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A 26-minute speech from hiding by fugitive al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was the Story of the Day. All three networks led with clips from the feed from the SITE Intelligence Group of bin Laden's first videotape message in three years. His title was The Solution, referring to the War in Iraq, and it addressed the people of the United States. CBS and ABC continued to anchor their newscasts from the road: CBS' Katie Couric from Damascus, ABC's Charles Gibson from the WWI Museum in Kansas City. Not one of the networks has considered President George Bush's attendance at the APEC Summit in Sydney to be worthy of a single story all week.

For all the attention the videotape message received--CBS News analyst Michael Scheuer exaggerated when he claimed bin Laden "dominates the international media to the exclusion of almost everything else"--there was not much to it. NBC's Pete Williams heard "no new threats" and CBS' Bob Orr found "no specific threats." NBC's Williams sniffed at its production values: "technically flawed," he called it, "in well over half of it, the picture of him talking is frozen."

Instead of threats bin Laden bloviated. NBC's Williams was polite: "Apparently he considers himself a world political commentator. It is Osama bin Laden the Pundit." CBS' Orr was ruder, dismissing the speech as "new rants…a wideranging broadside against capitalism and democracy." ABC's Brian Ross noted that after he called for an end to the war "he closes by urging Americans to embrace and join Islam, pointing out that there are no taxes under Islamic law."

Interestingly, one of the Americans bin Laden mentioned by name was Scheuer, the former CIA spy, now CBS in-house analyst. Scheuer's anchor Katie Couric (no link) asked him which of his own insights had been endorsed by bin Laden. "This war has nothing to do with our freedoms or our democracies," Scheuer responded, referring not to Iraq but to the motives behind al-Qaeda's attacks on the United States. "It has everything to do with the impact of our foreign policy." CBS' Pentagon correspondent David Martin checked with his spook sources and concluded that bin Laden is now in Chitral, part of the tribal zone of northern Pakistan.

Having exhausted the so-called substance of the videotape, what else is there to say? That beard of course--"several shades darker than the last time he appeared," noted CBS' Orr. ABC's Ross observed that his "jet black hair, eyebrows and beard" look "phony" to some. NBC's Williams interviewed Arsalan Iftikhar, editor of Islamica magazine, who smelled a rat: "Arab and Moslem males would probably be less likely to dye their beard than any other men…White hairs represent dignity, honor, wisdom. It is a sense of gravitas in that community."

Andrew Tyndall 9/14/07 4:02:06 pm

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