As Congress debates granting President Bush the power to wage war against Iraq, many in the Bay Area have expressed confusion and concern at what they perceive as a lack of adequate public discussion on the subject. Over the next…
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The Medium is the Mess: What to Do About Broadcast News? The San Francisco Chronicle
As the welcome but brief surge of intelligent news coverage precipitated by Sept. 11 fades, the war in Afghanistan winds down and the near- death experience of "Nightline" becomes just another dispiriting spasm of TV history, a momentary but deceptive…
Terry Gross of NPR Proves the Value of a Voice in the Dark The New York Times
In explaining why he felt that an analyst should sit unobtrusively behind his patients’ couch, Sigmund Freud explained that he did not want analysands to be influenced by his physical reactions and facial expressions. What is more, he added, "I…
Dangerous Straits Frontline PBS, Editorial Consultant
As President Bush arrives in Shanghai for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, where he will meet with China’s president Jiang Zemin, FRONTLINE and The New York Times join forces to explore the U.S.-China relationship. As much as trade or the…
Why Won’t Beijing Make Peace with the Dalai Lama? The San Francisco Chronicle
Dear Comrades: It may strike you as presumptuous for an uninvited outsider to address the Standing Committee of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party’s Politburo. Through long experience in China, I am well aware of the sensitive reaction…
The Jiang Zemin Mystery The New York Review of Books
Since the Chinese Communist Party leaders will not allow themselves to be criticized in the press or on television, critics have had to find other means to express their political grievances. Historically speaking, one of the most telling ways to…
China’s New Spiritual Uprising Salon
April 25 started as a normal Sunday in Beijing. But before the day was out, thousands of ordinary people in drip-dry shirts had mysteriously appeared outside Zhongnanhai, the leadership compound of the Chinese Communist Party near the Forbidden City. Here…
Prisoner of Its Past Salon
As I watched the demonstrators in front of U.S. diplomatic missions in China last month, after NATO’s accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, I couldn’t help but think back to my first visit to the People’s Republic in…
Tibet Through Chinese Eyes
Orville Schell, a longtime observer of China, says that even today this perception is held by most Chinese. “I don’t think there’s any more sensitive issue,” he says, “with the possible exception of Taiwan, because it grows out of the…
Justifying J-school Salon
In her recent Salon piece, “Advice from a J-school dropout,” Lea Aschkenas has a point. Journalism schools are not for everyone — evidently, at least, not for her. Indeed, whether I myself was cut out for a journalism school was…