On the bigger issue of a national shield law, I agree with Nick Gillespie, who argued that such a law would force the government to make unacceptable judgments about who is and who isn

The

The Western press has given too little attention to the role of Islamic terrorism in the escalating violence in Thailand. In recent months, militant Islamic separatists in Thailand

I’ve been running around DC all day working on a story and haven’t had time to blog much. Tonight I’m headed to this reunion thing where I’ll be hearing Judge Jim Gray, author of Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It — A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs. Sounds like high times. Needless to say, I’ll have your weekly “Underreported News” up tomorrow morning.

…when they think we’re the terrorists? Boston Globe columnist Derrick Z. Jackson:

The innocents in the so-called war on terror are always ”our” citizens or the citizens of our allies. The only innocent Iraqis are those killed by ”insurgents.” Our soldiers clearly did not intend to kill innocents. But this posturing of America as the great innocent, when everyone knows we kill innocents ourselves, is likely only to make us look more like the devil in the eyes of a suicide bomber.

But when you draw an equivalence (and that’s what you did) between those innocents and these innocents, you’ve lost the ability to tell right from wrong. Maybe the horror of a world where Islamic terrorists torture and kill children on purpose has convinced you that we live in a Godless universe with no right and wrong (it’s happened to greater minds than yours). I don’t know. But nowhere in your venomous column do you acknowledge that this is what we’re fighting against: We’re fighting against people who train to kill children. It’s sad that innocents have died at our hands in this war. It’s tragic. But we’re fighting people who would do worse than Beslan if they could. Much worse.

Last night I saw a play called The Pillowman. This excellent play explores one of literature

Media Blog readers have been asking me to keep

Media converged on the London story today, and depite initial and unavoidable confusion, the coverage was admirable. One last round-up of MSM and blogosphere coverage:

Scotsman: Death toll up to 37…

Washington Post: …with at least 700 injured.

ABC: Police found two unexploded bombs.

BBC: London blasts: Timeline and Maps.

CNN: Britain launches search for bombers.

MSNBC: Attacks point to al-Qaida.

Reuters: U.S. raises tuh-tuh-terrorism alert level (they said it!) for buses and trains.

Al Jazeera: Dozens killed in “Serial Blasts”.

Guardian: Londoners help each other.

New York Times: G8 focus shifts to terrorism.

CBS: Lots of online video coverage.

NRO: This is war.

PLUS: Blogosphere reactions:

I already linked to this Wall Street Journal article on how British citizens used cameraphones and blogs to cover their story, but I’m linking again because it’s unmissable.

The Corner’s had good reporting and commentary all day.

Andrew Sullivan has lots of British blog reactions, including this round-up at Europhobia, links to British blogger Tim Worstall and links to the Guardian’s blog.

Instapundit reaches far and rounds up tons of blog reactions.

TVNewser tracked the nets all day (and answered my “dueling O’Briens” question: Everyone else was on a plane to London).

Finally, my friend Alex Singleton, in London, writes on the Globalization Institute’s blog:

Today’s terrorist attacks on London show an profound ignorance of the British people. As a nation, we went through the IRA attacks. We know terrorism. But there’s one thing the British won’t accept: being bullied into a position. Terrorism doesn’t divide us: it unites us.

Because company policy prevents its reporters from using “emotive” words like “terrorism” or “terrorists”, Reuters has to resort to awkward phrases like the following:

Security experts said the blasts had all the hallmarks of the al Qaeda network responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and the Madrid train bombings in 2004.

(Thanks to a Media Blog reader for the tip.)

TVNewser has been keeping a record of the TV coverage of the London bombings, along with a look at CNN’s record-long edition of “American Morning” with Miles O’Brien and Soledad O’Brien, but he never answers my question: Why did CNN decide to go with the dueling O’Briens for this story? Where was Wolf? What on earth were they thinking? Kathryn Jean Lopez pointed out several glaring examples of this lightweight nonsense on the Corner:

She can’t be on all day long, so this will stop soon. “Their wounds are almost like they are war wounds” she said to Dr. Gupta.

Breaking news: THEY ARE WAR WOUNDS.

What’s next? An all-day “Fox and Friends”? Notice that ABC did not go with a seven-hour special edition of “The View”.

Today’s news from London makes the media’s obsession with its own anonymous source soap opera seem so petty, especially the way people in the press are tossing around words like “brave” to describe Judith Miller, a woman who willingly chose to go to jail rather than cooperate with a grand jury investigation. That’s not bravery. It’s self-righteousness glorified by the press corps in defense of a practice that, at best, is overrated, and at worst allows the kind of political sniping at the heart of the Plame case.

If you want an example of brave journalism, check out this story (via Instapundit):

As journalists scrambled to cover the London bomb blasts, ordinary citizens went online to share pictures snapped by cameraphones and reports of what they saw.

A Media Blog reader e-mails the following:

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamidreza Asefi, here Thursday condemned terrorist attacks on London’s transport network.

According to Foreign Ministry’s Department of Information and Press, Asefi expressed disapproval of terror attacks on London which killed and injured a number of people.

He condoled the next-of-kin of those killed and injured, denouncing resort to terror to reach aims as “inappropriate method.”

My friend who worked for Reuters until recently told me, “They’re allowed to say ‘explosion’ ‘blast’ and they can use the word ‘terrorist’ if someone else says it. They had someone else call this a terrorist attack [in their story today], but they can’t come out and say it. It wasn’t until last year that they said the 9/11 hijackers were hijackers. Their policy on that was that, since they hadn’t been tried in court, they couldn’t be called hijackers, but last year they sent around an e-mail saying that the company policy had changed.”

Honest Reporting has more.

The latest:

CNN: At least 33 dead.

Bloomberg: An organization called al-Qaeda in Europe is taking responsibility.

Times of London: Six explosions on subway trains and buses around London.

Reuters: World leaders condemn attacks.

CBS: U.S. security officials on alert. Terror alert will be raised to orange.

UPDATES:

NRO: Attacks likely part of a wider al-Qaeda summer offensive.

LA Times: G8 postpones declarations on climate change and the global economy.

CBC: However, Blair says that won’t stop the G8 leaders from continuing their work.

The press is known for rising to the occasion at times like these, and this blog will be evaluating the coverage throughout the day. For now, here are links to news stories from around the world:

CNN: Minute-by-Minute Account of the Attacks

Financial Times of London: Tony Blair: It

Kevin Drum links to this New York Times op-ed, to which an embarrassing correction has been appended:

The Op-Ed page in some copies of Wednesday’s newspaper carried an incorrect version of the below article about military recruitment. The article also briefly appeared on NYTimes.com before it was removed. The writer, an Army reserve officer, did not say, “Imagine my surprise the other day when I received orders to report to Fort Campbell, Ky., next Sunday,” nor did he characterize his recent call-up to active duty as the precursor to a “surprise tour of Iraq.” That language was added by an editor and was to have been removed before the article was published. Because of a production error, it was not.

Carter’s op-ed argues that recruiting is suffering because President Bush has yet to give a “recruiting speech” asking young people to volunteer. Yet even an op-ed critical of Bush is not critical enough for the NY Times, so it tries to change the author’s point of view to make him a victim of Bush policies rather than a volunteer.

Worse, it puts words in the author’s mouth like “imagine my surprise” and “surprise tour of Iraq” and other bilge to make the author sound as sarcastic and clich

Fox News is reporting that Matthew Cooper, the Time reporter threatened with jail time for refusing to disclose his source in the Valerie Plame leak investigation, has agreed to testify rather than go to jail.

UPDATE: Fox just reported that NY Times reporter Judith Miller will not reveal her sources.

UPDATE II: AP story here.

UPDATE III: Fox further reports that Matt Cooper’s source relieved him of the duty. According to AP:

“I went to bed ready to accept the sanctions” for not testifying, Cooper said. But he told the judge that not long before his early afternoon appearance, he had received “in somewhat dramatic fashion” a direct personal communication from his source freeing him from his commitment to keep the source’s identity secret.

UPDATE V: Cooper said he received a “Personal, unambiguous, uncoerced waiver to speak to the grand jury” from his source. NY Times executive editor Bill Keller called this is a “chilling” turn of events.

Day 1. The Washington Post

Last week I criticized the media’s obsession with the Aruba Teen, whose person has vanished but whose visage is inescapable. Now it looks like the coverage is angering Arubans:

ORANJESTAD, Aruba (AP) – A latent but growing resentment here became evident for the first time when more than 200 people, some wrapped in Aruban flags, said they were incensed by statements made by the mother of a missing American teen.

Those assembled outside the colonial courthouse in this Caribbean capital Tuesday night said they fear their tiny island nation is falsely being portrayed as not doing enough to find Natalee Holloway, the Alabama girl who vanished May 30 on a graduation trip with her high school class.

[snip]

There were complaints that some American television coverage unfairly depicted the island, which depends overwhelmingly on tourism, and as being crime- and drug-ridden.

Blogger Soccer Dad has the latest on the Washington Post

Hope everyone had a great Fourth of July weekend. The bachelor party was a success, considering that I am still engaged, none of my friends went to jail, and of the two major concerts in the world this weekend I attended the much better one.

I