Life Coverage - World-of-Newave.info World-of-Newave.info http://www.world-of-newave.info/ 2008-12-02T11:11:47Z Latest news and articles about Life Coverage Copyright (c)2004-2008. All rights reserved. {EUROPE > NEWS AND MEDIA} - After Savanna: The child protection case that rocked the Netherlands In the very early morning of Tuesday September 21 2004, a police car on patrol through the wooded outskirts of Holten, in eastern Holland, noticed a vehicle travelling down a road closed to traffic and pulled it over. A search of the boot revealed not the contraband that might have been expected - drugs or smuggled cigarettes, perhaps - but the body of a small child, and a shovel.Savanna was three years old, but weighed only 10kg, as a one-year-old might. She was severely undernourished, and covered in bruises. It was later established that she had probably died the day before, when her mother, Sonja de J, then 32, stuffed her mouth with a washcloth and taped it over. Savanna had a cold and couldn't breathe through her nose. She suffocated. The lines that the case then followed will, post-Victoria Climbié, post-Baby P, be familiar. Stories began to appear in the Dutch papers about a little girl from Alphen aan den Rijn, a small city near The Hague. Neighbours, friends and family spoke of ongoing abuse. The girl got hardly any food, they said. She was tied to a bed, she was hit, she was forced to have cold showers. Everyone was worried. So worried that they asked social services to intervene.In fact, the family had been in close contact with social services for a long time. It emerged that Sonja de J's two older children (born in 1992 and 1993) were already in care. A younger baby was taken away after Savanna was found. Savanna herself was put on the child protection register when she was 11 months old. A family guardian - a specialist social worker - was appointed and visited the family regularly. In April 2002 the then one-year-old Savanna was taken away from her mother and placed into temporary care. According to the Dutch newspaper Trouw, which went through the child protection reports, she was malnourished and neglected, and the mother was refusing to accept the advice of youth welfare services. But in July, Savanna was returned to her mother. Why, exactly, remains unclear. Then the guardian fell ill, so in November 2002 another guardian, Mieke A, was appointed. According to her lawyer, Simeon Burmeister, she visited every two weeks, and reviewed the case more often than that. Sometimes she visited in her spare time, "because she felt that the family was a real problem. But not as bad as they turned out to be".Then, in May 2004, the new baby was born. In the Netherlands, a maternity nurse, or kraamverzorgster, is assigned to a family and helps out all day, for the first eight days. The nurse who went to see Sonja de J was alarmed by the way she was treating Savanna. The child seemed to be kept in her room all the time, and wasn't eating properly. She seemed bruised and cowed. So the kraamverzorgster raised the alarm. In fact, several professionals involved with the children raised their concerns and reported suspected abuse. They were not, however, aware that there was a family guardian because she had never been in touch.Information obtained by the public prosecutor indicates that legal measures were immediately put in place, on May 14 2004, to take Savanna into care. However, Mieke A (who was 46 at the time, so not a novice), decided that this wasn't necessary and overruled them; a paediatrician who visited in July concurred. Two months later Savanna was dead. On October 4, 350 people marched silently through Alphen aan den Rijn in her memory. For the first time in the history of Dutch law, a guardian was charged in criminal court. Initially, says her lawyer, the charge was accessory to murder; at the last minute this was changed to negligence leading to grievous bodily harm. She should have listened to others more, said the prosecution; she should have picked up the signs that things were going horribly wrong. They did not ask for a prison sentence but for a suspended sentence of 150 hours of "work punishment". "The prosecutor tried to argue that there was a deal between mother and guardian to kill the child," says Burmeister. "The guardian did her work, but actions like this can always happen. She could not have known - she only had two hours every second week to visit the family. In these two hours they have to see everything. Maybe she didn't do her work very well but in Holland that's not a criminal offence."During the trial, a picture emerged of a care worker who was too ready to listen to the mother. Sonja de J was known to have a borderline personality disorder - and although the guardian knew this, she seems not to have taken sufficient notice of it. But under such circumstances it would have been difficult to extrapolate a norm from brief meetings; Sonja de J could, presumably, often be quite charming.Mieke A was interrogated by the police for six days. She was charged on March 18 2005, and was finally brought to what would become an enormously high-profile trial on May 31 2007. She was acquitted on November 16, 2007, three years after Savanna died. The court decided the death was not the guardian's fault and that she did work hard for the family. However, the judge censured her for believing her own findings to be more important than anyone else's. Sonja de J was sentenced to six years in prison for manslaughter, while her boyfriend, Mario B, got two years for GBH. When they finish their sentences, they will be transferred to a secure psychiatric unit on an order that lasts until the doctors say the inmate can be released back into society. It can be indefinite. Childcare services in the Netherlands now recognise two periods: before Savanna, and after Savanna. As with Victoria Climbié, as will be with Baby P, the aftermath is rarely as simple as imprisonment for the perpetrators. It reverberates through systems, through countries, through professions, and through the lives of vulnerable children all over the country.In the Netherlands the first evidence of a Savanna effect was a spike in the numbers of children being put on to child protection registers, or into care. As there are 15 different regional jurisdictions, there are no reliable national figures. Estimates based on anecdotal evidence veer from 5% to 40%, but Arne Theunissen, who began his career as a guardian, and is now a researcher in the department of clinical child studies at the Free University of Amsterdam, also points to the figures for Amsterdam, the largest agency in Holland. In 2004, 1,620 children were taken into care; in 2005, after Savanna, there were 2,891, an almost 75% increase. (There is also a growing demand for foster parents. According to a spokesperson for the Dutch Organisation for Foster Parents, there were 14,000 Dutch foster children in 2002 and 20,000 in 2007 - a 30% increase. "Many people say it's because of the Savanna effect," said the spokesperson, who declined to be named. "It could be. But it's more complicated than that, it has to do with the difficulties of being foster parents.")In Britain, says Kieron Hatton, head of the Centre for Social Work at the University of Portsmouth, the trend was already going that way. The Climbié case simply "reinforced a trend towards risk-aversion in social work caused by inquiries over previous years. Social work in the UK is quite risk-averse - in fact, it's too risk-averse." As for Baby P, the Observer reported last week that there had been as much as a three-fold increase in applications for child protection orders in the previous fortnight. Where the Inner London Court would normally expect to receive between two and three applications a day for children to be placed in care, staff said they were receiving between eight and 10 applications a day. According to the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass), there was a 26.4% increase in applications for all forms of child protection orders made between November 10 and November 20 across England this year, compared with the same period in 2007. Usually a case like this has a mostly local effect, says Anthony Douglas, chief executive of Cafcass. This time,"There is some sign of a genuine national effect, and all local authorities are reviewing their cases, and putting in early applications when they hadn't before."Jos Aalders is a volunteer ombudsman for children in the Netherlands. He can be controversial (rather like members of Fathers4Justice, he has been known to dress up as Zorro) but he is nevertheless trusted by countless families, who contact him with complaints about children and the social services. He says that these have risen by about 30%. "The trend has become that it is better to place a child into care then to take any risk whatsoever. And since complaints about abuse can be anonymous and come from anyone, children are taken away too soon in some cases. There is a case at the moment of a baby that was taken from his parents the day after the birth. The parents have very low IQs but they take care of themselves, work, have friends and family to help them. They did not even get a chance to do it right, the child was taken away immediately. I think that's typical of what is going on in child services."Mirjam, 36, who worked as a family guardian in a city near Amsterdam for 10 years before resigning a couple of months ago, agrees. (She wouldn't give her last name or place of work; she was unusual, however, in that she is willing to talk.) "I felt there was a lot of fear in how people acted in the months afterwards. Everyone was so afraid it could happen on their watch. Cases proceeded faster; children would be put on the child protection register sooner. And for a while there would be a request every Friday to go and get a child that needed to be taken away from their parents before the weekend." It wasn't just the guardians. Everyone was being more careful, starting with the person reporting abuse, through to the agency registering the complaints and the guardian's employers. "Better safe than sorry is the trend now," says Ton Moolenaar, a social worker for 30 years who now chairs a group for youth welfare workers. "And children aren't placed back with their parents as easily as before." He points out that the large spike in numbers seems to be over. But other "Savanna effects" have endured. "For one thing, the emphasis on the safety of the child is more than it was before. We used to work with a threefold principle: try to intervene as little as possible, try to get children back home as soon as possible and try to let them stay near their homes when they are temporarily taken into care. Only after all of that would we start actually taking a kid away from home and really placing them into care." (Because state care is not necessarily the best solution; in fact, Hatton says bluntly, of the UK, "our care system isn't that great. The outcomes in other countries, such as Denmark and Germany, are much better." )"Because of this," continues Moolenaar, "there are more safety precautions. We have to fill in long lists about the parents, the children, the interaction between the parents and between the parents and the children, which are then reviewed by behavioural scientists. It is very formal and has lead to a bigger workload. The underlying principle is fine though, it is all about the safety of the child."But, as happened with the Climbié case, where new computer systems meant social workers spent more time staring at a screen than visiting clients, and were progressively being robbed of independent judgment, these new requirements have unintended consequences. According to the spokeswoman for the Dutch Organisation for Foster Parents, welfare workers now "check and double-check everything, have to put it past the team, can't confirm anything. And even though being careful is good, this means the children who are already in a very difficult situation have even more insecurity. They don't know what will happen to them and because social services don't dare to decide, they are left in limbo for longer."The second major factor was the chilling effect the criminal trial had on guardians, who could not believe that things could come to that. "I, and many colleagues, protested in Utrecht," says Piet Bleeker, 34, who has worked as a family guardian for five years in Friesland, in the north of the Netherlands."It was a horrendous incident, but criminal prosecution for mistakes made in your job is quite disturbing. We did not want to be seen as criminals. I sat in the court during the case and it was horrible. The guardian got the blame for everything, while so many others were involved. I do understand it; she was the one responsible for placing Savanna in care or not in the end. But it was still hard to watch. Afterwards I ran through all my own cases in my mind. What child could be at risk, where did I have even the remotest doubt?"It was already difficult to find people willing to work as family guardians, but the prosecution, and vituperative media coverage of it, made it much harder. Sarah, 25, a social worker from Zwolle, was in training during the case. "The negative attention did get to us at school. You read about a case like this in the paper and it's about life and death. Plus the fact that the social worker was brought to court. As a 22-year-old you don't easily choose to go into that field. We discussed it often and me and my friends were just more reluctant to specialise as family guardians."A similar thing has happened here in the UK over the past few weeks. "We've had to do quite a lot of work with students to talk them through it," says Hatton, who blames the singling-out of social workers in media reports in particular. "We try to help the students understand that once they go into practice they'll be encouraged to enhance their training, that really people who are newly qualified shouldn't be working on very complex child protection cases." The problem is though, as he well knows, that there are so many vacancies, and such large caseloads, that this is often inevitable - which, of course, increases the chances of naive or bad decisions, and the cycle starting again.Since Savanna, the Netherlands has put various safeguards in place, many of which could be instructive here too. According to Jos Andriessen of the MOgroep, an umbrella agency for the 15 separate youth welfare agencies, there are to be fewer children assigned to each guardian; 15-17 by halfway through next year, down from 25. Decisions must be made by a team, rather by individuals. Risk-analysis is now a priority. There is now a 24-hour crisis number that people can ring. By 2010 there should be disciplinary board for social workers, so incidents can be referred there, instead of to the criminal courts. Agencies are cooperating more effectively and are clearer about each other's responsibilities.However, Theunissen believes they could go further. At the moment, the decision to remove a child from its family is overseen by a judge. He believes that the same rigour should be applied to the decision not to remove a child because "the decision to do nothing is as important as the decision to do something". In the UK, Douglas believes that in the most serious cases, where social workers are concerned but unable to prove anything, it should be possible to turn to methods used by the police - hidden cameras, for example. "It's a high-risk decision, because lots of organisations would cite human rights issues. But without identifying real dangerousness you won't get anywhere."But in the end, as Theunissen puts it, "however professional you are, you can never be sure what's going on in the night, behind the doors". It does not help to demonise those whose job it is to find out - rather, there should be collective investigations, collective decisions, and an earned trust, in the idealism of those who work with the most vulnerable children in society. "I never doubted my job," says Bleeker. "I never wanted to quit. I don't know many people who did. There is a lot of bad publicity; I still get it sometimes, people being almost aggressive when you say where you work. Then I take a deep breath and I sit down to explain my work to them. There is so much good in it, but we can't talk about cases, everything is confidential, so it's hard to explain. People in this field can't let it go easily. You can't just quit and leave your 15 cases".Child protectionNetherlandsBaby Pguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/europe/united-kingdom/news-and-media/after-savanna-the-child-protection-case-that-rocked-2008121252.htm 2008-12-01T00:06:48Z 2008-12-01T00:06:48Z Guardian.Co.Uk http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/dec/01/child-protection-baby-p-netherlands After Savanna: The child protection case that rocked the Netherlands {new window}   Www.Guardian.Co.Uk - In the very early morning of Tuesday September 21 2004, a police car on patrol through the wooded outskirts of Holten, in eastern Holland, noticed a vehicle travelling down a road closed to traffic and pulled it over. A search of the boot revealed not the contraband that might have been expected - drugs or smuggled cigarettes, perhaps - but the body of a small child, and a shovel.Savanna was three years old, but weighed only 10kg, as a one-year-old might. She was severely undernourished, and covered in bruises. It was later established that she had probably died the day before, when her mother, Sonja de J, then 32, stuffed her mouth with a washcloth and taped it over. Savanna had a cold and couldn't breathe through her nose. She suffocated. The lines that the case then followed will, post-Victoria Climbié, post-Baby P, be familiar. Stories began to appear in the Dutch papers about a little girl from Alphen aan den Rijn, a small city near The Hague. Neighbours, friends and family spoke of ongoing abuse. The girl got hardly any food, they said. She was tied to a bed, she was hit, she was forced to have cold showers. Everyone was worried. So worried that they asked social services to intervene.In fact, the family had been in close contact with social services for a long time. It emerged that Sonja de J's two older children (born in 1992 and 1993) were already in care. A younger baby was taken away after Savanna was found. Savanna herself was put on the child protection register when she was 11 months old. A family guardian - a specialist social worker - was appointed and visited the family regularly. In April 2002 the then one-year-old Savanna was taken away from her mother and placed into temporary care. According to the Dutch newspaper Trouw, which went through the child protection reports, she was malnourished and neglected, and the mother was refusing to accept the advice of youth welfare services. But in July, Savanna was returned to her mother. Why, exactly, remains unclear. Then the guardian fell ill, so in November 2002 another guardian, Mieke A, was appointed. According to her lawyer, Simeon Burmeister, she visited every two weeks, and reviewed the case more often than that. Sometimes she visited in her spare time, "because she felt that the family was a real problem. But not as bad as they turned out to be".Then, in May 2004, the new baby was born. In the Netherlands, a maternity nurse, or kraamverzorgster, is assigned to a family and helps out all day, for the first eight days. The nurse who went to see Sonja de J was alarmed by the way she was treating Savanna. The child seemed to be kept in her room all the time, and wasn't eating properly. She seemed bruised and cowed. So the kraamverzorgster raised the alarm. In fact, several professionals involved with the children raised their concerns and reported suspected abuse. They were not, however, aware that there was a family guardian because she had never been in touch.Information obtained by the public prosecutor indicates that legal measures were immediately put in place, on May 14 2004, to take Savanna into care. However, Mieke A (who was 46 at the time, so not a novice), decided that this wasn't necessary and overruled them; a paediatrician who visited in July concurred. Two months later Savanna was dead. On October 4, 350 people marched silently through Alphen aan den Rijn in her memory. For the first time in the history of Dutch law, a guardian was charged in criminal court. Initially, says her lawyer, the charge was accessory to murder; at the last minute this was changed to negligence leading to grievous bodily harm. She should have listened to others more, said the prosecution; she should have picked up the signs that things were going horribly wrong. They did not ask for a prison sentence but for a suspended sentence of 150 hours of "work punishment". "The prosecutor tried to argue that there was a deal between mother and guardian to kill the child," says Burmeister. "The guardian did her work, but actions like this can always happen. She could not have known - she only had two hours every second week to visit the family. In these two hours they have to see everything. Maybe she didn't do her work very well but in Holland that's not a criminal offence."During the trial, a picture emerged of a care worker who was too ready to listen to the mother. Sonja de J was known to have a borderline personality disorder - and although the guardian knew this, she seems not to have taken sufficient notice of it. But under such circumstances it would have been difficult to extrapolate a norm from brief meetings; Sonja de J could, presumably, often be quite charming.Mieke A was interrogated by the police for six days. She was charged on March 18 2005, and was finally brought to what would become an enormously high-profile trial on May 31 2007. She was acquitted on November 16, 2007, three years after Savanna died. The court decided the death was not the guardian's fault and that she did work hard for the family. However, the judge censured her for believing her own findings to be more important than anyone else's. Sonja de J was sentenced to six years in prison for manslaughter, while her boyfriend, Mario B, got two years for GBH. When they finish their sentences, they will be transferred to a secure psychiatric unit on an order that lasts until the doctors say the inmate can be released back into society. It can be indefinite. Childcare services in the Netherlands now recognise two periods: before Savanna, and after Savanna. As with Victoria Climbié, as will be with Baby P, the aftermath is rarely as simple as imprisonment for the perpetrators. It reverberates through systems, through countries, through professions, and through the lives of vulnerable children all over the country.In the Netherlands the first evidence of a Savanna effect was a spike in the numbers of children being put on to child protection registers, or into care. As there are 15 different regional jurisdictions, there are no reliable national figures. Estimates based on anecdotal evidence veer from 5% to 40%, but Arne Theunissen, who began his career as a guardian, and is now a researcher in the department of clinical child studies at the Free University of Amsterdam, also points to the figures for Amsterdam, the largest agency in Holland. In 2004, 1,620 children were taken into care; in 2005, after Savanna, there were 2,891, an almost 75% increase. (There is also a growing demand for foster parents. According to a spokesperson for the Dutch Organisation for Foster Parents, there were 14,000 Dutch foster children in 2002 and 20,000 in 2007 - a 30% increase. "Many people say it's because of the Savanna effect," said the spokesperson, who declined to be named. "It could be. But it's more complicated than that, it has to do with the difficulties of being foster parents.")In Britain, says Kieron Hatton, head of the Centre for Social Work at the University of Portsmouth, the trend was already going that way. The Climbié case simply "reinforced a trend towards risk-aversion in social work caused by inquiries over previous years. Social work in the UK is quite risk-averse - in fact, it's too risk-averse." As for Baby P, the Observer reported last week that there had been as much as a three-fold increase in applications for child protection orders in the previous fortnight. Where the Inner London Court would normally expect to receive between two and three applications a day for children to be placed in care, staff said they were receiving between eight and 10 applications a day. According to the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass), there was a 26.4% increase in applications for all forms of child protection orders made between November 10 and November 20 across England this year, compared with the same period in 2007. Usually a case like this has a mostly local effect, says Anthony Douglas, chief executive of Cafcass. This time,"There is some sign of a genuine national effect, and all local authorities are reviewing their cases, and putting in early applications when they hadn't before."Jos Aalders is a volunteer ombudsman for children in the Netherlands. He can be controversial (rather like members of Fathers4Justice, he has been known to dress up as Zorro) but he is nevertheless trusted by countless families, who contact him with complaints about children and the social services. He says that these have risen by about 30%. "The trend has become that it is better to place a child into care then to take any risk whatsoever. And since complaints about abuse can be anonymous and come from anyone, children are taken away too soon in some cases. There is a case at the moment of a baby that was taken from his parents the day after the birth. The parents have very low IQs but they take care of themselves, work, have friends and family to help them. They did not even get a chance to do it right, the child was taken away immediately. I think that's typical of what is going on in child services."Mirjam, 36, who worked as a family guardian in a city near Amsterdam for 10 years before resigning a couple of months ago, agrees. (She wouldn't give her last name or place of work; she was unusual, however, in that she is willing to talk.) "I felt there was a lot of fear in how people acted in the months afterwards. Everyone was so afraid it could happen on their watch. Cases proceeded faster; children would be put on the child protection register sooner. And for a while there would be a request every Friday to go and get a child that needed to be taken away from their parents before the weekend." It wasn't just the guardians. Everyone was being more careful, starting with the person reporting abuse, through to the agency registering the complaints and the guardian's employers. "Better safe than sorry is the trend now," says Ton Moolenaar, a social worker for 30 years who now chairs a group for youth welfare workers. "And children aren't placed back with their parents as easily as before." He points out that the large spike in numbers seems to be over. But other "Savanna effects" have endured. "For one thing, the emphasis on the safety of the child is more than it was before. We used to work with a threefold principle: try to intervene as little as possible, try to get children back home as soon as possible and try to let them stay near their homes when they are temporarily taken into care. Only after all of that would we start actually taking a kid away from home and really placing them into care." (Because state care is not necessarily the best solution; in fact, Hatton says bluntly, of the UK, "our care system isn't that great. The outcomes in other countries, such as Denmark and Germany, are much better." )"Because of this," continues Moolenaar, "there are more safety precautions. We have to fill in long lists about the parents, the children, the interaction between the parents and between the parents and the children, which are then reviewed by behavioural scientists. It is very formal and has lead to a bigger workload. The underlying principle is fine though, it is all about the safety of the child."But, as happened with the Climbié case, where new computer systems meant social workers spent more time staring at a screen than visiting clients, and were progressively being robbed of independent judgment, these new requirements have unintended consequences. According to the spokeswoman for the Dutch Organisation for Foster Parents, welfare workers now "check and double-check everything, have to put it past the team, can't confirm anything. And even though being careful is good, this means the children who are already in a very difficult situation have even more insecurity. They don't know what will happen to them and because social services don't dare to decide, they are left in limbo for longer."The second major factor was the chilling effect the criminal trial had on guardians, who could not believe that things could come to that. "I, and many colleagues, protested in Utrecht," says Piet Bleeker, 34, who has worked as a family guardian for five years in Friesland, in the north of the Netherlands."It was a horrendous incident, but criminal prosecution for mistakes made in your job is quite disturbing. We did not want to be seen as criminals. I sat in the court during the case and it was horrible. The guardian got the blame for everything, while so many others were involved. I do understand it; she was the one responsible for placing Savanna in care or not in the end. But it was still hard to watch. Afterwards I ran through all my own cases in my mind. What child could be at risk, where did I have even the remotest doubt?"It was already difficult to find people willing to work as family guardians, but the prosecution, and vituperative media coverage of it, made it much harder. Sarah, 25, a social worker from Zwolle, was in training during the case. "The negative attention did get to us at school. You read about a case like this in the paper and it's about life and death. Plus the fact that the social worker was brought to court. As a 22-year-old you don't easily choose to go into that field. We discussed it often and me and my friends were just more reluctant to specialise as family guardians."A similar thing has happened here in the UK over the past few weeks. "We've had to do quite a lot of work with students to talk them through it," says Hatton, who blames the singling-out of social workers in media reports in particular. "We try to help the students understand that once they go into practice they'll be encouraged to enhance their training, that really people who are newly qualified shouldn't be working on very complex child protection cases." The problem is though, as he well knows, that there are so many vacancies, and such large caseloads, that this is often inevitable - which, of course, increases the chances of naive or bad decisions, and the cycle starting again.Since Savanna, the Netherlands has put various safeguards in place, many of which could be instructive here too. According to Jos Andriessen of the MOgroep, an umbrella agency for the 15 separate youth welfare agencies, there are to be fewer children assigned to each guardian; 15-17 by halfway through next year, down from 25. Decisions must be made by a team, rather by individuals. Risk-analysis is now a priority. There is now a 24-hour crisis number that people can ring. By 2010 there should be disciplinary board for social workers, so incidents can be referred there, instead of to the criminal courts. Agencies are cooperating more effectively and are clearer about each other's responsibilities.However, Theunissen believes they could go further. At the moment, the decision to remove a child from its family is overseen by a judge. He believes that the same rigour should be applied to the decision not to remove a child because "the decision to do nothing is as important as the decision to do something". In the UK, Douglas believes that in the most serious cases, where social workers are concerned but unable to prove anything, it should be possible to turn to methods used by the police - hidden cameras, for example. "It's a high-risk decision, because lots of organisations would cite human rights issues. But without identifying real dangerousness you won't get anywhere."But in the end, as Theunissen puts it, "however professional you are, you can never be sure what's going on in the night, behind the doors". It does not help to demonise those whose job it is to find out - rather, there should be collective investigations, collective decisions, and an earned trust, in the idealism of those who work with the most vulnerable children in society. "I never doubted my job," says Bleeker. "I never wanted to quit. I don't know many people who did. There is a lot of bad publicity; I still get it sometimes, people being almost aggressive when you say where you work. Then I take a deep breath and I sit down to explain my work to them. There is so much good in it, but we can't talk about cases, everything is confidential, so it's hard to explain. People in this field can't let it go easily. You can't just quit and leave your 15 cases".Child protectionNetherlandsBaby Pguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
After Savanna: The child protection case that rocked the Netherlands | Society | The Guardian {...} Four years ago, social workers knew a three-year-old Dutch girl was at risk of abuse, but failed to prevent her death. Aida Edemariam and Sanne Rooseboom report {...}
Published: December 1, 2008, 12:06 am - Indexed: December 1, 2008, 9:33 am - Page Size: 89KB
Category: Regional > Europe > United Kingdom > News and Media

]]> {EUROPE > NEWS AND MEDIA} - Cricket: Power battle looms over England's return to India The England and Wales Cricket Board is bracing itself for a potential confrontation over its right to run the game if security reports judge that the Test series in India should go ahead in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai that have left India in a state of profound shock.The Indian board has shifted the venue of the second Test from Mumbai to Chennai after a request from the ECB for a venue in southern India. The first Test, surprisingly, remains in Ahmedabad, another city that has suffered recent terrorist violence, and the warm-up match has yet to be moved from Vadadora. The dates of the game are unchanged, with the Chennai Test beginning on December 19.The majority of England's squad will arrive at Heathrow this evening after flying yesterday from Bhubaneshwar to Bangalore to join the High Performance squad. Many England players have been adamant that they will not return, although it remains to be seen if those feelings will soften. An intense week of negotiations between the ECB and players' representatives is now inevitable.That debate will be partly based on an updated report compiled by Reg Dickason, England's security officer. If the Foreign Office has not adjusted its advice for any Indian city other than Mumbai it is hard to see how Dickason could take a tougher line. However the England players, who repeatedly express faith in his judgment, might expect him to do just that.The ECB, which anticipates that some players would pull out of the tour, is likely to look on these sympathetically, but the impression is that an England team will tour India even if severely weakened. An England side that has just lost 5-0 in a one-day series can hardly regard itself as irreplaceable. Any attempt by the Professional Cricketers' Association to organise a collective refusal to travel in the light of a critical security report could also cause a major stand-off between the ECB and players' representatives.Kevin Pietersen, England's captain, did not talk of a collective decision as England left Bhubaneshwar, but of people's right to run their own lives. Presumably that should go for those who do wish to represent England in India next month as well as those who do not."We need to make sure the security's right - but if it's not safe, then we won't be coming back," he said. "Players are their own people, I'll never force anyone to do anything or tell them to do anything against their will. On the field I may ask people to do things in a certain way but people run their own lives. We'll have to see how the security is."The television coverage here has been pretty graphic. I've heard back home it's not been like that but out here you see pools of blood, you see everything that has been going on. We've woken up this morning and seen more pictures of people jumping out of helicopters where we were two weeks ago. It's really made the guys aware and shocked them."I bet all the guys lost a whole battery on their mobiles yesterday with calls from friends and relatives and kids wanting to know where daddy is. We'll make a decision on it over the next 48 to 72 hours."The threat of terrorism is now a perpetual feature of an international cricketer's life, although such are the levels of hotel security they receive the likelihood that guns and explosives could be smuggled into a hotel while they were there is far lower than when they are not. The International Cricket Council has insisted that it has "no role to play in the current situation", although any disagreement between the ECB and the Indian board over safety would bring a security assessment that the ICC would regard as binding and could conceivably bring large financial penalties if the ECB was unable to accept its findings.Sean Morris, the PCA chief executive, has talked of security advisers assessing the Indian situation "in the cold light of day" and determining "is it safe to return or not?" Morris said that the players would accept that advice as long as the security situation does not deteriorate further.Ejaz Butt, the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, believes that the terrorist attacks in Mumbai could force the cancellation of India's tour to Pakistan in January. The Indian board is awaiting guidance from its government, and Butt said: "Now the scenario has definitely changed and now it is entirely up to the governments what they decide. We must wait and see what will happen." Cancellation would be another blow for Pakistan, who have not played a Test match for almost a year.Lalit Modi continued to insist yesterday that the Twenty20 Champions League was not postponed because of security fears but for logistical reasons. He went so far as to claim: "All eight teams tried to implore us to continue with the Champions League and just change Mumbai. Logistically, we could not replace a venue in 48 hours. We proposed the postponement."England in India 2008-09England Cricket TeamEngland cricket seriesIndia Cricket TeamCricketMumbai terror attacksguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/europe/united-kingdom/news-and-media/cricket-power-battle-looms-over-england-s-return-20081165738.htm 2008-11-29T00:03:17Z 2008-11-29T00:03:17Z Guardian.Co.Uk http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/nov/29/england-cricket-series-india Cricket: Power battle looms over England's return to India {new window}   Www.Guardian.Co.Uk - The England and Wales Cricket Board is bracing itself for a potential confrontation over its right to run the game if security reports judge that the Test series in India should go ahead in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai that have left India in a state of profound shock.The Indian board has shifted the venue of the second Test from Mumbai to Chennai after a request from the ECB for a venue in southern India. The first Test, surprisingly, remains in Ahmedabad, another city that has suffered recent terrorist violence, and the warm-up match has yet to be moved from Vadadora. The dates of the game are unchanged, with the Chennai Test beginning on December 19.The majority of England's squad will arrive at Heathrow this evening after flying yesterday from Bhubaneshwar to Bangalore to join the High Performance squad. Many England players have been adamant that they will not return, although it remains to be seen if those feelings will soften. An intense week of negotiations between the ECB and players' representatives is now inevitable.That debate will be partly based on an updated report compiled by Reg Dickason, England's security officer. If the Foreign Office has not adjusted its advice for any Indian city other than Mumbai it is hard to see how Dickason could take a tougher line. However the England players, who repeatedly express faith in his judgment, might expect him to do just that.The ECB, which anticipates that some players would pull out of the tour, is likely to look on these sympathetically, but the impression is that an England team will tour India even if severely weakened. An England side that has just lost 5-0 in a one-day series can hardly regard itself as irreplaceable. Any attempt by the Professional Cricketers' Association to organise a collective refusal to travel in the light of a critical security report could also cause a major stand-off between the ECB and players' representatives.Kevin Pietersen, England's captain, did not talk of a collective decision as England left Bhubaneshwar, but of people's right to run their own lives. Presumably that should go for those who do wish to represent England in India next month as well as those who do not."We need to make sure the security's right - but if it's not safe, then we won't be coming back," he said. "Players are their own people, I'll never force anyone to do anything or tell them to do anything against their will. On the field I may ask people to do things in a certain way but people run their own lives. We'll have to see how the security is."The television coverage here has been pretty graphic. I've heard back home it's not been like that but out here you see pools of blood, you see everything that has been going on. We've woken up this morning and seen more pictures of people jumping out of helicopters where we were two weeks ago. It's really made the guys aware and shocked them."I bet all the guys lost a whole battery on their mobiles yesterday with calls from friends and relatives and kids wanting to know where daddy is. We'll make a decision on it over the next 48 to 72 hours."The threat of terrorism is now a perpetual feature of an international cricketer's life, although such are the levels of hotel security they receive the likelihood that guns and explosives could be smuggled into a hotel while they were there is far lower than when they are not. The International Cricket Council has insisted that it has "no role to play in the current situation", although any disagreement between the ECB and the Indian board over safety would bring a security assessment that the ICC would regard as binding and could conceivably bring large financial penalties if the ECB was unable to accept its findings.Sean Morris, the PCA chief executive, has talked of security advisers assessing the Indian situation "in the cold light of day" and determining "is it safe to return or not?" Morris said that the players would accept that advice as long as the security situation does not deteriorate further.Ejaz Butt, the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, believes that the terrorist attacks in Mumbai could force the cancellation of India's tour to Pakistan in January. The Indian board is awaiting guidance from its government, and Butt said: "Now the scenario has definitely changed and now it is entirely up to the governments what they decide. We must wait and see what will happen." Cancellation would be another blow for Pakistan, who have not played a Test match for almost a year.Lalit Modi continued to insist yesterday that the Twenty20 Champions League was not postponed because of security fears but for logistical reasons. He went so far as to claim: "All eight teams tried to implore us to continue with the Champions League and just change Mumbai. Logistically, we could not replace a venue in 48 hours. We proposed the postponement."England in India 2008-09England Cricket TeamEngland cricket seriesIndia Cricket TeamCricketMumbai terror attacksguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Cricket: Power battle looms over England's return to India | Sport | The Guardian {...} The ECB has braced itself for a battle over its rights to run the game if the series go ahead in India {...}
Published: November 29, 2008, 12:03 am - Indexed: November 29, 2008, 11:26 am - Page Size: 99KB
Category: Regional > Europe > United Kingdom > News and Media

]]> {ISSUES > BIAS AND BALANCE} - Boehlert: Covering new presidents: the media's double standard In anticipation of the new administration, Beltway media insiders are busy laying the groundwork for how reporters and pundits will treat the new team on Pennsylvania Avenue. "Once a president takes office ... an adversarial relationship usually flourishes, at least with beat reporters," wrote Howard Kurtz in The Washington Post. And former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, discussing the press corps on Fox News, agreed: "They are inevitably going to turn on him, as all -- this happened to every administration. I don't see why we should be surprised. It is the natural turn of events." The conventional wisdom is quite clear: The press always turns skeptical and becomes combative when new presidents come to town. Except, of course, when the press does not. In truth, the model being touted today by media insiders didn't apply to the previous two administrations. That model didn't apply to Bill Clinton in 1993 because the press wasn't simply skeptical about his administration, the press savaged it. And the model didn't apply to George W. Bush in 2001, because instead of turning combative toward him, the press rolled over for the Republican. In terms of how the press has treated the last two new presidents, there's the Democratic model (i.e. overly hostile), and the Republican model (overly docile). At the outset of the Bush presidency, when it became obvious that the press had adopted a softer standard for judging the new Republican president, author Jeffrey Toobin noted that "the high emotional temperature of the Clinton years left a lot of people, including journalists, kind of exhausted." He added, "I think it will probably take a while to sort of gin that back up again." Over the course of eight years of covering Bush, I'm not sure the press ever recaptured the fever it displayed during the Clinton years. So it would be deeply suspicious if, in 2009, the press managed to turn up that emotional temperature just in time to cover another Democratic administration. It would also be troubling for journalism if the press responded to conservative claims today that reporters had been too soft on the Democrat during the campaign by reacting the same way journalists did when those claims were lodged during the 1992 campaign: by trashing the victorious Democrat to prove the press corps wasn't "in the tank." That's what helped fuel the stark double standard in terms of early coverage of the past two administrations. One quick example: On January 31, 1993, 12 days after Clinton had been sworn into office, Sam Donaldson appeared on ABC and made this jarring announcement: "Last week, we could talk about, 'Is the honeymoon over?' This week, we can talk about, 'Is the presidency over?' " (At the time, Clinton's approval rating hovered around 65 percent.) By contrast, on February 10, 2001, three weeks after Bush had been sworn into office, The New York Times' Frank Bruni penned a gentle, honeymoon-mode review about how authentic and at ease Bush seemed with his new role. "George W. Bush is establishing a no-fuss, no-sweat, 'look-Ma-no-hands' presidency, his exertions ever measured, his outlook always mirthful," wrote Bruni. "The gilded robes of the presidency have not obscured Mr. Bush's innate goofiness -- or, for that matter, his insistent folksiness." Bruni's piece was a classic example of what in journalism is called a "beat-sweetener." It's where a reporter assigned to a new beat ingratiates himself with key sources by writing flattering profiles. There were precious few White House beat-sweeteners published in 1993. "Perhaps never in our nation's history -- certainly not in its recent history -- has a President so early in his term been subjected to a greater barrage of negative media coverage than Bill Clinton," wrote the Los Angeles Times' late media critic David Shaw in 1993. (The headline to Shaw's piece: "Not Even Getting a 1st Chance; Early Coverage of the President Seemed More Like An Autopsy.") "The level of hostility in the [White House] pressroom, I think, was extraordinary," Newsweek's Eleanor Clift told the Los Angeles Times in 1993. For example, days after the Waco siege between federal forces and Branch Davidians ended in a deadly fireball in April of that year, a USA Today poll showed 93 percent of Americans did not blame Clinton for the outcome. Clift said she thought to herself, "The other 7 percent are in the White House press room." And Washington Post editorial page editor Meg Greenfield conceded she'd never seen any administration "pronounced dead" so quickly by the press. The conventional wisdom today is that it was a cacophony of missteps made by the new Clinton-led Democratic team that generated the bad press in 1993. That reporters and pundits simply responded to the bungled attempt at transition. What's been erased from that equation, though, is the acknowledgement that with or without the miscues, the press had already adopted an entirely new, contentious, and often disrespectful way of treating an incoming president. What's also glossed over is the fact that eight years later, the press then radically adjusted its standards -- again -- for the new Republican president. For lots of people, recalling Clinton's chronic battles with the press likely conjures up impeachment flashbacks featuring a cavalcade of conservative pundits chattering incessantly about the rule of law. Or maybe the Clinton battles remind them of reading mind-numbing Whitewater updates, which, even after four years of hype, never seemed as dire or spectacular as the press made them out to be. If the past is prologue, it's important to remember two things as the new Democratic administration prepares to take up residence. First, the press in 1992 was tagged as being overly affectionate toward Clinton in the general election. By early 1993, there had been a sea change in how journalists treated the Democrat. And second, Clinton's bad press started years before impeachment and months before any kind of official scandal machinery was put in place inside the U.S. Capitol. The hostile and at times overbearing press coverage started during the transition period and before Clinton even had time to do much of anything wrong. "Judging by today's press conference, the traditional media honeymoon seems already on the wane," ABC News' Diane Sawyer announced on January 14, 1993, one week before Clinton was inaugurated. Yes, there were several embarrassing tactical mistakes made early on by the inexperienced new administration that sparked bad press, including the withdrawal of Zoë Baird as Clinton's nominee to be attorney general because she had employed undocumented immigrants as her nanny and driver. And Clinton created controversy when he tried to keep his campaign promise to allow gays to serve openly in the military, an initiative the administration bungled, in part, by not doing enough preparation with allies on Capitol Hill or the Pentagon before the initiative was unveiled. Looking back, though, the so-called scandals that the press claimed were derailing Clinton's entire presidency just days into his first term seem pretty tame. (The hullabaloo over Baird's domestic help seems positively quaint in retrospect.) At the time though, it was pure doomsday, according to the press. Here was an utterly typical dispatch from Clinton's first weeks in office, courtesy of Time [emphasis added]: No sooner had Clinton emerged from the embarrassing miscalculation about Zoe Baird than he found himself in an even stickier political quagmire. After promising in his Inaugural Address to end an era of "deadlock and drift," Clinton was suddenly at war with the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well as members of his own party in Congress. Worse yet, the spectacle of Clinton clinging so resolutely to his gay-rights pledge after breaking broader promises on taxes, the deficit and spending projects raised questions about his judgment. Aside from the heavy-handed language, note how Time ridiculed Clinton for "clinging" to a long-forgotten campaign promise. The irony was that one of the key themes of the nasty coverage of Clinton's early presidency was that he was weak and excessively political (i.e. "Slick Willie"), that he gave in for political reasons, and that he refused to keep controversial campaign pledges. ("Clinton guaranteed himself a spate of bad press by backing off campaign promises," The Washington Post explained two weeks after his inauguration.) But when Clinton stood up on the campaign pledge regarding gays in the military, journalists not only were not impressed, they mocked him. (Perhaps they had different ideas about which of Clinton's campaign pledges were important and which ones were not.) "My colleagues and I, like journalistic Dr. Strangeloves, are ready to nuke Mr. Clinton at the slightest provocation," New York Times columnist Leslie Gelb conceded just one month after the Democrat became the 42nd president. The press pile-on simply gained momentum through the weeks and months. In the spring, the Washington Post Style section featured the headlined, "Another Failed Presidency, Already? Sure, It's Early. But What's That Sound of No Hands Clapping?" Around the same period, Time offered up this headline on its cover: "The Incredible Shrinking President." (Weeks earlier, the doomsday Time headline on newsstands around the country asked, "Anguish Over Bosnia: Will it be Clinton's Vietnam?") By the following year, The New York Times Magazine casually announced, "In mainstream journalism ... President Clinton is routinely depicted in the most unflattering terms: a liar, a fraud, a chronically indecisive man who cannot be trusted to stand for anything -- or with anyone." Today, the evidence suggests the over-the-top press coverage of early 1993 sprang from a conscious decision the press made to lock and load on the Democratic White House -- just as it appeared the press chose to pull back when Bush's first term played out in 2001, the way a blanket of calm suddenly descended over newsrooms that had spent the previous eight years in nonstop scandal-and-high-dudgeon mode. ("Good for Washington in giving a new president a break at the start," the hometown Washington Post cheered in the spring of 2001.) The press not only treated Bush with loving hands, but also dialed back its White House coverage, which meant Bush did not have to battle the media's constant glare. A study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that 41 percent fewer news stories were produced about Bush between January 21, 2001, and March 21, 2001, than there were produced about Clinton during the same two-month period eight years earlier. Newsweek, in particular, practically unplugged its Bush White House coverage, publishing 59 percent fewer stories about the new Bush vs. the new Clinton. The news blackout came despite the fact that the newly elected President Bush came into office under the extraordinary circumstances of losing the popular vote and securing the office only after a divided Supreme Court ordered the vote-counting in Florida to cease. And yes, Bush aides were quite content in 2001 with the reduced coverage of the new president. The White House's Mary Matalin told The Washington Post in April 2001 that Clinton talked too much --"[he] would just get out there and talk about anything, any time, any place" -- and that Bush would be more "efficient" in the way he made news. What a coincidence. The White House wanted less coverage and scrutiny from the press in 2001 (when Bush often appeared unsure of himself in public settings), and the GOP White House got less coverage and scrutiny. The double standard in how the press treated the incoming Democratic and Republican presidents remains glaringly obvious today. For instance, in 1993, journalists complained that the new Clinton communications team limited their access (by closing off portions of the White House to reporters), that aides didn't sufficiently schmooze reporters, and that the new president did not have enough formal press conferences. Also, they complained that the Clinton team was trying to "bypass" the mainstream media by embracing other outlets, like conducting waves of satellite-feed interviews with local television stations. That's why the Fourth Estate piled on the Democrats with hypercritical coverage. Because their feelings were hurt and their egos were bruised. "They're dissing us," David Lauter, Los Angeles Times White House reporter, complained to author Tom Rosenstiel in April 1993. "A press corps that has been avoided and ignored and treated in a way that is Nixonian is not going to cut [the president] any breaks," announced George Condon of the Copley News Service in 1993, while serving as president of the White House Correspondents Association. His point was that the Clintons had some of bad press coming to them. Paul Richter, White House correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, agreed. He said the treatment of the media by a president and his staff "really does affect the coverage." Some journalists even admitted that that was the reason the press treated some relatively minor 1993 news stories, such as the firing of seven members of the White House travel office, with such ferocity. (A ferocity that, viewed from the distance of 15 years, seems absolutely perplexing.) The travel office is a nonpartisan department within the White House staffed by aides who help make life easier for reporters traveling with the president by arranging meals and communications. Journalists get to know the office staffers and rely on them to help make life on the road less bumpy. In May 1993, the White House fired all seven travel staffers for gross financial mismanagement and announced the FBI had been asked to investigate. As Shaw at the Los Angeles Times noted, when hearing about the clumsy travel-office firings, the press corps erupted in outrage. "At one briefing, they asked 169 questions about the travel office firings. Neither Bosnia nor the President's deficit-reduction package, both major news stories at the time, received a fraction of that attention that day" [emphasis added]. In the days following the firings, the travel-office story (aka Travelgate) landed on Page One of The Washington Post six times, and four times on A1 of The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune. The press pitched the story as a blockbuster. In less than three weeks, the Post published nearly 20 news stories, editorials, and commentaries on the subject, even though its White House correspondents eventually conceded the firings were "relatively trivial." Newsweek summed up the media phenomenon at play with its Travelgate headline: "Don't Mess With the Media: The White House Press Corps Gets Its Revenge." Weeks later, when the media hyped the phony story that Clinton had held up traffic at Los Angeles International Airport while getting a $200 haircut as Air Force One idled on the tarmac, they enjoyed another round of payback. Suggesting the story revealed all sorts of deep character flaws embedded in Clinton (namely that he was a phony and a hypocrite), the press treated the haircut as an even bigger deal than Travelgate. The so-called scandal was mentioned 50 times by The Washington Post alone, including nine times in front-page stories. Six weeks later, though, when Newsday revealed that Federal Aviation Administration records showed no planes had been delayed while Clinton got a trim, virtually every news organization that initially hyped the story either downplayed (the Los Angeles Times) or completely ignored (The New York Times, ABC, CBS, NBC) the correction. The Post was so unresponsive to the facts that the paper's ombudsman had to devote an entire column to the matter, slapping reporters' hands for doing the absolute minimum to clear up any confusion about nonexistent flight delays caused by Clinton. And why the pile-on? Simple: The press was still angry with how their pals in the travel office had been treated. "There was a clear sense of retribution" in the media's haircut coverage, Newsweek's Mark Miller said at the time, because the media were "pissed off." Indeed, the resentment was growing, "whether it was conscious or subconscious," said John King, then working as White House correspondent for The Associated Press. "[S]o when people had a legitimate reason to kick [Clinton] as a buffoon, they went overboard." Try to recall, however, a single instance in early 2001 when the press went "overboard" and kicked Bush as a "buffoon" on the front pages for days on end regarding an essentially trivial process story. Cautious and respectful, the press did no such thing. "The truth is, this new president [Bush] has done things with relative impunity that would have been huge uproars if they had occurred under Clinton," The Washington Post's John Harris wrote in May 2001. Harris continued: Try to recall this major news story during Clinton's first 100 days: Under pressure from Western senators, the president capitulated on a minor part of his 1993 budget deal, grazing fees on ranchers using federal lands. A barrage of coverage had an unmistakable subtext: Clinton was weak and excessively political and caved to special interests. Bush has made numerous similar concessions on items far more central to the agenda he campaigned on, such as deemphasizing vouchers in his education plan and conceding that his tax cut will be some $350 billion smaller than he proposed. For the most part these repositionings are being cast as shrewd rather than servile. But if the press went easy on Bush in early 2001, if it looked the other way when he flip-flopped on campaign promises, that must have been thanks to the way the White House pampered reporters, right? Because journalists were quite open in 1993 about being offended by the White House's treatment and how being slighted, or "dissed," translated into tougher coverage. Recall that the press was angry about the way Democratic aides were uncommunicative and how few formal press conferences Clinton had held, and the way the Democrats were trying to go around the mainstream media. In truth, of course, if the Clinton team was guilty of slighting the press in 1993, the Bush team absolutely humiliated it. The Bush White House openly advertised its disdain for the press (former chief of staff Andrew Card famously dismissed the press as just another D.C. special interest group desperately seeking access), aides quickly formed habits of not returning reporters' calls, and Bush immediately canceled formal press briefings with reporters. And even the informal ones he held were rare in the first term. In fact, Bush held just 17 press conferences compared with Clinton's 44. (Despite the media's early grumbling, Clinton actually set a new mark for the most press conferences by any first-term president in the modern era.) Over time, it became clear to the entire country that the Bush White House did not respect the press, that it was dissing the press corps. The way the White House for years waved into press briefings a former $200-an-hour male escort with no journalism background and no serious press affiliation; the way the administration churned out misleading video news releases that crossed the legal line into "covert propaganda"; and the way the administration audaciously paid off pundits like Armstrong Williams to secretly hype White House initiatives. The media, though, didn't punish the Republican president with bad press. Contrary to the edicts laid down in the 1990s, the early Bush coverage was not affected by how the president and his staff slighted and controlled the press. Instead, the press sheepishly fell in line, nervous about having its already limited access even further restricted. The kowtowing was at times startling to watch. As Media Matters Senior Fellow Eric Alterman noted in 2003's What Liberal Media?: [T]he Bush team plays a kind of hardball that the Clintonians were never able to master. When Houston Chronicle reporter Bennett Roth asked press spokesman Ari Fleischer about underage drinking by the president's daughters, Fleischer informed him, Don Corleone-style, that his question had been "noted in the building." The implication was clear to all: More such unfriendly questions and Roth could be cut off, unable to do his job, and useless to his employers. The outcries of solidarity from Roth's colleagues in the press corps in the face of this public threat would not have disturbed the sleep of a napping newborn. There were other dynamics at play, as well. For instance, as the first Clinton term unfolded, there were open discussions among journalists about how they were anxious not to be tagged as being "in the tank" for Clinton. How they didn't want to be called out by The New Republic's running "Clinton Suck-Up Watch," which mocked journalists who the magazine saw as overly effusive in their praise of the new president. It was that professional anxiousness (i.e. that peer pressure) that led some to view the new Democratic administration through an unprecedented, hypercritical lens. It was also a phenomenon fueled by right-wing critics such as Rush Limbaugh who accused the press of having a liberal bias. Naturally, one way for the media to disprove that theory was to be especially hard on the new Democratic administration. "If you dared say anything complimentary [about Clinton] ... you were looked at like some sort of pathetic fool who was obviously in the tank," said Newsweek's Miller during Clinton's first year in office. At the time, observers suggested that get-tough approach toward Clinton simply reflected journalism's DNA. Brit Hume, then a White House correspondent for ABC News, insisted, "We live in a time when the worst thing that can be said about a journalist in Washington is that he or she is not 'tough.' " In 2001, however, very few journalists appeared concerned about being "in the tank" for Bush. In fact, the tank was quite crowded. It turns out, that urge among Beltway journalists to bend over backward for incoming Republican administrations goes back many years. Former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee explained the phenomenon to Mark Hertsgaard in his book about the press, On Bended Knee: Stressing that it was "all totally subconscious," Bradlee explained that when Ronald Reagan came to Washington in 1980, journalists at the Post sensed that "here comes a really true conservative. ... And we are known -- though I don't think justifiably -- as the great liberals. So, [we thought] we've got to really behave ourselves here. We've got to not be arrogant, make every effort to be informed, be mannerly, be fair. And we did this. I suspect in the process that this paper and probably a good deal of the press gave Reagan not a free ride but they didn't use the same standards on him that they used on Carter and on Nixon." Just like with Reagan, the D.C. press corps went out of its way to behave itself with Bush, to be "fair" to the new conservative president. Looking ahead, that desire among journalists to be tough on Democrats in 2009 for fear of being tagged liberal or "in the tank" could certainly come into play when Obama is inaugurated. Because just as the press was derided by Republicans for going too easy on the Democratic baby boomer candidate in 1992 ("Liberal-Media Lynch Mob" buttons and T-shirts were seen at the GOP convention that year), reporters and pundits have been under constant attack in 2008 for going too soft on the Democratic baby boomer candidate. So, in order to "prove" their independence, will journalists unleash an assault on the new Democratic White House the way they did in 1993? And will the press pick seemingly random beefs to make its case against the Democratic president, the way it lashed out at Clinton for being overly interested and engrossed in the issues? And the way it said his transition team was too deliberative and close-mouthed when selecting the most senior members of his new administration? Believe it or not, in 1993, those were deemed to be serious strikes against Clinton. In terms of the latter, restless reporters resented how, during the transition period in late 1992, Democrats didn't dole out enough information about key appointments. "The transition ruined any good feeling that there might have been," Jeffrey Birnbaum, then a Wall Street Journal reporter, said in 1993. "The dark days of Little Rock after the election, I think, are what soured the press relations with the Clintons." The National Journal concurred in a report that year: The amity suffered, however, as the campaign continued -- as the crowd of reporters grew and Clinton's accessibility dwindled. It deteriorated more during the transition. Reporters ensconced in Little Rock, Ark., and in pursuit of a story each day focused on Clinton's leisurely pace in making appointments and on the campaign promises he'd forsaken. By Clinton's last press conference before moving north toward his new home, the tone of the questioning had grown nasty. Note that when Clinton's team didn't leak enough transition-team information, the press got mad and said that's when the relationship began to sour. But eight years later, when the Bush team didn't leak transition-team information in late 2000, the press praised the new White House for its discipline and message control, an obvious double standard. Meanwhile, one of the deepest ironies of examining the hostile/docile press models for the two previously inaugurated presidents is that one of the personal traits that the press relentlessly mocked in Clinton during his first months in office was his high intellectual metabolism, how he wanted to debate every subject and engage around the clock and hear all kinds of opinions about the day's most important topics. The press saw that as a very troubling sign because sometimes it forced Clinton to delay his final decisions. "This has led to a perception of weakness and indecisiveness," NBC's Andrea Mitchell announced at the time. (Bush's lack of intellectual curiosity eight years later did not seem to worry the press.) From the media's perspective, Clinton was too engaged in the pressing topics of the day. Let's hope the press doesn't foolishly hold that against the next hands-on, issues-oriented president. http://articles.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/business/media/bias-and-balance/boehlert-covering-new-presidents-the-media-s-double-20081182028.htm 2008-11-19T21:50:30Z 2008-11-19T21:50:30Z Mediamatters.Org http://mediamatters.org/columns/200811190014 Boehlert: Covering new presidents: the media's double standard {new window}   Mediamatters.Org - In anticipation of the new administration, Beltway media insiders are busy laying the groundwork for how reporters and pundits will treat the new team on Pennsylvania Avenue. "Once a president takes office ... an adversarial relationship usually flourishes, at least with beat reporters," wrote Howard Kurtz in The Washington Post. And former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, discussing the press corps on Fox News, agreed: "They are inevitably going to turn on him, as all -- this happened to every administration. I don't see why we should be surprised. It is the natural turn of events." The conventional wisdom is quite clear: The press always turns skeptical and becomes combative when new presidents come to town. Except, of course, when the press does not. In truth, the model being touted today by media insiders didn't apply to the previous two administrations. That model didn't apply to Bill Clinton in 1993 because the press wasn't simply skeptical about his administration, the press savaged it. And the model didn't apply to George W. Bush in 2001, because instead of turning combative toward him, the press rolled over for the Republican. In terms of how the press has treated the last two new presidents, there's the Democratic model (i.e. overly hostile), and the Republican model (overly docile). At the outset of the Bush presidency, when it became obvious that the press had adopted a softer standard for judging the new Republican president, author Jeffrey Toobin noted that "the high emotional temperature of the Clinton years left a lot of people, including journalists, kind of exhausted." He added, "I think it will probably take a while to sort of gin that back up again." Over the course of eight years of covering Bush, I'm not sure the press ever recaptured the fever it displayed during the Clinton years. So it would be deeply suspicious if, in 2009, the press managed to turn up that emotional temperature just in time to cover another Democratic administration. It would also be troubling for journalism if the press responded to conservative claims today that reporters had been too soft on the Democrat during the campaign by reacting the same way journalists did when those claims were lodged during the 1992 campaign: by trashing the victorious Democrat to prove the press corps wasn't "in the tank." That's what helped fuel the stark double standard in terms of early coverage of the past two administrations. One quick example: On January 31, 1993, 12 days after Clinton had been sworn into office, Sam Donaldson appeared on ABC and made this jarring announcement: "Last week, we could talk about, 'Is the honeymoon over?' This week, we can talk about, 'Is the presidency over?' " (At the time, Clinton's approval rating hovered around 65 percent.) By contrast, on February 10, 2001, three weeks after Bush had been sworn into office, The New York Times' Frank Bruni penned a gentle, honeymoon-mode review about how authentic and at ease Bush seemed with his new role. "George W. Bush is establishing a no-fuss, no-sweat, 'look-Ma-no-hands' presidency, his exertions ever measured, his outlook always mirthful," wrote Bruni. "The gilded robes of the presidency have not obscured Mr. Bush's innate goofiness -- or, for that matter, his insistent folksiness." Bruni's piece was a classic example of what in journalism is called a "beat-sweetener." It's where a reporter assigned to a new beat ingratiates himself with key sources by writing flattering profiles. There were precious few White House beat-sweeteners published in 1993. "Perhaps never in our nation's history -- certainly not in its recent history -- has a President so early in his term been subjected to a greater barrage of negative media coverage than Bill Clinton," wrote the Los Angeles Times' late media critic David Shaw in 1993. (The headline to Shaw's piece: "Not Even Getting a 1st Chance; Early Coverage of the President Seemed More Like An Autopsy.") "The level of hostility in the [White House] pressroom, I think, was extraordinary," Newsweek's Eleanor Clift told the Los Angeles Times in 1993. For example, days after the Waco siege between federal forces and Branch Davidians ended in a deadly fireball in April of that year, a USA Today poll showed 93 percent of Americans did not blame Clinton for the outcome. Clift said she thought to herself, "The other 7 percent are in the White House press room." And Washington Post editorial page editor Meg Greenfield conceded she'd never seen any administration "pronounced dead" so quickly by the press. The conventional wisdom today is that it was a cacophony of missteps made by the new Clinton-led Democratic team that generated the bad press in 1993. That reporters and pundits simply responded to the bungled attempt at transition. What's been erased from that equation, though, is the acknowledgement that with or without the miscues, the press had already adopted an entirely new, contentious, and often disrespectful way of treating an incoming president. What's also glossed over is the fact that eight years later, the press then radically adjusted its standards -- again -- for the new Republican president. For lots of people, recalling Clinton's chronic battles with the press likely conjures up impeachment flashbacks featuring a cavalcade of conservative pundits chattering incessantly about the rule of law. Or maybe the Clinton battles remind them of reading mind-numbing Whitewater updates, which, even after four years of hype, never seemed as dire or spectacular as the press made them out to be. If the past is prologue, it's important to remember two things as the new Democratic administration prepares to take up residence. First, the press in 1992 was tagged as being overly affectionate toward Clinton in the general election. By early 1993, there had been a sea change in how journalists treated the Democrat. And second, Clinton's bad press started years before impeachment and months before any kind of official scandal machinery was put in place inside the U.S. Capitol. The hostile and at times overbearing press coverage started during the transition period and before Clinton even had time to do much of anything wrong. "Judging by today's press conference, the traditional media honeymoon seems already on the wane," ABC News' Diane Sawyer announced on January 14, 1993, one week before Clinton was inaugurated. Yes, there were several embarrassing tactical mistakes made early on by the inexperienced new administration that sparked bad press, including the withdrawal of Zoë Baird as Clinton's nominee to be attorney general because she had employed undocumented immigrants as her nanny and driver. And Clinton created controversy when he tried to keep his campaign promise to allow gays to serve openly in the military, an initiative the administration bungled, in part, by not doing enough preparation with allies on Capitol Hill or the Pentagon before the initiative was unveiled. Looking back, though, the so-called scandals that the press claimed were derailing Clinton's entire presidency just days into his first term seem pretty tame. (The hullabaloo over Baird's domestic help seems positively quaint in retrospect.) At the time though, it was pure doomsday, according to the press. Here was an utterly typical dispatch from Clinton's first weeks in office, courtesy of Time [emphasis added]: No sooner had Clinton emerged from the embarrassing miscalculation about Zoe Baird than he found himself in an even stickier political quagmire. After promising in his Inaugural Address to end an era of "deadlock and drift," Clinton was suddenly at war with the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well as members of his own party in Congress. Worse yet, the spectacle of Clinton clinging so resolutely to his gay-rights pledge after breaking broader promises on taxes, the deficit and spending projects raised questions about his judgment. Aside from the heavy-handed language, note how Time ridiculed Clinton for "clinging" to a long-forgotten campaign promise. The irony was that one of the key themes of the nasty coverage of Clinton's early presidency was that he was weak and excessively political (i.e. "Slick Willie"), that he gave in for political reasons, and that he refused to keep controversial campaign pledges. ("Clinton guaranteed himself a spate of bad press by backing off campaign promises," The Washington Post explained two weeks after his inauguration.) But when Clinton stood up on the campaign pledge regarding gays in the military, journalists not only were not impressed, they mocked him. (Perhaps they had different ideas about which of Clinton's campaign pledges were important and which ones were not.) "My colleagues and I, like journalistic Dr. Strangeloves, are ready to nuke Mr. Clinton at the slightest provocation," New York Times columnist Leslie Gelb conceded just one month after the Democrat became the 42nd president. The press pile-on simply gained momentum through the weeks and months. In the spring, the Washington Post Style section featured the headlined, "Another Failed Presidency, Already? Sure, It's Early. But What's That Sound of No Hands Clapping?" Around the same period, Time offered up this headline on its cover: "The Incredible Shrinking President." (Weeks earlier, the doomsday Time headline on newsstands around the country asked, "Anguish Over Bosnia: Will it be Clinton's Vietnam?") By the following year, The New York Times Magazine casually announced, "In mainstream journalism ... President Clinton is routinely depicted in the most unflattering terms: a liar, a fraud, a chronically indecisive man who cannot be trusted to stand for anything -- or with anyone." Today, the evidence suggests the over-the-top press coverage of early 1993 sprang from a conscious decision the press made to lock and load on the Democratic White House -- just as it appeared the press chose to pull back when Bush's first term played out in 2001, the way a blanket of calm suddenly descended over newsrooms that had spent the previous eight years in nonstop scandal-and-high-dudgeon mode. ("Good for Washington in giving a new president a break at the start," the hometown Washington Post cheered in the spring of 2001.) The press not only treated Bush with loving hands, but also dialed back its White House coverage, which meant Bush did not have to battle the media's constant glare. A study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that 41 percent fewer news stories were produced about Bush between January 21, 2001, and March 21, 2001, than there were produced about Clinton during the same two-month period eight years earlier. Newsweek, in particular, practically unplugged its Bush White House coverage, publishing 59 percent fewer stories about the new Bush vs. the new Clinton. The news blackout came despite the fact that the newly elected President Bush came into office under the extraordinary circumstances of losing the popular vote and securing the office only after a divided Supreme Court ordered the vote-counting in Florida to cease. And yes, Bush aides were quite content in 2001 with the reduced coverage of the new president. The White House's Mary Matalin told The Washington Post in April 2001 that Clinton talked too much --"[he] would just get out there and talk about anything, any time, any place" -- and that Bush would be more "efficient" in the way he made news. What a coincidence. The White House wanted less coverage and scrutiny from the press in 2001 (when Bush often appeared unsure of himself in public settings), and the GOP White House got less coverage and scrutiny. The double standard in how the press treated the incoming Democratic and Republican presidents remains glaringly obvious today. For instance, in 1993, journalists complained that the new Clinton communications team limited their access (by closing off portions of the White House to reporters), that aides didn't sufficiently schmooze reporters, and that the new president did not have enough formal press conferences. Also, they complained that the Clinton team was trying to "bypass" the mainstream media by embracing other outlets, like conducting waves of satellite-feed interviews with local television stations. That's why the Fourth Estate piled on the Democrats with hypercritical coverage. Because their feelings were hurt and their egos were bruised. "They're dissing us," David Lauter, Los Angeles Times White House reporter, complained to author Tom Rosenstiel in April 1993. "A press corps that has been avoided and ignored and treated in a way that is Nixonian is not going to cut [the president] any breaks," announced George Condon of the Copley News Service in 1993, while serving as president of the White House Correspondents Association. His point was that the Clintons had some of bad press coming to them. Paul Richter, White House correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, agreed. He said the treatment of the media by a president and his staff "really does affect the coverage." Some journalists even admitted that that was the reason the press treated some relatively minor 1993 news stories, such as the firing of seven members of the White House travel office, with such ferocity. (A ferocity that, viewed from the distance of 15 years, seems absolutely perplexing.) The travel office is a nonpartisan department within the White House staffed by aides who help make life easier for reporters traveling with the president by arranging meals and communications. Journalists get to know the office staffers and rely on them to help make life on the road less bumpy. In May 1993, the White House fired all seven travel staffers for gross financial mismanagement and announced the FBI had been asked to investigate. As Shaw at the Los Angeles Times noted, when hearing about the clumsy travel-office firings, the press corps erupted in outrage. "At one briefing, they asked 169 questions about the travel office firings. Neither Bosnia nor the President's deficit-reduction package, both major news stories at the time, received a fraction of that attention that day" [emphasis added]. In the days following the firings, the travel-office story (aka Travelgate) landed on Page One of The Washington Post six times, and four times on A1 of The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune. The press pitched the story as a blockbuster. In less than three weeks, the Post published nearly 20 news stories, editorials, and commentaries on the subject, even though its White House correspondents eventually conceded the firings were "relatively trivial." Newsweek summed up the media phenomenon at play with its Travelgate headline: "Don't Mess With the Media: The White House Press Corps Gets Its Revenge." Weeks later, when the media hyped the phony story that Clinton had held up traffic at Los Angeles International Airport while getting a $200 haircut as Air Force One idled on the tarmac, they enjoyed another round of payback. Suggesting the story revealed all sorts of deep character flaws embedded in Clinton (namely that he was a phony and a hypocrite), the press treated the haircut as an even bigger deal than Travelgate. The so-called scandal was mentioned 50 times by The Washington Post alone, including nine times in front-page stories. Six weeks later, though, when Newsday revealed that Federal Aviation Administration records showed no planes had been delayed while Clinton got a trim, virtually every news organization that initially hyped the story either downplayed (the Los Angeles Times) or completely ignored (The New York Times, ABC, CBS, NBC) the correction. The Post was so unresponsive to the facts that the paper's ombudsman had to devote an entire column to the matter, slapping reporters' hands for doing the absolute minimum to clear up any confusion about nonexistent flight delays caused by Clinton. And why the pile-on? Simple: The press was still angry with how their pals in the travel office had been treated. "There was a clear sense of retribution" in the media's haircut coverage, Newsweek's Mark Miller said at the time, because the media were "pissed off." Indeed, the resentment was growing, "whether it was conscious or subconscious," said John King, then working as White House correspondent for The Associated Press. "[S]o when people had a legitimate reason to kick [Clinton] as a buffoon, they went overboard." Try to recall, however, a single instance in early 2001 when the press went "overboard" and kicked Bush as a "buffoon" on the front pages for days on end regarding an essentially trivial process story. Cautious and respectful, the press did no such thing. "The truth is, this new president [Bush] has done things with relative impunity that would have been huge uproars if they had occurred under Clinton," The Washington Post's John Harris wrote in May 2001. Harris continued: Try to recall this major news story during Clinton's first 100 days: Under pressure from Western senators, the president capitulated on a minor part of his 1993 budget deal, grazing fees on ranchers using federal lands. A barrage of coverage had an unmistakable subtext: Clinton was weak and excessively political and caved to special interests. Bush has made numerous similar concessions on items far more central to the agenda he campaigned on, such as deemphasizing vouchers in his education plan and conceding that his tax cut will be some $350 billion smaller than he proposed. For the most part these repositionings are being cast as shrewd rather than servile. But if the press went easy on Bush in early 2001, if it looked the other way when he flip-flopped on campaign promises, that must have been thanks to the way the White House pampered reporters, right? Because journalists were quite open in 1993 about being offended by the White House's treatment and how being slighted, or "dissed," translated into tougher coverage. Recall that the press was angry about the way Democratic aides were uncommunicative and how few formal press conferences Clinton had held, and the way the Democrats were trying to go around the mainstream media. In truth, of course, if the Clinton team was guilty of slighting the press in 1993, the Bush team absolutely humiliated it. The Bush White House openly advertised its disdain for the press (former chief of staff Andrew Card famously dismissed the press as just another D.C. special interest group desperately seeking access), aides quickly formed habits of not returning reporters' calls, and Bush immediately canceled formal press briefings with reporters. And even the informal ones he held were rare in the first term. In fact, Bush held just 17 press conferences compared with Clinton's 44. (Despite the media's early grumbling, Clinton actually set a new mark for the most press conferences by any first-term president in the modern era.) Over time, it became clear to the entire country that the Bush White House did not respect the press, that it was dissing the press corps. The way the White House for years waved into press briefings a former $200-an-hour male escort with no journalism background and no serious press affiliation; the way the administration churned out misleading video news releases that crossed the legal line into "covert propaganda"; and the way the administration audaciously paid off pundits like Armstrong Williams to secretly hype White House initiatives. The media, though, didn't punish the Republican president with bad press. Contrary to the edicts laid down in the 1990s, the early Bush coverage was not affected by how the president and his staff slighted and controlled the press. Instead, the press sheepishly fell in line, nervous about having its already limited access even further restricted. The kowtowing was at times startling to watch. As Media Matters Senior Fellow Eric Alterman noted in 2003's What Liberal Media?: [T]he Bush team plays a kind of hardball that the Clintonians were never able to master. When Houston Chronicle reporter Bennett Roth asked press spokesman Ari Fleischer about underage drinking by the president's daughters, Fleischer informed him, Don Corleone-style, that his question had been "noted in the building." The implication was clear to all: More such unfriendly questions and Roth could be cut off, unable to do his job, and useless to his employers. The outcries of solidarity from Roth's colleagues in the press corps in the face of this public threat would not have disturbed the sleep of a napping newborn. There were other dynamics at play, as well. For instance, as the first Clinton term unfolded, there were open discussions among journalists about how they were anxious not to be tagged as being "in the tank" for Clinton. How they didn't want to be called out by The New Republic's running "Clinton Suck-Up Watch," which mocked journalists who the magazine saw as overly effusive in their praise of the new president. It was that professional anxiousness (i.e. that peer pressure) that led some to view the new Democratic administration through an unprecedented, hypercritical lens. It was also a phenomenon fueled by right-wing critics such as Rush Limbaugh who accused the press of having a liberal bias. Naturally, one way for the media to disprove that theory was to be especially hard on the new Democratic administration. "If you dared say anything complimentary [about Clinton] ... you were looked at like some sort of pathetic fool who was obviously in the tank," said Newsweek's Miller during Clinton's first year in office. At the time, observers suggested that get-tough approach toward Clinton simply reflected journalism's DNA. Brit Hume, then a White House correspondent for ABC News, insisted, "We live in a time when the worst thing that can be said about a journalist in Washington is that he or she is not 'tough.' " In 2001, however, very few journalists appeared concerned about being "in the tank" for Bush. In fact, the tank was quite crowded. It turns out, that urge among Beltway journalists to bend over backward for incoming Republican administrations goes back many years. Former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee explained the phenomenon to Mark Hertsgaard in his book about the press, On Bended Knee: Stressing that it was "all totally subconscious," Bradlee explained that when Ronald Reagan came to Washington in 1980, journalists at the Post sensed that "here comes a really true conservative. ... And we are known -- though I don't think justifiably -- as the great liberals. So, [we thought] we've got to really behave ourselves here. We've got to not be arrogant, make every effort to be informed, be mannerly, be fair. And we did this. I suspect in the process that this paper and probably a good deal of the press gave Reagan not a free ride but they didn't use the same standards on him that they used on Carter and on Nixon." Just like with Reagan, the D.C. press corps went out of its way to behave itself with Bush, to be "fair" to the new conservative president. Looking ahead, that desire among journalists to be tough on Democrats in 2009 for fear of being tagged liberal or "in the tank" could certainly come into play when Obama is inaugurated. Because just as the press was derided by Republicans for going too easy on the Democratic baby boomer candidate in 1992 ("Liberal-Media Lynch Mob" buttons and T-shirts were seen at the GOP convention that year), reporters and pundits have been under constant attack in 2008 for going too soft on the Democratic baby boomer candidate. So, in order to "prove" their independence, will journalists unleash an assault on the new Democratic White House the way they did in 1993? And will the press pick seemingly random beefs to make its case against the Democratic president, the way it lashed out at Clinton for being overly interested and engrossed in the issues? And the way it said his transition team was too deliberative and close-mouthed when selecting the most senior members of his new administration? Believe it or not, in 1993, those were deemed to be serious strikes against Clinton. In terms of the latter, restless reporters resented how, during the transition period in late 1992, Democrats didn't dole out enough information about key appointments. "The transition ruined any good feeling that there might have been," Jeffrey Birnbaum, then a Wall Street Journal reporter, said in 1993. "The dark days of Little Rock after the election, I think, are what soured the press relations with the Clintons." The National Journal concurred in a report that year: The amity suffered, however, as the campaign continued -- as the crowd of reporters grew and Clinton's accessibility dwindled. It deteriorated more during the transition. Reporters ensconced in Little Rock, Ark., and in pursuit of a story each day focused on Clinton's leisurely pace in making appointments and on the campaign promises he'd forsaken. By Clinton's last press conference before moving north toward his new home, the tone of the questioning had grown nasty. Note that when Clinton's team didn't leak enough transition-team information, the press got mad and said that's when the relationship began to sour. But eight years later, when the Bush team didn't leak transition-team information in late 2000, the press praised the new White House for its discipline and message control, an obvious double standard. Meanwhile, one of the deepest ironies of examining the hostile/docile press models for the two previously inaugurated presidents is that one of the personal traits that the press relentlessly mocked in Clinton during his first months in office was his high intellectual metabolism, how he wanted to debate every subject and engage around the clock and hear all kinds of opinions about the day's most important topics. The press saw that as a very troubling sign because sometimes it forced Clinton to delay his final decisions. "This has led to a perception of weakness and indecisiveness," NBC's Andrea Mitchell announced at the time. (Bush's lack of intellectual curiosity eight years later did not seem to worry the press.) From the media's perspective, Clinton was too engaged in the pressing topics of the day. Let's hope the press doesn't foolishly hold that against the next hands-on, issues-oriented president.
Media Matters - Covering new presidents: the media's double standard {...}
Published: November 19, 2008, 9:50 pm - Indexed: November 21, 2008, 1:24 pm - Page Size: 40KB
Category: Society > Issues > Business > Media > Bias and Balance

]]> {EUROPE > NEWS AND MEDIA} - Polly Toynbee: This frenzy of hatred is a disaster for children at risk The banality of evil makes revenge unsatisfactory. Once caught, the monster that pulled the fingernails from the baby or the serial strangler of women always turns out to be an unworthy vessel for society's fury: just another psychotic lowlife, weirdo, child of violence, passing on the damage done to him with double force.That's why the world needs to find more satisfying quarry to blame. Conveniently, social workers are always there to fill the role required by a frenzy of media hate. They failed to save a child: they are the true killers. The fury stirred up by the Sun verges on lynch mob incitement: 200,000 have signed its petition calling for the heads of "all the social workers involved in the case". "Blood on their hands" was the headline. Pictures of these public servants asked "Do you know them?", with a number to ring. Surprisingly few children are murdered, given how many parents are drug addicted, psychotic, violent or profoundly inadequate; 29,000 are on the child protection register and another 300,000 are reckoned to be "in need", with concerns about their quality of life. Yet last year of all those children in danger, 68 were killed (15 of those by strangers). Given how extraordinarily vulnerable children are, that is a relatively low figure to be balanced against the thousands who survive precarious lives, often thanks to social workers, who are never thanked. Back in 1974, Maria Colwell was the first child murder I covered. It happened to be the case that set in motion the laying down of new child protection measures. Every time a child dies, another report finds failures in process or practice, and another bout of reorganising follows a media frenzy. This time the hysteria has reached a newly demented pitch. Everyone finds in this rare horror the "proof" for whatever it is they already think about society. Trevor Kavanagh in the Sun says it's caused by a "leftie mafia" and "the corruption of entrenched Socialism". David Cameron and Iain Duncan Smith call it a sign of their "broken society". Yet the number of children killed has fallen steadily - down 50% in England and Wales since the 1970s. Professor Colin Pritchard, an expert on child abuse, points to World Health Organisation statistics: Britain was fourth worst among western nations in the 1970s. Now it is among the best: only four countries have fewer child murders per million. Compare America, where child murders have risen by 17% since the 1970s. "Our child protection has never been better," Pritchard, of the school of health and social care at Bournemouth University, says. "Especially in the front line." And social workers are better trained. "I am awed by what these young people have to face." Pritchard's research shows most child murders are committed by severely mentally ill mothers; next come mentally ill fathers, then mothers whose children are already on at-risk registers, and stepfathers or cohabitees who have a record of at least one act of violence. There is a fixed trajectory in the reporting of horrors. Whether it is the death of a child or a train crash, someone can always be found who blew the whistle, who reported the need for more rail inspections - or a lower social worker caseload. Talking to directors of children's services reveals that a lot of social workers, a lot of clients and a lot of their relatives write letters warning of failings: it's an emotive and hard-pressed service. Panorama finds unsurprising evidence that some police officers disagreed with some social workers about whether Baby P should go into foster care. Anyone who has sat in on a case conference can hear different views: not all will agree with the final decision. When it is fatally wrong, as in this case, someone can claim "I told you so." Paul Ennals, of the National Children's Bureau, points out that 80% of children who die are not on "at risk" registers, which may make social workers more or less culpable.Is every child death preventable? Possibly. But it would come at a social cost the likes of the Mail and the Sun would certainly not tolerate. All children at any risk could be added to the 60,000 in care. But search the Mail and find no shortage of outrage on the lines of "How social workers took away our children for 11 months without a shred of evidence". The Sun may get its scalp: The director of children's services in Haringey is unlikely to survive a critical report. Labour has framed the rules to make sure there is personal accountability at the top in such cases. The fallout will be serious. Children's departments will cover their backs and take many more into care. The pendulum may be due a slight swing that way, but it has its own dangers: when social workers are seen as child snatchers, parents are less willing to seek help or take injured children to hospital. There is no evidence to show if it is better to take a child away soon after birth when there is a danger the family can't cope. A child might have a better life with adopters; and if the authorities delay until the damage is done, the prognosis for older children in care is poor, many ending up in prison. But few doubt that, if parents are "good enough", children are best off with their own families. What Solomon can make the right call every time?At a conference on the morning the Baby P story broke last week, those who have worked in children's services all their lives were cast down by the coverage. They said how much better things had been since Margaret Hodge's Every Child Matters and Ed Balls's Children's Plan - at last schools, social services and health were starting to work together, though dragging professions out of their silos is hard work. A new generation of headteachers understands that treating the whole child - from breakfast to after-school club - and connecting all the services a family in trouble might need is the way to improve education results, too. There is optimism in the air as the progress from 2,500 children's centres already looks good, working to catch family problems at the earliest age. There will always be catastrophic failures, but one case blasted out of all proportion can undo years of good. David Lammy, the MP for the Haringey constituency of Tottenham, wonders how his borough will ever attract new social workers with the Sun waiting to tell them they have blood on their hands. If too few are found and more children suffer, the Sun is unlikely to own up to blood on its hands.polly.toynbee@guardian.co.ukChild protectionCrimeLocal governmentguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/europe/united-kingdom/news-and-media/polly-toynbee-this-frenzy-of-hatred-is-a-disaster-20081193819.htm 2008-11-18T00:08:09Z 2008-11-18T00:08:09Z Guardian.Co.Uk http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/18/comment-social-services-child-protection Polly Toynbee: This frenzy of hatred is a disaster for children at risk {new window}   Www.Guardian.Co.Uk - The banality of evil makes revenge unsatisfactory. Once caught, the monster that pulled the fingernails from the baby or the serial strangler of women always turns out to be an unworthy vessel for society's fury: just another psychotic lowlife, weirdo, child of violence, passing on the damage done to him with double force.That's why the world needs to find more satisfying quarry to blame. Conveniently, social workers are always there to fill the role required by a frenzy of media hate. They failed to save a child: they are the true killers. The fury stirred up by the Sun verges on lynch mob incitement: 200,000 have signed its petition calling for the heads of "all the social workers involved in the case". "Blood on their hands" was the headline. Pictures of these public servants asked "Do you know them?", with a number to ring. Surprisingly few children are murdered, given how many parents are drug addicted, psychotic, violent or profoundly inadequate; 29,000 are on the child protection register and another 300,000 are reckoned to be "in need", with concerns about their quality of life. Yet last year of all those children in danger, 68 were killed (15 of those by strangers). Given how extraordinarily vulnerable children are, that is a relatively low figure to be balanced against the thousands who survive precarious lives, often thanks to social workers, who are never thanked. Back in 1974, Maria Colwell was the first child murder I covered. It happened to be the case that set in motion the laying down of new child protection measures. Every time a child dies, another report finds failures in process or practice, and another bout of reorganising follows a media frenzy. This time the hysteria has reached a newly demented pitch. Everyone finds in this rare horror the "proof" for whatever it is they already think about society. Trevor Kavanagh in the Sun says it's caused by a "leftie mafia" and "the corruption of entrenched Socialism". David Cameron and Iain Duncan Smith call it a sign of their "broken society". Yet the number of children killed has fallen steadily - down 50% in England and Wales since the 1970s. Professor Colin Pritchard, an expert on child abuse, points to World Health Organisation statistics: Britain was fourth worst among western nations in the 1970s. Now it is among the best: only four countries have fewer child murders per million. Compare America, where child murders have risen by 17% since the 1970s. "Our child protection has never been better," Pritchard, of the school of health and social care at Bournemouth University, says. "Especially in the front line." And social workers are better trained. "I am awed by what these young people have to face." Pritchard's research shows most child murders are committed by severely mentally ill mothers; next come mentally ill fathers, then mothers whose children are already on at-risk registers, and stepfathers or cohabitees who have a record of at least one act of violence. There is a fixed trajectory in the reporting of horrors. Whether it is the death of a child or a train crash, someone can always be found who blew the whistle, who reported the need for more rail inspections - or a lower social worker caseload. Talking to directors of children's services reveals that a lot of social workers, a lot of clients and a lot of their relatives write letters warning of failings: it's an emotive and hard-pressed service. Panorama finds unsurprising evidence that some police officers disagreed with some social workers about whether Baby P should go into foster care. Anyone who has sat in on a case conference can hear different views: not all will agree with the final decision. When it is fatally wrong, as in this case, someone can claim "I told you so." Paul Ennals, of the National Children's Bureau, points out that 80% of children who die are not on "at risk" registers, which may make social workers more or less culpable.Is every child death preventable? Possibly. But it would come at a social cost the likes of the Mail and the Sun would certainly not tolerate. All children at any risk could be added to the 60,000 in care. But search the Mail and find no shortage of outrage on the lines of "How social workers took away our children for 11 months without a shred of evidence". The Sun may get its scalp: The director of children's services in Haringey is unlikely to survive a critical report. Labour has framed the rules to make sure there is personal accountability at the top in such cases. The fallout will be serious. Children's departments will cover their backs and take many more into care. The pendulum may be due a slight swing that way, but it has its own dangers: when social workers are seen as child snatchers, parents are less willing to seek help or take injured children to hospital. There is no evidence to show if it is better to take a child away soon after birth when there is a danger the family can't cope. A child might have a better life with adopters; and if the authorities delay until the damage is done, the prognosis for older children in care is poor, many ending up in prison. But few doubt that, if parents are "good enough", children are best off with their own families. What Solomon can make the right call every time?At a conference on the morning the Baby P story broke last week, those who have worked in children's services all their lives were cast down by the coverage. They said how much better things had been since Margaret Hodge's Every Child Matters and Ed Balls's Children's Plan - at last schools, social services and health were starting to work together, though dragging professions out of their silos is hard work. A new generation of headteachers understands that treating the whole child - from breakfast to after-school club - and connecting all the services a family in trouble might need is the way to improve education results, too. There is optimism in the air as the progress from 2,500 children's centres already looks good, working to catch family problems at the earliest age. There will always be catastrophic failures, but one case blasted out of all proportion can undo years of good. David Lammy, the MP for the Haringey constituency of Tottenham, wonders how his borough will ever attract new social workers with the Sun waiting to tell them they have blood on their hands. If too few are found and more children suffer, the Sun is unlikely to own up to blood on its hands.polly.toynbee@guardian.co.ukChild protectionCrimeLocal governmentguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Polly Toynbee: This frenzy of hatred is a disaster for children at risk | Comment is free | The Guardian {...} Polly Toynbee: Britain has one of the best records on child deaths. One case blasted out of all proportion can undo years of good {...}
Published: November 18, 2008, 12:08 am - Indexed: November 18, 2008, 10:34 am - Page Size: 101KB
Category: Regional > Europe > United Kingdom > News and Media

]]> {NORTH AMERICA > LODGING} - CANYON RANCH LUXURY HEALTH SPA RESORT AT DISCOUNTED RATES (Tucson, AZ) Imagine a place where everything you see, do and learn helps you become the healthiest, happiest you. Vacation at the award-winning and exclusive Canyon Ranch in the fascinating Sonoran Desert. You'll see the famed roadrunner, hear a distant coyote and discover the most amazing creature of all - the authentic, revitalized you. Fall in love with life again. This resort is for 2 people staying 8 days and 7 nights at the beautiful Canyon Ranch in Tucson, Arizona. EXECUTIVE KING: One bedroom has luxury accommodations with a sitting area, extra vanity, and mini-refrigerator and a patio. Rates from NOW - 12/20/08 and 1/2/09-5/31/09 1 Person Stay (8 days and 7 nights) $4,833* 2 People Stay (8 days and 7 nights) $6,122* LUXURY 1 BEDROOM CASITA: Master suite with living room, dining area, washer and dryer, kitchen facilities and patio. 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CANYON RANCH LUXURY HEALTH SPA RESORT AT DISCOUNTED RATES {...}
Published: November 15, 2008, 3:45 am - Indexed: November 15, 2008, 12:45 pm - Page Size: 6KB
Category: Regional > North America > United States > California > Metro Areas > San Francisco Bay Area > Travel and Tourism > Lodging

]]> {EUROPE > NEWS AND MEDIA} - Alan Rusbridger reflects on the legacies of Hugo Young following the publication of the legendary columnist's papers