HONEY, GET ME REWRITE
OK newshounds, name the suspicious element in this headline: US terror suspect 'to plead innocent'

The answer is that people plead "not guilty" in the United States, but Associated Press has a funny rule that insists reporters and editors instead use the term "innocent."

innocent Use innocent, rather than not guilty, in describing a defendant's plea or a jury's verdict, to guard against the word not being dropped inadvertently.
--The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual (1996)

So whenever you hear "innocent" in a news story, you can assume it was changed in order to conform to AP style. But if you see "innocent" in quotes, you can assume it was something likely uttered by the defendant or lawyer in an interview - or that someone has lifted something from AP.

The funny thing about the BBC story is that nowhere in the text does it quote anyone using the term "innocent" but in fact uses "not guilty" instead. And nowhere does the story credit AP or any other news outlet.

Lately I've been trying to figure out if BBC is as guilty as other news agencies whose foreign reporters borrow heavily from local media and try to pass it off as their own legwork to the folks back home. The "innocent" headline may be one of those tiny clues that someone was using an AP story to shore up what they had - but without giving AP any credit.
- posted by Amy @ 1/02/2002 08:48:00 AM

 

RESEARCHING IRAQ SANCTIONS
Matt Welch - who is probably madly collecting shiny new euros today - has a new story up at Online Journalism Review. He's become something of an armchair war junkie these days, and has put together an obsessive array of links for online readers interested in all the hows and whys of the Iraq sanctions and non-compliance issues since the Gulf War.
- posted by Amy @ 1/01/2002 02:28:00 PM

 

TAKE THAT, HARRY POTTER
I should say first off that I'm ever so pleased nothing blew up last night. However, there are already a few stories in the morning papers making me wonder what's in store for 2002.

There was a little book burning in New Mexico. A church saw fit to torch not only Harry Potter, but also a bit of Shakespeare (according to an A-section caption-only in the NYT) for good measure.

The Denver-based telephone company Qwest has notified its customers that unless they mail in an opt-out request, the company will sell plenty of their private information, including who their customers are calling.

Lawrence Singleton - who raped and chopped off the arms of a young California girl before leaving her to die in the desert and years later killed a prostitute in Florida - has died of cancer on Florida's death row.
- posted by Amy @ 1/01/2002 02:03:00 PM

 

2002
Happy New Year.
- posted by Amy @ 1/01/2002 01:43:00 PM

 

THE MOOD DOWNTOWN
Just got back from a trip down to the Financial District. Some friends are in town and I opted to join with them as they trekked down to see the Woolworth Building and a bit of the site. The mood down there has definitely changed. It is no longer somber. The respectful whispers are gone. We saw one guy - who must have been around 30 - up in his buddy's shoulders, laughing and trying to see over a fence into the rescue zone. Even when a cop came over and asked them to stop, they kept laughing and trying to get a better view. We passed the line snaking toward the new viewing platform. Apparently it's a 5-hour wait. The platform is at the back of the St. Paul's cemetery, near where the Border's Bookstore used to be. That building, by the way, looks as though it's now been torn down altogether. It was still standing about two weeks ago when I came home from a doctor's appointment.
At one point we walked up Fulton toward Broadway, a route I used to walk everyday I left work and headed for the subway. As I looked up today, I got something like a reverse vertigo. Kind of a seasick feeling because the towers weren't there. Now you can see sunlight at the end of the street.
As we headed back past City Hall, we saw the new mayor walk out of one building with his entourage and head toward the front of City Hall, which is all decked out in red white and blue bunting for the inauguration.
We also made a stop at the J&R Music World so I could buy Civ III. That's how I'll be spending my New Year's Eve while my husband has to work, about a dozen floors above Times Square tonight.
- posted by Amy @ 12/31/2001 03:56:00 PM

 

THE REAL 'MAN OF THE YEAR'
My buddy Tony Pierce names Phil Collins as the Man of the Year, "for not releasing an album this year."
- posted by Amy @ 12/31/2001 09:07:00 AM

 

END-OF-TAX-YEAR TIP
I haven't seen any stories on this, but I talked to my tax guy earlier this month and he mentioned that there appeared to be a sharp rise in IRS audits beginning about three months ago.
- posted by Amy @ 12/31/2001 09:03:00 AM

 

CHINA EASES MEDIA RULES OH-SO-SLIGHTLY
The Financial Times reports that China's Communist Party Central Committee has issued a semi-secret decree to incrementally liberalize its media. Specifically, it would allow non-media businesses to invest in media companies. One professor at a Beijing university says it is "is a pre-condition for a more open media."
- posted by Amy @ 12/31/2001 08:31:00 AM

 

AIRLINE SECURITY FOR DUMMIES
The New York Times reports that further revisions have been made to the "reforms" meant to improve the competency of airline security workers. It seems that 25 percent of them do not have a high school diploma. In the original plan to fix things after Sept. 11, the new workers would need a high school diploma. But now that seems too onerous, so it's been dropped. In defending the position a lawyer with a position in the case uses lawyer-speak to explain why it's good to have dumb people working in airport security:

The private security industry, which lobbied hard against the new law, agrees with that assessment. Kenneth P. Quinn, counsel for an association of the private airline security companies who will turn over their responsibilities to the government next year, said the repetitive nature of the screening jobs is often not a good fit for people with higher educational backgrounds.

"There's no demonstrable nexus between advanced educational degrees of any kind and the ability to perform at a high level as a screener," Mr. Quinn said. "In fact, the opposite is often true."

Tucked next to that story, the NYT ran an AP story about a man who had a loaded gun in his carry-on bag at Memphis. It was found after he was picked for a random search. But, oops, seems he had already gotten the same gun through security at Tampa and Atlanta. Delta acknowledged the event but had no further comment.
- posted by Amy @ 12/30/2001 12:59:00 PM