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Cooke’s Hoax Still Resonates After 30 Years

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In Digital Age, “Jimmy’s World” Remains a Cautionary Tale

Obama Says Fox News’ Opinions Continue a Tradition

. . . In Interview, Obama Calls Himself a “Progressive”

Texans Divided Over Arizona-Style Immigration Law

Dallas Reporter Accepts Award in Honor of Slain Journalists

NAHJ Admits Foul-Up, Asks Student Board Member to Quit

NPR’s “Morning Edition” Hears Strong Words on Race

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In Digital Age, “Jimmy’s World” Remains a Cautionary Tale

Tuesday marked the 30th anniversary of the day these words appeared on the front page of the Sunday Washington Post:

“Jimmy is 8 years old and a third-generation heroin addict, a precocious little boy with sandy hair, velvety brown eyes and needle marks freckling the baby-smooth skin of his thin brown arms.

“He nestles in a large, beige reclining chair in the living room of his comfortably furnished home in Southeast Washington. There is an almost cherubic expression on his small, round face as he talks about life — clothes, money, the Baltimore Orioles and heroin. He has been an addict since the age of 5.

“His hands are clasped behind his head, fancy running shoes adorn his feet, and a striped Izod T-shirt hangs over his thin frame. ‘Bad, ain’t it,’ he boasts to a reporter visiting recently. ‘I got me six of these.'”

It was an anniversary most would like to forget. “Jimmy’s World” was all a fabrication, created by reporter Janet Cooke, who went on to win a Pulitzer Prize that the Post was forced to return.

Thirty years later, Cooke’s name is synonymous with the hoax she perpetrated. Her story is taught in journalism schools, and some say a portion of the damage she wreaked on the credibility of the news media remains.

“How could she do it? I still don’t understand that,” Benjamin C. Bradlee, the Post’s executive editor at the time, told Journal-isms on Wednesday. “She was just one in a million.” He noted that the Post has had no similar incidents since, and that while today’s news industry has its woes, cases like Cooke’s are thankfully not among them.

Still, asked whether the Cooke affair and its aftermath continue to resonate, Bradlee confessed, “They do in my soul.”

Cooke’s hoax cost other black journalists credibility in the minds of some editors. The fear of guilt-by-common-blackness was foremost in many black journalists’ minds when Jayson Blair confessed to fabricating stories at the New York Times in 2003.

“Because she was black, innocent black journalists did penance for her sins,” Gayle Pollard-Terry wrote of Cooke in 1996 for the National Association of Black Journalists’ NABJ Journal. Cooke had publicly apologized that year on ABC’s “Nightline.”

“Fifteen years later, on the May 10 ‘Nightline’ report, Ted Koppel told Janet Cooke that an unidentified black woman who came to the Post after her told ABC that Cooke’s transgression had made the new reporter’s job all that much harder.” The woman was Michel Martin, now host of NPR’s “Tell Me More.”

“Jacqueline Thomas, then a young reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times, now Washington bureau chief for the Detroit News, remembers editors suddenly challenging her work.

“In other newsrooms, some black reporters were asked if they were ‘Cooke-ing’ their quotes. Others were told to double-check their sources and make sure they weren’t ‘Cooke-ed.’ Many editors told black reporters that they didn’t trust them or their work. Those editors often called sources to double-check, which undermined the reporters.

“In the wake of Cooke’s lies and the Post’s carelessness when hiring her, resumes were suddenly double-checked. References were grilled, at times even before the new job was offered. Transcripts were required from every academic institution attended decades after graduation.

“That is the sorry legacy of ‘Jimmy’s World,’ which has become a case study in journalism ethics classes. Her name has become synonymous with fakery and bad journalism. Her sins have cast doubts on a generation of black journalists.”

Black journalists at the Post today, most of whom arrived after the Cooke incident, live with the same competitive pressures Cooke faced. Informally, they articulated thoughts that included not wanting even to hear Cooke’s name, recalling the questioning their credibility took in black communities and resigning themselves to the notion that some people will always seek the easy way. They mentioned white miscreants whose names never became as prominent as Cooke’s.

Via e-mail, a couple went on the record.

“Even 30 years after the fact, the Janet Cooke debacle serves as a cautionary tale and a reminder of the solemn responsibility we carry as journalists,” Michael A. Fletcher told Journal-isms. “Particularly now, in this cluttered, chaotic and immensely competitive news environment, it is easy to forget the sacred bond we share with our audience. We have to tell the truth and we can not succumb to lying — or even hype or exaggeration — in an effort to stand out. The current may be moving in another direction, but we have to remember that our role is to find and report new information. And, yes, the more startling, the better that can be for business. But at the same time, we have to provide context and do our best to illuminate the complexity of the forces shaping our lives.”

Added Hamil R. Harris: “Integrity, truth and reputation are all we have in this business. I am in an Atlanta airport heading to Florida to bury my stepfather who raised me. On the plane I read a few chapters of All The Presidents Men. To me the legacy of the Post is to tell the truth and hold people accountable no matter where it may lead. Ironically on the TV is a story about one of the victims in the Eddie Long scandal speaking out. Journalism is hard work. There are no shortcuts even during the age of Facebook and Twitter.”

Cooke, 26 years old at the time of “Jimmy’s World,” has disappeared from public view. She spoke for the first time about her saga in a 1996 interview with GQ reporter Mike Sager, a former boyfriend and Washington Post metro reporter. They sold the rights to the story to Tri-Star Pictures for $1.6 million, with Cooke getting 55 percent and Sager 45 percent, according to reports at the time.

A usable script was never produced, but Sager, now a writer at large for Esquire magazine, says Cooke hasn’t completely vanished. “I’ve never lost touch with janet I don’t think, tho I’m not at liberty to divulge her whereabouts. I haven’t seen her since 96,” he wrote Journal-isms by e-mail. “No movie alas.” He said he gets an e-mail now and then.

Sager included the GQ story in his anthology, “Scary Monsters and Super Freaks.”

With an animated cartoon, Jim Morin of the Miami Herald comments on cable news. (Click to view)

Obama Says Fox News’ Opinions Continue Media Tradition

The rightward tilt of cable’s Fox News Channel, while “ultimately destructive,” is part of the American tradition of an opinionated press, President Obama said in a lengthy interview with Jan Wenner, founder, editor and publisher of Rolling Stone magazine.

Wenner asked, “What do you think of Fox News? Do you think it’s a good institution for America and for democracy?”

Obama laughed and replied, “Look, as president, I swore to uphold the Constitution, and part of that Constitution is a free press. We’ve got a tradition in this country of a press that oftentimes is opinionated. The golden age of an objective press was a pretty narrow span of time in our history. Before that, you had folks like Hearst who used their newspapers very intentionally to promote their viewpoints.

“I think Fox is part of that tradition — it is part of the tradition that has a very clear, undeniable point of view. It’s a point of view that I disagree with. It’s a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world. But as an economic enterprise, it’s been wildly successful. And I suspect that if you ask Mr. Murdoch what his number-one concern is, it’s that Fox is very successful.” The reference is to Rupert Murdoch, who heads Fox’s parent News Corp.

. . . In Interview, Obama Calls Himself a “Progressive”

The right wing might call him a “socialist,” and many in the news media might consider him a “centrist” or a “liberal Democrat,” but in his interview with Jan Wenner in the Oct. 15 issue of Rolling Stone, President Obama refers to himself as a “progressive.”

“I just made the announcement about Elizabeth Warren setting up our Consumer Finance Protection Bureau out in the Rose Garden, right before you came in,” he told Wenner.

“Here’s an agency that has the potential to save consumers billions of dollars over the next 20 to 30 years — simple stuff like making sure that folks don’t jack up your credit cards without you knowing about it, making sure that mortgage companies don’t steer you to higher-rate mortgages because they’re getting a kickback, making sure that payday loans aren’t preying on poor people in ways that these folks don’t understand. And you know what? That’s what we say we stand for as progressives.

“If we can’t take pleasure and satisfaction in concretely helping middle-class families and working-class families save money, get a college education, get health care — if that’s not what we’re about, then we shouldn’t be in the business of politics. Then we’re no better than the other side, because all we’re thinking about is whether or not we’re in power.”

Obama spent the bulk of the interview attempting to make the case that he has earned the continued support of progressives and others in his base as the midterm elections approach, assuring Wenner that he has remained loyal to his campaign promises.

“Sometimes I think the progressive community just pockets whatever we do, takes it for granted, and then asks, ‘Well, why didn’t you get this done?’ ” Obama said at one point.

Texans Divided Over Arizona-Style Immigration Law

“More than half of Texas voters support the idea of a state law similar to Arizona’s get-tough immigration measure, although the issue deeply divides them along racial and party lines, according to a new poll for the state’s five largest newspapers,” Peggy Fikac wrote Sunday for the Houston Chronicle.

The other papers were the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the San Antonio Express-News, the Austin American-Statesman and the Dallas Morning News.

“Since it’s an issue that according to the national GOP the ‘American people’ want resolved through punitive legislation and increased border security, it’s only reasonable to find out if Texans are every bit as paranoid and reckless with their assumptions of Latinos as some Arizona residents,” Marisa Treviño wrote on her Latina Lista blog.

“The poll showed that regarding a similar Arizona law: there were clear breaks between Republicans (78 percent favoring it) and Democrats (71 percent opposing it), and Hispanics (76 percent opposing) and whites (68 percent favoring).

“Yet, what surprised political analysts reviewing the poll was that the margins among the answers were so narrow. Clearly, there just isn’t the same kind of manic responses that the issue elicits in other states. And there shouldn’t be given the history of Mexicans with Texas before Texas was even part of the nation.

“But there is a concentrated effort among some people to push the issue as a divisive issue between Latinos and others.

“How do we know?

“It’s all in the comments.”

Alfredo Corchado, right, Mexico bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News, enters Lorimer Chapel at Colby College Sunday to receive the Elijah Lovejoy Award. Corchado said the award would honor more than 60 Mexican journalists murdered in the last decade. (Credit: Kennebec Journal)

Dallas Reporter Accepts Award in Honor of Slain Journalists

“So far in 2010 more than 7,600 people have been killed in Mexico’s bloody drug wars. Many if not most victims lived along the Texas border. Dozens of victims are journalists, the most recent a photographer killed last week in Ciudad Juarez,” Stephen Collins wrote Friday for Colby College in Maine, two days before the college’s presentation of its annual Elijah Lovejoy Award, named for the 19th-century newspaper editor and abolitionist.

Robert C. Maynard won the award in 1991.

“This year’s Lovejoy Convocation couldn’t be more timely,” Collins continued. “Colby honors Alfredo Corchado, the Mexico Bureau Chief for the Dallas Morning News, a journalist whom the Lovejoy award selection committee called the most intrepid reporter on the most dangerous beat in the Western Hemisphere.

“An American Journalism Review feature (http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4890) this summer provided chilling details of what Corchado has faced, including death threats and the promise of this ‘favor’ — ‘As we’re chopping you into pieces,’ he was told, ‘we’ll tape it so we can send it to your mother in El Paso.’ “

NAHJ Admits Foul-Up, Asks Student Board Member to Quit

A student at California State University, Northridge who won a three-way election in June to the board of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists has been asked to resign after the board determined that she did not meet the qualifications.

“The board recently learned that Jacqueline Guzmán-García, the winner of the spirited three-way contest for student representative, was a part-time student at the time of the elections and did not fulfill the bylaws’ full-time enrollment requirement (Article 7, Section 3),” NAHJ President Michele Salcedo wrote to NAHJ members on Tuesday. “This, of course, means that for the other two candidates, who were full-time students, the election results might have been quite different.

“While the Elections Committee thoroughly vetted the officer candidates, the student representative candidates were overlooked. Elections Committee Chair Dino Chiecchi is apologizing to the candidates for this oversight. I assure you, the board takes this failure in our system very seriously and will be looking at ways to make sure it does not happen again.

“. . . Because we know Jackie to be a woman of character, we are confident she will do the right thing and hope she will not only continue her work with Latino students on behalf of NAHJ but run for the national board in the future.”

Guzmán-García said Thursday, “I do want to clarify all this problem (or at least give my side of the story), but I’m still waiting to see when the board will be done . . .” [Updated Sept. 30]

On “Oprah,” D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee explains why some teachers were dismissed. (Video)

NPR’s “Morning Edition” Hears Strong Words on Race

NPR, whose ombudsman, Alicia Shepard, noted last year that the network’s only on-air African American male was Juan Williams, “who is not a staff employee,” featured Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy on “Morning Edition” Wednesday. Milloy is a black journalist who minced few words in criticizing outgoing District of Columbia Mayor Adrian Fenty and his schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee.

“You can see the Capitol dome. You can see the Lincoln Memorial. You can see the Washington Monument. You can see all, all of the testimonies to freedom and justice and equality, and right now it’s as bad as I’ve ever seen it,” Milloy said. “He vowed to work to do something about that. What accompanied the change in character, and it was a stunning change, it happened almost overnight — he went from being a really nice guy to kind of a mean guy, arrogant guy, when it came to dealing with black people.”

Milloy pointed out that one of Rhee’s first acts of school reform was to fire 229 teachers, mostly black.

“Michelle Rhee believed there was no excuses. You get in there, teachers, you find a student where they, you know, where they are, bring them to where they should be.”

“What’s wrong with that?” asked host Steve Inskeep.

“It’s pie in the sky when you’re dealing with children who may not even be in school. You’re talking about a population that now is flooding the homeless shelters and putting the onus totally on the teacher, you know, to bring up [test] scores. To have her impact statement reflect progress is just unrealistic,” Milloy replied.

The columnist continued, “I am concerned not about white people moving in, but the way black people are being kicked out. I have no problem with white people. I don’t like snooty, snarky people who are more connected to objects and things than they are to other people.”

NPR hired Corey Dade, formerly of the Wall Street Journal, as a Washington-based digital news correspondent covering a broad range of domestic issues, Dade, apparently NPR’s sole African American male reporter, started this month.

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