Reflections on Tibet

A portion of a taped interview I conducted aired on the CBS Early Show Thursday morning explaining my view of the Chinese government’s priorities in dealing with the unrest in Tibet – “Obviously, the main concern of the government is maintaining internal stability and...

The Tears of August

C-SPAN has just broadcast the first half of a two hour interview with former CBS newsman Roger Mudd. The occasion is the publication of his memoir The Place To Be: Washington, CBS, and the Glory Days of Television News. C-SPAN grand poobah Brian Lamb does his usual...

Dith Pran RIP

Dith Pran, the translator who survived the killing fields of Cambodia, died earlier today of pancreatic cancer; he was 65. He worked as a photojournalist for The New York Times. He was made internationally famous when the actor who portrayed him (Dr. Haing S. Ngor) in...

Anti-heroes and Anti-valets Upping the Ante

Robert Harris’s novel The Ghost had considerable success in Britain where it was seen as a very thinly veiled roman a clef. The just-recently-ex PM in the book, Adam Lang, overlaps in almost every way (up to and including the same number of syllables in their...