Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Ridge Resigns; Protests Greet Bush in Canada

Aired November 30, 2004 - 22:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again everyone.
OK, here's the question for the night. Do you skip watching the commercials on this program? When you hear me say "This is NEWSNIGHT" do you start flipping around the dial for a couple of minutes while the creative work of the people selling insurance or drugs or Depends or whatever that sponsors us each night are airing? Do you watch the commercials? And, if you don't, do you think you're stealing TV?

Commercials pay for all of this and most everything else on TV but if you don't watch the commercials then the advertisers don't buy the spots, which means CNN doesn't do the news, which means my daughter goes to bed hungry. OK, that's a little melodramatic but you get the point.

A lot has changed about TV in the last couple of decades but the biggest change of all may be your ability to easily skip the commercials. To us, of course, that is no small thing and it may not in the end be a small thing to you either. The changing nature of TV and advertising is one of the things we'll look at tonight.

But we start with the main course, if you will, our lead and it's not pleasant stuff, new allegations of torture at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo, CNN's Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon covered, Jamie the headline.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, the Pentagon insists that its coercive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo might be tough but they're not inhumane. The International Red Cross, however, calls them tantamount to torture.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you. We'll get to you at the top tonight.

Canada next, President Bush making his first official visit, long overdue some say, CNN's Senior White House Correspondent John King on the trip, John a headline.

JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, this trip is designed to mend a relationship that has been hurt by debates over Iraq, also nasty trade disputes. Take a look at the streets here in Ottawa today it is clear one visit will not be enough to get the job done -- Aaron.

BROWN: John, thank you.

Another piece of the Bush cabinet in play tonight CNN's Jeanne Meserve with the watch in Washington, Jeanne a headline from you.

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge is leaving the department he helped create. Reviews of his performance are mixed and the list of possible successors is long -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jeanne, thank you. We'll get back to you and the rest as we go tonight.

Also coming up on NEWSNIGHT, in the woods of Washington a murder case complicated by a clash of cultures.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERIC ANTONSON, HUNTER: I think it's kind of a language barrier. A lot of these people come over they don't understand our rules and our laws.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: What one accused killer's actions may mean for an entire community of immigrants.

Also tonight, pulling up anchor as Tom Brokaw prepares to pass the torch, a turning point for broadcast news but where next does it go?

The rooster goes nowhere. He's in for the long haul, so are papers and morning papers will wrap up the hour, all that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin with new allegations of torture at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay. The accusations come from the International Red Cross. The Pentagon flat out denies them.

At a glance the outlines of the story may seem familiar but the charges, first reported today by the "New York Times," raise complicated questions about what in fact constitutes torture, the answer certainly to be debated in the days ahead, if not the years ahead.

We begin at the Pentagon tonight and CNN's Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE (voice-over): The International Committee of the Red Cross has privately complained about the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba according to a confidential memorandum obtained by the "New York Times."

The document says the psychological and physical coercion used in interrogations by the U.S. amounts to an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment that is tantamount to torture.

GEN. RICHARD MYERS, JOINT CHIEFS CHAIRMAN: That's one group's opinion and you got to remember, by the way, when you read this and I'm not -- we certainly don't think it's torture and we've been over this very carefully and it's not just the U.S. military. It's the U.S. government.

MCINTYRE: A statement issued by the Pentagon said: "We vehemently deny any allegations of torture and reject categorically allegations that the treatment of detainees is improper."

Human rights advocates say the Pentagon denials are not credible citing reports that prisoners have been stripped to their underwear and forced to endure bright lights and loud music in highly air- conditioned rooms.

SCOTT HORTON, AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION: There is a paramount authority in the world on these questions. That paramount authority is the Red Cross. If the Red Cross concludes that conduct is tantamount to torture that's good enough for me.

MCINTYRE: The leaked document also alleges U.S. doctors advised interrogators on the mental vulnerabilities of prisoners calling that a flagrant violation of medical ethics. Attorney Scott Horton says he's been told the report included accounts of interrogators asking doctors for specific guidance.

HORTON: How far can we go without causing lasting physical damage to this person? How far can we go, how far could we go to break this person?

MCINTYRE: The Pentagon did not respond directly to that charge but in a statement said "The allegations that detainee medical files were used to harm detainees is false."

And some legal experts argue that doctors don't have to put privacy ahead of national security when it comes to getting vital intelligence from captured enemy combatants.

BRUCE FEIN, CONSTITUTIONAL LAWYER: They would be derelict in their duty to stand by idly and passively with that knowledge and ability and do nothing to save people's lives.

MCINTYRE: The International Red Cross is granted access to prisoners on condition that its findings will be shared only with the government but in light of the leak, an ICRC spokesperson in Geneva said, there are significant problems at Guantanamo that still have not been addressed by U.S. authorities.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE: The Bush administration argues that prisoners at Guantanamo are enemy combatants and therefore not covered by the Geneva Conventions. Nevertheless, it says, they are treated humanely in the spirit of the treaty.

But the Bush administration also embraces a controversial legal theory that gives President Bush wide powers to authorize coercive actions which the Pentagon insists might be rough but stop short of torture -- Aaron. BROWN: This becomes semantics at some point but, if you're sitting in the chair or chained to the chair, it's not a semantic argument. There was the memo, the legal argument that came out of the Justice Department that said essentially if the interrogator doesn't intend to torture, no matter what pain he may inflict short of death basically that it's not torture. It can't be prosecuted.

MCINTYRE: Well, the White House has said that that opinion was one of many that was advisory to the president. It doesn't necessarily embody the U.S. definition of torture.

But, clearly, the techniques that you're talking about at Guantanamo, if taken to an extreme, would be considered torture. It's the application of these techniques, such as stress positions or psychologically trying to mess with the prisoner.

These are things that, for instance, U.S. law enforcement officials do all the time in questioning criminal suspects. It's not considered torture. It's sort of how far you take them. Clearly, the Red Cross believes this has crossed the line and the Pentagon is arguing it hasn't.

BROWN: Well, just one final point in the case of a criminal suspect in American courts who has a whole range of rights once that suspect asks for a lawyer all questioning has to stop. That's not the case at Guantanamo. Jamie thanks. They have no access to lawyers there and that's not likely to change.

In Iraq today the month ended much as it began, casualties mounting and a crackdown on insurgents going on. In the western part of Baghdad, a car bomb targeting a U.S. military convoy wounded five American soldiers. Three other U.S. soldiers were hurt in two separate attacks in the northern part of the country.

November now shares the grim distinction being the deadliest month of the war. At least 135 American troops have died in the last 30 days as many as in bloody April when again there was a battle in Falluja.

One measure of the new efforts to break the insurgency as well, U.S. military officials said today 23 suspected insurgents have been detained in operations in both the north and the southern part of the country in the last two days, this as Iraqi officials attended a meeting in Iran where they appealed to their neighbors to do more to help tighten border security and stop insurgents from infiltrating.

Half a world away, the war in Iraq was an undeniable backdrop for the first official visit to Canada by President Bush a visit designed in large part to mend a bruised relationship with long time allies who are also each other's largest trading partners. In mileage and in travel time the journey short but reveal just how wide the gap can sometimes be.

Here's our Senior White House Correspondent John King.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) KING (voice-over): The demonstrators numbered in the thousands voicing opposition to the president and to U.S. foreign policy they complain puts war ahead of diplomacy. Mr. Bush passed within a few feet at one point and was defiant when asked about his many critics.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We just had a poll in our country where people decided that the foreign policy of the Bush administration ought to stay in place for four more years.

KING: This two day visit is designed to put U.S.-Canada relations on a better track after disputes over Iraq and trade issues, so Mr. Bush humorously noted he also passed some supporters.

BUSH: And I want to thank the Canadian people who came out to wave with all five fingers.

KING: Mr. Bush briefed Prime Minister Paul Martin on a morning conversation with Poland's president who was launching a new effort to end the stalemate over Ukraine's disputed election.

The Bush administration will not recognize the declared winner because of what it calls widespread fraud but the president also hopes to avoid a major riff with Moscow, so Mr. Bush was careful when asked about Russian President Putin's call for western governments to butt out.

BUSH: It's very important that violence not break out there and it's important that the will of the people be heard.

KING: Prime Minister Martin was more direct.

PAUL MARTIN, CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER: Elections within Ukraine have got to be free from outside influence and that includes Russia.

KING: The president also made clear he is not satisfied with Iran's promise to suspend its nuclear program.

BUSH: Our position is, is that they ought to terminate their nuclear weapons program and so we've obviously got more work to do.

KING: Mr. Bush also answered critics back home who say he has not leaned hard enough on fellow Republicans blocking passage of the major intelligence reforms recommended by the 9/11 Commission.

BUSH: Well, I want a bill. Let me see if I can say it as plainly as I can. I am for the intelligence bill.

KING: The president promised to lobby GOP leaders directly when back in Washington later this week.

(on camera): The demonstrations here were another reminder of the difficult challenge facing Mr. Bush. He heads into a second term looking to mend relationships bruised by the Iraq debate but opposition to the war and to the president himself still runs deep in many places, including here so close to home.

John King CNN, Ottawa, Canada.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Before leaving Canada, the president accepted the resignation of his Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. In the broadest sense, Mr. Ridge's departure is the latest in the reshuffling of the Bush cabinet that began almost as soon as the votes were counted on Election Day but the turnover at the Office of Homeland Security is also a first, Mr. Ridge a pioneer in a job created in the wake of 9/11.

Here's CNN's Jeanne Meserve.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE (voice-over): He was the nation's official bearer of bad news.

TOM RIDGE, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: We are now at high risk of a terrorist attack.

DAVID WEYMAN, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTL. STUDIES: He will probably be remembered as one of the sort of a gentle warrior in a time when an anxious nation needed a calm voice.

MESERVE: As the first Secretary of Homeland Security, Ridge had the daunting task of trying to wrestle 22 separate government agencies into one while simultaneously fending off terrorist attacks. There were none on his watch.

RIDGE: And can I tell you today there are X number of incidents that we were able to thwart or prevent, cannot. Am I fairly confident that we probably have, yes I am.

MESERVE: But Ridge gets mixed marks on managing the department and securing the country.

STEPHEN FLYNN, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS: Not much progress has really been made on the vast majority of our critical infrastructure; that is our energy grids, our transportation system beyond passenger aviation, water, food supply.

MESERVE: Ridge may be best remembered for boosting sales of duct tape and creating the color-coded threat warning system.

TIMOTHY CLARK, "GOVERNMENT EXECUTIVE" MAGAZINE: It seems a bit like a Jackson Pollack painting, you know. It's eye-catching but it's really not very comprehensible.

MESERVE: When late night comedians laughed, Ridge joined in.

JAY LENO, COMEDIAN: I'm sitting at home in my underpants watching the game. We're yellow. What do I do now?

RIDGE: Change your shorts.

LENO: Change your shorts.

MESERVE: Change in the department depends in part on who fills Ridge's shoes. Among those mentioned Frances Townsend, the current White House Homeland Security Adviser; EPA Administrator and former Utah Governor Mike Levitt; former Virginia Governor James Gilmore; and Asa Hutchinson, currently a DHS undersecretary.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE: Ridge will stay on until February 1st or until a successor is confirmed. He plans to sit back and take a few deep breaths before deciding on his future, which some believe may include a run for the White House someday -- Aaron.

BROWN: Does the White House want him to leave?

MESERVE: President Bush liked Tom Ridge, trusted him. That's why he asked him to come to Washington. Word is the president still likes him and trusts him and there was some talk in recent weeks that he might be asked to stay on at least for the short term.

However, knowledgeable sources tell me that there were others in the White House who had come to realize that Ridge might not have the management skills that were needed at this point in time. All of that said, however, Tom Ridge obviously set the time of his departure. The White House did not have a successor ready to name.

BROWN: Jeanne, thank you very much, Jeanne Meserve in Washington.

Ahead on the program tonight a clash of cultures in the Midwest that much seems clear but did those tensions lead to six murders in the Wisconsin woods?

Also a homecoming that could cost him his life but he'll make the trip anyway.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I want to go there and help even if I lose my life, so I think it's worth it to go and help my family.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: One man's decision to leave the comfort of his American life to return to Iraq, a break first.

From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Murder, especially if it happens far from home, can sometimes seem one dimensional. A person kills another and becomes a headline. But read a little deeper and from that tragedy life invariably unfolds in some cases entire communities revealed. Take the case of Wisconsin and across the border in Minnesota as well. The headline reads "Laotian Immigrant Kills Six Deer Hunters" but the larger story, the longstanding tension between two cultures.

Here's CNN's Keith Oppenheim.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEITH OPPENHEIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When Chai Vang appeared in a Wisconsin court, some people saw a brutal killer. Police say last week when other hunters accused him of trespassing, Vang fired his semiautomatic rifle killing six people and injuring two. Vang's version the other hunters used racial slurs and fired first. He had to defend himself.

Joua Beethor believes Vang's story. He runs a video store near the heart of St. Paul's Hmong neighborhood where Chai Vang was living. Beethor's attitudes are shaped by his own experiences. He told us about a time when he was at a gathering of Hmong hunters.

JOUA BEETHOR, HMONG HUNTER: And somehow a white guy come in and (expletive) on your fireplace.

OPPENHEIM (on camera): You're saying that there were white hunters who urinated on your fireplace while you were having a gathering?

BEETHOR: Yes, yes, and they not treat people like a human being or what. I don't know.

OPPENHEIM (voice-over): Next door Nengma Vang sells produce. He's not related to Chai Vang but wonders if he was provoked. Nengma says he's faced ugly words from white hunters.

(on camera): Like what?

NENGMA VANG, FORMER HUNTER: Just say "You (expletive) Asian," all that and "Get the hell out of here, go back"...

OPPENHEIM: For no reason?

VANG: Right, yes, for no reason. They just say, "Hey, what the hell are you doing over there?"

OPPENHEIM (voice-over): At a bar just blocks away some white hunters explained their frustrations.

ANTONSON: I think it's kind of a language barrier. A lot of these people come over. They don't understand our rules and our laws.

OPPENHEIM: In other words, these hunters believe some Hmong follow the culture of their homeland where hunting is for survival rather than a regulated sport as it is here.

CONNIE BROACH, ST. PAUL RESIDENT: They should be educated on what happens and the rules and the regulations, the respectfulness of the boundaries and everything and I don't think that they're taught that.

OPPENHEIM: The Department of Natural Resources in Minnesota is trying to improve things by educating Hmong hunters.

(on camera): But in Wisconsin there's just one part-time staffer holding workshops for perhaps 300 Hmong hunters per year when thousands of Hmong hunters go there to hunt. Bottom line, conservation officers here are saying if there's a background context to these hunter shootings, it's a concern about education and that a divide between two cultures in the woods is still pretty wide.

MARK JOHNSON, MINNESOTA DEER HUNTERS ASSN.: Two cultures that have to understand each other. How we integrate that's yet to be seen.

OPPENHEIM (voice-over): And it's still an ongoing process?

JOHNSON: Yes, and it should be and it will be for a long time to come.

OPPENHEIM: Keith Oppenheim, CNN, St. Paul.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: A quick look at a few other stories that made news around the country today.

Clamor, more of it on Capitol Hill over the bill to reform the nation's intelligence agencies, you heard the president talk about that earlier.

Some members of the 9/11 Commission virtually begged the Congress to get the bill ready for a vote before the upcoming recess. Some 9/11 families divided over the legislation. Some family members holding a press conference today in support of the bill, others say it needs revisions.

A change at the leadership of the NAACP, the nation's oldest civil rights organization, Kweisi Mfume resigned today as the president and the CEO, a position he held for the last nine years and Mfume says he wants to spend more time with his family, has not decided what he'll do next, former Congressman.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments today over whether a coach, a male coach on a girls' basketball team in Birmingham, Alabama can file for sexual discrimination under Title IX. That's the law that bars gender discrimination in schools that accept federal funds.

It was designed to put athletics for women on equal footing with men. In this case, the coach contends he lost his job after complaining about unequal funding for the female athletes at his school and now the court has it.

It wasn't, I suppose, a matter of if just a matter of when and when came today for Notre Dame's football coach Ty Willingham. He was fired. He was the school's first African American head coach and made a lot of news because of it. He lasted only three seasons, which might make you think he was some sort of outright loser but the record tells a different story. His teams were 21-15, which is not good enough for the Fighting Irish.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, the end of an era, Tom Brokaw steps down tomorrow. We'll take a look at TV's changing landscape.

And a VCR that was practically idiot proof, TiVo, soon to be with ads by the way. Is it the wave of the future? And what does it mean to television generally, a break first?

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: New York City tonight. That's Columbus Circle looking down Central Park South and all those fancy hotels.

By this time tomorrow, Tom Brokaw will be history. He held the chair at NBC for a generation, a child of South Dakota with boyish good looks and a neighbor's approachability. He leaves, unlike almost everyone else who has ever held one of those jobs or I guess one of these jobs, by his own decision on his own time table. He leaves number one.

Add to that last week's announcement that Dan Rather was retiring and two of the big three are hanging them up, which raises questions about what's next and about the changing nature of TV itself.

We have two reports tonight beginning first with Senior Analyst Jeff Greenfield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): It's been more than a decade since anyone left this center of power but when one or more of the nine unelected men and women do leave no one doubts that the power of the Supreme Court will remain. And it's been more than 20 years since anyone left this center of power where three unelected men have held court.

TOM BROKAW, NBC ANCHOR: I've been in this chair for more than 20 years.

GREENFIELD: But now with NBC's Tom Brokaw stepping down and with CBS' Dan Rather set to leave in March, there's real doubt about whether the network anchor or even broadcast network news will be anything like the power player it once was.

(on camera): If the answer to that question is a likely no, the reason for it may be a lot simpler than the idea that network news has gotten too liberal or too elitist or too old-fashioned. What has happened to broadcast news is what's happened to mass media in general the arrival of competition.

(voice-over): Broadcast news came of age on radio in the '30s and '40s most famously symbolized by CBS' Ed Murrow reporting from London in World War II. From that time and throughout its first decades on TV, from John Cameron Swayze and Douglas Edwards through Huntley and Brinkley and Cronkite and Chancellor it flourished because it was literally the only game in town.

But 30 years ago, the widespread deployment of the communications satellite broke the network monopoly. Now the newly emerging cable TV industry not only had the space for dozens of channels they had programming for those channels from HBO to CNN to ESPN to Lifetime competitors by the dozens were born and that also meant something else to watch if you didn't want to watch the news.

Moreover, local stations no longer had to wait for the network news to show images from around the world. They could get them pretty much from anywhere any time and all of this had led to the declining fortunes of broadcast news.

As recently as 1993, more than 40 million Americans watched the evening news. Last year the number was under 30 million. But don't start playing taps just yet. This number still dwarfs the roughly three million viewers that the three cable news networks combined draw on an average night. Broadcast news still remains the biggest game in town nearly 20 years after its death was first forecast.

(on camera): There's one other change we should note. When Walter Cronkite stepped down in 1981 he was widely regarded as the most trusted man in America. Now after more than three decades of criticism, mostly but not exclusively from the right, a lot fewer viewers see broadcast news as an unbiased source of information. So, what it's lost is not just a lot of its dominance but a chunk of its stature as well.

Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: But there's more to the changing landscape. Five years ago, no one knew what TiVo was. Today it's a verb as in "I'm going to TiVo it." The product, which is like a VCR but better, easier and a whole lot smarter, changes the way people watch TV, not simply by recording programs far more easily than VCRs but by allowing people to easily skip the commercials and therein lies the problem.

OK, you may not think it's a problem but TV people do, so much so that in an effort to calm them down and to make a few bucks TiVo is about to become more advertising friendly but perhaps not friendly enough.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): It's an impish symbol that's synonymous with a television revolution.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, I love TiVo. TiVo's great. TiVo has changed my life. My wife and I, we were totally inept as VCR-users.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm not a technically savvy person. I had to marry him because I didn't know how to work the VCR.

BROWN: Faster than you can say program for unattended recording, TiVo radicalized television viewing by giving subscribers the ability to pause and then resume live TV, the power to zip through commercials on fast-forward, and the option of digitally recording hours of TV shows that can be watched later, making prime time any time.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "SEX AND THE CITY")

CYNTHIA NIXON, ACTRESS: My boyfriend, TiVo.

SARAH JESSICA PARKER, ACTRESS: Ah, you traded Steve-o for TiVo.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: TiVo became a phenomenon in just five years. But it's still not profitable. And it faces fierce competition from other providers of digital video technology, or DVRs. So, TiVo's announcement that it will allow pop-up-like ads in March seems a shift in TiVo's identity.

ROBERT THOMPSON, SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY: The idea that advertising and TiVo would climb into bed together I think makes a lot of people nervous, because a lot of people like TiVo because of the ease with which it allowed them to annihilate advertising.

BROWN: But consumers' ability to bypass TV ads has huge implications for the future of free television, which depends on ad revenues to pay the bills.

TIMOTHY HANLON, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, STARCOM MEDIAVEST GROUP: The television industry is basically in the beginning stages of a nervous breakdown. I think advertisers who use television and have historically liked television for its emotive appeal are finding that it's a much more difficult enterprise in the face of such technologies like TiVo and DVR.

STUART ELLIOTT, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": The effort has to be in the future to try to bring people in and get them to opt in to want to see the ad.

BROWN: The new TiVo ads will be pop-up-like billboards that appear during commercial pause. The goal is to entice viewers to opt in to watching longer ads. But TiVo's CEO insists this is only a subtle shift and one that has been overplayed by the media.

MIKE RAMSAY, CEO, TIVO: We have real some rules of the game that we want to play by that we're sticking to religiously on behalf of our customers. And we're going to stick to them. And, yes, there will be new capabilities. People will see new forms of user interface. All that will evolve over time, but the rules will stay the same.

BROWN: What is clear is that TiVo is taking all of us into TV's future.

HANLON: Sometimes, pioneers get a lot of arrows in their backs. And TiVo is certainly getting its fair share, both from the consumer side and from the advertisers' side. But, clearly, they are on to something. TiVo, as the pioneer player in DVR technology, is leading the way in how advertising looks and feels going forward.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: So, when we come back, what does this all mean? What if you stop watching the commercials? What does it mean for free TV? How will it impact the industry? How will advertisers reach you? Will you see more product placement?

We'll take a break. And we look at the future of our business.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Getting back to the TiVo business, which, in this case, is about the future of TV, or at least free TV.

Tom Wolzien is senior media analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. And from Chicago joining us tonight, a man you heard a couple times a few moments ago, Tim Hanlon, the senior vice president of Starcom MediaVest Group, whatever that means.

Good to have you both with us.

At the risk of offending all the viewers out there, there is, Tom, it seems to be, an implicit bargain that television makes with viewers, free TV makes with viewers, which is, you watch the commercial. That's the deal. And once they break the bargain, the deal falls apart, right, Tom?

Tim, right. I'm sorry. I hate when I blow the name.

HANLON: I'm here for you, absolutely.

I think that is the old way of looking at how television has worked. And, clearly, in the face of new technology that puts a lot more control in the hands of the consumer, I don't know if that bargain holds as much as it used to anymore. And I think we all have to deal with the consequences.

BROWN: But if it doesn't hold, Tom, then how do we pay the bills around here?

TOM WOLZIEN, SENIOR MEDIA ANALYST, SANFORD C. BERNSTEIN & CO.: It's a real problem.

Shows like this, networks like this, probably aren't going to get zapped for the commercials. But it's the prime-time shows. It's the movies. It's the expensive "CSI"s requests and "Law & Order"s that people can record and blow off the commercials then later on.

BROWN: Today, how do advertisers look at this?

WOLZIEN: With concern on one hand and as a bargaining chit on the other, with concern because they have to find ways to reach the consumer, because advertising is part of the whole economic foundation of selling stuff, but, on the other hand, as a bargaining chip, because, if you can walk into a negotiation and say, hey, I don't know if people are zapping commercials or not, give me a lower cost per thousand, it becomes something they can use.

BROWN: Tim, David Poltrack, the longtime research guy at CBS, I saw a quote from him the other day where he said in some ways he thinks actually when people fast-forward TiVo, they're paying more attention to commercials than they would if they didn't have TiVo and they were just remote control surfing around the dial when the commercial pod started.

HANLON: You know, I think that's debatable. And you could argue that because you are so involved with fast-forwarding to getting to the resumation, if you will, of the program, that you're paying more attention. You are more leaning forward, if you will.

But I would argue that if you challenge anybody to look at a traditional commercial pod and you fast-forward it at a decent clip, it would be very challenging to remember more than one or two sort of ad blips, if that, in a commercial pod. And I think that's the issue that is at hand, is, how do people retain those ad messages, if at all?

BROWN: You're shaking your head.

WOLZIEN: Not a prayer.

I watched "24" last year as part of my job. I was curious. It was research.

BROWN: Yes.

WOLZIEN: I watched "24" all year on TiVo. I zapped through every commercial break. I could watch the show in 40 minutes and 10 seconds, each show, which should have been called "16" instead of "24".

HANLON: Absolutely. And that's -- effectively I think what we have to start from is ground zero. And that is, imagine all the commercial messages not being seen. What do we do from there?

BROWN: OK.

Back when I was a boy watching newscasts on TV on NBC, there was a big -- or maybe not so big, but big enough that I remember it -- Gulf Oil logo on the desk, product placement, if you will. Is that where we're headed. Is there going to be Pepsi bottles on my desk and Timex watches and who knows what else?

WOLZIEN: I think key is how much the people who watch can tolerate.

One of the keys to producing is sort of to take the viewer by the hand and walk them through a complex storyline and hold on to them through that show. To the extent that things start to pop up and you say, oh, my God, that's an auto ad coming full frame at me or that is a Pepsi or a Coke, it starts to breaks that chain. And, ultimately, I think it has a detrimental impact on the audience retention overall.

HANLON: Yes. I think we have to go back to the days of when Pat Weaver was running or helping run NBC, when he basically introduced the idea that maybe separate advertisers, instead of fully- sponsored shows, might add their own ad messages in between those shows.

I think, frankly, it's coming full-circle now, where we're kind of looking back at the days before Mr. Weaver and starting to see maybe we need to reintegrate ad messaging a bit more into the programming, if need be.

BROWN: Tim, that got a little jargony for me. Do that one again in non-ad lingo.

HANLON: Effectively, advertising has been in 30-second and 60- second bursts and in commercial pods.

BROWN: Yes.

HANLON: And the networks and advertisers have effectively added more and more commercials to those pods.

So it's no wonder that consumers, when given the opportunity to avoid them, seven, eight messages in a row, perhaps a lot of them not necessarily relevant, will want to fast-forward through them. Thus, maybe programs, product placement, sponsorship and the like, may be one way of many that advertising can somehow reintegrate within into -- into the television landscape.

BROWN: Let me, in 30 seconds, which seems an appropriate amount of time, throw out one more idea, which is that, for an advertiser, a TV ad is an incredibly powerful way to send a message. You make these little 30-second movies. And there's no other -- a billboard isn't the same. A radio ad isn't the same. There's no other advertising form to me that's quite as powerful.

WOLZIEN: I don't think there's any question about it, which is why TV continues to gain advertising dollars, even though print, newspapers, magazines, radio have been having a tougher time lately. But television keeps gaining. So advertisers would seem to agree with that.

HANLON: If those ads aren't seen, different question.

BROWN: That's the fact.

Thank you both, Tim and Tom, for joining us. We have to watch those bookings. `

All right, we'll take a break. Watch the ads. We've got a lot of good stuff coming back.

This is NEWSNIGHT. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Again, 135 young Americans died in Iraq this month. And I read today that 17,000, almost 18,000, have been wounded since the war began.

You don't have to look far in Iraq for reasons to leave. Earlier this month, Doctors Without Borders closed its clinics, becoming the largest major aid organization to pull out. Staying in Iraq, the group said, had simply become too dangerous. The truth is, Western news agencies have downsized their staffs in the country as well because of concerns over security.

But that is not the entire story. Here's another piece of it, a story of going home, not leaving, going home no matter the risk, in fact, in spite of the risk.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): Iraqi-born, an American citizen now, living out the American dream.

JABIR ALGARAWI, IRAQI-AMERICAN: I'm a real estate agent and been an agent for two years.

BROWN: But soon, he says he'll return home to Iraq, a place that is much more nightmare than dream.

ALGARAWI: I want to go there and help, too, even if I lose my life. So I think it's worth it to go and help my family there.

BROWN: There is a small town in the southern part of Iraq, not far from the Iranian border, a decision he insists that was not that difficult to make.

ALGARAWI: It's a duty toward the people in Iraq and toward this country. Every day, we sacrifice soldiers. And I feel I want to help.

BROWN: Jabir Algarawi is someone the Americans covet. He is a Shia, a Shia who worked for the coalition provisional authority after the American invasion. He helped set up local civic organizations, helped create regional women's groups as well. Then, last spring, as insurgents ratcheted up their attacks, one of the women he worked with, he recruited, was murdered.

ALGARAWI: She gave her life for the new Iraq. And I felt very sad. But the people condemned the incident. And, unfortunately, it was chaos.

BROWN: Nonetheless, he is going back, ironically, he says, to complete the work he did before the war began. He was among the 200 or so Iraqi-Americans who contributed to a 13-volume report commissioned by the State Department on shaping a post-Saddam Iraq, a report effectively shelved by the Pentagon in the days after the invasion. ALGARAWI: That plan was put on the side. And that one of the problem I believe we are facing now in Iraq with the chaos situation. The plan, didn't use it. So, our military went with no plan.

BROWN: Those volumes, he says, still are valid, still hold the key to a safe and functioning Iraq.

ALGARAWI: There is a lot of need to educate these figures to work with the Iraqis. So that document and that paper and that information, it has all the information, what they need to -- how they can work with the Iraqi and how they can peace -- toward the situation.

BROWN: And aside from his personal safety, he says he has but one worry.

ALGARAWI: I'm worried as an Iraqi-American. I'm worried myself the U.S. is going to give up. As an American, I want the mission accomplished. I don't want to feel we failed as Americans to accomplish and being defeated by a small group of criminal.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: One man's story tonight.

Take a break. Morning papers coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: OK, time to check morning papers from around the country and around the country I think today is pretty much it.

We'll start with "The Washington Times," because it's winter and I felt like baseball today. "Council Narrowly OKs Ballpark; 6-4 Approval Illustrates Sharp Divide." They're going to build a ballpark in the nation's capital because they have got a baseball team, the Montreal Expos moving down there to become the nationals. "Bush Defends Foreign Policy in Canada Trip." Well, of course he did.

"Stars and Stripes." There's an interesting pattern today, I think. "Stars and Stripes" leads as you would expect: "135 U.S. Dead in November, Matches Worst Month in Iraq. Car Bomb Kills Five Iraqis. Three U.S. Troops Among the Injured" is the lead.

"The Oregonian," down at the corner, OK? "Fallen Soldier Remembered as a Patriot," another Iraqi death story on the front page.

"The Des Moines Register." In today's edition, "Iowans Killed in Deadliest Month. Army Guard Soldier is Latest Victim." A Marine was among the 135 U.S. troops to die.

"Plattsville Journal." That's Plattsville, Wisconsin, I'm willing to bet a small amount of money. "Plattsville Native Saves Child's Life While Serving in Tallil, Iraq." So better news story, that. And that's a nice photo. And God bless that young man for doing that work over there.

"The Chattanooga Times Free Press." Something about this headline that made me nuts. "No Soft Shell Vehicles. Supply Officer Says All Military Transportation Going Into Iraq Will Be Armored." You know, we've been there a while.

"San Antonio Express-News." "Homeland Security Boss Quits." He made -- Tom Ridge made the front page in most papers.

By the way, the weather in Chicago tomorrow.

(CHIMES)

BROWN: I love that. "Sluggish."

We'll wrap it up in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: You know, I was just thinking, you might want to sleep in and TiVo "AMERICAN MORNING." And here are some of the stories you will see.

Here's Soledad.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks, Aaron.

Tomorrow on "AMERICAN MORNING," he blew the whistle on an Alabama school that refused to support the women's basketball team. Then, he got fired. Now, coach Roderick Jackson wants the same protection under the landmark law Title IX that female athletes get. Can he do that? We're going to meet the coach who is putting Title IX to the test -- CNN tomorrow, 7:00 a.m. Eastern.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: The case went before the Supreme Court today.

"LOU DOBBS TONIGHT" next for most of you.

We're back tomorrow, 10:00 Eastern time. We trust you'll join us and that you'll watch not just the program, but every one of the commercials, won't you?

We'll see you tomorrow. Good night for all of us.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired November 30, 2004 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again everyone.
OK, here's the question for the night. Do you skip watching the commercials on this program? When you hear me say "This is NEWSNIGHT" do you start flipping around the dial for a couple of minutes while the creative work of the people selling insurance or drugs or Depends or whatever that sponsors us each night are airing? Do you watch the commercials? And, if you don't, do you think you're stealing TV?

Commercials pay for all of this and most everything else on TV but if you don't watch the commercials then the advertisers don't buy the spots, which means CNN doesn't do the news, which means my daughter goes to bed hungry. OK, that's a little melodramatic but you get the point.

A lot has changed about TV in the last couple of decades but the biggest change of all may be your ability to easily skip the commercials. To us, of course, that is no small thing and it may not in the end be a small thing to you either. The changing nature of TV and advertising is one of the things we'll look at tonight.

But we start with the main course, if you will, our lead and it's not pleasant stuff, new allegations of torture at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo, CNN's Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon covered, Jamie the headline.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, the Pentagon insists that its coercive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo might be tough but they're not inhumane. The International Red Cross, however, calls them tantamount to torture.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you. We'll get to you at the top tonight.

Canada next, President Bush making his first official visit, long overdue some say, CNN's Senior White House Correspondent John King on the trip, John a headline.

JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, this trip is designed to mend a relationship that has been hurt by debates over Iraq, also nasty trade disputes. Take a look at the streets here in Ottawa today it is clear one visit will not be enough to get the job done -- Aaron.

BROWN: John, thank you.

Another piece of the Bush cabinet in play tonight CNN's Jeanne Meserve with the watch in Washington, Jeanne a headline from you.

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge is leaving the department he helped create. Reviews of his performance are mixed and the list of possible successors is long -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jeanne, thank you. We'll get back to you and the rest as we go tonight.

Also coming up on NEWSNIGHT, in the woods of Washington a murder case complicated by a clash of cultures.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERIC ANTONSON, HUNTER: I think it's kind of a language barrier. A lot of these people come over they don't understand our rules and our laws.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: What one accused killer's actions may mean for an entire community of immigrants.

Also tonight, pulling up anchor as Tom Brokaw prepares to pass the torch, a turning point for broadcast news but where next does it go?

The rooster goes nowhere. He's in for the long haul, so are papers and morning papers will wrap up the hour, all that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin with new allegations of torture at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay. The accusations come from the International Red Cross. The Pentagon flat out denies them.

At a glance the outlines of the story may seem familiar but the charges, first reported today by the "New York Times," raise complicated questions about what in fact constitutes torture, the answer certainly to be debated in the days ahead, if not the years ahead.

We begin at the Pentagon tonight and CNN's Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE (voice-over): The International Committee of the Red Cross has privately complained about the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba according to a confidential memorandum obtained by the "New York Times."

The document says the psychological and physical coercion used in interrogations by the U.S. amounts to an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment that is tantamount to torture.

GEN. RICHARD MYERS, JOINT CHIEFS CHAIRMAN: That's one group's opinion and you got to remember, by the way, when you read this and I'm not -- we certainly don't think it's torture and we've been over this very carefully and it's not just the U.S. military. It's the U.S. government.

MCINTYRE: A statement issued by the Pentagon said: "We vehemently deny any allegations of torture and reject categorically allegations that the treatment of detainees is improper."

Human rights advocates say the Pentagon denials are not credible citing reports that prisoners have been stripped to their underwear and forced to endure bright lights and loud music in highly air- conditioned rooms.

SCOTT HORTON, AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION: There is a paramount authority in the world on these questions. That paramount authority is the Red Cross. If the Red Cross concludes that conduct is tantamount to torture that's good enough for me.

MCINTYRE: The leaked document also alleges U.S. doctors advised interrogators on the mental vulnerabilities of prisoners calling that a flagrant violation of medical ethics. Attorney Scott Horton says he's been told the report included accounts of interrogators asking doctors for specific guidance.

HORTON: How far can we go without causing lasting physical damage to this person? How far can we go, how far could we go to break this person?

MCINTYRE: The Pentagon did not respond directly to that charge but in a statement said "The allegations that detainee medical files were used to harm detainees is false."

And some legal experts argue that doctors don't have to put privacy ahead of national security when it comes to getting vital intelligence from captured enemy combatants.

BRUCE FEIN, CONSTITUTIONAL LAWYER: They would be derelict in their duty to stand by idly and passively with that knowledge and ability and do nothing to save people's lives.

MCINTYRE: The International Red Cross is granted access to prisoners on condition that its findings will be shared only with the government but in light of the leak, an ICRC spokesperson in Geneva said, there are significant problems at Guantanamo that still have not been addressed by U.S. authorities.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE: The Bush administration argues that prisoners at Guantanamo are enemy combatants and therefore not covered by the Geneva Conventions. Nevertheless, it says, they are treated humanely in the spirit of the treaty.

But the Bush administration also embraces a controversial legal theory that gives President Bush wide powers to authorize coercive actions which the Pentagon insists might be rough but stop short of torture -- Aaron. BROWN: This becomes semantics at some point but, if you're sitting in the chair or chained to the chair, it's not a semantic argument. There was the memo, the legal argument that came out of the Justice Department that said essentially if the interrogator doesn't intend to torture, no matter what pain he may inflict short of death basically that it's not torture. It can't be prosecuted.

MCINTYRE: Well, the White House has said that that opinion was one of many that was advisory to the president. It doesn't necessarily embody the U.S. definition of torture.

But, clearly, the techniques that you're talking about at Guantanamo, if taken to an extreme, would be considered torture. It's the application of these techniques, such as stress positions or psychologically trying to mess with the prisoner.

These are things that, for instance, U.S. law enforcement officials do all the time in questioning criminal suspects. It's not considered torture. It's sort of how far you take them. Clearly, the Red Cross believes this has crossed the line and the Pentagon is arguing it hasn't.

BROWN: Well, just one final point in the case of a criminal suspect in American courts who has a whole range of rights once that suspect asks for a lawyer all questioning has to stop. That's not the case at Guantanamo. Jamie thanks. They have no access to lawyers there and that's not likely to change.

In Iraq today the month ended much as it began, casualties mounting and a crackdown on insurgents going on. In the western part of Baghdad, a car bomb targeting a U.S. military convoy wounded five American soldiers. Three other U.S. soldiers were hurt in two separate attacks in the northern part of the country.

November now shares the grim distinction being the deadliest month of the war. At least 135 American troops have died in the last 30 days as many as in bloody April when again there was a battle in Falluja.

One measure of the new efforts to break the insurgency as well, U.S. military officials said today 23 suspected insurgents have been detained in operations in both the north and the southern part of the country in the last two days, this as Iraqi officials attended a meeting in Iran where they appealed to their neighbors to do more to help tighten border security and stop insurgents from infiltrating.

Half a world away, the war in Iraq was an undeniable backdrop for the first official visit to Canada by President Bush a visit designed in large part to mend a bruised relationship with long time allies who are also each other's largest trading partners. In mileage and in travel time the journey short but reveal just how wide the gap can sometimes be.

Here's our Senior White House Correspondent John King.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) KING (voice-over): The demonstrators numbered in the thousands voicing opposition to the president and to U.S. foreign policy they complain puts war ahead of diplomacy. Mr. Bush passed within a few feet at one point and was defiant when asked about his many critics.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We just had a poll in our country where people decided that the foreign policy of the Bush administration ought to stay in place for four more years.

KING: This two day visit is designed to put U.S.-Canada relations on a better track after disputes over Iraq and trade issues, so Mr. Bush humorously noted he also passed some supporters.

BUSH: And I want to thank the Canadian people who came out to wave with all five fingers.

KING: Mr. Bush briefed Prime Minister Paul Martin on a morning conversation with Poland's president who was launching a new effort to end the stalemate over Ukraine's disputed election.

The Bush administration will not recognize the declared winner because of what it calls widespread fraud but the president also hopes to avoid a major riff with Moscow, so Mr. Bush was careful when asked about Russian President Putin's call for western governments to butt out.

BUSH: It's very important that violence not break out there and it's important that the will of the people be heard.

KING: Prime Minister Martin was more direct.

PAUL MARTIN, CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER: Elections within Ukraine have got to be free from outside influence and that includes Russia.

KING: The president also made clear he is not satisfied with Iran's promise to suspend its nuclear program.

BUSH: Our position is, is that they ought to terminate their nuclear weapons program and so we've obviously got more work to do.

KING: Mr. Bush also answered critics back home who say he has not leaned hard enough on fellow Republicans blocking passage of the major intelligence reforms recommended by the 9/11 Commission.

BUSH: Well, I want a bill. Let me see if I can say it as plainly as I can. I am for the intelligence bill.

KING: The president promised to lobby GOP leaders directly when back in Washington later this week.

(on camera): The demonstrations here were another reminder of the difficult challenge facing Mr. Bush. He heads into a second term looking to mend relationships bruised by the Iraq debate but opposition to the war and to the president himself still runs deep in many places, including here so close to home.

John King CNN, Ottawa, Canada.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Before leaving Canada, the president accepted the resignation of his Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. In the broadest sense, Mr. Ridge's departure is the latest in the reshuffling of the Bush cabinet that began almost as soon as the votes were counted on Election Day but the turnover at the Office of Homeland Security is also a first, Mr. Ridge a pioneer in a job created in the wake of 9/11.

Here's CNN's Jeanne Meserve.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE (voice-over): He was the nation's official bearer of bad news.

TOM RIDGE, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: We are now at high risk of a terrorist attack.

DAVID WEYMAN, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTL. STUDIES: He will probably be remembered as one of the sort of a gentle warrior in a time when an anxious nation needed a calm voice.

MESERVE: As the first Secretary of Homeland Security, Ridge had the daunting task of trying to wrestle 22 separate government agencies into one while simultaneously fending off terrorist attacks. There were none on his watch.

RIDGE: And can I tell you today there are X number of incidents that we were able to thwart or prevent, cannot. Am I fairly confident that we probably have, yes I am.

MESERVE: But Ridge gets mixed marks on managing the department and securing the country.

STEPHEN FLYNN, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS: Not much progress has really been made on the vast majority of our critical infrastructure; that is our energy grids, our transportation system beyond passenger aviation, water, food supply.

MESERVE: Ridge may be best remembered for boosting sales of duct tape and creating the color-coded threat warning system.

TIMOTHY CLARK, "GOVERNMENT EXECUTIVE" MAGAZINE: It seems a bit like a Jackson Pollack painting, you know. It's eye-catching but it's really not very comprehensible.

MESERVE: When late night comedians laughed, Ridge joined in.

JAY LENO, COMEDIAN: I'm sitting at home in my underpants watching the game. We're yellow. What do I do now?

RIDGE: Change your shorts.

LENO: Change your shorts.

MESERVE: Change in the department depends in part on who fills Ridge's shoes. Among those mentioned Frances Townsend, the current White House Homeland Security Adviser; EPA Administrator and former Utah Governor Mike Levitt; former Virginia Governor James Gilmore; and Asa Hutchinson, currently a DHS undersecretary.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE: Ridge will stay on until February 1st or until a successor is confirmed. He plans to sit back and take a few deep breaths before deciding on his future, which some believe may include a run for the White House someday -- Aaron.

BROWN: Does the White House want him to leave?

MESERVE: President Bush liked Tom Ridge, trusted him. That's why he asked him to come to Washington. Word is the president still likes him and trusts him and there was some talk in recent weeks that he might be asked to stay on at least for the short term.

However, knowledgeable sources tell me that there were others in the White House who had come to realize that Ridge might not have the management skills that were needed at this point in time. All of that said, however, Tom Ridge obviously set the time of his departure. The White House did not have a successor ready to name.

BROWN: Jeanne, thank you very much, Jeanne Meserve in Washington.

Ahead on the program tonight a clash of cultures in the Midwest that much seems clear but did those tensions lead to six murders in the Wisconsin woods?

Also a homecoming that could cost him his life but he'll make the trip anyway.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I want to go there and help even if I lose my life, so I think it's worth it to go and help my family.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: One man's decision to leave the comfort of his American life to return to Iraq, a break first.

From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Murder, especially if it happens far from home, can sometimes seem one dimensional. A person kills another and becomes a headline. But read a little deeper and from that tragedy life invariably unfolds in some cases entire communities revealed. Take the case of Wisconsin and across the border in Minnesota as well. The headline reads "Laotian Immigrant Kills Six Deer Hunters" but the larger story, the longstanding tension between two cultures.

Here's CNN's Keith Oppenheim.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEITH OPPENHEIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When Chai Vang appeared in a Wisconsin court, some people saw a brutal killer. Police say last week when other hunters accused him of trespassing, Vang fired his semiautomatic rifle killing six people and injuring two. Vang's version the other hunters used racial slurs and fired first. He had to defend himself.

Joua Beethor believes Vang's story. He runs a video store near the heart of St. Paul's Hmong neighborhood where Chai Vang was living. Beethor's attitudes are shaped by his own experiences. He told us about a time when he was at a gathering of Hmong hunters.

JOUA BEETHOR, HMONG HUNTER: And somehow a white guy come in and (expletive) on your fireplace.

OPPENHEIM (on camera): You're saying that there were white hunters who urinated on your fireplace while you were having a gathering?

BEETHOR: Yes, yes, and they not treat people like a human being or what. I don't know.

OPPENHEIM (voice-over): Next door Nengma Vang sells produce. He's not related to Chai Vang but wonders if he was provoked. Nengma says he's faced ugly words from white hunters.

(on camera): Like what?

NENGMA VANG, FORMER HUNTER: Just say "You (expletive) Asian," all that and "Get the hell out of here, go back"...

OPPENHEIM: For no reason?

VANG: Right, yes, for no reason. They just say, "Hey, what the hell are you doing over there?"

OPPENHEIM (voice-over): At a bar just blocks away some white hunters explained their frustrations.

ANTONSON: I think it's kind of a language barrier. A lot of these people come over. They don't understand our rules and our laws.

OPPENHEIM: In other words, these hunters believe some Hmong follow the culture of their homeland where hunting is for survival rather than a regulated sport as it is here.

CONNIE BROACH, ST. PAUL RESIDENT: They should be educated on what happens and the rules and the regulations, the respectfulness of the boundaries and everything and I don't think that they're taught that.

OPPENHEIM: The Department of Natural Resources in Minnesota is trying to improve things by educating Hmong hunters.

(on camera): But in Wisconsin there's just one part-time staffer holding workshops for perhaps 300 Hmong hunters per year when thousands of Hmong hunters go there to hunt. Bottom line, conservation officers here are saying if there's a background context to these hunter shootings, it's a concern about education and that a divide between two cultures in the woods is still pretty wide.

MARK JOHNSON, MINNESOTA DEER HUNTERS ASSN.: Two cultures that have to understand each other. How we integrate that's yet to be seen.

OPPENHEIM (voice-over): And it's still an ongoing process?

JOHNSON: Yes, and it should be and it will be for a long time to come.

OPPENHEIM: Keith Oppenheim, CNN, St. Paul.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: A quick look at a few other stories that made news around the country today.

Clamor, more of it on Capitol Hill over the bill to reform the nation's intelligence agencies, you heard the president talk about that earlier.

Some members of the 9/11 Commission virtually begged the Congress to get the bill ready for a vote before the upcoming recess. Some 9/11 families divided over the legislation. Some family members holding a press conference today in support of the bill, others say it needs revisions.

A change at the leadership of the NAACP, the nation's oldest civil rights organization, Kweisi Mfume resigned today as the president and the CEO, a position he held for the last nine years and Mfume says he wants to spend more time with his family, has not decided what he'll do next, former Congressman.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments today over whether a coach, a male coach on a girls' basketball team in Birmingham, Alabama can file for sexual discrimination under Title IX. That's the law that bars gender discrimination in schools that accept federal funds.

It was designed to put athletics for women on equal footing with men. In this case, the coach contends he lost his job after complaining about unequal funding for the female athletes at his school and now the court has it.

It wasn't, I suppose, a matter of if just a matter of when and when came today for Notre Dame's football coach Ty Willingham. He was fired. He was the school's first African American head coach and made a lot of news because of it. He lasted only three seasons, which might make you think he was some sort of outright loser but the record tells a different story. His teams were 21-15, which is not good enough for the Fighting Irish.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, the end of an era, Tom Brokaw steps down tomorrow. We'll take a look at TV's changing landscape.

And a VCR that was practically idiot proof, TiVo, soon to be with ads by the way. Is it the wave of the future? And what does it mean to television generally, a break first?

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: New York City tonight. That's Columbus Circle looking down Central Park South and all those fancy hotels.

By this time tomorrow, Tom Brokaw will be history. He held the chair at NBC for a generation, a child of South Dakota with boyish good looks and a neighbor's approachability. He leaves, unlike almost everyone else who has ever held one of those jobs or I guess one of these jobs, by his own decision on his own time table. He leaves number one.

Add to that last week's announcement that Dan Rather was retiring and two of the big three are hanging them up, which raises questions about what's next and about the changing nature of TV itself.

We have two reports tonight beginning first with Senior Analyst Jeff Greenfield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): It's been more than a decade since anyone left this center of power but when one or more of the nine unelected men and women do leave no one doubts that the power of the Supreme Court will remain. And it's been more than 20 years since anyone left this center of power where three unelected men have held court.

TOM BROKAW, NBC ANCHOR: I've been in this chair for more than 20 years.

GREENFIELD: But now with NBC's Tom Brokaw stepping down and with CBS' Dan Rather set to leave in March, there's real doubt about whether the network anchor or even broadcast network news will be anything like the power player it once was.

(on camera): If the answer to that question is a likely no, the reason for it may be a lot simpler than the idea that network news has gotten too liberal or too elitist or too old-fashioned. What has happened to broadcast news is what's happened to mass media in general the arrival of competition.

(voice-over): Broadcast news came of age on radio in the '30s and '40s most famously symbolized by CBS' Ed Murrow reporting from London in World War II. From that time and throughout its first decades on TV, from John Cameron Swayze and Douglas Edwards through Huntley and Brinkley and Cronkite and Chancellor it flourished because it was literally the only game in town.

But 30 years ago, the widespread deployment of the communications satellite broke the network monopoly. Now the newly emerging cable TV industry not only had the space for dozens of channels they had programming for those channels from HBO to CNN to ESPN to Lifetime competitors by the dozens were born and that also meant something else to watch if you didn't want to watch the news.

Moreover, local stations no longer had to wait for the network news to show images from around the world. They could get them pretty much from anywhere any time and all of this had led to the declining fortunes of broadcast news.

As recently as 1993, more than 40 million Americans watched the evening news. Last year the number was under 30 million. But don't start playing taps just yet. This number still dwarfs the roughly three million viewers that the three cable news networks combined draw on an average night. Broadcast news still remains the biggest game in town nearly 20 years after its death was first forecast.

(on camera): There's one other change we should note. When Walter Cronkite stepped down in 1981 he was widely regarded as the most trusted man in America. Now after more than three decades of criticism, mostly but not exclusively from the right, a lot fewer viewers see broadcast news as an unbiased source of information. So, what it's lost is not just a lot of its dominance but a chunk of its stature as well.

Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: But there's more to the changing landscape. Five years ago, no one knew what TiVo was. Today it's a verb as in "I'm going to TiVo it." The product, which is like a VCR but better, easier and a whole lot smarter, changes the way people watch TV, not simply by recording programs far more easily than VCRs but by allowing people to easily skip the commercials and therein lies the problem.

OK, you may not think it's a problem but TV people do, so much so that in an effort to calm them down and to make a few bucks TiVo is about to become more advertising friendly but perhaps not friendly enough.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): It's an impish symbol that's synonymous with a television revolution.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, I love TiVo. TiVo's great. TiVo has changed my life. My wife and I, we were totally inept as VCR-users.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm not a technically savvy person. I had to marry him because I didn't know how to work the VCR.

BROWN: Faster than you can say program for unattended recording, TiVo radicalized television viewing by giving subscribers the ability to pause and then resume live TV, the power to zip through commercials on fast-forward, and the option of digitally recording hours of TV shows that can be watched later, making prime time any time.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "SEX AND THE CITY")

CYNTHIA NIXON, ACTRESS: My boyfriend, TiVo.

SARAH JESSICA PARKER, ACTRESS: Ah, you traded Steve-o for TiVo.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: TiVo became a phenomenon in just five years. But it's still not profitable. And it faces fierce competition from other providers of digital video technology, or DVRs. So, TiVo's announcement that it will allow pop-up-like ads in March seems a shift in TiVo's identity.

ROBERT THOMPSON, SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY: The idea that advertising and TiVo would climb into bed together I think makes a lot of people nervous, because a lot of people like TiVo because of the ease with which it allowed them to annihilate advertising.

BROWN: But consumers' ability to bypass TV ads has huge implications for the future of free television, which depends on ad revenues to pay the bills.

TIMOTHY HANLON, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, STARCOM MEDIAVEST GROUP: The television industry is basically in the beginning stages of a nervous breakdown. I think advertisers who use television and have historically liked television for its emotive appeal are finding that it's a much more difficult enterprise in the face of such technologies like TiVo and DVR.

STUART ELLIOTT, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": The effort has to be in the future to try to bring people in and get them to opt in to want to see the ad.

BROWN: The new TiVo ads will be pop-up-like billboards that appear during commercial pause. The goal is to entice viewers to opt in to watching longer ads. But TiVo's CEO insists this is only a subtle shift and one that has been overplayed by the media.

MIKE RAMSAY, CEO, TIVO: We have real some rules of the game that we want to play by that we're sticking to religiously on behalf of our customers. And we're going to stick to them. And, yes, there will be new capabilities. People will see new forms of user interface. All that will evolve over time, but the rules will stay the same.

BROWN: What is clear is that TiVo is taking all of us into TV's future.

HANLON: Sometimes, pioneers get a lot of arrows in their backs. And TiVo is certainly getting its fair share, both from the consumer side and from the advertisers' side. But, clearly, they are on to something. TiVo, as the pioneer player in DVR technology, is leading the way in how advertising looks and feels going forward.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: So, when we come back, what does this all mean? What if you stop watching the commercials? What does it mean for free TV? How will it impact the industry? How will advertisers reach you? Will you see more product placement?

We'll take a break. And we look at the future of our business.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Getting back to the TiVo business, which, in this case, is about the future of TV, or at least free TV.

Tom Wolzien is senior media analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. And from Chicago joining us tonight, a man you heard a couple times a few moments ago, Tim Hanlon, the senior vice president of Starcom MediaVest Group, whatever that means.

Good to have you both with us.

At the risk of offending all the viewers out there, there is, Tom, it seems to be, an implicit bargain that television makes with viewers, free TV makes with viewers, which is, you watch the commercial. That's the deal. And once they break the bargain, the deal falls apart, right, Tom?

Tim, right. I'm sorry. I hate when I blow the name.

HANLON: I'm here for you, absolutely.

I think that is the old way of looking at how television has worked. And, clearly, in the face of new technology that puts a lot more control in the hands of the consumer, I don't know if that bargain holds as much as it used to anymore. And I think we all have to deal with the consequences.

BROWN: But if it doesn't hold, Tom, then how do we pay the bills around here?

TOM WOLZIEN, SENIOR MEDIA ANALYST, SANFORD C. BERNSTEIN & CO.: It's a real problem.

Shows like this, networks like this, probably aren't going to get zapped for the commercials. But it's the prime-time shows. It's the movies. It's the expensive "CSI"s requests and "Law & Order"s that people can record and blow off the commercials then later on.

BROWN: Today, how do advertisers look at this?

WOLZIEN: With concern on one hand and as a bargaining chit on the other, with concern because they have to find ways to reach the consumer, because advertising is part of the whole economic foundation of selling stuff, but, on the other hand, as a bargaining chip, because, if you can walk into a negotiation and say, hey, I don't know if people are zapping commercials or not, give me a lower cost per thousand, it becomes something they can use.

BROWN: Tim, David Poltrack, the longtime research guy at CBS, I saw a quote from him the other day where he said in some ways he thinks actually when people fast-forward TiVo, they're paying more attention to commercials than they would if they didn't have TiVo and they were just remote control surfing around the dial when the commercial pod started.

HANLON: You know, I think that's debatable. And you could argue that because you are so involved with fast-forwarding to getting to the resumation, if you will, of the program, that you're paying more attention. You are more leaning forward, if you will.

But I would argue that if you challenge anybody to look at a traditional commercial pod and you fast-forward it at a decent clip, it would be very challenging to remember more than one or two sort of ad blips, if that, in a commercial pod. And I think that's the issue that is at hand, is, how do people retain those ad messages, if at all?

BROWN: You're shaking your head.

WOLZIEN: Not a prayer.

I watched "24" last year as part of my job. I was curious. It was research.

BROWN: Yes.

WOLZIEN: I watched "24" all year on TiVo. I zapped through every commercial break. I could watch the show in 40 minutes and 10 seconds, each show, which should have been called "16" instead of "24".

HANLON: Absolutely. And that's -- effectively I think what we have to start from is ground zero. And that is, imagine all the commercial messages not being seen. What do we do from there?

BROWN: OK.

Back when I was a boy watching newscasts on TV on NBC, there was a big -- or maybe not so big, but big enough that I remember it -- Gulf Oil logo on the desk, product placement, if you will. Is that where we're headed. Is there going to be Pepsi bottles on my desk and Timex watches and who knows what else?

WOLZIEN: I think key is how much the people who watch can tolerate.

One of the keys to producing is sort of to take the viewer by the hand and walk them through a complex storyline and hold on to them through that show. To the extent that things start to pop up and you say, oh, my God, that's an auto ad coming full frame at me or that is a Pepsi or a Coke, it starts to breaks that chain. And, ultimately, I think it has a detrimental impact on the audience retention overall.

HANLON: Yes. I think we have to go back to the days of when Pat Weaver was running or helping run NBC, when he basically introduced the idea that maybe separate advertisers, instead of fully- sponsored shows, might add their own ad messages in between those shows.

I think, frankly, it's coming full-circle now, where we're kind of looking back at the days before Mr. Weaver and starting to see maybe we need to reintegrate ad messaging a bit more into the programming, if need be.

BROWN: Tim, that got a little jargony for me. Do that one again in non-ad lingo.

HANLON: Effectively, advertising has been in 30-second and 60- second bursts and in commercial pods.

BROWN: Yes.

HANLON: And the networks and advertisers have effectively added more and more commercials to those pods.

So it's no wonder that consumers, when given the opportunity to avoid them, seven, eight messages in a row, perhaps a lot of them not necessarily relevant, will want to fast-forward through them. Thus, maybe programs, product placement, sponsorship and the like, may be one way of many that advertising can somehow reintegrate within into -- into the television landscape.

BROWN: Let me, in 30 seconds, which seems an appropriate amount of time, throw out one more idea, which is that, for an advertiser, a TV ad is an incredibly powerful way to send a message. You make these little 30-second movies. And there's no other -- a billboard isn't the same. A radio ad isn't the same. There's no other advertising form to me that's quite as powerful.

WOLZIEN: I don't think there's any question about it, which is why TV continues to gain advertising dollars, even though print, newspapers, magazines, radio have been having a tougher time lately. But television keeps gaining. So advertisers would seem to agree with that.

HANLON: If those ads aren't seen, different question.

BROWN: That's the fact.

Thank you both, Tim and Tom, for joining us. We have to watch those bookings. `

All right, we'll take a break. Watch the ads. We've got a lot of good stuff coming back.

This is NEWSNIGHT. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Again, 135 young Americans died in Iraq this month. And I read today that 17,000, almost 18,000, have been wounded since the war began.

You don't have to look far in Iraq for reasons to leave. Earlier this month, Doctors Without Borders closed its clinics, becoming the largest major aid organization to pull out. Staying in Iraq, the group said, had simply become too dangerous. The truth is, Western news agencies have downsized their staffs in the country as well because of concerns over security.

But that is not the entire story. Here's another piece of it, a story of going home, not leaving, going home no matter the risk, in fact, in spite of the risk.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): Iraqi-born, an American citizen now, living out the American dream.

JABIR ALGARAWI, IRAQI-AMERICAN: I'm a real estate agent and been an agent for two years.

BROWN: But soon, he says he'll return home to Iraq, a place that is much more nightmare than dream.

ALGARAWI: I want to go there and help, too, even if I lose my life. So I think it's worth it to go and help my family there.

BROWN: There is a small town in the southern part of Iraq, not far from the Iranian border, a decision he insists that was not that difficult to make.

ALGARAWI: It's a duty toward the people in Iraq and toward this country. Every day, we sacrifice soldiers. And I feel I want to help.

BROWN: Jabir Algarawi is someone the Americans covet. He is a Shia, a Shia who worked for the coalition provisional authority after the American invasion. He helped set up local civic organizations, helped create regional women's groups as well. Then, last spring, as insurgents ratcheted up their attacks, one of the women he worked with, he recruited, was murdered.

ALGARAWI: She gave her life for the new Iraq. And I felt very sad. But the people condemned the incident. And, unfortunately, it was chaos.

BROWN: Nonetheless, he is going back, ironically, he says, to complete the work he did before the war began. He was among the 200 or so Iraqi-Americans who contributed to a 13-volume report commissioned by the State Department on shaping a post-Saddam Iraq, a report effectively shelved by the Pentagon in the days after the invasion. ALGARAWI: That plan was put on the side. And that one of the problem I believe we are facing now in Iraq with the chaos situation. The plan, didn't use it. So, our military went with no plan.

BROWN: Those volumes, he says, still are valid, still hold the key to a safe and functioning Iraq.

ALGARAWI: There is a lot of need to educate these figures to work with the Iraqis. So that document and that paper and that information, it has all the information, what they need to -- how they can work with the Iraqi and how they can peace -- toward the situation.

BROWN: And aside from his personal safety, he says he has but one worry.

ALGARAWI: I'm worried as an Iraqi-American. I'm worried myself the U.S. is going to give up. As an American, I want the mission accomplished. I don't want to feel we failed as Americans to accomplish and being defeated by a small group of criminal.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: One man's story tonight.

Take a break. Morning papers coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: OK, time to check morning papers from around the country and around the country I think today is pretty much it.

We'll start with "The Washington Times," because it's winter and I felt like baseball today. "Council Narrowly OKs Ballpark; 6-4 Approval Illustrates Sharp Divide." They're going to build a ballpark in the nation's capital because they have got a baseball team, the Montreal Expos moving down there to become the nationals. "Bush Defends Foreign Policy in Canada Trip." Well, of course he did.

"Stars and Stripes." There's an interesting pattern today, I think. "Stars and Stripes" leads as you would expect: "135 U.S. Dead in November, Matches Worst Month in Iraq. Car Bomb Kills Five Iraqis. Three U.S. Troops Among the Injured" is the lead.

"The Oregonian," down at the corner, OK? "Fallen Soldier Remembered as a Patriot," another Iraqi death story on the front page.

"The Des Moines Register." In today's edition, "Iowans Killed in Deadliest Month. Army Guard Soldier is Latest Victim." A Marine was among the 135 U.S. troops to die.

"Plattsville Journal." That's Plattsville, Wisconsin, I'm willing to bet a small amount of money. "Plattsville Native Saves Child's Life While Serving in Tallil, Iraq." So better news story, that. And that's a nice photo. And God bless that young man for doing that work over there.

"The Chattanooga Times Free Press." Something about this headline that made me nuts. "No Soft Shell Vehicles. Supply Officer Says All Military Transportation Going Into Iraq Will Be Armored." You know, we've been there a while.

"San Antonio Express-News." "Homeland Security Boss Quits." He made -- Tom Ridge made the front page in most papers.

By the way, the weather in Chicago tomorrow.

(CHIMES)

BROWN: I love that. "Sluggish."

We'll wrap it up in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: You know, I was just thinking, you might want to sleep in and TiVo "AMERICAN MORNING." And here are some of the stories you will see.

Here's Soledad.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks, Aaron.

Tomorrow on "AMERICAN MORNING," he blew the whistle on an Alabama school that refused to support the women's basketball team. Then, he got fired. Now, coach Roderick Jackson wants the same protection under the landmark law Title IX that female athletes get. Can he do that? We're going to meet the coach who is putting Title IX to the test -- CNN tomorrow, 7:00 a.m. Eastern.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: The case went before the Supreme Court today.

"LOU DOBBS TONIGHT" next for most of you.

We're back tomorrow, 10:00 Eastern time. We trust you'll join us and that you'll watch not just the program, but every one of the commercials, won't you?

We'll see you tomorrow. Good night for all of us.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com