Sunday, June 19, 2011

Rich people and their money makes me wanna hurl/Thomas L. Friedman

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Thomas_Friedman
Excerpt:
Thomas L. Friedman is a columnist for the New York Times and has authored a number of books, including From Beirut to Jerusalem, recounting his years a reporter in Lebanon and Israel, as well as The Lexus and the Olive Tree, a defense of globalization and free trade.
His work has been critized for being a defense of neo-liberal and free trade policies and deriding those challenging these policies. [1]
He is also a supporter of the war in Iraq. [2]
He is married to Ann Friedman. "In England, he met Ann Bucksbaum, a Phi Beta Kappa Stanford graduate studying at the London School of Economics. She came from a wealthy Iowa real-estate family. They courted and married in 1978 during a small ceremony in London’s Hyde Park Synagogue." The article adds that "One irony is that Friedman married into one of the 100 richest families in the country a quarter century ago and now is far more famous than it is. The Bucksbaums, widely recognized as benevolent leaders in the real-estate industry and pioneers in the development of shopping malls, are worth about $2.7 billion. Friedman says his father-in-law, patriarch Matthew Bucksbaum, is his best friend." [1]
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/04/13/friedman_hotel_lede
Excerpt:
Thomas Friedman
At some point, not long ago, someone told jet-setting New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman to stop quoting cab drivers in his columns, and he largely has. But sometimes, the urge to explain big, complicated events in faraway lands by going directly to a service industry employee-on-the-street who sounds suspiciously like a fictional character drawn up to introduce a columnist's argument is too great. And so we we get this, the first paragraph of today's Friedman column:

When I was in Cairo during the Egyptian uprising, I wanted to change hotels one day to be closer to the action and called the Marriott to see if it had any openings. The young-sounding Egyptian woman who spoke with me from the reservations department offered me a room and then asked: "Do you have a corporate rate?" I said, "I don’t know. I work for The New York Times." There was a silence on the phone for a few moments, and then she said: "Can I ask you something?" Sure. "Are we going to be O.K.? I’m worried."

What is your favorite part? The scared foreigner asking the wise millionaire American for his insight and reassurance? The fact that foreign correspondent Thomas Friedman's method of getting "closer to the action" in the midst of a revolution is by moving to a closer Marriott? (After first "reporting" on the uprising, we must never forget, from Davos, where he was when it began?) To me, the best bit is that Friedman, who practically lives in hotels when he's not at his hideous mansion, has no clue if he should ask for the corporate rate, I assume because he rarely has to deal with nitty-gritty monetary details like that, thanks to his literally infinite expense account.
All this paragraph is missing is a tortuously mixed metaphor.
Oh, also, Friedman never answers her question! He doesn't even go back to it at the end or anything.
  • Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More: Alex Pareene

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Pulitzer_Prize
Excerpt:
Pulitzer Prize
"More than 2,400 entries are submitted each year in the Pulitzer Prize competitions, and only 21 awards are normally made. The awards are the culmination of a year-long process that begins early in the year with the appointment of 102 distinguished judges who serve on 20 separate juries and are asked to make three nominations in each of the 21 categories." [1]



Current Members of The Pulitzer Prize Board (Updated 12/06/07) [2]


International Reporting

  • 1980 Joel Brinkley, reporter and Jay Mather, photographer of Louisville Courier-Journal - For stories from Cambodia.
  • 1981 Shirley Christian of Miami Herald - For her dispatches from Central America.
  • 1982 John Darnton of New York Times - For his reporting from Poland.
  • 1983 Thomas L. Friedman and Loren Jenkins of New York Times and Washington Post (respectively) - For their individual reporting of the Israeli invasion of Beirut and its tragic aftermath.
  • 1984 Karen Elliott House of Wall Street Journal - For her extraordinary series of interviews with Jordan's King Hussein which correctly anticipated the problems that would confront the Reagan administration's Middle East peace plan.
  • 1985 Josh Friedman and Dennis Bell, reporters, and Ozier Muhammad, photographer of Newsday, Long Island, N.Y. - For their series on the plight of the hungry in Africa.
  • 1986 Lewis M. Simons, Pete Carey and Katherine Ellison of San Jose (CA) Mercury News - For their June 1985 series that documented massive transfers of wealth abroad by President Marcos and his associates and had a direct impact on subsequent political developments in the Philippines and the United States.
  • 1987 Michael Parks of Los Angeles Times - For his balanced and comprehensive coverage of South Africa.
  • 1988 Thomas L. Friedman of New York Times - For balanced and informed coverage of Israel.
  • 1989 Bill Keller of New York Times - For resourceful and detailed coverage of events in the U.S.S.R.
  • 1989 Glenn Frankel of Washington Post - For sensitive and balanced reporting from Israel and the Middle East.
  • 1990 Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl Wu Dunn of New York Times - For knowledgeable reporting from China on the mass movement for democracy and its subsequent suppression.
  • 1991 Caryle Murphy of Washington Post - For her dispatches from occupied Kuwait, some of which she filed while in hiding from Iraqi authorities.
  • 1991 Serge Schmemann of New York Times - For his coverage of the reunification of Germany.
  • 1992 Patrick J. Sloyan of Newsday, Long Island, N.Y. - For his reporting on the Persian Gulf War, conducted after the war was over, which revealed new details of American battlefield tactics and "friendly fire" incidents.
  • 1993 John F. Burns of New York Times - For his courageous and thorough coverage of the destruction of Sarajevo and the barbarous killings in the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
  • 1993 Roy Gutman of Newsday, Long Island, N.Y. - For his courageous and persistent reporting that disclosed atrocities and other human rights violations in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
  • 1994 Dallas Morning News Team of Dallas Morning News - For its series examining the epidemic of violence against women in many nations.
  • 1995 Mark Fritz of Associated Press - For his reporting on the ethnic violence and slaughter in Rwanda.
  • 1996 David Rohde of Christian Science Monitor - For his persistent on-site reporting of the massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica.
  • 1997 John F. Burns of New York Times - For his courageous and insightful coverage of the harrowing regime imposed on Afghanistan by the Taliban.
  • 1998 Staff of New York Times - For its revealing series that profiled the corrosive effects of drug corruption in Mexico.
  • 1999 Staff of Wall Street Journal - For its in-depth, analytical coverage of the Russian financial crisis.
  • 2000 Mark Schoofs of Village Voice - For his provocative and enlightening series on the AIDS crisis in Africa.
  • 2001 Paul Salopek of Chicago Tribune - For his reporting on the political strife and disease epidemics ravaging Africa, witnessed firsthand as he traveled, sometimes by canoe, through rebel-controlled regions of the Congo.
  • 2001 Ian Johnson of Wall Street Journal - For his revealing stories about victims of the Chinese government's often brutal suppression of the Falun Gong movement and the implications of that campaign for the future.
  • 2002 Barry Bearak of New York Times - For his deeply affecting and illuminating coverage of daily life in war-torn Afghanistan.
  • 2003 Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan of Washington Post - For their exposure of horrific conditions in Mexico's criminal justice system and how they affect the daily lives of people.
  • 2004 Anthony Shadid of Washington Post - For his extraordinary ability to capture, at personal peril, the voices and emotions of Iraqis as their country was invaded, their leader toppled and their way of life upended.
  • 2005 Kim Murphy of Los Angeles Times - For her eloquent, wide ranging coverage of Russia's struggle to cope with terrorism, improve the economy and make democracy work.
  • 2005 Dele Olojede of Newsday, Long Island, N.Y. - For his fresh, haunting look at Rwanda a decade after rape and genocidal slaughter had ravaged the Tutsi tribe.
  • 2006 Joseph Kahn and Jim Yardley of New York Times - For their ambitious stories on ragged justice in China as the booming nation's legal system evolves.
  • 2007 Staff of Wall Street Journal - For its sharply edged reports on the adverse impact of China's booming capitalism on conditions ranging from inequality to pollution.

http://blogs.forbes.com/kerenblankfeld/2010/08/18/the-tarnishing-of-the-bucksbaum-family-legacy/
Excerpt:
Bucksbaum family trusts to the company’s former CFO and COO:
In October 2008, the independent members of the Company’s Board of Directors learned that between November 2007 and September 2008, an affiliate of certain Bucksbaum family trusts advanced a series of unsecured loans, without the Board’s approval, to Mr. Robert Michaels, the Company’s former director and president and current chief operating officer, and Mr. Bernard Freibaum, the Company’s former director and chief financial officer, for the purpose of repaying personal margin debt relating to Company common stock owned by each of them.
Now, nearly two years later, the loan is being reviewed, according to General Growth’s 2010 second quarter report to shareholders:
In July 2010, the Company received notice that, pursuant to an April 21, 2010 order, the SEC is conducting a formal, non-public investigation into possible violations of proscriptions on insider trading under the federal securities laws by certain current and former officers and directors. The formal investigation is the continuation of an informal inquiry that the SEC initiated in October 2008. The Company intends to continue to cooperate fully with the SEC with respect to the investigation. While the Company cannot predict the outcome of this investigation with certainty, based on the information currently available to it, the Company believes that the outcome of the investigation will not have a material adverse effect on its financial condition or results of operations.
Time will tell what will come of all this. But with the Bucksbaum rein already coming to an end, one thing is for sure: the family’s legacy has been tainted.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Washington_Educational_Television_Association
Excerpt:
Trustees

Ann B. Friedman
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)