Should Local TV Reporters Disclose When They are Reciting Someone Else's Words?

It was something I noticed when I decided to take a closer look at the health reporting on local TV stations.

Often, stories would present sources without identifying where they lived. Or the piece would unfold over long minutes without showing the reporter with the subjects or at any of the locations.

For the educated viewer, these were giveaway clues: these anchors were likely voicing a script prepared somewhere else, using footage shot somewhere else. A few Google searches later, I found several stories where local health reporters had simply re-voiced stories, almost word-for-word, provided by news services such as Ivanhoe Broadcast News and Medstar Television.

Typically, the reporters don't reveal these sources in their pieces, which I think leads viewers to believe they are reporting these stories themselves. It's a practice TV stations have indulged for many years, but I've never felt it was totally honest with the viewer, so I wrote a column dissecting the issue for today newspaper.

I understand why it happens: TV stations want their health franchises to appear regularly -- usually too often to rely on stories turned by a single reporter. At WFTS-Ch. 28, health reporter Linda Hurtado also happens to be the station's 5:30 p.m. news anchor, which makes negotiating the workload a challenge. And producers have often written scripts for reporters and news anchors to voice.

But at a time when new outlets are handling more sources of information than ever, we'll have to be more careful about disclosing where that material comes from -- particularly when it involves taking stories wholesale which are repeated, word-for-word, at other stations.

Here's a story on the use of art to help those suffering from Alzheimer's disease that ran on WFTS.

And here's the same story on a station in Moline, Ill. And also the same story done in Orlando; though the text on their Web site is different, the video uses the same script.

Two Examples of an Important TV Truth: Never Lose it on a TV News Set

I don't know why experienced TV journalists never learn this lesson. But the current online climate makes it plain: famous anchors lose their tempers on set at their own peril.

Industry veterans know that production staffers, who often earn many times less the salaries of the highly-paid, high-strung primadonnas losing it publicly, love to secretly roll tape when a famous face is having a tantrum. Rest assured that the embarrassing video will surface later, plunked online by someone who got a bootleg tape from a friend of a friend and can't wait to share it with cyberspace.

Here is Bill O'Reilly blowing his top when he was an anchor on Inside Edition, apparently upset that someone didn't write a tagline capping the end of the show, just before proving that he didn't really need the script, anyway.

Here's the F-word heard around cyberspace -- New York anchor Sue Simmons loosing the F-word at the end of a promo she thought was being taped, but was actually airing live.

    

Big Changes Coming for the St. Petersburg Times on May 19

The St. Petersburg Times will be seriously redefined on May 19.

That's when the paper will implement changes designed to emphasize material readers have told us they value most in the weekday paper and bring down costs. The big changes: Floridian, our daily features section, will publish just on Sundays, while our business section will merge with our B section metro news in a new section. TV listings, comics, Dear Abby, crossword puzzles and the more popular syndicated elements of our features section will move to a new section called BayLink.

As always, when circumstances compel the Times to reimagine the newspaper, executives have tried to husband resources while emphasizing elements readers will like in new ways. So there are new features added to the Taste section -- including a weekly restaurant review -- a return of the color weather map, four new comics and the move of our daily entertainment report, The Juice, to the inside front page of our A section, among other changes. The Sunday paper, where much of our readership's attention falls, will change little.

Leaders here are hoping BayLink -- which combines classifieds, syndicated features and news content in a section they're imagining as newspaper's closest thing to a shopping mall -- will be seen an innovative effort at collecting material readers want in one section. 

Among the big elements which will disappear: traditional stock listings (some will be available in a new format; many papers have eliminated them, because the information is so readily available online), the Road Test column, the Parenting column (though more parenting coverage is planned, both online and for the paper), the Working section and the Sew Simple feature.

There will also be a half-page in Sunday Floridian featuring much of the material featured in this space, called, surprisingly enough, The Feed.

Top staffers at the paper have been working on these changes for months, with an eye toward creating a more streamlined paper during the week, eliminating material readers may not value so much, and, in the midst of a serious recession, cutting costs. It is the second time we've redesigned the paper since 2006 -- coming close on the heels of the Tampa Tribune's reconfiguration in March -- and the open question is always how will readers react to paying the same price for a smaller product? 

Our executive editor Neil Brown will introduce readers to these changes with a column on Sunday, and there will be stories in the paper each day next week outlining how each section will change and where people can find the material they've come to enjoy.

It's a tough spot for a media critic to negotiate; I'm not an ombudsman with a contract guaranteeing employment no matter what I write, so I've tried to respect the organization's need to plan while pulling together this blog post to give anyone who reads this space early notice on the coming changes.

I've written before in this space about how the Times' business model ensuring our independence -- the fact that we're owned by a non-profit, the Poynter Institute -- has given us a bit more time to deal with the financial forces that are dramatically transforming other newspapers. But we're not insulated from the pressure, and these changes are evidence of that fact.

Looks like we're all stepping into a new era together, starting May 19.

60 Minutes' Steve Kroft Speaks on Clarence Thomas Interview; Leaves a Few Questions Unanswered

One of the treats of the conference on covering race that I'm attending here at Columbia University, was a chance to hear 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft talk about one of his most controversial interviews in recent memory: his Sept. 30 sit-down with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Critics accused Kroft of handling Thomas with kid gloves to get the kind of access he has never given a TV journalist: hanging with him at his boyhood home in Savanna, Ga., riding in his RV (which he occasionally parks at Wal Marts when he is traveling?!) and questioning him with his wife. Thomas was selling a book -- Kroft admits the publishing house was instrumental in pushing Thomas to do the interview in the first place -- and still left CBS producers unsure if he would fully participate.

"I don't think anybody deserves to be defined totally by his enemies," Kroft said, explaining why he agreed with Thomas' feeling that he had been caricatured by the press. "He is somebody who hasn't gotten a fair shake in the press -- in part, because he let people define him."

I was impressed and a little envious at the resources Kroft said he had -- including seven or eight producers to comb through mountains of research to produce two thick "briefing books" which give him everything major that has been reported on Thomas. 

More than anything, I was intrigued by a moment when Kroft was asked about a typical Thomas inconsistency: He has a moment early in the interview where he insists race is not a huge factor in his life or perception of himself. But he also recounts growing up in a segregated south, feeling as if the white world discounted his law degree from Yale because he was black and being told by his grandfather that at a certain age, he couldn't dare look a white woman in the face for fear of lynching or worse.

But Thomas wound up an opponent of affirmative action who married a white woman. Doesn't that indicate that race had some impact on him, despite his protestations? "I didn't think about that until this session," noted Kroft today.

In an odd way, that response proved the value of what we're talking about here at Columbia. If you don't have journalists on hand who know black culture and black issues -- like the reasons why some black people feel Clarence Thomas is in denial about how race and affirmative action have affected his own life -- then you get stories which miss important cultural issues.

Later, we wondered why Kroft's story claimed at the outset that many criticisms about Thomas -- that he was an affirmative action hire who wants to kill affirmative action, for example -- were false. But the story didn't really seem to demonstrate how. And the many inconsistencies about Thomas' life and views weren't challenged much.

Still it was an informative look at how a big institution like 60 Minutes gets those big interviews -- and what viewers may be missing in the process. 

Deggans Among Three Times Finalists for Sunshine State Awards

Got some good news this week: I was named a finalist in the criticism category for the South Florida Society of Professional Journalists' Sunshine State Awards. The list of finalists released so far is here.

I join fellow Times colleagues Josh Korr (criticism) and Stephanie Hayes (humorous column writing) as finalists from the paper. Since the local SPJ chapter no longer presents awards, the Sunshine State Awards are the closest thing we have to a regional, general interest journalism awards contest.

I was surprised at how many Tampa-area outlets actually were featured among the finalists, including nods for Creative Loafing's Wayne Garcia and Brian Reis, the Tampa Tribune's Jeff Houck, Gretchen Parker, and Michelle Bearden and Florida Trend's Cynthia Barnett.

Doubt I'll make the May 31 awards ceremony, where winners are to be revealed. Since I'm up against Josh and the Miami Herald's ace TV critic Glenn Garvin, I'm not sure how good my chances are anyway. But it sure is nice to be nominated....   

Cable TV's Election Coverage: The More They Talk, The Less We Learn

I have a simple theory about cable news, developed after months spent consuming its endless coverage of this endless presidential election: the more attention they pay to a subject, the less viewers actually learn.

I tested my notion recently by tackling a marathon assignment: spending a day watching the shows cobbled together by each cable news channel to capitalize on the nation's electoral interest -- Fox’s America’s Election HQ, MSNBC’s Race to the White House and CNN’s Election Center.

What I found: news programs chewing over morsels of information like grazing cows, taking a sliver of reported fact and massaging it with bursts of analysis and supposition until viewers had a tough time separating actual fact from assumption and opinion.

I call it the high “noise to signal ratio” of cable news; the way punditry and strategy often overwhelms the meat of reportage. Unsurprisingly, the show with the highest noise to signal ratio on this day was found at Fox News.

America’s Election HQ is a chummy, vibrating hour packed with flashy graphics, made-to-order partisan conflicts, Fox’s trademark general friendliness to conservatives and two gleaming, youthful hosts in anchors Bill Hemmer and Megyn Kelly.

The day I watched, Hemmer led the show with “breaking news”: former Clinton aide Dick Morris heard from an unnamed source that Bill Clinton had recommended to Columbia’s president in 2007 that he would only get a trade agreement with the U.S. by convincing Democrats to support it. According to Morris, 10 days later, Columbia hired the consulting firm led by Mark Penn, the recently-resigned chief strategist of Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

“Are you reporting that Bill Clinton got Mark Penn the gig?” Hemmer asked urgently.
“Yes,” said Morris, before thinking better of his allegation. “I don’t -- I can’t prove it. I wasn’t there.” So what exactly was he reporting? That Clinton told Columbia’s president last year that Democrats control Congress thanks to their success in 2006’s midterm elections? That’s breaking political news?

Another urgent panel discussion centered on acampaign worker assembling a crowd to stand behind Michelle Obama at a Pittsburgh rally, who yelled for “more white people.”

Fox’s high velocity election program was a clear contrast to MSNBC’s Race to the White House, a vehicle for rising NBC News star David Gregory that seems tailor made for Hardball-weaned political junkies.

What irked me most here was the continuing presence of pundit Pat Buchanan, who has written at least one book implying America’s success lies in its identity as a white Christian nation. Why MSNBC and NBC News continue to allow this guy to denounce people like Jeremiah Wright as bigots with no mention of his own tangled history remains a mystery to me.

Indeed, it wasn’t until I turned on CNN’s Election Center that I felt the media noise subside a bit. On a day when there wasn’t much real campaign news, Brown’s CNN show focused more on the news of the day, spending the first 15 minutes or so dissecting the protests in San Francisco and the likelihood that any president could implement a quick troop withdrawal from Iraq.

At a time when Americans are still struggling to make a historic electoral choice, don't we deserve election coverage which cuts  through the noise instead of adding to it?

People Magazine Exclusive From Lakeland's YouTube Fight Victim: "It Feels Like Something's In My Ear."

People magazine on Friday unveiled its exclusive interview with Victoria Lindsay, the teenage cheerleader underneath the white dot in a now-world-famous video, showing her being pummeled by a gang of girls in Lakeland.

Dubbed by People as "the girl fight seen round the world," the incident has brought adult charges of assault for the six girls and two boys involved -- all teens ranging from age 14 to 18 -- along with a media dustup as outlets such as the Dr. Phil show tried to lock up the stories of various participants through whatever means possible.

It's unclear yet what People did to gain its exclusive with the victim, a friend and her parents, but it seems the primary benefit was visual -- as the magazine published a page-size photo of Lindsay's face and a group shot with her father and stepmother (according to the magazine, Lindsay's mother is serving a 10-year prison term for a fatal stabbing).

Citing a gag order imposed by the judge overseeing the case, People only has a few quotes from Lindsay in its six-page story, focused on how she feels after the attack: "I was in a lot of pain...It feels like something's in my ear." And after observing that Lindsay was living with the family of one of her alleged assailants after falling out with her parents, the teen said "Your Number 1 friend is your family. Don't trust anybody." (the gag order also seems to allow Polk County sheriff Grady Judd a lot of leeway to describe the crime without competing accounts from the accused)

Unfortunately, the case seems more about children from troubled homes acting out and clueless parents still unable to accept what their kids have done.  More than once, the story quotes adults blaming the Internet for what the kids did, with little acknowledgment that something besides overheated MySpace messages may have fueled this beatdown.

Tallahassee-Based Black-Centered TV News Channel Signs Deal With Comcast

UPDATE: The Black Television News Channel is a project fronted by former Republican Congressman J.C. Watts, aimed at creating a black-focused news channel which would look like a hybrid of Fox News Channel and CNN, according to its senior vice president Steven Pruitt.

The company is based in Tallahassee right now because it is working with Bob Brilliante, the former head of Florida's News Channel -- an effort to create a statewide TV news channel which never quite lived up to its ambitions. The project expects to move its headquarters to Washington D.C. soon and launch in time for Black History Month 2009, according to Pruitt.

Pruitt says the company is securing carriage deals like the one it announced today before hiring any personnel. But this will be the third time an independent company has tried to form a black-centered TV news network; Quincy Jones was the most visible investor in New Urban Entertainment, which fell apart when it couldn't nail carriage agrements and Stuart, Fla. lawyer Willie Gary tried spinning off a news network from his Major Broadcasting Cable Network, which also failed. Neither of the two existing  black-focused cable networks, Black Entertainment Television or TV One, offers regular newscast programming

Pruitt also said the company expects to spend more than $30-million on the venture. As well as some ethnic media is doing these days, starting a TV news channel from scratch is a tall order; it will be interesting to see how this one unfolds, if it ever does. Bear in mind, all I know about this company is what Pruitt and his press release have told me, so far. (UPDATE END)

I'll be doing some reporting later today to check up on this, but here's a press release I got today which looks interesting. Bear in mind that press releases most times don't tell the whole story.

Here it is:

Washington, DC — April 14, 2008 -- Black Television News Channel (BTNC), the nation’s only African-American news network, scheduled to launch in 2009, today announced a multi-year carriage agreement with Comcast (CMCSA, CMCSK), the country’s leading provider of cable, entertainment and communications products and services.  Under the agreement, BTNC expects that it will be added to Comcast systems in the following key African American markets: Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Baltimore.

BTNC will be a 24/7 cable news network that provides original news programming with a distinctly African-American perspective, and therefore helps fill a major gap in today’s media. BTNC is the endeavor of J.C. Watts, Jr., former U.S. congressman from Oklahoma and celebrated athlete, and broadcast and cable news veterans. 

“Our unique and vast content partnerships with African American newsmakers will provide our viewers LIVE access to the stories and people in whom our viewers have a special interest,” said Watts. “With this agreement, Comcast continues to demonstrate its commitment to working with independent programmers with diverse points of view.”

BTNC will construct the first coast-to-coast all high-definition television newsgathering infrastructure with its network operations center located in Washington, DC.

###
About BTNC

Black Television News Channel will be the nation’s only provider of 24/7 cable news programming dedicated to covering the unique perspective of African American communities.  BTNC will provide access to information and educational programming to meet the specific needs of this growing and dynamic community, which is a major consumer of subscription television services. BTNC will provide a new voice that represents African Americans in mainstream media and fosters political, economic, and social discourse.  BTNC’s programming will shed light on the unique social, economic, and political challenges facing urban communities and help close the “image gap” that exists today between the negative African American stereotypes perpetuated by mainstream media news and our enterprising black communities.

Jailed Trucker Jean Claude Meus Gets New Trial: Did TV Help Make It Happen?

Score another win for media-savvy attorney John Trevena.

It has taken years, but Trevena has finally won a new trial for the 44-year-old Haitian immigrant truck driver, who started a 15-year prison sentence in 2003 after his conviction on vehicular homicide charges after an accident in which prosecutors alleged he fell asleep at the wheel.

I wrote about Meus and Trevena back in 2005, when Trevena tipped WTVT-Ch. 13 investigative reporter Doug Smith to the seeming disparity. At the time, Jennifer Porter, a 29-year-old, part-Cuban woman widely perceived to be white, had received three years of probation, two years of house arrest and 500 hours of community service after leaving the scene of a car accident in which she struck two children, who died.

Didn't hurt that she was represented by the most powerful criminal lawyer in town, Barry Cohen.

I wrote about how national media outlets were surprisingly indifferent to Meus' story, despite its parallels with the Porter case and questionable outcome. Trevena and Smith stuck with the case, however, and saw their efforts pay off Tuesday. See Smith's story from last night here.

Meus, who stayed at the scene and cooperated with investigators, was charged with homicide in Hardee County for the accident, which killed a 40-year-old woman and her daughter. His case was striking enough that two sisters of the woman killed in the accident took up his cause, arguing that the trial wasn't fair.

Smith's story, along with a later piece in the St. Petersburg Times, suggested Meus may have faced tougher charges and received a stiffer sentence because of his race and lack of wealth (Trevena didn't represent him in the original trial). Smith noted, for example, that another trucker, Thomas Smith, had a similar accident in 2002 in Hardee County which killed a man, but that driver admitted falling asleep at the wheel and got a traffic citation for it as his only punishment.

The difference between Smith and Meus? Smith is white and Meus is not.

But it sounds like justice may finally be at hand, thanks to a persistent lawyer and TV reporter. 

 

Why Do Journalists Care About the Pulitzers When Readers Don't?

It's a reaction I often see after newspapers run their list of the winners in the biggest prize journalism has to offer: the Pulitzers.

It may be the first line in the obituary of every journalist who wins one, but that only shows that obituaries are a form usually featured best in newspapers. Because each time the list of winners goes up, there is the resultant drizzle of blog posts and columns from people criticizing the awards process and the newspaper executives who get so worked up about them.

As someone who has helped establish journalism contests in Pittsburgh, New Jersey and the Tampa Bay area, I can tell you that awards help encourage journalists. And when journalism's highest honor goes to incisive reports about Walter Reed Hospital, the influence of Vice President Dick Cheney, toxic chemicals in products imported from China, faulty regulation of consumer products and the operation of civilian security contractors in Iraq, it only encourages journalists everywhere to swing for the fences.

These are stories which spawned major headlines worldwide when they were first printed and were dissected on media outlets ranging from local TV shows to The Daily Show. So how does somebody like Gawker president Nick Denton criticize newspapers for honoring this work, saying these outlets should be working harder to chase readers?

If Denton really knew the media world he was criticizing, he would realize that most newspapers' problems these days aren't sliding circulation figures. Our problem is the decimation of advertising revenues; free classifieds online and the demise of the real estate industry is really buffeting our bottom lines.

This is the kind of hard news investigation which fuels the great turning wheel of 24/7 cable news and endless punditry on blogs and talk radio. Denton smirks about newspapers creating journalism to impress their colleagues -- he doesn't get that the Pulitzer's also are about inspiring colleagues to dig up the kind of stories that can change a nation's view of its vice president, its military or its war time conduct.

These are the kind of game changing stories every journalist should aspire to tell at some point in their careers, because they are the fuel that powers the engine of democracy. That Denton sees it solely as an exercise in self congratulation may say a lot more about his work than the awards he's criticizing.

An Accusation Which Makes Me Proud: Bill O'Reilly Thinks I'm a 'Race Baiter'

The main people who don't seem to want to talk about race in America these days, are those who earn their living by keeping us apart.

Exhibit A: Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, a guy who I've called on the carpet many times for his use of coded words and phrases to pass along stereotypical, insulting ideas. He's gleefully pointed out going after "black rappers" in a prime time special on explicit entertainment, noted how those who live a "gangsta life" were like those left to drown in post-Katrina New Orleans and insisted he wasn't going to "go on a lynching party" when Michelle Obama said some thing which upset conservatives about America.

Last night, in one of those inexplicable moments when a world-famous opinionator reaches out to swat a barely-known newspaper writer, O'Reilly called me "one of the biggest race baiters in the country," offering no proof of how I'd earned the term, beyond my status as chair of the Media Monitoring Committee for the National Association of Black Journalists.

I'm betting it's because I took note of his lynching remark in a column about Don Imus on Friday. Indeed, I have a long history of tangling with Fox News' most popular pundit, viewable in stories here, here and here.

"Millions of white Americans will no longer even think about discussing race with black people," O'Reilly offered, just before plastering my picture on his screen. "Any slip of the tongue can lead to trouble."

Of course, O'Reilly's use of coded race language is hardly accidental. A key part of his show involves invoking the specter of out-of-control black males to frighten his audience. Once a critic like me objects, he can claim it was a mistake and accuse others of overreaching or unfairness. But if the Don Imus incident teaches anything, it's that mainstream America is growing far less tolerant of such antics.

I'm not saying I'm perfect in this. We've reached a point with prejudice and stereotypes where the issues are subtle, deep-seated and difficult to discuss. But I think intent counts for a lot -- and it seems obvious to me that O'Reilly doesn't come to these debates with respect for many positions besides his own. And that's why I'm so tough on him; because he's smart enough to know exactly what he's doing.

The News Hounds web site notes that the only people O'Reilly accuses of being unfair about claims of racism are black folks (he did cite the liberal media watchdog Web site Media Matters for America, which is run by white people). His list of "race hustlers includes an ex-girlfriend of comic Bill Maher, who filed a palimony suit accusing the HBO host of using "degrading racial comments" against her. (that mention, which really has little to do with accusations of racism in politics and media, just seemed calculated to show a picture of Maher, who is white, next to his black centerfold model ex-girlfriend).   

O'Reilly and I can agree on one thing: the word racist is thrown around way too much. It feeds the notion that the only people who leverage such language are serious bigots, which isn't true. The toughest thing about confronting stereotypes sometimes is that they are seductive, entertaining and often employed by people who aren't bigots. Doesn't make them any more right.

In O'Reilly's world, the only "race hustlers" in the game seem to be black people (except Al Sharpton, with whom O'Reilly seems to have a cordial relationship). But white pundits like O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage often use race tension to score points with their audiences, exploiting their fear and frustration about race issues to score ratings points.

As I've said many times before, I judge journalists by the enemies they make. So I must be doing pretty well these days.

Here's a clip of O'Reilly's rant, courtesy of YouTube:

   

Washington Post Wins Six Pulitzers, Bob Dylan Wins One

Overlooked again.

Journalism's highest honor in 2008, the Pulitzer Prizes, were announced today, and once again I must live vicariously through former Times colleague Anne Hull, who won this year with Dana Priest at the Washington Post for her most excellent series exposing the shortcomings at Walter Reed Army Hospital. In all, the Post took home six awards -- its most ever -- including another by a former SP Times alum, Jo Becker, who worked with Bart Gellman to expose the enormous influence (and man-sized safe) of Vice President Dick Cheney. (UPDATE: I've also been informed that Anne's partner Dana Priest was also an SP Times alum from the '80s, which I didn't realize because I wasn't working here then.)

I also seem to remember that the day her Cheney story ran last year, Jo managed the awesome feat of getting a front page byline at the Post, where she used to work, and the New York Times, where she now works. (a Washingtonian magazine piece back then presciently asked, "What happens if the Post's Cheney series wins a Pulitzer?")

In criticism, the Boston Globe's Mike Feeney won; the paper provides a collection of his stories online, which range from movies to photography. It is very good work, and I applaud a newspaper which has the resources to keep publishing a writer who critiques photography (along with finalist Inga Saffron, who writes about architecture for the Philadelphia Inquirer).

But I do long for the days when beat critics such as Roger Ebert and Tom Shales won Pulitzers for the work they did in the crush of keeping readers informed, day-to-day, about TV and film. It seems to me too often the Pulitzers criticism honors go to writers who are a bit disconnected from most of the criticism average readers consume.

But since Bob Dylan got a Pulitzer for, well, being Bob Dylan, maybe that's already taken care of.

Here's the list of winners, courtesy of the AP:

JOURNALISM:
Public Service: The Washington Post
Breaking News Reporting: The Washington Post staff
Investigative Reporting: Walt Bogdanich and Jake Hooker of The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune Staff
Explanatory Reporting: Amy Harmon of The New York Times
Local Reporting: David Umhoefer of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
National Reporting: Jo Becker and Barton Gellman of The Washington Post
International Reporting: Steve Fainaru of The Washington Post
Feature Writing: Gene Weingarten of The Washington Post
Commentary: Steven Pearlstein of The Washington Post
Criticism: Mark Feeney of The Boston Globe
Editorial Writing: No Award
Editorial Cartooning: Michael Ramirez of Investor’s Business Daily Breaking News
Photography: Adrees Latif of Reuters Feature Photography: Preston Gannaway of the Concord (N.H.) Monitor

ARTS:

Fiction: “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” by Junot Diaz (Riverhead Books)
Drama: “August: Osage County,” by Tracy Letts
History: “What Hath God Wrought: the Transformation of America, 1815-1848,” by Daniel Walker Howe (Oxford University Press)
Biography: “Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father,” by John Matteson (W.W. Norton)
Poetry: “Time and Materials,” by Robert Hass (Ecco/HarperCollins) and “Failure,” by Philip Schultz (Harcourt)
General Nonfiction: “The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945,” by Saul Friedlander (HarperCollins)

MUSIC: “The Little Match Girl Passion,” by David Lang, premiered Oct. 25, 2007, at Carnegie Hall, New York. (G. Schirmer, Inc.)

SPECIAL CITATION: Bob Dylan

   

Death of Newspaper Critics Feels Like a Metaphor for the Industry

A journalist friend of mine last week recalled a quote about the newspaper industry I found funny: No other industry defines its premiere product -- quality investigative news and substantive hard news reporting -- as broccoli to be choked down by a readership which doesn't get it.

I found myself thinking of that quote while reading this piece about the disappearing newspaper TV critic at major regional daily newspapers. It dovetails with stories here and here about the vanishing movie critic at major dailies. And let's not forget this wordy but comprehensive piece by Eric Alterman at the New Yorker about newspapers.

I am obvious the most biased of biased sources. But both these trends seem bassackwards as the broccoli=serious news attitude. There is obviously loads of interest in movies, movie stars, TV, TV actors and the evolution of modern media. So why are newspapers firing, laying off, reassigning or buying out the people who have covered these beats for years?

Reason #1: It saves money -- True enough, most people in these beats are older employees with big paychecks. But look at what happened at the Tampa Tribune when they eliminated longtime movie critic Bob Ross. After trying to develop a squad of average people to do his job, they've turned to TV critic Walt Belcher, asking him to step in and review movies or write trend pieces about films and stage shows, proving it isn't so easy to replace a critic with wire copy as it might seem.

Reason #2: Readers don't care about the content -- This is the toughest argument to gauge. While it's true there isn't a clear cause and effect relationship between critics and audience, critics can do a lot more than evaluate entertainment product. We explain, verify, outline trends, dig up news, start conversations and amplify them. How can you measure that in a poll or box office receipts?

Reason #3: It's old fashioned -- This is argument I understand least. At a time when digital technology is revolutionizing media, why would you eliminate the person whose job involves tracking all of that? If critics are writing boring stuff, then editors should be helping them energize their work, not figuring out how to make them take a buyout. One look at the websites started by pushed-out TV crits Ed Bark in Dallas and David Bianculli in New York shows how little the newspapers which employed them actually allowed these guys to do. In these times, cutting a pop culture arts critic feels like eliminating the cops reporter's job because stories out of the police department are boring. Shouldn't you just improve the performance of your cops reporter?

Yeah, I've got a vested interest in this one. But I wouldn't have spent nearly 20 years honing my abilities as a TV/media critic if I didn't think it was also an important beat to cover well. Hope more newspaper editors start believing that, too...

 

Deggans PunditWatch 08: Another CNN Stop and an Award From Columbia University

The stars have aligned, and I'm coming back to CNN two weeks after a well-received appearance to talk about the media, Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Once again, I'll be on Howie Kurtz's media show Reliable Sources at about 10:30 a.m., this time to talk about the role of Fox News Channel in a political world which may be dominated by Democrats. I'll be appearing with Time magazine's James Poniewozik to discuss a piece he wrote about this very issue in Time magazine. My own writing about Fox has been more sporadic; here's an old piece about the channel's coverage of the then month's old war in Iraq.

I also got some good news a few weeks ago, confirmed by a press release issued recently: My work has been honored once again by Columbia University's Let's Do It Better Awards, a program aimed at improving coverage of people of color by highlighting "best practices" examples of good work.

The good folks at Columbia honored a selection of my columns over the last two years, including this, and this and this. As a result, I'll go to Columbia early next month and meet all the other honorees -- two years ago, I met CBS News legend Ed Bradley there not long before his death -- participating in a panel on race and election coverage moderated by Ray Suarez from PBS' NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

All the print stuff will be released in a book, while the TV stuff will be released in DVD, helping other journalists figure out how to negotiate these difficult stories.

Click here to see the release:

New York Times Notes Pundit Diversity, But Whiffs on the Reason

   

UPDATE: An original version of this blog post said there were no women anchors working afternoon shows on the three cable TV networks. That was an error; Fox News has several female anchors working in the afternoon and the post has been corrected. 

The New York Times had an interesting story yesterday on the diversity of pundits deployed by the TV networks and cable TV channels to discuss this year's historic presidential election.

Penned by Felica Lee, it was an informative and interesting take on a trend which has helped ignite the career of folks like Roland Martin, Amy Holmes and Eugene Robinson, as TV news departments grapple with the reality of a landmark run for the presidency featuring a popular woman and biracial male. (I've even gotten a taste of this, with appearances on CNN, NPR and Fox News over the past year).

Unfortunately, I think it also brushed aside the reason why these outlets have developed such a diverse palette of experts: their field of anchors is amazingly devoid of that same diversity.

Indeed, as cable TV begins to more closely resemble talk radio as the voice of the Angry White Male, you have a list of TV news shows which closely resembles the talk radio universe -- mostly middle-aged white guys with a few women sprinkled in.

I've already noted in a previous post that, with the exception of Campbell Brown and Greta Van Susteren, white males host every program in prime time on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. Katie Couric breaks up the testosterone among the evening news anchors, but her ratings are a distant third in a three-person race. And there seems to be little diversity among the press gaggle following the candidates, as well.

Contrast that with the morning shows on network TV and cable, where gender and ethnic diversity are tremendous. It seems apparent, that programmer have concluded that diversity only works in mornings, and they've leveraged a diverse field of reporters and pundits to mask the unrelenting lack of diversity among their highest profile name anchors.

It will be interesting to see, if we eventually inaugurate a President Clinton or Obama, whether the anchor lineups will change, as well. Or, if we welcome a President McCain, whether cable networks will still feel the need to have such a diverse slate of pundits.

Why Did It Take Sinbad to Expose Hillary Clinton's Bosnia "Misstatement"?

As I've been watching coverage of Hillary Clinton's attempt to explain why she characterized a visit to Bosnia years ago as much more dangerous than it actually was, I've been struck by network reporters' attempts to insert themselves into the story.

Both CBS's Sharyl Attkisson and NBC's Andrea Mitchell have pointed out during their reports that they were actually with Clinton on that Bosnia trip and recalled no sniper fire, rushing crowds or exagerrated danger. Since headlines have been filled with the news, other journalists who took that trip 12 years ago -- including former MTV News reporter Tabitha Soren -- have weighed in.

So why did it take comic Sinbad to blow the lid on the whole deal?

The idea that Clinton may have been fudging the truth about her Bosnia story first came from a March 11 interview Sinbad gave to The Sleuth, a behind-the-scenes Washington blog produced by WashingtonPost.com writer Mary Ann Akers. The former Jingle All the Way co-star, last in the news denying widespread rumors he was dead (just the career folks, rimshot!) accompanied Clinton on the 1996 trip with singer Sheryl Crow and said it wasn't so dangerous.

His best line: "What kind of president would say, 'Hey, man, I can't go 'cause I might get shot so I'm going to send my wife...oh, and take a guitar player and a comedian with you.'"

Unfortunately, Sinbad also declared himself an Obama supporter during the interview, which probably   cost him credibility. And Akers basically presented the story as a he said, she said, with a Clinton spokesman providing quotes from stories published at the time noting the danger. Journalists acknowledge Clinton has told the Bosnia story at least since December on the stump; relating it so many times, reporters who regularly cover her had begun to joke about how often she'd drag out this old chestnut.

The Post ran a snarky blog item on Clinton's use of the story Dec. 29 and the conservative media watchdog site Newsbusters noted March 18 that no reporter covering the Bosnia trip in 1996 mentioned sniper fire.

But the truth of the Bosnia visit didn't resonate in the mainstream press until Attkisson's story this week (what's funny, is that Attkisson's original report plays up the danger of the visit a lot more than her latest story).

But shouldn't Mitchell and Attkisson, who have filed more than a few election stories this year, have remembered the truth before now?

Rev. Wright Debate on CNN But Not in Tampa

I was disappointed to hear that Rev. Jeremiah Wright was not coming to Tampa. I was hoping his appearance here might bring the debate over his words to the Tampa Bay area in a way which might help broaden the debate a bit.

I've been pretty disappointed in how media outlets have been unable to present a quality debate about some of the issues Wright's speeches have raised. Instead, we're stuck in soundbites and snarky comments, with longtime closet racists such as Pat Buchanan using the controversy as an excuse to air their awful comments in the guise of serving as elder statesmen.

I wonder how it is a guy like Buchanan can write books and columns admiringly quoting white supremacist William Pierce and the white supremacist organiztion the New Century Foundation without any rebuke from mainstream media. And yet his he is indignant that journalists haven't hammered Obama harder for his ties to Wright?

Here is a video of my vain attempt to bring some perspective to this debate on Howard Kurtz's Reliable Sources show. The video is provided by left-leaning media watchdogs Media Matters, which have also criticized CNN's Kurtz for not covering the excesses of conservative pastors more:

Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Sermon in Context

When the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's sermons first came under fire, I didn't even want to bother arguing about them. I was raised in a black church. I knew how good preachers would use hyperbole and aggressive statements to make their point during sermons aimed at teaching bold lessons to parishioners.

But then, of all people, Bubba the Love Sponge hipped me to some postings on YouTube, where an enterprising videographer found larger clips of the most notorious sermons quoted by TV news outlets in the stories which kicked off the controversy about his speeches. And I was ashamed.

Because Rev. Wright deserved a better defender than I -- or, frankly Barack Obama -- have been during this nonsense. A look at these clips, which present much larger excerpts of Wright's speeches, shows that his seemingly damning statements came during passionate speeches about America's history of racial oppression and America's history of killing innocents while exacting military revenge against enemies.

One of Rev. Wright's most controversial comments -- the statements about "chickens coming home to roost" after 9/11 -- was his quote of a white ambassador speaking on Fox News Channel. Why didn't the TV news reporters tell us this?

It is true that Wright has also made some strident charges which aren't true. In a phrase within his GD America speech, he says the government injected black men with syphillis. Presumably, he is referring to the legendary Tuskegee Experiment, in which nearly 400 black men who already had syphillis were led to believe they were being treated for it when they were really being observed by government physicians noting the effects of the disease's advancement. (ironically, the story was broken in 1972 by Jean Heller, a former St. Pete Times reporter who was working for the Associated Press at the time)

He's also said the government has given drugs to black people, a possible reference to a widely discredited theory that the CIA helped establish the drug pipeline which first brought crack cocaine to Los Angeles, as a method of funding the Nicaraguan Contra rebels. This theory was the subject of a 1996 three-part series in the San Jose Mercury News and a book. But the newspaper backed off the story after it was published and the reporter, Gary Webb, eventually killed himself in 2004.

What is clear here, is that Wright is articulating the suspicions and cynicism of many black people about the motives of a government led mostly by white people. I think his characterizations can sometimes be simplistic and off base, but I don't think he's the raving racist some pundits have made him out to be.

Check these two excerpts of his speeches from YouTube and see if they don't make you think twice:

Deggans on CNN Sunday Talking Obama's Race Speech

Howie Kurtz must be desperate on an Easter Sunday.

How else to explain the Washington Post media critic's invitation for your truly to join him on his CNN show Reliable Sources at 10 a.m. Sunday to discuss media coverage of Barack Obama's speech on race?

I was unfortunately sidelined by the whole wisdom tooth thing when he actually gave the speech -- though watching it through a haze of Novocaine and Oxycodone was a novel experience -- and in the days since, I've been struck by a few things.

TV, of course, manages to trivialize everything. so it is no surprise that much of the TV coverage I've seen has trivialized this landmark speech. Still, much as I hate to agree with MSNBC's Joe Scarborough on anything, I do think he's right when he says this particular issue turns on anger. (Here's a great piece on that issue)

Until now, Obama has found success with many types of white voters by avoiding the Angry Black Man Syndrome. But when I think scares some white people about Obama's ties to Jeremiah Wright isn't the specifics of what he's said -- white and black preachers have said similar things about America since the days of Elmer Gantry. What scared some white voters is Obama link to a typically angry black man.

Until now, Obama has always met talk about race issues with the same kind of cool reserve William F. Buckley brought to discussions of conservative values. This is the communication mode much of America accepts best. It's the way Dick Cheney sold us all on the Iraq War; big ideas presented calmly and with an air of authority.

But Wright is all the things which scare some white voters and anger others. He's aggressive, angry, wild-eyed, full of conspiracy theories about race and loud contempt for the institutional racism which dogs our political system. If you were to bloodlessly list all of his arguments, more folks white and black would likely agree with many of his points. But it's all in the presentation, these days.

Ironically, Hillary Clinton has often suffered from Angry White Woman Syndrome in her run for the White House, disregarded and marginalized by some commentators as emasculating, shrill, shrewish or an example of the b-word because she is a powerful woman expressing opinions powerfully. Now, she's benefiting a bit from seeing that show shoved on Obama's foot.

Given that no one has suggested any of Wright's rhetoric has influenced Obama's policies or initiatives, I'm not sure what all this has to do with the job he'll do as chief executive. Instead, it says much more about our own tangled dysfunctional attitudes on race and anger than anything either Democratic candidate actually stands for.

Watching me try to fit all this commentary into a two-minute segment on CNN is bound to be entertaining. Here's an interesting clip where Chris Wallace actually takes Fox & Friends to task for its unfortunate and distorted discussion of Obama's speech on race.

   

Racist Crowd Attacks Black TV Reporter and Cameraman

I still remember the time it almost happened to me.

I was a green, just-out-of-college reporter covering the Easyriders Motorcycle Rodeo just north of Pittsburgh in Butler, Pa. and I was feeling awfully out of my element interviewing biker guys and their old ladies (their term!). They were doing things like balancing a running bike in place, using no legs, while the girl sits up in the back seat and tries to bite a hot dog hanging from a line in the air. Really.

While I was watching this action (and wondering who came up with this crazy s*%#) a spectator in the stands decided he wanted to come down a pick a fight with me -- mostly because I was the only black man in the joint. Fortunately, I had done some really cool interviews with guys in the merchandise stands and they literally put the guy down for me to keep him from kicking my butt.

All this explains why I feel for South Carolina TV reporter Charmayne Brown, who was attacked by crazy relatives of a guy she was reporting on, who had been arrested by police for murder. She was black, they were white and they pounded on her while yelling racial slurs (of course, a competing TV crew filmed the whole ugliness without actually, you know, helping)

Here it is, if you can stand to watch it. Me, I'm just thinking how lucky I was that Saturday afternoon 17 years ago.

 

Did Obama Consultant Lose Her Job Over Journalistic Malpractice?

I just got a call from Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, so I guess this is a real issue.

The media Web site Romenesko is buzzing a bit over some folks implication that Samantha Power, a well-known foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama, wound up resigning today over a comment which journalists should not have printed.

I've also heard a little discussion about this on other journalism email listservs. The way the story has been reported so far, Powers tried to take back her already infamous quote about Hillary Clinton seconds after she said it. ""She is a monster, too – that is off the record – she is stooping to anything," The Scotsman quoted her as saying. Before that, she had said ""We f***** up in Ohio...In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio's the only place they can win."

I know the whole issue of on or off-the-record comments is complex for non-journalists. As a reporter, I try to be explicit with sources when a conversation is on or off the record -- off the record comments are usually for my ears only, unless the source agrees I can tell others, usually without their names attached. I rarely allow people to take back important things they've said on the record. If I'm talking to someone who is not particularly media-savvy, I may not be so didactic about rules.

But Power is hardly that. She's a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who has appeared on the Daily Show and posed for a pictorial in Men's Vogue. We're at a point in the campaign where the world's media is on full-fledged "gaffe mode" -- looking for the slightest verbal slip-up by any person connected to either candidate in a tight race. If anyone should know how to conduct herself around a reporter she doesn't know in a situation like this, it should be Power.

The bottom line, is that off the record conversations occur after both the source and reporter have agreed -- hardly something you can do when the source throws in the request AFTER they've already said something. If I had been that reporter for the Scotsman, I would have printed Power's comments, too.

Still Defiant: David Simon Caps Five Seasons of Unspooling The Wire

The best series currently on television will end its five-year run Sunday night. And most of America's TV audience will never notice.

While  most viewers gear up for next week's American Idol episodes, HBO's The Wire will conclude its run as TV's most challenging, dense creatively astute series. (also, as TV's only predominantly black TV series which isn't perceived as one)

It's not hard to see why Idol gets more attention: The Wire practically dares its audience to keep up, slinging around lingo from politics, cop work, the streets and newspaper newsrooms with no explanation, tackling some of America's most daunting problems with a fatalistic realism that can be unsettling for those used to the way CSI wraps up a murder in 60 minutes or less.

Creator David Simon's message: that few individuals, no matter how heroic, can beat a venal, exploitive bureaucracy. And those who try -- normally the triumphant heroes in more conventional narratives -- usually wind up with the crap end of the stick.

Simon stopped doing interviews when the writers strike broke out in November, so he wasn't available to talk before the debut of the shows last season in January. But with the series finale airing at 9 p.m. Sunday, I finally caught up with the big man to ask a few compelling questions.

Was it tough not talking to the press as your last season started?

“I was very amused by the reaction. People who become fans of the show, they want to see more of what they enjoyed in the past. They want that validated. They always felt that way with (NBC cop show)Homicide. By the time I got to Homicide, Andre Braugher was dying to see his character do something different. But people just wanted to see Frank Pembelton take apart a suspect in the interview room one more time. This season, we went through the same thing.” Hear Simon's take in an interview with National Public Radio's Fresh Air here.

You brought in the media this year. And I was surprised by the way critics who had no problem with the liberties taken in cop shows such as NYPD Blue and Law & Order were complaining about the journalism stuff in The Wire.

“If you’re at a newspaper now where the technology seems to be running against the industry, there’s some frustration is seeing anyone critique the product. I sort of understand that. I believe there was relevance in the critique. I don’t believe that journalists and journalism are wholly innocent in what’s happening. My argument will be that the Internet is a tidal wave, and to withstand it, newspapers had to be strong and vibrant and essential to their communities. After the last few years of profit taking, they were anything but. I know they did when I was at The Sun."

As you say, you were a cops reporter at the Baltimore Sun for many years. Why are so many journalists so resistant to the scenes you're showing in The Wire?

“I knew by presenting this critique that a lot of people would get cranky. There is a wonderful hypocrisy to all the journalists who thought we were doing God’s work when we were lampooning police officers, but the notion that a managing editor might be fatuous or venal, or that the profession might be portrayed in a way that wasn’t ennobling -– now you’re talking outrage. I mean, we had a cop legalizing drugs in season three. I couldn’t sell that story to the mainstream press. Ed Burns gave a bunch of interviews about education to all the education periodicals last season. They were fascinated by the school stuff in season four. But season five... For the first time the mainstream media wants to discuss the content of The Wire. TV critics were talking about the content, but it didn’t make it off the entertainment pages, until we started talking about journalism. And everybody got excited.”

Your downsized Baltimore Sun misses nearly every major story which breaks in the city during this last season -- a lesson about what happens to newspapers with slashed staffs. Do you think people are missing the point because if your well-publicized feud with the two guys who ran the Sun when you left, John Carroll and Bill Marimow?   Read Simon's account of that moment in a first0person piece for Esquire here.

"I have, since 2000, been very public saying that I hold the editors who used to run my newsroom in very low regard. I don’t care that it strikes some people as inelegant or rude or arrogant. These fellas emphasized that in journalism which I did not find meaningful. Ultimately, they aggressively defended a fabricator who had been caught time and again and did so by maligning anyone who would raise the issue personally. For that reason, I’m comfortable with my opinion. I left the paper in 1995. When I left, I still kept them in low regard, but I kept my mouth shut until 2000. They ignored all of it. They kept submitting his stuff for a Pulitzer. A lot of honorable journalists were appalled with what was happening in that newsroom. Four years later when it happened again, and they were apologizing to the governor, at that point, I resolved that I was going to own my past."

But your style of narrative journalism is what wins awards these days -- we practice it at the St. Petersburg Times. Why didn't you feel support for your work at the Sun?

"They value impact journalism. Surround something that is fundamentally unjust and attack it with a series of blunt articles until people react. That is Pulitzer logic. I was on the street doing (the book) The Corner when Clinton’s welfare reform came through. All the adult males had been thrown off the welfare rolls. They were herding them onto (Social Security disability) rolls...because there was no safety net anymore. Did the Baltimore Sun cover the dramatic turn of events as the result on welfare reform? No, they did a series about how so many people were cheating on SSI."

So, to bring a question I've wanted to ask for weeks: Why did have to kill Omar?

“Read your Greek plays – read Antigone. All that stuff you didn’t read in high school. The Wire is cyclical, like most Greek tragedies. The Wire is cyclical in its sense of the permanence of fate. It’s kind of a hard thing for some people to accept. We’re more comfortable with the later western tradition. Characters confront their inner demons and they change their destiny. We like to believe that. But I'm not sure it happens often."

What's the legacy of The Wire?

  “I have no idea. I think we took a lot of risks. We were committed to our content. There’s no reason other people can’t do this, or other shows. There’s every reason to hope some aspect of TV will do the same thing. I’m very grateful to HBO that they gave us 60 episodes and let us do exactly what we wanted. I wouldn’t change a thing  -- well, I wouldn't change anything of real substance. Nothing’s perfect -– nothing is every truly finished, just a little bit abandoned. At the same time, in terms of overall message and intent and storytelling, I’m pretty sanguine."