Some Bashers Said to Miss the Point
As Newsweek magazine is pummeled by “liberal media” bashers, the Bush administration and journalism critics for its Periscope item on reports of Americans abusing the Koran in order to enrage prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, some writers are coming forward to accuse the critics of exaggerations tailored to fit their agendas.
“It needs to be said: The media’s performance in the wake of Newsweek’s blunder has been, from a journalistic standpoint, more disheartening than the original sin,” Brian Montopoli wrote yesterday on the Columbia Journalism Review online.
“Newsweek made a serious error in relying on a single source for its story, and its subsequent report may (or may not) have spurred fatal riots. The magazine subsequently apologized, then retracted the part of the story in question and vowed not to make the error again. In contrast, most of the rest of the media, in reporting the story, has continued to stumble all over itself, making the same mistakes over and over again. And unlike Newsweek, none of them are showing any signs of remorse.”
“This is hardly the first time that the administration has sought to portray the American media as inadequately patriotic,” Marvin Kalb, a senior fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, added in a New York Times story.
“They are addressing the mistake, and not the essence of the story. The essence of the story is that the United States has been rather indelicate, to put it mildly, in the way that they have treated prisoners of war.”
Jon Friedman observed in his Media Web column on MarketWwatch.com that since the news magazine’s Monday retraction, “Newsweek’s top editors and reporters have been more conspicuous on the air than Jane Fonda. Political reporter Howard Fineman spoke to Don Imus on the radio. Editor Mark Whitaker appeared on ‘Nightline’ [and PBS’ “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer“], Washington Bureau Chief Daniel Klaidman took the case to CNN and Fox early on Tuesday.”
There seems to be confusion over what exactly Newsweek retracted.
“Most reporters, particularly on television, are reporting that Newsweek has retracted the allegation that U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran at Guantánamo Bay,” Montopoli wrote for CJR.
“But that’s wrong: The magazine has said only that it no longer stands by its claim that allegations of Koran desecration appear in a forthcoming report from U.S. Southern Command. That’s a very different point. There have been numerous other reports — mostly from detainees — suggesting that U.S. interrogators at Guantánamo did abuse the Koran. We don’t know exactly what happened, but we do know that there’s a significant difference between what Newsweek said—that its source can no longer be sure that the allegations appear in an upcoming military report—and what the press is reporting the magazine said—that no desecration of the Koran ever took place.”
Others echoed that point: “Uh, people, I hate to tell you this, but the story about Americans abusing the Koran in order to enrage prisoners has been out there for quite some time,” wrote syndicated columnist Molly Ivins.
“Surely the larger point is not the story itself but that it was so eminently plausible, in Pakistan, Afghanistan and everywhere else. And it was plausible precisely because interrogation techniques designed to be offensive to Muslims were used in Iraq and Guantánamo, as administration and military officials have also confirmed,” the Washington Post’s Anne Applebaum wrote today in an opinion column. The Post also ran a news story by Carol D. Leonnig, “Desecration of Koran Had Been Reported Before,” and the Center for Constitutional Rights called attention to its report, “Former Guantánamo Detainees Confirm Allegations of Abuse of the Qu’ran.”
“At the end of the day, there’s no journalistic felony,” Newsweek contributing editor Ellis Cose, a former president and chief executive officer of the Maynard Institute, told Journal-isms Tuesday. “Some people screwed up.”
He described the mood at Newsweek’s New York headquarters as “somber but not depressed.” Staffers who were contacted — Cose is not on staff — said today they had been instructed to refer all questions to the magazine’s communications department.
Meantime, right-wing politicians and talk-show hosts were having their day. On Fox’s “The O’Reilly Factor” Tuesday, host Bill O’Reilly said, “Some in the media magnify every mistake the military makes in order to hammer the Bush administration, and that’s the real problem here. Fifty-three front page Abu Ghraib stories by the New York Times do indeed inflame the world, as did the bogus Newsweek Koran story. So let’s place the blame where it belongs, on news agencies that are blinded by ideology, and who make mistakes because of that blindness.”
For its part, the White House “pressed Newsweek on Tuesday to go beyond a retraction and ‘help repair the damage’ to the image of the United States in the Muslim world after the magazine mistakenly reported that a Pentagon investigation had found that interrogators at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, tried to flush a Koran down a toilet,” as Elisabeth Bumiller reported today in the New York Times.
“Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said at his televised noon briefing that the magazine should decide for itself how to undo what he called the ‘serious consequences’ and ‘lasting damage’ from its reporting, but he repeatedly offered a suggestion.
“‘One way is to point out what the policies and practices of our United States military are,’ Mr. McClellan said.”
Reporters at a White House briefing Tuesday challenged McClellan’s scolding on their use of anonymous sources, which some have pointed out often comes at the insistence of the administration, not the reporters.
“With all due respect, though, it sounds like you’re saying your single anonymous sources are OK and everyone else’s aren’t,” one reporter told McClellan, according to the transcript.
“No, I’m not saying that at all,” McClellan replied. “In fact, I think you may have missed what I said. I think that we should move away from the use of — the long-used practice of the background briefings, and we’ve taken steps to do that. . . .”
‘USA Today’ Drastically Reduces Its Use of Anonymous Sources (Joe Strupp, Editor & Publisher)
Original Newsweek “Periscope” item
Will ‘Newsweek’ Retraction Hurt Overall Press Credibility? (Associated Press)
The ‘Newsweek’ Scandal: Harm and Hypocrisy (Greg Mitchell, Editor & Publisher)
Newsweek Flap Spurs Debate Over Sources (Joe Hagan, Wall Street Journal)
Newsweek’s Take-Our-Word-For-It World (Jay Rosen, PressThink)
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Whitaker Not Surprised “When Times Get Hard”
“I’m not like some people who would walk a mile for a camera,” Newsweek’s executive editor, Mark Whitaker, said. “I’m not necessarily looking for more television exposure.” But, he said, “it’s necessary at a time like this that the editor come forward and speak for the magazine.”
Whitaker was the subject of a profile by Howard Kurtz today in the Washington Post, “Botched Report Puts Newsweek Editor in Front Of the Story.”
“Not since Newsweek had to admit that it was duped into running phony Hitler diaries in 1983 has the magazine been at the center of a storm of this intensity,” Kurtz wrote.
“Whitaker was born in Lower Merion, Pa., the son of a white mother and a black father who had been her student at Swarthmore College — a relationship that caused something of a stir on campus. His parents divorced when he was 5, and Whitaker rarely saw his father, Syl, for a half-dozen years.
“. . . When he succeeded Maynard Parker, who died of leukemia in 1998, Whitaker’s reserved personality provided a striking contrast to his hard-charging predecessor. Although he had once written a cover story on ‘The Hidden Rage of Successful Blacks,’ Whitaker played down any hoopla about becoming the first black editor of a major newsweekly. But he has tried to be what he calls ‘ahead of the curve’ on racial issues, with covers including ‘The Good News About Black America.’
“‘When you’re a person of color in what remains a mostly white world, especially in our profession, you develop a sense of independent judgment,’ he says. ‘When times get hard it doesn’t completely surprise you. I’ve been thinking a little about those things in the last few days.'”
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Only 6 Blacks Applied for Nieman Fellowship
Mary C. Curtis, executive features editor/columnist at North Carolina’s Charlotte Observer, and Nancy San Martin, world reporter for the Miami Herald, are among the 12 winners of Nieman fellowships at Harvard University, the Nieman Foundation announced today.
But the program, which had no African Americans in its 2004-05 class after only six applied, attracted no additional black applicants this year, according to curator Bob Giles.
“We had 111 applicants this year — 55 women and 56 men. 24 applicants (21.6 percent) were identified as journalists of color: 14 Hispanic, 6 African American, 4 Asian American. Among the finalists were two African Americans and one Hispanic,” Giles told Journal-isms. “Obviously, there is more work to be done here.”
The Nieman is the oldest midcareer fellowship for journalists, allowing working journalists an academic year of study at Harvard. The applicants must have the cooperation of their news organizations; the employers must agree to hold their jobs for them until they return, and they often write letters of recommendation.
As reported last year, only six African Americans were among the 113 who applied for the current, 2004-05 class, and just one was among the 27 finalists interviewed by the selection committee.
When the subject of low numbers was discussed last year on the listserve of the National Association of Black Journalists, one member said, “Maybe it’s worth surveying members to see what conditions are imposed by their news organizations? Do they make up the difference between your stipend and your salary during the leave? Do they hold your job? Do you have to quit and reapply? Do different rules apply to different people?”
Added another: “Let’s face it, even the best among us think more about leaving the business rather than taking a fellowship so we can hang in there longer under a glass ceiling.”
Curtis, a 1981 graduate of the Maynard Institute’s Editing Program for Minority Journalists, plans to “examine the sociological, historical and economic forces that have limited the role of minorities in the fine arts in the United States,” the Nieman announcement said. San Martin, who is active in the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, intends to study “the history of conflicts, emergence of post-turmoil societies, U.S. role in development and effects of globalization.”
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Investigators Unhappy With Editing of Albom Report
Several reporters who worked on the Detroit Free Press review of star columnist Mitch Albom‘s work say editors “emphasized elements that supported Albom rather than criticized him,” Ron French and David Shepardson wrote Tuesday in the rival Detroit News.
“Free Press investigative reporter David Zeman said Monday he and other reporters who conducted the five-week investigation were disappointed that editors chose to emphasize ‘what we didn’t find, instead of what we did find.’
“What the reporting team found was a number of cases in which Albom used quotes from other publications without telling readers, making it seem as if he had gathered the quotes himself. Such a practice violates the ethics policy of the Free Press, posted on the paper’s Web site.
“Instead of leading with the ethics violations, the headline and lead of the Monday story in the Free Press emphasized that no pattern of deception had been found,” the story said. Free Press Publisher and Editor Carole Leigh Hutton denied in the News story that she had sought to water down the results of the investigation.
In a column Tuesday, Hutton said the paper would now take these steps:
- “Add detail to the ethics policy to clarify requirements on attribution, specifically in commentary pieces.
- “Begin random use of verification letters, sent to people we write about or quote, for their assessment of the accuracy of what we published.
- “Begin a program of random post-publication fact-checking to look for inaccuracies that slip through our multilayered editing process.
- “Require that any complaint or allegation that could be construed as a violation of our ethics policy must be reported to the publisher and editor, managing editor and public editor the day the complaint is received.
- “Require that every compilation of items taken from staff and wire service reports must carry that information in a tagline attached to the text so that the credit automatically becomes part of our archives.
- “Notify all syndicates from which we buy columns of our policy on quote attribution.”
Columnists’ Group President: Albom Shouldn’t Be Too Maligned (Dave Astor, Editor & Publisher)
From Our Readers: Now that inquiry is complete, time for Albom to move on (Letters, Detroit Free Press)
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CBS Cancels “60 Minutes Wednesday”
“Eight months after broadcasting a report critical of President Bush that was later disavowed, CBS said today that it had canceled the Wednesday edition of ’60 Minutes,'” Jacques Steinberg reported today for the online edition of the New York Times.
“The cancellation is expected to have reverberations throughout the news division as correspondents, producers, editors and others are perhaps moved around.”
Vicki Mabrey is a London-based correspondent for the show, which features Charles Grodin as commentator, Dan Rather as anchor and managing editor and Charlie Rose, Bob Simon and Scott Pelley as correspondents. Ed Gordon, a former anchor at Black Entertainment Television who now hosts a show on National Public Radio, joined the program in November as a contributor, debuting with a profile of actor Jamie Foxx.
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Latino, Black Papers Backed L.A.’s Villaraigosa
City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa made history Tuesday, ousting Mayor James Hahn in a historical landslide. And the editor of the city’s — and nation’s —largest Spanish-language daily says it’s not for him to determine whether the Spanish news media played any role in the outcome.
“We covered it like any other newspaper,” said Ruben Keoseyan, editor of La Opinión, whose circulation of 123,614 makes it the nation’s largest Spanish-language daily. “Our job is to cover the election in the fairest way possible . . . whether we influenced people or not, I couldn’t tell you,” he said to Journal-isms.
Editorially, the paper endorsed Villaraigosa, who has become the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles since 1872.
La Opinión also co-sponsored a televised debate April 23, held before a small audience at Univision’s West Los Angeles studios and the first such event broadcast in Spanish.
The mayor-elect also had the endorsement of the Los Angeles Sentinel, an African American newspaper. “I’d like to remind you, the first 44 settlers that founded Los Angeles, they may have been Mexican settlers, but let me share something with you: They were of African heritage,” Villaraigosa said May 4 at the paper’s headquarters. “They were mulatto. They were mestizo. We need to talk about that,” he said, according to the Los Angeles Times.
“I’m running for mayor like Tom Bradley did 30 years ago: to be a mayor for all the people,” Villaraigosa said at a debate held by the Sentinel.
Reporters and commentators for the Los Angeles Times maintained a blog on election night, and columnist Earl Ofari Hutchinson was to join KTTV-TV Fox 11 as an analyst for its election-night coverage.
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Networks Targeting Asians Must Straddle Niches
“Over the past year, at least a half-dozen English-language, 24-hour cable and satellite networks targeting Asians have started or announced plans, such as Comcast-owned AZN and MTV’s three channels for Indian, Chinese and Korean immigrants. They are all clamoring to reach markets with large Asian populations; the Washington region has about 414,000 of the nation’s 12 million Asians, according to the U.S. Census Bureau,” S. Mitra Kalita wrote Sunday in the Washington Post.
“As competition intensifies, the networks have discovered that the programming of yesteryear (think amateurs croaking songs on Saturday mornings) no longer cuts it. Unlike the mammoth Latino market, Asians cannot be unified by language, so programmers are trying to lure an audience that straddles several niches. And they compete mightily to create content that will resonate across Asian subgroups and eventually into the mainstream, bringing in the viewers and advertising revenue they need to survive.”
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Cleveland TV Reporter Arrested on Assignment
“Maple Heights police arrested WEWS Channel 5 anchor Curtis Jackson at a crime scene Sunday as he followed a woman to her apartment for an interview,” Rachel Dissel reported Tuesday in the Plain Dealer of Cleveland.
“Chief Rich Maracz said that Jackson was inside the boundaries of a crime scene. He said officers asked Jackson several times to leave before they arrested him.
“He refused to obey the lawful order of police,” Maracz said.
“WEWS News Director John Butte said that Jackson believed he had the right to go anywhere the general public could. When police asked him to leave, Butte said, Jackson agreed but asked the officer for his name. That was when he was arrested, Butte said.”
The station reported Monday that Jackson was released from jail, and posted a slide show of his arrest on its Web site.
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“Boycott” of Defender Not Attracting Coverage
“You haven’t read anything about the so-called ‘boycott’ of the Chicago Defender in E&P until now, for two reasons: The story its organizers are trying to sell Chicago journalists is basically incoherent, and their claims of community support are outlandish,” Mark Fitzgerald wrote Thursday in Editor & Publisher.
“When I asked around about the organizers of the campaign, people who know Chicago’s African American community far better than I do were pretty dismissive. ‘If you’re thinking about writing about this, I have three words of advice,’ one told me. ‘It’s beneath you.’
“But slowly the campaign is making its way into the mainstream press. The local National Public Radio outlet devoted a segment to it in April. On the hundredth anniversary of the Defender May 5, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell, who has shown a strong independent streak when writing about black community issues, portrayed the paper’s top executives as ’embroiled in a struggle with grassroots activists for the soul of the paper.'”
On Sunday, the Sun-Times published its news story on the centennial, by Lisa Donovan. It concluded with this quote from editor Roland S. Martin: “We are trying to redefine what a black newspaper is by not saying we’re a black newspaper. . . . We want to be the leading news and information source to African Americans in the city and beyond.”
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Boston Columnist: Push for Tribe’s Recognition
Boston Herald columnist Howard Manly wrote Monday that it was nice for Unity: Journalists of Color to push for repeal of a 17th century law barring Indians from Boston as a condition for considering the city for its 2008 convention.
But, he wrote, “What could push a more meaningful issue to the federal table is recognition of the Nipmuc tribe. For the last 31 years, the federal government has refused to grant the tribe official recognition, which, if approved, would mean eligibility for federal grants for land, housing, education, health — and gaming licenses.”
“The Clinton administration had given the Nipmucs preliminary approval but that was rescinded by the incoming Bush administration. The reason was startling — lack of proof,” wrote Manly, who is president of the Boston Association of Black Journalists.
“Of course, there was plenty of proof. The federal government simply didn’t acknowledge the state’s official recognition of the tribe issued in 1976. Nor did it recognize the references to the Earle Report of 1861 — one of the first census reports done on the Indian population in Massachusetts — and copies of the 1869 Enfranchisement Act that gave Indians and people of color citizenship here.
“Much of the evidence of Nipmuc history — and what were tribal lands — disappeared in the 17th century.”
“. . . Not too long ago, journalism was about changing the world. It still is, and while eliminating symbols of the past is nice, pushing for the rights of all Americans is absolutely necessary,” Manly concluded.
“The Nipmucs deserve at least that much respect.”
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