The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: Our summary of the news, then a Newsmaker interview with Iraq's ambassador to the United States, a health unit report on raising money to fight AIDS around the world, a debate over Bill Cosby's comments about young black Americans, and a look at the feeding of public perceptions of President Bush and Sen. Kerry.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Car bombers struck again today in Iraq, 120 miles northwest of Baghdad. The explosion killed at least 11 Iraqis, wounded 40 others near police and government office buildings. Yesterday, a car bomb in Baghdad killed ten Iraqis. Overnight in Kirkuk, a woman and three children died in a rocket attack. Today, gunmen fired on a foreign ministry car south of Kirkuk. The foreign minister was not in the car, but a staffer was killed. And in Karbala, a car bomb exploded near a Bulgarian military base after police closed in. Two militants were killed. Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi announced a new domestic intelligence agency today to infiltrate insurgent groups. He urged other Muslim nations to help Iraq fight what he called "evil forces." And he warned of difficult days to come.

IYAD ALLAWI: We anticipate the terrorists would hit harder the weeks ahead, and even maybe months ahead because they know that they should not give us a chance to equal our capabilities and security in the army.

JIM LEHRER: Allawi also said Iraqi police have arrested operatives linked to al-Qaida. He told an Arabic newspaper in London that one suspect was a driver for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an alleged terrorist leader. Thousands of Iraqis denounced al-Zarqawi today in a protest march in Baghdad. They also demanded Saddam Hussein be executed. A new video of a Filipino hostage in Iraq appeared on al Jazeera Television today. In it, he thanked his government for agreeing to pull its peacekeepers from Iraq early. That was a key demand of the kidnappers. Later, Iraqi police in Baiji recovered an unidentified, headless body. On Tuesday, kidnappers announced they'd beheaded one of two Bulgarian hostages. That country refused to withdraw its forces. We'll have more on developments in Iraq, with Baghdad's ambassador to the United States right after this News Summary. In the U.S. presidential race today, Democrat John Kerry accused President Bush of splitting the nation down racial and economic lines. Kerry addressed the NAACP National convention in Philadelphia. He sharply criticized the president's policies and his refusal to speak to the civil rights group.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: I will be a president who is truly a uniter, not one who seeks to divide one nation by race or riches or by any other label. You know something? The president may be too bus toy speak to you now, but I got news for you. He's going to have plenty of time after Nov. 2.

JIM LEHRER: The president has been at odds with the NAACP since the 2000 campaign. That year, the group suggested he didn't care about the dragging death of a black man in Texas. It has also called him an illegal president. Today, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that's why the president won't address the group's convention.

SCOTT McCLELLAN: The president believes it's important to have a constructive dialogue that brings Americans together around shared priorities. Unfortunately, the current leadership has just shown that they are not interested in having a constructive dialogue, by continuing to engage in harsh political rhetoric.

JIM LEHRER: The president does plan to speak to the Urban League next week. McClellan said that group has worked closely with the administration. A federal judge approved Enron's plan to reorganize today and emerge from bankruptcy. Under the plan, the energy firm will drop its name and break into three separate companies. Creditors will get back less than 20 cents on the dollar, or about $12 billion. Enron owed more than $60 billion when it collapsed in 2001. Inflation at the wholesale level fell unexpectedly in June. The Labor Department reported today the Producer Price Index dropped 0.3 percent. Falling food and energy prices were the main factors. And output at U.S. Factories, mines, and utilities also fell in June by 0.3 percent. The Federal Reserve reported it was the largest drop in more than a year. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than 45 points to close at 10,163. The NASDAQ fell two points to close at 1,912. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the Iraqi ambassador, AIDS funding, the Cosby challenge, and political perceptions.

FOCUS - SEARCH FOR STABILITY

JIM LEHRER: Now to our interview with Iraq's ambassador to Washington, Rend Al-Rahim Francke. Madam Ambassador, welcome.

REND AL-RAHIM FRANCKE: Thank you.

JIM LEHRER: Your prime minister announced the formation of a domestic intelligence agency today. Why is that necessary?

REND AL-RAHIM FRANCKE: No country can live and function without intelligence capability. In the United States, you have the FBI for domestic intelligence and the CIA for foreign intelligence. In Iraq, the security systems including the intelligence organizations completely collapsed in April 2003. They were formerly dissolved in May, 2003. They have not been put together again yet. You cannot have a functioning state without some kind of security and intelligence capability. This new directorate of security for Iraq is, in fact, not a brand new organization, but a recreation of an intelligence capability, intelligence institution that did exist and it is now being reorganized under the ministry of justice. And that's a very important change, by the way.

JIM LEHRER: And its primary purpose right now is to gain, to gather intelligence about the insurgents, the people who are creating these acts of violence all over the country?

REND AL-RAHIM FRANCKE: Indeed. We need intelligence in order not onto capture criminals after the fact, but also as a deterrence. And that is a very important item in our security.

JIM LEHRER: Much has been made over the fact that so little is known about these people. Even how many, for instance, Jim Hogan in his column in the Washington Post this morning was quoting an Associated Press story as saying there may be as many as 20,000 organized insurgents. Does that figure make sense to you?

REND AL-RAHIM FRANCKE: I don't know what the real figure is, and I don't think anybody does. But we do have a movement of terrorists that is composed of foreign people coming into the country, people who were allied with the old regime and who benefited from the old regime. And we also have both domestic and foreign Islamist fanatics.

JIM LEHRER: And they're all getting together?

REND AL-RAHIM FRANCKE: And this is a conjunction of tactical interests in undermining the system in Iraq. So I don't know what the figure is, but this is the confluence of interests that we are seeing operating now.

JIM LEHRER: It was clear at least in some ways that the U.S. coalition was unable to get a handle on who these people were, put them out of business. Do you believe that the interim government is going to be able to do that?

REND AL-RAHIM FRANCKE: Yes. It's a very different ball game now. First of all, the intelligence capability that can be developed by the Iraqi government is far different from an intelligence that is developed by the coalition because it was not a domestic homegrown intelligence capability. Now Iraq can carry on, and that's very important. Secondly, the ability of indigenous Iraqi security forces -- whether National Guard or police -- is being developed and they are better able to understand the social structure, and the composition of cities and groups that aren't gendering this terrorism, than non-Iraqi troops can do. And finally, there is a very important sea change that has happened in Iraq since June 28. The population is very reassured about the return of sovereignty.

And it's giving the new government its confidence and its backing. And the intelligence that we are now collecting from all new Iraqis, people who live in cities and towns where the insurgents may be operating, that intelligence that we're gleaning from the population far exceeds anything that was happening prior to sovereignty.

JIM LEHRER: Well, you talked about a sea change. You've also said in the past, you've been critical of the way the U.S. coalition took care of your country after, immediately after major hostilities ended. Did that set things back, are things going to be able to -- is the interim government going to be able to get things back on track?

REND AL-RAHIM FRANCKE: My major criticism, and that has been the criticism of many Iraqis, is that the notion of occupation and the implementation of occupation was not something that Iraqis wanted. Iraqis welcomed coalition troops and U.S. troops as liberators. But I think the notion of occupation weighed very heavily on Iraqis. And both in the principle and in the implementation, occupation simply did not work. Now that we do not have occupation anymore, I think we are back on track. I just wish that we had had a sovereign government a very long time ago, so that the coalition would stay as liberators and an Iraqi sovereign government would take care of day-to-day running of the country.

JIM LEHRER: How can there not be occupation when there's still 140,000 foreign troops in Iraq?

REND AL-RAHIM FRANCKE: Well, there are troops in Japan, there are troops in Germany, and until recently there were multi-national troops in Germany. There are troops in Korea, and in various other parts of the world. Do we deny that Japan is a sovereign nation? Do we deny that Germany is a sovereign state, or South Korea? I do not think that the presence of troops in the country undermines sovereignty. The Iraqi government is sovereign to the extent that it determines the disposal of its resources, of its funds, it determines its own political development. And it also organizes its relationship with the multi-national force that is in the country. And that is what sovereignty means to us.

JIM LEHRER: Your government has also recently offered amnesty to -- a form of amnesty to insurgents. Has neighbor taken the government up on that yet?

REND AL-RAHIM FRANCKE: Well, first of all, we do not have an amnesty law yet and that is under discussion. So they have not are issued the amnesty law. It has been talked about, and both the prime minister and the president of Iraq have discussed it in the press, but it is still something that is being formulated. I think there will be an amnesty law, but it has not been issued yet.

JIM LEHRER: And it will be amnesty for, how are they going to distinguish between good insurgents and bad insurgents?

REND AL-RAHIM FRANCKE: Well, this is part of the reason that you need intelligence, you need a National Guard, you need police, because that kind of way and that kind of distinguishing between those who can be given amnesty and those who can't is in fact a matter of rebuilding, reforming the history of the individuals who are going to be amnestied. You have to be able to assess the history of each individual before you can grant amnesty.

JIM LEHRER: Speaking of intelligence what was your reaction to these two reports this week, first from the Senate Intelligence Committee in this country and then yesterday a British parliament parliamentary committee on the prewar intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

REND AL-RAHIM FRANCKE: I'm not really in a position, first of all, I have not read the reports and they are hefty reports. But even after I read them, these are domestic issues, that I am not in a very good position to judge.

JIM LEHRER: Did you think there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

REND AL-RAHIM FRANCKE: I certainly thought there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I am surprised that none have been found, and I still do not exclude the possibility that some will be found.

JIM LEHRER: Why did you think they were there?

REND AL-RAHIM FRANCKE: Because for Saddam Hussein this was an important tool of his power projection in the region. He had amassed them before; he had used them before both against Iran and against the Kurds, and in some ways against the uprising in 1991, although the history of that has to be established. It was the firm belief of most Iraqis that this was inseparable from Saddam's image of himself and of his power, both domestically and in the region. As I say, I still do not exclude finding such weapons in the future.

JIM LEHRER: You were in the United States for a long time before the war began, and you were in fact involved in anti-Saddam Hussein activities around the world. Did you have information, specific information that confirmed to you, to your satisfaction that he did in fact have weapons of mass destruction?

REND AL-RAHIM FRANCKE: When you say anti-Saddam activities, I want to clarify that I was the head of the Iraq Foundation -

JIM LEHRER: right.

REND AL-RAHIM FRANCKE: -- which was a think tank, and which convened conferences and did research. We were not engaged in any intelligence activity.

JIM LEHRER: Right. Okay. Excuse my shorthand.

REND AL-RAHIM FRANCKE: The reports that I read in the press, including from Iraqi sources and so on, I felt were credible partly because I knew what Saddam was like and what he had in the past. I had no reason to disbelieve those reports. But then I am not an intelligence operative and intelligence is not what I did.

JIM LEHRER: Both President Bush and Prime Minister Blair have said, oh, well, it doesn't matter at all that it's good that Saddam Hussein is gone, it was worth the cost in lives, and in finances for us to do this. Do you agree with them?

REND AL-RAHIM FRANCKE: I think that getting rid of Saddam Hussein was a supreme moral act that the coalition did for the Iraqi people, and for the region, by the way. If you ask me, are we now more secure that Saddam Hussein is gone, my answer is yes. The Iraqi people are more secure, Iraq is a safer place, therefore the region is a safer place, and ultimately the civilized world is a safer place. I do not think that the removal of Saddam Hussein was a mistake; I think it was a good act. And I think we are going to be able to judge this; in time when Iraq stabilizes, we will understand the difference that the removal of Saddam Hussein makes not just for Iraq but for the entire region, I do not think it was done, it was a wrong act.

JIM LEHRER: Why is that it the Iraqi people themselves could not remove Saddam Hussein after all these years?

REND AL-RAHIM FRANCKE: You know, they tried on many occasions. And above all in 1991, when there was an uprising that took over 14 governates, the equation was unequal. Saddam had all the fire power, he had the arms, he had the equipment, he had the intelligence capability. Those who opposed him had only the force of their voice and their numbers; they did not have the means. And in 1991, perhaps as many as 300,000 people were killed as a result of the crushing of the uprising.

We have seen it in the results of the mass graves that have been unearthed since then, and by the way, the story of the mass graves has not been told in full. We have not uncovered them all. After 1991, there were self attempts, coup attempts, but they didn't -- they never rose to the level of a coup attempt; they were a conspiratorial sparkle in the eyes of some military officers, they were found out and there were many executions that ensued, specifically in 1996, as many as 200 officers may have been executed. It was not for want of trying. But we never made it.

JIM LEHRER: Do you personally believe that if the U.S. coalition had not gone in there and removed him, that he could have remained in power over Iraq for the rest of his life?

REND AL-RAHIM FRANCKE: Indeed. Not just for the rest of his life, he was grooming his son, Qusay, to take over. We could see a succession of a Saddam dynasty in Iraq, and moreover, one thing that people tend to forget, the sanctions regime that was imposed on Iraq and the regime of Saddam Hussein --.

JIM LEHRER: -- the UN -- because of the weapons --

REND AL-RAHIM FRANCKE: Right, was truly eroding. This is something that people either don't realize or choose to forget. We foresaw an Iraq that was still under Saddam for a generation to come and then under Qusay sanctions being lifted and the whole horrible story of domestic repression, weapons of mass destruction, and regional aggression repeating itself. And this was the scenario that we Iraqis were looking at if Saddam was not removed.

JIM LEHRER: Madam Ambassador, thank you very much.

REND AL-RAHIM FRANCKE: Thank you.

UPDATE - GLOBAL FIGHT

JIM LEHRER: Now the fight against AIDS. Tonight in Bangkok, the international AIDS conference wraps up. A key issue has been the status of a large global campaign to combat the disease.

Susan Dentzer, of our health unit, has a closer look at that effort. The unit is a partnership with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

SUSAN DENTZER: Mary Bardales looks like any other two year old, apprehensive about a trip to the doctor. In fact, Bardales comes to this hospital in her native Honduras because she has HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. She was infected while still in the womb, through her mother, Maria, who apparently contracted the virus from her husband.

Last year, the ailing mother and daughter started on a regimen of AIDS drugs called anti-retrovirals that the hospital gives out for free. Now they're both healthy, and Maria Bardales is grateful.

MARIA BARDALES: ( Translated ): I tell them, "thank you so much." God bless them. If she hadn't gotten the medications, my daughter would be dead. Yes, thank you.

SUSAN DENTZER: The Bardaleses are among roughly 1,800 poor and HIV-positive Hondurans now getting these antiretroviral drugs. They're being paid for by an entity most people have never heard of: The global fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. Those three diseases kill an estimated six million people around the world each year, and infect millions more. So in 2001, the world's richest countries agreed to set up the fund to plow large sums of money into fighting them. Dr. Richard Feachem is the global fund's executive director.

DR. RICHARD FEACHEM: We've raised, to date, $5.5 billion U.S., which is nothing like enough. But three years ago we had zero, so it's a big step in the right direction. The goal is to get to what we call our cruising altitude, our steady state of income and expenditure. And our estimate of that cruising altitude is something like $8 billion per year.

SUSAN DENTZER: But at this week's international AIDS conference in Bangkok, the fund's performance has been a topic of both celebration and concern. The good news is that the fund has come as far as it has in just two short years. The bad news is that it's falling far short of global health advocates' original goals. Dr. Paul Zeitz heads the Global AIDS Alliance, a nonprofit advocacy group. He says the fund may not be able to give out any money next year, and is unlikely to reach the target of granting $8 billion a year in assistance by 2007.

DR. PAUL ZEITZ: There is a serious risk now that the global fund may not provide any new grants during 2005 or 2006, and this is going to dramatically slow progress that's been made to date in the expansion of programs for people to stop AIDS, TB, and malaria. It's the moral question of our time. How could we let this dying go on when we have a mechanism that we know is working?

SUSAN DENTZER: Proponents like Zeitz say the shortfall is especially troubling since the global fund seemed to hold so much promise. Republican Congressman Jim Kolbe of Arizona heads a House appropriations panel that oversees U.S. contributions to the fund.

REP. JIM KOLBE: Well, I was a big supporter of the concept of the global fund from the very beginning, because I thought it was the best way we could get international support for HIV/AIDS, and I think in that sense, that it really has worked. It has mobilized the world community. It has brought attention worldwide to this, and it has brought a lot of other governments into it.

SUSAN DENTZER: Unlike most assistance programs, the global fund doesn't give money directly to governments. Rather it works through committees, made up not just of government officials in a given country, but also nongovernmental organizations, faith based groups and private firms. The global fund now works through these mechanisms in 128 countries and three territories. Zeitz describes how one came together in Zambia where he formally devised health programs.

DR. PAUL ZEITZ: When the country got together and applied for its first grant to the global fund, I got calls from Zambia from people saying, "Paul, you're not going to believe this. We all got together for the first time ever and came up with one coordinated plan." That was a dream come true, that all the stakeholders would come together, get a strategic plan together, and then the funding was available to actually fund that plan.

SUSAN DENTZER: So far the fund has awarded $3 billion in grants. It says the money will eventually pay for anti-retrovirals for 1.6 million people; support more than a million AIDS orphans such as these in Rwanda; pay for insecticide-treated bed nets to fight malaria, as here in Senegal; and fund drug therapy for millions with tuberculosis, as here at this Cambodian clinic.

SPOKESPERSON: This is her x-ray. We know that she's on TB drugs, she's on one-three - upper TB therapy, and I don't see any signs of active TB on the chest x- ray.

SUSAN DENTZER: All this has been possible through the support of 47 countries plus the European Commission, as well as a handful of private donors like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The largest single donor has been the U.S. Government, with $1.2 billion pledged through 2004. The U.S. contribution to the fund is part of the five-year, $15 billion plan for emergency AIDS relief that President Bush proposed and Congress adopted last year. This year, the fund has asked the U.S. for an additional $1.2 billion to be paid in 2005. But the Bush administration and congressional leaders said no. Instead, the administration proposed just $200 million more for the fund in 2005. Congress now seems likely to raise that to $500 million.

Now a debate is flourishing over who's being too parsimonious toward the global fund-- the U.S., or other governments. Some AIDS activists in Bangkok this week blame the U.S.

President Bush's global AIDS coordinator, Randall Tobias, said in Bangkok this week that the criticism was unwarranted.

RANDALL TOBIAS: This year, for example, the United States will commit almost twice as much to fighting international HIV/AIDS than the rest of the world's donor governments combined. So in the context of the facts, it really makes no sense.

SUSAN DENTZER: U.S. officials say other countries should step up their contributions. They point out that Japan has pledged only $269 million so far to the global fund, Germany just $300 million, and Saudi Arabia only $10 million. Last year in fact Congress grew so concerned about low contributions from other countries that it capped the U.S. share at one-third of the fund's total receipts.

REP. JIM KOLBE: It's a kind of challenge grant, if you will. We're saying to the rest of the world, "come on, you can surely put up two-thirds of this money. If we're going to put up one- third of all the money in the world for this, you can put up some of this." And at the moment they're not quite meeting that.

SUSAN DENTZER: Kolbe says that if other countries hike their contributions to the fund, the U.S. will consider larger appropriations in future years. Meanwhile, he and other Bush administration officials say the U.S. has other avenues of assistance-- specifically, the direct aid to 15 HIV-affected countries under the president's emergency plan.

REP. JIM KOLBE: We can move the money out of these by lateral programs in these focus countries very, very quickly, and that's because we have mechanisms, organizations sets up there, we have been dealing with this for a long time in these countries.

SUSAN DENTZER: But in Bangkok, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said focusing so much on bilateral aid at the expense of the global fund was a mistake.

KOFI ANNA: In individual governments begin to set up their own initiatives, they start from scratch; it takes longer, the money that they hold will not be spent for quite a long time.

SUSAN DENTZER: International officials in Bangkok warned that the global fund shortfall was just one sign of a growing funding crisis in the fight against AIDS.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: What Bill Cosby said, and the public's Bush-Kerry perceptions.

FOCUS - TOUGH TALK

JIM LEHRER: Those comments made by Bill Cosby on issues facing African Americans. Ray Suarez has our story.

BILL COSBY ON SHOW: Let's put on some music around here.

RAY SUAREZ: Entertainer Bill Cosby is known for making people laugh. But this summer, he's been at the center of controversy for his tough talk aimed at some in black America, most recently at a Rainbow-Push Coalition dinner in Chicago earlier this month, where he criticized some black men.

BILL COSBY: (July 1) You young men and old men, you've got to stop beating up your women because you can't find a job, because you didn't want to get an education.

RAY SUAREZ: Speaking to the mostly black audience, Cosby disparaged the casual use of racial slurs by African American entertainers.

BILL COSBY: When you put on a record and that record is yelling - (bleep) - and (bleep) that, and you've got your six- or seven- year-old sitting in the backseat of the car, those children hear that.

RAY SUAREZ: And he said too many black parents are avoiding personal responsibility.

BILL COSBY: It is almost analgesic to talk about what the white man is doing against us. And it keeps a person frozen in their seat.

RAY SUAREZ: Cosby came under fire for those comments.

REP ELIJAH CUMMINGS: It gives a society with racist tendencies at times an excuse. "They're not doing for themselves" while so many African Americans are working very, very hard.

RAY SUAREZ: It was the second time in two months Cosby's remarks drew controversy. In May at Howard University, Cosby said this: "The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids -- $500 sneakers - for what? And won't spent $200 for "Hooked on Phonics.'" He further clarified those remarks on PBS' the Tavis Smiley Show in May.

BILL COSBY: What I'm saying here... and the mistake I made was in saying that there are people who are striving and working in the lower economic area. The people who are not holding up their end is quite obvious to me: And that happens to be those people, to me, who don't have a clue of education-- learning standard English, math, and graduating from school-- what that has for them in terms of empowerment.

RAY SUAREZ: Cosby appeared earlier this week at the NAACP Convention in Philadelphia, but steered clear of any controversy and stuck to comedy.

Two viewpoints now on Cosby's comments. Dr. Alvin Poussaint is a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School and the Judge Baker Children's Center in Boston. He also was a script consultant to the Cosby Show. Ta-Nehisi Coates is a writer for the Village Voice and a contributor to several other magazines.

Well, Dr. Poussaint, Bill Cosby said what he said, and he clarified and extended his remarks. Do you agree with the thrust of what was he had to say?

DR. ALVIN POUSSAINT: Well, I think I agree with the thrust and his concern. I think a lot of people interpret it as him bashing black people, black poor people. He clarified himself and said he was not talking about all black poor people and so on, and of course a lot of black middle class people aren't doing the right thing too. But I think the spirit of what he said was he felt that the black community, particularly people who are not making it, should be paying more attention to education, basically was saying that, and that parents should be paying more attention to good parenting, because a lot of bad things were happening to our youth. And I think that's pretty obvious that it is. And it's at a crisis proportion in many of our cities. In Baltimore, 76 percent of black males don't graduate from high school. Of the two million people in jail, about 45 percent are African-American, most have been males. Of the homicides in the country, about 45 percent are African-American males, mostly killing other black people and black males. So there is a crisis, and the dropout rate from high school is still very high. It's better, but it gets camouflaged in the statistics. In Baltimore again, 50 percent of 9th graders don't graduate from high school. Well, if you get pockets like that in urban areas like Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, there's a serious problem for the black community. And I think he was saying people have to pay attention to it. He made the remarks in Washington when the NAACP president was there because he wanted to call it to the attention of the leadership in the country, and he wanted to make his statements go national. Perhaps he didn't say it with the best finesse and so on, but I think he was talking symbolically most of the time, people have attacked him because of the statistics. Unless you have statistics in front of you, you're going to get into trouble. I get into trouble trying to use statistics. But I think basically what he was saying is that we have to salvage more of these young people who are going down the tubes, losing their lives and so on. And even though we have that very huge incarceration rate, and in some cities like Baltimore and Washington, close to 50 percent of the men, the young men particularly under the criminal justice system jurisdiction in one way or the other, so there are problems and I think he was trying to call people's attention to it. I think that we should take it in that spirit.

RAY SUAREZ: Let me stop you right there. Let me get a reaction from Ta-Nehisi Coates. You got a couple pieces out of Bill Cosby's remarks. What provoked you to write and also respond to Dr. Poussaint?

TA-NEHISI COATES: Well, I think it's quite clear that, you know, in the African-American community there are plenty of problems and we can look at the statistics and see that. But in terms of Bill Cosby and the remarks he made on both occasions, I think this is really a case of perception first as reality. So when Bill Cosby called out young African-American women and says that we're having a four, five, six, I'm sorry, they're having four, five, six seven babies at a time, I have to look at that and consider that the teen pregnancy rate over the past decade among young black women has declined by 40 percent. When he says that young black kids are not valuing education, I think that disparages the very real fact that the gap in SAT scores between whites and blacks has been cut by half. When he critiques black criminality and sort of gives us this picture of young black boys running wild in the street, I think that stands in contrast with the fact that since 1994, the crime rates across the border plunged, and particularly among young black men. Not to say we don't have any real problems. There have been studies in New York that have basically concluded that among African-American men, the employment rate is around 50 percent or so. There have been plenty of studies that have looked at the fact that they have too many households in which there's only one-parent homes. So I don't think, you know, it's so much that we are without fathers, I think it's the nature and the way in which the dialogue is taking place. The solutions to those problems don't lie in attacking the way people dress, they don't lie in attacking the way people talk, they certainly don't lie in attacking what people name their kids, as Bill Cosby did. My name is Ta-Nehisi, my son's name is Samari, my partner's name is Kinyata; my best friend's son's name is Kamati... all these people are God fearing honest people who want the same thing that any other American would want. And when Bill Cosby points us out because of the way we talk, the way we name our kids as opposed to sticking with the reality, have you to wonder how much of this is actually about reality and how much of it is actually about appearance.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Ta-Nehisi Coates, is this a problem of a man who is in his late 60s being somewhat removed from youth culture and just sort of spraying it with buckshot? Or is this an attempt to provoke a conversation, apparently it's worked in getting people talking about some of the issues that he names --

TA-NEHISI COATES: Well, I would argue that in fact it actually hasn't worked. I can remember when this happened about, you know, ten or fifteen years ago when Reverend Calvin Butts wanted to take on some of the issues that were going on in rap music, as Cosby is trying to do now. And what I remember of Calvin Butts is most people my age remember him being angry and steamrolling a bunch of CD's. The same thing happened with C. Delores Tucker and it really didn't change anything. I have no problem with the debate. Some people have said oh Cosby is airing out dirty laundry. I think, you know, if it's a real critique, let's have our critique, let's bring out statistics to the table and let's have that debate. But let's have it honestly. Let's not have it by demeaning people. And if we're going to have it, Cosby at least - you know, it's not so much the problem that he's 60 years old, it's the problem that he's 60 years old and hasn't invested effort in researching the lives, the culture of young people. You can't watch two hours of BET or listen to a CD and then try to critique hip-hop, any more than I can listen to one John Coltrane CD and try to critique jazz or look at one episode of the Cosby Show and then try to critique the career of Bill Cosby. I think his critique - I mean, I really understand the issues; I understand why he's angry, but what we're getting is anger and it's not helpful and it's not productive in terms of an inter-generational dialogue.

RAY SUAREZ: Dr. Poussaint, what do you make of the critique that yes as Ta-Nehisi Coates notes there are real problems, but this didn't get at it?

DR. ALVIN POUSSAINT: Oh, I think there are real problems, and I think it is getting at it, I think the fact that Reverend Jesse Jackson has him out to address his convention, the fact that other black leaders all over the country, parents, people I listened to in the community are all very concerned and interested in what Bill Cosby had to say and most of them, I would bet, support what he said, that there are issues and problems that need to be addressed, and yes everyone would agree that there's been improvement in a lot of areas. But we're still far, far behind, and we shouldn't be complacent about our current problems. And Bill felt that people are too complacent and not doing enough. When we -- a generation gap, for instance, is that a lot of black youth now are anti-education and anti-intellectualism, who feel that getting an education is being white, is acting white. We never had that in previous generations, this is something new. I think this is very, very disconcerting that black youth are culturally adapting such postures when the high school dropout rate is so high, when they're going to jail at increasing rates, it's in fact really very high, and in jail about 70 percent of inmates have not graduated from high school. So Cosby's plea around educating, parents really tending to their children, reading to them, teaching them how to speak standard English is well taken and very important. I'm a psychiatrist, and I focus on parenting all the time in black communities, and it's something that they welcome in fact. And I think that we have an opportunity to do something here, as a population and blacks are stirred up and interested in this right now, because what Cosby has done to really make a difference. And that means a whole community, that doesn't mean we should ignore racism, there's racism in the criminal justice system. It means we also need good schools, but if he mobilizes black parents not only perhaps so they do better by their children but also become active in fighting for better schools in their communities, and interchanging more with the teachers, I think when we really want to find out some of the problems, we need to talk to school teachers in the community, parents in the community, where they're really having these types of problems, and they're not everywhere, but they are a significant part of black America at this time.

We still have a poverty rate of over 25 percent in the black community, and many of these problems are associated with poverty, and we have to attack that on all levels, of policy and so on. But in the meantime, we should not sit back and be complacent about being parents, we should always be struggling to overcome. That's been our history, to overcome and succeed against the odds.

RAY SUAREZ: Ta-Nehisi Coates, a call to action, if it starts with Bill Cosby and ends up being a dialogue among members of Operation Push, people who were delegates to the NAACP meetings, people who watched Tavis Smiley, is there -- does it eventually get to the people that Bill Cosby wants to reach?

TA-NEHISI COATES: No, I don't think it does. I think what I'm seeing right now is really a dialogue among people who are pretty much Bill Cosby fans and are of his quote unquote generation, and I about that I mean the civil rights generation. The problem here and I heard a lot of it in what Dr. Poussaint, you know, just said, it's not so much that we as young people are arguing for complacency or arguing for a lack of a dialogue within the community, it's that I would hesitate to say the entire civil rights generation has made up its mind about young people, but in what Dr. Poussaint just said, I think I heard the problem. When you say that young black people are anti-education, there's really nothing to talk about, because you've clearly made up your mind about young black people, Cosby has clearly made up his mind about young black people. It's not the sort of dialogue that seeks to ask questions. It's a dialogue that comes at us having already formed conclusions. And, you know, far as I'm concerned that's not a dialogue.

DR. ALVIN POUSSAINT: You have to speak the truth. If we have those types of problems, we have to face them. I think by denying them and left refusing to look at them the truth that, well, it's a fact by not Cosby by other educators and researchers in fact have given information and produced studies indicating that a lot of black youth feel that getting an education is acting white, and because of that they turn against education because it's not hip to be educated if it's acting white and giving up your so-called authentic black identity.

RAY SUAREZ: We have time for a quick response.

TA-NEHISI COATES: I'm sorry?

RAY SUAREZ: Go ahead, respond to that point please.

TA-NEHISI COATES: I would just stick with my original point, if we're going to have a dialogue, it cannot come from us making statements at each other, it has to come from us asking questions of each other. Missing in all of this, I don't see much dialogue with young black people. I have yet to see Cosby in any of these clips sitting down asking questions of young black people as opposed to making statements about them.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Dr. Alvin Poussaint, gentlemen, thank you both.

FOCUS - PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight: Campaign image making. Media correspondent Terrence Smith has that story.

TERENCE SMITH: How does the public shape its perceptions of the presidential candidates, and what are the dominant images of those candidates at this point in the campaign? A new study addresses those questions. Joining us is Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Tom, welcome to broadcast.

TOM ROSENSTIEL: Thank you.

TERENCE SMITH: You did this study with the Pew Research Center and with the University of Missouri Journalism School. And it's unusual in that you looked at the news coverage of the campaign, the candidates' ads themselves, and also the input from late-night comedy shows. What did you find?

TOM ROSENSTIEL: Well, Terry, there are these dominant themes, or master narratives, that take hold over the media, that are seized on by journalists in story after story, that are reinforced in the ads that the candidates are projecting, and that even-- when they really solidify-- make it to the late-night comedy shows and sort of become emblazoned in satire.

TERENCE SMITH: You have some examples in your report here, in the study, of occasions when that sort of mythology makes its way into the reporting. Here's one, for example, that we can look at, that is John Roberts reporting on the CBS Evening News on April 13. Let's take a look.

JOHN ROBERTS: At stake tonight is the president's credibility, chipped away at in recent weeks by the twin issues of Iraq and the 9/11 investigation.

TERENCE SMITH: Okay. "Chipped away at by the twin..." what's that based on?

TOM ROSENSTIEL: It becomes the conventional wisdom or the pack journalism of the moment that the 9/11 Commission and that the events in Iraq are going to erode President Bush's credibility, and this is the theme that sort of interlaces the coverage of these events. As the press has become more interpretive, it needs a kind of frame to relay the facts, because just giving the facts isn't quite enough in the journalism world anymore.

TERENCE SMITH: Okay. There's another example that you cite, this one from Tim Russert on Meet the Press, and this one deals with John Kerry and the accepted wisdom about John Kerry. Let's look at that.

TIM RUSSERT: The Republicans pounding away on the flip-flops of John Kerry, day after day after day.

TERENCE SMITH: The flip-flops of John Kerry. He's accepting that.

TOM ROSENSTIEL: Right. It's interesting when you look at the phrasing there, that he's not saying that they're accusing him of flip-flops day after day; they are hitting him on the flip-flops. The notion that John Kerry is a flip-flopper becomes accepted. And it's interesting: In the coverage that we saw, 44 percent of the time that these assertions are proffered, there is no actual evidence cited of them, by anyone. And this is one case.

TERENCE SMITH: So sloppy journalism?

TOM ROSENSTIEL: Well, it's just... it's an accepted idea: "Bush is dim" or "Gore is a liar" were two of the master narratives that we were able to identify four years ago.

TERENCE SMITH: And of course you have examples that you cite from print as well. One is from a page-one news analysis in the New York Times. It was published after a presidential press conference on April 14. And the author writes: "With those words, Mr. Bush drove home the single-mindedness that has become the hallmark of his presidency, his greatest strength in the eyes of his admirers, and a dangerous never-change-course stubbornness in the eyes of his detractors."

TOM ROSENSTIEL: These master narratives, in a way, are a way of organizing how we see someone. And so with President Bush, we know that there's these characteristics about him; now what do they mean? Well, to some people, in the looking glass, they're strong... they're strength; and to others, they're stubbornness. But they become sort of vessels by which you then organize all the facts and try and give them meaning.

TERENCE SMITH: Right, now, that was a news analysis so, that's somewhat different than a straight news story. But here's another example that you cite in the study, from the Philadelphia Inquirer, on May 17. "Kerry's public standing has been damaged by a Bush onslaught of critical ads, and many swing voters either don't know him or consider him a vacillating politician." Where does that last phrase come from?

TOM ROSENSTIEL: Well, there's no way that the reporters of the Philadelphia Inquirer could tell with any proof...

TERENCE SMITH: What many swing voters think...

TOM ROSENSTIEL: Because many swing voters haven't made up their minds, which was what makes them swing voters, and the effect of the ads-- we know that a lot of ads have been spent-- but they didn't know what the effect of these ads were. They didn't have any social science to back that up because we're just beginning to get that data now.

TERENCE SMITH: And yet your study found-- and the poll backed it up-- that if it gets out there enough, it becomes, as you say, part of the accepted wisdom about these candidates. Finally, in the category of the late-night comedy shows, which other polls have shown are, for better or for worse, the source of political information, particularly for a lot of younger people, you cite Jon Stewart's Daily Show. And we have a clip of that from April 8 of his making a joke.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: I do not believe that there was a lack of high-level attention. The president was paying attention to this. How much higher level can you get?

JON STEWART: Well... ( laughter ) I suppose it could have gone to Cheney. ( Laughter )

TERENCE SMITH: Okay, what's the subtext there?

TOM ROSENSTIEL: Well, the notion that it is a holdover from 2000 that Bush is really sort of not up to the job and that Cheney is the puppeteer. The thing about the late night comedy shows is that this is the place where old ideas never die. I mean, we're still seeing that Bush is a dimwit here. If something gets to the point where it's fodder for satire, it becomes I think very difficult to shake. We're still seeing... I mean, Dan Quayle is still the brunt... Joey Buttafuoco is still on the late-night comedy shows.

TERENCE SMITH: All right, and we have one other, one last one from David Letterman's show March 30, and this is, of course, a spoof of Kerry.

DAVID LETTERMAN: You know, there's a lot of talk about John Kerry, who's running for president, and a lot of people say that he takes one side of an issue, and then a couple of weeks later, if it's politically beneficial, he'll take the other side of the issue. They're accusing him of flipping and flopping, and I think that that's just part of life, but in politics there is no greater sin to commit than flip-flopping on the issues.

SPOKESMAN: Flip-flopping away.

DAVID LETTERMAN: Especially when they're important issues. As a matter of fact, did you see the C-Span? They were voting... the senate was voting today on an issue. Watch this. I think you'll find it fascinating.

SPOKESMAN: Mr. Kennedy? Mr. Kennedy votes no. Mr. Kerry? Mr. Kerry votes no. Wait, now, Mr. Kerry votes yes. ( Laughter ) okay, now he says no. Back to yes. Now back to no. ( Laughter )

TERENCE SMITH: Okay, all right. So there's the Letterman tape. But again it's the flip- flopping. That's the... now it's out there. Now it's part of the joke.

TOM ROSENSTIEL: Right, and I mean, I imagine if people are getting political information from these comedy shows, somebody might think that that was actual C-Span tape. You know, and the thing is, that you can't not laugh. This stuff is very funny, and when you laugh, what it... you know, this stuff then becomes not just an allegation, it's really how you feel about somebody.

TERENCE SMITH: Okay, well, here's the bottom line. If from your studies, did you find that this influences voters' attitudes about the candidate? Does it influence the way they might vote?

TOM ROSENSTIEL: Well, we know from the analysis that over time the press coverage is having an impact, that people who watch a lot of news or follow the news closely are more likely to agree with these master narratives. The ads, however, are having a much more limited impact at this point, which is remarkable given that they've spent almost $200 million already on ads. Kerry's ads are not... didn't have any impact, and Bush's only a very limited.

TERENCE SMITH: Okay. Tom Rosenstiel, thanks so much.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of the day: A car bombing in western Iraq killed at least 11 Iraqis and wounded 40. The Iraqi prime minister announced a new domestic intelligence agency to help fight the insurgents. On the NewsHour tonight, Baghdad's ambassador to the U.S. said Iraqis are giving more information to the interim government than they ever did to U.S. forces. And a U.S. federal judge approved Enron's plan to reorganize and emerge from bankruptcy. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening with Mark Shields and William Safire, among others. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.