All Blog Posts from Public Eye

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, everywhere you go.

And watch. And read. And listen.

End of year lists or compilations and formulaic news coverage are as much a part of this season as egg nog and concerns about “The War on Christmas.”

Over at PR Week Hamilton Nolan observed that the ritual of end-of-year lists is in full swing already:

Birdwatching magazines do it. Beekeeping magazines do it. Even, yes, PRWeek does it. As the end of the year approaches, magazines of all stripes spew forth lists covering every possible lens through which one could view our world. Looks back. Looks forward. Predictions, analyses, bests and worsts, most notable people, places, things, events, products, gadgets, guns, and gewgaws.

Everyone from media critics to casual readers has grumbled about the profusion of these lists as long as they've been published.

Though I’m not exactly sure what a “gewgaw” is, but I wholeheartedly second Nolan’s notion.

But unlike the proliferation of summertime lists – which serve as cover for vacationing reporters – the end of year lists make an amount of intellectual sense.

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The Skinny, Hillary Profita's take on the top of the news and the best of the Web, appears daily here on Public Eye and on the "Evening News" page at CBSNews.com.

Following the New York Times leakage yesterday of the expected (lest we forget non-binding) report from James Baker-Lee Hamilton & Friends (a.k.a the Iraq Study Group) the Washington Post today has its own rundown of the panel's anticipated suggestions.

The paper highlights the group's planned recommendation to cut troops – potentially by half – by 2008. In case you live under a rock somewhere, that happens to also be the same year we'll be electing a new president. "The choice of early 2008 as a goal could also, intentionally or not, change the nature of the debate over the war at the height of the U.S. presidential primary season." Really?

Both papers and the Wall Street Journal's newsbox have an overview of yesterday's meeting between President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, following Wednesday's snub or no snub kerfuffle.

Graceful Exit From Iraq? Nah.

With that and the leaked recommendations from the Iraq Study Group in the air, Bush told reporters that Maliki is "the right guy for Iraq" and "This business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it whatsoever." According to the Washington Post, White House aides later modified that statement, cautioning "against interpreting that as opposition to any change in the U.S. troop posture."

Instead, according to an aide: "Some options being discussed by the Iraqi Study Group and his own administration's internal policy review, the official said, are 'things that he's very open to.'" Writes the New York Times: "the idea of a major and rapid withdrawal seems to be fading as a viable option." The paper emphasizes the same in a news analysis, aptly titled, "Idea of Rapid Withdrawal From Iraq Seems to Fade."

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