Media Roundup: Counting Teeth

The media reports on the Conrad Black trial, webbed overnight and today, have only one piece of news - a Conrad Black interview with the Guardian. The rest of the reports are either recaps or feature pieces:

1. Paul Waldie has a feaure report, webbed by the Globe and Mail, in the Travel section. It's entitled "Conrad Who?" Before discussing the downtown and municipal conditions in Chicago, it notes that typical Chicagoans don't care that much about the fate of Mr. Black because, when he was the CEO of Hollinger Int'l, he was hardly in the city. Mr. Waldie recommends seeing at least one of the two Chicago commodities exchanges, and the (wild) rabbits in Grant Park.

2. The Guardian has published an intro on its own interview with Mr. Black, entitled "I'm at war with the US government, says Conrad Black." It contains his justification for that statement: the U.S. government's violation of the Fifth Amendment protections it should be extending to him. "'There's a promise in the fifth amendment of no seizure of property without proper compensation. It's an outrage. Due process is guaranteed. It's not happening,'..."

3. The interview itself, subtitled "Not everyone would react to the prospect of 101 years in jail by writing a biography of Nixon, but Conrad Black is not everyone. Oliver Burkeman meets the defiant ex-tycoon." The meeting's subject is Mr. Black's new book on Richard Nixon, The Invincible Quest: the Life of Richard Milhous Nixon. Despite that ostensible subject, a book that Mr. Burkeman finds "a persuasive defence of Nixon," most of the interview article deals with the trial itself, including Mr. Black's self-predicted outcome: "'...stage three is where I win.'" Regarding Mr. Nixon himself, Mr. Black says, "'The US simply can't pretend that this guy was some aberration, some kind of mutant, who ran on furry feet into the White House and hid his real nature, until the brave people of the Washington Post pulled back the shower-curtain one night, saw the cloven hooves, and threw him out.'" (Mr. Black also has some unkind things to say about Tom Bower.)

4. There are three other reports on the Guardian interview: the first is from the Melbourne Herald-Sun; the second is from the Globe and Mail; and the third comes courtesy of the Khallej Times of the United Arab Emirates.

5. The third item in the Hamilton Spectator's "Business Briefs," entitled "Courts," has a summary of last week's trial action, with a reminder at the end that Paul Healy is slated to testify next week.

6. Another report by Mr. Waldie, also webbed by the Globe, discusses the old friendship between Conrad Black and Izzy Asper, put under strain by the National Post's coverage of former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien: "they also had a dispute over [it] that was so bitter Mr. Asper at one point said he felt 'embarrassed, humiliated and held up to ridicule and dishonour' by Lord Black." The impression of their camaraderie, as derived from letters they exchanged in 2000 and 2001, "indicate that the men were very close during negotiations for the Hollinger newspapers and talked extensively about their plans for the future." They also show a surprisingly creative duo of deal-crafters, if only on paper. It also reveals that the (in restrospect temporary) joint ownership of the Post fell apart as a result of the Post's editorial staff treating Mr. Asper's son, David, in the same manner as they treated Conrad Black himself, with regard to differences between senior executive and editorial staff.

7. Two of those letters are trial documents submitted by the prosecution. The front page of the Globe's website has two PDF links to them, reproduced here: (PDF file #1; PDF file #2.)

8. CBC News has webbed a recap of last week's trial events by Susan Berger.

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If you're interested, an unrelated piece by Eric Phillips has a quote from Mohandas K. Gandhi as its header: "'First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.'" Granted that there are four stages, not three, in this quote, but if you count the first one listed as Stage Zero,...

Also, in the blog "Small Dead Animals," item #6 above has been linked to too, with comments from SDA readers. One of them explains the tenacious support of Conrad Black amongst conservatives, journalists or otherwise, and may explain why there's so much media sympathy towards him, relative to who he (otherwise) is: when the proprietor of the National Post, he had brought real investigative journalism to Canada. As the commentator explains it, "My husband and I were National Post supporters from the very beginning. It's largely because of the Nat'l Post, under Lord Black's courageous, and sometimes outrageous, leadership, that Shawinigate, the HRDC, and other [Liberal] scandals were exposed.... [It] was a breath of fresh air, allowing Canadians access to what was REALLY happening in the backrooms of our political parties on Parliament Hill. Many of us already suspected the dishonesty and thuggery, but it's National Post journalists who did the digging and uncovered the unsavoury details."

(If you're interested, even Tom Bower allows in a tone of admiration when discussing the launch of the National Post. See Conrad & Lady Black: Dancing On The Edge, pp. 245-52.)