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Boldly Telling Lies in the Media

richard

What if Candidates Don’t Care if They’re Caught?

The outright lies being told in the final weeks of the presidential contest have become so bold that they are challenging the premise that the news media have the ability to counteract them, commentators said over the weekend.

"We’re running a campaign to win. And we’re not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it," John McCain spokesman Brian Rogers told¬†the Politico’s Jonathan Martin. Martin wrote Saturday, "McCain’s tactics are drawing the scorn of many in the media and organizations tasked with fact-checking the truthfulness of campaigns. In recent weeks, Team McCain has been described as dishonorable, disingenuous and downright cynical."

Even Karl Rove, George W. Bush‘s political wizard, said¬†on "Fox News Sunday" that McCain "has gone, in his ad . . . one step too far and attributed to [Barack] Obama things that are beyond the 100 percent truth test."

The Associated Press’ Charles Babington, who¬†had been angrily accused by MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann of proffering a pro-McCain "analysis" of Obama’s Democratic convention speech, wrote a piece¬†headlined, "Will Public Believe McCain ‘Doublespeak’ — Or the Press?"

The McCain campaign assault calls into question the role of the news media as impartial arbiter of truth independent of campaign agendas. "In a perverse way, even the recent media effort to fact-check campaign utterances has troubling consequences," Edward Wasserman, Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., wrote Monday in the Miami Herald. "Every expenditure of reporting time spent assessing campaign claims puts the news media once again into a reactive mode, ratifying an agenda of informational priorities that was engineered not to illuminate the electorate, but to bring some momentary partisan benefit."

Moreover, wrote¬†Farhad Manjoo Friday in Slate magazine, "it wouldn’t be surprising if McCain’s lies worked. In my book ‘True Enough: Learning To Live in a Post-Fact Society,’ published earlier this year, I argued that in the digital world, facts are a stock of faltering value. The phenomenon that scholars call ‘media fragmentation’ – the disintegration of the mass media into the many niches of the Web, cable news, and talk radio – lets us consume news that we like and avoid news that we don’t."

Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University, mounted¬†a campaign this weekend "to encourage the political press to grow a spine." But even Rosen conceded, "the rules and assumptions underlying the fact checking regime are vulnerable to challenge from any campaign that a) doesn’t care if it’s called out, b) is willing to deny in a flat, affectless way realities as plain as the nose on Jay Carney‘s shellshocked face, and c) has incorporated attacks on the news media into the heart of its appeal to voters."

Rosen’s reference was to an interview McCain granted Aug. 28 to Time magazine’s Carney, "where McCain began to signal that the culture war strategy, including beating up on the press and refusing to answer questions, was on the way."

"So what’s our alternative?" Dan Froomkin asked¬†Friday on the Nieman Watchdog Web site. "Well, one alternative would be to fight back — for the press to create some sort of hugely negative consequence for making stuff up. For instance, to make it the lede of the main story every time a candidate repeats an obviously untrue statement, rather than a one-time-only sidebar deep inside the paper or newscast. But my ever-triangulating colleagues in the media are loathe to do something that makes it look like we’re taking sides, even if that side is accuracy.

"So here’s what I think should be the next big thing, after fact-checking: Call it meta-fact-checking – or worldview checking. Here are some questions reporters should be answering for their readers:

"Call this the Bush Memorial Question: How reality-based is the candidate? Does he acknowledge unpleasant realities? Does he think he makes his own reality, and that asserting something that isn’t true will sort of make it true? Does he hold many beliefs — say, about Iraq or the economy — that most objective observers would say are not realistic?

"Does the candidate say things that the people covering him know he doesn’t believe? . . . Is the candidate exposed to dissenting views — either in public or within his campaign? Does he encourage dissenting views? How hard does the campaign work to keep dissenters out of his way? . . .

"Is the candidate ever willing to try to make his case in front of people who don’t already agree with him? Is he willing to engage them? Does he tailor his speeches to specific audiences in order so that they will like what they hear? Or so that they will open their minds to views they may not initially share?

"How does he respond to people who don’t share his views? Does he dismiss them? Does he try to persuade them? Does he listen?"

NBC News President Challenges "Uppity" Comment

NBC News President Steve Capus sent a letter to a white Georgia congressional candidate who called NBC correspondent Ron Allen, a black journalist, "very uppity," an NBC spokeswoman told Journal-isms on Monday.

The letter was sent to "express our disappointment with his comment," spokeswoman Lauren Skowronski said. However, she said, NBC is not releasing the letter.

Eighth District Republican candidate Rick Goddard, a retired Air Force general, made the comments on the "Kenny B. and Charles E. Show" on a Macon, Ga., radio station after returning from the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., this month.

"I’ll tell you one thing, I think we’re going to have a very, very strong, capable president in John McCain. Last night, Newt Gingrich disarmed a very uppity newscaster who tried to question him on the capabilities and leadership of Governor Palin," he said, referring to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the vice presidential nominee, and Gingrich, the onetime speaker of the House. "There’s simply no comparison between a governor and a community organizer," Goddard said.

The comments took place days after Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., applied the "uppity" term to Barack and Michelle Obama, as Jim Galloway wrote in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "The Coweta County congressman later explained that, in the Southern mill village where he grew up, the word was racially neutral," Galloway wrote.

However, as J.W. Wood recalled¬†last week in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "The phrase ‘uppity (N-word)’ was used to let a black person know he was out of his ‘place.’"

Goddard’s campaign manager, Lonnie Dietz, told Journal-isms that Goddard received NBC’s letter but that, "We’re just not going to comment on it."

Allen said, "I really haven’t dealt with this at all."

Hollis Towns Named Top Editor in Asbury Park, N.J.

Hollis Towns, executive editor at the Cincinnati Enquirer, has been named top editor at the Asbury Park Press in Monmouth County, N.J., Enquirer Editor Tom Callinan announced to his staff on Tuesday. 

Towns, 44, has been executive editor, the No. 2 job, since January 2007, and had been managing editor since 2004. Both papers are owned by the Gannett Co.

The Asbury Park Press has a circulation of 184,095 on Sunday and 140,882 Monday through Friday, according to figures reported to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The Cincinnati paper is 279,825 on Sunday and 212,369 Monday through Friday.

Rather than replace Towns’ position, Callinan said the paper would restructure the news division with six directors who will partner with him in managing the Local Information Center, Gannett’s new name for its newsrooms. Callinan will be editor and vice president/content.

Towns, who was named executive editor/vice president of news, was previously managing editor of the Kalamazoo (Mich.) Gazette and a reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. [Added Sept. 16]

Reznet Sends Reporter to Native Areas Hit by Ike

"Weary evacuees filled rescue shelters, and local officials watched the costly damage mount from Hurricane Ike after its massive storm surge swamped Louisiana’s coastline and flooded the bayou communities where much of the state’s Native American population lives," Victor Merina reported¬†Sunday from Houma, La., for Reznetnews.org.

Denny McAuliffe, Reznet’s project director, said it was the only coverage focusing on the Native American population.

"At least two people were reported dead and tens of thousands were forced from their homes as dangerous water levels submerged neighborhoods and closed off highways, forcing people — still reeling from Hurricane Gustav less than two weeks earlier — to flee their homes and businesses yet again," the story continued.

In Houston, "KPRC (Channel 2), KHOU (Channel 11), KTRK (Channel 13) and KRIV (Channel 26) began wall-to-wall storm coverage as early as Thursday and remained in that mode Sunday," David Barron reported Sunday night on the Web site of the Houston Chronicle.

"Each continued to broadcast over the air and via their Internet sites.

"Audio feeds also were available on radios configured to receive TV sound. The latter was a lifeline for many without power.

"Channel 11 news director Keith Connors said Channel 11 personnel were working 12 hours on and 12 hours off, although a few employees had not been home since Ike moved toward the coast."

In Galveston, "Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas on Monday ordered all city employees not to talk to news reporters. She did not say when that order would be lifted," Rhiannon Meyers reported early Tuesday on the Galveston County Daily News Web site.

 “It’s the worst thing the city could do. Those who will suffer most are evacuees,” Publisher Dolph Tillotson said in a statement via text message, the story said. “The media will have to turn to other sources that might be less reliable. I can’t imagine a dumber move under these extreme circumstances.”

Hurricane Ike blew the roof off the daily newspaper and reduced its equipment to a single cell phone, but the Galveston County Daily News never missed an edition, Harvey Rice wrote in the Chronicle.

Editor Heber Taylor "was blogging as the eye of the storm passed over Galveston Island and the natural gas that powered the generator was cut off. The power went out as Taylor put the period to his last sentence: ‘We are about to lose contact.’

"The newspaper plunged into darkness, and the wind tore off the roof soon afterward, allowing in rain that soaked the interior. The storm surge lapped at the newspaper’s doorstep.

"’We have no newsroom to go to,’ reporter Rhiannon Meyers said.

"The next morning, Taylor made arrangements with the Herald Zeitung in New Braunfels to do the layout and the Victoria Advocate to do the printing."  [Updated Sept. 16.]

Cable Industry Reports 30% People of Color

"The cable industry has made gains in minority employment over the past two years, but some of its numbers fall well short of its [telecom] competitors, according to a new National Association for Multi-Ethnicity in Communications survey," R. Thomas Umstead reported Sunday night for Multichannel News.

"Multichannel News obtained a copy of the biannual NAMIC Employment Research Survey, which reports that cable’s overall representation of African-Americans, Hispanics and Asian-Americans rose to 30% from 28% since NAMIC’s last survey in 2006.

"But that falls short of diversity statistics from the top telco companies — AT&T, Sprint and Verizon Communications — which report a 36% diversity rate among their collective employees according to the survey, which was developed in conjunction with DiversityInc magazine. Each year that magazine compiled its own top-50 list of companies committed to diversifying their employment and supplier ranks."

Meanwhile, CableFAX: The Magazine compiled a list of the top 50 most influential minorities in cable.

The top 10 are:

Debra Lee, chairman and CEO, BET Networks; Andrea Wong, president and CEO, Lifetime Networks; Albert Cheng, executive vice president, digital media, Disney-ABC Television Group; Dinni Jain, president and COO, Insight Communications; Henry Ahn, executive vice president, TV Networks Distribution, NBC Universal; Johnathan Rodgers, president and CEO, TV One; Scott Mills, president and COO, BET Networks; Marwan Fawaz, executive vice president and chief technology officer, Charter Communications; Jacqueline Hern?°ndez, COO, Telemundo Communications Group; and Charisse R. Lillie, vice president of community investment at Comcast and executive vice president of the Comcast Foundation.

Editors of Color Gain Key Posts With AP Association

Journalists of color were elected to key positions¬†on the Associated Press Managing Editors Association’s governing board at the editors’ annual meeting¬†in Las Vegas, according¬†to the Associated Press and Editor & Publisher.

They include Otis Sanford, editor of opinion and editorials at the Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn., vice president; Hollis Towns, executive editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer, secretary, and Joseph Garcia, viewpoints and aztalk editor of the Arizona Republic in Phoenix, chairman of the Journalism Today committees.

Sanford is in position to become president in 2010; Towns in 2011.

Elected to three-year terms on the association’s governing board were Debra Adams Simmons, managing editor of the Plain Dealer in Cleveland; Randy Lovely, editor and vice president/news, the Arizona Republic; Martin Reynolds, editor of the Oakland Tribune and assistant managing editor/news of the Bay Area News Group, and Michael Days, editor, Philadelphia Daily News.

Everett J. Mitchell, executive editor of the Courier-Post in Cherry Hill, N.J., was the APME program chair.

Bobbie Jo Buel, executive editor of the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, was elected president, serving a one-year term.

The APME board consults with the AP on its news coverage and services to newspaper members. The AP, the world’s largest news organization,¬†has a separate board that directs the cooperative.

Osage Nation Cuts Distribution of Newspaper

"It took just one meeting for the Osage Nation Congress to end distribution of the tribe’s sole media source for more than 40 years," Sunnie Redhouse reported¬†Thursday for reznetnews.org.

"In an appropriations committee meeting Wednesday night in Pawhuska, Okla., the Congress approved a budget cut for The Osage News, a publication written by, about and for tribal members.

"The cut prevents the tribe from mailing the publication to its more than 10,000 readers. Paula Stabler, acting editor of The Osage News and communications officer for the tribe, said, ‘People across the country, they have no way of receiving the important information. Our population is scattered throughout the United States. It’s always been a way to keep an updated list of our people.’

"Stabler said the cut doesn’t prevent publication of the paper, just the distribution, leaving the paper to rely on electronic distribution."

Portland Columnist Taking Buyout, to "Recreate" Herself

After 10 years at the Oregonian, columnist S. Renee Mitchell is taking the Portland paper’s buyout offer and plans on "expanding my reach as an international speaker, performer and women’s advocate," Mitchell told colleagues last week. She officially leaves on Oct. 1.

"This is a very emotional decision that is still hard to talk about. I love what I do and I will certainly miss it but my spiritual path is taking me in a completely new direction. After 25 years in the newspaper industry, it is empowering to have the flexibility to recreate myself," she wrote.

"I will remain based in Portland, where I will continue to invest my talents, voice and energy into community building and becoming a full-time writer on my own terms. . . . My various projects include publishing my first novel, discovering my potential as a multi-media artist, and expanding my reach as an international speaker, performer and women’s advocate. I also plan to travel more, record more CDs and spend more time with my twin boys, who are living in Detroit with their father. (If you didn’t know that, here’s the link to my Aug. 20 column.)

"In a few weeks, I will be traveling to Guam, New Orleans and Florida to speak and/or perform my now-one-woman show, ‘Tangoing With Tornadoes.’"

Short Takes

Feedback: Put Facts With the Lie on the Front Page

As a military veteran-turned-journalist, I can truly appreciate the admonishment by New York University Professor Jay Rosen. His suggestion that the political press "grow a spine" and Dan Froomkin’s that the press create a consequence for politicians and government officials who lie in order to manipulate news coverage, political processes and popularity of people and issues are brilliant!

Sen. John McCain’s campaign is currently engaged in such manipulations ‚Äî knowing that the follow-up with facts may take days (or weeks) and the consequences will be minor (brief news article, buried info or weak expose drowned by other news). Any campaign counter-attack quickly mitigates such sad attempts at holding McCain’s feet to the fire.

Froomkin suggests putting the facts with the lie in the lede. Another great suggestion. I would add putting it on the front page, in the top news broadcast and following with editorials and discussions.

But I am dismayed at the notion that such a practice isn’t standard. After all, when a president lies, it is a HUGE deal! It ought to be front page news with bells and whistles. The same treatment ought to be served up to every politician who gets caught in a lie.

If the press isn’t the great arbiter of truth, and routinely fails to hold leaders accountable (in a BIG way) to the public they serve, then who performs that job in American society?

I wonder what Rosen thinks of Nancy Pelosi’s two-year-old announcement that she refused to consider impeaching a commander in chief that the majority of this nation wanted removed? And today ‚Äî many consequences later ‚Äî the American public is reaping the rewards of Pelosi’s opposition to the will of the people. Meanwhile, the impeachment process languishes in virtual obscurity because of media complicity with Congress in keeping it quiet.

No wonder leaders think they can get away with murder. It happens every day!

Mike Green
Ashland Daily Tidings
Ashland, Ore.

Feedback: The Fleas Come With the Dog

It never ceases to amaze me how sensitive today’s generation of journalists are.

We are getting all worked up because one congressional candidate referred to a black journalist as "uppity."

Geeeze.

That reporter was lucky, if that’s all he was called.

Just ask many of those who work in the everyday newsrooms of our nation. Even minority lawmakers have made more disparaging remarks about minorities in the news media.

As much as I admire the gesture by Steve Capus, president of NBC News, I hope he also writes the president of NBC and chair of GE strongly condemning the fact that most television news operations, including those of NBC, do not pay their summer interns. It is an offensive barrier for many people of color seeking that important internship experience and resume blurb. It’s worse than being called "uppity." It’s denying opportunity.

As for a professional journalist being called names or referred to negatively in the course of doing their job, I always thought the fleas came with the dog. If not, I’d be out of ink and paper from writing letters of protest.

Reginald Stuart
Silver Spring, Md.
Sept. 16, 2008

Stuart is a journalist and corporate recruiter for the McClatchy Co. who was a NBC-RCA Journalism Fellow at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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