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Darts & Laurels
^ DART to The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle, for helping a mighty giant secretly cast a spell. Enfolded within their many Sunday sections was a four-color, sixteen-page "Fall Television Preview" featuring, as the cover line put it, "Our Picks for Action! Comedy! Talk! Kids!" Without any indication of exactly just whose "picks" they were, readers might well have concluded that the recommendations -- which included shows scheduled to run on ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox -- represented the trusted judgment of their favorite Sunday paper; only the more knowing (or perhaps the more cynical) might have guessed that the company behind the section was one and the same as the company behind each and every one of the promoted programs and that -- as research has revealed -- the magic word was Disney. The section was titled, with no apparent irony, "Behind the Screen."
^ DART to The Boston Globe and art critic Christine Temin, for less than museum-quality journalism. As a favor to the city's Museum of Fine Arts, Temin made a trip to New York, passed herself off at a Sotheby's auction as a wealthy private collector, and, following the instructions of MFA curator Rita Freed, bid on two Nubian antiquities that Freed hoped to acquire at prices more affordable than what they would fetch if her institutional interest were known. Although Temin was outbid on both objects by, as it turned out, an American museum and a German museum -- neither of which apparently felt the need to enlist the aid of a front -- the trip was not without some compensation for both the journalist and her source. In an artful page one feature in the Sunday Globe's arts section (July 2) Temin recounted her adventures as a Sotheby's "plant," then moved on to a highly flattering portrait of the "loyal" . . . "clever" . . . "enthusiastic" . . . "top-notch" . . . "charming" Freed.
* LAUREL to the Atlanta Business Chronicle and staff writer Carey Gillam, for delivering the news about a locally headquartered business without the usual bubble-wrap. After a routine inquiry into the death of Ken Martin, a United Parcel Service driver crushed against a loading dock by a backing-up truck that gave no warning, Gillam went on to analyze federal inspection records and interview UPS workers, union leaders, company officials, and safety regulators. Packed with solid data (the millions of dollars paid out each year in penalties and settlements of an ever-rising number of OSHA violations by a company whose revenues come close to $20 billion a year), as well as with personal testimony ("They're always there, pushing, pushing, pushing," workers are quoted as saying, referring to the speed and productivity requirements set for almost every motion), Gillam's report (August 4-10) concluded that, far from being an isolated incident, "what happened to Martin was one of thousands of injuries and fatalities that have paralleled UPS's corporate drivto be the biggest, best -- and fastest -- delivery service in the world." Irony added considerable weight to Gillam's case: the carefully handled, good-citizen image of UPS -- anointed by Fortune as one of America's "most admired companies," honored with the job of delivering the official Olympic invitations around the world, chaired by the man who heads Atlanta's United Way -- stacked beside the company's ferocious fight, through lobbyists and political contributions, against federal efforts to develop standards to protect the health and safety of its people.
^ DART to The Seattle Times, for trading its journalistic birthright for a scoop of potage. Upon learning in May that the board of regents of the University of Washington had been holding secret discussions on the replacement of UW's retiring president, the Times marched off to court, seeking a ruling that the board be prevented from voting on, or selecting, ranking, or committing to any candidate in closed executive session; the lawsuit further asked that the board be held in violation of the state's Open Public Meetings Act -- an act, after all, as editor Michael Fancher reminded his readers in a June 4 editorial, "which exists to let the people scrutinize their government." That lofty free-speech litany, however, was not without its limits: on June 9, one of the regents revealed that the Times had offered to back off the suit if the university would release to the paper the list of finalists' names twenty-four hours before announcing it to the public.
^ DART to the San Diego Business Journal and publisher Ted Owen, for a journalistic version of ethnic cleansing. Offended by the appearance on the cover of the Small Business supplement in its September 4 issue of three Chaldean-Americans who, like thousands of their fellow Chaldeans from Iraq, successfully operate grocery, liquor, and convenience stores in the San Diego area, Owen -- a retired marine who served in Vietnam -- issued an order to the newsroom troops: no more "un-American" photos of Iraqis, Iranians, or Vietnamese on the cover of the publication. In response, Ellen Holzman, the special projects editor responsible for the supplement, resigned, explaining in a letter to editor Martin Hill that "this policy is chauvinistic, jingoistic, and racially discriminatory. . . . I cannot be a part of a newsroom where such policies exist." (On September l1, in the wake of local media coverage and local business outrage, Owen reversed the ban.)
* LAUREL to Artnews magazine, for its strong and steady hand in drawing the world's attention to a most unpretty picture. Since December 1984, when in a 20,000-word investigative piece contributing editor Andrew Decker brought to light Austria's shameful maneuverings in avoiding the return of thousands of officially "heirless" works of art stolen from Holocaust victims by the Nazis in World War II, Artnews has kept its focus on the subject, and in September l995 had the gratifying pleasure of reporting that the Austrians had at last agreed to turn over some 8,000 paintings, sculptures, and other objects to the Jewish Community of Vienna, which later this year will organize an auction and distribute the proceeds to various charities. A statement issued in August by the World Jewish Congress put the magazine's contribution in a proper frame: "The pioneering work done by Artnews magazine . . . during the 1980s gave the World Jewish Congress the moral claim to continue the struggle for Jewish cultural and aesthetic wealth stored in Mauerbach, Austria, and for other such treasures illegally converted from their Jewish owners to museums and government institutions in Central and Eastern Europe."
^ DART to The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press, for strikingly tilted news. After negotiations between the papers and their workers collapsed in July and reporters, pressmen, and drivers walked out (see page 13), readers might have expected that the papers would cover the bitter dispute with the same fairness and balance given to previous hometown labor issues, such as those involving the United Auto Workers and the Big Three in Detroit. What readers got instead, however, were daily bundles of stories, editorials, columns, photos, and ads pushing the management line. Three sample headlines: strikers losing readers' respect; detroit newspaper president: 'i try to be a straight shooter'; columnist to unions: adapt or die. (Needless to say, reports on the threat to hire replacement workers did not include reminders of the Free Press's earlier position on that subject, eloquently argued in editorials on June 24, 1994 -- striking workers' protection bill deserves the senate's active support -- and on February 20, 1995 -- scab ball.) Fortunately, less self-serving coverage was available on local TV, most notably on WXYZ -- a lesson not likely to be forgotten by newshungry Detroit when the strike finally comes to an end.
* LAUREL to Cleveland's alternative weekly, Free Times,and media critic Roldo Bartimole, for illuminating the bumpy road taken by a certain story, including a major detour. Drawing on newsroom sources developed over his twenty-five-year career pointing out potholes in The Plain Dealer's coverage, Bartimole's May 24 Free Times column retraced the course of an exclusive story that appeared on the Pee Dee's front page of Sunday, April 23, conspicuously without a byline. The byline, Bartimole revealed, had been removed at the request of transportation writer Bill Sammon upon learning that his story -- which reported on a $1 billion plan for new construction by the Ohio Turnpike Commission -- had been changed to remove from the lead the negative news that the plan would require an 80 percent increase in turnpike tolls. The rewrite, sources suggested, had been sparked by the need to avoid a collision between the publisher and his first cousin, who happens to be the turnpike commission's coordinator for construction. Amusingly enough, however, the attempted censorship, as Bartimole called it, backfired; since nobody mentioned the shift to the writer of the headline, it stayed close on the tail of the original lead, to wit: turnpike tolls rise 80 percent to fund 3rd lane, plazas. What's more, Bartimole gleefully noted, the version distributed around the state by The Associated Press, which had picked up the Pee Dee's exclusive story, correctly put in its lead that 80 percent fact, thus forcing the paper to deal with it head-on.
^ DART to the Torrington, Connecticut, Register Citizen, for half-baked journalism. The editors had the crust to turn over all eighty-four column-inches of the June 1 food page to a feature that seemed to be about the picking, storing, and cooking of strawberries -- but that in fact was a concoction, as the flaky byline noted, of King Arthur Flour, folding in advice from a King Arthur Flour baker, decorated with a photo of a King Arthur Flour pie, and dishing out recipes that, along with the berries, called specifically for King Arthur white, unbleached, whole wheat, stone-ground, all-purpose, and/or multi-purpose flour.
