Posted 10:07 AM by Peter Fallow
MEDIA BIAS UPDATE, PART 10,345: Here's one of those pieces I missed last week. Neal Gabler, writing in the Los Angeles Times, makes points both strong and weak in this opinion piece about media bias.

Discussing charges of whether big media are biased to the left or to the right, Gabler raises a provocative point:

But there is a third and more disturbing possibility in which both sides have gotten it wrong. Looking at it philosophically rather than ideologically, the real media war today isn't between liberals and conservatives but between two entirely different journalistic mind-sets: those who believe in advocacy, and those who believe in objectivity -- or, at the very least, in the appearance of objectivity. And what we are witnessing is not just a political skirmish but a battle for the soul of American journalism.

He then launches into a brief history of American journalism, reminding us that newspapers of the not-too-distant past were unabashedly biased, and also describing how the "idea of professionalization" that arose during the Progressive Era steered us toward the objectivity model that now dominates most major media outlets.

However, Gabler misses a major chunk of U.S. history when discussing the era of supposed "objectivity" in the media. ("The anchormen at NBC or CBS were seldom accused of bias back then" Gabler writes.) In the process, he somewhat mischaracterizes conservative media criticism of the press.

That chunk of U.S. history is the tumultuous 1960s, the era when most of today's top news executives came of age. While most acolytes of the old New Left are firmly ensconced in academia -- and educating the next generation of journalists -- there are enough of their old comrades in journalism to raise concern. (Think Lowell Bergman, the 60 Minutes producer portrayed by Al Pacino in The Insider. He was a former comrade of David Horowitz's at Ramparts magazine. Unlike Horowitz, he has not renounced his radical past.) The fact that the right is disturbed when 89 percent of journalists voted Democratic in 1992 is part and parcel of the basic conservative critique of society's general leftward turn over the past 30-40 years. But Gabler even denies that has happened:

Lest they lend credence to charges of bias, mainstream news outlets seem to be bending over backward to prove they are not liberal and harbor no animus toward the Republican administration, even though the political spectrum has shifted so far right over the last decade that thinking once considered centrist is now seen as liberal.

I disagree with his charge that the political spectrum has "shifted so far to the right." At the very least, it lacks any context. In my opinion, the Republicans of 2002 do not really look and sound like the Republicans of 1990. (Democrats, meanwhile, sound exactly the same.) And sure, we've got welfare reform and tax cuts, but is society really any more conservative than it was 10 years ago? Popular culture tells me no -- for reasons both good and bad. At best, mainstream news outlets are trying (and too often failing) to prove their lack of animus toward the Republican administration because of the effective efforts of groups such as the Media Research Center. And also because of the next good point Gabler makes:

The dirty little secret of network newscasts, and of most major newspapers, is not that they are manned by liberal proselytizers. It is that they are trying to attract the widest possible viewership, or readership, and that doing so necessitates that they be as inoffensive as possible. That is why investigative reports seem so toothless, gumming away at government boondoggles or consumer fraud or corrupt politicians that are unlikely to infuriate either the left or the right.

But Gabler again loses me when he discusses what he calls "advocates." Apparently, they're almost all right-wingers, and apparently, they are gathering attention to themselves all out of proportion to their slice of the media pie. (No mention of the obvious advocacy that seeps into "objective" news stories based on studies from left-leaning groups such as People for the American Way or the Center for Science in the Public Interest, or on the ways opinion polls get manipulated for what appears to be political motives. See these guys for more.)

Yet, one would never guess this by the way the advocates have been driving the news. Cable's influence is magnified exponentially by the fact that its audience is more energized and its reports deeply impassioned. It grabs attention while the networks and newspapers studiously avoid attention. It makes news while the traditional networks break news.

I have to wonder if Gabler is watching the same cable news channels I'm watching. MSNBC impassioned? Come on. The only energized audiences I see on cable news are on CNN's Talk Back Live. I watch cable news all during the day, and if anything, it's pretty boring unless there's breaking news. But Gabler doesn't see it that way, and he makes an unfair comparison:

Just compare Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings to O'Reilly, Brit Hume, Chris Matthews and Kudlow and Cramer. Though he calls his show a "no-spin zone," Fox's O'Reilly grills his guests, smirks at their answers and shakes his head in disbelief when he hears what he regards as a liberal opinion. MSNBC's Matthews was once an aide to Democratic House Speaker Tip O'Neill, but he too plays the cable game by roasting liberalism on a spit that spins as fast as a jet turbine. Similarly, Hume on Fox can barely conceal his agony when he has to report a criticism of President Bush. For these guys, Bill Clinton and Tom Daschle, not Osama bin Laden and his ilk, are the real threats to America.

Rather, Brokaw and Jennings are basically highly paid news readers. O'Reilly, Matthews, and Kudlow & Cramer are obviously hosting opinion-driven talk shows. (I'm not even going to entertain his characterization of Britt Hume, which is patently unfair and dishonest.) Obviously, there's a difference. Why doesn't Gabler acknowledge that?

In conclusion, I think Gabler raised some important issues. But he seems to see only the few "successes" conservatives have had in a couple of high-profile stories (think Clinton's sex scandals) and ignores the slanted "objective" coverage of issues touching on economics, race, crime, affirmative action, abortion, immigration, feminism and many more. In my opinion, these are more important than the horse-race coverage of politics and whether one party's mouthpieces are getting more face time on the evening news.

Posted 8:06 AM by Peter Fallow
POWER OF THE BLOGOSPHERE: I'm sure everyone everywhere has blogged about this, but here's that article from the Boston Globe on the Blogosphere's impact on the Trent Lott story. I rather liked Walter Shapiro's quote at the end:

''Like every revolution,'' he says, blogging ''is overhyped on the way up, overscorned on the way down, and settles into the middle realm of reality.''

So true.

Posted 7:37 AM by Peter Fallow
ON THE BEAT: Here's one I missed from last week, but it is well worth a look. Hank Stuever, a Style reporter for the Washington Post, reports on a story he wrote about a car show in D.C. What makes this piece truly enjoyable is the inside look at how a real, live newsroom operates. Check it out. And check out his other diary entries from last week, here, here and here.

Posted 7:03 AM by Peter Fallow
CHARACTER-FREE NEWSROOMS: David Shaw, media critic for the Los Angeles Times, bemoans the absence of real characters from newsrooms in a fine article.

I kind of agree with him. When I took my current job at a much bigger paper a couple of years ago, I noticed that many of my colleagues seemed depressingly similar: a lot of the men have JFK haircuts and expensive suits, a lot of the women are aerobicized fashion plates, and both groups never smile -- ever. It was a far cry from my days at smaller papers, where I worked with failed stand-up comedians, heavy drinkers, chain smokers, convicted felons, co-worker love triangles (and quadrangles), editors who cursed loudly and threw stuff against the wall, paste-up men with liquor bottles hidden beside the wax machine, pressmen who drank beer on Friday nights after the bosses had gone home, and many more characters. And though I'm very happy in my new job, I miss the old days sometimes.

Posted 6:40 AM by Peter Fallow
BACK TO WORK: I'm back after a fantastic holiday. I visited two wonderful families, saw some old friends and ate a ton of great food. Now it's back to the grind of work -- and blogging. We'll see what's out there today.

Posted 10:24 AM by Peter Fallow
...AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT: The Amazing Techie Girlfriend and I have got a busy day of shopping ahead of us today, and tomorrow we'll be hitting the road to visit friends and family. So don't expect any posts from me until Monday, Dec. 30. I hope everyone has a happy holiday, no matter how you choose to observe it. And thank you all for stopping by my humble blog over the past (almost) year. It's not a smashing success, but I'm quite happy with the reception it's gotten.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Posted 10:20 AM by Peter Fallow
HOW THE LOTT STORY GOT MISSED: Paul Janensch, a former newspaper editor who is now a journalism instructor, explains how the Trent Lott story may have been missed by the media when it first broke:

How could Washington journalists, supposedly the cream of the crop, have failed to pick up on Lott's statement at the beginning? (And many of you thought they were all liberals eager to bash conservatives.)

When I worked in Washington, I was struck by how boring it can be to cover a carefully scripted event. Often the reporters there already know how they will frame their stories and don't pay attention to what's actually said at a Congressional hearing or a press briefing.

Or a birthday party.

Hmm. This echoes what I wrote the other day.

Posted 10:12 AM by Peter Fallow
POWERS SURGE: In light of Trent Lott's announcement that he will step down as majority leader, I present William Powers' excellent take on the whole situation:

Why the Lott story took off so slowly is a good question. But just as good, and in some ways more intriguing, is the opposite question of why this story took off at all, and once it did, why it had such staying power. After all, Lott is not the first national political figure to say or do something that most people found deeply wrong. In a television interview just last year, Sen. Robert C. Byrd twice used the phrase "white niggers." But when Byrd apologized, the story went away. There are countless other examples of pols who spoke or behaved offensively, performed some act of contrition, and returned to business as usual.

Why do some transgressors become such pariahs that they are driven out of public life (think Jim Wright, Bob Packwood), while others not only survive their ignominy but go on to prosper (Bill Clinton)? Every scandal is different, of course, and the rules of the game change over time. It's hard to imagine Ted Kennedy, or any other national figure, surviving a Chappaquiddick-like incident today.

But there is one factor that plays a huge role in all these stories, and yet it has been scarcely mentioned in the last few weeks: goodwill. I mean that free-floating sense of generosity and tolerance that allows us to excuse errors, often very grievous ones, made by certain public figures. Over time, as they emerge into public consciousness, some pols manage to build up major stores of this stuff, and it keeps them afloat in a time of scandal. Others accrue little or no goodwill, and when these unfortunate souls get in trouble, they sink like a stone.

Based on the events of the last week, we can safely place Lott among the goodwill-deficient. It's true his story took several days to get traction, but once it did, it soon became clear that very few people in politics or the media had warm feelings of any kind about the Senate majority leader.

Just go read the whole thing.

Posted 6:33 AM by Peter Fallow
MEDIA BIAS UPDATE, PART 3,964: Michael Kelly continues his short series on media bias. (Here's the first part.) This time, he's got some statistics from the Center for Media and Public Affairs.

There's one passage I wanted to highlight from Kelly's latest column:

To this, we journalists argue that we -- unique among humans -- are able to see the world and its events free from the prejudices of our own vantage points. How can this be? Because, we say, of our professional training and discipline.

But we don't have any professional training or discipline. Journalism is not a profession in the sense of medicine or law or science. Journalists do not go through years of brutal academic apprenticeship designed to inculcate adherence to an agreed-upon code of ethics (such as the Hippocratic oath) or an agreed-upon method of truth-determining (such as the method of scientific inquiry). We are not required to meet any standards of knowledge. We are not certified. We operate under no mandated professional set of rules. We need not even be decently educated, as consumers of news frequently notice.

And even if we really were trained professionals, we still would not be able to attain the godlike ability to perceive and present the "objective" truth on all matters that come before us. Because we are, in fact, not unique among humans.

Amen to that.

That's about all I've got time for today, folks. It's going to be one of those days.

Posted 7:58 AM by Peter Fallow
SPRINGSTEEN MUST BE BUSY: Eric Alterman has a scathing review of Bob Woodward's "Bush at War." Alterman makes some good points, and Bob Woodward is certainly an easy target, but one question keeps nagging me: If Woodward had used his "unorthodox sourcing and journalistic writing techniques" to make the president look like a complete jackass, do you think Alterman would still be critical of the book? Discuss among yourselves.

Posted 7:35 AM by Peter Fallow
MORE ON LOTT: National Review has a column on the bashing Trent Lott is taking in newspapers in his home region. Here's the "nut graf" (or grafs):

Thoughtful conservatives here, as in the rest of the country, share a deep philosophical commitment to color-blindness under the law — combined with a Jack Kemp-like enthusiasm for market-based anti-poverty incentives that would be particularly beneficial to black Americans trapped in downtrodden neighborhoods.

While rejecting racial preferences under the law, we also realize that racism still exists and still is hurtful....Conservative defenders of Mr. Lott may have reason to react against "politically correct" tendencies to see racists behind every tree. But words such as Lott uttered, words that truly are racially divisive on their face, only feed those leftist tendencies to conflate benevolent conservative policy positions with the daily racism on golf courses and in restaurants that black Americans still experience.

Just go read the whole thing.

Posted 7:20 AM by Peter Fallow
THE TIMES HAVE PASSED THE TIMES BY: The Weekly Standard has a nice piece on the Augusta National brouhaha at the New York Times. But it's not mere Times-bashing. Here's a longish excerpt that I think is pretty important:

No paper in the country takes itself as seriously as the Times does, and it is hard to imagine another paper acting quite as the Times did in this case. Yet the story of the spiked columns is about more than the Times. In fact, it is a story about the old--i.e., the establishment--media. And the story shows why their influence has waned.

By "establishment media" I mean the several national newspapers of 50 and 60 years ago, including the Times, later joined by the TV networks. They determined what was news. And for them, news had a certain authority. Indeed, as Walter Lippmann contended, news precluded argument--or at least any argument that might conflict with what the "news" was believed to support.

That understanding of news still has adherents in high places at the Times. That explains why there was no rush to get the dissenting columns into print. It also explains why, as Jack Shafer, the press writer for slate.com, has written, the Times so scrupulously avoids self-criticism.

The Times doesn't provide forums--as other papers do--where its work can be questioned. It has no ombudsman, nor an in-house media reporter allowed to treat the Times like any other institution. And why not? Because such forums and such writers are unnecessary. News, you see, precludes argument.

The problem with that understanding of news--and of doing journalism--is that in the long run it isn't going to prove adequate. As regards public affairs, man--especially democratic man--is made for argument. In "The Revolt of the Elites," the sociologist Christopher Lasch explained why. It is only in the course of argument, he wrote, that "we come to understand what we know and what we still need to learn."

The article also mentions bloggers (several by name and URL) who are helping promote arguments and debates on matters of public interest. Check it out.

Posted 10:25 AM by Peter Fallow
LILEKS ON PIZZA: I'm one of many fans of James Lileks, and, judging by the quote I ripped off from one of his posts earlier this year, he's a fan of this blog, too. However, I've got to say the guy has some bizarre tastes in pizza.

A quarter-inch of sauce? Jeebus. I used to work at Domino's in college, and occasionally we would get orders for pizza with extra sauce. It was once my misfortune to sample one of these pies, and it was simply awful. With each bite, the sauce would squirt out of each corner of my mouth. The overload of thick red liquid had transformed the crust into a soggy mess, and overpowered the cheese and toppings. Ugh. Give me light sauce every time. (Holds up better in transit, by the way.) Or, if you really want to be my friend, send me a white pie. It has no tomato sauce at all. Just lots of cheese, garlic and a thin layer of olive oil. Pure heaven, especially with pepperoni, mushrooms, black olives and onions.

Any thoughts out there on this? What's your favorite pizza? Leave a comment below if you'd like.

Posted 10:07 AM by Peter Fallow
HERE'S THE SCOOP: Sridhar Pappu of the New York Observer has the inside story on how those two spiked Augusta National columns were resurrected in the New York Times. It's so good, so chock-full of juicy insider stuff, that I'm not going to bother excerpting any of it. Just go read it.

Posted 9:49 AM by Peter Fallow
MISSISSIPPI MEMORIES: Gregory Favre, who works for the Poynter Institute, has an excellent piece today on the "Old Mississippi" Trent Lott was fondly recalling during Strom Thurmond's birthday party. In the column, Favre also recalls brave white journalists such as Hodding Carter II:

Carter owned and edited the Delta Democrat Times in Greenville and won a Pulitzer Prize for editorials condemning racial bigotry. The Mississippi House once passed a resolution —89-19— calling Carter a liar. He then wrote that by a vote of one to zero the House contained 89 liars. "Those 89 character mobbers can go to hell, collectively or singly, and wait till I back down," he said.

It's hard to imagine ANY newspaper editor writing words like that these days. Then again, the stakes were much higher. Carter was a lone voice working in the midst of a low-level guerrilla war.

Posted 8:33 AM by Peter Fallow
INTERNET LIBEL CASE: A Virginia court has thrown out a prison warden's suit against two Connecticut newspapers that could have had a chilling effect on Internet news postings. (In a nutshell, the warden believed that negative stories about him posted on the papers' Web sites could be read in his home state of Virginia, which is much different from a news story published in a paper hundreds of miles away that no one in your hometown would ever read.) Here's the story.

Posted 7:52 AM by Peter Fallow
MORE ON GORE: In a short, piquant piece, The American Prowler looks at an Al Gore story that was somehow overlooked by the Vast Right-Wing Media Conspiracy. Check it out.

Posted 7:36 AM by Peter Fallow
TAKE A TABLET: Editor & Publisher takes a look at a PC designed specifically for reading online newspapers. Very interesting, though I still wonder about the practicality of this. I guess it would appeal to people like the Amazing Techie Girlfriend who are already toting around an assload of electronics crap everywhere they go.

Posted 8:04 AM by Peter Fallow
BIASED LANGUAGE: John Rosenberg of Discriminations points out a newspaper editorial that uses subtle yet biased language to cast conservatives in a negative light. Here's the passage John identified in the Gainesville (Ga.) Times:

Ironically, some conservative commentators are among Lott's strongest critics. They know that his presence will continue to hurt the GOP's credibility with minority voters and its ability to expand its diversity.

And John nails the reason why this passage made it into print:

Why is it ironical that conservatives are among Lott's harshest critics? Because conservatives are so widely thought to be racists.

I'm reminded of an incident at my own paper several months ago. While editing a profile of a developer, I came across a description of the story's subject as "politically conservative yet personally generous." Now, this story had already been through two senior editors who are paid at a scale far above my own, and neither of them noticed this patently unfair description of conservatives. So I changed the passage to read "politically conservative and personally generous."

Nobody really seemed to notice; it was such a minor thing, anyway. But to me, it was a perfect example of the mind-set of far too many of my colleagues.

For the record, I don't encounter this kind of bias every day. But it certainly crops up from time to time.

Posted 7:33 AM by Peter Fallow
MEDIA BIAS UPDATE, PART 3,976: Jeff Jacoby takes on the argument that the media are turning right. Check it out.

Posted 7:22 AM by Peter Fallow
MORE ON LOTT: Howard Kurtz summarizes the media's slow reaction to Trent Lott's pro-segregation comments at Strom Thurmond's birthday party.

The other day, I blogged about possible reasons for a slow reaction to Lott in the editorial pages. Today, Kurtz details reasons why reporters on hand when the remarks were made may have been asleep at the switch:

Baltimore Sun reporter Julie Hirschfeld Davis says there was so much "tongue-in-cheek" talk at Thurmond's birthday party "that a lot of us probably tuned out remarks that we might have been more careful listening to if it hadn't been such a jubilant atmosphere. Most people were writing this as a featury 100th-birthday bash."

This makes some sense to me. It would have been one thing if Lott made his comments during a political speech at a more formal event. I can guarantee you there would have been an immediate reaction. These comments came at an informal event, and Thurmond's birthday was a story that was almost certainly a low priority for news organizations that were covering it. Of course, the media (prodded by bloggers, as Kurtz points out) have made this into a huge story since then.

Posted 1:31 PM by Peter Fallow
AND FINALLY: I have to give a big shout out to the Amazing Techie Girlfriend, who proved her prowess with machinery the other night by properly reconnecting the VCR to our new digital cable box after I had screwed it up and then formatting the remote to run EVERYTHING! Thanks, hon. You're a marvel.

(P.S. She made me do this.)

Posted 8:30 AM by Peter Fallow
CONSERVATIVE MEDIA COMMENTARY THAT'S DUMB: The usually excellent David Brooks sinks to that level with this silly little piece in the Weekly Standard. He's apparently bemoaning the fact that the gossip-fueled celebrity coverage of Britney, Mariah, Jacko and others has overlooked the sad tale of Liesel Pritzke, some mega-rich kid engaged in a trust-fund battle with her family:

If this were the 1930s, the entire country would be up in arms over this story. Life magazine would put it on the cover. Society pages all over the nation would write about nothing else.

Today, of course, there is no Life. Nor are there society pages. Inherited wealth doesn't have the prestige it used to have. The aristocratic network of big money families is no longer very important. You can still get a few people to care about crack-ups in the Bingham, Koch, or Pritzker families, but these stories are midgets compared to the epic soap operas, which concern Whitney, Mariah, Michael Jackson, and such.

We've become more democratic in our scandal-mongering, more infatuated with the commercial/media phenoms and less with the rarefied upper crust. We've become more American and less pseudo-European.

I suppose that's good news, but I wouldn't mind seeing more of Liesel Pritzker.

Brooks does a lot of wonderful writing and reporting (I especially loved his book "Bobos in Paradise"), but I just don't understand his pining for the days when naked worship of actual plutocrats was considered OK. I'm all for inherited wealth, but I'm also all for the very democratic and very American spirit that, at its best, minimizes in-your-face displays of wealth and privilege.

Posted 8:12 AM by Peter Fallow
POWERS UP: William Powers has a characteristically smart assessment of The New York Times. Check it out.

Posted 8:07 AM by Peter Fallow
PUBLISHER SILENCES AUGUSTA DEBATE: Talk about a classic example of conflict of interest. Check this out:

The club appears to get special treatment in the local newspaper, the Augusta Chronicle, owned by publisher William "Billy" Morris III, a longtime Augusta National member. According to sources, Morris recently called his editors and demanded that a long profile of Burk scheduled to appear on a Sunday front page be shoved back to pages 10 and 11. He killed the accompanying Burk question and answer sidebar.

Morris also refused to run a recent piece by a writer who agreed in principle with Augusta's position, but nevertheless urged the club to give in and admit a woman for the good of the game and the tournament. Morris did not return telephone calls seeking response, and his paper's president, general manager and executive editor declined to comment.

It's buried in this long article on the brouhaha at Augusta National.

This is ridiculous. It doesn't matter how you feel about the issue (and personally, I think the golf club is correct because of the right of free association). In an ideal world, Morris should have excused himself from any discussions about Augusta National. But this is a perfect example of the small-town, protect-the-sacred-cow mentality that prevails at a lot of smaller newspapers.

Posted 3:30 PM by Peter Fallow
CONTRADICTORY CROUCH? Stanley Crouch, whom I greatly admire, weighs in on the Trent Lott controversy today. Crouch was loudly calling for Lott's resignation a couple of years ago when news of Lott's association with the Council of Conservative Citizens first surfaced. Because Crouch believes only a couple of columnists at the New York Times joined him in his crusade (I think there were a bit more than that), he writes this (and gets linked on Romenesko's Media News for it):

That proved to me that all the talk about a liberal media bias was bunk - at least when it comes to race.

Sorry, Stanley. Lazy coverage of one senator does not a trend make. (Guess he never read this guy's book.) Later, Crouch writes this:

Lott might survive all this. He is not black. If he were, and if he had associated with a racist black organization, the media would have pressed his pants while he was wearing them.

This is odd. Crouch has written for years about how black politicians and public figures almost never come under fire from the media for associating with the racist Nation of Islam. He's always been one of the few black writers brave enough to point out the double standards involved in so much coverage of racial issues. Then again, he had made the Lott thing a bit of a personal campaign the other year.

Posted 2:16 PM by Peter Fallow
MEDIA BIAS UPDATE, PART 2,938: Here's one I missed the other day. Michael Kelly writes what promises to be the first in a series on media bias. He's got some numbers that make it hard to believe that members of the media just woke up one day during Campaign 2000, decided, "Hey, what the hell. Let's go right on this one!" and have been doing nothing but the same ever since. I'm sure that will be news to the co-workers I hear bitching around the coffee pot about the "disaster" in store for this country under Bush.

Furthermore, I really, really, really wish I could publish excerpts from the "newsletters" that each department at the paper posts on our companywide Intranet. (Hint: The balance that seems to be showing up in my colleagues' political reporting certainly isn't reflected in their opinions on President Bush, the GOP in general or what they view as the simpleminded, TV-manipulated tastes of the American people.) In its own way, it would be almost as revealing as Michelangelo Signorile's discovery that a sub-editor at the Washington Times holds some dubious neo-Confederate views that he expresses on like-minded Web sites in his time away from work. (See below.)

Posted 1:43 PM by Peter Fallow
IT'S DEAN'S WORLD, WE'RE JUST LIVING IN IT: Dean Esmay, lord and master of Dean's World, has a nice post on the various political and news publications in America. (Hint: There's news and then there's "Nooz.") Check it out.

Posted 5:43 AM by Peter Fallow
SIGNORILE WATCH: In light of the recent national coverage of Howell Raines' ill-advised crusade against the Augusta National Golf Club, Michelangelo Signorile has put on his investigative-reporter's cap and unveiled what he apparently considers a much greater crime: An assistant national editor at the Washington Times who holds some questionable views on the South's role in the Civil War.

First of all, I have to wonder how much influence an "assistant national editor" wields at the 100,000-circulation Washington Times. (Robert Stacy McCain is not even listed on this staff directory.) Judging by the infrequency of his writing (I can only find three bylined stories by him in the past month) and the fact that he's not considered important enough to have his e-mail address published, I'll wager that this guy is a glorified copy editor who gets to write an occasional article or opinion piece and has negotiated to get the title "assistant national editor." (I've seen it happen before at smaller newspapers. Heck, I was once offered the title "assistant copy desk chief." It would have been more work without an increase in pay. I declined.) Equating McCain's influence to that of Howell Raines, the executive editor of arguably the world's most influential newspaper, doesn't even begin to pass the smell test.

I agree with Signorile that some of McCain's views are reprehensible, and I'm not even going to defend them. But don't journalists, in their roles outside of the newsroom, get to exercise freedom of speech? (A lot of journalistic codes of ethics say no, but I think they're wrong. That's a whole other post, though.) Howell Raines is being criticized for the quixotic campaign he's leading in his role as executive editor. Signorile is criticizing McCain for views he espouses outside of the pages of the Washington Times. To me, there's a big difference. The former is legitimate criticism of a very public figure in a very public role at the nation's top newspaper. The latter smacks of a Stalinist witch hunt against a relatively insignificant writer at a much smaller newspaper. You can almost see the headlines if this concept were carried to its logical conclusion: "Reporter who covers gender issues once purchased copy of Penthouse." Or "Redskins beat writer actually a Cowboys fan."

Signorile also is alarmed that some of McCain's work has appeared on a racist Web site:

Some of McCain’s Washington Times articles are reprinted, presumably with his and his paper’s permission, on a creepy website called American Renaissance (to which McCain has written at least one letter to the editor, offering "warm congratulations" on an article). Here’s what the respected Southern Poverty Law Center has to say about that site: "Edited by white separatist Jared Taylor, American Renaissance is a magazine with a highfalutin tone that links IQ levels to racial groups and promotes eugenics, the ‘science’ of improving the human race through selective breeding."

It's true that three of McCain's articles from the Washington Times have appeared on the American Renaissance's Web site. It's also true that a quick search found at least one article from the the Washington Post that has been reprinted there, too, presumably with the Post's permission. Applying Signorile's "logic," it seems that Washington's "other" newspaper is now tainted through guilt by association with white supremacists. But that seems to be the thrust of this whole article. It's a not-so-subtle attempt to link a newspaper that doesn't pretend to be anything but conservative to racists.

Of course, the big question is whether McCain's views have slanted his reporting. Signorile claims they have, but the evidence he presents is pretty flimsy:

These viewpoints offer background for and insight into some of McCain’s pieces in The Washington Times. This past October he warned about the "Backlash Building in White America," as the headline of his article blared, and he interviewed and promoted an obscure professor who claimed "that society should combat white nationalists in part by acknowledging the legitimacy of some of their grievances" and that white nationalism is "the monster that identity politics created." (Yes, blame it all on blacks themselves!)

I'll let you read the article in question to see what you think, but the Q&A with Carol Swain is hardly advocating the position that the Old South was right. And contrary to what Signorile writes, Swain is hardly obscure. She is a professor at Vanderbilt University who has, according to this Web site, made several appearances in the national media and placed articles in top newspapers and journals. And, as you can tell from the photo, she's also black. Signorile left that bit out, if he was aware of it at all. (Here's more on Swain here and here.) Swain's views are certainly provocative, but there's absolutely zero evidence that she's singing the praises of white supremacists or "blaming" black people for anything. Here's an excerpt of what she said in her interview with McCain:

The white nationalists use the language of civil rights, [which] condemns discrimination against individuals on the basis of their race, national origin, gender. What the white nationalists say is that discrimination is wrong, it's unfair, it's unconstitutional, and most Americans agree. But they follow that up by saying that white people are discriminated against, that in fact they are the most discriminated-against group in America. ... Multiculturalism provided white nationalists with the language to justify a parallel form of identity politics for white Americans. If all people have the right to protect their distinct cultural, political and genetic identity then, the white nationalists say, white people have the same rights. They use the language that minorities have developed and apply it to white people, and it works just as well. I think multiculturalism itself has gone too far. It takes us too far from the American ideal of having one national identity. And it encourages all groups to think in terms of distinct group interests that compete with the interests of all other Americans.

So an article that is critical of white supremacists AND multiculturalism is cited as "proof" that McCain's views have influenced his reporting? That's pretty weak.

One more thing: Signorile makes it sound as if the New York Times' Augusta crusade is a campaign for gender equity that has come under fire from a bunch of angry, white, straight males. He completely ignores the fact that the issue is more about the right of free association than anything else. And that makes Signorile's column even more dishonest.

Posted 10:15 AM by Peter Fallow
RIGHT-WING MEDIA BIAS UPDATE: National Review editors weigh in on the latest DNC talking point making the rounds in the media. Here's a bit I really liked from someone I don't usually like -- Rush Limbaugh:

Rush, as usual, got it right. In response to Daschle, he noted the new prominence of some conservative or right-leaning news outlets, and said, "Suddenly these liberal politicians have to fight in the arena of ideas . . . I'm sure Sen. Daschle would love it if nobody were out there" contradicting him on points of policy, but "that's not how free speech works."

Amen to that.

Posted 9:41 AM by Peter Fallow
LOTT'S OF BAD NEWS: Howard Kurtz has a nice roundup on the Trent Lott fiasco today. Check it out.

As for Kurtz's question about why there were virtually no editorials about the incident over the weekend, I have a possible explanation. The story was reported in newspapers on Saturday. (Strange, considering Lott made the statements Thursday. Possibly he made them Thursday night, too late for newspaper deadlines for Friday editions.) Op-Ed pages for big Sunday sections are almost always done in advance, generally by Friday afternoon. It's entirely possible that the "lack of outrage" lefties are crying about could be blamed on something as simple as a production schedule. (Apparently, Lott is getting it good today all over the place. That's because the Op-Ed folks, who almost always work Sunday-Thursday or Monday-Friday, are now back at work.) It's not an excuse, just a possible explanation.

My personal view is that Lott's remarks were outrageous, and he should step down as majority leader. If he hasn't learned by now that the "glorious" Southern past includes monstrous crimes that were contrary to everything in the American creed, then he is not fit to lead the Senate Republicans. But it goes further than that. Not only does he make Republicans look bad; he also makes white Southerners look bad. Those still blind enough to see white sheets and burning crosses as the defining symbols of life below the Mason-Dixon line have just gotten some extra ammo.

Posted 9:12 AM by Peter Fallow
ELITE MEDIA? David Shaw, the media critic for the Los Angeles Times, wrote an interesting article the other day on what he sees as the disconnect between "elite" journalists and the people they cover. He makes a few good points, such as this one:

The natural sympathy that most journalists feel for the underdog and for the downtrodden prevents the media from ignoring the poor. The fascination that the American public has with the rich and famous prevents the media from ignoring the upper strata of society. But newspapers seldom write about the middle class, the working class -- white- or blue-collar.

I think that's true to an extent. You see plenty of coverage of the struggles of poor people, and lots of coverage of the lifestyles of the rich and famous, yet comparatively little on the challenges of middle-class life. But I think Shaw's class analysis could use a little more context (there's that damn word again), especially here:

The median annual salary for "experienced reporters" working at newspapers with more than 250,000 daily circulation -- the 40 largest papers in the country -- was about $56,000 last year, according to a newspaper industry study. Pay for "senior reporters" -- and for top reporters and editors at the largest of these papers -- is substantially more. But median income for all U.S. workers over 15 is about $31,500.

I don't doubt that reporters at the top papers are paid well; in fact, when I accepted this new job at a much bigger paper, my pay nearly doubled. However, I'm certain that those 40 largest papers are also located in the 40 largest cities, which means the cost of living is much, much higher. For example, I noted that my current pay is nearly double what I was making at a newspaper with a circulation of roughly 55,000. But my rent more than doubled (for a smaller apartment), and groceries, gasoline and other essentials are more expensive. I tried to calculate my ratio of expenses to pay here and at my old job and concluded that my new salary is equivalent to a slight pay increase at my old job. In other words, for my market, I'm right smack-dab in the middle of the middle class.

The piece also includes the obligatory moaning about the lack of diversity in newsrooms. It's true that the percentages at newspapers don't match the percentages in the general population, but compared with other professions such as medicine and law, journalism is staggeringly diverse.

All in all, though, it's not a bad column. Check it out.

Posted 8:51 AM by Peter Fallow
I'M BACK: I've been fighting what feels like a bizarre type of flu, but I'm feeling well enough to blog. Thanks for your patience.

Posted 11:21 AM by Peter Fallow
TIMES OUT OF MIND: Dave Shiflett rips into The New York Times. I especially loved this bit:

Howell Raines, according to insiders and outsiders alike, is an intellectual bully. Like many in his tribe, he mistakes his personal obsessions with Universal Objective Truth, including his obsession with a private golf club's membership policies. In the Augusta matter, he has embarrassed his paper by giving this non-story more coverage than the Times might lavish on a medium-sized African war.

Ouch.

Posted 9:57 AM by Peter Fallow
RIGHT-WING MEDIA BIAS? E.J. Dionne claims the right has "won" the media-bias argument, even though he denies that it existed in the first place:

To the extent that there has been a bias in the establishment media, it has been less a liberal tilt than a preference for the values of the educated, professional class -- which, surprise, surprise, is roughly the class position of most journalists.

This meant that on social and cultural issues -- abortion and religion come to mind -- journalism was not particularly hospitable to conservative voices. But on economic issues -- especially free trade and balanced budgets -- the press tilted toward the center or even toward moderate conservatism. You might say that the two groups most likely to be mistreated by the media were religious conservatives and trade unionists.

What an arrogant and evasive passage. The "values of the educated, professional class" reflect the sort of elitist liberalism that conservatives have bemoaned for decades. Calling it something that sounds prettier doesn't change that. And if you've got a group of so-called "objective" journalists who vote Democratic at something like an 80-percent clip, isn't that a problem? As for Dionne's bit on social issues, well, what he leaves out is as important as what he puts in. Dionne is right about abortion and religion not getting covered properly. But how about affirmative action (especially the horrendous coverage of Proposition 209 in California) or virtually any story that touches on race? How about immigration? Or homosexuality? Or AIDS? Apparently, those controversial and divisive issues don't count in Dionne's reckoning.

As for the economic angle, well, most of the liberal journalists I work with want their 401(k) to do well. They like their Volvos with their "Visualize World Peace" bumper stickers, and they love their Crate & Barrel home decor. But that doesn't make them eligible for membership in the Cato Institute. There's a lot of evidence that even liberal journalists, much like liberal politicians, will argue for balanced budgets and responsible government spending while crusading against cuts to social programs. (Mickey Kaus, a liberal, has been faithfully documenting big media's resistance to any evidence of progress in welfare reform for a couple of years now.)

And once again, let me repeat: Conservatives are glad to be finally getting a fair shake in the field of punditry. Indeed, most of the intellectually engaging and entertaining writers on editorial pages these days come from the right. But conservatives (and a few liberals) also agree that a huge amount of bias slips into straight news coverage, often in the form of supplying "context" to a story. (The New York Times is notorious for doing this, and is rightfully blasted for it by its many critics.) Hell, I closely read dozens of stories every week that go into our newspaper. Does screaming left-leaning bias leap out from every story? Of course not, and I believe conservatives hurt their case by suggesting that it does. But there's still enough to cause concern and to make me grumble as I push the "send" button.

Posted 6:21 PM by Peter Fallow
ROONE ARLEDGE DIES: I'm saddened to hear of his passing. He was the chairman of ABC News and thus bears some responsibility for the rise of Peter Jennings. But he will forever be remembered as the inventor of Monday Night Football and ABC's Wide World of Sports, and as the driving force behind the Olympics becoming a must-see event. If MNF were the only thing he'd done, it would have been enough to make him a broadcasting legend. Rest in peace, Roone, and thanks for giving us an excuse to drink beer on Mondays.

Posted 2:01 PM by Peter Fallow
LAZIEST BLOG POST IN HISTORY: I'm tired. Here's some stuff so I can say I posted today.

Posted 9:28 AM by Peter Fallow
SEGREGATION AND THE MEDIA: Go read this piece on the Census Bureau's study of racial-segregation levels in America's cities. It makes an interesting point: Cities with less segregation are also among the fastest-growing cities, largely because they have lower taxes and fewer regulations. Meanwhile, cities with more segregation are losing population, have higher taxes and grapple with more regulations.

The story made me wonder how different news organizations might have reported the Census story when it first broke. I did a Google News search and here's what turned up:

From the Washington Times:

Black Americans experienced a notable decline in residential segregation between 1980 and 2000, but they remain the most racially isolated of minority groups, according to a newly released report from the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2000, blacks were 10 percent more likely to interact with whites than 20 years ago, the study, "Racial and Ethnic Residential Segregation in the United States: 1980-2000," found, creating a black-white relationship that is less segregated than ever before.

Here's how The Associated Press reported it, and how it appeared in Newsday:

America's metropolitan areas became more integrated during the 1990s, as renovated inner cities attracted whites and immigrants while more blacks moved out to the suburbs, the Census Bureau reported Wednesday.

Here's the Census Bureau's press release on the study:

African-Americans experienced modest but consistent declines in residential segregation from 1980 to 2000, according to a two-year analysis of census data by the U.S. Census Bureau. The study found that segregation patterns were mixed for Hispanics, Asians and Pacific Islanders, and American Indians and Alaska Natives. Despite the declines, African-Americans remained the most highly segregated group.

And here's language straight from the study:

The trend for Blacks or African Americans is clearest of all -- declines in segregation were observed over the 1980 to 2000 period across all dimensions of segregation we considered.

But then look at how Reuters covered it, via ABC:

Blacks remain the most highly segregated minority group in neighborhoods across the United States, despite changes over the last 20 years, the U.S. Census Bureau said on Wednesday. Billed as one of the agency's most exhaustive studies ever of residential segregation, the report on trends between 1980 and 2000 showed Hispanics were the next most segregated group, followed by Asians, American Indians and Alaska natives.

It's clear that there are still many in the media who consciously or unconsciously choose to downplay any good news about race relations in this country. Stories such as this go against the blacks-as-eternal-victims script that is so ingrained in the minds of a lot of journalists, so they spin it in a way that confirms their worldview. (And Reuters should have said "past 20 years," not "last 20 years." Sorry. It's a copy-desk thing.) Maybe this guy can enlighten us.

Posted 8:08 AM by Peter Fallow
SNIPER UPDATE: The new issue of the American Journalism Review is out, and it includes three articles on coverage of the D.C. sniper case. This one is the most interesting. It's a look at how media-fueled "profiling" that focused exclusively on white, middle-aged men may have hindered the manhunt.

Posted 7:42 AM by Peter Fallow
CAREER-LIMITING MOVE: That's what this story could represent for two New York Times sports columnists who allegedly had articles killed because they took a position contrary to the paper's ongoing crusade against the Augusta National Golf Club. Taking an internal dispute to the pages of a competing paper? Wow. These guys could be facing some serious career repercussions, especially under a control-freak regime like Howell Raines' Times. Granted, Dave Anderson is a legend, and you generally don't gut-shoot a legend, and Harvey Araton has worked there for years, but it'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out.

UPDATE: Susanna Cornett weighs in on the story.

Posted 9:13 AM by Peter Fallow
MORE ON GORE: The blog world is familiar with Al Gore's "discovery" last week of the sudden appearance of a vast right-wing conspiracy in the national media, a bias that's driven by one cable news network (whose ratings are still far behind the broadcast networks), a handful of talk-radio blowhards and one conservative newspaper, The Washington Times, which sports an awe-inspiring circulation of just over 100,000. (By way of comparison, that's about half the circulation of a mid-sized paper like the Charlotte Observer, and less than a tenth the circulation of the New York Times.) Well, I found a nice response to Gore's position at The American Prowler. Let's revisit what Gore said:

"Something" -- he doesn't define what something is -- "will start at the Republican National Committee, inside the building, and it will explode the next day on the right-wing talk show network and on Fox News and in the newspapers that play the game, The Washington Times and the others. And then they'll create a little echo chamber, and pretty soon they'll start baiting the mainstream media for allegedly ignoring the story they've pushed into the zeitgeist. And then pretty soon the mainstream media goes out and disingenuously takes a so-called objective sampling, and lo and behold, these R.N.C. talking points are woven into the fabric of the zeitgeist."

Forget the underlying assumption that the American people (and now, apparently, huge swaths of the media) are automatons whose minds are clay in the hands of the Scaife-funded right-wing spin masters. (Apparently, Gore believes "responsible" voters should ignore the thousands of alternative media outlets now available and only get their news from "mainstream" newspapers and networks that far too often get their "talking points" from the Democratic National Committee. See Henry Hanks' research on this.) The Prowler nails the crux of the issue:

Is it possible that the RNC and the media are responding to the zeitgeist, not driving it? This is inconceivable to Gore because he assumes the American people would never, unless snookered, favor Republican or conservative ideas. Unable to admit this possibility, the Democrats' explanations for defeat grow ever more elaborate. The obvious explanation -- the American people just don't trust liberalism, especially when their lives are at stake -- is too difficult to bear, so alternative theories must be faked up.

Just go read the whole thing.

Posted 8:32 AM by Peter Fallow
DROP THE OBJECTIVITY: Lots of people have seen and written about this piece from Las Vegas Review-Journal editor Thomas Mitchell in which he calls for journalists to drop the pretense of objectivity in covering politics. All I'll add is that I think it's a concept I would support, in theory at least. It would certainly remove any doubts about "media bias," but it would be nearly impossible to implement overnight. First and foremost, there would be tremendous institutional resistance to it from the usual suspects (J-schools, hand-wringing professional organizations, book-writing journalists.) Secondly, a lot of readers would raise a stink, and if there's anything nervous, bottom-line-driven publishers hate, it's readers who raise a stink. So don't hold your breath waiting for this idea to take hold at newspapers.

For more on Mitchell, check out this from Andrew Cline's Rhetorica blog.

Posted 8:17 AM by Peter Fallow
SHAFER -- THE ONE TO HAVE WHEN YOU'RE HAVING MORE THAN ONE: Jack Shafer, the media critic for Slate, has done it again with this examination of a ridiculously slanted Page One story from the New York Times.The article in question was highly critical of Republican attempts to dismantle the seniority system for congressional leadership, yet buried in the piece is the admission that it's the same thing Democrats have been trying to do for years. Here's the clincher:

Oddly, I don't recall a Page One New York Times story about Democrats "Reining in 'Cardinals of Spending' " when they changed the system. Should we attribute today's peculiar treatment to 1) ahistorical news judgment; 2) pervasive liberal bias at the New York Times (which I don't oppose in principle); or should we cite it as 3) an example of a reporter capitalizing on the top editors' political prejudices to write his way onto Page One?

Excellent as usual. Check it out.

Posted 7:19 AM by Peter Fallow
THE BAGHDAD BUGLE: Here's an interesting look at the media in Iraq. To sum up their coverage of America, George W. Bush bad, Gwyneth Paltrow good. And then there's this:

The return of U.N. arms inspectors to Iraq was big news internationally with foreign reporters, TV crews and photographers chasing them everywhere. But Iraq's media carried only brief Foreign Ministry announcements listing the sites they investigated.

Meanwhile, events that barely register elsewhere can be big news in Iraq. On a recent day the daily Al-Jumhuriya reported that "a demonstration took place in New Bedford to protest the American threats of military aggression against Iraq." The story was about a march in New Bedford, Mass. attended by about 200 people.

Dude. The Iraqi press covers anti-war protests in the U.S. much more thoroughly than the New York Times or the Washington Post, man! Perhaps those ANSWER supporters who are unhappy with the coverage here can take out a subscription to Al-Jumhuriya to get news that's free of the inherent right-wing, war-mongering corporate bias that we are force-fed here in Amerikkka.

Or, to save postage in the long term, they could just move to Iraq. Preferably right next door to a hidden military "command-and-control" center.

Posted 7:10 AM by Peter Fallow
RIGHT-WING MEDIA BIAS? Howard Kurtz has a good column today on errors that have appeared in The Washington Times that could be linked to editorial page editor Tony Blankley's desire to shed a negative light on John McCain and Jim Jeffords. With that in mind, check out Andrew Cline's list of biases that the media carry.

Posted 6:58 AM by Peter Fallow
RAINES EVERY DAY: I'm sure this is everywhere today, because it was linked on Drudge last night, but check out this Newsweek article on the activist journalism being practiced at the New York Times under Executive Editor Howell Raines. It's pretty good.

I wish I had more time to comment on it, but this is going to be Another One of Those Weeks at work. I'm sure other newspaper folks out there know what the run-up to Christmas is like. You've got huge sections because there are a lot more retail ads in the paper, and there's a lot of advance work to do. So I'll be slammed this week, and posting may be light to non-existent. But thanks for stopping by.