Thursday, April 2
I was looking forward to reading the Times’ reporting on the Group of 20 meeting after incidentally seeing some presentations of it on Fox News Wednesday night. Not surprisingly, the Times differed from Fox in the amount of background it gave, and the level of objectivity. If the NYT is subjective and political it is usually most evident in where information is placed in the story. Sometimes the positive perspective, as on Rick Scott today, is buried—but it is there. But on Fox, even on “news” shows rather than the highly popular commentary, every event is somehow spun into a political attack, every phrase is twisted to squeeze something incendiary out, negligible stories are pumped into revivalist histrionics, concessions wind up being another way to club an opponent or avoid more in depth argument. And it blows my mind that while papers are going bankrupt such coverage is at #1 with viewers.
So at least according to the Times account, Obama hasn’t destroyed Anglo-American relations to pander to Russians or Chinese, protesting in London isn’t directed at Obama’s socialist leadership, and Sarkozy isn’t exactly Sean Hannity’s soul mate. However, some of the NYT G20 coverage seemed lacking to me. An article on Medvedev’s meeting with Obama was unbalanced, without a single quote from the Russian leader to match line after line from the American. An article on China’s rise as a superpower contained cultural blinds—conceding China’s promising economy and role in world recovery financing, the article applies American cultural perspective to diminish the potential ascendancy of China.

Wednesday, April 1
The second “A World of Hurt” almost read like a satire of Aristophanes or Voltaire. And though I loved the article, I’m still not sure I understand how the independent medical examiner system works, only that there are so many points in it that anyone involved can say “I don’t know what happened” if discrepancies, errors, or more concrete signs of fraud turn up.
“Pleasure Boats Are Becoming Castaways” presented a scenario I wouldn’t have imagined. With so many boats being abandoned because of high maintenance and a bad second hand market, aren’t there other people who would like to snatch them up on the sly?

Tuesday, March 31
Lot of finance stories in tangible form – colleges taking more students who can pay tuition in full, workers receiving or faking injuries and the monetary consequences, and more on the national auto problem with GM and Chrysler.
What I would really like to see is a story on the choices of which car brands and models may make survive, why some have already been eliminated and not others. How are the decisions made? If they are based solely on popularity/ profitability, then it might be interesting to read a story on the causes of vehicles high sales. The most popular is rarely the best in arts or thought, so government dictation of inferior car survival over superior based solely on previous sales would be a curious scenario.