SPJ national update IV: Study puts Iraq death toll past 650,000; and report says thousands wrongly on terror list. A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq than would have if the invasion had not occurred in March 2003. The estimate, produced by interviewing residents in a random sampling of households throughout the country, is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech in December and more than 10 times the estimate of 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group. The survey got the same estimate for immediate post-invasion deaths as an earlier study. Death certificates substantiated the great majority of deaths. "We're very confident with the results," said Gilbert Burnham, a Johns Hopkins physician and epidemiologist. More here. ... Thousands of people have been mistakenly linked to names on terror watch lists when they crossed the border, boarded commercial airliners or were stopped for traffic violations, the Government Accountability Office reports. More than 30,000 airline passengers have asked the Transportation Security Administration to clear their names from the lists. More here.
SPJ national update V: Fox News in decline?; and fewer reporters embedded in Iraq. Fox News Channel marked its 10th anniversary by experiencing its first ratings slump. Viewership the first eight months of the year was down 5 percent compared to 2005, with a steeper 13 percent decline in prime time, according to Nielsen Media Research. For 12 straight months, Fox's prime-time audience has been smaller than the year before. More here. ... The number of embedded journalists reporting alongside U.S. troops in Iraq has settled to below two dozen. The figure rebounded only slightly from a low of 11 in September. During the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, more than 600 reporters, TV crews and photographers linked up with U.S. and British units. "This is more than pathetic," said Sig Christenson, a reporter for the San Antonio Express-News and president of Military Reporters and Editors, a journalists group. More here.
SPJ national update VI: Number of books facing challenge drops to all-time low; media firms counted as small businesses; and so much for separation of church and state. The number of books threatened with removal from library shelves fell last year to its lowest total on record, with 405 challenges reported to the American Library Association. The ALA has tracked efforts to pull texts since the early 1980s, when it helped found Banned Books Week as a celebration of free expression. Challenges have gone up and down over the past few years but overall have dropped by more than half since Banned Books Week was started. Judith Krug, director of the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom, cited a couple of possible factors for the decline: Librarians are better prepared to organize community support on behalf of a book, and would-be censors are focusing more on online content. More here. ... Some of the nation's largest media companies, including the Associated Press, were counted last year by the government as small businesses for contracting purposes, inflating the Bush administration's record of help to small companies. Other companies cited as small businesses by the White House included The New York Times Co., USA Today International Corp., Bloomberg, PBS, ExxonMobil and Microsoft. More here. ... Like a gap in the fossil record, evolutionary biology is missing from a list of majors that the U.S. Department of Education has deemed eligible for a new federal grant program designed to reward students majoring in engineering, mathematics, science or certain foreign languages. That absence apparently indicates that students in the evolutionary sciences do not qualify for the grants, and some observers wonder whether the omission was deliberate. More here.
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The Heat Was on at Joe T. Garcia's ...
by Susan Tallant
... But it wasn't the hot sauce that spiced up the evening. A debate between Tarrant County District Attorney Tim Curry and challenger Terri Moore turned into an often-sharp exchange at the packed-house Fort Worth SPJ October meeting.
Republican Curry boasted of 34 years of professionally managing what he called the county's largest law firm and noted before the night was done that he has been endorsed by the Fort Worth Police Department and Arlington Police Department, the Fort Worth Firefighters Association and the Tarrant County Sheriff's Department. Democrat Moore, who made a run for the office four years ago, touted her accomplishments while working for Curry and being in private practice.
"I tried the largest internet porn case in U.S. history, and, folks, they got slammed," she said. "That is what you can expect from me as district attorney."
Curry said Moore's claim is an oxymoron because she later represented a high-profile admitted sex offender in court. "I find it a little bit odd that she is touting the pornography case as a federal prosecutor, then turns around and represents a notorious pedophile," Curry said.
Moore acknowledged the case but said she was just doing her job. "Everybody, no matter what you have been accused of, has a right to have representation," she said.
The format called for written questions from the audience, a three-minute answer, then a response and counterresponse. One of the questions for Moore concerned her husband's criminal record.
"Shame on you, whoever asked that question," she said.
Moore said her husband of 25 years had once had problems with the IRS. Curry agreed that the question was inappropriate, but his statement was not enough to cool things down between the candidates.
"Four years ago when I ran against this man, he put it in a piece of mail," Moore said.
Other issues of audience concern were ethics and corruption. Curry said unethical behavior is unacceptable in any government and that his office has prosecuted cases involving corruption in the past but has not had any major cases recently.
Moore said the reason no cases have been prosecuted lately is due to lack of prosecution. "Fort Worth is a big, old good ol' boy town, and you tend to see a discrepancy there," she said. "Do you think it's because Fort Worth is so good that there is no corruption and Dallas is so bad that there is?"
Moore said establishing the gang unit was one of her major accomplishments. Curry said Moore did not start the gang unit but was assigned to run it.
Election day is Tuesday, Nov. 7.
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PEOPLE & PLACES
Cathy O'Neal is one proud mom. Her son, Sean, has been named Austin city editor for The Onion, which is adding print editions to its online presence. ...
Big doings at Balcom. Edwards Ranch has selected the Balcom Agency as the advertising and marketing agency of record for the 850-acre mixed-used development in southwest Fort Worth. The first phase of residential development will launch in early 2007. Established in 1848 as a working cattle ranch, the Edwards Ranch development will encompass three communities: Riverhills, a 320-acre high-end custom residential neighborhood encompassing 500 lots; Clearfork, a 279-acre town center and office campus; and Overland, a later phased mixed-use development. Meanwhile, the Nocona Athletic Goods Co. has chosen Balcom as its public relations agency of record to handle all corporate communications, media relations and event publicity. The Nocona Leather Goods Co. was founded in 1926 and later became the Nocona Athletic Goods Co. Its Nokona baseball glove was trademarked in 1934 (spelled with a "k" when the U.S. Patent Office would not allow the name of an incorporated town to be registered) and to this day is recognized as the last handmade, American-made baseball glove. ...
Skip Hollandsworth, an executive editor at Texas Monthly; Russell Hurst, executive director of SPJ (then Sigma Delta Chi) from 1962-81, during which time membership more than doubled; and PR legends Jerre Todd, owner of the full-service ad/PR firm the Todd Company, and Camille Keith, an original employee of Southwest Airlines who rose through the ranks to become VP of special marketing, were inducted last month into the TCU Schieffer School of Journalism Hall of Excellence in ceremonies at the annual Journalism Exes Breakfast, held at Joe T. Garcia's Mexican Restaurant. Previous inductees are journalism educators Warren Agee and J. Willard Ridings, CBS newsman Bob Schieffer, Broadway and TV actress Betty Buckley, newspaper editor Ken Bunting, sports journalist Dan Jenkins, online journalism pioneer Johnny Livengood and writers Bud Shrake and Gary Cartwright. ...
