Media Nation

Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi today has a great catch. As I noted yesterday, Editor & Publisher’s Greg Mitchell posted an instant analysis of the West Virginia mining tragedy in which he called the media’s performance “disturbing and disgraceful.” Vennochi reports that, later in the day, Mitchell toned it down, eliminating the word “disgraceful.” Talk about backtracking. Mitchell’s revised column is online here.

“In a telephone interview,” Vennochi writes (link now fixed), “Mitchell said his first take on the miracle mine rescue might eventually show the same rush to judgment for which he was criticizing journalists.” Gee, Greg, you think? Vennochi continues:

“One question that has to be asked,” said Mitchell, “is ‘how much did the media spread the news? … the first question is whether the media carried the rumors, spread the rumors.'” Mitchell acknowledges that he does not know the answer to the question; and until the journalists on the scene recount their personal timetable and confirming sources, it is risky to draw conclusions about the quality of the journalism.

The Associated Press, by most accounts, played a key role in spreading the news — a false rumor, as we soon learned — that 12 of the 13 miners had been found alive. Here’s the top of an E&P story on what happened:

The Associated Press, which carried to newspapers around the world false reports on trapped miners being rescued in West Virginia late Tuesday night, said in a statement this afternoon that it had reported “accurately” based on information “provided by credible sources — family members and the governor.”

The governor again. In a perfect world, journalists would check everything. But for the life of me, I can’t see anything wrong with the media’s relying on the word of West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin. Authoritative, on-the-record sources sometimes turn out to be wrong. But you can’t blame the messenger.

Much of the criticism directed at the media has focused on the fact that they didn’t wait to hear from the mining company before running with the story. On the face of it, though, I’m not sure why journalists should have considered company officials — who weren’t available — more credible than the governor. Take this to its logical extreme, and presumably the media should not have reported that the miners were alive unless all 12 of them suddenly appeared at the Baptist church where family members were waiting.

There are plenty of reasons for the media to engage in self-flagellation. This isn’t one of them.

Follow-up: Greg Gatlin of the Boston Herald caught Mitchell’s switch-a-roo as well. Gatlin’s also got some good stuff on AP’s first dispatches, which weren’t quite as reliant on Gov. Manchin as its statement would have you believe.

There are plenty more where those came from at “Today’s Front Pages.”

Three quick observations about the terrible news coming out of West Virginia this morning — news made all the more terrible because the media initially reported that 12 of the 13 miners had been found alive.

1. The North Pole edition of the Globe, dutifully delivered to Media Nation every day at about 5 a.m., runs with the headline “Body of one miner recovered; Hopes dwindling for others in W. Va.” Reportedly both the Globe and the Herald later put out editions touting the miracle-that-wasn’t. But if you go to the Globe and Herald Web sites right now, you’ll see that both papers are up to date, complete with front-page images on the latest developments. I’m sure this scenario was repeated across the country.

Since the dawn of the television age, print has been irrelevant in covering fast-breaking news. The role of newspapers today is to provide depth, context and analysis after the fact. The Internet serves to emphasis that change — only now, the newspapers’ own Web sites are proving to be more valuable than their print counterparts. Thus, today marks another small step in the move toward paperless news.

2. Though it will be some time before we can sort out why the media got it wrong, preliminary indications are that they thought they were reporting authoritative news when in fact they were passing along rumors. Gov. Joe Manchin, it turned out, didn’t have any inside information; rather, he was picking up on what the family members had somehow heard.

In that respect, this is reminiscent of what happened in New Orleans, where rumors of widespread rapes and murders were given credence by the mayor and the police chief. As the New Orleans Times-Picayune established, there was almost no truth to any of those stories. But it’s hard to blame the media for reporting what the city’s top two officials were telling them. And it’s hard to blame the media today for reporting that the miners had been rescued when the governor himself believed it was true.

3. Everyone is reporting the frightening safety record of the mine. But the larger story is that the Bush administration has been letting mining regulation slide backward. Rick Klein and Susan Milligan report the lowlights in today’s Globe. This is not a story the media should let drop.

Follow-up: Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher has wasted no time in calling the media’s performance “disturbing and disgraceful.”

The Globe columnist essentially takes the Herald’s side on the matter of whether Boston Mayor Tom Menino said enough about crime in his speech on Monday. McNamara writes:

I do wonder … what the mayor was thinking when he relegated to a few sentences in his feel-good speech any mention of a rash of homicides that left 75 people dead in Boston in the year just ended. The introduction of a direct Boston-to-Beijing flight from Logan International Airport somehow does not feel like an adequate counter to that bad news.

Once again, with apologies to Boston magazine, “Thank God We’re a Two-Newspaper Town.” If the magazine’s not going to use it, can Media Nation have it?

Today’s lead story in the Boston Globe is headlined, “Menino calls on Bostonians to shed fear, report crime.” The article, by Lisa Wangsness, begins:

In his fourth inaugural speech yesterday, Mayor Thomas M. Menino declared that the burden of fighting Boston’s violent crime wave rests not only on police but on city residents, who, he said, must overcome fear and turn in neighbors engaged in illegal activity.

“Personal responsibility must be our mantra,” the mayor said, “from every single person on every single block. If you know someone who has an illegal gun, or you are witness to a crime, you must speak up and keep the specter of fear far away from our neighborhoods.”

Meanwhile, the Boston Herald leads with “Speak no evil: Mayor’s speech ignores crime crisis.” Kevin Rothstein leads with this:

Mayor Thomas M. Menino virtually ignored the issue of crime in an upbeat inaugural address yesterday — turning a blind eye to the city’s 10-year murder-rate high as he talked up a new air link to China and a feel-good faith in the city….

Instead, Menino stuck to a positive message, telling the packed house at Faneuil Hall that the biggest change in the city was “the feeling of faith that we have come to recognize in recent years” and boasting of a new non-stop flight from Boston to Beijing.

The Globe does note that “Menino devoted just six sentences of his 15-minute speech to crime.” You can watch Menino’s speech yourself by clicking here. And here are his “six sentences” (or so) on crime, which, by my reckoning, came 12 minutes into his address:

We had faith that we could create a top urban school system. We are doing just that. Today we have another challenge that we must address with the same conviction: the fight for public safety. We’re putting more police officers on the streets, but police cannot solve this challenge alone. Personal responsibility: that must be our mantra, from every single person on every single block. If you know someone who has an illegal gun, or you’re a witness to a crime, you must speak up, and keep the specter of fear far from our neighborhoods. I will not allow a handful of thugs to destroy families and lives. We have come too far forward to go so far back.

Was that enough? Did Menino “virtually ignore” crime? You decide.

New York Times public editor Byron Calame yesterday roasted publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and executive editor Bill Keller for not offering any real explanation as to why they waited a year before publishing news of the Bush administration’s no-warrant wiretapping. Jay Rosen has let Times management have it here and here.

I’d like to know more myself. Naturally, I’m curious to know whether the Times could have published a story before the 2004 presidential election. I’d hate to think Keller sat on a story that could have changed the outcome.

But with the Justice Department’s announcement that it plans to root out the source or sources who leaked this to the Times, there really isn’t a chance that Keller will be able to say more. In fact, it’s pretty obvious that Keller decided to stonewall the New York Observer, Calame and others because he knew his paper’s reporting — which continues — would drag it into yet another legal battle.

Like Slate’s Jack Shafer, I think it’s likely that Keller has a good explanation for why he sat on this for so long. I wish he could tell us, but I think I understand why he can’t.

Nothing earth-shattering, but Katharine Seelye has a good overview in today’s New York Times on how those covered by the media are using technology to put their own version of reality before the public.

When a person or organization demonstrates an inclination to file libel suits, it can be considered an act of courage for someone simply to exercise his First Amendment rights.

My knowledge of the legal issues surrounding the Islamic Society of Boston wouldn’t fill a thimble. All I know is that it is suing the Boston Herald and WFXT-TV (Channel 25), among others, for reporting on the society’s alleged ties to terrorism — ties that the society vociferously denies.

But it took some guts for Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby to weigh in yesterday with a tough piece on the organization and its “abusive lawsuit,” headlined “Questions the Islamic Society should answer.” Good for Jacoby. And good for Globe editorial-page editor Renée Loth for running it.

Mark Jurkowitz’s backgrounder in the Nov. 18 Boston Phoenix is an essential guide to the players.

I’m quoted in the Detroit Free Press today in a story by staff writer Julie Hinds about Bob Woodruff, the new co-anchor of ABC’s “World News Night” and, as it happens, a Detroit-area native.

Despite my determination not to get sucked into blogland this week, things keep coming up. This morning I listened to a voice-mail left last week (sorry) by someone who didn’t identify himself, but who sounded as though he is a lawyer. He seemed to be quite familiar with Superior Court Judge Ernest Murphy’s libel case against the Boston Herald, and was contemptuous of my commentary about it.

I didn’t save his message, so no direct quotes. But I do want to consider his two main arguments:

1. Anyone who has done his homework would know that the reason Murphy asked Herald publisher Pat Purcell for $3.26 million rather than the $2.1 million a jury awarded him was because Murphy was figuring in interest.

There is a simple answer to this: No. Not true.

To review, on Feb. 19, immediately after the verdict, the Boston Globe quoted David Rich, one of Murphy’s lawyers, as saying that the award amounted to $2.7 million with the interest that had accumulated since the suit’s filing three years earlier. One day later, Murphy sent a letter to Purcell seeking $3.26 million as the price for ending the case.

Nor has Murphy’s lead counsel, Howard Cooper, explained the mark-up in a convincing manner. Last week, Mark Jurkowitz of the Boston Phoenix covered a news conference at which Cooper said the $2.7 million has grown to $2.95 million, as the 12 percent interest clock keeps ticking away. That makes sense. So what’s up with the $3.26 million? Jurkowitz wrote: “He [Cooper] claimed the judge’s dollar figure ‘could be seen to represent a hypothetical discount from the Herald’s worst case scenario,’ in which the paper could end up owing more.”

Huh? If Purcell had paid Murphy $2.7 million right after the trial ended, wouldn’t that have been the end of it? The “worst case scenario,” after all, involves several years of presumably fruitless appeals, mounting interest costs and huge legal fees, above and beyond what Purcell had already paid. None of those factors would have been in play last February. So we still don’t know what the answer is. Note: I’m not saying there isn’t a good answer — that would be going beyond the facts (see point #2, below). I’m just saying the $3.26 million hasn’t been adequately explained.

By the way, I’ve seen commentators — including at least one newspaper columnist — who haven’t even grasped the elementary point that interest costs have long since rendered the $2.1 million figure irrelevant. So this is hardly a shortcoming of blogs per se. (And in the case of Media Nation, not a shortcoming at all.) Which brings me to my caller’s next point.

2. It’s irresponsible for a blogger to write without doing any reporting. The lesson of the Herald case is that you have an obligation to report before you start typing.

Ah, the central dilemma of every blogger, or at least every one who takes his journalistic obligations seriously. Quite frankly, this is something with which I wrestle all the time. Most items on Media Nation, as well as across blogland, are unreported in the traditional sense — that is, I’m not picking up the phone and interviewing sources.

But that’s not what most blogs are. Rather, they consist of commentary on what other media are reporting. Is that a lower order of journalism than what you read in a good newspaper every day? Yes, of course. But it has value to the extent that a blogger can make sense out of the news in ways that you might not have thought about before.

A key to responsible blogging, I think, is disciplining yourself not to go beyond what you find in your excursions across the mediascape. Thus, I see absolutely nothing wrong with noting that Murphy asked Purcell for some $500,000 more than the $2.7 million judgment-plus-interest; that the tone of his letters to Purcell was bullying; and that well-known media observer Alex Jones had said the letters called Murphy’s own judgment into question. None of this goes beyond what’s on the public record. On the other hand, ascribing motives to Murphy’s behavior would be out of bounds unless I had some special insight I had gleaned — insight I could only gain by interviewing people.

I’m also free to express my opinion. And it remains my opinion that the Herald’s journalism with regard to Murphy, though sloppy and sensationalistic, did not rise to the level of reckless disregard for the truth, which is the threshold a public official such as Murphy must meet in a libel case. It is also my opinion that Murphy should have taken the Herald on in the court of public opinion — Holmes’ “marketplace of ideas” — rather than trying to intimidate the news media into soft-pedaling its reporting on public officials lest they be hit with a multimillion-dollar libel judgment.

Murphy has every right to hold his reputation in high regard. I wish he had the same regard for the central purpose of the First Amendment, which is to encourage vigorous, contentious and even irresponsible discussion of public affairs.

My previous Murphy posts are online here, here, here and here.