Saturday, February 18, 2006

Supervillain of the Day

On a normal day, the Chicago Sun-Times couldn't cover a little girl's imaginary tea party without detecting some whiff of scandal. That's why it bugs me that it plays one of today's lead stories with such credulity.

The story reports that Cook County Sheriff Michael Sheahan personally nabbed a drug-crime suspect who escaped from a hospital yesterday morning. While this is certainly not impossible, it warrants some of the CST's usual skepticism. As an infobox that accompanies the story makes plain, the sheriff could really use a symbolic display of, well, basic competence. His prisoners are escaping, not to mention shooting each other in the county jail.

Not until the 11th paragraph do we learn that the suspect turned herself in, which sort of kills the excitement/heroism angle that the CST's blaring front-page headline suggests.

And even if Sheahan had chased her down, it wouldn't have been that hard. She was charged with heroin possession and was taken to the hospital because she complained of chest pains. According to Sheahan, she's 5'2" and weighs 240 pounds. So it appears we're talking about the cops versus an obese junkie (see pic for handy reference). Oh, do be careful, Super Sheriff!

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Never heard of it! Pt. 2



Good thing there's a "Learn" button.

Saturday, February 11, 2006

Serious, True and Impossible

Amir Mizroch of The Jerusalem Post complains about the vague and contradictory language of a hospital spokesman who described Ariel Sharon's condition as "serious, stable and critical."

I've had similar problems with hospital spokesmen and spokeswomen. United States medical privacy laws (see Slate's explanation) certainly create an extra chilling effect--I'm not sure if Israel has that problem--but my experience and Mizroch's column tell me that doctors, hospital spokesmen and reporters need to agree on some language and parameters for describing patients' conditions.

First, if we're going to keep using words like "stable," "critical," "serious," "good," etc., we need to give them strict definitions for medical-news usage. Spokesmen have described patients to me as "stable and critical," I think, to which my editor quickly and confidently responded, "you can't be stable and critical." This means that nobody is really sure what exactly all these terms are supposed to mean.

In the case of a public figure, hospitals seem pretty willing to provide details about procedures, which only makes me wonder why the Hadassah spokesman didn't describe Sharon's condition in more specific terms. Any transparent government should be willing to provide these details:

Is the patient conscious? Talking? Mobile? In a lot of pain? What good/bad signs will doctors be looking for?

Maybe it's too intrusive to reveal some of these details about private citizens injured in car crashes or other accidents. I think, though, that detailed medical information about injured crime suspects should be made public to some extent, if only to allow the press to monitor officers' use of force and public spending on suspects' medical care.

And, as Mizroch says, reporters should aggressively press spokesmen to define their clumsy terms.

A Better Job vs. Another Job

Slate's Jack Shafer correctly points out that Nicholas Kristof is wrong to urge Bill O'Reilly to come with him on a trip to Darfur.

Every journalist who chooses to report on Subject A receives critical mail and phone calls from folks who insist that the journalist should be reporting on Subject B if he thinks A is a problem. Kristof must think it's clever to stoop to a gambit that's beneath any self-respecting blogger.

Shafer might add that this is a common tactic that demagogues like O'Reilly use to smother their guests in interviews. For example, I once heard Sean Hannity berate an ACLU spokesman because the ACLU had never publicly criticized Saddam Hussein's regime. I can't even remember what the ACLU guy said as he spluttered and begged for understanding, but he missed the point, which is that Iraq is simply outside the scope of what the ACLU does. A political organization, like a journalist, has to have a well-defined set of goals and a well-defined area of expertise, and the ACLU's just doesn't happen to include protecting civil liberties in other countries. Now, if Amnesty International or, say, Reporters Without Borders had ignored Iraq, it would be appropriate to call them out on that. But in this case, Hannity was just trying to knock his guest down and use his back as a soapbox.

It's one thing to ask someone to do better at his job, and another thing entirely to ask him to do change the central nature of that job.

That's what Kristof is doing here. If he wants to tell O'Reilly what to do, his orders should be within the scope of O'Reilly's show. Africa just isn't O'Reilly's beat. If Kristof wants to draw more attention to Darfur, he should appeal to someone who might actually be willing to help him. If he believes the issue is this urgent, why should he indulge himself in useless sarcasm?

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

The Slow Trickle of Evolution

Does it make anybody else happy that the only people killed so far in the Mohammed cartoon protests have been protesters? I only wish more American fundamentalist raisin cakes would get themselves trampled and/or shot while imposing mob rule on television shows. American newspapers' hesitation to print the cartoons and television networks' readiness to cancel episodes and even series reveals a pathetic willingness to acquiesce to religious fanatics.

Wikipedia, unlike nearly every publication in the United States, has a JPG of the original Jyllands-Posten page of cartoons.

Friday, February 03, 2006

Help search for Jennifer Kesse

Jennifer Kesse has been missing from her Orlando home for almost two weeks now. A group called Child Watch of North America is organizing volunteers for a search this weekend. Sign up if you can, and please pass this on to anyone you know in Central Florida. My good friend Matt is one of Kesse's cousins. The family would really appreciate any and all help.

More information and a signup form at jenniferkesse.com.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Never heard of it!



Yes, MapQuest and Pollstar--you are both dumb.