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Letters
YOU'D BETTER BELIEVE IT!
The editors of the Columbia Journalism Review seem to have decided, in their wisdom, that the ultimate arbiter of editorial commentary is Trudy Lieberman of Consumer Reports, inspired by Morton Mintz, who once used the news columns of The Washington Post for his Naderite crusading. They haven't noticed that the consumer movement, among other things a handmaiden to the tort liability bar, has its own axes to grind.
While the ostensible subject is me ("Bartley's Believe It or Not!," cjr, July/August), the burden of Ms. Lieberman's ad hominem attack falls on our writers who have been exposing the excesses of the plaintiffs' bar. She "corrects" our Max Boot, for example, who wrote that California's insurance rate regulation, Proposition 103, didn't work. Her proof is a "study" by some of its proponents that rates didn't go up as fast as before. In fact, proponents initially said rates would go down, and some of them agree with Mr. Boot about the outcome. At any rate this is a matter of judgment and arguments, not a factual error.
Similarly, Mr. Boot pointed out that Melvin Belli and others had filed class-action suits explicitly stimulated by Eileen Welsome's Pulitzer-Prize-winning Albuquerque Tribune articles on radiation tests during the 1940s and 1950s. Ms. Lieberman cites a letter we published by Tim Gallagher of the Albuquerque paper: "Gallagher wrote that Boot had failed to summarize Welsome's work accurately. The Tribune didn't claim to be the first to report that people were injected with plutonium and it credited others who had; the Tribune did claim to be the first media institution to identify victims and report that they had never given informed consent for the experiment..."
In fact, Mr. Boot's summary of Ms. Welsome's article said, "Her stories didn't contribute much new information about the scope or nature of the testing, but they added a 'human interest' spin: She managed to identify a number of people involved in the experiments and interviewed their relatives at length." He also said, "The most troubling element of the plutonium tests was the lack of 'informed consent.' "
Similarly, she reports one side of a dispute our Gordon Crovitz had back in 1989, expressing shock that he has gone on to a distinguished career as editor and publisher of Dow Jones's Far Eastern Economic Review. She also says we were guilty of "a misleading half-truth at best" for writing that most Democrats and some Republicans are deeply dependent on contributions from trial lawyers. As evidence she compares a trial lawyer PAC with business PACs. But anyone of reasonable sophistication understands that the lawyers tend to give individually rather than through their PAC; the Center for Responsive Politics, scarcely an ideological ally of ours, found that in the first nine months of 1995 trial lawyers were by far the biggest donors to the Clinton campaign. Let readers judge who is guilty of a "misleading half-truth."
Now, in applying her scrutiny to years of daily journalism, Ms. Lieberman did uncover some errors. In an editorial opposing subsidies to the maritime business, we said that mariners earn $125,000 for a six-month stint. More accurately, we should have said this was the cost to the employer of a "billet," including fringe benefits, according to a 1994 study conducted by MIT and commissioned by the Commerce Department.
We opposed the nomination of Miami lawyer Bruce Greer to the federal bench because of his former partnerships in firms with especially close client relationships with corrupt financial institutions such as ESM Government Securities and David Paul's CenTrust bank, a satellite of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. In passing we called for investigation of Mr. Greer's limited partnership in the Cen Office building, which "public records indicate was once owned by CenTrust." Upon further investigation, namely a new title search, we find that CenTrust did not own this property, only some nearby. It somehow seems to me more central, though, that in criticizing our opposition to Mr. Greer, Ms. Lieberman managed not to mention that he was also found unqualified by an American Bar Association panel.
We did not publish letters from California lawyer Michael Aguirre, or his client. Mr. Aguirre's letter threatened a lawsuit, and accordingly was extensively answered by our attorney. It is not true, however, that our editorial failed to mention that Mr. Aguirre's suit against Rep. Chris Cox continues in another forum. Ms. Lieberman to the contrary, that was specifically included in the editorial about which she complains.
Finally, I did not respond to Ms. Lieberman's requests for interviews because I do not trust her not to distort whatever I say. In this department, she outdid herself by criticizing us for relying on letters to the editor to record corrections, and complimenting The Washington Post for doing it the right way. Then she concludes her article with a quote attributed to me by the Post's Howard Kurtz. On this quote, the editors of the Post were kind enough to print a letter from me. To wit:
I could have demanded a formal "correction," I suppose, or complained that the Post buried my letter on Christmas Day (12/25/95). But I was content that it is in the electronic databases, where a search of "Bartley" quickly discovers it. Anyone who came back to the record would know that the quote was suspect, and might even look at our original editorial to see that it included the fact of denials. Instead, Ms. Lieberman took the quote and repeated it at face value, either because she didn't do a minimal database search, or because she knew the full truth but it complicated her hatchet job.
If the Columbia School of Journalism is going to sponsor a magazine second-guessing those of us in the profession, it should also provide some adult supervision.
Robert L. Bartley
Editor
The Wall Street Journal
New York, N.Y.
Trudy Lieberman replies:
Robert Bartley's letter is a perfect example of the convoluted arguments, omissions, and innuendo that characterize his Wall Street Journal editorial page.
To begin, he implies that I am a mouthpiece for the "tort liability bar," commonly known as trial lawyers. In fact, over the years I have written many articles that trial lawyers objected to, particularly about the benefits of no-fault auto insurance to consumers -- an approach that is anathema to the trial lawyers and to Ralph Nader.
Bartley defends Max Boot's op-ed about California's Proposition 103, which said flatly that "it didn't work." The study cjr cited, drawn from insurance-industry data, showed a dramatic turnaround that brought California's once-soaring rate increases to a point 88 percent below the nation's as a whole. Those findings were inconvenient for Boot, and now for Bartley. In his second point, the selection of quotes from Max Boot's op-ed about Eileen Welsome's Pulitzer Prize-winning articles are taken out of context. Boot made those points only after he had implied that hype surrounding her articles' "revelations" had set off a wave of hysteria and litigation.
As for Bartley's attack on our comparison of contributions by a trial-lawyer PAC to those of a business PAC (the American Tort Reform Association), surely anyone of reasonable sophistication understands that members of the American Tort Reform Association, which includes some of the biggest names in the corporate world, have employees who contribute individually to candidates as well as through their PAC, just as trial lawyers do. (The rest of his argument mixes the apples of presidential contributions with the oranges of contributions to congressional candidates that were the focus of the editorial and our critique of it.)
While it is certainly magnanimous of Bartley to admit the Journal erred in the matter of ownership of the CenTrust building, such an admission begs the question we've been posing -- where was the correction?
The Journal's editorial on Michael Aguirre did note that the suit had been refiled, but instead of granting the import of that fact by explaining that the case had just been transferred to the court's complex litigation division, the editorial downplayed the whole case with a sentence saying, "the only judge to hear the case dismissed the charge against Latham and Watkins on demurrer -- which means that, even if all of the allegations were true, they still didn't amount to a valid cause of action." That deceptive brush-off is all we accused the Journal of.
Bartley saves his thickest smoke screen for last -- in his aggrieved hoo-ha over our failure to mention his response to Howard Kurtz. His published letter was barely worth a mention, since in it he made no attempt to refute the most damning quote in the Post's piece (which, incidentally, we left out): Bartley told Kurtz "we did not make an attempt to independently confirm" Mrs. Clinton's involvement. In his letter to the editor of the Post, he points to a sentence in the editorial referring to "a string of denials"; that reference is vague and its tone dismissive. To build an editorial on a piece of second-hand gossip from a British newspaper and make no mention of the subject's response is no small infraction. So, while Bartley presents the matter of "whether the first lady's office should have been specifically named" as a quibble, most careful readers will discern that it was the whole point.
Indeed, I was aware of Bartley's letter to the Post denying a sentence in Kurtz's article. I also interviewed Kurtz about it, and he denied taking any of Bartley's quotes out of context. Since Bartley refused numerous requests to talk with me, it was impossible to assess his side in the matter. Like any journalist, I weighed the credibility of my sources.
My heart soared to see Trudy Lieberman's dissection of the factually challenged and journalistically bankrupt Wall Street Journal editorial page. So many Journal essays are prima facie absurd that it's a great service to scrutinize some that are less openly false.
An element Lieberman doesn't address is the section's frequent missing-gear logic and fundamental misunderstanding of how the government works. My favorite of many examples: a May 24, 1995, editorial that decried an Arizona Supreme Court decision that overturned a statewide vote, sneering, "It didn't much matter what the people of Arkansas thought -- or voted -- on this subject." No follow-up letter pointed out that, in fact, it doesn't matter -- that the new law was unconstitutional and that justices aren't supposed to bend with the popular breeze. And, presumably, the writer was not sent back to high school to repeat civics.
Matthew Budman
Highland Park, N.J.
In her article on The Wall Street Journal, Trudy Lieberman writes, "Delays in publishing letters of correction can undermine the correction itself." A correction is an admission of error by the publication. Unless a reader's letter alleging error is accompanied by an editorial or editor's note candidly acknowledging the error, the letter cannot suffice as a correction, and shouldn't be termed one, no matter how timely its appearance.
Many so-called letters of correction are from self-described wronged parties. These letters are an especially inadequate way to set the record straight inasmuch as readers properly can regard them as self-serving.
Lieberman indicates elsewhere in her piece a belief that a preferable way to correct editorial-page errors is via correction boxes. Whether errors are admitted in boxes, editorials, or in editor's notes, the key point is that editors must assume responsibility to play fair with readers and to not mislead them. Running letters in lieu of corrections abdicates that responsibility, for readers cannot know whether the letter signifies that the editor simply is airing "the other side" or is intending to admit error. A cop-out then becomes compounded by confusion.
Unfortunately, misuse of the letters column to evade forthrightly correcting error is by no means confined to The Wall Street Journal.
Gilbert Cranberg
Des Moines, Iowa
(Ed. note: Cranberg is a former editorial-page editor of The Des Moines Register.)
In describing how Robert Bartley and his Wall Street Journal editorial page are both sloppy with the facts and ruthless, Trudy Lieberman has performed an important service. She might have added that Bartley also has a predilection for garnishing his editorials with snide, belittling personal insinuations.
For example, a Journal editorial once sought to demean "cocktail party environmentalists in places like Cambridge and Sausalito." Environmentalists and consumer advocates, of course, have long been among Bartley's favorite btes noires. One of his techniques is to taint the legitimacy and motives of those whose opinions or politics he disapproves. Thus, a Journal editorial has chastised the "no-growth specialists, the safety and health fascists who try to turn real and imagined hazards to some political end."
The Journal has an arsenal of verbal weapons for undermining a target's integrity. People on the wrong side of Bartley are likely to be "do-gooders" or to represent some "special interest" (like consumers). This approach need not be limited to people. For example, one editorial referred to "so-called acid rain."
Rick Odell
Washington, D.C.
Everyone would have been better served if you had simply printed a picture of Lieberman sticking out her tongue and giving Bartley the raspberry, and let it go at that. What we got instead were tendentious anecdotes collected from opponents or competitors of Bartley and the Journal, all labeled "research." I have seen sophomore term papers which were not so shallow.
So many of the anecdotes in Lieberman's article actually deal with differences of opinion or interpretation. Since when do the opinion pages of the Journal, or The New York Times, or The Washington Post, reflect only absolute, inviolate facts and opinions upon which everyone agrees?
I wonder if Stephen Rosenfeld of the Post truly believes, at least as Lieberman sets it up, that the editorial-page practices of the Post are more honorable than those of the Journal. Is all he can come up with the example of correcting in a column his mistake about "a former Democrat" (what a terrible thing to say about a person), instead of waiting for the wronged one to seek justice by writing a letter -- as Lieberman says the cold and callous Journal did in a similar situation?
Perhaps the most egregious, and dishonest, flaw in this greatly flawed piece is the assertion that, since Bartley would not discuss Journal editorial practices with Lieberman "one can only conclude that affecting policy and changing the course of history matter most." What an unprofessional thing to say. You could equally fairly conclude, based on the information given, that Bartley had a sore throat and couldn't talk, or that perhaps he stutters and does not like to speak in public, or that in a spiritual conversation with John Peter Zenger he was told not to speak with Lieberman.
Lieberman throws up her hands and says of the Journal, "It's impossible to say how many errors go uncorrected." Would that that were not true of every newspaper in the land.
John Hols
Spokane, Wash.
CORRECTIONS
An article in the May/June issue, "Is There Life After Layoff?," erroneously stated the date on which the Houston Post closed. The correct date is April 18.
