegation that he will make an effort in the coming months to satisfy President Clinton's concerns about human rights. 1 CLINTON MOVES TO NEXT ISSUE President Clinton shifted his focus from Russia to the Middle East as he flew to Geneva. He stopped in Belarus, where he became embroiled in a local dispute. 1
Full Article
Skating News Crosses the Atlantic, Too
Date: 16 January 1994
By Christopher Clarey
Christopher Clarey
The Nancy Kerrigan-Tonya Harding saga is making waves on this side of the Atlantic, too. From network news in Frankfurt to radio broadcasts in Paris to tabloids (and broadsheets) in London, Europeans are being updated regularly on the plot twists and legal turns in the sports world's latest example of fact triumphing over fiction. Members of the continent's figure-skating establishment are having difficulty believing their ears and eyes as they prepare for this week's European championships in Copenhagen.
Full Article
'Live From the Battlefield': A Life Under Fire
Date: 16 January 1994
By Bill Keller
Bill Keller
PETER ARNETT may be the quintessential war correspondent of our half-century. It is not just that he has covered the defining wars, from the dispiriting slog of Vietnam to the new-world-order slaughter of the Persian Gulf. He has also made the transition from the teletype world of the wire services to the real-time world of Cable News Network. His fearless insistence on seeing things for himself has won him about every prize available in either medium, left competitors awed and envious (David Halberstam, who made his own name in Vietnam, called Mr. Arnett "the best reporter of the war") and often infuriated the men whose wars he covered.
Full Article
Gore Preaches, and Practices, the Techno-Gospel
Date: 17 January 1994
By Peter H. Lewis
Peter Lewis
The Vice President strode into his office, took a seat at a Compaq personal computer and briskly pecked out a confident greeting. "Welcome to the White House," Al Gore typed. "Let's get started."
Full Article
ASSAD HOLDS OUT PROSPECT OF NORMAL TIES WITH ISRAEL AFTER TALKS WITH CLINTON
Date: 17 January 1994
By Douglas Jehl
Douglas Jehl
After more than five hours of talks here with President Clinton, President Hafez al-Assad of Syria today held out the prospect of normal relations with Israel soon and said his country was committed to achieving peace in the Middle East this year. The statement by Mr. Assad was the most explicit sign yet of Syrian willingness to rejoin peace talks with Israel in earnest. Mr. Clinton said immediately that he hoped the statement "would provoke a positive response in Israel."
Full Article
Ms. Bacallao, Mr. Shields
Date: 16 January 1994
Madelene Bacallao, a daughter of Ovidio Bacallao of Miami and Xiomara Bacallao of Weehawken, N.J., was married yesterday in Lenox, Mass., to Richard C. Shields, the son of Richard and Jeanne Shields of Carmel, N.Y. The Rev. William F. Baughman, a Unitarian-Universalist minister, officiated at Wheatleigh, an inn.
Full Article
A Life Under Fire
Date: 16 January 1994
By Bill Keller
Bill Keller
LIVE FROM THE BATTLEFIELD From Vietnam to Baghdad: 35 Years in the World's War Zones. By Peter Arnett. Illustrated. 463 pp. New York: Simon & Schuster. $23.
Full Article