DARTS & LAURELS
Darts
& Laurels is written by Gloria Cooper, CJR's deputy
executive editor. Nominations may be addressed to her by mail,
phone (212-854-1887), or e-mail (gc15@columbia.edu).
DART
for removing yet more bricks from journalism's shaky wall, to:
THE
DENVER POST
Above the fold in the November 25 sports section the Post
presented legitimate reports, accompanied by an AP photo, on World
Cup skiing; below the fold the page slid smoothly into what appeared
to be further coverage of winter sports, the whole comprising
a pleasingly integrated layout of photos, headlines, typeface,
and text. In fact, however, the lower half-page was (as whispered
in a microscopic, mid-page clue for hawk-eyed readers only) an
“advertisement” for a video game version of National
Hockey League playoffs. For contrast, see the rival Rocky Mountain
News’s display on that very same day of that very same
ad on a sports-section page — unassisted by matching news
copy and unmistakably marked: PAID ADVERTISEMENT PAID ADVERTISEMENT
PAID ADVERTISEMENT PAID ADVERTISEMENT.
THE
VANCOUVER SUN
The forty-two-column-inch centerpiece of the paper’s front
page on Friday, January 17, was a colorfully illustrated gee-whiz
story on the digital services newly available to customers of
Shaw Cable. Graphically instructing readers on “what you
need” to purchase, say, a movie like Austin Powers in
Goldmember, and larded with quotes from a company spokesman,
the piece managed to mention the Shaw company’s name some
eighteen times. It did not, however, mention the four full pages
of Shaw Cable ads that wrapped around the Sun’s “Movie
Weekend” section elsewhere in that issue (one of which included
a full-page graphic of Austin Powers in Goldmember). Nor
did it mention an inside ad for a “Business Connection Luncheon”
five days hence, at which the featured speaker would be Dennis
Skulsky, “president and publisher of . . . The Vancouver
Sun.” Skulsky’s topic: “The Business Community
and the Media — The Secrets of Getting Your Message Out.
WTVH-TV
Although Syracuse viewers didn’t know it at the time, some
of those three-minute interviews — a car dealer on leasing
options, a shop owner on jewelry, a financial planner on the stock
market, a lawyer on personal-injury claims — that recently
aired on the Granite Broadcasting station’s five o’clock
news-and-talk program Central New York Live! were part
of advertising contracts with WTVH — and paid for, it turns
out, by the car dealer, the shop owner, the financial planner,
the lawyer. In a February 12 story exposing the deceptive practice,
the Syracuse Post-Standard noted that, after being contacted
by the paper, the station had made some gestures toward disclosure
— gestures less than enthusiastic toward disclosure less
than full.
LAUREL
TO THE NEWS & OBSERVER,
in Raleigh, North Carolina, for bringing a bit more justice to
the criminal justice system. Tipped that a small-time drug dealer
was innocent of the brutal murder that had put him on death row,
reporter Joseph Neff revisited the entire case, from analyzing
court filings and tracking down witnesses to interviewing the
attorneys and conferring with experts on such forensic arcana
as the age of the maggots that had invaded the corpse. His investigation
revealed, among other things, that prosecutors had withheld exculpatory
evidence, that a damning witness had fabricated her testimony,
and that the murder could have taken place only during a time
when the convicted man was either out of the state or in jail
on an unrelated, minor charge. Even as the second installment
of “Time of Death” appeared in print, a Superior Court
judge had overturned the conviction and ordered a new trial. Disturbingly,
however, as Neff makes clear, that just outcome would not have
been possible had the original sentence called for anything short
of execution, such as life without parole: North Carolina law
gives the right of access to all prosecution files on their cases
to death-row inmates only.
DART
TO KTVU-TV
in San Francisco and Ross McGowan, anchor of its early morning
newscast, for lowering the ethical bar. In the course of countless
interviews over the past five years, McGowan has bellied up to
one particular city supervisor, Gavin Newsom, some eighty-four
times, drawing out the politician’s views on state and local
politics, tending to his worthy pet projects, giving viewers a
taste of his personal high life, and generally boosting his shot
at becoming mayor. At no time in those conversations, however,
was mention ever made of the off-air relationship between interviewer
and interviewee — namely, that McGowan is a partner (to the
tune of $25,000) in a company that operates a San Francisco bar
and whose president is Gavin Newsom. But not to worry. As the
anchor — with the full support of executive producer Rosemarie
Thomas Schwarz — told the San Francisco Chronicle, which
revealed the conflict of interest in a February 23 story: if something
came up about his business partner that “needed the tough
questions,” he “like[s] to think” he’d ask
them.
DART
TO REUTERS
for failing to make distinctions. Applying its special theory
of relativity, the international news agency imposes an official
ban on the use in its reports of the “emotive” word
“terrorist,” except in quotations (a post-9/11 policy
memo by the global news director, Stephen Jukes, justified the
ruling thusly: “one man’s terrorist is another man’s
freedom fighter”). Now a March 12 dispatch makes one wonder
if another commonly used, demonstrably definable term — “suicide
bomber” — is edging toward relativity as well. In a
Gaza-datelined story by Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters reported that
Saddam Hussein had given $10,000 each to “twenty-two families
of militants killed in fighting or of civilians killed during
Israeli army offensives, incursions, or air strikes,” and
$25,000 to “a family of a Palestinian suicide bomber.”
Helpfully doing the math, Reuters summed it all up in this indiscriminate
lead: “Families of Palestinians killed by Israel received
$245,000 in checks from Saddam Hussein on Wednesday . . . .”
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Darts
& Laurels is written by Gloria Cooper, CJR's deputy
executive editor. Nominations may be addressed to her by mail,
phone (212-854-1887), or e-mail (gc15@columbia.edu).
