WashPost: Almost everything sniper pundits told media was wrong. So much for the so-called experts. Paul Farhi and Linton Weeks write: "The important question is, was the orgy of speculation harmless -- or was there a very dangerous undercurrent to it? By saturating the public's consciousness with phantom images of thirtyish white men, did the media profilers distract attention from a more general and possibly open-minded search for the perpetrators?" A CNN senior veep says: "We have no regrets. . . . I think we were very responsible." (Washington Post)

• Kurtz: Unreleased info aired on TV news helped crack case (WashPost)
• CNN confirms it considered using "C.S.I." actors as pundits (NYT/r.r.)
• No TV pundit got even the broadest outlines of the story right (Newsday)
• Rosenberg praises CNN reporter Arena for saying, "I don't know" (LAT/r.r.)
• Rosenstiel: Washington media were "responsible, restrained" (WashTimes)
• Powers: Bare-bones wire stories epitomize new world of news (NatJournal) 
• Journalism prof says media were aiding, abetting sniper (MSNBC.com)

Several excellent articles on the abundence - and incorrectness - of much of the profiling done on TV during the sniper chase.  From Jim Romenesko's MediaNews

First Worm with a EULA?. ErikRed1488 writes "There is a new virtual postcard from Friend Greetings, owned by Permissioned Media that prompts you to install their software to view the ... [Slashdot]

Now this is a clever trick.  Since most people don't read the end-user license agreement (EULA) for software that they install, people who get this software will most likely install it without realizing that they're giving permission to Permissioned Media to send out mails to people in their Outlook address book and install whatever other software they may want to in the future.

Technically, this isn't a worm or a virus - it's advertising software designed to monitor user behaviour and deliver targeted ads using the information gathered while monitoring.  According to the Permissioned Media site, the software is bundeled with several different programs, including .mp3 players, screen savers, shopping programs and others.

Two years ago in Missouri, the former Democrat Governor, Mel Carnahan, was killed in a plane crash shortly before the 2000 elections.  Since they were unable to get a new official candidate on the ticket in time, Carnahan's widow, Jean, agreed to accept the Governor's appointment to the Senate to serve her husband's term should he win the election.  Which he did - beating John Ashcroft (and I've never ceased wondering why on Earth Bush would want to appoint a man to his cabinet who not only could not win as an incumbent in a state that often leans Repubican, but couldn't even beat a dead man).

Even though I'm a Kansan, I live close to the Kansas/Missouri borderline, and much of the news coverage here is focused on the Missouri side of that line.  I recall it being a difficult time - not just for people close to the Carnahans, but also for the citizens of Missouri in general.  Mel Carnahan was a very well-liked man and his death was a shock to a great many people.

Today, we learn, that Senator Paul Wellstone, Democrat in Minnesota, has been killed in a plane crash, shortly before the 2002 elections. Even more tragic, it sounds as though his wife and possibly children, were killed as well.

Wellstone has been a big target of the Republicans this year, largely because he has a reputation as one of the most liberal Senators currently in office.  While I know that this year's race has been tight and that - given the slim margin of control in the Senate - each race is cruical to each party, I hope that we won't be hearing of any tasteless jokes or expressions of relief that Wellstone is now "out of the way".  While it may sound somewhat outrageous that I would express any concern about that at all, what's worse is that I'd feel the need to express the same concern, even if has been a popular Republican that had died.  I have that little faith in the humanity of all our politicians.

I do want to extend my condolences to any who knew and loved Senator Wellstone and his family.  No loss is ever an easy one.  I also wish to extend them to the citizens of Minnesota.  Having seen how a death like this - right before an election - can cause a great dea of confusion. I hope that you will all be granted the comfort you need, and deserve, by Whatever or Whomever you hold sacred.

Bare bellies provoke a wobbly. Last week a group of angry young women stormed the offices of The Newcastle Herald to protest against columnist Jeff Corbett and his opinion of female midriff fashions, "belly blubber" and "horribly deep navels"... "At an age when girls should be striving to be pleasing to the eye, the male eye, these young women were going to serious lengths to expose an acre of wobbling excess. Haven't they looked in the mirror?"... Then he described exposed bellies as a form of terrorism." [Daily Rotten]

Ok, I'm a fat woman, so when I read an article like this, I tend to take more offense than others might.  But more than anything else, the assertion Corbett makes that there should ever be a time when girls should strive to be pleasing to the male eye, bothers me.

It's true that for most "love" relationships there needs to be some physical attraction - but that need should pass fairly quickly, as the physical body is one of the most changable aspects of a person, making it very unstable to build a relationship upon. 

Unfortunately, there are so many sources of pressure on women - especially young women - to conform to a certain body-type that we've seen a grave increase in eating disorders.  Anorexia is becoming almost commonplace as young girls stive to be pleasing to the male eye, as is bulimia. There are even "support" groups now for people who think they have the right to choose to be anorexic if they so wish.  I know many, many times I prayed and wished that I could be anorexic because I was so desparate to lose the weight I had gained - not so much so that I could be attractive, but so that people could quit being cruel to me.  Had I been a weaker person - and there are many times I've wished for that as well - I can easily see that I would have killed myself long before now.

Many will say that being fat is a choice - and that all one needs to do is eat less and exercise more to lose it.  Speaking from personal experience, however, I can tell you it's not that simple.  There are many reasons why a person will gain or carry extra weight.  But you know what? The whys of it shouldn't matter.  A fat person is still a person, with all the intelligence, emotions, spirit and such as any other.  I someone is not attracted to fat people sexually, that is, of course, their progative.  What I disagree with is with the constant message being presented by society, the media and peers that it is some kind of moral failing or social wrong to be fat.

An Angry Telephone Call Provided One Crucial Clue. The first real break in the sniper case came last Thursday in an angry phone call from a man claiming responsibility for a murder-robbery in Montgomery, Ala. By Eric Lichtblau and Don Van Natta Jr.. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

Today has been filled with good new about the sniper case, and everyone is spending a lot of time patting themselves and each other on the back.  But just wait, in a couple of days the criticism will start - did the police do all they could? Did the media say or do enough or too much? Should some clues have been recognized as important long before they were?

The story of how the pieces fell together is interesting, if a bit convoluted. The first piece of the solution came about on October 8th when a policeman in Baltimore noticed a man sleeping in his car - a blue Chevy Caprice - and made note of the car and its license plate.  At the time, no one recognized the car as being significant.  I suspect this will be the point over which there will be the most fingerpointing - people saying that he should have realized at that point what he had, thus ending the killings nearly 2 weeks before he was actually caught.  Unless there is other information I'm not aware of, however, I don't see that the office can be faulted.  There had, early on, been one report - one - of a dark Chevy Caprice being seen at one of the crime scened, but by the 8th, the focus for a possible vehicle had shifted to a white van or white box truck.  Add to that the conventional wisdom (and stated by profilers) that the suspect would be a white make in his 20's or 30's, and I think it's understandable why a cop might not have been overly suspicious of a black man in his 40's in a dark Caprice.

The next "break" in the case came once the police and the sniper began their odd communication. Apparently, the sniper called the police but the operator initially thought he was a crank caller.  He told her to check "Montgomery" if they wanted to verify that he was who he said he was, but since much of the killing had taken place in Montgomery County, MD, they cops didn't initially realize what the caller was referring to.  And interesting detail that the article provides is how the cops finally became aware of what it was the caller was referring to:  Apparently feeling that the police weren't taking him terribly seriously, he placed calls to two priests to see if he could get them to give a message to the police.  In an interesting bit of irony, the police contacted one of those churches the day after they received the call as they thought the killer might be a parishoner (though I've yet to find out why that is).  In the process of discussing that possibility, the Monsingior told the police of the call he had received, which specified that the police should be checking in Montgomery, Alabama.

Once they called law enforcement officials in Alabama, they learned of a shooting that had taken place there in late September, and that there had been an unidentified fingerprint found at the scene.  The local police in Alabama did not have access to the federal fingerprint files, and so they weren't able to make a match, but the federal officers working on the sniper case did, and traced the fingerprint to to the 17-year-old suspect.  That is what led them to search the home in Tacoma. 

As they gathered more information about the sniper, one of the things that cropped up was the description and license number of the car from back on October 8th.  Once the police scanners and news media began broadcasting that number it was essentially just a matter of time.  At 3am, a trucker pulled into a rest stop, noticed the car, realized the license number was a match and called the police.

While I still think the media has spent far too much time on this story and too much time in not only useless, but - as we can now see, misleading - speculation, I do have to give them props for having gotten that license plate number out.  That made it possible for the trucker to realize that he had found the car and facilitated the arrest of the suspects.

I have to wonder, though, if we hadn't been hearing so much about the "standard" profile of a serial killer, or speculation on what the killer might be like, if people would have been more open to a wider range of possible suspects that could have ended the killings sooner. I think one big quesation that will need to be answered is how the "white van/truck" became so much a focus of the investigation.  I suspect that because white vans and trucks are rather popular, and becuase the media had made several mentions of a white van or truck that witnesses were somewhat primed to see a white van, so if, in the confusion after the shooting, a white van happened to be in the area (which isn't that unlikely an occurrance), people would remember it.

Hopefully, this will be the end of the matter, and there are no other people out there who were part of the killings.  And hopefully, as the post-mortem is done on how the investigation - and, just as importantly, the coverage of the investigation - was handled, both law enforcement and the media will learn the kinds of lessons that can help catch the next person who goes on a killing spree even faster.