12 September 2006 @ 2:39PM >> “Danny” writes:

From: danny danny@studioanto.com
Subject: dumb ass
Date: September 12, 2006 2:27:17 PM EDT
To: Evan Coyne Maloney

Why not travel the world and discover a bit about other cultures? That might do good to your humanity

Thanks for the suggestion Danny. However, there are certain places in the world that I’d rather avoid, because I don’t have a strong desire to have my head sawed off. Having my head sawed off might not be too good for my humanity.

12 September 2006 >> Not only did Saddam Hussein have CNN’s chief news executive covering for him, it now appears that Saddam had a spy inside the Associated Press who was supplying the Iraqi dictator with information on U.N. weapons inspection plans.

AP bills itself as “the backbone of the world’s information system serving thousands of daily newspaper, radio, television and online customers” and “is the largest and oldest news organization in the world, serving as a source of news, photos, graphics, audio and video for more than one billion people a day.”

An organization that large is vulnerable to infiltration, and a lone Iraqi spy inside AP is not necessarily a sign of a systemic problem. Still, it makes you wonder who else has infiltrated the world’s big media outlets, and whether they’re having any effect on coverage. (In the case of AP rival Reuters, we already know the answer.)