Newsdog

More he said/she said reporting by the NYT

2011-02-21T08:09:00.007-05:00

The NY Times has done it again, missing a great opportunity to provide some real analysis of the recent House vote to cut spending and push toward a government shut down.

In today's story As Republicans See a Mandate on Budget Cuts, Others See Risk, Adam Nagourney and David M. Herszenhorn interview current or former Congressmen and one pollster. This he said/she said kind of reporting is lazy, wasteful and only provides predictable results. I won't blame this entirely on the reporters, as this could have been exactly what the editors assigned. I will take them all to task, however, for not fulfilling their responsibilities as members of the nation's paper of record.

The story begins with an assertion that can pretty much be seen as an attempt to defray the calls of liberal bias from the Foxinistas.

In Congress and in statehouses, Republican lawmakers and governors are claiming a broad mandate from last year’s elections as they embark on an aggressive campaign of cutting government spending and taking on public unions. Their agenda echoes in its ambition what President Obama and Democrats tried after winning office in their own electoral wave in 2008.

This assertion equating the GOP's vote - a thinly veiled attack on the poor - with President Obama's effort to provide health insurance for all Americans is ludicrous at best. The story only supports this with comments from a Republican senator. Well, what do you expect them to say?

How about talking to some political analysts, professors, or even former Congresspersons who have turned their backs on partisanship. If you only talk to people with partisan axes to grind, all you're going to do is get cutting remarks that get the reader no closer to the truth.

That's what I thought what being a newsman was all about, seeking the truth and trying to make sense of big decisions to better inform citizens.

There they go again...

2009-05-16T11:39:00.007-04:00

Once again, The NY Times is falling for the Republican line, this time on Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Whether it's because of the bias of the reporter or the all-too-often inclination for newspaper editors/reporters to bend over too far to appear objective, the result is a biased position that is poorly sourced and supported.

In the story - In Detainee Furor, a Rare Stumble by Speaker Pelosi - Timesman Carl Hulse frames the story as a score by the right-wing machine, instead of the he said/she said situation that it clearly is. If the predicament is any more than this, his story doesn't support it. He has CIA Director Leon Panetta and Republicans saying she was briefed about the illegal torture methods in 2002, and Pelosi saying she wasn't. But the story provides no evidence for the reader to decide which side is telling the truth. None of the sources are even quoted saying what shows them on the papers they're looking at that indicates specific torture methods were outlined. It's all vague spy speak.

So, why is this a front page story? I guess this is what passes for investigative journalism these days at the Times. They can't meet their profit margins and seek the whole truth anymore. If the nation's paper of record can't do it, how can we expect other news organizations to do what is needed?

The Times has once again lost the bigger picture. This latest "story" has only added to the Republican smoke screen about lying to the American people about the war in Iraq and the atrocities committed there. And the Republicans - aided by the Times - wants to talk about allegations that a Congresswoman lied about whether the Bush administration lied to her? WTF!

McClatchy CEO Less Than Convincing...Again

2008-04-22T20:49:00.011-04:00

Gary Pruitt, CEO of McClatchy, the second-largest newspaper corporation in America, tried to boost morale among workers at his struggling company in a video (reported by Editor and Publisher). He said the chain needs to make what amounts to cuts of another $500 million - after a year of $800 million in "debt payments" - and that the company may not have reached bottom. "At this point we simply can't tell when this decline will end," he said.

Not exactly reassuring from an executive who took more than $10 million in compensation the past two years. I guess he can afford to be cheery: he's doing great. And if he drives the company into the ground and get canned by the board, he'll do even better with an even larger compensation send off.

Pruitt insists his company would still be in the same "downturn" if they hadn't purchased the larger Knight Ridder Corporation a few years back. Maybe his company would be, but the papers he acquired wouldn't be as bad off. Granted, the industry is definitely facing declining earnings, but many of the former KR papers wouldn't be facing the same level of cutbacks on their own. Some of them were making pretty good money before McClatchy came to town. I know; I used to work at one.

Yes, Pruitt's compensation is a drop in the big bucket leaking millions, but tell that to the workers in the newsrooms and pressrooms who are struggling on meager pay. Pruitt can make these claimes on video, but I dare him to step into a newsroom with "You Can't Always Get What You Want" playing in the backround.

Clinton's Integrity Problem

2008-04-14T19:52:00.012-04:00

The New York Times' lead is dead-on in Clinton Keeps Up Blast Over Obama’s Small-Town Remarks about stoking the controversy, but I'm not sure many readers will get the irony in the rest of the story. The story doesn't let her get away with it, in other words, but the jury's out on voters.

Hoping to stoke the controversy over Senator Barack Obama’s remarks about small-town voters, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton made a hasty campaign stop in Scranton on Sunday and called his comments “elitist and divisive.”

So, let's recap. This is a candidate who has lied (Tell Us Another One, LA Times) and after she's called on it by the media repeats the lies (Fibber In Chief, London Times) for weeks. This person is now criticizing her competitor who has merely misspoke about blue-collar workers feeling bitter? Hell, they're not the only ones bitter. She has no ethical ground to stand upon. Serial lying does not equate with insensitivity, but Clinton is counting on voters not seeing such a distinction. On this count, I hope she is lying to herself. As this is getting a great deal of play in the corporate media, who knows how it will influence the outcome in this increasingly tawdry campaign season.

Jimmy Carter's Critics Prefer Fear to Peace

2008-04-13T11:37:00.007-04:00

Secretary of State, and soon-to-be-job-seeker, Condoleeza Rice says she finds it "hard to understand what is going to be gained by having discussions with Hamas about peace when Hamas is, in fact, the impediment to peace." Add that to the long list of things that she, and the Bush administration, seems to find hard to understand. Such criticism is disingenuous for a group of idealogues who have come late trying to deal with the Israeli-Palistinian conflict.

Carter answers his critics better than I could, in an interview for ABC News' "This Week," as reported by AP.

''I feel quite at ease in doing this,'' he said. ''I think there's no doubt in anyone's mind that, if Israel is ever going to find peace with justice concerning the relationship with their next-door neighbors, the Palestinians, that Hamas will have to be included in the process.''

Although he said the meeting would not be a negotiation, he outlined distinct goals.

''I think that it's very important that at least someone meet with the Hamas leaders to express their views, to ascertain what flexibility they have, to try to induce them to stop all attacks against innocent civilians in Israel and to cooperate with the Fatah as a group that unites the Palestinians, maybe to get them to agree to a cease-fire -- things of this kind,'' he said.

I think the biggest reason why Rice has pleaded with Carter to stop is that she fears that he might make some progress where she has failed. I believe they would rather do the wrong thing than see a Democrat succeed. Just like at the beginning of this administration, when their ABC policy (anything but Clinton) led them to do the opposite of any policy of Clinton's. That included, disastrously, ignoring the advice of people like Richard Clarke.

Shame on Pruitt

2008-04-02T20:34:00.003-04:00

Here's the outrage of the week: McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt took $4.6 million in compensation in 2007. I say took, because he certainly didn't earn it, as the corporation lost untold millions...again. Although his take last year was $1 million less than 2006 - another losing year for the company - he should be ashamed of himself for accepting such a large amount of money. I doubt he does, however, as shame is something CEOs don't seem to have - otherwise they would not be where they are.

So let's put this in perspective. While once profitable papers in the McClatchy stable have been slashing budgets to feed the corporate monster still hemorrhaging from buying larger Knight Ridder, newsroom staffers work shorthanded as departing colleagues' positions go unfilled. Meanwhile, the profits keep rolling in for corporate executives. What's wrong with this picture? Corporate America is ethically bankrupt and is dragging workers down with it.

While some of the nation's best journalists have been struggling, sacrificing, cutting expenses, working harder amid worries of their own futures, Pruitt and his ilk have been coasting along collecting millions like nothing's wrong. How do they sleep at night? What kind of example are they setting for their own children? How does he hope to inspire McClatchy employees to keep on sacrificing if he doesn't?

If I were still a McClatchy employee - I escaped a year ago, thankfully - I would be further demoralized. My heart goes out to those still struggling in the newsrooms of America, as the executives continue to rob their futures. These execs are as ethically bankrupt as the investors and board members who expect the unrealistic 30+% profit margins from an industry that protects and defends the First Amendment and our way of life.

Shame on Pruitt and other executives for adding to the problem, instead of helping solve it. They claim they are saving the industry, while in fact they are contributing to its demise.

CNN's iReport a Case of I Don't Think So

2008-03-04T07:25:00.004-05:00

CNN's recently unveiled iReport site looks pretty much like what it is (and not what corporate bosses must prefer it to be): a mish-mash of items that range from opinions on last month's Super Bowl to shaky, unintelligible video footage of news events.

These versions of community journalism can add to the news that sites offer readers, but not much. Video of events in international locales where professional reporters are not present can serve a purpose. The current video up on CNN's site on unrest in Camaroon falls short, however, and is a prime example of why this kind of stuff will ultimately fail - the reports are issued by non-professionals. The voice over is faint and I can't even tell what language he's speaking, much less what he's saying. The camera work is so shaky and out of focus, I can't really tell what's happening, other than people in the distance running along a highway. I can't see why this is happening or what they're running from.

When I ran the Web site at a California newspaper a little more than a year ago, the biggest headache of my job was policing public comments on stories and in discussion rooms. The first 2-3 story comments were often to the point and mostly related to the story, but the discussion quickly degenerated into name-calling and one-upmanship. People wonder why journalists often become cynical - journalists never wonder that, they know. They also know a lot about what they report on and know how to do it, in general. This is not an argument for journalism schools, by the way. I didn't go to J-School and most of the best reporters I know have B.A.s in something else, like English or history or science. They picked up their reporting skills in college, during internships and in the early days of their careers.

Newpapers and news Web sites ought to go with their strength - news by experienced reporters - instead of resorting to printing the mostly dreck that amateurs submit. If the news organizations do provide opportunities for the public to submit stuff - I hesitate to call it news (just look at the CNN site; I don't know what to call it, but it isn't news) - they need to be more vigilant about vetting it for accuracy and reliability - the hallmarks of the professionals. To do that, however, newsrooms would have to take more time and resources away from putting out the paper or broadcast, and they've already lost too much to corporate greed. Reporters and editors are not perfect, but neither are doctors or mechanics. You wouldn't want an untrained mechanic working on your car, would you? If news organizations begin to print more of this stuff from the the public - who are not trained or expected to be objective and fair - what will the public be able to trust? It already has enough trouble trusting what is put out there by professionals. How does this type of endeavor improve the quality of the news?

New York Times Stumbles Again

2008-02-24T17:58:00.005-05:00

Many who criticized the NY Times for it's story last week on John McCain were right to take the gray lady to task. Former Boston Globe editor and reporter Walter V. Robinson, who wrote about McCain's lobbyist connections in 2000, had the best criticism of the story in an interview with his former employer. He felt the paper missed the point:

"I think the issue here is not so much the senator's alleged friendship with this one lobbyist, but whether she and other lobbyists received favors from McCain. Remember, McCain, in 2000 and again this year, is running against the special interests. It's the job of reporters to compare what politicians say against what they do."

The Times' public editor, Clark Hoyt, also had some dead-on criticism of the story in his piece today:

"A newspaper cannot begin a story about the all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee with the suggestion of an extramarital affair with an attractive lobbyist 31 years his junior and expect readers to focus on anything other than what most of them did. And if a newspaper is going to suggest an improper sexual affair, whether editors think that is the central point or not, it owes readers more proof than The Times was able to provide.

The stakes are just too big. As the flamboyant Edwin Edwards of Louisiana once said, “The only way I can lose this election is if I’m caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy.”

The pity of it is that, without the sex, The Times was on to a good story. McCain, who was reprimanded by the Senate Ethics Committee in 1991 for exercising “poor judgment” by intervening with federal regulators on behalf of a corrupt savings and loan executive, recast himself as a crusader against special interests and the corrupting influence of money in politics. Yet he has continued to maintain complex relationships with lobbyists like Iseman, at whose request he wrote to the Federal Communications Commission to urge a speed-up on a decision affecting one of her clients."

Let's hope the insights of these two, who are in a far better position to perceive things than the rest of us, aren't lost in the uproar.

Photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times

Others Beginning to Notice

2008-02-13T20:26:00.002-05:00

The Huffington Post's Stacy Parker Aab and I are not the only ones who've noticed NY Times columnist Paul Krugman's stong anti-Obama stance.

Cass R. Sunstein takes him on at The New Republic in Why Is Paul Krugman So Hostile To Barack Obama? Others have concluded that Krugman just likes Clinton better, but Sunstein puts the following hypothesis forward:

"I think that the difference between the two goes deeper, and that it is really one of temperament. This is a speculation, but it is not otherwise easy to explain Krugman's seemingly visceral hostility to Barack Obama."

A very likely conclusion, that leaves the door open to other possibilities. Very reasonable as well, since it is hard to really see why he's concluded that Clinton is the better candidate. His words just don't support his thesis.

Media Cover Up?

2008-02-10T20:05:00.000-05:00

Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, has been on a tear lately, alleging a cover up by the media - A WHISTLEBLOWER has made a series of extraordinary claims about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets (the lede from the London Times story) - last month and now calling for the impeachment of President Bush to derail his plans to invade Iran.

The Brad Blog has written about Ellsberg quite a bit - even hosting a blog entry by Ellsberg - posing the question why U.S. media have ignored the whistleblower story and the call for impeachment. Although Bill Moyers hosted a fascinating discussion on the impeachment issue last June, U.S. media have ignored the story as if the issue was trivial.

I don't know if there is a cover up. It appears that there might be. In addition, the fact that someone of Ellberg's stature who has a history of being right ought to be enough to inspire at least some reporters to check this out. This is not an expensive story to report, so this can't be blamed on dwindling resources among profit-driven, stock market-influenced news corporations. Let's call them for what they are - even publishers and editors and small newspapers in major chains make news decisions influenced by corporate financial goals. Anybody who thinks otherwise is lying or has never worked in a corporate-owned newsroom.

The sad truth is, until these mainstream publications cover these controversial stories, the public sees them as rants from fringe publications. When will the tide turn and we distrust the mainstream publications for refusing to report the truth?

Krugman's Wild Insurance Prediction

2008-02-07T19:26:00.000-05:00

I like much of what economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman writes about. He's a thoughtful, deliberate writer, which is refreshing. He is often out front of the reporting staff at the Times on big stories.

In Monday's column - Clinton, Obama, Insurance - however, I was with him until his preposterous prediction in the last sentence that only by electing Hillary Clinton will we get some version of universal health care. Economists often get into trouble when they start predicting things. They often do a good job analyzing what lead us into whatever economic situation we happen to be in, but history has proven them to be poor predictors. Krugman should stick to his analysis and leave the scaremongering to the political operatives and campaign shills who make a living spreading lies.

Neither candidate's plan is perfect. To predict that one candidate has a better chance of getting universal health care is like predicting the super bowl. I think he's just as wrong as all those who forecast the Patriots would handle the Giants.

Bad Voodoo Blood

2008-02-03T16:35:00.002-05:00

I'm not a big fan of Maureen Dowd, but I think she is on to something in today's column in the NYTimes - There Will Be Blood.

Months ago, I thought an Obama/Clinton or Clinton/Obama ticket was a foregone conclusion. Despite their nastiness, such a combination is not unprecedented. Recall that the 1980 Republican race saw a great deal of animosity between Reagan and the elder Bush, who is smarter than his son and had a different name for "Reaganomics" during the campaign - "voodoo economics." Reagan picked him anyway.

I've increasingly come to think the pairing of the top two Democratic frontrunners is less likely, and Dowd comes up with the best reason yet - any vice president of Clinton's will have to get in line behind her husband. I doubt Obama would take it. I'm not even sure Edwards would.

If Obama wins, I think he's much more likely to pick Edwards to try and secure the southern vote and have a respected - but less flashy - person as a running mate. Clinton is unlikely to pick Obama for that reason, as well - he outshines her as a speaker and a personality. Neither is a desirable quality for a VP candidate, if you're the top dog.

The politics of destruction

2008-01-27T11:59:00.000-05:00

Steve Clemons at Huffingtonpost.com makes an argument that falls apart because he begins with a faulty premise: Obama's Win & Comments on Caroline Kennedy's Pruned and Clipped Sculpture of JFK's Legacy.

He implies right in the headline and later in the text that Caroline Kennedy was presenting a sculpture - or full image - of her father's legacy in her op-ed piece (A President Like My Father) in today's NY Times. She did nothing of the sort and the rest of his argument crumbles as a result. Kennedy compares Obama to her father in one area: the ability to inspire people to do good. She mentions leadership and character but doesn't talk about foreign policy chops or other important attributes of what it takes to be a good president, but that wasn't her point in writing the piece. Don't tear something apart on something it didn't even set out to do. That's unfair and deceitful.

You sound like a member of Clinton's campaign, which is out to divide and conquer. Seems the couple has learned a few things from the Bush gang, sadly. I'm tired of that approach and the voting public appears to be, too.

Obama's Turning Point

2008-01-26T21:24:00.000-05:00

Dan Kennedy at Media Nation is onto something with his post Obama's best speech yet?

I think the power of this speech, with the strength of this victory in South Carolina, is a turning point in the campaign for the Democratic nomination. While CNN pundits pointed out that Clinton leads in every Super Tuesday state except Obama's home state of Illinois, this will not stand. For an African American to win a primary in a southern state is historic, that he won big could have a huge impact in states where the polls are close. If he's electable there, he's electable in a lot of states.

While this is the merely the first draft of history, I think this day and Obama's powerful speech will be looked upon as a turning point where he convinced many Americans he is the candidate of change.

NY Times Series Suffers in Round 2

2008-01-20T20:24:00.000-05:00

I mean suffers only in print, where the justification for the series - which began Jan. 13 - was not as clearly stated as it was in part 1.

While the story was well told and a good read an all that, the layout didn't make it entirely clear this was part 2 of the series. The editors also did not include some of the explanation early in the first story that presented the findings of the team's investigation that shows an increase in these kinds of crimes among veterans mentally damaged by war. Online it's packaged clearly; in print it suffers.

You Don't Know Royko

2008-01-17T22:43:00.001-05:00

Today's Romenesko links to a fascinating discussion on Newsosaur about a 20-year-old journalism student who had never heard of Mike Royko, the late, great Chicago newspaper columnist.

One of the commenters on the site was J-School teacher who wrote that today's journalism students need not know Royko's work. She pulled out a list of people who made major contributions in their field, as if this was somehow comparable to a columnist who was synicated in hundreds of newspapers across the country.

Here's what I posted on the teacher's blog:

It's sad but no surprise to me that a journalism student wouldn't know Royko. When I used to speak to journalism students at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, few had heard of "All The President's Men," let alone Woodward or Bernstein. And these guys are still alive and working.

I never went to J-School, but I grew up reading guys like Royko, Breslin, Bob Greene, Frank DeFord and later Molly Ivins. All of them influenced me to become a journalist. Granted, when this 20-year-old was growing up he couldn't have read Royko in his local newspaper. But that a J-School prof doesn't see the value of reading the masters is troubling. As an English major when I was in college, what would I have studied if I hadn't read Twain, Hemingway, Shakespeare, Fitzgerald and Woolf? Nobody said J-profs should focus entirely on the past, but one must know what has come before to go forward with any success.

Kudos to NY Times for "Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles"

2008-01-14T21:01:00.001-05:00

Despite an onslaught of negative feedback on their site from bloggers about the story, the Times did a commendable job reporting this story. While national media - the Times included - often spot a "trend" in small observations that normal folk would not identify as anything resembling one, this time the paper seems to have done their research. Many observers who wrote into the site questioned the paper's motives - without refuting the evidence presented - but here is some pretty good justification for doing the story, on page 2 of the Web edition:

"The Times used the same methods to research homicides involving all active-duty military personnel and new veterans for the six years before and after the present wartime period began with the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

This showed an 89 percent increase during the present wartime period, to 349 cases from 184, about three-quarters of which involved Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. The increase occurred even though there have been fewer troops stationed in the United States in the last six years and the American homicide rate has been, on average, lower."

Partisan bloggers can try and brush this aside, but this inconvenient data warrants the investigation the paper performed. While many of the critics claim the paper is sensationalizing the issue and portraying vets as a pack of murderers, the paper is very clear it is focusing on a small number of soldiers and veterans and does a decent job of refraining from generalizations.

This is the same crowd the administration counts on to back up it's claims that anyone who criticizes it is unpatriotic and with the terrorists. 1-20-09 folks.

I'm a frequent critic of the Times but this time it appears they've done a good job.

Barack W. Bush?

2008-01-12T15:12:00.000-05:00

My wife howled with laughter this morning, reading Paul Burka's Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, United We Fall. After reading it myself, I saw the fallacious premise that tickled her so. Burka was stuggling - and understandably so - to make an analogy between Barack Obama and George W. Bush. That was laughable enough, but try this one on from Burka:

"Just as Mr. Bush’s message of compassionate conservatism appealed to many Democrats and independent-minded liberals, Mr. Obama’s politics of hope seems to disarm Republicans and rightward-leaning independents."

I don't know a liberal who was ever impressed with Bush the younger, whether before the campaign or since the debacle in Iraq. The popular votes in the 2000 and 2004 elections indicate some Democrats and Independents indeed voted for Bush, but these were not liberals, who have disliked Bush and his father for a long time now.

The rest of the story collapses in on itself from the weight of this less-than-flimsy premise, exposing the piece as an example of extreme cynicism: that someone trying to appeal to our better selves is somehow taking us for a ride, just like Bush has. We surely need skepticism in today's world, but there's no evidence of this kind of dastardliness in Obama and Burka doesn't even attempt to provide any. Just because it's an opinion piece doesn't mean you can stretch the truth to fit your hypothesis.

Obama like Bush? That is a laugh.

Reader request for editor horror stories

2008-01-11T22:12:00.000-05:00

A loyal reader has inqiured, "Would be curious to hear about some of the crazy suggestions forced on you by editors...especially if there were any that you regret following!"

Lordie! While most of my memories about being a newsman are positive, I've got a few horror stories like most reporters. This one - which happened many years ago - still puzzles me to this day, as I have never settled on an satisfactory explanation for the senior editor's actions.

The story actually began the night before, when the veteran and well-decorated cops reporter was working late - she was often late turning in stories, but was a superb reporter - and heard a scanner call for an attempted suicide. Within minutes, she heard a report that indicated the act was performed in a home. She checked with her police source to confirm that it was not a prominent citizen, and learned it was a teenager who shot himself while in his own home. A tragic situation but not up to the threshold of a news story. In general, suicides do not get reported unless performed in public or by prominent citizens. As this met neither criteria, she informed the city editor and did not pursue it.

The next morning, the executive editor heard about the suicide - I believe from a local citizen who had dropped her child off at the high school and noticed something was going on, inquired and was told about a student who had shot himself the night before. The editor sent a reporter over to the school to inquire, on the basis that the act was publicly known since the news was all over campus. The reporter called the editor to let her know that the principal was asking media to not come on campus and bother students during this time of mourning. When the cops reporter arrived that morning, the editor also sent her up to the school to demand that the principal reverse her "lock-down" order. The cops reporter informed the senior editor about the facts of the situation but sent her anyway.

Back in the newsroom, I fielded a phone call from the cops reporter, who was sitting with the tearful principal in the school office. The dismayed cops reporter filled me in on the details, to my shared horror. Moments after I hung up from that call, a mid-level editor asked a photographer and I to go over to the hospital to speak with the parents, who were keeping vigil over their critically injured son. Apparently they were just waiting, gathering themselves for the decision to take their 16-year-old son off life support and donate his organs. We both vehemently resisted his request, citing the facts as we heard them from our colleagues closest to the situation, but he said this was an order from the senior editor.

My colleague and I were torn, knowing that we were risking our jobs if we didn't do what she said. We deliberated and even went back to the mid-level editor a second time, and he was just angrier than before. So, we drove over to the hospital and then stood in the parking lot for several minutes before going in, cursing the stupidity of the editors for asking us to compromise our ethics for essentially nothing. We didn't even have an idea what we would ask the parents on the slight chance they would even talk to us.

We walked slowly into the hospital and up to the front desk, staffed by kindly-looking, gray-haired ladies in pink smocks. We inquired about the parents, whom the ladies said had just left to get some lunch. We breathed a sigh of relief, handed them our business cards and strode out of there as fast as we could. We could honestly tell our bosses we had followed their orders. I like to think that if the parents were there and available, we would have found a way not to disturb them.

I never received an explanation why the senior editor asked us to do that. She eventually printed the name of the boy - over the objection of all the reporters involved in the story - in the next day's paper, but buried the story inside. He died that same afternoon we stopped by the hospital. Thank God the parents did not call the number on my business card. I would not have known what to say, except to transfer them to the senior editor's line.

The Politics of Celebrity

2008-01-10T20:31:00.000-05:00

The headline is about the only thing resembling news in this story from today's Los Angeles Times. Obama, Clinton vie for high-profile backers seems like a straightforward enough head, but the reporter almost immediately dives into breathless prose and over-the-top generalizations that, to be fair, were likely suggested by an editor:

"But this time around, they (the candidates) not only need money but also something that's perhaps even more valuable -- celebrity talent."

Nothing new here.

"In the wake of the recent caucus/primary madness, there's even more pressure on stars not only to endorse but also to campaign in the states where they might make a difference."

Celebrities feeling pressure to endorse? What's up with that? Reporter Tina Daunt offers no support for this statement or any evidence how the search for celebrity endorsements is different this campaign. Having been a reporter, I have seen editors give silly story ideas to reporters, so she likely just did as she was told. This just doesn't seem like the kind of story initiated by a reporter, most of whom would know better.

Kurtz Gets it Right

2008-01-09T19:06:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post's media critic Howard Kurtz gets it right in this morning's column, Media Blow It Again. It helps that his paper had an accurate read on the results as well (see post from this morning below). Kurtz did such a good job, I'll get out of the way so you can read his take.

There they go again...

2008-01-09T06:42:00.000-05:00

An upset?!? I don't think so. That's what the New York Times, however, calls Hillary Clinton's narrow victory last night - Clinton Upsets Obama; McCain Wins - on their Website this morning. The Washington Post took a more realistic view in their headline - Clinton Defies Polls, Edges Obama. How could it be an upset? Of what, mere polls? Clinton has been the frontrunner since before she entered the race. Obama wins a caucus in a small state and a couple polls over the weekend indicate he took the lead in New Hampshire, and all of a sudden it's an upset if it doesn't go according to script? Whose script? The media's, that's whose.

Instead of saying the polls this week must have been wrong, no, they call it an upset (even though the only true upset was that it upset their expectations). While this may be a minor point in the larger picture, using the verb "upset" does frame the entire story and the reading public's perception of what happened yesterday. Another example of puffing up something to make it appear more than it is. While still the nation's best daily, the Times slips up all too often. Their slideshows sure are cool, though.

Horse Race Ad Nauseum

2008-01-02T22:53:00.000-05:00

Once again, major media has reduced an opportunity to explore the future
of our country to a horse race, a dog race, a rat race. Pick your pet.
In this case, as in many, it is the New York Times doing a disservice to
readers in it's Jan. 1 story about the latest Iowa poll, Campaigns Feeling Effects of Iowa Poll. Forget issues. Who's ahead? Who cares? It's not only media's job to tell people what then want to know but also what they need to know.

"Iraq Attacks Fall 60 Percent, Petraeus Says" without challenge from the NY TImes

2008-01-01T21:47:00.000-05:00

Here's an e-mail I sent to New York Times reporter Stephen Farrell, who co-wrote the Dec. 30 story with Solomon Moore:

Stephen,
As a former reporter myself, I hope you will give this more serious consideration than, say, an anonymous blog entry, and not take it as a personal attack. It is not, but it is an attempt and constructive criticism. I read your story today "Iraq Attacks Fall 60 Percent, Petraeus Says" and noticed it lacked perspective. Petraeus is no doubt accurately quoted, but what he says is misleading. Maybe an editor cut it out, but there should have been a mention of previous reports that Al Qaeda in Mesopotomia representing a small fraction of the insurgency in Iraq.
The implication the reader is left with is this is the most serious threat - or only one - facing the war torn country. For further reference, please see your esteemed Public Editor's opinion on the issue, "Seeing Al Qaeda Around Every Corner." The complete truth is vital. It is a heavy responsibility writing for the paper of record for the country. Something I undoubtedly would struggle mightily with if I had the talent.

I have not yet received a reply.