|
<advertisement>
|
 |
 
|
|
media search: |
 |
Darts and Laurels
* LAUREL to WTVJ-TV, Miami, for a journalistic statement with environmental impact. In its two-part series "What's Killing the Neighborhood?" (May 13-14), the NBC affiliate gave voice to the fears and frustrations of homeowners in the Wingate section of northwest Fort Lauderdale, a predominantly black, working-class area surrounding the city's former garbage dump. Weighing the uncommonly high number of cancer deaths in Wingate families; plowing through layers of local records and state health agency studies; piling up testimony from scores of residents who recalled the choking fumes and sooty ash that permeated the air before the incinerators were finally shut down in l978; citing the many companies whose toxic wastes contributed to the contamination; and collecting the opinions of desperate community activists and cost-conscious, foot-dragging bureaucrats on how to get rid of the poison still in the ground - WTVJ's three-month investigation demanded that attention be paid. And, finally, it was. In a follow- on August 27, WTVJ was able to report that the Environmental Protection Agency, having ignored the site since putting it on its superfund list in l989, was suddenly promising action - and giving credit to WTVJ.
^ DART to Graham Ledger, weekend anchor at KFMB-TV, the CBS affiliate in San Diego, for professional myopia. Ledger's two-part February series on a laser procedure to correct nearsightedness - a series in which he focused on his own operation and the doctor who successfully performed it - left the journalist with a tendency to blur the lines. In the July 6 edition of _The San Diego Union-Tribune, he showed up in an ad for a "ïNo-Charge' consultation with the doctor who gave Graham Ledger 20/20 vision." "This is amazing," reads the plug next to his photo. "It's a miracle. I went from 20/2000 in each eye to 20/20 in each. It's like being reborn." The ad neglected to note that in Graham's particular case, not only the consultation, but also the $3,000 operation, had been "No-Charge."
^ DART to the Kalamazoo, Michigan, Gazette, and to the Los Angeles Times, for their misdirected programs in enterprise journalism. In flyers posted throughout the building, the Gazette has been urging "employees and free-lancers" to "get your business acquaintances" to subscribe to Business Direct Magazine, a sister publication. For every "business acquaintance" signed up for a four-week free sample, the flyer promised, Gazetteers would get a dollar, while "business acquaintances" who could be persuaded to buy one-year subscriptions would be worth $10 or $15, depending on the demographics. Similarly challenging paths to advancement have recently been presented to reporters and editors at the Los Angeles Times. There, the reward for nailing down a $12, eight-week Sunday subscription is five bucks on payday and a company t-shirt.
* LAUREL to radio station WHAM-AM in Rochester, New York, for not listening easily to intimidating advertisers. When the Frontier Corporation, a telecommunications company based in Rochester, threatened to pull all its commercials unless the station stopped airing spots put out by the Communication Workers of America - the spots were aimed at gaining public support in the union's long contract dispute with Rochester Telephone, a Frontier subsidiary - WHAM tuned out. Such resistance was expensive: the spots ran, and Frontier made good on its threat. Other local stations that enjoy Frontier's business showed less grace under the pressure: WDKX-FM, for example, ran the spots for a while, but then caved in.
^ DART to The Dallas Morning News and courthouse reporter Tracy Everbach, for redefining the concept of amicus curiae. A glossy brochure promoting a local law firm is replete with supportive depositions from such impressive witnesses as corporation executives, city officials, other lawyers - and Everbach. As the alternative Dallas Observer dryly said of its discovery that the mainstream reporter had written a glowing testimonial for people she covers, "Sure, it sounds unethical, but the more we thought about it, the more we realized that the News had once again taken a bold step into the future of community journalism." The law firm has since stopped circulating the brochure.
^ DART to the Los Angeles Times and writer Ruben Navarrette; to The New York Times; and to the Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, for failing to mark their words. In a July 6 op-ed piece, Navarrette persuasively showed why Latinos could and should support the "English Language Education for Immigrant Children Initiative," a referendum slated for June l998 that would effectively end bilingual education in California public schools. The article noted that one of the sponsors of the measure is former gubernatorial candidate Ron Unz. It did not note that Navarrette was Unz's paid media consultant.
Similarly, in a July 21 op-ed piece in The New York Times on the need to develop "the strongest possible ties" to the country of Georgia because of "its potential importance in bringing the oil and gas resources of the Caspian Sea to international markets," the writer, James A. Baker III, was identified as "Secretary of State under President George Bush and honorary chairman of the James Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University." But the Times did not include the fact that Baker is a partner in a law firm that represents an oil consortium and other companies in the region (an omission it corrected in an editor's note, on Saturday, July 26).
Finally, an op-ed article distributed on August 12 by Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service on "The Costly Myth of Global Warming" identified the writer, Ryan H. Sager, as "a research associate with the nonpartisan Environmental Policy Task Force at the National Center for Public Policy Research." But the news service failed to note that the NCPPR, according to its own home page on the Internet, is "a conservative action foundation" that "uses research . . . to illustrate to the general public the conservative perspective on issues of national concern . . . . Specifically, the ïclaims of liberal environmental groups.'" Indeed, its home page boasts, the NCPPR "has an opinion-editorial printed in newspapers across the United States an average of one every 3.1 business days."
* LAUREL to the Mustang Daily, campus paper of California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, for casting a journalistic pearl before swine. In a balanced report in the June 3 issue, student editors Matt Berger and Steve Enders described in riveting detail an environmental dilemma confronting the school. Tracing the course of a single drop of clear, clean water as it falls from a cloud and makes its way through Cal Poly's swine and cattle units, crop fields and parking lots, the article showed how the accumulated animal wastes, pesticides, herbicides, and other pollutants are delivered routinely to local streams and creeks. An effective combination of near-poetic imagery and scientific fact, the report included graphics, maps, and photos, as well as the views of proponents and critics of Cal Poly's clean-up plans.
^ DART to The Bristol, Connecticut, Press, and the Taunton, Massachusetts, Daily Gazette, siblings in the family of the Journal Register Company of Trenton, New Jersey, for some apparently genetic predispositions. In a peculiar May 9 "report" it deemed worthy of page one, the Press announced the price of the Journal Register's stock in its first public offering, then felt compelled to add the usual formal disclaimer: "this shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of these securities . . . etc., etc." The story concluded with instructions on how to get a prospectus. In a similar promotional mode, a July 31 story that ran in the Gazette was headlined journal register company, taunton daily gazette parent, reports record quarter earnings. Readers of the business section in the nearby Providence Journal-Bulletin may well have been confused. There, Neil Downing's July 30 story, which was based on documents filed by the Journal Register with the Securies and Exchange Commission, was headlined journal register reports loss in 2nd quarter due to bonuses. Although the Gazette's story had devoted considerable space to statements by president Robert M. Jelenic and chief financial officer Jean B. Clifton about how pleased both were with the quarterly results and how the paper was improving the quality of life, it neglected to mention that - as the Providence Journal-Bulletin story made clear - the quality of Jelenic's and Clifton's life had been considerably improved by bonuses ($10.3 million and $5.2 million, respectively, split roughly evenly between stock options and cash), and that those bonuses had not exactly improved the value of investors' shares.
^ DART to the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel and "Your Business," its "Weekly Guide to Your Money, Enterprise, and Career," for a misguided model of reporting on, of all things, careers in the newspaper business. In the July 28 cover story, "Training for the Top," management associate Alexandra Roumain told of her experiences as a participant in the Sun-Sentinel's "Training Toward Management" program and how she came to understand "why our product and company is thriving in a day and age when many newspapers in the country are facing difficult times." The piece was replete with two captioned photos of the author (one in four-color on the section's front page), three separate bylines, and many plugs for the Sun-Sentinel, its publisher, and its parent, the Tribune Company. As Roumain observed with no apparent irony, "The company makes an investment in the TTM associates. All of us want our contributions to pay off for the company."
^ DART to the Portland, Maine, Press Herald, for an overdeveloped sense of family pride. When the local Rotary Club decided to bestow a community service award on Madeleine G. Corson, chairman of the board of Guy Gannett Communications, parent of the Press Herald, the paper fell all over itself in spreading the news. A 13-column-inch story (with photo) heralding the award (rotary to honor gannett chairman) was followed two days later by a 8-column-inch story (with photo) heralding its presentation (rotary honors gannett chairman). Readers who stuck with the article all the way to the last two sentences learned that two weeks earlier, another solid citizen had been honored with the very same award. No explanation was offered as to why that recipient had received from Guy Gannett Communications no attention whatsoever.
