Newspapers have an obligation to report as much information as they have in as accurate a characterization as they can manage.
This morning, USA Today reported that its own poll showed Bush ahead of Kerry. But it stuffs the news that two other polls still have the competitors in a statistical dead heat down in the 8th paragraph. The headline supports the lead (though an abbreviated headline on the website mentions both).
USA Today should not privilege its own poll over equally valid polls in order to have a scoop or even to tout the fact that it conducted a poll in the first place. Give the whole news--which is still that no one knows who's gonna win this thing.
Friday, September 17, 2004
Thursday, September 16, 2004
Project Rebirth
A link to a freelance story I wrote for Architectural Record, where I used to be the web editor. The story is about a film and web site project called Project Rebirth, which will chronicle the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site in time lapse photography.
The Columbia Blogcasting System
A Wall Street Journal editorial about the CBS News forged documents affair takes the whole incident over into the realm of the debate over the so-called liberal media.
I hope that this does not become that. Dan Rather has a history of being an antagonist of the Bushes, which would certainly raise questions from the right over his impartiality. And, as has been pointed out, the documents really only revived the mostly-accepted idea that Bush skipped out on his duty. This is nothing very new, and the new documents don't do much to support the story. So motives are suspect, and Dan Rather would have done himself and CBS a favor by waiting for more conclusive proof before going with the story. That's a lesson for journalism students.
On the other hand though, pundits seem to be celebrating the bloggers for somehow uncovering these forgeries. I need to point out that these documents have not yet been proven forgeries. All the bloggers did was complain and raise some conspiracy theories. And so far, that's all anyone has on any side: conspiracy theories. The WSJ editorial raised the possibility that the Kerry campaign or the Democrats fed Rather the documents. But the other side of the fence (The WSJ is notoriously conservative) is just as paranoid. In her column this morning, Maureen Dowd talked of rumors that Karl Rove is behind the documents. In this twisted scenario, Rove fed CBS the papers, knowing that they would be discredited, so that people would stop talking about Bush's lackluster service record, and talk instead about how the Dems planted these documents (see the WSJ editorial).
Neither one of these scenarios is immediately plausible, but they both seem more likely than the idea that Dan Rather or CBS is intentionally duping the American public with false documents. As the media writer Ken Auletta pointed out, 60 Minutes is still the best network TV news magazine, and its heritage certainly points toward good journalistic judgment. And CBS better figure out what happened before some enterprising blogger actually moves from skepticism and punditry and does some reporting. If that happens, then bloggers would really have accomplished something.
I hope that this does not become that. Dan Rather has a history of being an antagonist of the Bushes, which would certainly raise questions from the right over his impartiality. And, as has been pointed out, the documents really only revived the mostly-accepted idea that Bush skipped out on his duty. This is nothing very new, and the new documents don't do much to support the story. So motives are suspect, and Dan Rather would have done himself and CBS a favor by waiting for more conclusive proof before going with the story. That's a lesson for journalism students.
On the other hand though, pundits seem to be celebrating the bloggers for somehow uncovering these forgeries. I need to point out that these documents have not yet been proven forgeries. All the bloggers did was complain and raise some conspiracy theories. And so far, that's all anyone has on any side: conspiracy theories. The WSJ editorial raised the possibility that the Kerry campaign or the Democrats fed Rather the documents. But the other side of the fence (The WSJ is notoriously conservative) is just as paranoid. In her column this morning, Maureen Dowd talked of rumors that Karl Rove is behind the documents. In this twisted scenario, Rove fed CBS the papers, knowing that they would be discredited, so that people would stop talking about Bush's lackluster service record, and talk instead about how the Dems planted these documents (see the WSJ editorial).
Neither one of these scenarios is immediately plausible, but they both seem more likely than the idea that Dan Rather or CBS is intentionally duping the American public with false documents. As the media writer Ken Auletta pointed out, 60 Minutes is still the best network TV news magazine, and its heritage certainly points toward good journalistic judgment. And CBS better figure out what happened before some enterprising blogger actually moves from skepticism and punditry and does some reporting. If that happens, then bloggers would really have accomplished something.
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
I'd Rather not
...to paraphrase Bartleby. I've been intentionally avoiding comment on the 60 Minutes 2 uproar about the forged--or not--documents from Bush's Air National Guard service.
There has been much praise of the "blogosphere" for uncovering this "story." And while as a newbie blogger myself, I do think that there is merit to that sort of scrambling angry personal-opinion journalism. But I just watched the follow-up to the story in which Bush's superior's secretary said she thought the documents were forged, but that the ideas were not. A sort of third way.
Is this ass-covering on Rather's part? Maybe. But we can't really know what's going on, since we weren't wherever it was that these memos made their way to CBS. I can't imagine that CBS made this up, as some blogging conspiracy theorists have suggested. I CAN imagine that someone did. But I could be wrong, and anything I say is speculation.
Which is why we need good, professional journalists, too. Bloggers may have outed the documents, but they're not going to solve the mystery.
There has been much praise of the "blogosphere" for uncovering this "story." And while as a newbie blogger myself, I do think that there is merit to that sort of scrambling angry personal-opinion journalism. But I just watched the follow-up to the story in which Bush's superior's secretary said she thought the documents were forged, but that the ideas were not. A sort of third way.
Is this ass-covering on Rather's part? Maybe. But we can't really know what's going on, since we weren't wherever it was that these memos made their way to CBS. I can't imagine that CBS made this up, as some blogging conspiracy theorists have suggested. I CAN imagine that someone did. But I could be wrong, and anything I say is speculation.
Which is why we need good, professional journalists, too. Bloggers may have outed the documents, but they're not going to solve the mystery.
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Today's thoughts on Today
Ew, never mind. Kitty Kelley overload. A five minute segment, maybe. Three days in a row? Ew. Forget my praise of NBC. Make her go away.
Lipp service
I'm reading 'The Elements of Journalism' by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel for the class I'm teaching. I came across this quote in Chapter one, apropos of what I was saying about the reading public:
According to K+R, Walter Lippmann said, "People... mostly know the world only indirectly, through 'pictures they make up in their heads.' And they receive these mental pictures largely through the media. The problem, Lippmann argued, is that the pictures most people have in their heads are hopelessly distorted and incomplete, marred by the irredeemable weaknesses of the press."
That's really what I meant, I suppose, when I rashly accused the American reading public of being stupid. These flawed mental pictures, I think, could be at least partly repaired by reputable news organizations (though Lippmann was writing in 1922, so even radio was a new thing), but the pictures are too heavily influenced by TV for even a particularly strong photograph to change their minds, let alone a well-reported and written story.
According to K+R, Walter Lippmann said, "People... mostly know the world only indirectly, through 'pictures they make up in their heads.' And they receive these mental pictures largely through the media. The problem, Lippmann argued, is that the pictures most people have in their heads are hopelessly distorted and incomplete, marred by the irredeemable weaknesses of the press."
That's really what I meant, I suppose, when I rashly accused the American reading public of being stupid. These flawed mental pictures, I think, could be at least partly repaired by reputable news organizations (though Lippmann was writing in 1922, so even radio was a new thing), but the pictures are too heavily influenced by TV for even a particularly strong photograph to change their minds, let alone a well-reported and written story.
It's worse than I thought
Daniel Fienberg supplied me with some more up-to-date figures on Fox's convention ratings. President Bush's speech apparently topped 7.3 million viewers.
Monday, September 13, 2004
The high road is under construction
This op-ed from the Washington Post was brought to my attention. In it, Bryan Keefer, an editor at CJR's laudable Campaign Desk. In it, he pleads for a a more high-minded journalism from the more high-minded papers. His enumerated suggestions for more mature coverage--in order to appeal to us younger readers (he's 26; I'm 27) are great, but I think that they're unrealistic.
While I agree with what he's asking for, which is an end to the scoop mentality, I don't think he's going to get it. And I hate to beat the same healthy, nay (neigh?) thriving horse, but it's outlets like Fox News that cause serious publications like the Times and the Post to have to address these allegations. Because the newspaper with the biggest circulation in this country, USA Today, only reaches 2 million people. Does that sound like a lot? Well, it's not. It's pathetic how few people read newspapers. And it's USA Today, which while it's more credible than its McPaper reputation would have you believe, it's still not the NYT or the WP.
Fox, on the other hand--and the other news networks--reach much bigger audiences. During the Republican Convention, Fox was reaching audiences of nearly 6 million (Reuters, via Yahoo News). And as long as anyone sees Fox as a credible news source, the so-called "news" that comes out of it is going to have to be addressed by the real papers. Maybe they haven't been doing a great job of it, but if they went completely high-minded, they run the risk of becoming irrelevant to the vast majority of Americans--who, let me remind you, are, frankly, stupid. I believe in the general goodness of mankind, but we are not a country of independent thinkers (see Mencken's booboisie). Bryan Keefer and I wish that we were.
While I agree with what he's asking for, which is an end to the scoop mentality, I don't think he's going to get it. And I hate to beat the same healthy, nay (neigh?) thriving horse, but it's outlets like Fox News that cause serious publications like the Times and the Post to have to address these allegations. Because the newspaper with the biggest circulation in this country, USA Today, only reaches 2 million people. Does that sound like a lot? Well, it's not. It's pathetic how few people read newspapers. And it's USA Today, which while it's more credible than its McPaper reputation would have you believe, it's still not the NYT or the WP.
Fox, on the other hand--and the other news networks--reach much bigger audiences. During the Republican Convention, Fox was reaching audiences of nearly 6 million (Reuters, via Yahoo News). And as long as anyone sees Fox as a credible news source, the so-called "news" that comes out of it is going to have to be addressed by the real papers. Maybe they haven't been doing a great job of it, but if they went completely high-minded, they run the risk of becoming irrelevant to the vast majority of Americans--who, let me remind you, are, frankly, stupid. I believe in the general goodness of mankind, but we are not a country of independent thinkers (see Mencken's booboisie). Bryan Keefer and I wish that we were.
Lauering my standards
This is a position I may someday regret taking, but feel that Matt Lauer of NBC's Today Show has become at the very least a competent interviewer. I base that on his interview this morning of Kitty Kelley, and on his interview of President Bush last week. That was the interview, you may remember, in which Bush said that he didn't think the war on terror could ever be won.
Kitty Kelley wrote a book about the Bush family in which she accuses George W. of using cocaine at Camp David. I haven't read that, so I won't comment on HER journalism. But I applaud, first of all, NBC, for pushing through with its announced interview with Kelley despite reported pressure from the White House not to run it at all. That's probably one benefit of media consolidation: if you're owned by GE, you're practically as big as the government, so you can stand up to them. Lauer also did a more than plausible job. With both Bush and Kelley, he stood his ground, thought on his feet, and was astute enough to ask a question again if it wasn't answered the first time. If I were CJR, I'd give Lauer a laurel.
Kitty Kelley wrote a book about the Bush family in which she accuses George W. of using cocaine at Camp David. I haven't read that, so I won't comment on HER journalism. But I applaud, first of all, NBC, for pushing through with its announced interview with Kelley despite reported pressure from the White House not to run it at all. That's probably one benefit of media consolidation: if you're owned by GE, you're practically as big as the government, so you can stand up to them. Lauer also did a more than plausible job. With both Bush and Kelley, he stood his ground, thought on his feet, and was astute enough to ask a question again if it wasn't answered the first time. If I were CJR, I'd give Lauer a laurel.
Booboisie
My Bartleby daily email was late in getting to me yesterday (in fact I only got it this morning). Otherwise I would have known that yesterday, the 12th, was H.L. Mencken's birthday.
It's a milestone important to any crotchety press critic.
And speaking of crotchety, I also want to acknowledge an objection from Daniel Fienberg, a friend of mine who writes and regularly posts his work to the web. It wasn't so much that I forgot about him when I was writing the original acknowledgements in this blog, as my making a subconscious distinction between my amateur blogging and his professional work.
It's a milestone important to any crotchety press critic.
And speaking of crotchety, I also want to acknowledge an objection from Daniel Fienberg, a friend of mine who writes and regularly posts his work to the web. It wasn't so much that I forgot about him when I was writing the original acknowledgements in this blog, as my making a subconscious distinction between my amateur blogging and his professional work.
Sunday, September 12, 2004
Another note from SPJ
One of my personal highlights from SPJ was seeing Sreenath Sreenivasan, who was never really my professor, but he was the adviser of the Columbia SPJ chapter. He gave a seminar on how journalists can better use the web, but a lot of these resources are great for non-journalists, too. A link to his web surfing tips:
Smarter Surfing: Better Use of Your Web Time
Smarter Surfing: Better Use of Your Web Time
Fried Okrent
My primary newspaper is the New York Times. I feel like I should be morally obligated to read five or so newspapers every morning: the Times, the Washington Post, one or both of the major NYC tabloids, those free papers they've started handing out on the subway, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. Which is an important paper, even if it's easy to make fun of.
Today marks the return of Daniel Okrent, the Times's Public Editor. In that same ethics panel I mentioned yesterday, Al Siegal (and I'm going to fudge the quote here again), was asked why the Times didn't call the position an ombudsman.
"Two reasons," he said. "One is that the Washington Post's Mike Getler so fully emodies the term." He said it wasn't quite a copyright that the Post had on ombudsmen, but he didn't want to compete. The other reason made a little bit more sense to me. An ombudsman, Siegal said, had two primary respoonsibilities: writing a weekly column, and circulating a memo to the Post's staff about standards and practices. The Public Editor only writes the column (and it's fortnightly).
Here's what Okrent said he's going to be watching in the last nine months of his term:
"The list is long - corrections policy, book reviewing, the use of "experts," loaded language, Middle East coverage, honesty in photographs, what the editors mean by "news analysis" (not to mention "White House Letter," "Political Memo" and various other ways they say "not a news story")."
Siegal and Okrent were both results of the Blair affair, so I'll use one to answer the other on the first point. Siegel said that reporters will often come to him with a new piece of information about a published story and ask him "Is this worth a correction?" He says he responds by asking the reporters if they would write the story the same way today knowing what they know. The answer is always yes, and his advice is always to run a correction. Now whether that is policy or just a public stance, I don't know.
I'm particularly interested to see what comes out of his book review investigation, the language thing, and honesty in photographs--this last one because I'm teaching a freshman liberal arts cluster on ethics and journalism, and one of the courses I'm working with is a photojournalism course. And I'm always very interested in the creeping of opinion and analysis onto the front page, which is the last thing Okrent mentions. I have my own thoughts on whether this is a good or a bad thing.
Today marks the return of Daniel Okrent, the Times's Public Editor. In that same ethics panel I mentioned yesterday, Al Siegal (and I'm going to fudge the quote here again), was asked why the Times didn't call the position an ombudsman.
"Two reasons," he said. "One is that the Washington Post's Mike Getler so fully emodies the term." He said it wasn't quite a copyright that the Post had on ombudsmen, but he didn't want to compete. The other reason made a little bit more sense to me. An ombudsman, Siegal said, had two primary respoonsibilities: writing a weekly column, and circulating a memo to the Post's staff about standards and practices. The Public Editor only writes the column (and it's fortnightly).
Here's what Okrent said he's going to be watching in the last nine months of his term:
"The list is long - corrections policy, book reviewing, the use of "experts," loaded language, Middle East coverage, honesty in photographs, what the editors mean by "news analysis" (not to mention "White House Letter," "Political Memo" and various other ways they say "not a news story")."
Siegal and Okrent were both results of the Blair affair, so I'll use one to answer the other on the first point. Siegel said that reporters will often come to him with a new piece of information about a published story and ask him "Is this worth a correction?" He says he responds by asking the reporters if they would write the story the same way today knowing what they know. The answer is always yes, and his advice is always to run a correction. Now whether that is policy or just a public stance, I don't know.
I'm particularly interested to see what comes out of his book review investigation, the language thing, and honesty in photographs--this last one because I'm teaching a freshman liberal arts cluster on ethics and journalism, and one of the courses I'm working with is a photojournalism course. And I'm always very interested in the creeping of opinion and analysis onto the front page, which is the last thing Okrent mentions. I have my own thoughts on whether this is a good or a bad thing.
My first clarification
At the SPJ conference today (well, technically yesterday now), Al Siegal, of the Siegal Commission that investigated Jayson Blair, made an interesting comment at the ethics panel presentation. I'm going to be completely unethical now and reconstruct his quote, but he was talking about reporters who objected to having corrections run on their stories.
"I have a hard time convincing them that it's not a moral failure to have a correction run," he said (or so he said once I've stuffed the words back into his mouth). "It's a chance to make the story more accurate."
See, now I know that's not right, since the way he said it, it actually didn't sound like a moral failure. At any rate, all of that is by way of introducing my first correction, from a "source" whose sentiments, she claimed, I misrepresented. I quote here from Rachael Goldfarb's email:
"I'm flattered and touched by the dedication (although my "claiming to like what [you] write" is arguably a poor word choice since I do indeed enjoy your writing very much -- I'm not claiming to; it's fact.)"
In my own defense (and modesty), I say that I had to regard what she said as merely a claim, since I couldn't fathom her liking my writing as much as she (that word again) claims to. (I'm tempted here to use a smiley, but it's much to early in the blog to resort to emoticons.)
"I have a hard time convincing them that it's not a moral failure to have a correction run," he said (or so he said once I've stuffed the words back into his mouth). "It's a chance to make the story more accurate."
See, now I know that's not right, since the way he said it, it actually didn't sound like a moral failure. At any rate, all of that is by way of introducing my first correction, from a "source" whose sentiments, she claimed, I misrepresented. I quote here from Rachael Goldfarb's email:
"I'm flattered and touched by the dedication (although my "claiming to like what [you] write" is arguably a poor word choice since I do indeed enjoy your writing very much -- I'm not claiming to; it's fact.)"
In my own defense (and modesty), I say that I had to regard what she said as merely a claim, since I couldn't fathom her liking my writing as much as she (that word again) claims to. (I'm tempted here to use a smiley, but it's much to early in the blog to resort to emoticons.)
First things
The occasion of doing a first of anything makes one prone to ponder infinity. But pondering infinity makes me physically naseous, so I won't. I'm more inclined to say a little something about my own writing and how I think this might help it, and to do a little bit of explanation of what I expect this blog to do. That seems only appropriate for a first post, though perhaps a little hackneyed.
So about me, first, with a promise to segue into writing, with the thoughts behind the blog as a rousing conclusion.
I used to write effortlessly. In high school, the idea of tossing off a short story on a Saturday night was just about the easiest thing I could think of--at an age when I was really expected to be thinking only of tossing off. I even wrote an 80-page "novel" at one point. It was sort of a cliched James Bond-ish spy novel with lots of sex in it (so I wasn't too far off from the expected behavior). But then something happened in college. Mostly, college happened. And fiction got left behind (and probably rightly so) for the (at the time) more important pursuits of papers and exams. And while I loved the writing I did for 34th Street magazine, which was the campus entertainment rag, I felt somehow like that should be the end of my writitng for fun. It was becoming time to earn a living. And somehow I ended up in journalism school.
There will be plenty of time to discuss my feelings on journalism school, I'm sure, so I'll gloss over that, lingering just long enough to make it clear that while I love the job I have now, I don't think that I was cut out to be a reporter, per se.
And yet then there's this blog. And Blogging is something that was discussed at the convention of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) this weekend. I think that in the right hands, a blog could actually bring a return to the more experiential journalism that I most enjoy reading. The kind that's written at a cafe table as the Nazis advance, but the writer still has a glass of beaujolais next to his Remington portable, Nazis be damned. I think that the blog has a real chance to return the meaning to the term "correspondent."
But that's not what I really want to do with this necessarily. Of course, I do hope that the blog will be somehow experiential. But I also hope, as the title I picked might suggest in its Lieblingesque way, to bring a critical eye to the world, and especially to the media. I am a journalist by training, and an academic by heart and by employment. So you can expect some journalism to show up in this blog, but you should also expect some ranting and raving--albeit informed ranting and raving--about the activities of the press, and well, anything else I damn well please. What books I'm reading. Movies I've seen. Politics. My friends.
Speaking of friends, I had started this blog several months ago with a completely different first post, and I dedicated that now-defunct, one-post blog to my friend Rachael, who is currently slogging through the first weeks of her second year of law school. I did so because she's a fellow press junkie, and because she claims to enjoy reading my writing. But I want to make a fuller dedication with this revamped blog. So it's to my Mom, who taught me to be questioning and critical (and more importantly, she instilled in me the love of a cheap pun). It's to my Dad, who in many ways is my ideal reader. It's to my sisters, one of whom is stubbornly opposed to the idea of critical thinking, on principle. The other is still celebrating her 9/11 birthday in the Central Time Zone.
And of course, everything has to be dedicated to Paul. Because he has to hear me spout all this crap first, and yet he keeps coming back for more.
So about me, first, with a promise to segue into writing, with the thoughts behind the blog as a rousing conclusion.
I used to write effortlessly. In high school, the idea of tossing off a short story on a Saturday night was just about the easiest thing I could think of--at an age when I was really expected to be thinking only of tossing off. I even wrote an 80-page "novel" at one point. It was sort of a cliched James Bond-ish spy novel with lots of sex in it (so I wasn't too far off from the expected behavior). But then something happened in college. Mostly, college happened. And fiction got left behind (and probably rightly so) for the (at the time) more important pursuits of papers and exams. And while I loved the writing I did for 34th Street magazine, which was the campus entertainment rag, I felt somehow like that should be the end of my writitng for fun. It was becoming time to earn a living. And somehow I ended up in journalism school.
There will be plenty of time to discuss my feelings on journalism school, I'm sure, so I'll gloss over that, lingering just long enough to make it clear that while I love the job I have now, I don't think that I was cut out to be a reporter, per se.
And yet then there's this blog. And Blogging is something that was discussed at the convention of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) this weekend. I think that in the right hands, a blog could actually bring a return to the more experiential journalism that I most enjoy reading. The kind that's written at a cafe table as the Nazis advance, but the writer still has a glass of beaujolais next to his Remington portable, Nazis be damned. I think that the blog has a real chance to return the meaning to the term "correspondent."
But that's not what I really want to do with this necessarily. Of course, I do hope that the blog will be somehow experiential. But I also hope, as the title I picked might suggest in its Lieblingesque way, to bring a critical eye to the world, and especially to the media. I am a journalist by training, and an academic by heart and by employment. So you can expect some journalism to show up in this blog, but you should also expect some ranting and raving--albeit informed ranting and raving--about the activities of the press, and well, anything else I damn well please. What books I'm reading. Movies I've seen. Politics. My friends.
Speaking of friends, I had started this blog several months ago with a completely different first post, and I dedicated that now-defunct, one-post blog to my friend Rachael, who is currently slogging through the first weeks of her second year of law school. I did so because she's a fellow press junkie, and because she claims to enjoy reading my writing. But I want to make a fuller dedication with this revamped blog. So it's to my Mom, who taught me to be questioning and critical (and more importantly, she instilled in me the love of a cheap pun). It's to my Dad, who in many ways is my ideal reader. It's to my sisters, one of whom is stubbornly opposed to the idea of critical thinking, on principle. The other is still celebrating her 9/11 birthday in the Central Time Zone.
And of course, everything has to be dedicated to Paul. Because he has to hear me spout all this crap first, and yet he keeps coming back for more.
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