Prime time hostages: A case study of coverage during captivity

Media coverage of the hijacking and diversion of to Beirut of TWA Flight 847 on 14 June 1985 by members of the Shi'ite Muslim Islamic Jihad was characterized by several unique aspects. For the first time during reporting of such an event, the hostages, their captors, and Middle Eastern political leaders were interviewed live on American television. The media were drawn directly into the negotiations to free the hostages when the hijackers and Amal mediators delivered a letter from the captives to President Reagan via the crew of reporters at Beirut Airport. The hijackers’ awareness of the importance of news coverage was indicated by their continuing use of the media to communicate their political views and demands to government officials and the public. This paper traces the efforts of the hijackers to make use of the media and details the coverage of the event by the three major U.S. networks and other major news organizations from the beginning of the crisis until the release of the hostages on 30 June.     

Identity Documents,Welfare Enhancement,and Group Empowerment in the Global South

Abstract

Having a birth certificate is a stepping stone to acquiring an array of rights and benefits, including other documents necessary to navigate in and outside of one’s home country. Despite a birth certificate’s importance, many children in the developing world never obtain one. Whether a person does so or not often depends on ethnicity, race, gender, and age. With the rights of individuals as well as groups in mind, this article examines some of the crucial causes and consequences of not acquiring this key document. It concludes that legal empowerment matters. It also underscores what governments can do, if political will exists, to facilitate the process of birth registration and certification among citizens.     

Technology assessment in Australia: the case for a formal agency to improve advice to policy makers

The pace and reach of technological change has led to calls for better technology policy and governance to improve social outcomes. Technology assessment can provide information and processes to improve technology policy. Having conducted a review of international best practice, we established a set of quality criteria for TA. In effect, good technology assessments are systematic, broad, inclusive and well resourced and are conducted by organisations that are trustworthy and influential. Although not having a formal TA agency, Australia does have a number of recent examples of TA-like activities in the form of ad hoc processes (such as reviews and inquiries) and within other organisations. Drawing on reports, commentaries, discussions and our observations as participants, we have assessed these activities and processes against our quality criteria. Our findings indicate that TA capacity in Australia is fragmented, uncoordinated and variable in quality and impact. We conclude that a formal TA agency could improve Australian technology policy and capacity for technology governance that would be more in line with other nations, notably in Europe.     

Faith and economics in 'development': A bridge across the chasm?

Beliefs about the origin and nature of the universe and the place of humanity within it have seldom been considered of relevance for economic theory and practice. Yet, for the large majority of the world's people, a bedrock of strong ethical principles, based on their religious faith, is an essential prerequisite for long-term economic progress. The World Faiths Development Dialogue is exploring the possibility of bridging the apparent chasm which separates the secular development agencies, such as the World Bank, from the world's religions. What visions have the faith communities to offer? Is there a genuine convergence of interests?     

Simultaneous Lineups,Sequential Lineups,and Showups: Eyewitness Identification Decisions of Adults and Children

Two experiments were conducted comparing the identification accuracy of children aged 3–15 years (N = 307) and undergraduates (N = 384) using target-present and target-absent simultaneous and sequential lineups and showups. Correct identification rates tended not to vary across either age of subject or identification procedure. However, children show a significant tendency to guess as indicated by their lower rate of correct rejection when the target is absent. The tendency for children to make false positive choices was particularly evident with showups.     

Negotiating Civil-Military Relations in Post-Authoritarian Argentina and Chile

This article invokes game theory to analyze civilian attempts to push back military influence in two countries where the armed forces have enjoyed strikingly dissimilar levels of power and privilege after the transition of democracy: Argentina and Chile. It finds that civilian governments in both countries have managed to make progress in challenging military prerogatives. But they have made relatively more progress in areas unrelated to human rights. While civilians have had to respect military immunity in the human rights sphere, they have anaged to erode other limitations on popular sovereignty that the officer corps imposed as a condition for leaving power. The resulting accommodation I describe reflects the pragmatic approach to politics that civilian and military leaders have assumed in post-authoritarian Latin America.     

The Application of Missing Data Estimation Models to the Problem of Unknown Victim/Offender Relationships in Homicide Cases

Homicide cases suffer from substantial levels of missing data, a problem largely ignored by criminological researchers. The present research seeks to address this problem by imputing values for unknown victim/offender relationships using the EM algorithm. The analysis is carried out first using homicide data from the Los Angeles Police Department (1994-1998), and then compared with imputations using homicide data for Chicago (1991-1995), using a variety of predictor variables to assess the extent to which they influence the assignment of cases to the various relationship categories. The findings indicate that, contrary to popular belief, many of the unknown cases likely involve intimate partners, other family, and friends/acquaintances. However, they disproportionately involve strangers. Yet even after imputations, stranger homicides do not increase more than approximately 5%. The paper addresses the issue of whether data on victim/offender relationships can be considered missing at random (MAR), and the im-plications of the current findings for both existing and future research on homicide.