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Darts and Laurels
* DART to Newsweek, ABC World News Tonight, the CBS Evening News, The Boston Globe, and CNN, for highly suspect news judgment. When on October 30 Judge Norma Holloway Johnson unsealed a September court order in which she ruled that members of Kenneth Starr's Office of Independent Counsel must show why they should not be held in contempt for "serious and repetitive" leaks of secret grand jury information in its Clinton probe -- a ruling based on twenty-four "key news stories" that on their face constituted evidence of such violations -- the recipient news outlets listed in the order reacted in telling ways. Commendably, The Washington Post in a page 6 story identified the two Post reports cited by the judge, but no others followed its lead. The New York Times's page 9 account tucked its own name into the middle of its roster of the eleven news organizations cited, and left it at that. Likewise, NBC acknowledged in passing that the "network television reports" cited in the show-cause order included "stories by NBC News." The New York Daily News's barebones report named no names at all. Neither did Fox. But while The Boston Globe did elaborate with detailed examples -- specifically, of apparent leaks in stories on ABC, NBC, CNN, and in The New York Times -- it chose to ignore the court's citation of a story in the Globe itself. Similarly, CNN's Reliable Sources referred to the judge's citation of NBC, but neglected to note her inclusion of CNN. Skipping the show-cause order altogether, along with their own involvement in it: ABC, CBS, and -- most alarmingly of all for a publication whose attention to the Lewinsky matter has seemed to equal Starr's -- Newsweek.
* DART to the Albany, New York, Times Union, for flighty judgment. On the front page of its July 10 business section, the paper carried an 8-by-11-inch box on Delta Air Lines's newly announced service between Albany and Orlando. Packed with a four-color photo of a Delta executive, red and white Delta logos at top and bottom, and minute details about schedules, routes, fares, and restrictions, the story managed to display Delta's name twenty-two times. Readers puzzled by such excess baggage found a possible explanation in the story's jump: "Integral to the airlines's decision to come to Albany was commitments from regional businesses, including the Times Union and other media companies, to offer marketing assistance to Delta Express . . . ."
* DART to Consumer Reports, for diluting its mission. In a house ad running in its September, October, and November issues the magazine has been spouting the scary health risks -- stroke, kidney disease, cancer in adults, lower IQ in children -- that can come from unseen lead in their drinking water. The ad then goes on to tell its readers "what to do about it" -- namely, tap the toll-free Consumer Reports Water Test Service, which for $35 will send a test kit and lead-content report (MasterCard and Visa accepted). What the ad (or, more accurately, what the "product market test," as the Consumers Union internal newsletter calls it in an article piping its bottom-line palatability) does not tell readers are a few other facts that consumers might want to know. For one thing, that the tests are done by an outside lab: the Environmental Quality Institute at the University of North Carolina in Asheville. And for another, that for those who contact that lab directly, the charge for the same lead-in-the-water-test is just seventeen bucks. As one informed consumer dryly put it to cjr: "Not exactly the sort of 'Best Buy' that readers expect from CR." (In December, the experiment was dropped.)
* LAUREL to managing editor Ken Mink, city editor Terry Martin, editorial page editor Dale McConnaughay, sports editor Chris Simmons, features editor Richard Prior, wire editor Lew Sword, and assistant city editor Eric Gorton, of the Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg, Virginia, for leading their boss through a cram course in journalistic standards. On September 22, the p.r. coordinator for Blue Ridge Community College astonished the recently installed city editor when she called to remind him of their "agreement of understanding." It was a document signed the previous year by James R. Perkins, president of the college, and Richard Morin, editor and general manager of the Daily News-Record, stipulating that over the next three years the paper would provide an "in-kind gift of publicity" to the college valued at $25,068. In addition to space for display ads, the agreement called for a gift of space for a monthly column written by members of BRCC faculty and edited by its p.r. coordinator ("value $5,724: 432 column-inches at $13.25"), as well as the assignment of a reporter to follow up, with a minimum of twenty-four published articles, on story ideas provided by the school's p.r. coordinator ("value, $9,570: 720 column-inches plus $30 for reporter"). On September 25, the above-named editors sent a letter to Morin. "To a man," they told their boss, "we were, and we remain, shocked, angered, and distressed that such a document could exist . . . . This 'agreement,' however well intentioned, seeks to assign a dollar value to news stories, a fundamental affront to all that journalism strives to achieve. It goes beyond . . . what reasonably can be deemed the discretionary authority of any editor . . . . Our highest priority at the moment is to see that this three-year accord is rescinded at once." That very day, it was.
* DART to the Shelbyville, Tennessee, Times-Gazette, and political reporter and columnist Bob Scruggs, for just not getting it. Scruggs has allowed his longtime friendship with Linda Nannie, mayor of nearby Bell Buckle, to shade his coverage of conflicts between the mayor and her critics -- and even to shade the front porch of his home with a Reelect Nannie banner. As for the judgment of the paper's editor, Mark McGee, an August 5 editorial about complaints of bias offered this unique response: "Yes, Bob is biased. He lives in the town and he is going to be biased. I could send another reporter, even one of those suggested by Bell Buckle residents opposed to Bob's stand. But wouldn't that reporter be biased in some way as well?" (After the alternative weekly Nashville Scene picked up on the Bell Buckle story in September, McGee announced that henceforth he'd be covering the political beat himself.)
* LAUREL to Microsoft's Slate, and Time Warner's Time, latest candidates for membership in the Anti-Synergy League. Boldly confronting the challenge of covering the anti-trust trial of its parent, the online magazine published a number of colorful dispatches from which filial devotion was noticeably absent. Time's blockbuster investigation of corporate welfare -- in which reporters Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele demonstrated, among other things, that the supposed creation of jobs as justification for the $125 billion-a-year of public moneys handed out to companies is in fact a myth -- was quick to acknowledge that "We Play the Game Too." Detailing the millions of dollars in tax breaks, rebates, and free services that Time Warner has enjoyed, the article noted that such other news organizations as ABC, NBC, The New York Times, the New York Post, Reuters, and Fox are also in line for special incentives from New York City. For contrast, consider Rupert Murdoch's London Times. In October, that paper axed a piece by religion columnist Doug Gay expressing his concerns about monopolistic media in general and about Murdoch's empire in particular. And for further contrast, consider Disney's ABC News, which in October killed a 20/20 investigation that disclosed dangerously lax security checks in hiring at theme parks, including Disney World.
* DART to Jay Smith, president of Cox Newspapers, for an ominous new sign on the bottom-line road. Honored with the job of delivering the twenty-first annual Ralph McGill Lecture at the University of Georgia on October 16, Smith used that lofty pulpit in a less than lofty way. His speech, billed under the title of "Newspapering in the '90s -- Idealism Meets Financial Reality and Survives," not only attacked a reporter at Cox's Dayton Daily News who had compared firings at the paper to a tragic tornado; it also lashed out at newspaper critics who would . . . "gnaw at the foundation from within." Smith's sourest words were directed at Gene Roberts, formerly of The Philadelphia Inquirer and The New York Times and now a journalism professor at the University of Maryland, who in various precincts, including cjr, has worried about the ever-rising lust for profits. Pointing to Roberts by name, Smith suggested that "there ought to be a special shame on those who once occupied some of the top newspaper editorships who now snipe from safe academic nests." Luckily for the future of journalism, not every big-time publisher shares that small-time vision. Here is one, speaking at the Johnson Foundation's Wingspread Conference in Racine, Wisconsin, in 1987: "It is possible to make a reasonable profit and to run excellent newspapers at the same time. But too much profit kills newspaper quality, public service, and circulation growth. What can be done? I think we need more incisive, intelligent, knowledgeable, public criticism of all daily newspapers. I think we need much tougher, sharper criticism from the academy. A steady flow of intelligent public criticism of the best and worst newspapers in America would have a powerfully positive cumulative effect on our profession." That thoughtful speaker was Jim Ottaway, Jr., senior vice president of Dow Jones.
