Staff commentary

Media decide what's news, what's not

       On the front page of yesterday's New York Times (NYT) is a preview of the meeting between President George W. Bush and Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. The Saudi leader visited Bush at his Texas ranch to deliver a stern warning about political realities in the Arab world: either Bush reins in Israeli leader Ariel Sharon, or nothing is unthinkable -- from cutting off oil exports to the United States to shutting down U.S. military bases in the region.

This is important, and deserved to run on the front page of the nation's premier newspaper. The implications of a possible U.S.-Arab split over Israeli incursions in Palestine are immense. The only story to get bigger play in yesterday's NYT was the meeting at the Vatican between U.S. cardinals and the Pope regarding the scandal surrounding church treatment of pedophile priests.

But not everyone reads the NYT. Many read local papers; every morning I read the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (P-I). Before I saw the NYT yesterday, I was struck by the page-five placement the P-I gave to the preview of the Bush-Abdullah meeting. The lead report for Seattle readers was a story about state employees who were fired for inappropriate use of e-mail and the Internet -- not exactly earth-shaking news.

My point is not about the meeting between Bush and the Saudi leader, nor am I trashing the choice the P-I made. There is good reason for our local paper to highlight local stories. A meeting preview may well deserve to run inside, while the meeting itself can run on the front page if the outcome merits such coverage.

The point is, it's easy to look at the front page and simply accept that the stories there are the most important news of the day. It ain't necessarily so. If you want to get the most out of the news, you need to understand that each media outlet has reasons for highlighting or hiding particular stories. The top news is often not on the front page.

Sometimes, the most significant news is nowhere at all, at least not in the media. Readers need to develop skills at gauging the importance of stories, irrespective of the implied importance that our media grant through placement. And smart readers should develop multiple and diverse news sources, not rely on a single type of source to define the world.

One source to check out is the nationally syndicated radio show The Connection, weekdays at 11 p.m. on KUOW 94.9. Wednesday's guest was Michael Ignatieff, from the Carr Center of Human Rights Policy at Harvard. I'm no fan of U.S. military intervention, but Ignatieff makes a strong case for it.

Arguing that both Yasser Arafat and Sharon are pursuing hopelessly dead-end policies leading inevitably toward regional devastation, Ignatieff asserts that a viable two-state solution for Israel and Palestine requires U.S. military enforcement. Check out Ignatieff's recent article on the subject, "Why Bush must send in his troops: Imposing a two-state solution is the last chance for Middle East peace" at www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/Ignatieff042402/ignatieff042402.html.