Countdown Newsletter -- 03/22/06: War on the Media

[Patsy Stone]

What's one thing you can do when you're not winning the war?

Attack the media.

Are the images Americans are seeing from Iraq due to the level of violence or is it just the messenger? And, as President Bush suggested Tuesday at a White House news conference, are the media also being used by the insurgents? "They're capable of blowing up innocent life," Bush said, "So it ends up on your TV show." As opposition to the war rises, it's a theme amplified by Vice President Dick Cheney and conservative talk show hosts: a supposedly passive, even lazy media is focusing too much on random violence. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11947276/

Countdown w/ Keith Olbermann broadcasts LIVE at 8 pm et, and the count is never complete without you. Join us.

Journalist Helen Thomas has questioned every president since John Kennedy. On Tuesday she got what has become a rare chance to question the current commander in chief. "You're going to be sorry," Thomas warned President Bush when he called on her in his news conference at the White House. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/21/AR2006032101135.html
Helen Thomas is our guest tonight.

After Bill O'Reilly on Fox News and on the Web called his paper "friendly to child rapists," Jeff Bruce, editor of the Dayton Daily News replied today, even though he said he knows what happens "when you wrestle a pig." But this O'Reilly charge was "so outrageous and such a distortion" he felt he had no choice. According to the Daily News, O'Reilly, through a producer of his TV show, has responded to Bruce's reply this way: "Previous attacks launched on me disqualify the Dayton Daily News from any serious debate. We believe that Jeff Bruce is not an honest individual."

An article in the Dayton paper said that O'Reilly's commentary had already resulted in more than 1,000 e-mails arriving. The Daily News editorial, which ran Sunday, cautioned against removing Judge John Connor of Franklin County Common Pleas Court, without a formal complaint or investigation, after Connor gave probation and house arrest instead of prison to a man convicted of repeatedly raping two boys. http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002200353

The latest invention in TX: dummy cars which catch car thieves. When the thieves try to steal the car, the doors lock, "Bad Boys" starts to play, and the thieves can't get out.

Vivi, the award-winning whippet that disappeared from Kennedy Airport more than a month ago, may have turned up 10 miles to the north, in Flushing, her hopeful owner said yesterday. Volunteers searching for the pooch have been getting numerous calls about Vivi being spotted in and around Flushing Cemetery during the past week, suggesting that the show-dog turned-stray may be surviving the harsh elements and adapting to its new environment. http://www.nydailynews.com/boroughs/story/401714p-340289c.html

That's some of what we're planning for tonight's show.

Finally,
HARARE, Zimbabwe -- A bogus traditional healer who persuaded a businesswoman to hire "mermaids" and accommodate them in a Harare hotel to help find a stolen car was convicted of theft by false pretenses, court officials said Tuesday. Harare magistrate Sandra Nhau found Edina Chizema guilty of swindling a businesswoman of her savings with promises that mermaids would help recover the luxury car in 2004 and solve the businesswoman's unspecified "personal problems." http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/Z/ZIMBABWE_MERMAIDS?SITE=NWCN&TEMPLATE=STRANGEHEADS.html&SECTION=HOME
Sounds to me like Tony Soprano's next "dream sequence".

-- Carey Fox

Countdown Home: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/

More:
When 4-year-old Cortez Stewart was reunited with her mother and five siblings in Texas last week, it closed a happy chapter in the sad story of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Cortez represented the last of 5,192 Gulf Coast children listed as missing or displaced after the storms struck more than six months ago. The effort to reunite those youngsters became the largest child-recovery effort in U.S. history. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11909504/

General Motors Corp. and bankrupt former subsidiary Delphi Corp. will offer early retirement incentives to more than 125,000 factory workers, the companies said on Wednesday, after reaching a cost-cutting deal with the United Auto Workers union. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11957866/

The United States indicted 50 leaders of Colombia's largest guerrilla group, charging them with sending more than $25 billion worth of cocaine around the world to finance terrorism at home. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11909500/

Basque separatist group ETA on Wednesday declared a permanent cease-fire after almost four decades of bombings and shootings in Spain during its campaign for independence. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11956000/

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police without a warrant cannot search a home when one resident says to come in but another tells them to go away, and the court's new leader complained that the ruling could hamper investigations of domestic abuse. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11959183/

A corporate-backed watchdog group that monitors software for deceptive and abusive practices on Wednesday named a widely used file-sharing program and three other applications as violators of its guidelines. Kazaa, which its producer Sharman Networks claims is the most popular program for sharing files over the Internet, "misleadingly advertises itself as spyware-free, does not completely remove all components during the uninstall process, interferes with computer use, and makes undisclosed modifications to other software," according to a report from the group StopBadware.org. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11957635/