Entries from June 2009
The soon-to-be-a-major-motion-picture saga of New York Times reporter David Rohde – who was kidnapped, along with his translator, by the Taliban last November and escaped, along with his translator, last Saturday – has raised some Big J journalism questions about the effort by the Times to keep the kidnapping out of the news.
As the Times itself just reported, its executives persuaded numerous mainstream media outlets to quash any coverage of the kidnapping. More problematic, Times execs also got Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales to have the online encyclopedia delete any references to the kidnapping, so that the captors could not “get online and assess who he was and what he’d done and what his value to them might be.”
All worthy efforts, but journalistically sound?
Phoenix media critic Adam Reilly has some thoughtful comments on his blog, writing that
[W]hile Wikipedia did constrain the freedom of some of its users, it didn’t violate their freedom of speech. The individuals who wanted to get word of Rohde’s kidnapping out could have contacted countless news outlets, for example; or nabbed a relevant blogspot account to publicize Rohde’s situation and Wikipedia’s response; or simply stood on the streetcorner handing out leaflets that did the same.
That led to this response from a commenter:
I’d be more understanding if it wasn’t for the NYT double-standard. When it comes to releasing information about our secret program to track terrorists finances, they have no qualms about publishing that info, in essence working against America’s safety. So what happens when terrorism hits home with them? Surprise, it’s “hush-hush” to the point of deleting public information again or again. I’m glad the reporter is OK, but I’ll never trust the NYT, and now wikipedia.
Which led to this response from Adam Reilly:
When the Times reports something like the warrantless wiretapping story, they’re operating on the assuption that the threat to privacy is a massive public ill that outweighs any potential safety threat stemming from their coverage. Whether you buy that argument or not, it’s possible to make it.
One other aspect that many Times critics overlook: the paper held off on publishing the warrantless wiretapping story for a full year because the Bush administration convinced Times executives that the story’s potential to jeopardize public safety outweighed the public’s right to know what the federal government was up to.
The Times might want a mulligan on that call. But I bet they sleep just fine now that David Rohde is back in the fold.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: David Rohde, New York Times, Wikipedia
At least twice in the past month the New York Times has published stories with the basic theme, The American Public Is Way Out in Front of Politicians on Gay Rights.
At the end of May there was Matt Bai’s piece in the Times Magazine asking the musical question, “How did Washington miss the generational shift toward gay marriage?” Bai also made this observation:
On gay rights, localities and courts have dragged national politicians toward what would seem to be an inevitable social reckoning.
Fast forward to yesterday’s Times front page, which featured a piece headlined, “Political Shifts on Gay Rights Are Lagging Behind Culture.”
Nut graf:
The conflicting signals from the White House about its commitment to gay issues reflect a broader paradox: even as cultural acceptance of homosexuality increases across the country, the politics of gay rights remains full of crosscurrents.
The “cultural acceptance of homosexuality” might be eluding the political world, but it increasingly includes the advertising arena. Coincidentally or not, yesterday’s Times also ran a “special advertising feature” headlined “Stonewall 40 Years Later.”
And what did we find imbedded in a cursory essay – read, advertorial – about the landmark 1969 insurgency against a New York City police raid on a Greenwich Village gay bar? Go figure – laudatory references to the special advertising feature’s sponsors, each of which also ran a traditional ad in the two-page spread.
To wit:
ABC Carpet & Home (“All employees, regardless of race or sexual preference, are treated equally”)
The Visionaire condominium (“has attracted gay owners who want a building that is both luxurious and state-of-the-art in terms of being ‘green’”)
Olivia Cruises and Resorts (“The safe space for women created by 1970s music festivals [has] found a new venue”)
and
The Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention Convention & Visitor Bureau (“Fort Lauderdale has over 30 gay-owned guesthouses and over 150 gay-owned businesses”)
Moral of the story: The politics of gay rights might be business as usual, but business, in the end, is just business.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: advertising, Gay rights, New York Times
Confidential sources are the Achilles heel of print media.
Part of the reason the general public doesn’t trust/believe/respect newspapers, for instance, is that the general public thinks it’s too easy for them to just make stuff up. See Jayson Blair et. al. for further details.
So newspaper editors have taken pains lately to specify just why they’ve granted anonymity to the sources they cite.
Here’s a typical disclaimer:
These people were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak.
Duh.
But this quote from a New York Times piece about Michael Jackson takes the cake:
‘It’s all a mess,’ said one executive involved in Mr. Jackson’s financial affairs who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of respect for the entertainer’s family.
Puh-leeze. Saying nothing is respect for the entertainer’s family. Anything else is bushwa.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Confidential sources
Social networking giant MySpace is hardly going Friendster, but it does have its problems.
Facebook is currently kicking its boot-up, reportedly drawing more monthly visitors than MySpace, which also is experiencing losses in page views and revenues.
So what looked like a steal for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. – which outbid Viacom for MySpace in 2005 for a lunch-money $580 million, propped up by $300 million annually in guaranteed Google adbucks for five years – is now a millstone.
Enter Viacom honcho Sumner Redstone, the bridesmaid in in the MySpace bake-off. Redstone “could get a second chance” to own MySpace, according to a New York Times piece this week. The Times story also said this about Redstone’s second-place finish four years ago:
The Viacom chairman acknowledged firing the chief executive, Tom Freston, for failing to purchase MySpace when he figured he could have had it for $500 million. Losing out to Mr. Murdoch was a ‘humiliating experience,’ Mr. Redstone told [PBS host] Charlie Rose in a 2006 interview.
Here’s the thing: According to a piece by Lloyd Grove in the Daily Beast,
[I]t was Redstone and Viacom board member (now CEO) Philippe Dauman, not Freston, who shut down the bidding for MySpace – this, according to numerous accounts, including the definitive book on the subject, Julia Angwin’s Stealing MySpace.
So, if Grove is to be believed (and he seems pretty solid), the Times bought a pig in a poke (that is, a pig in a bag) from Redstone. As did Charlie Rose.
Not exactly a “humiliating experience” for the Times and Rose, but not exactly a Hallmark moment either.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Lloyd Grove, MySpace, New York Times
I tend to agree with Slate’s John Dickerson’s piece on So. Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, which features this fabulous lede:
Mark Sanford is no longer missing, but he’s obviously lost.
I also agree with Lee Siegel’s Daily Beast post, in which he’s outraged that the liberal privacy crowd has been AWOL about the leaked emails between Sanford and his Argentine paramour, and that the anti-Patriot Act set hasn’t been howling about it.
The emails have been boffo boxoffice for So. Carolina’s The State, which has attracted almost two million hits in the past several days.
When I actually read the emails, though, it was just sad – two people caught in a position only a chiropractor could straighten out, expressing emotions that were more raw than a sushi buffet.
There’s a Peeping Tom facet to this affair that’s thoroughly unsettling. I’m done peeping.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: email, Sanford
Despite Dr. Johnson’s excellent advice (see above right), I hereby claim my humble space in the blogosphere.
(Big shoutout to blogger extraordinaire Dan Kennedy, whose helpful ministrations got me to the starting line.)
Up until now, my blogging experience has been limited to the receiving end, which is to say I’ve been flame-broiled in the flogosphere on numerous and memorable occasions. But finally I’m ready to start dishing it out (well, dishing, anyway).
Of course, I have no idea what I’ll fill this space with, but I know I have exactly zero to say about the demise of Michael Jackson, whose story would be sad if it weren’t so sordid. Ditto for the kneejerk (accent all too often on jerk) coverage by the news and entertainment media.
But I will try my best to post at least once a day, and to write something interesting and different.
There – have I set the bar low enough?
Think so.
Categories: Uncategorized
