Media

Government agencies have tried to remove sensitive information from the internet, only to discover that copies have proliferated and they're virtually impossible to eradicate. Copies of supposedly eradicated reports and documents can be found using common search engines and the Internet Archive's whimsically named Wayback Machine, a digital archive of Internet sites that makes it possible to visit web pages even after they have been deleted or changed.

Katie Couric of "Today," Diane Sawyer of "Good Morning America," and Bryant Gumbel of "The Early Show" are three of the nation's biggest media stars. But are they journalists or glorified hawkers? According to a report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which studied the three network morning shows for two weeks in June and two weeks in October, these programs spend an awful lot of time selling things to the public. ... Even given some slight moderation after the Sept. 11 attacks, the report suggested that the shows were becoming a "kind of sophisticated infomercial."

Apparently Muslims have learned a thing or two from America after all, according to Fouad Ajami, who complains that the Al Jazeera television network is guilty of "the Hollywoodization of news ... with an abandon that would make the Fox News Channel blush." Ajami notes that "Al Jazeera's reporters and editors have no qualms about challenging the wisdom of today's Arab rulers. Indeed, Al Jazeera has been rebuked by the governments of Libya and Tunisia for giving opposition leaders from those countries significant air time.

TV news crews that followed Northern Alliance forces into Kabul mostly provided celebratory coverage of victorious soldiers waving, crowds of people celebrating in the streets, and men defiantly shaving their beards. For the correspondents on the ground, however, the mood was less euphoric. "You can't trust anybody you see with a gun," said NBC news director David Verdi. "You just don't know. It's really like the wild, wild West.