daughter, and not only the kind of man that you would not leave alone with your son - he was the kind of
man that you would not leave alone with your dog.
Marian Javits, in particular, was charmed by him, and she continued to be his friend even after his stories and eccentricities had
become familiar - this despite the fact that one of his eccentricities had to do with her dog. Lying in bed recovering from a leg
injury received while riding, she was startled when her dog ran furiously across the room, dripping urine. A moment later Kosinski
appeared at the door. Later a friend told her that Kosinski had been observed abusing the dog in a way that would engender such
behavior.
(James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996, p. 263)
HOME DISINFORMATION 60 MINUTES 866 hits since 9May98
T.R. Reid Washington Post 9May98 60 Minutes gullibility
The program featured dramatic footage of a drug "mule" said to be smuggling several
million dollars' worth of heroin to London for Colombia's Cali drug cartel. The Guardian
reported, though, that the "mule" actually carried no drugs, that his trip to London was
paid for by the documentary's producers, and that many of the report's dramatic
moments were faked.
The instance of 60 Minutes credulity documented in the T.R. Reid Washington Post
article below occasions the following reflections, some of which demonstrate the
relevance of the article to Ukrainain affairs:
Successful Criminals Do Not Make Public Confessions. The 60 Minutes drug
smuggling broadcast whose title I will assume was The Mule shows individuals who
cooperate in a documentary exposing their own highly lucrative criminal activities
which is an incongruity. Successful criminals do not make public disclosure of their
crimes because this hastens their getting caught. I have discussed this self-evident
principle at length in Impossibilities of a TV documentary - whose focus is an ABC
television Prime Time documentary titled Girls for Sale featuring this same incongruity
of successful criminals disclosing their crimes, in this case the crime of employing
Slavic girls as sex slaves in Israel. One may say, then, that television news
sometimes demonstrates almost childlike insensitivity to incongruity, which is the same
as saying that it demonstrates almost childlike credulity, and that one incongruity
that it appears particularly insensitive to is that of successful criminals making
public confession of their crimes.
Television News Overlooks Many Diverse Incongruities. The earlier 60 Minutes
broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom is similar in that it was loaded with palpable
incongruities, though not the incongruity of criminals publicly confessing their
crimes. For example, while host Morley Safer is describing a pogrom which was supposed
to have taken place in Ukraine in July of 1941, the scene being shown is of bodies
lying on the ground in snow. Multiply this sort of incongruity a hundredfold - I do
not exaggerate - and you create the 60 Minutes broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom.
The explanation may be different each time. In each case, some explanation of
such incongruities is called for, and in each case the explanation may be different.
In the case of the 60 Minutes story The Mule, the explanation seems to be that a
fraudulent story advanced the career of a documentary filmmaker. In the case of the
ABC TV Prime Time story Girls for Sale, my speculation is that the story was true and
that it advanced Israeli interests. And in the case of the 60 Minutes story The Ugly
Face of Freedom, it is evident that the story was false, my speculation being again
that it advanced Israeli interests.
North American News May be Particularly Susceptible to Corruption. We have
three reasons for suspecting this, two of them coming from Reid's Washington Post
article below: (i) Reid describes London journalism as "furiously competitive" where "a