Media Nation

Can the media credibly be accusing of rumor-mongering when the sources for many of the rumors are a major city’s duly elected mayor and his police chief? NOLA.com, the New Orleans Times-Picayune website, has an eye-opening story today showing the murders, gun battles and rapes that allegedly took place in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina simply never happened.

Trouble is, as the story notes, some of the wildest of those rumors came directly from Mayor Ray Nagin and Police Chief Eddie Compass. The Times-Picayune’s Brian Thevenot and Gordon Russell write:

THEVENOT AND RUSSELL: In interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Compass reported rapes of “babies,” and Mayor Ray Nagin spoke of “hundreds of armed gang members” killing and raping people inside the Dome. Unidentified evacuees told of children stepping over so many bodies, “we couldn’t count.”

The picture that emerged was one of the impoverished, masses of flood victims resorting to utter depravity, randomly attacking each other, as well as the police trying to protect them and the rescue workers trying to save them. Nagin told Winfrey the crowd has descended to an “almost animalistic state.”

Four weeks after the storm, few of the widely reported atrocities have been backed with evidence. The piles of bodies never materialized, and soldiers, police officers and rescue personnel on the front lines say that although anarchy reigned at times and people suffered unimaginable indignities, most of the worst crimes reported at the time never happened.

We’ve known almost from the beginning that these stories were vastly exaggerated, but the Times-Picayune puts substantially more meat on the bone. And as tempting as it is to whack the media for being irresponsible, it’s hard to imagine why journalists shouldn’t report unconfirmed horror stories when those stories are being told by the city’s top two officials, on the record, to a national television audience.

For an ironic footnote, check out this story from Saturday’s Houston Chronicle on whether there was any Rita-induced chaos: “There have been some burglaries, but ‘is it rampant like it was in New Orleans? Not even close,’ said Sgt. Nate McDuell, spokesman for the Houston Police Department. ‘We don’t have bands of thugs roaming the streets here. The lid is on here.'”

Today’s New York Times account of the intelligent-design trial about to get under way in Pennsylvania is weirdly even-handed. You’d never know from Laurie Goodstein’s report that there’s scandal afoot in Dover, Pa.

Head on over to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, though, and you’ll find a story by Bill Toland that includes this bombshell:

TOLAND: It’s clear that, in Dover, “the board acted with the purpose of promoting religious view,” says Pepper Hamilton attorney Stephen G. Harvey. “One board member said, ‘Two thousand years ago, a man died on a cross. Can’t someone take a stand for him?'” Harvey is repeating an account of a school board meeting published in both of York’s daily newspapers. But the board member reported to have made the comment has since said the quotes were fabricated.

An audio tape of the meeting has been destroyed.

I’m sure this isn’t news to people who’ve followed the case more closely than I. But the entire nation wasn’t watching until recently.

The York Dispatch is standing by its account. Just last Friday, it published a timeline of the case that included this:

YORK DISPATCH: — June 15, 2004 — Nearly 100 Dover residents and teachers attended a board meeting to continue debating whether creationism should be taught alongside evolution. School board members, residents and the head of the high school science department said they were concerned about mixing science and religion. Buckingham stood by his opposition to the Prentice Hall book, saying “Nearly 2,000 years ago someone died on a cross for us; shouldn’t we have the courage to stand up for him?”

Board members Alan Bonsell and Noel Wenrich agreed with Buckingham, saying creationism should be taught to balance evolution.

The Times did mention Buckingham’s quote in an article published on Jan. 16 of this year. At that time, the paper reported that Richard Thompson, a lawyer who’s defending the school board, had claimed Buckingham “made that statement in another context, a dispute about the Pledge of Allegiance in 2003.” Hmm. That’s rather different, don’t you think?

Meanwhile, the dispute over what Buckingham and other school-board members actually said could land two journalists in jail, according to this article by Michelle Starr, a reporter with the York Daily Record and York Sunday News. With the tape no longer in existence, lawyers want to force the reporters to testify about what they heard.

Surely this is one of the very few instances where reporters have been subpoenaed to testify about what they observed in an open, public meeting. If they lose their bid to stay out of court, the so-called reporter’s privilege – already under siege in cases ranging from Judith Miller to Wen Ho Lee – will all but disappear.

This is an ugly case. By no means should the mainstream media try to gloss this over with a coat of respectful even-handedness out of a misguided attempt to show that they’re not anti-religion.

Today’s Boston Globe contains that most frustrating of journalistic subspecies: a long, abject “Editor’s Note” that will prove utterly mystifying to any reader who doesn’t remember the original story. As mea culpas go, this one’s a doozy, beginning with this:

GLOBE: A Page One story Aug. 26 detailing allegations that the International Rescue Committee’s resettlement program for Somali Bantus in Boston has provided inadequate assistance to the refugees failed to meet Globe reporting standards in several areas. The story relied on the accounts of two former IRC employees and four families in the approximately 140-refugee community and did not present enough context about the broader refugee experience for the reader to judge how prevalent the alleged problems were.

And on and on it goes, closing with a statement that even the translator the Globe relied on shouldn’t have been used, because that person’s participation “was arranged by the ex-employees who had brought the complaints to the Globe’s attention.”

None of this, though, adds up to much unless you can look up the original story. I have. Written by Globe staff reporter Raja Mishra beneath the headline “Rift Erupts over Agency’s Care of Refugees – Ex Workers Plan to File Complaints,” it begins with this:

MISHRA: Asha Mohamed’s life began on a Somalian corn farm. It ended, improbably, in Everett.

There, the mother of seven descended into dementia, living months in a urine-soaked apartment without medical care, caretakers and family members said. She died quietly last December in her late 50s or 60s – her family is unsure exactly how old she was – of stroke-related complications in a nursing home bed. Family members said they were barely able to visit her or even understand what ailed their matriarch. [Note: I’ve added dashes that appear to have been stripped out when this was uploaded. Perhaps they were parantheses in the original.]

Former employees of the organization that resettled Mohamed in Everett, the International Rescue Committee, said the nonprofit failed her and dozens of other Somali Bantu refugees in the Boston area, saving them from squalid African refugee camps only to deliver them into an isolating and impoverished existence here.

“She was a hard worker; she was kind,” said Asha Mohamed’s son, Abdi Sabtow, who lives with his family in Everett. “IRC is the worst. They never helped like they promised.”

If you would like to judge for yourself, you’ll find the complete story in the Globe’s archives here. If you’re not a subscriber and don’t want to pay, you should also be able to find it online if you have a library card. The Boston Public Library and all the suburban library groups offer free access to newspaper databases.

Often, free links recent newspaper stories can be tracked down with just the right Google search – but not this one. Too bad. The Globe deserves some credit for setting the record straight. But without ready access to the original article, the goal of transparency is only half met.

It sounds like there’s a decent chance that art maven William Koch will not sue the Boston Globe after the Globe published an “Editor’s Note” yesterday offering some mitigating facts that had not found their way into Alex Beam’s Aug. 9 column. Mark Jurkowitz has the details. My earlier item is here. You can find all the links you need in those two items.

“The future of media will be nothing like what we think. Just consider what we thought the future would look like 15 years ago.” I’ve uploaded a copy of the remarks I delivered last night at the Ford Hall Forum, at Northeastern University, in a joint appearance with PressThink blogger Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University. Please have a look.

For the life of me, I can’t understand why the Boston Globe has failed to follow up on columnist Scot Lehigh’s revelation that WTKK Radio (96.9 FM) talk-show host Jay Severin has falsely claimed to have won a Pulitzer Prize – especially since Severin hasn’t appeared on the air since Lehigh’s column ran last Friday.

Today the Boston Herald’s Inside Track takes a stab at trying to figure out what’s going on. The Tracksters attribute Severin’s disappearance to his recently signed syndication deal with Infinity Broadcasting, which (God help us) could lead to his taking the late David Brudnoy’s old slot on WBZ Radio (AM 1030). (The syndication deal was first reported by the Globe’s Geoff Edgers, also last Friday.)

I suspect the Tracksters are right: a phony prize or two just isn’t a big deal in the world of political talk (just ask Bill O’Reilly), but signing a contract with a competitor is war. Still, it’s strange that the Track makes absolutely no mention of the Pulitzer story.

These are not the best of times for either of Boston’s daily newspapers. Three stories in today’s Boston Herald tell the tale:

– Following Monday’s announcement that the New York Times Co. will reduce its workforce – a move that will cost the Boston Globe 35 newsroom positions – the Herald’s Jay Fitzgerald reports that Globe union members are mad as hell. Not surprisingly, union president Dan Totten reserves some venom for James “King” Kilts, the mogul who sold locally owned Gillette down the river to Procter & Gamble. Kilts was named to the Times Co. board several months ago.

– The Herald’s Greg Gatlin indulges (link now fixed, thanks to Media Nation reader SMM) in some speculation about the future of Globe publisher Richard Gilman. Gatlin also dredges up a hardy perennial: the notion that the paper will cut costs by running material from the New York Times.

There are really two issues here. The first is that the Globe might use Times stories instead of material it currently buys from the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere. That might enable the Globe to save money, but it wouldn’t necessarily represent a downsizing of the paper’s ambitions.

The second, more serious issue is whether the Globe might substitute Times coverage for some of its own reporting on national and world affairs. This would be the big one, and would cement even further the idea that the Globe is just a satellite of the Times.

My guess: the first might happen on at least a selective basis (the Globe has occasionally published Times photos for the past few years), but the second won’t, at least not yet. What the pessimists overlook is that the Globe is one of the Times Co.’s most valuable properties. Speculation to the contrary, Times Co. executives do not want to persuade readers to drop the Globe and take the Times instead, because they want the Globe to be financially successful.

On the other hand, speculation that the Times Co. will seek to squeeze the Globe as much as possible without actually driving readers away strikes me as being right on target. Unfortunately.

– Lest we forget, the Herald itself went through an incredibly painful round cost-cutting earlier this year, slashing its newsroom by about 40 employees, or 25 percent. And publisher Pat Purcell is still pushing to bolster his revenues by any means necessary. Today, in a non-bylined piece, the paper tries to put the best face on the fact that tabloid is starting to run page-one ads. The forced-cutesy lead:

HERALD: Future trivia question: Which advertiser was the first to land an ad on the Boston Herald’s front page? Answer: Sovereign Bank.

The story notes that such papers as the Times and USA Today have run page-one ads.

The Herald ad – a red strip across the bottom teasing a bigger ad on page three – is fairly unobtrusive. Nor do I think it takes away from the paper’s image or credibility. I’d go so far as to say it’s acceptable for paper as economically challenged as the Herald. But publishing ads on the front still falls into the category of Things You Don’t Really Want to Do.

To read the Boston Globe’s account of cutbacks announced by the New York Times Co. yesterday – including 35 positions to be eliminated in the Globe newsroom – you’d think that newspaper analyst John Morton believes they are the inevitable consequence of rising costs and a softening economy. The Globe’s Christopher Rowland writes:

ROWLAND: US newspapers have been taking a beating on the price of newsprint, which has been rising 10 to 15 percent a year with another price increase due to take effect Oct. 1, said industry analyst John Morton, president of Morton Research Inc., of Silver Spring, Md.

“That, combined with advertising revenue not keeping pace with inflation, puts a profit squeeze on companies, and one of the ways you can alleviate that is laying off people,” he said.

But wait. In an article published by the Globe’s corporate big brother, the New York Times, Morton sounds like a fire-breathing populist, ready to lead the oppressed workers in a round of “Solidarity Forever.” Here’s how Katharine Seelye ends her story:

SEELYE: John Morton, a newspaper industry analyst, said that one of the many business and social trends working against newspapers was public ownership of newspaper companies.

“Wall Street appreciates cost-cutting and improving margins and increased profitability,” he said. “Those are the things that make them dance a jig at night. They put that kind of pressure on publicly owned companies, and newspapers are no more immune to that than anybody else. These cuts and layoffs are known as dancing to Wall Street’s tune.”

Whoa! I like that John Morton. Hold on, though. Because Frank Ahrens, in the Washington Post, captures yet another side of Morton. To wit:

AHERNS: Newspaper analyst John Morton, however, said that all media are suffering from an ad slump and that yesterday’s cuts do not yet sound the death knell for newspapers.

“In terms of what it’s doing to editorial staff, these are not horrible cuts,” Morton said. “All three of these papers have fairly fat staffs compared with most other papers, if you take the rule of thumb of one editorial employee for every 1,000 [in] circulation.” [The three papers Morton’s referring to are the Globe, the Times and Knight Ridder’s Philadelphia Inquirer, which also announced major cuts yesterday.]

Gee, that certainly doesn’t sound like the guy who mocked owners for “dancing to Wall Street’s tune.”

So which John Morton should we believe? I’ve interviewed Morton a number of times over the years, and have always found him to be consistently hard-headed in his business assessments, yet also consistently concerned about the effects that corporate ownership is having on newspaper quality. What we’re seeing here are both Mortons, albeit with each paper choosing which Morton it likes better.

I understand the need to pick a quote and run with it, and I understand that Morton isn’t the story. But it’s too bad that the neither Globe, the Times nor the Post offered enough Morton so that readers could fully understand his views.

(A brief pause for credit: Although I’d come up with the Globe-Times comparison on my own, I hadn’t known about Morton’s remarks to the Post before my morning read of Romenesko.)

Locally, Jay Fitzgerald of the Boston Herald has a rock-’em, sock-’em take on downsizing at the tabloid’s Expressway rival, writing:

FITZGERALD: The planned bloodletting cast a pall over the Globe’s newsroom. Some staffers were grumbling about Morrissey Boulevard’s news operation taking a far bigger hit, from a percentage standpoint, than the Times’ newsroom. The Times Co. will slash about 250 jobs from its flagship New York Times broadsheet, 45 of them within the Times’ newsroom.

This past spring, the Globe covered in endless detail a huge downsizing at the Herald, which cost that paper a quarter of its newsroom jobs. (So did I, mainly on Media Log at BostonPhoenix.com.) Now it’s payback time at One Herald Square.

A final observation: The Globe’s recently unveiled Sidekick section must cost something, no? Given that the daily entertainment guide still has virtually no advertising in it, wouldn’t it be a good idea to think about dumping it in order to save the jobs of a few people who cover actual news?

The Herald’s Inside Track goes after the Globe sports section today, claiming that the “Boring Broadsheet” favors the Red Sox over the three-time-champion Patriots because the Globe’s corporate owner, the New York Times Co., owns a share of the Sox.

“National Football League sources” are said to be upset. What prompted their dime-drop appears to be a complaint that Globe sports editor Joe Sullivan made about access to the Patriots during practice.

Sullivan denies stinting on Pats coverage, telling the Tracksters, “I don’t see how fans of either team could feel shortchanged.”

But Bruce Allen of Boston Sports Media Watch thinks there’s more than a little something to the Track’s complaint.

ALLEN: Even the Inside Track is jumping on the Globe for their lack of Patriots coverage, and they report about Globe sports editor Joe Sullivan calling up the NFL to whine about access to the team during practice. As I mentioned in part II of my Globe Review last month, I thought that Sullivan had done some good things during his watch there, but lately he’s been taking a lot of hits over the paper’s Patriots coverage, and isn’t looking good for it. His adamant stand that the paper has the most Patriots coverage in the region rings false to anyone who reads through the papers on a daily basis. His failure to promise or even admit that they’ll try to do better continues to be a slap in the face to Patriots fans.

Here’s the direct link to Allen’s post today, although it wasn’t working as of this morning.

On July 29, the Phoenix’s Ian Donnis took a close look at the relationship between the Sox and the Globe.

Media Nation offers three not-very-original observations:

1. Baseball is more interesting than football.

2. Boston is and always will be a baseball town.

3. I’m a lot more concerned about how the Globe – and especially its editorial page – covers the Red Sox’ development plans in the Fenway neighborhood than I am about measuring column-inches devoted to the Sox and the Pats. That’s where the real conflict-of-interest potential is.

From Alex Beam’s Boston Globe piece on the new luxury magazine Boston Common and its owner, Jason Binn:

BINN: When Madeleine Albright talks about luxury lifestyle, that’s the kind of story an editor wants.

Madeleine Albright?