I Read the News Today, Oh Boy

There are many unanswered questions about Neda, the Iranian girl whose tragic last images may signify the iconic moment in the Iranian revolution 2.0 (Youtube link asks you to verify you are over 18 to watch due to the "graphic content" of the girl's real time death). Time Magazine has a summary of how the video came about and the historic impact of martyrdom in the Islamic culture, Iran in particular. I don't yet know if Neda is authentic, or whether Neda is in fact her name (Neda is also Farsi word for "the voice"), but the video of her bloody death Saturday during day 8 of alternately surging and suppressing street riots between Mousavi supporters and the Basij has had a polarizing effect internationally. Hashmark Neda (#neda) is a popular search term on Twitter, and unverified tweets are reporting the mosque for her funeral has "canceled the program." Meantime, the Guardian Council has admitted to evidence of voter fraud in at least 50 Iranian cities.

The John Ensign scandal took a turn for the weirder this weekend when the Las Vegas Sun printed the letter where Doug Hampton tries to persuade Fox News that his wife having sex with his boss was a newsworthy story. (So nice he tried to keep the story in the family: "I could have sought the most liberal, Republican hating media to expose this story.") In the letter he says, "The actions of Senator Ensign have ruined our lives and careers and left my family in shambles. We have lost significant income." One version of the story has Fox anchor Megan Kelly apparently not seeing the news value and passing on the scoop and then losing the former cuckolded chief of staff's correspondence, but Fox says no such letter ever reached their newsroom. I still need a scandal line up to follow the gossip (check out my Nevada expert friend Sally Denton's analysis at Daily Beast), but I think that's when someone must have tipped the senator his secret was out. Ensign outed himself at a press conference his office says was to short circuit "exorbitant demands."

As Lynn Sweet noted here Friday, Judge Sonia Sotomayor has resigned from Belizean Grove, her all-women club fashioned ironically as an alternative to the 130-year-old all-male Bohemian Club in California. Although I can't imagine that the professional women with whom Sotomayor lunched intended to discriminate against the Y chromosome crowd, exclusion is dangerous to civil liberties. Justice Anthony Kennedy, President Reagan's third choice for the Court vacancy, resigned from a number of all-male organizations prior to his confirmation in 1988.

The most exciting story for journalists today is the midnight escape of intrepid NYT reporter David Rohde and his Afghani fixer, Tahir Ludin, after seven months of being held hostage in Pakistan by the Taliban. Rohde has not reported yet about his ordeal, but Ludin was interviewed Sunday. I predict Rohde's next Pulitzer-worthy news story (he has already won two of the highly respected journalism awards) is about to be written.