42 years later, two Boston Globe stalwarts are still debating objectivity

Cooling towers at Three Mile Island. Photo information unclear.

New York Times media columnist Ben Smith has a fun piece today on two retired Boston Globe stalwarts, Tom Palmer and Alan Berger.

In 1979, when Berger was writing media criticism for The Real Paper (a competitor to The Boston Phoenix), he called out Palmer for what he regarded as overweening objectivity following a dangerous accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. Berger called Palmer “thoughtful, honest, and entirely conventional” for failing to emphasize the dangers of nuclear power.

Palmer told Smith: “Journalists are simply not smart enough and educated enough to change the world. They should damn well just inform the public to the best of their abilities and let the public decide.”

I know Berger only by reputation, but I’ve known Palmer for years. He spoke to my graduate ethics class in February 2020 about his critique of liberal media bias, and he may have been my last in-person guest speaker before the pandemic.

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In Maine, a newspaper is revived as a nonprofit

Terrific column by Bill Nemitz in the Portland Press Herald about how residents in the tiny Maine town of Harpswell revived their newspaper, the Harpswell Anchor, as a nonprofit.

“The November issue of the new-and-improved Harpswell Anchor will be its sixth,” Nemitz writes. “And by all indications, the 24-page tabloid isn’t just surviving. It’s thriving.”

The BPD officer who helped win a Muzzle Award gets off with a slap on the wrist

Video of Boston Police Sgt. Clifton McHale bragging about driving his cruiser into protesters was at the heart of our lead GBH News Muzzle Award for 2021. The Muzzle was giving to the Boston and Worcester police departments for their violent suppression of Black Lives Matter demonstrations last year following the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

Incredibly, McHale is being let off with a slap at the wrist and has returned to duty. Eoin Higgins, who obtained bodycam footage of McHale and other officers in the original story for The Appeal last December, broke the news of McHale’s unconscionably short suspension of eight to 10 days on Thursday for his newsletter, The Flashpoint.

“It makes you wonder what a Boston Police officer has to do to get fired,” attorney Carl Williams, who originally provided the bodycam footage to Higgins, was quoted as saying. “How in an unprecedented time of calls for police accountability can this be happening?”

In the video, McHale can be seen and heard excitedly telling a fellow officer about his exploits:

Dude, dude, dude, I fuckin’ drove down Tremont — there was an unmarked state police cruiser they were all gathered around. So then I had a fucker keep coming, fucking running, I’m fucking hitting people with the car, did you hear me, I was like, “get the fuck—”

But when McHale realizes he’s being caught on tape, he tries to back down:

Oh, no no no no no, what I’m saying is, though, that they were in front, like, I didn’t hit anybody, like, just driving, that’s all.

This is not the first time that McHale has crossed the line. Laura Crimaldi reports in The Boston Globe that McHale served a one-year suspension for a 2005 incident “after an internal investigation concluded he had engaged in ‘inappropriate sexual relations with [a] highly intoxicated woman.'” As Globe columnist Adrian Walker writes, “Clifton McHale still carries a badge, and that fact shouldn’t sit well with anyone in Boston.”

Despite his boasting, apparently McHale didn’t actually drive his cruiser into anyone. But that doesn’t mean he should have gotten off with such a light penalty. In fact, he should have been fired.

Acting Mayor Kim Janey denounced McHale’s light punishment. And whoever wins the mayoral election, Michelle Wu or Annissa Essaibi George, is going to have her hands full in attempting to reform the Boston Police Department.

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The Democrats’ future is bleak because our elections are undemocratic

My lunchtime reading today was Ezra Klein’s column in The New York Times on David Shor, whose modeling shows that Democrats face disaster for years to come if they can’t find a way to expand their appeal beyond the educated liberal elites that now constitute their base.

The shorthand version is that Shor thinks Democrats need to reach out more to moderate voters, but that’s not exactly right. For instance, Klein writes, “One of the highest-polling policies in Shor’s research is letting Medicare negotiate prescription drug prices, but it’s so-called moderates, like [Sen. Kyrsten] Sinema, who are trying to strike that from the reconciliation bill. To Shor, this is lunacy.”

There’s a lot to chew over. Fundamentally, though, I think the framing is catastrophically wrong, and in the usual way: Shor, and to a lesser extent Klein, have immersed themselves in what Democrats are doing wrong and how they need to change in order to win national elections.

But millions more people are voting for Democratic presidential and Senate candidates than for Republicans. When they fall short, it is entirely because of structural reasons — the Electoral College and the two-senators-per-state rule that gives tiny Republican states like Wyoming and North Dakota disproportionate power compared to giant Democratic states like California and New York.

Shor and Klein dwell at length, for instance, on the mistakes Hillary Clinton made in 2016. Shor claims that Clinton’s insistence on talking about immigration reform caused the Midwest to flip to Donald Trump. The better path, he argues, would have been not to talk about it. The big honking fact that goes unmentioned is that Clinton won 3 million more votes than Trump.

Should Democrats do more to appeal to the non-college-educated? Of course. But they are already winning a majority of voters, and it’s not that close. Short of abolishing the Electoral College and transforming the Senate into a largely powerless House of Lords, it’s hard to see how Shor’s prescriptions are going to make much of a difference.

And yes, abolishing the Electoral College and disempowering the Senate is exactly what we need to do if we want to maintain any pretense of having a democracy.

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A new study highlights the difficulties of working for small newspapers

Photo (cc) 2013 by zamo86

You’ll have to forgive me for not plowing through a massive new report from Columbia’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism on a survey of more than 300 newsroom employees at small (under 50,000 circulation) newspapers. The survey follows up a similar study conducted in 2016. I did look at the executive summary and the conclusion, which contain some interesting findings. Among them:

  • More than a third of those responding, or 37%, said they work between 50 and 60 hours a week, and 50% said they work 40 to 50 hours a week.

Recently the NewsGuild announced it was investigating unpaid overtime work at Gannett. But that would involve union papers, which tend to be larger. It’s no secret that small dailies and weeklies have been exploiting their employees pretty much forever. As the economics of the business become increasingly difficult, the situation may be getting worse.

  • COVID is taking a toll, with 43% saying they felt less secure in their employment than they did at the beginning of the pandemic.
  • “Participants were often highly critical of hedge-fund ownership and frequently cited nonprofit models as the way forward for the sector.”
  • Efforts to create more diverse newsrooms at small newspapers are inadequate at best.
  • Some 57% say they are more involved in digital work than they were three years ago; 49% said they are producing more stories per week than they were three years ago; and 62% said social media had become a more important tool in their work.

“Despite a challenging financial landscape, coupled with wider issues such as trust in journalism, our 2020 cohort — like their predecessors in 2016 — retained a sense of optimism about the future of their industry,” write the authors, Damian Radcliffe and Ryan Wallace. “In particular, they highlighted the importance of hyperlocal news, embracing digital and filing information gaps by covering stories not offered elsewhere.”

One fact that stands out from the survey is that the staffs at smaller newspapers are old and white, and that if there’s any hope of reaching younger, more diverse audiences, then new approaches are needed. I hope anyone working for these newspapers who’s under the age of 50 is making plans right now to start a new venture in their community.

There’s also an important unanswered question here. What would the findings look like if employees of independently owned newspapers could be separated out from those whose papers have been acquired by a corporate chain or hedge fund? Working conditions can be pretty tough at independents as well, but the journalists might have more of a sense of community service.

Finally: Laura Hazard Owen has written a good overview of the study at Nieman Lab.

Announcing the debut of ‘What Works,’ a podcast about the future of local news

I am thrilled to announce the debut of our podcast, “What Works: The Future of Local News,” from Northeastern University’s School of Journalism.

Every month — and soon, perhaps, every week — former Boston Globe editor Ellen Clegg and I will talk to journalists, policymakers and entrepreneurs about efforts they’re making to keep local news alive. (We’re working on a book with the same name.) Corporate chains and hedge funds are squeezing the life out of local news. There is a better way. We and our guests are telling that story.

In our first episode, I interview Massachusetts state Rep. Lori Ehrlich, a Marblehead Democrat who co-sponsored legislation to launch a commission that will study the future of local news in the state. (Note: I’ll be a member of the commission.) Ehrlich lays out her vision and underscores the role that local journalism plays in a democracy. Ellen and I share a few quick takes on the news as well.

You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Pocket Casts, and we’re aiming for more platforms soon. We hope you’ll give it a listen — we’re very excited about this project, which has been long in the making.

Also, many thanks to Alison Booth, who designed the graphic that accompanies our podcast, and to Promiser, whose song “WOW!” is our theme. Wow indeed.

Why Section 230 should be curbed for algorithmically driven platforms

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen testifies on Capitol Hill Tuesday.

Facebook in the midst of what we can only hope will prove to be an existential crisis. So I was struck this morning when Boston Globe technology columnist Hiawatha Bray suggested a step that I proposed more than a year ago — eliminating Section 230 protections from social media platforms that use algorithms. Bray writes:

Maybe we should eliminate Section 230 protections for algorithmically powered social networks. For Internet sites that let readers find their own way around, the law would remain the same. But a Facebook or Twitter or YouTube or TikTok could be sued by private citizens — not the government — for postings that defame somebody or which threaten violence.

Here’s what I wrote for GBH News in June 2020:

One possible approach might be to remove Section 230 protections from any online publisher that uses algorithms in order to drive up engagement. When 230 was enacted, third-party content flowed chronologically. By removing protections from algorithmic content, the law would recognize that digital media have fundamentally changed.

If Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook want to continue profiting from the divisiveness they’ve helped foster, then maybe they should have to pay for it by assuming the same legal liability for third-party content as print publishers.

I hope it’s an idea whose time has come.

Subsidizing local news: The hopes and fears of a Harvard Law professor

Previously published at GBH News.

The challenge in providing government assistance to ease the local news crisis is to find ways of helping those who really need it while keeping the bad actors out. Which is why Martha Minow said this week that she’s “hopeful” but “fearful” about a federal bill that would create tax credits to subsidize subscribers, advertisers and news organizations.

“What I’m troubled about is: What’s local news, who defines it and how do we prevent the manipulation of this by multinational corporations?” she said. “That’s a problem, and I don’t know anyone who’s come up with an answer for that.”

Minow, a Harvard Law School professor, is the author of the recently published “Saving the News: Why the Constitution Calls for Government Action to Preserve Freedom of Speech.” The book lays out a series of ideas for reviving journalism, from requiring social media platforms to pay for content to providing subsidies for nonprofit news. She spoke Monday at a local book group that met virtually.

The legislation Minow was referencing, the Local Journalism Sustainability Act, has attracted an unusual amount of bipartisan support and seems to stand a decent chance of becoming law. Those who wrote the proposal included limits on the size of news organizations that would be eligible, but the large corporate chains that own many of them would not be blocked from applying. That’s problematic given that chains and hedge funds are squeezing the life out of local news.

Minow, though, was referring to a different phenomenon — “sham” local news organizations that “shill for who knows what.” Although Minow did not use the term, such sites are purveyors of what is known as “pink slime” journalism, which look like community sites but are in reality vehicles for political propaganda. Those who operate such projects have taken advantage of the opening created by the precipitous decline of legitimate local news organizations in recent years by launching hundreds of such sites — most of them on the political right, but some on the left as well. One suggestion Minow offered was to limit government assistance to news organizations whose journalists live in the communities they cover.

Much of “Saving the News” is devoted to the proposition that government has always been involved in subsidizing journalism, from low postal rates to the development of the telegraph, from regulating radio and television to investing in the internet. Given that activist history, she writes, it would be derelict for the government not to step in. She quotes Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, who in 1945 wrote that “it would be strange indeed … if the grave concern for freedom of the press which prompted adoption of the First Amendment should be read as a command that the government was without power to protect that freedom.”

Her proposals fall under three broad categories:

• Regulating Facebook and other social media platforms “subject to duties and expectations commensurate with their functions and their powers.” That would include not just requiring them to pay news organizations for the content they use but also regulating them as public utilities and subjecting them to antitrust enforcement;

• Fighting misinformation and disinformation through “public and private protections against deception, fraud, and manipulation and bolstering the capacities of individuals and communities to monitor and correct abuses and demand better media and internet practices”;

• Using the power of government to “support, amplify, and sustain a variety of public interest news sources and resources at the local, regional, and national levels.”

“With the entire project of democracy in danger, federal, state, and local governments can and indeed should be obliged to act — while remaining as neutral as possible toward content and viewpoint in private speech,” Minow writes. “If judicial readings of the First Amendment prevent such actions, the courts would be turning the Constitution into a suicide pact.”

In a time of intense polarization, Minow said this week that she hopes reviving local news can help bring communities together. Noting that studies have shown corruption rises and voting rates drop in the absence of reliable local journalism, she said, “There’s less polarization in local communities for obvious reasons. People have to get along, they have to get the snow plowed.”

Minow comes by her interest in reliable news and information naturally: Her father, Newton Minow, is a former chair of the FCC best known for calling television “a vast wasteland.” His daughter’s book is a useful compendium of why we need to take steps to save local news — and what some of those steps might look like.

An ethical breakdown in Colorado shows the influence of the ‘Romenesko effect’

By now you may have heard about a remarkable 1,000-word retraction published by the Daily Camera of Boulder, Colorado, regarding a story about local residents’ memories of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. I first learned that the paper had a problem from Colorado College journalism professor Corey Hutchins’ newsletter. He wrote last Friday that the story in question had been taken down, and then — several hours later — came the retraction.

It seems that just about everything you could imagine was wrong with the story, including quotes, names and even the location of the Pentagon. The Camera frankly uses the word “fabricated” in describing what happened. The retraction does not name the reporter, but Hutchins does — April Morganroth, who would not comment when Hutchins contacted her.

A couple of observations about this remarkable lapse of journalism ethics.

First, we used to call this the “Romenesko effect,” after the pioneering media blogger Jim Romenesko, now retired. When he first began his work in the late 1990s, he would occasionally highlight some instance of fabrication or plagiarism that had gotten someone fired.

Oftentimes these incidents took place at obscure publications. Back in the day, young, inexperienced reporters caught in such instances of wrongdoing might, if they were sufficiently contrite, have a chance to start over at a different publication. The rise of online media such as Romenesko’s blog made that all but impossible since a reporter’s misdeeds would follow them wherever they tried to land. Maybe that was fair, maybe it wasn’t. But the rules had changed for good.

Second, it’s hard not to notice that the Camera is owned by the hedge fund Alden Global Capital. Staffing, no doubt, is minimal, and Morganroth’s story may have been published with little or no editing. It’s possible that a diligent editor would have spotted problems, though maybe not.

Certainly large, well-edited papers like The New York Times and The Boston Globe have had issues with fabricators, so I don’t mean to pick on the Camera. But to the extent that the problems with Morganroth’s story were catchable, they were less likely to be caught at a paper with few newsroom resources than at one that still has a reasonable level of editing.

Federal judge rules that a headline calling someone a ‘spy’ can be protected opinion

Is it permissible to call someone an Iranian spy if the facts are somewhat more nuanced than that? Apparently the answer is yes — at least according to U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs.

Burroughs recently dismissed a libel claim brought in Boston by Kaveh Afrasiabi against United Press International and Struan Stevenson, writing that an article written by Stevenson, whose headline referred to Afrasiabi as an “Iranian spy,” was a matter of clearly labeled opinion, which is protected by the First Amendment. I learned about the case from Adam Gaffin, who wrote about it at Universal Hub last Friday.

There are a lot of fascinating details in Burroughs’ opinion. Most of it is based on long-settled law that opinion is protected as long as there is some factual support for it, or if it cannot be proven true or false. Afrasiabi’s complaint was based on the headline, “Iranian spy arrested by FBI was wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Burroughs found that “wolf in sheep’s clothing” was pure opinion, whereas the reference to him as a spy was a matter of opinion grounded at least in part in the factual record as well as because the entire piece was opinion.

“Although the term ‘spy’ is arguably capable of being proved false, the phrase ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ plainly is not,” she wrote. “Given that the term ‘Iranian spy’ is followed by ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing,’ the entire headline, read together as it must be, is clearly a statement of opinion.”

Moreover, Afrasiabi has been charged with failing to register with the U.S. government under the terms of the Foreign Agent Registration Act. Afrasiabi has asserted that he never engaged in espionage against the United States.

As Gaffin observes, the judge’s ruling also references a Boston Herald case involving the suicide of Brad Delp, lead singer of the band Boston, which found that you can’t go looking for nuance in headlines. Quoting from that decision, she wrote: “A newspaper need not choose the most delicate word available in constructing its headline; it is permitted some drama in grabbing its reader’s attention, so long as the headline remains a fair index of what is accurately reported below.”

Here is the heart of Judge Burroughs’ decision, which found that Stevenson laid out the facts, allowing readers to determine whether they agreed with the headline or not:

Because Mr. Stevenson accurately presented the facts surrounding Dr. Afrasiabi’s background, arrest, and criminal charges in the Article, neither he nor UPI can be held liable for defamation based on his opinion that those facts render Dr. Afrasiabi an “Iranian spy” and a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.” … Put slightly differently, because the Article permits the reader to form his or her own opinion about whether the facts presented make Dr. Afrasiabi a “spy” and/or “a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” the statement is not actionable.

Finally: What, may you ask, is UPI these days? Does it have anything to do with the UPI of the 20th century, which for decades was The Associated Press’ main rival? The answer is no, not really.

According to Wikipedia, which seems to have the most up-to-date information, UPI today is part of News World Communications, which in turn was founded by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church. News World used to own The Washington Times as well, but that paper is now owned by a different Moon entity.

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