|
<advertisement>
|
 |
 
|
|
media search: |
 |
Darts and Laurels
* LAUREL to the Northwest Arkansas Times and editor Mike Masterson, for a testament to the redemptive power of the press. After the Times had won a triumphant First Amendment victory in a libel suit brought by one Dan Coody, a Fayetteville mayoral candidate in 1992 who claimed that the paper's maliciously false news reports and editorials had cost him not only the election but also his good name, Masterson took a long hard look at the case. His six-week review of the stacks of documents and depositions, internal memorandums and newspaper clippings led to one unmistakable conclusion, and in a May 5 piece he spelled it out for all the world to see. Under the headline an apology is long overdue, Masterson (who joined the Times as editor in 1995 when it was sold by its longtime owner, Thomson Publishing, to American Publishing) detailed the paper's almost pathological smear campaign -- including totally unwarranted rumors, innuendoes, suggestions, and hints of drug use, bad checks, armed robbery, and prison -- against a candidate perceived by the then publisher, David Stokes, to be a "left winger that has a large following of the '60s crowd." As Masterson put it, "I hope Coody and his wife and family and this community will accept this apology and forgive the Times for this travesty against truth, fairness, and just good, factual journalism." For his part, Coody told cjr, "Unfortunately, no one I know has ever heard of this kind of thing happening at a newspaper. I can't help but think that such commitment to what is true might actually become a contagious phenomenon within your powerful profession. And that might create a big positive from all the negative I have experienced since my campaign of 1992."
^ DART to the El Paso Times, for the journalistic equivalent of election fraud. In a March 9 editorial published two days before the Texas primary, the Times responsibly urged that all registered voters participate -- "For a few to decide public issues . . . is to defeat the purpose of a free society" -- then civic-mindedly proceeded to endorse those candidates that "are the best choices as seen by the editorial board of the El Paso Times." That board, however -- created with no little fanfare several years ago and made up of three members of the newsroom staff and three representatives of the outside community -- had, in at least one congressional district race, made an entirely different choice, only to be overruled by Times editor and publisher Dionicio Flores. According to the Albuquerque Journal's March 12 report on the organized protest that followed, Flores responded to questions thusly: "I am the board."
^ DART to Heritage Newspapers of Saline, Michigan, for professional prostitution. In a come-hither flyer aimed at enticing local building contractors to advertise in an upcoming home guide to be distributed by six of its weeklies, Heritage laid out its proposition in unmistakable terms: for a quarter-page ad the papers would respond with a staff-written, eighth-of-a-page "spotlight" about the advertiser's "business, service, or development"; a half-page ad, and the papers would come across with a quarter-page piece; a full-page ad, and the papers would go all the way -- "a half-page feature story (and photo)."
^ DART to the National Newspaper Publishers Association, for traveling without a moral compass. Thirteen officers and members of the NNPA, which represents some 200 black-owned papers with 11 million readers across the U.S., accepted an invitation to an all-expense-paid tour of Nigeria last fall that was underwritten by the military dictatorship in power there as part of an aggressive media campaign to counter mainstream reports of political repression, human rights abuses, and the censorship of journalists. That campaign, according to a May 20 article in The Nation magazine, has been furthered by a series of misguidedly reassuring editorials in NNPA papers -- and, perhaps not coincidentally, by lucrative ads and advertorial inserts placed by lobbyists for Nigeria in those very same hard-pressed papers.
^ DART to WJLA-TV, in Washington, D.C., for losing its street smarts. Since the closing off of Pennsylvania Avenue to vehicular traffic in the interest of White House security, the station has presented an unusual pile-up of negative stories, series, and specials on the shutdown that is far from accidental. According to an article by Howard Kurtz in the July 10 Washington Post, WJLA's coverage is the result of an increasing flow of pressure from Allbritton Communications, which is the parent not only of WJLA but also of Riggs Bank. It seems that because of the closing of Pennsylvania Avenue, the bank has lost a number of customers at its Pennsylvania Avenue branch.
*LAUREL to the Palo Alto [California] High School student newspaper, TheCampanile; and to the Blue Springs [Missouri] South High School student newspaper, the Jaguar Journal, for teaching the grown-ups a thing or two. In a page-one story in its March 11 edition, The Campanile revealed the previously unnoticed fact that, at a closed session of questionable legality earlier this year, the budget-cutting board of the financially strapped school district had voted to appoint an associate superintendent to a newly created but never advertised administrative job that gave her a retroactive salary increase of $9,000. On April 12, the Jaguar Journal published the findings of its investigation into the ease with which underage students were able to buy cigarettes at certain local stores -- a story that school officials originally had killed when the student editors refused to delete the names of the offending stores. Officials reversed their decision only after the Journal in its April 4 issue ran a large block of white space under the headline two area businesses sell cigarettes to minors, an act of journalistic independence that prompted a supportive page-one story on the controversy in the daily Blue Springs Examiner in which the stores were named.
^ DART to The Wall Street Journal, for yet another example of mishandling the mail. On May 21, Representative Patricia Schroeder of Colorado sent to the paper a letter to the editor commenting on an op-ed piece published that day and headlined "The Navy's Enemies" by former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, in which he argued that the recent suicide of Admiral Jeremy Boorda had been triggered by the "relentless lynch mob that has hounded the U.S. Navy" since the Tailhook convention of 1991. "What should have been at most a week's story," Lehman wrote, "instead ignited a firestorm that has been consuming the Navy ever since, . . . fanned and encouraged" by, among others, "witch-hunting journalists"; by President Clinton, "who . . . brought in an administration staffed by former war protesters"; and by "Pat Schroeder and her McCarthyite slurs." Lehman, however, "missed the point," wrote Schoeder in her letter to the editor. "The scandal dragged on because the service tried to cover it up. . . . In the interests of full disclosure, Lehman mig have mentioned that while he was the Navy Secretary he condoned and participated in the Tailhook bacchanalias that even today he describes as 'the usual excesses of an annual party.'" On June 13, with her letter still not published, Schroeder wrote to the paper again, noting that "when someone is repeatedly targeted on your editorial pages, common courtesy would suggest access to your letters forum." Finally, on June 20, the editors found space for Schroeder's May 21 letter, though not in its entirety: three words -- noting that Lehman had both condoned and participated in those Tailhook bacchanalias -- were edited out. "Knowledge of Mr. Lehman's personal involvement in Tailhook's sordid occurrences is useful to your readers' understanding of why senior Navy officials have been more interested in protecting themselves and in shifting blame to junior officers," Schroeder wrote in a June 20 letter published on July 10. "I would not want to think the Journal was part of that protection scheme."
^ DART to the Los Angeles Times, for barking up the wrong tree. Roving over fifty precious column inches of the front page of its second section were three four-color pictures of a staff photographer's dog.
^ DART to the Fairfield, Montana, Sun Times, for redefining the concept of political journalism. When Gov. Marc Racicot addressed the audience at a local GOP fund-raiser this spring, the large section of paneled wall behind the speaker's podium was completely blank. But when a six-by-five-inch, above-the-fold photo of the event appeared on the Sun Times's front page, the wall had, through the miracle of modern technology, become conspicuously adorned -- with a campaign poster urging voters to elect jim anderson teton county commissioner. The candidate also happens to be the editor and publisher of the Fairfield Sun Times.
