I'M BACK ... AND I'M GONE AGAIN

I'M BACK ... AND I'M GONE AGAIN: Well, I've enjoyed my month-plus blogging break so much that I'm going to make it permanent.

I'm retiring from blogging.

I know, I know. I did this once before. Last spring, I got fed up with blogging and quit, but I was eventually lured back.

That's not going to happen this time.

Why am I doing this? The main reason is that I want to get involved in life again. Blogging, even on a shorter schedule, simply took up too much time in my already busy day for me to do it as well as I would like. My morning blogging constitutional began to feel too much like work, and that's never good.

That doesn't mean I've completely soured on blogging. I still think it's a wonderfully democratic new medium, and I've discovered many interesting writers. I'll be reading all my favorites every day, several times a day, so I'll still be a part of the show.

I just won't be posting anymore.

I want to thank all of you folks who have seen fit to stop by over the past year and a half, and I'd also like to thank all the people who have linked me on their blogs and corresponded with me via e-mail. I've really treasured the experience.

That is all.

So long.

SUMMER VACATION

SUMMER VACATION: OK, I'm fed up with blogging, even with the truncated posting schedule I've been following for the past few months. I'll be logging off until sometime in July. Peace.

FOLLOW THE MONEY

FOLLOW THE MONEY: The Weekly Standard examines the hypocrisy of Bill Moyers when it comes to conflicts of interest.

This is a fairly damning piece about a beloved left-leaning media icon, but once again, it's not on Romenesko, so it officially does not exist.

WOLFOWITZ'S WORDS

WOLFOWITZ'S WORDS: Everyone's been all over this story, so just in case you haven't seen it, here's the Weekly Standard's version.

'TIMES' TROUBLES

'TIMES' TROUBLES: Howard Kurtz summarizes the New York Times' recent woes.

FCC DEREGULATION

FCC DEREGULATION: The big vote is today, and I have to say I'm a little worried. Not so much because I'm worried about the end of true press freedom. I'm more worried about the crapification of news coverage. There are many positives about corporate-owned media (they have more resources and greater reach), but they also are notorious cost-cutters. If stories you care about don't seem to get covered, I guarantee you it's not because the corporate fat cats have ordered it to be that way so they can preserve "the status quo." It's usually because the allocation of resources for doing more reporting is not in the budget.

I guess we'll have to see how this shakes out in the years ahead. And, of course, we should remember that the FCC's rules could be changed again at some future date.

THE FRIDAY FIVE

THE FRIDAY FIVE: OK, here goes:

1. What do you most want to be remembered for?
Being a good person. (I'm trying to be a good person, anyway.)

2. What quotation best fits your outlook on life?
"Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about."
Oscar Wilde

3. What single achievement are you most proud of in the past year?
Lowering my cholesterol more than 70 points. The only "drug" I've used is niacin.

4. What about the past ten years?
Hmm. I guess securing my current job. That, and finally meeting a woman whom I love, and who loves me.

5. If you were asked to give a child a single piece of advice to guide them through life, what would you say?
Strive to be a good and kind person.

MORE 'TIMES' BASHING

MORE 'TIMES' BASHING: Jonah Goldberg dissects a New York Times article on "Hipublicans," young campus conservatives who (gasp) look like all the other kids at college! As usual, it's funny and smart, often in the same sentence. Check it out.

IT'S MILLER TIME

IT'S MILLER TIME: Slate's Jack Shafer continues to excoriate the New York Times' Judith Miller for her coverage of intelligence reports on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Now, I'm a little concerned that we haven't found these weapons yet (I think we will eventually) but I don't think this is cause to be overly hard on Miller. Let me explain.

Shafer makes a big deal of the fact that Miller and the Times unquestioningly reported the findings of intelligence sources, perhaps inadvertently allowing themselves to be "spun" by sinister forces who wanted a war in Iraq at any cost. Presumably, Shafer and other critics would want Miller to use some other sources that might cast reasonable doubt on what's being fed to U.S. intelligence agencies. But the key question is, what would these alternative sources be? Intelligence agencies in other countries? Some apparatchik from Saddam Hussein's regime? Scott Ritter? An "independent" body such as the U.N.? International A.N.S.W.E.R.?

And therein lies the rub. How much can you trust your sources for a blockbuster story when they're basically the only ones you have? And in our current hypermedia environment, would you really expect a newspaper to hold such a story until some alternative sources could be found?

DID YOU GET THE MEMO?

DID YOU GET THE MEMO? Check this out. It's a memo from Los Angeles Times editor John Carroll to his staffers regarding a blatantly biased story on abortion. (Link via Hoystory.)

AL-JAZEERA FOR SALE

AL-JAZEERA FOR SALE: The Weekly Standard has a potential blockbuster of a story: Evidence that Saddam Hussein paid off some Al-Jazeera staffers to ensure positive media coverage.

Nothing on Romenesko yet, though, so the story officially does not exist.

BRAGG RESIGNS

BRAGG RESIGNS: Rick Bragg, the New York Times reporter who was suspended for relying too heavily on stringers, has resigned. After Bragg made comments to the Washington Post claiming that what he did was not unusual and that he was being singled out for punishment, many of his colleagues vented their spleens Wednesday on Romenesko's Letters page (and also here), denying that the use of uncredited stringers to do the basic reporting on many stories in the Times was widespread. However, the Washington Post story cited above indicates that the practice may, indeed, be fairly common:

Lisa Suhay, a Times freelance writer who says her work on one article was badly distorted by Blair, maintained that Bragg "is being punished for what I, as a freelancer, have seen in four years as common practice.

"I have covered anthrax, plane crashes, roller-coaster disasters, interviewed the family of a local POW -- all high-profile stories, with no credit. . . . It was simply understood that I got paid to be invisible, a nonentity, entrusted to go to market to get the choicest bits for the dish being prepared."

Milton Allimadi, a Times metro stringer for two years in the mid-1990s, said he routinely filed crime stories that were "barely touched" by editors and reporters but never got a byline. "I often wondered how readers I had interviewed must have been surprised the next day. While interviewing them I identified myself as Milton Allimadi, and the next day the byline would be totally different," he said.

It certainly seems that Bragg took the reliance on stringers to ludicrous lengths. But I think the blame for this fiasco rests with the Times' stringer policy, which is pretty damn unclear. The paper needs to tell its big-shot reporters to swallow their egos and allow people who do the legwork for a story to get some credit, either in the byline or in a note at the bottom of the story.

SEGWAY COVERAGE

SEGWAY COVERAGE: The Washington City Paper has an interesting story on how journalists have hyped the Segway scooter. Apparently, few have seriously considered the implications of sidewalks full of people moving at up to 12 mph. I liked this bit:

If Segway driving moves out of the realm of the theoretical and becomes part of the traffic flow, reporters will adopt a more skeptical tone. But a few may have to get run over first.

Personally, this Segway thing seems like something for uber-geeks only. I don't think it will ever catch on with the car-driving, foot-walking public.

RACE & THE MEDIA

RACE & THE MEDIA: Using the Jayson Blair affair as a springboard, Reason's Cathy Young calls for a reasoned debate about race in America:

Racism has a terrible history in American culture, and few would deny that it still exists in many strata of society. As a result, there is a widespread attitude that to challenge or dismiss specific claims of racism is insensitive if not downright dangerous. Even blacks who stray from the party line are often accused of either unwittingly playing into the hands of racists or consciously trying to please their white "masters." Issues such as affirmative action have many complicated layers, and both sides have valid arguments. But we should be able to discuss these issues without being browbeaten by charges of bigotry. The best way to overcome racial antagonism is to lay all the cards on the table.

Amen to that.

MORE 'TIMES' BASHING

MORE 'TIMES' BASHING: The hits just keep on coming. This time, City Journal writer Sol Stern dissects a piece celebrating the Black Panthers. Ironically, Stern wrote one of the first hagiographies of the Panthers for the Times in 1967.

HOW TO WRITE A 'NEW YORK TIMES' FEATURE STORY

HOW TO WRITE A 'NEW YORK TIMES' FEATURE STORY: James Lileks tells us. And he also addresses the Rick Bragg fiasco:

I will say this: when I was a feature writer, everything I wrote about, I saw. The idea that someone else would provide me with raw material to shape into a story from my desk would have seemed completely wrong, and would have made me feel like a fraud when anyone said they liked the piece. It’s not the writing alone that makes a good piece, it’s what you noticed, what your eye chose and your mind remembered. It’s all the stuff you leave out that makes your piece work, as much as the stuff you put in.

Yes, you can take some stringer’s notes and compose a story, but the difference between that an a piece you wrote from your own research is the difference between a Penthouse Forum letter and your recollection of your wedding night.

True.

MORE ON DIVERSITY

MORE ON DIVERSITY: Check out this excellent post on newsroom diversity by John Rosenberg at Discriminations. He raises some important questions:

And this, finally, brings us back to the Blair Affair, and a larger question: What is the relevance of ASNE's (American Society of Newspaper Editors) aggressive pro-"diversity" stance to the way its members write about "diversity"? ASNE's web site, for example, calls for "increasing minority scholarships and internships," even though one Court of Appeals has held such race-specific scholarships unconstitutional at state institutions (Podberesky v. Kirwan, 38 F.3d 147 [4th Cir. 1994], cert. denied, 115 S. Ct. 2001 [1995]).

Does membership in an organization energetically espousing such views, and impressing them upon its members, compromise the ability of the press to cover the controversy over "diversity" -- not only in its own newsrooms but also at other organizations? Does it raise the famous issue of "the appearance" of a conflict of interest, or at least of a lack of objectivity?

The short answer is of course it compromises the media's ability to cover diversity-related issues. I don't have time to go into it today, but check out Jim Sleeper's Liberal Racism for more, or William McGowan's Coloring The News.

FACT CHECKERS EXPLAINED

FACT CHECKERS EXPLAINED: Slate has a very useful story explaining why daily newspapers don't employ fact checkers. (Hint: There's no time to do it.) Check it out.

MORE 'TIMES' TROUBLES

MORE 'TIMES' TROUBLES: I'm a little late catching up to the story of Rick Bragg, the New York Times reporter who has been disciplined for not giving a stringer credit for doing grunt-work reporting. Apparently, it's a common occurrence at the Times and other papers, though I have to say I've never heard of it until now. It's always been my experience that stringers or contributors get partial credit, either in the byline or in a note at the end of the story.

Anyway, back to Bragg. He tells the Washington Post that he feels he's being singled out as a sacrificial lamb in the aftermath of the Jayson Blair affair:

But now what he calls a "poisonous atmosphere" has descended on the Times -- one that prompted the paper to suspend Bragg for two weeks for practices he considers utterly routine -- and the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter says he will quit in the next few weeks.

"Obviously, I'm taking a bullet here," he said of the suspension imposed last week. "Anyone with half a brain can see that." But, he said, "I'm too mad to whine about it."

So Bragg is a make-up call for Blair, to prove that white guys can be screw-ups, too, perhaps?

HAVE A GREAT MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND!

HAVE A GREAT MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND! I'll drink a few for you and check back in next week.

THE FRIDAY FIVE

THE FRIDAY FIVE: Here's something new I'm going to try each week. You can, too. Follow this link. Here goes:

1. What brand of toothpaste do you use?
Mentadent Advanced Care.

2. What brand of toilet paper do you prefer?
Charmin. The softer, the better.

3. What brand(s) of shoes do you wear?
At work, whatever kind of generic dress or dress casual shoe I can afford. At home, Adidas or Nike. (Currently Nike. They were on sale.)

4. What brand of soda do you drink?
I'm not a big soda drinker, but I like all kinds. Sprite, Mountain Dew and Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi.

5. What brand of gum do you chew?
Whatever anyone gives me. I rarely buy gum.

McGOWAN ON THE MEDIA

McGOWAN ON THE MEDIA William McGowan, author of the excellent Coloring the News, weighs in on the media's recent woes and examines a little-observed phenomenon: "high-end media nepotism." Check it out.

And for more McGowan, here's an interview with him about Jayson Blair at Times Watch. Note this comment, with which I generally agree:

"I don’t think the Blair case should impose a stigma on all minority journalists. It shouldn’t invalidate all diversity efforts either, especially efforts aimed at casting a wide net, opening doors to talented people, all the while maintaining standards as you are doing so. But I do think you’d be journalistically at fault if you didn’t acknowledge where diversity and race was a factor in the Blair case and the Times institutional response to it."

Amen to that.

HEDGES UPDATE

HEDGES UPDATE: The excellent TimesWatch has more on New York Times reporter Chris Hedges' diatribe at Rockford College's graduation ceremony, including examples of his "objectivity" regarding Israel and U.S. foreign policy. And, if you don't want to listen to Hedges' screed, you can read a transcript here.

And here's James Lileks on Hedges' speech:

Is it wrong to deliver an antiwar commencement address? Of course not. You could argue that it would be a dereliction of your duties not to bring the outside world into your comments, since that’s the place to which the grads are headed. But such a speech needs to persuade. It needs to draw the audience close, make eye contact. Crack a joke, wax colloquial, opine a bit, then bring it all back to the grads. Pat them on the back, remind them that the process of learning has just begun, warn them against cant of any sort, and give them a closing that wraps this extraordinary day up in one sweet smart line they can take with them for the hard years to come.

What did he do? He cracked the mike, and said I have come to talk about war, and empire. You could just hear the shoulders sag: oh man. It’s Mr. Big Wet Pillow fingering his Vietnamese worry-beads. As if we haven’t heard this for the last four years.

That's perfect.

ON CONDITION OF ANONYMITY

ON CONDITION OF ANONYMITY: Editor & Publisher has an editorial up on the Jayson Blair fiasco. The first couple of grafs are a lame attempt to minimize the degree to which an overzealous quest for "diversity" played a role in this whole mess. But the nut of the opinion piece is a solid critique of the use and abuse of anonymous sources:

One inescapable conclusion from this scandal is that the Times has developed an addictive tolerance for anonymous sources, the crack cocaine of journalism. The Times could not go cold turkey even in its extraordinary Mother's Day cataloging of Blair's journalistic sins, an occasion that cried out for 100% on-the-record reporting. For no apparent reason other than habit, an entirely innocuous e-mail message was attributed to "one fellow reporter."

It is virtually impossible to read an important front-page story in the Times and not stumble across anonymous sources, either used directly to supply what we assume is factual information, or indirectly in those ever popular "context-setting" sentences. Here's an example of both types from today's paper:

Mr. Rumsfeld's initial proposal came at a time when questions were being raised both inside and out the government over the quality of the intelligence concerning links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. One intelligence official said Mr. Rumsfeld had become irritated by disagreements within the intelligence community over the possible links between Iraq and the Qaeda network. Before the war, some Pentagon officials expressed frustration over what they perceived to be excessive caution on the part of C.I.A. analysts who found scant Qaeda-Iraqi connections, according to several intelligence officials.

Anonymous sources can certainly be important, but it is possible to overdo it. The Times overdoes it on a daily basis.

MORE 'TIMES' BASHING

Post updated to reflect the fact that I'm not sure Hedges was actually in Iraq this time around. I saw a print-edition story in the New York Post that said he wasn't, but the Web version doesn't say that. So, I'm removing the part of my post that says all of Hedges' reporting from Iraq "now comes into question." -- The Editor

MORE 'TIMES' BASHING: Did you see this story? Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times war correspondent, launched an 18-minute tirade that could have been penned by Noam Chomsky at the graduation ceremony for Rockford College. Think I'm kidding about the Chomskyite content? Listen for yourself. I did, and not once did he even mention the kids who were getting their diplomas that day. There wasn't even a "as you go out into the world" bit at the end of his rant. It was just pure bile directed at the Bush administration. No wonder he was loudly and heartily booed, and nearly yanked off the stage.

I'm not saying Hedges doesn't have the right to say what he believes. But I have to wonder about whether it was appropriate to vent his spleen in such a manner at a graduation ceremony. Furthermore, any claims of "objectivity" Hedges may make in his role as a journalist can no longer be taken seriously.

What was he thinking? Apparently, he was thinking that the people in the audience at this liberal arts college were a bunch of brainwashed sheep.

CHALLENGING THE 'TIMES'

CHALLENGING THE 'TIMES': Stanley Kurtz has a useful column in The National Review that looks at the expansion plans of the New York Times, and continues the argument that the Washington Post should go national to fill the vacuum created by an increasingly on-the-run Grey Lady.

I'm all for that. Sure, the Post's stories are widely read because they're available through wire services nationwide, but it would be great to go into any bookstore or 7-11 in the nation and purchase an edition of the paper that carries a national slant.

IS THIS SPREADING?

IS THIS SPREADING? The New York Daily News reports that its tabloid rival, the New York Post, lifted a National Enquirer article about Kathie Lee Gifford:

The Post identified its bad boy as Robin Gregg, a freelancer who the paper's brass said 'fessed up to stealing a story from that paragon of journalism the National Enquirer. Some would call that a perfect fit for the fact-challenged Post.

Ouch.

BLACK JOURNALISTS ON BLAIR

BLACK JOURNALISTS ON BLAIR: Compare and contrast these two opinion columns on the role of affirmative action in the Jayson Blair fiasco. Here's Jabari Asim in the Washington Post:

The discomfort that I and some other black journalists felt in the wake of the Blair fiasco exposed the frustrating degree to which we are still dependent upon others' ability or willingness to see us as individuals. What makes our plight so painfully clear are the appalling and bizarrely illogical reactions of various white journalists. For all their vaunted liberalness, they have in columns and editorials implicated Blair as an affirmative action blunderer by which all black hires should be judged. It's preposterous to suggest that one reporter's shortcomings indict all programs aimed at increasing newsroom diversity, yet some reputedly knowledgeable observers have argued as much....

I do feel some compassion for Blair, despite my annoyance. His flameout had to hurt, and I get no kicks from anyone's pain. If his disgrace has a bright side, it is that the consequent discussions about diversity in journalism will ultimately show how overwhelmingly white the profession remains.

Take magazines, for instance.

Except at the newsweeklies, most minority employees found at mass-media magazines are answering the phones and emptying the trash. Research the names on the editorial mastheads at GQ, Esquire, Vogue, The Nation, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, Harper's, The American Prospect and The Atlantic Monthly--put them all together--and see if you can find enough minority writers and editors to use up all the fingers on one hand. That would be a far more useful exercise than merely raising a ruckus about race.

I especially loved the sweeping and erroneous bit about Blair representing the "standard by which all black hires should be judged." Who in the hell has written that? And then that part at the end, where he claims that raising a ruckus about the racial makeup of certain magazines would be a far more useful exercise than "merely raising a ruckus about race." Huh?

For another perspective, here's Joseph Perkins in the San Diego Union-Tribune:

"Did race have anything to do with the awful case of Brian Walski, the Los Angeles Times photographer who fabricated the photograph out of Iraq earlier this year?" asks a news release from the National Association of Black Journalists.

"Was it a factor with the two Salt Lake City reporters who sold a fabricated story to the National Enquirer for $20,000 in the Elizabeth Smart case?

"Was it a factor with Mike Barnicle, Stephen Glass, Ruth Shalit, Eric Drudis or the dozens of other white journalists who smeared the honorable profession of journalism and lied to their readers?

"Why should it be a factor here?"

Well, here's why: Those white journalists are seen as individuals. They are not viewed as members of a separate class or designated group, mainly because they were not hired through some special program that appears from afar to hold its beneficiaries to less demanding standards than those outside the program.

Indeed, the fact that the Times even has a minority program suggests that its editors believe they have to cut corners to hire minorities. It implies that, if the Times subjected minorities to the same hiring criteria as whites, the newspaper's reporting ranks would look like an audience at a Lincoln Center chamber music concert.

But here's the reality: There are roughly 6,500 black, Hispanic and Asian journalists throughout the fair land, according to the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

A newspaper that boasts the Gray Lady's prestige can certainly attract the best and brightest of those minority journalists without some stigmatizing program.

When the day comes that The New York Times and other news organizations practice colorblind hiring, when minorities are brought on staff as individuals rather than members of a special class, then the failings of one minority journalist – like Jayson Blair – will not reflect badly on all.

Amen to that.

JAYSON BLAIR UPDATE

JAYSON BLAIR UPDATE: OK, I've been away from blogging for the past week while the Jayson Blair story was going nuts. I've read a ton of good commentary on the story, and I'm not going to try to link to all the stuff I've read. But here's a riveting story from Newsweek about Blair. Clearly, he's a deeply troubled young man, and I sincerely hope he can get his life straightened out.

In other news, here's a profile of Macarena Hernandez, who alerted the Times to Blair's plagiarism of her story in the San Antonio Express-News. The author makes some valid points about efforts to diversify the workforce, and how that's not always a bad thing.

I have few problems with programs that identify promising minorities and try to help them get a foot in the door. (Notice I said a foot in the door, not a shove all the way up the ladder.) The problem comes when companies adopt aggressive affirmative-action programs that tie the number of minorities hired into a manager's career prospects. That only encourages cutting corners, and is probably the No. 1 factor behind most of the questionable AA-related hires I've seen in my career. Throwing people who are unprepared for a career in journalism into the hyperactive atmosphere of a newsroom just so you can get a little star by your name at the corporate office is a serious problem.

But it can be avoided. Large newspaper chains, which own papers of all sizes, can change their diversity programs so that all rookie reporters, regardless of ethnicity, are required to spend at least a year, preferably two or three, at a small newspaper. Yes, the pay is crummy, and yes, the nightlife may suck, but there's no better learning ground. And the Jayson Blairs of the world, rare as they are, would be weeded out.

Meanwhile, Roger Clegg says the Blair affair should have ramifications for all industries.

CROUCH DISMISSED

CROUCH DISMISSED: Stanley Crouch, one of my favorite essayists, has been fired from Jazz Times magazine:

Crouch, a highly visible commentator and McArthur Foundation "genius" award-winner whose strong opinions and sometimes blustery manner have frequently provoked controversy, was dismissed after the publication of "Putting the White Man in Charge" in Jazz Times' April issue.

In the column, he wrote that white critics have elevated white jazz musicians "far beyond their abilities in order to allow white writers to make themselves feel more comfortable about evaluating an art from which they feel substantially alienated."

Crouch is certainly knowledgeable about jazz and the ways race is actually lived in America (as opposed to the way polemicists portray it), but he's also an iconoclast. It seems he often writes the first thing that pops into his find, because in many of his essays in years past he's explicitly made the point that the most important aesthetic assessments of jazz music have come from white critics, and that whites have been the primary promoters of jazz throughout its history. I guess he's changed his mind, though I haven't read the essay in question.

Like I said, I have often enjoyed Crouch's essays. But his New York Daily News column is god-awful on most days. It's like he's just going through the motions. Maybe his long-in-the-works biography of Charlie Parker will be worthwhile.

THE FULL HORROR OF JAYSON BLAIR

THE FULL HORROR OF JAYSON BLAIR: The New York Times documents, in excruciating detail, the Jayson Blair story. You've got to give the Times credit for coming clean, but still, the level of deception -- both from Blair and his diversity-obsessed bosses -- is absolutely unbelievable.

UPDATE: John Rosenberg over at Discriminations has finally weighed in on L'affaire Blair. Well, sort of. He's actually describing what appears to be more dubious reporting from the Times, in this instance on a story about the affirmative action suit at the University of Michigan.

AND EVEN STILL MORE ON BLAIR

AND EVEN STILL MORE ON BLAIR: Romenesko has several new links on the Jayson Blair controversy. In this story, New York Times Managing Editor Gerald Boyd (who is black) sticks his fingers in his ears and goes, "I am not listen I am not listening I am not listening":

Boyd bristled when asked if Blair, who is black, figured in a bid by The Times to diversify its mostly white staff of national correspondents, saying, "It's not an issue about diversity, but about a reporter who had issues that allowed him to deceive."

Yes, but it's certainly difficult to imagine a twentysomething in such a lofty position in journalism if he wasn't black.

The Times hopes to publish a Sunday story detailing Blair's forgeries, and they're asking for help.

Finally, Slate's Jack Shafer offers his take on the Blair fiasco. In the process, he cites Janet Cooke, Patricia Smith, Stephen Glass and Jay Forman as famous news fakers, but leaves off Mike Barnicle.

And here's an interesting item from Google. Who had a prominent role in making sure Jayson Blair kept his job when he was under intense scrutiny for his errors at the New York Times? Gerald Boyd. And when Boyd won the National Association of Black Journalist's 2001 Journalist of the Year award, guess who nominated him? Jayson Blair. Hmmmmm. Sounds like they had no problem communicating on that one.

THIS IS STILL A STORY?

THIS IS STILL A STORY? It's been eight months, and racial arsonists in Philadelphia are STILL up in arms over the fact that the Philadelphia Daily News fairly and accurately reported some unpleasant news: that virtually all of the fugitive murder suspects in the Philadelphia area are minorities. A groveling apology wasn't enough. Hell, even "diversity" maven Keith Woods of the Poynter Institute (he's black, by the way) is calling bullshit on this one:

"First of all, you can't definitively say somebody is a racist unless you open up their closet and find a hood and white sheets," says Woods. "This leaves the paper in the untenable position of proving they are not racist. How do you prove that?"

For the umpteenth time, read this.

JUST A THOUGHT

JUST A THOUGHT: It seems we're having trouble finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. (It was the pretense for the war, after all.) Many commenters are questioning whether they even existed. A few others suggest Saddam moved them to Syria.

But I've yet to see a more terrifying scenario bandied about: that these weapons have already been dispersed to terrorists around the world. In other words, they could be in a train station locker in Paris, or a cellar in Rome, or a refugee camp in Gaza, or a self-storage shed in suburban D.C.

It's been going through my mind the past couple of days. Anyone else's?

DANGEROUS PLACES TO WORK

DANGEROUS PLACES TO WORK: According to this story, it's the usual suspects -- Cuba, Iraq, Vietnam -- plus places like the West Bank, Gaza, Afghanistan Eritrea, Belarus, Chechnya and Togo.

STILL MORE ON BLAIR

STILL MORE ON BLAIR: Howard Kurtz writes a straight-news story on more apparent fabrications and plagiarisms by disgraced New York Times reporter Jayson Blair. Check it out.

REVOKE THE PRIZE!

REVOKE THE PRIZE! Walter Duranty's Pulitzer Prize, that is. The National Review reminds us of another journalistic fraud perpetrated by the New York Times: Duranty's shameful coverage of Stalin's political famine in the Ukraine in the 1930s, a crime that Duranty privately acknowledged claimed 10 million victims even while he filed reports that completely obscured that inconvenient fact.

MORE TIMES-BASHING

MORE TIMES-BASHING: The Weekly Standard examines some contradictory reporting from the New York Times. Check it out.

THE HERSH-O-METER

THE HERSH-O-METER: Slate's Jack Shafer has a snarky piece on Seymour Hersh, the ace investigative reporter for The New Yorker who has been spectacularly wrong about a great many things since Sept. 11. In fact, you could use Hersh's reporting as a kind of negative gauge of the truth:

Given this extraordinary track record, any thumbs-down flashed by Hersh must be interpreted as a leading indicator that the precise opposite is about to happen.

Give it a look.

EVEN MORE ON BLAIR

EVEN MORE ON BLAIR: The Washington City Paper has done a masterful job of examining Jayson Blair's coverage of the sniper rampage that gripped the Washington, D.C., area. The City Paper's conclusion:

The Times may have to retract whole swaths of Blair's sniper package, which includes 52 stories spanning last October through April. Week by week, the Times' coverage helped to misshape public opinion on the sniper case—a rampage of carelessness that certainly taints the U.S. media, if not the sniper jury pool.

After reading the City Paper's piece, those who pointed out that Blair's error rate was lower than some veteran Times reporters now must seriously question that line of argument. Blair's errors (including five in one story on a benefit concert) were obviously above and beyond the routine.

But the story of Jayson Blair goes beyond the coddling of an affirmative-action hire. It illustrates a real problem faced by daily newspapers: the lack of time to do a complete and thorough check of facts and sources, and how that can be exploited by someone inclined to do so:

"There's no system that I know of that can protect you from a reporter or editor who sets out to make up untrue things and get them into the paper," says Raines.

In a perfect world, people who besmirch the already deeply troubled name of journalism in such a manner would be forced to stay as far away from a keyboard as possible. Unfortunately, they don't. Stephen Glass, the serial fabricator who was such a deep embarrassment to The New Republic a few years ago, has written a novel based on his experiences.

UPDATE: Matthew Hoy comments on the Blair story, and includes his observations on newsroom "diversity" programs.

'THE HYPOCRISY OF NOAM CHOMSKY'

'THE HYPOCRISY OF NOAM CHOMSKY': The New Criterion has a devastating critique of leftist icon Noam Chomsky. One of many great passages:

Chomsky has declared himself a libertarian and anarchist but has defended some of the most authoritarian and murderous regimes in human history. His political philosophy is purportedly based on empowering the oppressed and toiling masses but he has contempt for ordinary people who he regards as ignorant dupes of the privileged and the powerful. He has defined the responsibility of the intellectual as the pursuit of truth and the exposure of lies, but has supported the regimes he admires by suppressing the truth and perpetrating falsehoods. He has endorsed universal moral principles but has only applied them to Western liberal democracies, while continuing to rationalize the crimes of his own political favorites.

There's a lot more. Give it a read.

BULL'S EYE

BULL'S EYE: The Columbia Journalism Review has its Darts & Laurels feature up. It celebrates the dubious and the honorable in journalism. Check it out.

EVEN MORE ON BLAIR

EVEN MORE ON BLAIR: Here's a fascinating story on Jayson Blair's plagiarism. It seems the San Antonio Express-News story he ripped off was written by a young woman who had worked alongside Blair at a prestigious internship at the New York Times in the summer of 1998.

MORE ON BLAIR: The fallout from the Jayson Blair fiasco continues. Here's Howell Raines:

"Jayson was repeatedly warned about having too many errors and he was also consistently praised for showing journalistic energy and enterprise," Raines said. "But still he had trouble with basics of the craft."

But I suppose giving an incompetent black reporter the boot would have compromised Raines' liberal bona-fides. This episode clearly highlights something many others have written -- that "diversity" is not always for the "underprivileged." Its main beneficiaries often are liberals still suffering under white guilt, who get to pat themselves on the back about how good and decent they are. Meanwhile, a once-great newspaper slides a little further into irrelevance.

Here's a sampling of comments from Romenesko's Letters page:

From DAVID McLEMORE:
...There are surely any number of reasons why Jayson Blair so terribly imploded. Like many here, I lay a much of the blame on the editors at the Times. How many corrections must be written before they did more than urge him to be more careful?

Regardless of why it happened, the responsibility of getting right falls on Mr. Blair. He knew he didn't interview the subject of his story. He knew he borrowed a bit too heavily from another reporter's work. He should know what went wrong. He's the one who did it the wrong way.

___

From THOMAS COLLINS:
As a former journalist, I worked very hard work to get the kind of assignments seemed to fall into Jayson Blair's lap. I cannot recall a day in the 25 years I worked as a journalist at second-tier newspapers that I didn't worry a mistake could land me back covering night cops or out the door entirely.

The explanations given by [New York Times executive editor Howell] Raines and others seem stuffy and pompous and designed to explain the Blairs of the world as aberrations that somehow slipped through a minor crack in the mighty New York Times. I'm embarrassed not only for longevity of Blair's survival and progress in a career for which most of us would have killed, but for the arrogance of Raines and others who nurtured him and encouraged him.

___

From OMAR SOFRADZIJA, Reporter, Peoria (IL) Journal Star:
You know who I feel bad for out of the whole Jayson Blair mess? The person who paid their dues, worked long hours doing all sorts of scrub work, actually graduated from college, did the right things the right way, earned themselves a job interview at The New York Times and lost the job to Blair. Whoever you are, my heart goes out to you. And shame on all the opportunists who always find the career short cut, never give back anything to anybody and whose bylines are more important than what goes underneath.

There are many others, and even a couple that kinda sorta defend Blair, but it seems only Howard Kurtz had the balls to ask the question that needed to be asked:

"Look, this was a promising young black reporter. I wonder if a middle-aged hack would have gotten away with 50 mistakes and still be at that job."

Once again, see this guy's book for more.

And Glenn, I'm sorry, but the fact that Johnny Apple has had more corrections than Jayson Blair is fairly irrelevant. Even if Blair had only a handful of errors, his apparent plagiarism on the San Antonio story and his complete mishandling of the sniper story should have been enough to send him packing.

And finally, Mickey Kaus has more.

REPORTER CANNED

REPORTER CANNED: Romensko is all over the story of Jayson Blair, a New York Times reporter who has been fired for plagiarism. It seems this story is very similar to this story from the San Antonio Express-News. And the Washington Post reports on the huge number of corrections the Times has run on Blair's stories

POWERS SURGE: Here's another solid column from William Powers. This time, he's writing about the Rick Santorum blow-up and more. Give it a look.

GOOD, AND BAD, EMBED

GOOD, AND BAD, EMBED: Slate's Jack Shafer has an exhaustive review of the embedded reporter program. He quotes the journalists who were there on the ground in Iraq, and he highlights the good and bad. Check it out.

READ THIS

READ THIS: Especially the comments. It's about Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter Carl Prine, who caught flak for grabbing a gun while covering the war in Iraq. He's again responded to his critics.

HAPPY MAY DAY

HAPPY MAY DAY: Before marching, though, grab a chair, take off your Chairman Mao hat and read this.

TO BLOG, OR NOT TO BLOG

TO BLOG, OR NOT TO BLOG: There's a debate going on over at CyberJournalist.net about whether it's OK for journalists to blog. On the pro-blogging side, it's J.D. Lasica. On the anti-blogging side, it's Eric Meyer.

The loser leaves town.

WAR IN THE CLUBHOUSE

WAR IN THE CLUBHOUSE: Boston Red Sox relief pitcher Mike Timlin has a pro-war bumper sticker on his locker at Fenway Park. Big frickin' deal, you say? Apparently, it was to a Boston-area journalist:

The controversy started last week, when Boston Herald sportswriter Howard Bryant took note of a yellow bumper sticker that veteran reliever Mike Timlin kept on his locker. Next to a peace sign was the legend: "The footprint of the AMERICAN CHICKEN." Timlin is conservative, and comes from Midland, Texas, the president's home town. But he was disinclined to make a big deal of the sticker, which a local policeman had given him. He just thought it was funny.

Bryant didn't. In his April 22 article, in fact, he reacted to the bumper sticker as if nothing had ever struck him as funny in his entire life. The language was rabid: "Whether he wants to admit it or not," Bryant wrote of Timlin, "he's dead wrong, and for some people in his own clubhouse, the implication is rightly offensive. The sticker spoke not only for him, but volumes about him." And the tone was pompous: "The sticker spoke clearly, symbolic on numerous, uncomplicated levels. First, there was the double-entendre; the peace symbol is shaped similar to the foot of a chicken, thus de facto joke." [sic] Bryant described Timlin as a "Southern neoconservative," and accused him of "politicizing his corner of the room."

This was illogical. Bryant was picking a fight with Timlin not--as he claimed--over etiquette but over ideology.

As TAPPED might say, "Astounding. Most of the time, it's generally agreed, liberal media bias is subtle -- topics not covered, conservative sources not interviewed, or reporters and producers blatantly editorializing throughout so-called straight news stories in order to please their bosses. But it looks like the campus-speech-code strategy of trying to censor messages that make leftists even vaguely uncomfortable has spread to the sports pages."

LEST WE FORGET

LEST WE FORGET: Here's an interesting story on the journalism industry from the New York Times. A study of media coverage of the achievement gap between black and white students highlights the cyclical nature of the media's response to long-term social problems. It's "a research model developed in 1972 by Anthony Downs of the Brookings Institution, describing the classic American 'issue attention cycle.' ":

The news media and public ignore a serious problem for years; for some reason, they suddenly notice, declare it a crisis and concoct a solution; next they realize the problem will not be easily fixed and will be costly; they grow angry, then bored; finally, they resume ignoring the problem.

It's no Feiler Faster Thesis, but it's fascinating nonetheless.

I'M GONNA PUKE

I'M GONNA PUKE: That's basically what Salt Lake Tribune publisher William Dean Singleton said when he found out two reporters sold salacious information on the Elizabeth Smart story to the National Enquirer. (The reporters were first suspended, then fired.)

DIVERSITY FOLLIES

DIVERSITY FOLLIES: John Rosenberg of Discriminations wades into the waters of newsroom diversity by dissecting an article from the Poynter Institute. Give it a look. It perfectly encapsulates the "diversity uber alles" mind-set prevalent in so many newsrooms and the mental gymnastics required to maintain that perspective.

FREE AMERICA'S PRESS!

FREE AMERICA'S PRESS! Rand Simberg has the scoop in a very funny post.

TIM ROBBINS UPDATE

TIM ROBBINS UPDATE: Here's an update to my post below on the bogus story of Tim Robbins being "censored" by the Today Show, an idea that TAPPED found "astounding" without checking the facts.

A bit of Googling has turned up video of Robbins' appearance, though only the last 2:15 of it. But that's important, because it clearly demonstrates that the segment DOES NOT wrap up in the way TV producer Steve Rosenbaum described it. In fact, it seems that Rosenbaum saw the first nine minutes of Robbins' interview, took the abrupt segueway to a commercial as proof of "censorship," and didn't tune back in to see Robbins' additional two minutes of interview time. Either that, or Rosenbaum is being incredibly dishonest.

What this means is that America was actually subjected to an EXTRAORDINARY 11 MINUTES of Robbins' ramblings, not a longer-than-average nine minutes, as I posted last night. That also means Robbins was granted NEARLY FOUR MORE MINUTES of airtime than the longest recent celebrity interview currently available at the Today Show Web site. (See post below.)

As I wrote last night, "astounding" indeed.

Furthermore, I found this post about Robbins' appearance at a blog called The Pod Bay Door. Sean Engmann (who had found the link to the Robbins clip above) sets the record straight in the post's comments, and I'll excerpt his entire comment here:

This "news" story of Tim Robbins being censored on The Today Show is as bogus as it gets. The "story" broke over the weekend as the result of a piece by one Steve Rosenbaum, a TV producer for the prestigious Rock and Rap Confidential. "Not in Our Name" picked up the story, and without checking up on the facts, decided to run with it. The story is now permeating through college campuses as professors recklessly read Rosenbaum's account verbatim to classes and send out a copy via e-mail.

Upon first reading the story, I was skeptical, particularly since, if NBC censored Robbins, it would logically have been a major news story on every other network. Also, had Robbins been cut off on the April 14th Today Show, surely he would have brought it up in his remarks to the National Press Club in his April 15th speech regarding what he perceives to be an erosion of his 1st Amendment rights. There was not one mention of any wrongdoing by Today in his entire speech (though he did attack other networks, such as FOX News quite pointedly). (Here's a transcript of Robbins' speech. -- Ed.) My skepticism led me to search for the streaming video of the interview, which MSNBC has available at: http://www.msnbc.com/m/mw/mw.asp?t=V&id=tdy_lauer_robbins_030414&sk=&pl=&name=&opt=0

As you'll see in the video, much of the content described here by Rosenbaum is discussed, however, there is clearly no evidence of any censorship whatsoever. The fact that people are giving such extremists credibility shocks me. This story continually gets passed along by chain e-mail, distorting the views of many, with a reckless disregard for the truth. Anyone sending out this story should be ashamed of themselves as it is a blatant power grab by extremists. These people send out a classic piece of propaganda, in which they have the audacity to claim that the media itself is being used as a propaganda tool by the Bush Administration. I guess the best way to get away with a lie is to be overt about it, and accuse others of doing what you are. Shameful.

There's not much more I can add to that.

UPDATED ON 5-01-2003: Spinsanity has picked up on my post and added its own research. Thanks, guys. Meanwhile, here's TAPPED's lame update: "Our friends at Spinsanity says the story may not be quite as diabolical as Rosenbaum's account suggests." Way to go, TAPPED. Bad grammar and a mealy-mouthed non-apology for your role in helping to spread this poisonous and grotesquely dishonest story.

MORE 'CRUSHING' OF DISSENT

MORE 'CRUSHING' OF DISSENT: I don't usually comment on TV-related stuff, but something I saw over at TAPPED deserves a word or two. It seems that Steve Rosenbaum, a New York TV producer, was watching Tim Robbins' visit to the Today Show the other day and got his panties all in a wad because NBC appeared to wrap up the segment before Robbins could finish a rant about the right-wing conspiracy to silence him, or the Bush administration's plans to take over the world, or something. As Rosenbaum so melodramatically put it, "something happened that has perhaps never happened before in the history of morning television." (And I'm sure it also "changed us in a deep and profound way from that day forward.")

Here's TAPPED's equally melodramatic commentary on the "incident":

Astounding. Most of the time, it's generally agreed, corporate media censorship is subtle -- topics not covered, liberal hosts not hired, or reporters and producers self-censoring for fear of offending their bosses. But it looks like the Bill O'Reilly techniques of guest control have spread to other networks.

Let's take a deep breath and examine the facts we have before us. According to Rosenbaum's description of what transpired, Matt Lauer introduced Robbins at 8:15 a.m., and the interview began to wrap at about 8:24 a.m.

Folks, that's a nine-minute segment. NINE MINUTES. Now, I'm no TV expert, but that seems to be an exceptionally long interview, even by Today standards. (I'm a regular watcher, but I don't usually tune in until 9 a.m. or so.)

In fact, a quick glance at video clips of celebrity interviews available at the Today Show Web site reveals that the Robbins interview was nearly two minutes longer than the most recent ones granted to a star, or even a newsmaker. This was the video content on the site as of 10 p.m. Monday:

• An interview with former CIA director James Woolsey about the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein runs 5:08.
  
• An interview with author Harlan Coben runs 5:05.

If those links are gone, check out recent celebrity interviews here. A sampling of what was posted as of 10 p.m. Monday:

• An interview with Madonna, who has also taken a lot of flak for her anti-war views, runs 6:02.
  
• An interview with Nick Nolte runs 6:27.
  
• An interview with Ed Burns runs 5:50.
  
• An interview with Dustin Hoffman runs 6:10.
  
• An interview with Cher runs 5:18.
  
• An interview with Sigourney Weaver runs 7:46, the longest one posted on the Web site.

Astounding indeed. Robbins was actually granted EXTRA TIME to share his ramblings with Americans as they ate their corn flakes. And the abrupt ending seems to confirm that. (Who hasn't seen a TV interview run long and get cut short for a commercial?) That "deluge of invective" in Lauer's earpiece was most likely a producer screaming "wrap this thing up," not some CEO hollering "get this commie off the air."

To me, the worst thing you could say about this whole mini non-controversy is that it confirms the "corporate media's bias" to honor its contracts with advertisers.

FUNNY PAPER

FUNNY PAPER: The Weekly Standard wonders what the New York Times would have written in the weeks after the American Revolution. Give it a look.

THE CORRECTIONS

THE CORRECTIONS: Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler has a useful column describing the process for getting corrections in the paper. Along the way, he reminds us how easy it is for mistakes to happen:

The Post, in general, is a well-edited newspaper. But it publishes, on a typical day, about 150,000 words plus dozens of graphs, charts and photo captions. So mistakes are certain to happen. The mistakes I'm talking about are factual errors, like the one I made last week. There are also occasional errors in spelling, grammar and usage, as well as typographical errors. These may happen too often for close readers. But they are facts of life for a big daily newspaper, and they don't get officially corrected, although they do get pointed out to reporters and editors when they are caught.

Obviously, the bigger the staff you have, the fewer mistakes you should see in the paper (or so the theory goes). So, if you are among the vast majority of American newspaper readers who don't get a paper produced by a staff the size of the Post's, please keep that in mind.

EMBEDDED REPORTER SPEAKS

EMBEDDED REPORTER SPEAKS: Last Friday, I highlighted the story of Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter Carl Prine, who was being blasted by the Pittsburgh City Paper for grabbing a gun when the unit he was embedded with came under attack in Iraq. (Scroll down to read the item critical of Prine.) Well, it appears that Prine left a comment in the original post responding both to the City Paper's charges and some of the other commenters, and I think it's worth pulling out and highlighting here for you:

Since I am the subject of this curious post, I shall respond, in Barry's style, of course:

1) I never "carried" a weapon. One was thrown to me in an ambush. I held it for, at most, 10 seconds. The weapon never came off "safe," and I never fired. The rifle was returned, quickly, without any bragging or fist-pumping, moments after we cleared the kill zone.

2) Although I wore camouflage utilities (beware of snipers) and carried a gas mask, they weren't the standard U.S. uniform. I went without a knife, helmet and body armor so that I would NOT appear to be an American combatant. Early in the war, I tagged along on two combat patrols toting nothing but my camera and a notebook. I don't know of any other journalist in the conflict that went to this extreme to avoid being labled by the Iraqis as an American soldier.

3) For Tim Porter, the "apparent" lousy writing wasn't so "apparent" after all. I hadn't written anything about the incident. I was interviewed within seconds of the attack by TV newsmen. In hindsight, I should've let the adrenaline dip before yacking with them. I certainly thought the focus of the interview was Al Tuwaitha, not the ambush. Perhaps I'm old fashioned, but isn't it refreshing to see a reporter who does NOT write about himself in war? Who concentrates solely on the news at hand? Heavens, where is my objectivity, minders?

4) After being contacted by the CIty Paper, the Pentagon reviewed what happened during the ambush. These officials determined that not only had I not violated the Geneva Convention (an absurb, likely libelous, charge), but that I hadn't even broken the embed agreement. Perhaps we should all ask why the Pittsburgh City Paper failed to print that salient fact.

Questions: cprine@tribweb.com

Very interesting.

WELCOME BACK, REGULAR NEWS CYCLE

WELCOME BACK, REGULAR NEWS CYCLE: William Powers heaps praise on something most of us would probably bemoan: the return of "regular news," warts and all. But Powers, as usual, reaches the kind of conclusions you wouldn't expect:

The distinction between worthy news stories and unworthy ones is not half as clear as we like to tell ourselves. There is ego and venality and muck and tawdriness at every level of the news. And fascination. The normal media cycle isn't inferior to what we experienced during the war. It's just different. And it arguably is a more accurate reflection of the brawling, grasping, endlessly layered society that we are.

Check it out.

BLOGGING JOURNALISTS UPDATE

BLOGGING JOURNALISTS UPDATE: Hartford Courant editor Brian Toolan tells Editor & Publisher why he forced Denis Horgan to shut down his blog:

"Denis Horgan's entire professional profile is a result of his attachment to The Hartford Courant, yet he has unilaterally created for himself a parallel journalistic universe where he'll do commentary on the institutions that the paper has to cover without any editing oversight by the Courant," Toolan said. "That makes the paper vulnerable."

The editor added that allowing an employee to set up his own opinion blog was a bad precedent. "There are 325 other people here who could create similar [Web sites] for themselves," Toolan said.

Yeah, we wouldn't want journalists exercising their First Amendment rights, would we?

I do realize that there is a whole laundry list of reasons why newspaper editors might be leery of blogging journalists, the chief one being a reporter commenting editorially on issues he or she covers, or on stories that appear in the paper he or she works for. However, papers could easily put some kind of minor clause into the ethics agreements newsroom folks are often required to sign, either yearly or as a condition of being hired. (Hell, a lot of those documents may already have such clauses that could be interpreted in such a way, if anyone signing them ever bothered to read closely.)

I think it's interesting to contrast the Hartford Courant's reaction to a blogging journalist with that of the Boston Herald, which gladly links to blogging columnist Cosmo Macero Jr.

As for myself, I'm going to keep on doing what I do -- anonymously but carefully. I don't think anyone in my office is getting hurt by this page.

SHAFER ON THE CASE

SHAFER ON THE CASE: Jack Shafer continues his investigation into The New York Times' "scoop" on the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He's raising some troubling questions, both about the Times' reporting on this story and the government's assessment of Iraq's WMD program.

WOLFF VERACITY UPDATE

WOLFF VERACITY UPDATE: Remember Michael Wolff, the New York magazine reporter who was so proud of his smug little question at a CentCom briefing? The other day, I wondered why Wolff couldn't have named the "Republican operative" who allegedly intimidated him after his performance. (As I pointed out, Wolff could have just asked the guy his name.) I further wondered whether Wolff had just made the encounter up, despite the fact that he seems to be describing a real person, GOP media strategist Jim Wilkinson.

Well, it appears that Wolff may, indeed, have problems with the truth. (Thanks to Henry Hanks for the tip.)

UH-OH

UH-OH: Romenesko reports that Dennis Horgan, a longtime Hartford Courant columnist, has been ordered to shut down the blog he started following his newspaper's decision to kill his column. (I notice that he picked the same Blogger template that I chose. I hope that's not a bad sign.)

Well, at least they didn't fire the guy.

THIS IS FUNNY

THIS IS FUNNY: "Christopher Hitchens Forcibly Removed From Trailer Park After Drunken Confrontation With Common-Law Wife." It's The Onion, of course.

DEEP THROAT UNCOVERED! Read all about the identity of the Watergate mole made famous in All The President's Men at the appropriately named Deep Throat Uncovered.

WHAT A SCOOP

WHAT A SCOOP: The Telegraph is reporting that British Labour Party member and prominent anti-war activist George Galloway was being paid off by Saddam Hussein. If true, that's a blockbuster of tremendous proportions. Kudos to The Telegraph for finding the documents that led to this great scoop.

ARABS BASHING SYRIA

ARABS BASHING SYRIA: The National Review points out a series of articles in a Kuwaiti newspaper detailing the brutality of the Baathist regime in Damascus. As the author writes, "The idea that Arab opinion is monolithic has just received a shattering blow."

I think that's something we should all remember.

DID EMBEDDING WORK? Apparently, yes:

The Pentagon's decision to ''embed'' reporters with the troops gave journalists more access to this conflict than any since the Vietnam War. An April 9 Pew Research Center survey revealed that 80 percent of the respondents thought embedded journalists' reports were fair and objective. In journalistic circles, there was a good deal of hand-wringing that the bonds forged between reporters and soldiers could threaten objectivity. But the verdict is that the incredible access to the action made the embedding experiment a solid and surprising success.

There's more in this Boston Globe story.

THE NEW RULES

THE NEW RULES: Jack Shafer wonders if the New York Times "changed the rules of journalism" in an exclusive story about the search for chemical and biological weapons in Iraq. Give it a look.

CHAVEZ RELENTS

CHAVEZ RELENTS: Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has decided to allow newspapers to resume purchasing newsprint. Chavez had originally prohibited the importation of newsprint in an attempt to silence the vocal opposition to his neo-Marxist regime.

FOOL ME ONCE

FOOL ME ONCE: Here's the story of the hapless reporter who interviewed "Heywood Jablome" at the Masters. Check it out.

BOOK REVIEW

BOOK REVIEW: Here's an excellent review of a book by retired British journalist Ian Hargreaves, "Journalism: Truth or Dare?" A teaser:

This engagingly written book does not, however, conform to the stereotype of the retired journalist attacking journalism. It is, if not exactly a celebration of journalism, at least a defence of some of its virtues - of which he rightly says that the most significant is the ability to discover, and to report, the truth.

Give the review a look. It's an enjoyable and informative read. (Link via Arts & Letters Daily.)

SATURDAY IS NATIONAL COLUMNISTS DAY

SATURDAY IS NATIONAL COLUMNISTS DAY: I've never heard of this until now.

I'm sure somebody could use this to come up with a gift list for national columnists. You know, something along the lines of, "For Paul Krugman: A sense of perspective." That kind of thing. I just don't care enough today, but if you've got any ideas, leave them in comments.

ETHICS WATCH

ETHICS WATCH: Here's a doozy. A newspaper faked a blurb on an arson in order to help police catch a suspect in a murder-for-hire plot. Journalistic ethics watchdogs are outraged, and I'm not feeling well, either. I wonder, though, if there was a way the paper could have helped out without actually publishing a fake story. Here's why:

"The King County Sheriff's office staged this fire ... and requested that the King County Journal put in a blurb that there was a fire there and it seemed suspicious — and it was then mailed to Sherer," sheriff's spokeswoman Christina Bartlett said yesterday.

The suspect, who was in jail, wanted the clip mailed to him to verify that the arson had taken place. With that in mind, the newspaper could have produced a page mock-up through its pagination system and photocopied the galley flat. Or, if it needed to be more elaborate, they could have actually made a fake page and run it off on newsprint just for the police.

COMPARE AND CONTRAST

COMPARE AND CONTRAST: Journalists in war zones are often faced with difficult decisions, especially when they come under enemy fire. With that in mind, let's take a look at how two such incidents were reported by two different alternative newspapers.

First, here's Dan Kennedy's take on the remarkable story of Boston Herald reporter Jules Crittenden, who came under enemy fire in Iraq while embedded with the 3rd Infantry Division:

While rolling through Baghdad, Crittenden called out the positions of three Iraqi soldiers aiming rocket-propelled grenades at the vulnerable, "lightly armored" vehicle he was riding in so that an American gunner could kill them. "I saw one man’s body splatter as the large caliber bullets ripped it up," Crittenden wrote. "The man behind him appeared to be rising, and was cut down by repeated bursts."

Here's Kennedy's assessment of Crittenden's actions:

You’d have to search high and low to find anyone willing to criticize him for what he did. He found himself in a life-and-death situation, and he acted in self-defense.

Hold on, Dan. I think we have a winner. Check out this story from Chris Potter of the Pittsburgh City Paper. It's about the actions of Pittsburgh Tribune-Review embedded reporter Carl Prine, who was with U.S. troops when they discovered what appeared to be a secret hiding place for nuclear material. (Scroll down to the third item with the revealing headline, "When Journos Go Rambo.")

But Prine did report something on Fox-53 no one had heard before. On the drive from Al-Tuwaitha, he said, the Marines came under enemy fire. An incendiary shell, he said, “just splattered our jeep, or Humvee, with hot flames just cascading across the windshield. I grabbed a rifle because we were ready to rock and roll.”

Prine has not mentioned taking up arms in his Tribune-Review stories. But if his TV account is true, he violated Pentagon “ground rules” for reporters in embedded units. Those rules say that “media embedded with U.S. forces are not permitted to carry personal firearms.” Violating the rules “may result in the immediate termination of the embed,” according to the policy statement.

Potter goes on to point out that a Pentagon spokesman, a left-leaning media critic and a spokesman for the Committee to Protect Journalists all consider Prine's actions to be in violation of the Geneva Convention, though I have to wonder whether the act of merely picking up and holding a gun constitutes "taking up arms" against enemy combatants. I guess we'd also have to know how long Prine held the gun. Did he keep it with him at all times? Did he let it go when the danger passed? We simply don't know.

Now, there are certainly many ethical questions raised by the whole "embedding" thing, and it's certainly fair to raise them. But surely, even reporters from the evil, Scaife-funded Tribune-Review can be cut some slack for the eminently human reactions they might have when bullets and mortar shells are crashing around them. But then, I think the Herald's Crittenden had the best response:

"Some in our profession might think that as a reporter and non-combatant, I was there only to observe. Now that I have assisted in the deaths of three fellow human beings in the war I was sent to cover, I’m sure there are some people who will question my ethics, my objectivity, etc. I’ll keep the argument short. Screw them, they weren’t there. But they are welcome to join me next time if they care to test their professionalism."

As someone once said, there are no atheists -- or media ethicists -- in fox holes.

SURVEY SAYS

SURVEY SAYS: Tim Porter links to an interesting and mildly surprising survey of American journalists. (For example, there are fewer reporters who identify themselves as Democrats than at any time since 1971.) Give it a look.

AMITAI ETZIONI'S BLOGGING

AMITAI ETZIONI'S BLOGGING: The George Washington University professor and a leader of the communitarian movement has a blog. Check it out.

WOLFF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING

WOLFF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING: There's been a lot written about New York magazine media critic Michael Wolff's story on "the question" he asked at a Centcom press conference in Doha, and the unnamed operative who said some not-very-nice things to him. Here's the excerpt:

The next person to buttonhole me was the CENTCOM Über-civilian, a thirtyish Republican operative (part of his job seemed to be to seed the press pool with specific questions that CENTCOM wanted asked during the briefings, telling reporters, for instance, that CENTCOM wouldn’t show the video of Private Lynch being rescued, because it would be seen as “the United States spiking the ball in the end zone,” unless reporters asked for proof that the rescue was successful). He was more Full Metal Jacket in his approach (although he was a civilian, he was, inexplicably, in uniform—making him, I suppose, a sort of paramilitary figure): “I have a brother who is in a Hummer at the front, so don’t talk to me about too much fucking air-conditioning.” And: “A lot of people don’t like you.” And then: “Don’t fuck with things you don’t understand.” And, too: “This is fucking war, asshole.” And finally: “No more questions for you.”

I have to wonder: Why couldn't a top-notch journalist such as Michael Wolff ASK THIS GUY TO TELL HIM HIS NAME? Assuming Wolff didn't just make him up, that is.

SIGNORILE WATCH

SIGNORILE WATCH: Michelangelo Signorile accuses Washington Post gossip columnist Lloyd Grove of "paying" political allies who feed him information by placing items in his column for them, a serious ethics violation. And the evidence? Signorile used to do something similar when he worked at a PR firm where Grove was previously employed.

Here’s how it worked: We gave the gossip columnists a bunch of items on a page, each one usually no longer than a paragraph. Every other item was a "free" item–delicious, sometimes even scandalous gossip about a celebrity or a politician. The others were "client" items (which were always underlined, so as to distinguish them). We got our gossip from a variety of sources around town, as well as in Hollywood, Washington, Europe and elsewhere, and we’d often pay them off with screening passes to films or house seats for Broadway shows. If the columnists used a "free" item, it was understood that they had to use a "client" item. Sometimes they’d run it in the same column; other times the items would run days apart.

That's interesting, but it's quite a bit different from what Signorile accuses Grove of doing. But why should we expect honest commentary from him?

RAINES OF TERROR

RAINES OF TERROR: I wanted to blog about this yesterday, but I ran out of time. Here's yet more proof that the New York Times under Howell Raines is being run like Captain Queeg's ship:

According to insiders, Raines is the kind of 1950s-style autocrat who manages through humiliation and fear. Aside from right-hand men Gerald Boyd and Andy Rosenthal and a core of loyalists, morale is said to be at a new low. There are many rooms in that palace and nobody sees the whole picture. But, says one source, "the old timers who lived through the worst of [former executive editor] Abe Rosenthal say they have never seen anyone be so arrogant, so petty, so mean. Vindictiveness is in." Another source says, "It's no longer about managing down. It's about paying obeisance to the king." Among cognoscenti, 43rd Street is now known as the "republic of fear."

This does not bode well for the future of the Times.

PERSPECTIVE, PLEASE

PERSPECTIVE, PLEASE: The Weekly Standard has another piece analyzing the media's gloom-and-doom attitude toward the war in Iraq:

The rest of the press should get a grip. This is the most successful U.S. military intervention since 1945. This was no half victory like Kosovo, in which U.S. forces liberated only one province, or Afghanistan, where the U.S. left warlords in control of much of the country. This was the real deal: marching to the enemy capital and imposing peace on our terms. This calls for champagne and tickertape. Instead the press, and opponents of the war, are moving the goalposts.

Amen to that.

THE IDIOT FACTOR

THE IDIOT FACTOR: Lloyd Grove is reporting on a racist comment the jackass Bill O'Reilly allegedly made at a fundraiser for an inner-city charity. If this is true, I hope it does some serious damage to his career, because it sure needs to be damaged.

I am one of the first people to decry silly racial witch hunts, but it seems to me that O'Reilly really crossed the line. Suggesting that inner-city kids who are trying to do well may be out stealing hubcaps is a couple of degrees removed from using the word "niggardly" at a press conference.

Further down in Grove's column is an item on Sid Blumenthal's upcoming book. Apparently, he disses Michael Kelly in it. Bad timing, Sid.

CNN & IRAQ

CNN & IRAQ: The Washington Post excoriates CNN for covering up Saddam Hussein's atrocities in this stinging editorial. Check it out.

A CHRISTIAN SITE?

A CHRISTIAN SITE? Susanna Cornett of Cut on the Bias fame sent me this e-mail the other day:

I just found out via The Volokh Conspiracy that some lowlife has captured the web addresses of a whole slew of "misspelled" blog addresses.

http://mediaminded.blogpsot.com/

Thought you might find it interesting to see that the link takes you to Aarons Bible, an alleged Christian site. I must say that I personally think that no matter the quality of his content, the sneaky backdoor way of getting traffic empties his words of any value.

Sure enough, the link opens on a Christian-themed Web site with a ton of pop-up windows. Very bizarre. (And here's the Volokh Conspiracy post that Susanna noticed.)

CNN IN IRAQ

CNN IN IRAQ: The fallout continues from Eason Jordan's New York Times editorial describing how CNN covered up Iraqi atrocities in order to maintain a bureau in Baghdad. Franklin Foer, who wrote a piece that criticized CNN's Iraq operation several months ago for The New Republic, has an I-told-you-so column in the Wall Street Journal.

But I found a revealing bit of information over at TNR's &c. blog. Many observers, including myself, initially felt that CNN knew full well that it had made a deal with the devil in order to operate inside Iraq. Well, apparently some of the folks on the ground didn't get the memo:

But the thought that occurs to us as we read Eason's op-ed is: Well, then why the hell did CNN's Baghdad bureau chief, Jane Arraf, write us a scathing letter accusing TNR's Franklin Foer of "cross[ing] over into fiction" when his piece, "Air War," chronicled the extent to which CNN's (and other networks') desire to appease the Iraqi regime was distorting its news coverage. "I'm not sure why anyone would go through the process of obtaining the Iraqi visas Foer describes," Arraf wrote, "other than to fuel dinner-party stories about the horrors of getting into Iraq or to rack up frequent guest points at the InterContinental Hotel." Come to think of it, we're not sure either.

Just another in a long line of those things that make you go "hmmmm."

PACKING FOR WAR

PACKING FOR WAR: Here's an informative article from Columbia Journalism Review on the massive amount of gear toted by journalists in Iraq.

And to think I bitch about having to carry a laptop occasionally.

A 'STORY' ABOUT 'SNEER QUOTES'

A 'STORY' ABOUT 'SNEER QUOTES': An interesting article in The Weekly Standard looks at how journalists such as Robert Fisk have employed "sneer quotes" in a their skeptical, negative coverage of the war in Iraq:

Scare quotes have two functions, the first of which is quite straightforward: They allow their users very easily to express incredulity about, and often contempt for, the views of their political opponents. But they also allow those users to avoid the hard work of thinking up their own descriptions of events or people or ideas. And they're parasitic: They suck all their nourishment from the host words, contributing nothing of their own. Fisk's sneer quotes--he's not as scary as he'd like to be--allow him to express his revulsion at the very notion of describing what's happening in Iraq as "liberation," but relieve him of the obligation to say just what he thinks is happening in that city. Is it (as many left-wing critics have said) a new form of colonization? Ah, but that is a claim too easily refuted, unless one wishes to stretch the term beyond all historical recognition. Is it occupation? But if so, we would need to have a conversation about the purposes of occupation, some of which can be better than others. This is all too complicated; it's so much simpler to wheel out the trusty old inverted commas.

Personally, I think there's a place for sneer quotes. The problem comes when they become overused (or "overused"). Anyway, give the story a look.

SHAFER PEELS APPLE

SHAFER PEELS APPLE: Another delightful takedown of New York Times ace reporter Johnny Apple from Slate's Jack Shafer. I loved this:

The best way to give critical justice to today's piece would involve reproducing all 1,100 words of it and highlighting every sentence in yellow, with an appropriate annotation ("Well, duh!"; "No kidding?"; "How stupid does Johnny Apple think we are?"; and so on).

Just go read the whole thing.

VENEZUELA MEDIA UPDATE

VENEZUELA MEDIA UPDATE: President Hugo Chavez's crackdown on the press continues. His latest tactic is to use "currency controls" to deny newsprint to newspapers.

This should make The Nation happy.

THE HORRORS OF IRAQ

THE HORRORS OF IRAQ: Here are some of the things a CNN reporter couldn't tell the world about Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It's chilling, gut-wrenching stuff.

UPDATE: I was prepared to write this off as one of those difficult situations worldwide media organizations sometimes find themselves in, but reading this post from the Volokh Conspiracy makes me wonder. Eugene Volokh dug up a transcript from an interview with Jordan for WNYC's On the Media. Check out this passage (I've highlighted the same ones Volokh did):

BOB GARFIELD: Back in '91 CNN and Peter Arnett in particular were heavily criticized, mostly by civilians, for reporting from within Baghdad during the U.S. attack in ways that they'd consider to be utter propaganda and to -- out of context and not reflecting the overall reality of Saddam Hussein'[s] regime. Have you analyzed what you can get access to without appearing to be just a propaganda tool for Saddam?

EASON JORDAN: Well absolutely. I mean we work very hard to report forthrightly, to report fairly and to report accurately and if we ever determine we cannot do that, then we would not want to be there; but we do think that some light is better than no light whatsoever. I think that the world, the American people will be shortchanged if foreign journalists are kicked out, because even in Peter Arnett's case there were things that he reported on -- and this is a long time ago now -- but things he reported on that I don't think would have been reported at all had he not been there. We feel committed to our Baghdad presence. We've had a bureau there for 12 years with occasional interruptions when we've been thrown out, but we're not there to please the Iraqi government -- we're not there to displease the Iraqi government -- we're just there to do our job.

BOB GARFIELD: Let's say there's an -- a second Gulf War. Is that the mother of all stories? Do you have to be there? Are there -- decisions you'll make on the margins to be s -- as certain as you possibly can that you will have a presence there?

EASON JORDAN: We'd very much like to be there if there's a second war; but -- we are not going to make journalistic compromises in an effort to make that happen, being mindful that in wartime there is censorship on all sides, and we're prepared to deal with a certain amount of censorship as long as it's not -- extreme, ridiculous censorship where -- which we've actually seen a number of cases in previous conflicts -- not just with Iraq. But -- sure! We want to be there, but it's -- we don't want to be there come hell or high water. We want to be there if we can be there and operate as a responsible news organization. . . .

Like Volokh, I think Jordan's statements could be interpreted in a number of ways. The most generous interpretation is that he's being dishonest to protect the lives of his Iraqi colleagues. But the bigger question is this: Why risk their lives (and the lives of their families) just so CNN can get some kind of "exclusive" if war breaks out? And why spend years peddling low-level propaganda for Saddam just so you can be there when the shit hits the fan?

Matt Welch has some typically astute observations, too. Check them out, if you haven't already.

ANOTHER KELLY TRIBUTE

ANOTHER KELLY TRIBUTE: This one by William Powers may be the best one yet. I especially liked this passage:

The most amazing thing about Mike's career is how unsmooth and unpackaged it was, and how blithely he defied the established rules about how to get ahead in the media. Rule No. 1 is, once you've clawed your way inside the establishment and secured a personal beachhead at a respectable daily paper, a prestige magazine, or a major TV organization, you do whatever it takes to hang on.

That is, you do all the things that people everywhere do to survive and prosper in bureaucracies.

Read the landscape carefully. Say the right things. Protect your flank. Please your superiors, both bosses present and potential bosses future. And cultivate your talent so it delights the crucial constituencies. There are invisible tribes in the media -- cultural and ideological, high and low, left, right, and center -- and they lavish jobs and prizes on those who meet their stinting criteria. The surest way to the top is to do a new, improved version of the story, the interview, the column, the book that's been done a thousand times before, because that's what most people, the poor dolts, crave. Step up to the template and meet it.

Mike was nobody's fool, and he knew precisely how the system worked. Yet he strutted around the media establishment for 25 years subverting it at every opportunity.

That's not just nicely written. It also reveals some important and little-noticed truths about the media. Bravo.

ANOTHER HOWLER FROM THE HOWLER:

ANOTHER HOWLER FROM THE HOWLER: I hate to keep picking on Bob Somerby, but it's kind of hard not to when you stumble on something such as this:

THE FORGOTTEN VILLAGE: For those who care about kids in our urban schools, Marc Fisher’s lengthy piece in Sunday’s Post magazine is essential reading. We’ll offer more thoughts at the end of the week, when we return from a one- or two-day hiatus. In the meantime, Fisher’s piece demands to be read. Such articles almost never appear in the mainstream press—a press which much prefers to publish pleasing “Schools That Work” stories.

Emphasis mine. Such stories "almost never appear in the mainstream press"? Well, look at what I turned up in a very quick perusal of Derek Willis' excellent journalism blog, The Scoop:

Fired cops hold jobs as school security, New Orleans Times-Picayune

In an embattled school system with declining enrollment, weak test scores and growing financial problems, hiring standards for security guards has not been a pressing issue. With a starting salary of $20,400 and wide-ranging duties that include patrolling school grounds, protecting students and staff, enforcing laws and making arrests, school officials traditionally have welcomed almost any applicant with some law enforcement experience.

Segregation persists in Chicago's public schools, Chicago Tribune

...the integration of Chicago's public schools has produced "a school system as segregated as it was 20 years ago." Using state enrollment figures, the paper says that "along with the decline in white students, black students have slipped to 51 percent of the total enrollment, while Hispanic students have become the fastest-growing group. They account for more than a third of Chicago students, at 36 percent - yet most are clustered in their own segregated schools."

Teacher quality, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette launched a five-part series on teacher quality in Western Pennsylvania with a story by Jane Elizabeth reporting that "even though teacher requirements appear to have gotten tougher in recent years, there are loopholes you could drive a school bus through."

Permanent substitutes, Gannett News Service

Gannett News Service checked into the tactic of using long-term substitute teachers to fill job vacancies, "one of the dirty little secrets in education," as one expert said. Half of public schools serving minority children rely on long-term subs.

Experienced teachers and minorities, The Des Moines Register

The Des Moines Register's Kathy A. Bolten analyzed Iowa education records and found that "poor and minority students in Iowa's largest school districts typically are taught by the least experienced teachers." The paper focused on school districts in the state's largest areas that had a "high percentage of elementary students from families who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches."

Stories touching on safety, segregation and teacher quality, all issues of vital interest to urban school districts and all reported in big-time newspapers. And those are just the ones that a single blogger has noticed since mid-December.

Applying the Howlerian standard, I could claim that Somerby's wild charges of media indifference to the plight of public education have done deep damage to the country's discourse on the matter -- only it wouldn't be true, because very few people actually read him, and far fewer read me.