Baghdad Diary

Wall Street Journal reporter Farnaz Fassihi published excerpts of her diary in the Columbia Journalism Review:

Tuesday, September 14
The insurgents have brought the war to downtown Baghdad. For the fourth day in a row Haifa Street, a strip of old houses and Soviet-style apartment blocks, is a battleground between Americans and rebels. A few days ago, I watched Mazen, an Arab colleague with Al Arabiya news channel, get shot by an American helicopter as he was doing a live stand-up on Haifa Street. He died on television as I sipped my morning coffee.

Good News-Bad News

and I had an exchange about journalism recently that I thought raised some important questions. I’d like to take a stab at the answers here, and I welcome working journalists and other writers to add their two cents.

The Benefactor

I appear to have an anonymous benefactor: someone donated 12 months to my paid account, extending it to April of 2006.

I don’t know who did this, nor why, but it was a very nice thing to do. If you’re out there reading this, thank you very much.

The Dumb Leading the Ignorant

This report in Salon’s “war room” is a must, must read, even if you have to register for a day pass. The Blind Leading the Blind:

Even if they don’t like to say it out loud, lots of Democrats think that George Bush’s supporters are a horde of ignoramuses. Now comes evidence that they’re right! A remarkable new report titled “The Separate Realities of Bush and Kerry Supporters” from PIPA, the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, suggests that rank and file Republicans are more benighted than even the most supercilious coastal elitist would imagine.

Analyzing data from a series of nationwide polls, the report finds that a majority of Bush supporters believe things about the world that are objectively untrue, while the majority of Kerry supporters dwell in the reality-based community. For example, Bush backers largely think that the president and his policies are popular internationally. Seventy-five percent believe that Iraq was providing “substantial” aid to al-Qaida, and 63 percent say clear evidence of this has been found.

From the Department of Too Much Optimism

A Chinese satellite has smashed into a villager’s house on its return to earth, the country’s media reports.

“The satellite landed in our home. Maybe this means we’ll have good luck this year,” the tenant of the wrecked apartment was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

From BBC NEWS.