NewsCommonsense

News That Makes My Day

Jay Rosen is back.  At least his blog PressThink is again active after no posts for almost a year.  I’m not sure why. He’s one of the most thoughtful (if slightly long-winded) media commentators out there so I’m thrilled to see him posting again (since late February but I missed his return).  His latest is about the challenge—and his solution—for CNN, which is hemorrhaging viewers.

Understatement of the Day

Further assessment – this took longer than I should have spent on it.

Above is the last sentence in a long, detailed explanation with electronic images of why the author (Mediate’s Philip Bump) thinks the now infamous photo of Tea Party founder Dale Robertson is not a fake.  Robertson had said he never seen examples of racism at Tea party events.  Then this photo of him was circulated.

In today’s media environment, just by spending so much time and energy debunking the myth that it’s a fake reinforces the message that it’s a fake.

A Freelancer’s Ethical Problem

A private investigator hired a freelance writer to dig into the background of two FDA officials.  The firm, Kroll, was hired by drug maker Amphastar Pharmaceuticals that was frustrated that its generic drug wasn’t getting approval fast enough. 

At one point, the investigators hired a freelance reporter to file Freedom of Information Act requests, using her status as a journalist to request Woodcock’s emails, phone records, voicemails, calendar and expense reports, among other documents – without mentioning that she was being paid for her efforts by a private investigative firm.

“I am making this request as a journalist and this information is of timely value,” Melanie Haiken, a San Francisco-based freelance reporter wrote to the FDA. “As a journalist, I am primarily engaged in disseminating information.”

Haiken did not disclose that she was working for the private investigators at the time. In an email explaining its fees, Kroll told Amphastar that the expenses related to the FOIC covered “the cost of the person we are using to make the requests untraceable to you, the client.”

…Haiken, the freelance journalist, confirms that she filed the FOIA on behalf of Kroll. But Haiken said her intent was journalistic, and that she hoped the FOIAs would yield an interesting story. “I’m not really an investigator, I’m a health writer,” she said. “I have a right to get a story tip from somebody, even if it’s somebody at Kroll.”

This is a horrible breach of ethics for a reporter—freelance or not.

NPR Ditches ‘Democrat Party’

The NPR ombudsman has made it official:  the network is no longer to use the improper term “Democrat Party.”

What, you say, even its correspondents use the disparaging name Republicans use for their opponents?  Sadly, yes.

[Linda] WERTHEIMER: Now, he announced his decision just before the filing deadline for candidates to enter the race. So does he hurt the Democrat Party with this timing?

[Ken] RUDIN: Recyclable. I'm just - I just can't get over what's going on here. But anyway, Ritter was in trouble with his own party. Basically what happened, when Ken Salazar, the senator, resigned to become the Interior secretary, Ritter named somebody named Michael Bennett to the Senate seat held by Salazar, and half the Democratic Party was unhappy about that.

[Update:  I must have been bleary eyed as Rudin’s remarks do not use the term “Democrat party.”

Black Journalists: Wanted! Needed?

The Washington Post ombudsman Andy Alexander thinks the paper doesn’t have enough minority reporters.  He makes a good case.  But he buries the lead.  In his blog post today, he narrows in on the key problem:  Not talk, but story decisions.

Some minority staffers have told me they have considered leaving The Post because they feel that white assignment editors too often won’t embrace their story ideas. They believe the reason often is that the white editors simply don’t buy into the coverage idea because it’s on a topic that isn’t familiar to them or is uncomfortably outside their cultural environment.

Bobbi Bowman, a former Post reporter and editor who now is a diversity consultant to the American Society of News Editors (disclosure: I sit on its board), said it’s a problem in newsrooms. Frustration often builds among minority staffers “because they don’t think anyone listens to them” when they propose story ideas or new areas of coverage. In rejecting these ideas, she said, assigning editors often are saying to themselves: “This hasn’t happened to me, so it isn’t ‘news.’” The remedy, she said, is for editors to think outside their cultural comfort zone and be more willing to “accept other people’s definition of news.”

That becomes easier as newsroom diversity grows and minorities move into supervisory positions where they can shape news coverage. But in the current financial climate, when the Post is still struggling to return to annual profitability, expanding diversity is an extra challenge because staffing levels are being further trimmed.

All the more reason to expand newsroom conversation around the issue. Talk is cheap, but critically important.

Talk isn’t a bad idea.  And in this way and at this level, it may not be cheap.  But at the end of the chat, it takes a newspaper’s commitment to cover the stories of minorities, which will include stories about depravation, hopelessness and prejudice as well as inspiring ones about overcoming the challenges or the experiences of those who’ve inherited a leg up.  In any case, a newspaper making that commitment must come first.

That’s hard to do in today’s news environment, especially if The Post sees itself as the newspaper of political record.  You can’t have reporters investing time to find out what’s happening in minorities communities and explaining why it’s important, if you’re assigning “he said, she said” stories and covering or covering tea party rallies.

And what would that change in focus bring?  Before anything else, charges of “liberal media!”  Are the Post editors ready take the heat, or will they stick to stories of Clarence Thomas  clones?

Not only is it safer to be the stenographer of the political elite arguments, it’s cheaper.  Plopping a reporter in the White House briefing room or sending one to a Congressional press conference costs less that sending a reporter into a community to enterprise stories, for which even the minority reporter requires time to build trust among communities that don’t necessarily crave news coverage—and return with the best stories. 

So before they count face colors in the newsroom, they’ll need to decide whether it will make a difference.

UPDATE:  Seems like Politico is catching flak about the predominance of white men at the top.

Measuring Healthcare

As I reported last week, the level of displeasure over the recently passed healthcare reform legislation is often overstated.  The impetus for that post was the CNN/Opinion Research poll of last week.

There’s another CNN/OR poll this week.  Here again is a key data point.

"Thinking about the health care bill that Congress passed this week, which of the following statements best describes your view of what Congress should do in the future? Congress should leave the bill as it is. Congress should make additional changes to increase the government's involvement in the nation's health care system. Congress should repeal most of the major provisions in that bill and replace them with a completely different set of proposals." Options rotated

Leave as is……………………………….23%

Increase govt. involvement…..27%

Repeal and replace………………..47%

Unsure……………………………………..3%

So 50% like it or want more govt. involvement.

Another question:

"Which of the following statements best describes your views about the health care bill that Congress passed this week? You approve of the bill becoming law and have no reservations about it. You approve of the bill becoming law but you think it did not go far enough. You disapprove of the bill becoming law but you support a few of its proposals. You disapprove of the bill becoming law and oppose all of its proposals."

Approve, no reservations………………….15%

Didn’t go far enough………………………….27%

Disapprove, but support some of it….31%

Oppose all of it……………………………………25%

Unsure………………………………………………….1%

So 74% like at least some of the reform.

Here’s the way the CNN’s polling director interprets the poll.

The 47 percent who favor "repeal and replace" is significantly lower than the 56 percent who say they disapprove of the bill's passage last week.

"That's because opposition to the new law comes in many different forms and not all of them benefit the GOP," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Some Americans continue to say that they disapprove of the bill because they want even more government involvement in health care than the bill created. Only a quarter are against the entire bill; one in three support at least a few proposals in the new law. [Emphasis added] And a handful of Americans appear to dislike the bill but don't want Congress to spend any more time on health care."

When will the press get it?

Cross posted on Commonwealth Commonsense.

The Power of Three

The Washington Post covered a protest over the weekend outside the home of Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-Ohio). 

They showed up to decry the freshman congressman's vote for the overhaul, standing in the chilling rain most of the afternoon Sunday holding signs that read: "Driehaus Voted to Destroy Our Children's Future" and "Remember in November."

How big a story is this?

Sunday's gathering, which never included more than three people at a time [Emphasis added], was anchored by Jim Berns, a libertarian who has run for Driehaus's seat three times and for the state legislature 10 times. He wore a suit and waved at the congressman's neighbors -- a couple of whom greeted him with a middle finger, others with a thumbs-up.

What do you think the likelihood is of The Post covering a three-person protest in favor of healthcare?

Asleep at the Printing Press

While The Washington Post—and most other major papers—were writing stories about the to and fro comments, slanders, strategizing and complaining of the politicians considering healthcare, it missed something.

Whenever a newspaper uses the term “little noticed” in a story after a piece of legislation was passed, it’s a tacit admission that it didn’t do a very good job of informing its readers.

A little-noticed provision of the health legislation has rescued federal support for a controversial form of sex education: teaching youths to remain virgins until marriage.

The legislation restores $250 million over five years for states to sponsor programs aimed at preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases by focusing exclusively on encouraging children and adolescents to avoid sex. The funding provides at least a partial reprieve for the approach, which faced losing all federal support under President Obama's first two budgets.

Not everyone is thrilled.

"To spend a quarter-billion dollars on abstinence-only-until-marriage programs that have already been proven to fail is reckless and irresponsible," said James Wagoner of Advocates for Youth, a Washington group. "When on top of that you add the fact that this puts the health and lives of young people at risk, this becomes outrageous."

During President George W. Bush's administration, abstinence programs received more than $100 million a year directly in federal funding and about $50 million each year in federal money funneled through the states. But the effort came under mounting criticism when independent evaluations concluded that the approach was ineffective and evidence began to emerge that the long decline in teen pregnancies was reversing.

This should be embarrassing—for The Post.

Does the GOP Work for Fox News?

David Frum, the conservative speechwriter for W, who criticized Congressional Republicans for their healthcare strategy, has lost his job at the American Enterprise Institute due to AEI donor pressure.   In an interview with ABC (I can’t get the embed to work), he makes an astute observation.

Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us and now we're discovering we work for Fox. And this balance here has been completely reversed. The thing that sustains a strong Fox network is the thing that undermines a strong Republican party.

Fox is the 800 lb. gorilla of the right.  (Rush Limbaugh is the 700 lb. gorilla, though he looks like he’s put on a few pounds lately.)  I don’t watch Fox enough to know if it ever criticizes the GOP Congressional leadership for being too extreme, but if its right-wing agenda is putting the GOP in a box with a padlock on it, the implications for both are intriguing. 

If some of the more moderate Republicans start to exert themselves, can they withstand the Fox assault?  If they begin to boycott Fox because they would get pummeled, can the network sustain itself with only the most strident voices?  I’m told that Fox actually has a good following among independent voters.  Will they desert the network if it is only the wing nuts?  GOP leadership as guests must give it some seal of approval to independents, and if they leave, will a part of its audience?

MSNBC, most notably Chris Matthews, has a few right-of-center guests.  I’m not sure if Rachel Maddow tries hard to get the other side and is shunned.  I wouldn't be surprised if Olbermann avoids them; he seems only capable of pandering questions to the left.  Matthews and especially Maddow can hold their own, so it’s a disappointment to me that she doesn’t have more opponents on her show.  But MSNBC has been critical of Democrats, especially the president and conservative Dems.  (I’ve rarely seen its hosts criticize the most liberal Dems, unless it was Rep. Kucinich for threatening to vote against the healthcare bill.)

If the GOP leadership were smart, they’d go on Fox and push back.  If they were smart…

“Pro-life” and “Pro-Choice” Are Dead

Let’s hope other news organizations follow NPR’s lead. 

On the air, we should use "abortion rights supporter(s)/advocate(s)" and "abortion rights opponent(s)" or derivations thereof (for example: "advocates of abortion rights"). It is acceptable to use the phrase "anti-abortion", but do not use the term "pro-abortion rights".

And while they’re at it, let’s hope they stop using “death tax,” “partial birth abortion,” and other advocates’ terms that have made their way into mainstream journalism.