text:
January 5, 2006
"Today, we fell short." vs. "I'm not seeing any obvious missteps."
I don't blame the news media for initially false information about the West Virginia mining disaster. I blame confusion, exhaustion, human emotion and poor decision-making by company officials. Then there are the explanations from editors. Some focus on accuracy. Others on truth.
Right: Sherry Chisenhall, Wichita Eagle editor. "Today, we fell short."
I'll explain why we (and newspapers across the country) went to press last night with the information we had at the time. But it won't excuse the blunt truth that we violated a basic tenet of journalism today in our printed edition: Report what you know and how you know it.
Wrong: Amanda Bennett, Philadelphia Inquirer editor. "I'm not seeing any obvious missteps."
After the correct information emerged, Editor & Publisher's website printed a comprehensive overview of the first big media screw-up of the new year, calling the mistake "disgraceful."
Right: Mike Days, Philadelphia Daily News, editor. "We are in the business of reporting truth."
Mike Days, editor of The Philadelphia Daily News, agreed that newspapers in most cases went with the best information they had. But he said editors must take blame when their stories are wrong, no matter what the reason. "The paper is responsible for everything in the paper and if there is an inaccuracy, in this case a huge one, you have to take responsibility," Days said. "We are in the business of reporting truth, and we can't just ignore it."
Wrong: Marty Baron, Boston Globe, editor. ""It seemed we handled it just fine all along the way."
Baron told E&P the coverage was as good as could be expected, given the timing of events and the fact that the original reports were coming from rescue workers, government officials, and families of the miners. "It seemed we handled it just fine all along the way," said Baron. "It's not like people were working with no information. There were officials commenting on this. As it turned out, wrong information was given out."
Right: USA Today, Note to readers. "This documentation proved inadequate."
USA TODAY also incorrectly reported that the survivors had been taken to a hospital by ambulances. In fact, just one ambulance left the mining site. The newspaper's coverage also included USA TODAY interviews with the miners' family members, who said they had been told that their relatives were alive.
Wrong: Mike Silverman, AP, managing editor. "AP was reporting accurately the information that we were provided."
The Associated Press cited family members in its initial dispatch, at 11:52 p.m., saying the miners were alive. Five versions later, at 12:25 a.m., the story added the quote from Manchin _ "They told us they have 12 alive" _ and dropped attribution for the miners' rescue to the third paragraph.
I think these are two distinctive philosophies. What do you think?
(This started in comments)
It's true that the "press" part of what happened in West Virginia is of minor importance compared to the rest, and there isn't much here that's malpractice.
It's true, as well, that if the "announcement" of 12 men alive had been made two, three hours later, no wrong headlines would have been seen, and we wouldn't be talking about the screw-ups.
But here we have an event where the explanations that journalists give to themselves (what satisifes them as "the reason it happened") communicate powerfully and intimately to the users of news because the event also "happened" to them. They will remember it for a long time, and talk about it. So will history, whatever that is.
First the audience got taken to miracle land. Then the audience learned it was all a mistake, and the men were dead. So when journalists explain how the news got made, how it broke down, what the procedures at 2 am are, they are, in this case, interpreting a very jarring experience to the people who are supposed to smoothly trust in their news experience the next time around.
I think it's important, and the better part of wisdom, to speak in a moral voice about being wrong under conditions like that— not a "shit happens" or a "gimme a break" or a "I don't see any violation of our procedures…" voice. Even if true, I wouldn't do anything different next time doesn't communicate very well about this time.
Moral doesn't mean moralizing or sky-is-falling. A moral voice need not blow the events out of proportion, either, or give a false mea culpa. It not only explains how the story was gotten wrong, but also accepts that a wrong got done— even if there was no violation of procedure. "The paper is responsible for everything in the paper" (Mike Days) speaks in a moral voice, in the sense that I mean it.
In explaining what happened, some editors primarily addressed themselves to the end user's experience of a vanished miracle, while others talked of professional standards, rituals and routines. Without meaning to insult anyone, they were treating the journalist's experience as primary. But under conditions of factual intimacy ("we lived for a while the wrong information you gave us") that discourse is not up to the task.
"AP was reporting accurately the information that we were provided by credible sources" says: we didn't do anything wrong. "The paper is responsible for everything in the paper" accepts what happened with end users. Accuracy, which was achieved, is the more technical term, truth, which did not happen, is a moral category. Although there's no big scandal in it, this one happens to lie very near the center of the trust transaction in journalism, and so it's foolish for editors to be among its minimizers.
After Matter: Notes, reactions & links…
Editor & Publisher continues to report developments on this story. See Spokesman in Miner Tragedy Says He Never Confirmed Miracle Rescue. (Jan. 6) Interesting.
Regret the Error has two good round-ups. One gives links to all the correction and explanation stories newspapers ran; the other re-caps the whole episode. Good places to start.
Serious Questions on Sourcing in Mine 'Rescue' Story Remain. Joe Strupp and Greg Mitchell in Editor & Publisher (Jan. 5):
What was most surprising in the many follow-up stories today was how few fresh details were added about sourcing — including any mention of a single new source not already identified. Despite repeated attempts by E&P to reach reporters at the scene, none have yet responded. Here we will provide the first step-by-step chronology from a strictly journalistic perspective. So what do we know, or think we know?
Revealing. Also very good is Joe Strupp, Local W.Va. Paper Says Skepticism Helped it Avoid Mining Story Goof. (Jan. 4) The reporter for the local daily didn't run to the church to get misinformed.
I did a live Q & A with readers at washingtonpost.com (Jan. 6). Here it is, The Press: Year in Review. My favorite moment was probably:
Q. I work as a senior IT professional. I make good bank. If I retyped vendor marketing materials and sold my company on an expensive system that ended up failing, I'd get canned. Immediately. I might even get sued for damages, so they would recoup the money paid me. I'd have a black mark next to my name and really lose my career.
Tim Graham of Newsbusters takes issue with some of what I said. Graham says the Bush team has no particular beef with the White House press. The White House has no involvement in the ongoing culture war seeking to discredit Big Journalism as the liberal media, he thinks. In his next post, Tim will explain to us that journalists are some of Bush's best friends, and W. can't live without his Paul Krugman.
Look Out Outlook. Vaughn Ververs at Public Eye, the CBS press blog, spotted the argument in a statement today from Susan Glasser, 36, the new Sunday Outlook editor at the Washington Post (just announced.)
It's a promising appointment. Glasser started at The Post in '98. She was a deputy national editor and political reporter here, then went to Moscow as a correspondent in 2001. Perhaps the most interesting thing about her: She comes to Outlook after covering terrorism for the Post. In the story announcing her new job she says:
Outlook is one of the great pieces of real estate in the Sunday Washington Post, with a real storied tradition of helping shape the Washington conversation. What I would hope to do is build on that and think of lots of exciting and interesting ways to update it for an Internet era when opinions and controversy have become the currency but reasoned commentary and analysis are sometimes missing from that new digital equation.
Ververs asked me, Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine, Lost Remotes Steve Safran, and Brian Stetler of TV Newser: what did you think of Glasser's statement? Responses here.
I like this from Jarvis about the lost miners and the media: "Its not the news thats live; its the process of figuring out what to believe thats live."
If you're not reading The Blogging Journalist ("Munir Umrani's Weblog on Blogging by Journalists, Citizen Journalists and Pundits in an Era of Changing Media") perhaps you should be.
Steve Outing at Poynter: "Here's what I think newspaper front-page editors should have done last night: Published an info box accompanying the story pointing people to the paper's website for updates on the story, and acknowledging that as of the time the paper-edition story was printed, the situation was fluid."
How the LA Times held the presses, and corrected the newspaper.
Joan Vennochi, columnist, Boston Globe:
Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher, blasted off a Wednesday online column that began by describing the incorrect news reports as "one of the most disturbing and disgraceful media performances of this type in recent years." Later in the day, however, Mitchell deleted the word "disgraceful" — again, one of the luxuries of online journalism versus traditional print.
Blogger Chuck Holton was there:
Be careful, though, trying to pin the blame for this fiasco on the media. There is a difference between spreading a rumor and reporting that a rumor is spreading. Dont think so? Try to imagine a scenario where live cameras pointing at the church could have avoided showing the jubilation that erupted there when the despicable rumor began that the twelve were alive. To their credit, the live news people, like CNN, simply reported that they were being told that there were survivors, and continued to report when the Governor gave the rumor an implied - if inadvertent - endorsement with his comment that miracles do happen.
Murray Waas at Huffington Post:
Anderson Cooper and Geraldo Rivera and Bill OReilly we know not to trust, however. They, too, have emotions, but there is a promiscuity, and dare say, even a vulgarity, to their emotions. Their tears and anger are displayed so frequently and shared with so many that in the end they become meaningless. Their television shows will move somewhere else, and the families of the Sago miners will be alone—or finally left alone—to grieve.
Ex-Portland Communique blogger One True B!X at his new site: "In terms newsies will understand: Why did you run — and run hard — with a story based on information from a single anonymous source?" It's true, as regards the original source of the information that 12 were alive. No one ever had a name.
Hey, check out this Thinker to Watch in 2006. Says Forbes Magazine. Let's hope their aim is true.
Posted by Jay Rosen at January 5, 2006 12:16 AM Print
I don't know. Is it really time to start pointing fingers already? There are twelve grieving families out there.
It's important to look at how the story came to be reported in the way that it did, but I don't necessarily think that's where the media's focus should rest at the moment.
(not speaking for WaPo, which sort of straddled the fence)
Jay, I tried to post this response to your question on the previous thread regarding the variance between Gal Beckerman's piece at CJR Daily and my own thoughts. But it was closed to comment, so I will answer here.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 5, 2006 1:22 AM | Permalink
There's a lot of pressure to get that story, get that scoop, get the best quote and a unique angle. And get it like five minutes ago.
This has echoes of November 2000 more than of 9/11 -- though the problems of the 24-hour news cycle pervade all these premature headline ejaculations.
One thing I noticed on 9/11 was that television journalists were hesitant to exposit on what might or might not be true, and that seemed to be an aftereffect of 2000.
That will probably be the case the next time -- but not the time after that.
The difference seems to be between those who recognize that there is a problem when news outlets go to press without thoroughly vetted information and those who believe that sometimes you go to press with the sourcing you have, not the sourcing you want.
And that that's a perfectly acceptable part of the game.
Posted by: Richard B. Simon at January 5, 2006 1:47 AM | Permalink
I don't know. Is it really time to start pointing fingers already? There are twelve grieving families out there.
Kinda sounds like many bloggers who have wondered about the press' jump to blame President Bush for...oh...just about anything! :-)
But seriously, I don't think this is a question of "blame." I think the situation yesterday DOES raise red flags of concerns, simply because this was NOT the first time the press has chosen to report with lots of emotion and not a lot of verification. We saw it in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, as well - and if it seems like some of us are "jumping" on the press unfairly, it is because there is - at this point - HISTORY, here. It's tough to gather and disseminate news when you're also trying to be dynamic and on the spot, and the cameras never shut down, that's true. But if that is the model of journalism that is being embraced, then it is up to the fourth estate to figure out how to make the model work, or abandon it. As we've seen twice now, reporting unconfirmed information - no matter how innocently it is done - is not really journalism, and these errors are not covering the press with glory, particularly not when (breaking news aside) so many in the press seem to believe that the standard of journalism is, "we make the charge, now you prove us wrong."
The narrative must be gotten right, the first time, or it is very unfair to the story subjects - once the memes and stories are out there, it is difficult to correct things.
Posted by: The Anchoress at January 5, 2006 1:47 AM | Permalink
erik: I'm not the media.
"I don't insist that my reporters agree with my take on things." Glad to hear it, Steve. I agree with your reporter.
Anchoress: thanks for stopping by.
No, no, I didn't mean you specifically, Jay. I'm just concerned that the media's focus will shift too far towards the "what went wrong/who's to blame" side of the story (as it pertains to the information release), potentially at the expense of the real issues raised in the aftermath like the condition of the mine and the questionable circumstances surrounding the incident. That would be adding tragedy to tragedy.
I do agree that there's some deserved soul-searching going on in newsrooms across the country, for the record. I would have preferred some further sourcing before going with the initial story, but I also wasn't on the ground there. It's a bad situation all around.
I also agree that pointing out that you got a story wrong (you the press, not you the Rosen :P) and trying to explain how is a better plan than claiming you were only reporting what you were told. The former tries to bridge understanding, the latter connotates that journalistic "we-know-better" wall that so irritates the non-MSM.
(again, not speaking for WaPo)
Steve Lovelady:
Delving farther, we find that Dao, obviously writing on deadline, is quite careful to attribute the "12 miners found alive" not just to family members but also to "Joe Thornton, the deputy secretary for the West Virginia Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety." Next we learn that shortly before midnight, Thornton not only declares that the miners are alive, but he embroiders on the story, telling Dao that the 12 survivors are being examined at the mine and will shortly be taken to the hospital ! Aha, I think we've found the problem. To paraphrase Jason, the hapless Mr. Thornton exhibited "an abject failure of military professionalism."
Hmmm...how can I put this gently?
Mr. Thornton, as a sharp observer might gather from his title "Assistant secretary," the absence of any indication of military rank, and your own prefix "Mr.," is a civilian. In other words, Mr. Lovelady, he ain't military. But you make a game attempt to slime the profession, just the same.
Next time, don't spill so much slime on yourself, in the attempt, mmkay?
Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 5, 2006 2:52 AM | Permalink
I have to feel a lot more sympathy toward the east coast papers, and almost no sympathy toward the cable news networks. The east coast papers were on deadline, and "everyone" was reporting that the miners had been found alive.
As Jay noted in the previous thread, the "story" was at the church, but the information was elsewhere. So CNN plants Anderson Cooper at the church -- that's understandable....but where were the rest of the CNN reporters who should have been at the mines asking the "usual" questions like "when will the miners be able to see their families" and "what hospital will they be taken to?" I don't understand how, if the larger news organizations were doing their jobs in those three hours, that the virtual news blackout from the company during that period did not send off some alarm bells.
When the East Coast papers went to press, the story has a small, and not apparently significant hole in it -- no confirmation from the company. But that was the kind of hole that grows as time passes, and after an hour it should have been noticeable, and after two hours it should have been unavoidable.
But somehow, Anderson Cooper managed to avoid that hole for another hour. One can literally see the producer sitting in a trailer, saying "nothing from the company yet? Okay, Atlanta says we have 3 minutes before the next break, so have Cooper interview Cousin Buford, then we'll go to commercial..."
Re: comparisons to the Katrina coverage --- why is the focus on the reporting of the mayor's estimate of the death toll? This comparison appears to be driven by the bias warriors who are trying to "shoehorn" the failures at Sago into their larger narrative.
But there was a lot of "reporting" that was much, much worse --- stories that focussed on the "lawlessness" of the people left at the superdome which turned out to be grossly exaggerated, the story about shot being fired at a rescue helicopter which turned out to be completely untrue but was endlessly repeated.....
And these false reports were far more damaging to an accurate perception of what happened in New Orleans---and were endlessly exploited by right wing commenters in what can only be described as "race-baiting".
Sure, the mayor got the death toll wrong....but in getting it wrong, he also increased the sense of urgency about a problem that was spiralling out of control because of the inadequate response and unfulfilled promises of FEMA. Nobody knew how many were dead --- but it was possible to "check out" the story of the rescue helicopter that was attacked, and determine it was false -- but that was never done (or if it was, it was not widely disseminated to the Bill O'Reilly's and Brit Hume's of the airwaves.)
There was a lot to complain about with regard to the Katrina coverage --- and those who are "cherry picking" from that coverage to score "bias warrior" points here should not be taken seriously when it comes to understanding what happened at Sago.
I lose repect for the judgements of people who conclude "bias" as the answer to every criticism in the same way that I discount the opinions of people who see bias as the cause of every mistake.
I think these threads have reached equilibrium now.
Posted by: kristen at January 5, 2006 8:14 AM | Permalink
The miners were supposed to be alive. But for moments, many of them, then hours, the live shots were of people and things which should have been doing stuff if the miners were alive. And the people and things were standing around, or waiting in line--ambulance lights flashing--and then we got to repeating the same shots.
ami, typically, goes after the right wing, in the NOLA story. The problem with NOLA's famous unstories is threefold. One, nobody verified the stories. Two, they got endless repeats in the media. (Two sub A) They may have delayed the rescue and relief efforts thanksverymuchguys. Three, the media's retraction is muted and very much driven by blogs. Without the latter, this would be down the memory hole and even more people than now would be remembering the false stories as true.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 5, 2006 8:23 AM | Permalink
Steve...."If they come to a different conclusion than mine, as long as they can convince me that they have reported things out, I publish it."
Mr. Lovelady, could you expand on this for me, please, (because I'm curious)? Not coming from a "press" background, I have no idea what a typical model is for the relationship between reporter and editor. Are you saying that an editor typically looks at stories from the standpoint of the conclusion they present? Or a better question, what role do conclusions play in a story and what process is in place to distinquish them from opinion on topics that you have no knowledge, for example?
(I'm genuinely interested in your thought process here... the "model," so to speak, so please don't prejudge me that I'm heading anywhere particularly.)
Posted by: kristen at January 5, 2006 8:24 AM | Permalink
I think this is an example of bias (storytelling) in a non-political sense. Therefore I hope we can talk about it without getting into legal analysis or teen-age antics.
I think that the press caught wind of something it wanted to hear(the miners are alive, a good thing). It was near press time so that they had to report something. Something had happened, but what happened was in reaction to incorrect information. Instead of offering that the reports were unsubstantiated, they led with the miners are alive. What the press saw was accurate, but the story line (conclusion) was incorrect.
The offering of conclusions is where the press (MSM and bloggers) get things wrong, not the facts or the reactions of people.
Kudos to those outlets offering explanations of what happened. That is responsible journalism. As a news consumer that is what I expect.
I am asking about the "process" here not the result. I do not want to get into the problem of pointing fingers because **it happens and not everyone reacts in a way that is perfect. After all, if the company had thought about the press ramifications they would have announced the deaths earlier. If the newspapers were able the change their headlines more quickly, then less bad headlines would have gone out.
If, if, if, if, if. The key here is to analyze the process and figure out how to make it better, not crucify those trying to the best they can.
Tim. The point is that if this the best they can do, as you charitably imply, we have a problem.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 5, 2006 8:51 AM | Permalink
ami, typically, goes after the right wing, in the NOLA story. The problem with NOLA's famous unstories is threefold. One, nobody verified the stories. Two, they got endless repeats in the media. (Two sub A) They may have delayed the rescue and relief efforts thanksverymuchguys.
Richard, I "went after the right wing" because the people who are citing problems with the Katrina coverage talk about only one thing -- the overestimation of the death toll by Mayor Nagin, and the fact that Nagin's estimates were widely reported.
You insist that Nagin's estimates should not have been reported until "verified".... how do you "verify" an estimate? Wait until all the bodies are recovered? (and BTW, there are lots of "missing" people whose bodies have not been recovered to this day.)
No one criticises the media for estimating death tolls of the Tsunami, or earthquakes, or similar disasters -- even when they turn out to be way off.
And I don't see anyone on the right criticizing the vastly exaggerated estimates of the number of bodies found in mass graves in Iraq (let alone the consistent mischaracterization of who was found in those graves...the largest mass grave that has been found is full of Iraqi soldiers who mutinously participated in the 1991 uprising against Saddam. Even here in America, we authorize summary execution for mutiny on the battlefield.)
The point being that the right consistently tries to create the impression of media bias by emphasizing only those mistakes that appear to work in favor of the "liberal" agenda -- while ignoring the errors that support the "conservative" agenda, and "neutral" errors.
The mistakes made at Sago are only remotely connected to those made with the coverage of Katrina --- its like saying that Wombats are like Kangaroos; sure, they are both marsupials, but were talking two very different animals here. Trying to tie the Katrina mistakes into the Sago mistakes doesn't make a lot of sense, and it makes even less sense to constantly harp on Nagin's death estimates to make any kind of point about what happened at Sago.
If, if, if, if, if. The key here is to analyze the process and figure out how to make it better, not crucify those trying to the best they can.
Tim, I don't think its a problem with the "process" of news-gathering. Its a problem of deciding what constitutes "news".
Why was Aaron Brown replaced by Anderson Cooper? Why was Cooper dispatched to Sago....instead of to DC to cover the Abramoff indictments? Those are the real questions, because as long as the cable channels see Sago as the place where "the big story" is, and the rest of the media allows the cable channels to set the "news agenda", "fixing the process" is rather pointless.
Does this have to be another bias discussion?
Editors across the country are explaining themselves today, including Marty Baron of the Boston Globe, Len Downie of the Washington Post, David Shribman of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. But at the New York Times it's spokesman Toby Usnik. Katharine Seelye's article had no quotes from any editor at her newspaper.
Another aspect of all of this that come to my mind is the hill that the media stand on vs news blogger. The hill is that "we check our facts and they are just opinion"
Posted by: Robert Paterson at January 5, 2006 9:39 AM | Permalink
That IS my point. The problem is not with the actors it is with the script. When I mention bias I am not talking about the bias of any particular person or organization. I am talking about the bias the process of reporting the news brings.
Each technology brings it own bias of speed of delivery, accuracy of information and the cost of obtaining and delivering of information. This triangle is prevelant in ALL corporate projects, not just news gathering and reporting.
The problem in this case seems to be timing of the event. Many newspaper organizations were put in no-win situation and looked really bad.
Ami. I already answered how to report Nagin's statement.
"The numbers left in the areas under the worst threat after evacation is not known."
The right focuses on a number of things about NOLA, including the media's uncritical assumption that the worst stories about blacks were so likely to be true that they didn't have to be checked. Nagin's blunder is simply the easiest to get into one sentence, but is not considered as egregious as some of the other stuff.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 5, 2006 10:01 AM | Permalink
Newsgathering in competitive, confusing, fluid and tense situations is an imperfect process. We perceive that imperfection as minor or major, based on how things turn out, and we evaluate the performance of the "men in the arena" (sorry, couldn't resist the irony) based on whatever press-think we tend to apply to the conduct of news media. Which means we're going to disagree on things, and I've got zero problem with that.
What I would caution against are the inevitable bold, simple, macho solutions. We're full of 'em -- in fact, whenever there's a screw up, you can pretty much count on top news executives to come out a few days later with some rock-ribbed proclamation about how we're going to return to the old verities, followed by a promise to "our" readers/viewers that you'll never again see this mistake again at MY newspaper/news channel/website/radiostation/blog. And inevitably, the solution has something to do with how we're going to rein-in our decision-making so that bad information never moves anywhere via us.
The solution, it seems, is always greater control.
But these solutions never really fix the problem. Maybe you don't get the same error in the same way, but life is chaotic -- it gives you new errors in similar ways. The problem is that our control over these situations, as newsgatherers and evaluators, is limited. So when we bluster about how we're going to prevent this or that from ever happening again, we might be well-intentioned, but we're promising control we really don't have.
This is particularly touchy for daily newspapers. TV beats us on immediacy and emotion. The Web beats us on depth and context. The Blogosphere beats us for interactivity and the need to talk about what has happened. This leaves us selling two things: 1. We're the easiest medium to read (unless your carrier tossed your morning edition in a puddle); 2. We have editors who take great pains to bring you the accurate, complete story.
We can continue promising the illusion of control over modern global mass-broadcast-networked media, or we can acknowledge its unprecedented features and start building new verities, applying the spirit of the old verities in more effective and useful ways.
Posted by: Daniel Conover at January 5, 2006 10:13 AM | Permalink
Dan: If I had one, you could run my newspaper anytime.
Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 5, 2006 10:23 AM | Permalink
And as to official sources, your evaluation about those sources is likely to be based on two things: 1. Your feelings about the official; 2. Your attitude toward authority.
Official sources do not tell the truth. They manage information. Doing so is often responsible, maybe even commendable. It can also be manipulative, dishonest and motivated by factors other than any reasonable ideal of public interest. Hiding behind official sourcing is a trick that media lawyers love, but it isn't the same thing as trying to get at the truth.
We like to think the truth is clean, but the truth is messy. It's like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall. Which is why, 20 years from now, when historians write about what really happened in 2005, they still won't agree.
Posted by: Daniel Conover at January 5, 2006 10:23 AM | Permalink
Daniel. Good words.
The LAT ran an article on federal dogs--issues of wolves and endangered species--replete with howlers, dated APRIL FIRST, which was a hoax. Not a deliberately planted false story aimed at burning the LAT but a piece of stuff somebody put out on the web for fun and which was discovered by the LAT.
In your opinion, is the unavoidable number of examples that editors miss a few higher than, lower than, or about the same as is necessary to retain the confidence in the papers?
You have to remember the reader's question: If they get this many things wrong that I catch, how many more do they screw up that I don't catch?
Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 5, 2006 10:26 AM | Permalink
Great tough question. My soundbite answer is "Compared to what?" Compared to what we'll know next week? Twenty years from now? No.
Compared to other media in real time? Yes. Because I don't think the issue is ultimately the editors, but the task, and I don't think most other media do that task better. But they often have better tools.
Posted by: Daniel Conover at January 5, 2006 10:50 AM | Permalink
Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 5, 2006 11:07 AM | Permalink
It is the illusion of control that gets newspapers in trouble. As you have pointed out newpapers have certain advantages and disadvantages as a news delivery system. In my mind the mining story is a great example of those advantages and disadvantages.
The "problem" cannot be fixed (or controlled), it can only be better managed.
I can't help but point out that Jay Rosen would put Dan Conover in charge of his newspaper and Steve Lovelady would put Dave McLemore in charge of his.
I'm sure that says something about the thinking of these two media critics. That might be an interesting PressThink Q&A.
Perhaps questions posed to all four, or two at a time? Questions from each other to each other?
It's good to see media outlets wrestling with the initially false reports and opening the process a bit for view. It may not be a pretty picture but it's a necessary one.
As I've said earlier, I fall into the camp that this is a terrible mistake that happened because of perfectly understandable reasons. I don't see this as a most grievous sin of journalism nor do I see it as some here as evidence of the media's lack of credibility. A bad thing happened and it will likely happen again, given the realities of 21st Century journalism. We are a painfully imperfect structure, journalism.
That said, I see signs that the rush to judgment is starting to alter a bit. The Boston Globe reports that Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher, deleted the world 'disgraceful' from its on-line editions one day after tearing journalism a new one over incorrect reporting, which he labeled "one of the most disturbing and disgraceful media performances of this type in recent years."
Mitchell told the Globe his first take was, perhaps, a bit hasty, acknowledging that, '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.'
There will, as some editors have said, be a push for reporters to push a little harder and seek out more detail, more fact. And that's a good thing for all of us.
Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 5, 2006 11:23 AM | Permalink
Dan said:
We like to think the truth is clean, but the truth is messy. It's like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall. Which is why, 20 years from now, when historians write about what really happened in 2005, they still won't agree.
I agree with much of what Dan posted except the above assertion. In a few months this would have largely faded from the public's collective memory. 20-years from now, when historians talk about 2006, this would at best be a footnote.
This is a non-issue, as painful as the consequences may have been to the families. I may not be well-enough informed to say this, but the immediate families of the miners were, in all likelihood, not getting their news from the TV circus or the newspaper accounts. If they were, then the media may have inadvertently contributed towards some of their pain. For many others, the story is like watching a reality show (or a movie even) with a lot of emotional ups and downs and an ending with a twist. For these media consumers, the value proposition may have even exceeded that which could have been possible from a pure truth based narrative.
Could it have been handled by the Press better? of-course, but that answer is true, in various degrees, of 99% of press coverage. Are the shortcomings intentional, or caused by some bias? clearly not. So let us move on to more substantive issues and stop barking up the wrong tree (says he, hopefully!:)).
For the various Editors and Publishers and other mediapersons out in force flogging this, one has a suspicion that this is an easy one to own up, appear to indulge in self-examination, and show remorse and contrition, all of which is nice to see, but one wishes that the issue involved was more substantive.
Posted by: village idiot at January 5, 2006 12:32 PM | Permalink
vi: when i spoke about 2005, i meant the big stories -- iraq, GWOT, "web 2.0", etc. i think we'll be arguing over those things just like we're still arguing over vietnam.
i agree that the 12alive/12dead story will be a footnote, except in texts for emergency communications management.
Posted by: Daniel Conover at January 5, 2006 12:41 PM | Permalink
Village. Nice to know you think it wasn't a matter of bias or deliberation.
The question is why people should believe what they read in the papers and, in that context, the reason for the mistake is utterly irrelevant.
Hmm. Contrarian thought here.
If the media made fewer boneheaded mistakes, the agenda-pushing, bias-fueled stuff would stand out in greater relief. Couldn't say, when caught, oops, we do this all the time, nothing personal.
Hmmm mmm.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 5, 2006 12:42 PM | Permalink
In the last paragraph of my post above, the opening should read, "As for the ...." instead of "For the ...."
Posted by: village idiot at January 5, 2006 12:42 PM | Permalink
Just to be clear:
Richard, are you suggesting that having sloppy non-political coverage somehow serves as a way of hiding the media's secret liberal agenda? And that our puppetmasters are somehow doing this deliberately?
Because I just want to be clear about what those "Hmmmms" meant, and whether you're just kidding (sorta).
Posted by: Daniel Conover at January 5, 2006 12:47 PM | Permalink
Dan, Now that you point out how you meant it, it is clear that I misunderstood; Sorry.
Posted by: village idiot at January 5, 2006 12:51 PM | Permalink
Village. Nice to know you think it wasn't a matter of bias or deliberation. Irrelevant.
Thanks for reinforcing my own thought. I always knew I was irrelevant. Otherwise, I would have designed the universe a bit differently; a lot less anthropic selection dependent!
Posted by: villageidiot at January 5, 2006 1:09 PM | Permalink
Occasionally Richard will observe on the news media chronic inability to get ever the simplest things right, and the total cluelessness of reporters and editors. But even that is part of devotion to a single proposition--the "agenda-pushing, bias-fueled stuff"--which is by now almost pathological. There isn't any subject but that subject. No discussion that isn't that discussion. When are participants going to figure that out? He's here for one obsessive reason. To drill "the agenda-pushing, bias-fueled stuff" into your mind because he thinks the offenders are present and he can finally get them to face it. I hate it. I have no idea how to make it stop. But I wish it would stop. Meanwhile, the rest of you should wise up.
This error was a good-faith error: Official sources were saying the miners were alive, on the record, and families were confirming they'd been told they were alive.
What would constitute "checking" or confirming" an official report followed by a clearly visible secondary impact of the alleged good news? Would a reporter be required to talk to the survivors to confirm they are alive?
This one doesn't fit into any convenient mold of sloppiness or egregiousness or recklessness, at least not the first reports. After an hour of silence, yeah, I'd get itchy, but for all I know so were the reporters on the scene. They could have been yammering away asking for more, but then at what point does the little voice inside that says "this is all wrong" convert into sending a publishable report that, indeed, this is all wrong, especially if the same official source responsible for the error is now silent? Two hours? Not bad.
The timing of this magnified its effects. Situations change all day long, and so do stories -- for a lot of east coast newspapers, the story solidified and was reported at the same time the papers went to press. Had it happened at midday instead of late at night, two things might have happened: 1. the correct information might simply have been reported in several hundred morning newspapers; 2. a sidebar on the pain caused by false official information earlier in the cycle would have been produced.
(We didn't report the wrong news, but that, again, was simply because we had the accurate news from the AP at the right time for our publication schedule.)
I'm the last guy to defend journalism as it is too often practiced today, but this incident doesn't lend itself to any pattern. At least part of the cause is architectural -- timing caused by the processes involved in producing print newspapers. That has always been a concern. And some of the criticism -- listen to yourselves, folks, you're criticizing "mainstream media" for embracing what everyone thought was good news? Yikes. I'm quite sure there are better examples around which any amount of sanctimony and indignation can be mustered.
Bill Watson
Posted by: Bill Watson at January 5, 2006 1:16 PM | Permalink
Daniel. I don't know that the mistakes are on purpose. As everybody says around here, they just happen.
The result is that the actual, purposeful trash has a bodyguard and a ready-made excuse.
Let's presume a perfect world in journalism where boneheaded errors never happen. That means the only misrepresentations that happen are deliberate.
So, when the Plame thing shakes out, the journos couldn't say, we made a mistake in thinking--innocently--that she was a covert agent.
Because mistakes don't happen.
I don't think anybody needs to decree mistakes. There are plenty without management taking an interest.
I am contemplating one possible result of a massive reduction in the number of boneheaded mistakes.
You could, if you want to continue this line of thought, insist the media never, ever misrepresent on purpose. Nobody ever inserts stuff into a soldier's column to make it look the opposite of what he said. Stuff like that doesn't happen.
Or you could go along with this and think about what would happen if the oops--we had a procedural error--excuse is obsolete because there are no more procedural errors.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 5, 2006 1:17 PM | Permalink
You just can't make this stuff up! While the NYTimes accepts no responsibility for bad reporting, today's editorial found someone to blame for the miner's deaths-----George Bush! I knew if there was any way to tie this tragedy to GWB, the Times would find a way to do it.
Additionally, they find a way to tie Sago with the "race and poverty" master narrative of Katrina, even though this angle has mostly been discredited.
The New York Times has become a cartoon. Too hilarious!
Posted by: Abigail Beecher at January 5, 2006 1:23 PM | Permalink
Don't take me, or the writers who work for me, as "a typical model for the relationship between reporter and editor."
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 5, 2006 1:25 PM | Permalink
What is most interesting to me is that all of the "mea culpas" and assorted commentary on what happened with this story is coming from the print media.
I just checked the CNN, MSNBC, and FOXNews websites, and none of them seem to acknowledge that there was any problem with their reporting.
Yet these were the people who were supposedly the one to come to for "up-to-the-minute" information --- and when information was not forthcoming from the mine company, they should have been the first to take notice....
The print media is explaining the screw up in terms of "what we did, and why we did it, and where we may have gone wrong". The cable networks are explaining it solely in terms of what the company knew, when it knew it, and when it finally released the information.
The print media is to be commended for its efforts to explain and understand "what went wrong" --- the cable channels -- not so much. Or, really, not at all.
Oops! Forgot to add the link so everyone can join the hilarity. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/05/opinion/05thu1.html?pagewanted=print
Posted by: Abigail Beecher at January 5, 2006 1:31 PM | Permalink
This must be one of my blind spots. (We all have them -- even Richard. Even Jason.)
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 5, 2006 1:38 PM | Permalink
The issue is why the press was reporting they're alive. There was no official announcement to that effect. Those who made the unofficial statements weren't questioned about how they knew. Those who saw nothing happening when something should have been happening (ambulances, etc.) did not twig.
It's not even a matter of reporting an erroneous official report without verification or caveat.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 5, 2006 1:56 PM | Permalink
Jumping off what Dan said...
I don't read my newspaper for breaking news on this kind of story. Newspapers aren't the best source for this kind of national, tumultuous story. I don't imagine there are two many newspaper readers left who don't use either radio, tv, or the net to suppliment their newspaper reading. Those other media cover this type of story much much better than the newspaper.
Dan has a good handle on what newspapers do well - a modicum of thoughtful analysis, a fairly timely product, backed up by a column of accuracy. Newspapers can afford to fail to give us indepth, contextualized coverage of a specific issue. And they can afford to be a little late on scoops like these. What they can't afford is to be wrong with any regularity. The way I see it, a lot of editors still have the wrong priorities. (I get that being scooped in the newspaper world is still an issue but I think it's got more relevency with the slow burning stories.)
Posted by: Mavis Beacon at January 5, 2006 2:08 PM | Permalink
pardon the atrocious spelling
Posted by: Mavis Beacon at January 5, 2006 2:11 PM | Permalink
So, tell me -- how is this even a press issue ??
it depends upon what you mean by "press issue"
to me, its not a "here's another chance to bash the MSM" press issue.
rather its a "chance to reflect upon the impact of technological advances on journalism" press issue, and (IHMO, most importantly) a "chance to reflect on how the ethos of the 24 hour news-o-tainment channels is being adopted by the rest of the journalistic establishment" press issue.
Good lord, Lovelady, get a clue. The press is fighting for it's life. Their approval rating is at the 28% mark. If it turns out that the NYTimes has broken laws and harmed national security, press approval will plunge into the teens.
The press has been shown, time after time, to advance false (fake but accurate) information in the quest for ratings? agenda? power? dumb, but well meaning?--- fill in the blank. The list of phoney press-generated scandals is long.
Of course, the dimwits go with "we didn't do anything wrong" and point the finger and play the blame game in order to divert attention. But the press has played that game too long and too hard. At some point the piper must be paid. Some are getting a clue, and some are Lovelady.
Posted by: Abigail Beecher at January 5, 2006 2:15 PM | Permalink
The media reported no official statement, referred to none, passed along rumors as truth. --Aubrey.
Not true, Richard.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 5, 2006 2:34 PM | Permalink
Do you believe everything you hear as long as it comes from someone with a job title longer than your bibliography? Or do you consider where he's been and whether or not he might be talking out of his *ss?
I don't think it's a reporter's role to be a rubber stamp.
If the morgue is in the hospital, the assistant secretary actually may have been correct.
Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 5, 2006 2:44 PM | Permalink
On a lighter note (the human interest side of the Pressthink community!):
The way Abigail goes at Steve, it sounds as if the two have a history. Is it just on these forums (it sounds too colorful for that), or does it extend beyond the cyberspace?:-)
Posted by: village idiot at January 5, 2006 2:48 PM | Permalink
Steve Lovelady asks: "How is this a Press Issue?
Village Idiot offered a useful insight when he reflected that the function of the Sago story was not to provide information--"the immediate families of the miners were, in all likelihood, not getting their news from the TV circus or the newspaper accounts"--but to provide drama--"a reality show (or a movie even) with a lot of emotional ups and downs and an ending with a twist."
It is undeniable that a huge component of the mix of story types that comprise the entire journalistic enterprise is the "story"--used in both its journalistic and its narrative sense--whose power is not to inform us but to move our emotions.
Damsel In Distress stories of Beautiful Missing White Women are so popular because of their emotive impact not as a social issue. Think of the frequent trope used to validate a story--that it has the same major plot line as a movie. Would the runaway bride have been such a big story if it were no labelable as the Runaway Bride? Would Farris Hassan's Baghdad adventure have been as newsworthy if it could not be tagged Farris' Day Off?
The primetime news magazines of the broadcast TV networks use the rubric of journalism to recycle non-fiction plots from soap operas and true crime confidentials.
This is how we understand why the cable news channels were staked out in West Virginia. They were not deployed as neutral observers ready to report whatever eventuality occured. They had a rooting interest in the money headline, the happy ending. It is inconceivable that they would have made the contrary mistake--erroneously trumpeting mass fatalities only to be told three hours later that the crew of miners had survived.
Technically, in journalism rules, their mistake consisted not of repeating the reports of survival, but in dropping the "reportedly." This seemingly small mistake is explained by the overarching pressure for a feelgood miracle headline.
The last time I remember the dropping of the "reportedly" so nakedly used to shoehorn the unknown events of a story into a preconceived heroic narrative was in the matter of Jessica Lynch, where the pressure yo produce an Appalachian Amazon was so intense that the facts did really get in the way.
Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at January 5, 2006 2:53 PM | Permalink
So true, vi---Lovelady done me wrong.
Posted by: Abigail Beecher at January 5, 2006 3:04 PM | Permalink
Ami. I didn't see any referral to the official statement until later.
The question is not, I repeat, the insider stuff and how the reasons can be explained are not the issues.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 5, 2006 3:32 PM | Permalink
Is there a difference between the Judy Miller defense that her official sources got it wrong on WMD and those defending their miracle stories based on official "quotes" from the wire services of AP and NYT?
"Because you see what you wanna see. And you hear what you wanna hear. Dig?" -- The Rock Man, Harry Nilsson's The Point, 1971.
Posted by: Daniel Conover at January 5, 2006 3:46 PM | Permalink
And are you saying they don't talk about it as part of the job?
And do you think none have commented that that's the difference between them and bloggers?
Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 5, 2006 3:55 PM | Permalink
Well, what I thought was interesting enough for a post is what's, er, um, in the post. Some editors think "explaining" to readers means to explain why the reporting was accurate, if unfortunate. (As in: The governor said twelve were alive and we reported in accurately.) Others try to wrestle with why the reporting was untrue, if accurate. (As in: High standards for documentation weren't met.)
Not that anyone has to discuss the post or anything.
Bad analogy; Judy Miller willfully ignored controverting evidence and cherry-picked what she told her readers. Please check this lengthy paper by David Albright
But I am sure you already knew this.
Posted by: village idiot at January 5, 2006 4:01 PM | Permalink
Well, Jay, if we're not discussing this in a large steel drum, then we have outside issues to consider.
Which implies an improvement may come?
Which, and this is what I think is most important, is most likely to keep the reader satisfied with the paper or station in question?
It doesn't really matter what journalists think of each other's excuses. It really doesn't.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 5, 2006 4:12 PM | Permalink
Gee, vi, I still think it's a great analogy.
You could, of course, try to argue that there was no controverting evidence at the mine. That the media wasn't cherrypicking the story.
You could try to explain the differences between the "not my fault, officials got it wrong" echo.
But I am sure you already knew this.
I'm just trying to figure out where you keep hearing all this self-congratulating going on. And bigshots don't count. They're in the media celebrity game, not the journalism trade. Remember the five phases of a military operation: 1. Enthusiasm; 2. Disillusionment; 3. The Search for the Guilty; 4. The Punishment of the Innocent; and 5. Praise and Honors for the Non-Participants. It applies to civilian institutions as well.
Posted by: Daniel Conover at January 5, 2006 4:26 PM | Permalink
Tragedies at Sago mine rock W.Va., world
The New York Times reported Wednesday that Joe Thornton, deputy secretary of the state Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety, told reporters shortly after midnight that the rescued miners were being examined at the mine and would soon be taken to hospitals. If this is true, West Virginians surely want to know how such a terrible mistake was made. If it's not true, then people will have less trust in the national media that parachute in during disasters.
All this insistence on holding the story until you have further independent confirmation (even if you're two minutes from deadline) would be bracing -- were it not coming from the same voices who in another context repeatedly whine that reporters don't take what officaldom says at face value, and instead try to dig deeper than the "official" explanation from a Rumsfeld or a Cheney or a Rice.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 5, 2006 4:43 PM | Permalink
Yep. Ironic, isn't it?
All these bloggers calling for the MSM to exercise greater control because of a screw-up no amount of journalistic control could have prevented.
I haven't heard any bloggers saying "You know, we need to check stuff out more before we post it."
Posted by: Daniel Conover at January 5, 2006 4:48 PM | Permalink
Steve Lovelady: The other is, if it's midnight, and the presses roll at 12:01 am, you go with what you got, however unsatisfactory or fragmentary it may be.
Funny, where is the miracle at the mine story that said, "this is unsatisfactory and fragmentary, but it's what we had when the presses rolled."
That part of the story came after the "ALIVE!" headlines, didn't it? Wouldn't want to confuse meta-reporting with strong headlines.
Abigail, Abigail, what did I do ?
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 5, 2006 4:52 PM | Permalink
Okay, Dan. You got me. Journalists don't congratulate themselves.
It only sounds like self-congratulation.
My mistake.
Anyway, as long as anybody in journalism thinks stuff should be checked out, the mine story is a failure because it was not checked out.
Steve. The difference is that in the blogosphere it works.
Posted by: RIchard Aubrey at January 5, 2006 4:53 PM | Permalink
You're dealing with press hate here, Steve and Dan. (Hatred of, that is) Expecting it to be logical--or proving it isn't--are both dubious comment acts.
I liked Andrew Tyndall's observation: "The primetime news magazines of the broadcast TV networks use the rubric of journalism to recycle non-fiction plots from soap operas and true crime confidentials."
I would add that "news" from that perspective is an attractive programming option because the production costs are born by reality, as it were. You don't have to pay a Jessica Lange or Jeff Bridges their going rates. You just film the grieving families and they get zippo. Big cost differential.
Steve. The difference is that in the blogosphere it works ....
At some blogs [like this one, for the most part] it works, Richard.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 5, 2006 5:12 PM | Permalink
Posted by: The One True b!X at January 5, 2006 5:23 PM | Permalink
That part of the story came after the "ALIVE!" headlines, didn't it? Wouldn't want to confuse.
Nope. The family celebration and ecstatic cries of 'they're alive,' came first. Live and on the air, as it were. There's plenty of time lines out there, Sisyphus. It' clear followed the families, not vice versa.
Here's the part so many here have glossed over - hell, ignored. The reporting continued. Some stayed up; others were reached hours later by editors and began making phone calls.
That's a point that the non-journalist critics don't comprehend: the news is on-going. This is especially true of breaking events, like mine disasters, hurricanes and elections. You keep reporting, adding fresh detail and correcting errors.
At the mines, three hours after the celebration, CNN got the news live - again - when a woman walked up and told Anderson Cooper the 12 were dead.
Now, key question: should he have shooed her away, not reported that bit of info and waited until he could get official confirmation?
Right, Richard?
Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 5, 2006 5:24 PM | Permalink
Sisyphus said:
You could, of course, try to argue that there was no controverting evidence at the mine. That the media wasn't cherrypicking the story.
And from page 17 first paragraph of the linked document:
The Truth Starts to Emerge
You probably have already read this and satisfied yourself that this does not meet your cherry-picking threshold. It does for me. I am posting it here so other readers can also read and come to their own conclusions.
Posted by: village idiot at January 5, 2006 5:27 PM | Permalink
vi, for some reason you think you have to prove to me that Miller was a dupe?
How does proving that Miller cherrypicked answer the question about the mine?
I understand you want to prove what I already know about Miller because it's important to you. I'll get out of your way.
Where's the argument that there was no controverting evidence at the mine? That the media wasn't cherrypicking what they were reporting from the mine?
Miller was provided controverting information which she decided to ignore in favor of a contrary narrative. That is my point. I do not see anybody did that with, for example, the information that the WV 'Official' provided to James Dao, the Times reporter. Perhaps I am missing something that you know because you still apparently think that Judy Miller and James Dao are comparable in their reporting methodology (you insist that it is a great analogy).
Posted by: village idiot at January 5, 2006 5:43 PM | Permalink
Where's the argument that there was no controverting evidence at the mine? That the media wasn't cherrypicking what they were reporting from the mine?
Maybe this is where the difference is -- I will wait till some controverting evidence comes out before I tell myself that James Dao is a dupe. Until that happens, JD has my presumption of innocence, so to speak.
Posted by: village idiot at January 5, 2006 6:00 PM | Permalink
Here's something that some people in this forum will find interesting. Vaughn Ververs at Public Eye spotted the arguable premise in this statements from Susan Glasser, 36, the new Sunday Outlook editor, just announced. She joined The Post in 1998. She was a deputy national editor and political reporter here, then to Moscow as a correspondent in 2001. In the story announcing her new job she says:
Outlook is one of the great pieces of real estate in the Sunday Washington Post, with a real storied tradition of helping shape the Washington conversation. What I would hope to do is build on that and think of lots of exciting and interesting ways to update it for an Internet era when opinions and controversy have become the currency but reasoned commentary and analysis are sometimes missing from that new digital equation."
Ververs asked me, Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine, Lost Remotes Steve Safran, and Brian Stetler of TV Newser: what did you think of Glasser's statement? First sentence of each:
Rosen: "First of all, I would love to write for 'Outlook.'...
Jarvis: "As if opinions and controversy have not always been the currency in Washington?"
Steve Safran: "Susan Glaser has a good point, and I hope she is earnest in running with it."
Brian Stetler: "I think Glasser hit the nail on the head."
Dave. You do what you want.
The question is how, after these extended chin-pullers, you're going to convince readers to trust you. You can nitpick me all you want. Think that will convince readers to trust you?
Cooper wouldn't have had to shoo the woman away if he or his minions had done the work right the first time.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 5, 2006 6:02 PM | Permalink
Here's the timeline/analogy ...
Let's start at the mine.
Suddenly the families are rejoicing and church bells are ringing. TV and press run toward the commotion. They interview family members who tell them "they're alive!"
"How do you know? Who told you?"
"Some guy came in the church and told us."
"Who? Did you recognize him?"
Hmmmm ....
Now here's where it gets strange to me. Only the AP quotes the guv' and only Dao quotes the spokesguy for WV DMAPS. Where's the Q&A: "How do you know?" "Who told you?" "Have you seen the miners?" "When will they be coming out?" "When's the press conference?" "Is this official?" etc. etc.
That's the meta-reporting that the readers don't get.
In fact, for 3 hours there was no reporting, as you point out:
You keep reporting, adding fresh detail and correcting errors.3 Hours? Where they trying to prove or disprove what they had?
If Anderson is the exemplar, the media had to be sought out. Dragged, reluctantly, back into the story - to their jobs - by a now grieving family member.
The stories were published with the fore-knowledge (that wasn't true) that all 12 miners were rescued.
Judy Miller published her stories with the fore-knowledge (from reporting as far back as 1998) that WMD would be found. She wasn't interested in disproving it. She wanted to celebrate with the officials that would be proved right ... and then weren't.
It took, what, the Kay Report?, to drag Miller back to the story. But she wasn't wrong, because her officials were wrong and that makes her accurate.
Judy Miller, like I said in my original post, wilfully disregarded controverting evidence that was available to her, which could have informed her readers immensely.
On the other hand, the worst accusation that you can sustain against James Dao is of laziness.
I do not see how both are the same.
Posted by: village idiot at January 5, 2006 6:30 PM | Permalink
vi, OK, call it a failed best try. I liked this from b!X:
Update: Also over on CNN, suddenly one of their on-the-spot reporters is recalling all of these details of things that seemed off or not right in the period after she and everyone else parroted the news of survival.
Shorter Susan Glazer...
You're still going to be subjected to the same inside the Beltway convention wisdom from tired bloviators like Broder, Hoagland, Will, and Cohen--- BUT we'll add a Peter Daou-type column TOO!
If there is one aspect of traditional newspapers I'd like to see the blogs destroy, its the "institutional op-ed columnist". Maybe they served a purpose, back in the day when nobody else had access to, and the time to read, all the major dailies, newsweeklies, and monthly publications, and distill the conventional wisdom derived from those various publications for our consumption two or three times a week.
But the Broders, Friedman's, Wills, and Brooks of the world no longer fill a function in a world where the news is a 24/7 product being consumed by the masses, and we have more choices of informed, opinionated people who aren't (at least not yet) consumed with their own sense of self-importance.
If Glazer wants to improve Outlook, dump the stable of columnists that she has now, and start looking for new voices --- people who not only think, but write well --- and don't give a damn if their opinions mean that they don't get invited to the next Georgetown cocktail-weenie festival.
I'm with Steve in one sense. The "press" part of what happened in West Virginia is of minor importance compared to the rest, and there isn't much here that's malpractice. In that sense it's of small moment.
But Steve. You are making too much of a single (true) fact: if the "announcement" of 12 men alive had been made two, three hours later, no wrong headlines would have been seen, and we wouldn't be talking about this. That's correct, but put that aside for a moment...
Here we have an event where the explanations that journalists give to themselves (what satisifes them as "the reason this happened") communicate very powerfully and intimately to the audience because the event also happened to them. They will remember it for a very long time, and talk about it. So will history, whatever that is.
First the audience got taken to miracle land. Then the audience learned it was all wrong, and the men were dead. So when journalists explain how the news was made, how it broke down, what the procedures at 2 am are, they are, in this case, also explaining a very jolting experience to the people who are supposed to trust in that experience next time the news is consulted.
It's a choice, but I think a critically important one, and it is the better part of wisdom, to speak in a moral voice about being wrong like that-- not a "shit happens" or a "gimme a break" or a "I don't see any violation of our procedures" voice.
Moral doesn't mean moralizing or sky-is-falling. A moral voice need not blow the events out of proportion, either. It not only accepts that the story was wrong but that a wrong was done. The paper is responsible for everything in the paper" would be speaking in a moral voice, in my sense of it.
The header to this post tries, in fact, to "shrink" the event. I'm not making a scandal, I am focusing a lens by looking at the explanations that were offered by American editors.
Explaining what happened, some editors primarily addressed themselves to people's experience (this, I've said, forces them to speak in a moral voice) while others talked of professional standards, rituals and routines. They were treating the journalist's experience as primary. But under conditions of such intimacy ("we lived the wrong information you gave us...") that discourse is not up to its task. This, then, is how the post tells wrong from right.
Not a big scandal, or the "top" story. Nor is it a small event, just the music of chance absurdly amplified. This one happens to lie very near the center of the trust transaction in journalism, and so one is foolish to be its minimizer.
Jay Rosen,
I believe Andrew Heyward was onto this, and that's why he agreed to write his PressThink post. His solution is the wise one: reduce the harm from each error and each slippage from the objective news ideal by reducing the majesty of your claim to know.Does that play a role here as well? Not just reactive damage control with a moral voice, but proactive damage control with a humble one.
"You're dealing with press hate here, Steve and Dan. (Hatred of, that is) Expecting it to be logical--or proving it isn't--are both dubious comment acts." -- Jay.
This would be good. It might bleed off the moonbats from Press Think.
The first thing I would hope for from Press Hate is evidence for Richard's bald assertion that readers of the Dallas Morning News do not trust Dave McLemore. (It can't be anyone else who doesn't trust him, since in fact it is the the Dallas Morning News that McLemore works for, not CNN or the New York Times or anyone else.)
That one -- McLemore = not to be trusted -- was certainly an eye-opener for me.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 5, 2006 7:41 PM | Permalink
Well, I think I'll just go outside for a breath of fresh air...
Ami said:
If there is one aspect of traditional newspapers I'd like to see the blogs destroy, its the "institutional op-ed columnist".
You are in luck. The institutional op-ed columnist looks to be the most likely first-casualty of the blogs. The op-eds, because of some phantom code of civility that newspapers still try to abide by, are unable to provide the red meat that the majority of blog readers are after these days. So the choices are: 1) to take the path of a Mr. Limbaugh, or 2) to find something more worthwhile to do. To the extent that some of them are willing to choose 1, they will find the blog a less restrictive platform (not to be burdened with fact-checking has got to be a very liberating experience).
So my sense is that we will see some of these pundits get out of journalism (there are a few spots available at the various think-tanks for the fleet-footed) and the others will either set up their own blogs, or be drawn to an existing one that caters to their kind of groupthink.
Posted by: village idiot at January 5, 2006 7:54 PM | Permalink
Jay, I agree.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 5, 2006 7:59 PM | Permalink
I have no idea whether Dave's readers trust him. Maybe they want the Victoria's Secrets ads, or the betting line for the dog races someplace.
I have no idea.
My point is that journalists telling other journalists that they didn't screw up that badly isn't likely to impress readers who saw them screw up.
Is this such a difficult concept?
I will say, as a matter of full disclosure, that a reporter screwed up through the j-school issue of incompetence and laziness and made my daughter look foolish regarding a serious issue of public health in a report that went on to AP. There was no correction, but there was a rowback much later which corrected very little--as is the goal of a rowback.
Now, is there a codicil to the First Amendment that says I have to bend over and say, "Thank you sir. Please do it again. I really don't mind. In fact, it never happened."
Get back to me when you find it.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 5, 2006 8:26 PM | Permalink
Okay, so it's press hate-- with an explanation.
B!x: your piece is good.
Sisyphus: I would say yes, to your question. CNN could have done itself a favor by asking itself: what do we not know? and emphasizing--even if it's just in the control room--how blind its reporters actually were.
Jay and Company,
As the defenders of the current regime love to point out, why try to put the media in charge of policy issues when we have elected officials carrying responsibility for those policy areas? Surely part of the news on this story is whether or not the officials we have elected, and the people our elected officials have (often dubiously) appointed, have been doing the job they were elected to do.
How many major American papers reported the story of coal mining safety regulation today as context or even potentially direct cause of the deaths? Could responsible journalism actually avoid raising the issue of what caused the deaths when they may very well have been entirely preventable?
NY Times: Company Owner Says Cost-cutting Didn't Lead to Mine Explosion
Wa Po: Mine Safety.
Q and A on general conditions of coal mining with no specific information on the company, mine, and administration in question.
Chicago Tribune: Nothing concerning the mining fatality story on the website that I can find.
L.A. Times: Ill-fated Miners Fought to Survive After Explosion
Discusses forthcoming government investigations of the issue.
Were today's deaths of the 12 coal miners preventable?
Last year, the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration filed 200 alleged violations against the Sago mine. 46 citations were issued in the past three months - 18 of them were considered "serious and substantial...Sago mine was forced to suspend operations 16 times in 2005 after failing to comply with safety rules. The violations found at Sago included mine roofs that collapsed without warning, faulty tunnel supports and a dangerous build-up of flammable coal dust. But the fines that the company were required to pay were extremely low, most of them $250 or $60 dollars. Government documents also show a high rate of accidents at Sago. 42 workers and contractors have been injured in accidents since 2000 and the average number of working days lost because of accidents in the past five years was nearly double the national average for underground coal mines.
What do we think of these respective treatments as examples of news judgment and editorial decision-making?
The standard human interest approach (12 Miners Die in Accident, How Sad) actively erases obvious and newsworthy issues we can actually do something about as a democratic society.
Alternative, non-human interest directed news questions we could ask about the mining deaths last night and today include:
How seriously has the US coal mining industry been taking safety issues and how has government oversight under the Bush administration been performing in upholding previously designed strategies that have been proven successful in the past for preventing such deaths? Were the companies and the Bush admininistration doing everything they could, everything they reasonably should have, or not? Were private corporations recklessly endangering lives or not? Were elected officials charged with supervising working conditions doing their job or not? Are the laws that define their job adequate or not?
This issue calls for more reporting but so far it looks like we have at least three basic narrative options newspapers could choose to go with:
Possible narrative number one: not only has the coal mining industry and the company in question not done everything it could, or even what it could be reasonably expected to do, it was probably an active cause of the deaths. The company was cited for dozens of safety violations that they never bothered to fix over a period of years. If their negligence is proven to be a direct cause of the miners' deaths, a corporation that kills people should be held accountable. How many newspapers are asking AND REPORTING ON this question? The corruption of the coal mining industry in itself is a failing of contemporary American morality that considers profits more important than lives.
Possible narrative number three:
(Of course it is possible many people voted for the Bush administration precisely so they would gut and obstruct labor safety enforcement. It is even possible that any such action that didn't bother to change the laws they are legally required to enforce under current law would be an impeachable offense. That would be a different post and a somewhat different topic.)
Posted by: Mark Anderson at January 5, 2006 9:13 PM | Permalink
Dave .... The question is how ... you're going to convince readers to trust you. You can nitpick me all you want. Think that will convince readers to trust you?
I have no idea whether Dave's readers trust him.
Well, that's a little bit of progress. It seems McLemore is temporarily off the hook.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 5, 2006 9:13 PM | Permalink
Well, I think I'll just go outside for a breath of fresh air...
Tim --
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 5, 2006 9:28 PM | Permalink
Time Warp:
Posted by: Mark Anderson at January 5, 2006 9:33 PM | Permalink
Felt good.
To be clear, I wasn't trying to compare Miller and Dao. I was trying to compare Miller and the editors in Jay's essay that got the "Wrong:" category.
I probably should have made that clear to vi and stayed closer to that track.
I don't like being called a press hater or bias ranter. It happens sometimes.
I do expect that Jay will let me know if I cross that line. Otherwise, my interest is contributing to PressThink, not detracting from it, and learning while I'm here.
Learning. That's what makes PressThink special in my view.
really, tim, do you work hard at turning everything into black/white simplicities? Or it just an art?
On the CNN tape I watched, people ran up to the reporters, screaming, 'they're alive. Twelve are alive." When the reporters asked how they knew, they were told a 'company guy' told them at the church.
This was literally two minutes before 12 in West Virginia. By deadline a few minutes later, print and tv reporters were able to quote, by name, state officials who confirmed the 'miracle.'
What they did for every minute of nearly the next three hours, I can't say. Check notes. Confer with editors about the folo up. call home. get a drink. All of the above.
But at some point, about three hours later, the company men came out, went public and said 12 were dead. Which prompted another round of reporting, trying to get the updated info in the few papers that hadn''t run off the presses.
What was Anderson Cooper doing three hours after the news broke? As best I could tell, he was doing what Anderson Cooper does: emoting and rambling on about the joy of the moment. Which is when the woman walked up.
Who said Cooper was an exemplar? Or that the media had to be 'dragged, reluctantly, back into the story? That's your creation, Tim, sorely at odds with the facts. Your choice, I suppose.
But this - "The stories were published with the fore-knowledge (that wasn't true) that all 12 miners were rescued." I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying the reporters had foreknowledge the story wasn't true? I hope not.
The foreknowledge was that they were alive. It sadly turned out to be false because the people with the knowledge, the mine execs, refuseds to come forward and tell the families or the media.
As for trust and my relative value, steve, I'd say I'm always going to run a distant third behind the Cowboy scores and the comics. Humility goes with working on a product that lines recycling bin the next day.
Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 5, 2006 9:53 PM | Permalink
OK, I think I need that fresh air, now.
Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 5, 2006 10:03 PM | Permalink
really, tim, do you work hard at turning everything into black/white simplicities? Or it just an art?
Let's call it a gift. Althought black/white simplicities is your creation, not mine.
By deadline a few minutes later, print and tv reporters were able to quote, by name, state officials who confirmed the 'miracle.'
Here's Dao:
Within minutes, the church bell began ringing, and town members flocked to the church to join the celebration. Gov. Joe Manchin III, who was in the church, was swept up in the wave of euphoria.Interestingly, no mention of Joe Thornton. He's probably not talking.
Who said Cooper was an exemplar?
Uh, you?
Are you saying the reporters had foreknowledge the story wasn't true?
No, I'm saying that at midnight the presses ran with a story that would be true (but then wasn't), rather than a story that reflected what little they knew to be true.
OK. that clarifies things a little.
But Tim, my reference to Anderson was, at best, an example to make a point. I decidedly do not see him as an exemplar, i.e., one that is worthy of imitation.
Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 5, 2006 10:45 PM | Permalink
Tim, I don't consider you a press hater.
Joe Strupp and Greg Mitchell in Editor & Publisher:
Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 5, 2006 10:50 PM | Permalink
You can call me a big meanie, or whatever you wish.
There is very little--perhaps none--attention paid to the question of what does this mean in terms of public regard for the media.
IMO, this is the question. It is not answered by snarking at me, or swapping reasons that not verifying is just dandy.
However, if the question makes you uncomfortable, as it should, you can distract yourselves by railing at the lower orders who don't understand your business.
It would be one thing if it were only one thing.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 5, 2006 11:30 PM | Permalink
This is the most pointless thread I've seen in what has become, sadly, a pointless Web site, wallowing in -- uh, I can't even describe it.
Y'all have fun now.
Posted by: Dexter Westbrook at January 6, 2006 12:21 AM | Permalink
Jumping here late ... I'm with Steve with this comment issue. Many blogs are echo chambers.
Posted by: bush's jaw at January 6, 2006 12:26 AM | Permalink
1. Enthusiasm; 2. Disillusionment; 3. The Search for the Guilty; 4. The Punishment of the Innocent; and 5. Praise and Honors for the Non-Participants.
I have the same list for IS projects except I insert between 2 and 3 a 'Panic" phase. This is the phase where you realize that everything cannot get done in the timeframe required and decisions have to be made. These are usually the decisions everyone second guesses later.
You are right it works everywhere. This event is a good example where the media did its best under extreme time contraints. It is in the final 4 phases that many of us are concerned about, and where the real damage is done.
Re, Mark Anderson's "possible narratives:"
Here's a fourth "possible narrative."
Someone over at the New York Times joins those of us in the "reality-based community" and actually DOES THEIR JOB and looks up the numbers of mine fatalities nationwide compared to those numbers over the last decade, and provides a sober analysis of the trends:
Number of mine deaths per year:
1995: 47
So here's the REAL narrative: The numbers show pretty clearly that mine fatalities actually declined consistently and substantially after the Bush Administration took over federal mine enforcement. (The New York Times has soiled itself once again.)
What's distressing - or OUGHT to be distressing - is that your own set of assumptions had blinded you to the possibility that the Bush Administration had actually been effective in reducing the number of mine fatalities.
And this is how media bias really works. It's not a conscious thing. The reporter, who lives in an echo chamber of like-minded people who share the same basic assumptions he does, starts with a basic meta-narrative: The Bush Administration is pro-business. Therefore the Bush Administration doesn't care about workers. And then he writes the story based on those basic assumptions.
Since the editor lives in the same echo chamber, it never even occurs to the editor to consider whether those assumptions are actually warranted. So it passes three or four rounds of editors and similarly like-minded fact checkers. And because of the lack of diversity of intellect at the Times, their cogitively inbred staff soils itself again, blaming the Bush Administration for compromising mine safety by appointing people from the mine industry to the Mine Safety Administration (As opposed to, say, the Clinton Administration's enlightened system of appointing trial lawyers or people from some other randomly selected industry to oversee safety in an industry they don't understand.
And you fell into the same trap.
Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 6, 2006 9:57 AM | Permalink
There is now a part II to this post, based on this comment on mine. To which Lovelady said: "Jay, I agree. If you doubt it, see Beckerman's second piece, on CJR Daily today."
The Beckerman piece makes a similar argument to my post (except that he singled out Len Downie, and deservedly so.) But I could have sworn, Steve, that you said a while back in this thread that you didn't see why this event was post-worthy at PressThink. I was trying to explain why it was.
Meanwhile, Beckerman might have included the words of Anderson Cooper at CNN: "For those of us in the media, I'm not sure what we could have done to keep this news from spreading like it did. When you have the governor of the state giving you the thumbs-up, a congresswoman talking about this on air, hundreds of relatives and family members jubilant, some of who received calls from mining officials, it's tough to ignore what they're saying."
Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 6, 2006 10:03 AM | Permalink
There is very little--perhaps none--attention paid to the question of what does this mean in terms of public regard for the media.Richard and I obviously disagree on fundamental points, but on a practical level this is clearly an important question.
I'm not arguing against his question, but against simple conclusions (You got this wrong = you're irresponsible and stupid) and simple solutions (Don't report until you "know all the facts") to incredibly complex problems.
I'm still not sure what Jay's "moral voice" idea means or how it would work out in practical terms. I do know that I skim over variations on The paper is responsible for everything in the paper" statement, because it's often just a rheorical device like politicians saying "I take responsibility" when the clear message of their speech is "but it's not my fault."
I think the long-term answer to trust is to try to say what you really think (easier than it sounds), and I think what most of us in the business really think about this event boils down to something like:
"We feel horrible about it; the system we all operate under right now makes moments like this inevitable; we're not capable of talking about that complexity candidly because we think our critics (not to mention our competing media and our in-house rivals) will take such statements out of context and use them against us; so let's make some gestures that will control the damage to our reputation and try to move on."
That's damage-control-think, not get-to-the-root-of-the-problem-think. And the root of the problem is that too many of the people making decisions at news organizations don't want to think about the implications of instant global mass-broadcast-networked, 24-hour media. They think it's all egghead bullshit. Executives want practical answers, spreadsheets. Not navel-gazing.
And they're right when they say that raising all these issues sounds like evasion. It does sound like evasion. Which is why these issues don't get discussed in public and why so many of the proposed solutions propose solving the wrong problems.
Posted by: Daniel Conover at January 6, 2006 10:06 AM | Permalink
Daniel. I would think it's practical. The question is whether the people presently paying your salaries by subscribing and putatively looking at the ads might just stop.
Anybody got any observations on Jason's last post?
Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 6, 2006 10:58 AM | Permalink
But I could have sworn, Steve, that you said a while back in this thread that you didn't see why this event was post-worthy at PressThink. -- Jay
I did say that, Jay.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 6, 2006 11:02 AM | Permalink
My comment would be that stories citing how many violations the W. Virgina mine had that suggest the Bush Administration has grown lax, but which don't include the facts about declining deaths would be incomplete and a critic like Jason would have a legitimate beef about the missing information. And stories that noted the decline in fatalities from 2000 that didn't note there was decline from 95 to 2000, as well, would also be incomplete.
Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 6, 2006 11:14 AM | Permalink
That's a great list, Tim. And uncannily accurate.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 6, 2006 11:24 AM | Permalink
Ref. Mine citations:
When I was in the Army, one of the thorns in the commander's side was the Command Maintenance Management Inspection, the moronic CMMI.
Cites were divided into two kinds, major and minor. Major would be...this truck doesn't run. Minor would be--this truck's canvas has a rip.
While the partisan value of the cite total at this mine is obvious, the actual information is not.
It remains to be seen--snork--how it will be reported.
Posted by: RIchard Aubrey at January 6, 2006 11:31 AM | Permalink
Steve you have a typo, Panic comes after Disillusionment ;).
Off topic, but Powerline is noting that it is, indeed, a federal crime simply to publish classified information related to US signal intelligence activities.
I had alluded to this in referring to White's separate opinion in the Pentagon Papers case, in noting that White said the government could bring a criminal case against the NY Times for possession of classified documents. I hadn't noticed that it was a crime to publish, even without unauthorized possession of documents.
That would explain why the NY Times has clammed up - the Times itself violated the law.
Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 6, 2006 11:46 AM | Permalink
Saying I'm a press hater is like saying someone who is trying, unsuccessfully, to get a veterinarian to cure his pet's ringworm is a dog hater.
Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 6, 2006 11:49 AM | Permalink
First of all, if American corporations actually took care to protect their workers, there would be no need for any US administration to regulate worker safety. Let's not forget to put the primary blame where it belongs: on corporations that recklessly endanger their employees.
For the NYTimes or Jason Van Steenwyk to actually arrive at persuasive conclusions regarding the government's role in this story, they would have to take at least two more steps:
1) Translate the number of injured miners into a percentage of the mining work force. Fewer injuries in a work force that is much smaller is not necessarily an improvement in safety standards. It can easily be the reverse.
2) Account for administration resolve in enforcing the law. It is entirely possible that either the Clinton or the Bush administrations were falling down on enforcement but the corporate sector was doing better, or sheer chance happened to fall in one direction for a limited period of time. Variation within a very small range is not indicative of much.
The Democracy Now story yesterday included the firsthand account of a man who worked for FMSHA who was investigating a mining disaster that occurred during the late Clinton administration who had political appointees of the Bush administration actively obstruct his work when they took office and demand that ongoing investigations of labor law violations be halted, that labor law not be enforced, and a report exonerating the corporation in question be written in administration enforced ignorance of the facts.
On top of that, Bush's FMSHA changed government policy from one of issuing citations and demanding compliance as the law requires, to one of passively requesting corporate compliance and refusing to use the legal authority already at their disposal to bring about compliance.
These last two points empirically establish FMSHA's active opposition to enforcing the laws on the books under the Bush administration.
How should we describe attempts to give an administration that actively opposes labor safety enforcement credit for successful safety regulation? Truthful is not the first word that springs to my mind. Reliably contributing to my safety in the workplace would not be near the top of the list. Actively helping the Bush administration endanger Americans would come closer to the evidence at hand.
Numerical trends in fatalities in a shrinking work force are irrelevant to the fact that we have first person testimony establishing the Bush administration's active opposition to enforcing current mine safety laws and regulations. Jason Van Steenwyk's lack of interest in this aspect of the case suggests a lack of interest in what is actually happening.
A few days ago, a prominent media figure was suggesting that given how many more employees than managers there are in the American newspaper marketplace, perhaps major American papers could improve their falling circulation by running regular labor sections in their newspapers to help balance the predictably management-oriented coverage they regularly run in the business sections. That would go a long way toward balancing out the egregiously pro-management coverage our current press models leave us with. In that case, celebrations of lower inflation on the business page would be balanced out by lamentations stagnant wages and increased health insurance co-pays, celebrations of increased business profitability over the last twenty years would be balanced out by investigations into where those profits are going and why that is a good thing given that they clearly have no connection whatever to the standard of living of most Americans.
Posted by: Mark Anderson at January 6, 2006 12:15 PM | Permalink
To me, there are two separate issues:
1) The initial reporting that the miners were alive. I don't really fault any of the major media for reporting it -- they did have "reliable" sources who apparently cofirmed the reports (although the Governor is now saying that his "confirmation was "Miracles do happen", and trying to cast it as not a confirmation), the bells were ringing, people were celebrating, and no one was questioning anything.
2) The failure of the media to recognise that there was something wrong for three hours is a different kettle of fish. Either the reporters weren't asking the questions that one would ordinarily ask in this kind of situation, or they weren't "putting the pieces together" as the hours passed and the expected answers weren't provided.
on another note, I found Cooper's excuses distressingly disingenuous, especially this one
Everyone we talked to last night and early this morning, we quizzed them. Who did you hear this from? Where were you?
Cooper wasn't asking these questions to verify the sourcing of the report -- he was asking these questions for their "human drama narrative" value. (i.e. the facts had been established, and Cooper was going for the "story" of how people reacted to the facts, like someone asking the question "Where were you on V-E day? How did you hear about it? How did you feel?")
Bring back Aaron Brown!
Those folks at Powerline, they are losing their touch. They used to be a lot quicker;-)
Posted by: village idiot at January 6, 2006 12:22 PM | Permalink
Good piece, Jay. I wrote up this column for BlogCritics on how I expect - rightlyit turns out - people would say this was the media's error when I think blame falls with the coal mining company being slow to replace bad info with right info.
Posted by: Scott Butki at January 6, 2006 12:31 PM | Permalink
people would say this was the media's error when I think blame falls with the coal mining company being slow to replace bad info with right info.
Scott, media critics are rightfully examining what the media did, and did not do, in reporting a false story as true for three full hours. There is no disagreement (as far as I know) that the mining company failed, and failed miserably, to do what it should have done. But many of us think that this was a story about "the dog that didn't bark", i.e. that the absense of anything coming from the company to cofirm the story for hours was significant in and of itself, and was something that a "good reporter" would have caught.
Ami has identified a most unfortunate trope in current television journalism.
"How do you feel about this" does not rank as the final follow-up question after all the who-what-when-whys... have been successfully accounted for.
Catch any of the television morning programs and you will see the search for an emotional response rise to the top of the pecking order. Under this system of journalism, a successful interview is one that elicits emotional affect--preferably tears--not information.
Richard Aubrey concentrates his energy worrying about the lack of veracity in the information he sees in newscasts. I think Ami's criticism is more to the point--facts are devalued at the expense of emotions, not at the expense of falsehoods.
It is Katie Couric's supreme skill at human interest reporting--which reached its peak in her emotional interviews in the wake of the Columbine HS shooting--that underlies the unease among lovers of serious journalism about the possibility of her taking the anchor's chair at the CBS Evening News. It is not that she is not up to the task of hard-news journalism, it is that she is so adept at the emotional journalism too.
Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at January 6, 2006 12:50 PM | Permalink
There was a thread of a part of this story that was discussed briefly but not followed up when Jay mentioned that the "story had moved to the church" according to the cable guys and national print people.
Why was cable news in West Viriginia at all? Why was this a "national" story? Why was this breaking news at 12 midnight when realistically its a sad (or happy) story that mostly effects a local community? Why did Anderson Cooper have to be in W. Virginia to report on this story? Why did CNN have to go live with their information?
Maybe I'm lapsing into my Advanced Communication theory McCombs & Shaw studies about Agenda-setting, but seriously...why do *I* a non-coal miner, a non-West Viginian care about 13 miners trapped in a mine? What is the national angle on this story? Of course I care now because we have Anderson Cooper and CNN turning this into a reality-tv soap opera. "media may not be successful... in telling people what to think, but it stunningly successful in telling people what to think about." So the cable news is telling me, at midnight YOU REALLY NEED TO WORRY ABOUT THESE MINERS. THIS IS GOOD DRAMA HERE. So now here I am, worrying about them. Worrying about their fates.
I do wonder if their was national interest in the story due to residual memory about another trapped-miners-found-alive in Pennsylvania from last year. None of the West Virginia stories reference that incident directly, but I can't help but wonder if the shadow of that happy story is the root cause why there was a media blitz in W. Virginia.
Isn't there some kind of joke about organizations that have a speculatur fuck-up but then say their system worked perfectly...so the fuck-up really mustn't have happened?
There's a echo of New Orleans reporting problems ("rapes...robberies...snipers shooting at helicopters") that is the same problem that happened in W. Virginia. The difference between New Orleans and W. Virginia is that W. Virginia's mistakes were corrected quickly because they were obvious. New Orleans' reporting mistakes probably did cause some real world delays in aid, lasting impressions about black people and chaos, and probably contributed to what happened with the city of Gretna not wanting anyone to cross their bridge.
Posted by: catrina at January 6, 2006 12:52 PM | Permalink
I can't take credit for the phrase "Press Hate," Jayson. It was coined by Jay to admonish Dan and I for fruitlessly trying to reason with Richard -- I just happily appropriated it.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 6, 2006 1:02 PM | Permalink
Deadlines are a key part of any excuse.
At some point, youve got to print a paper, he said. I dont know what else you can do.
Well, I think he DOES know what else you can do, and I think it will happen soon. We will stop printing papers.
Picking an arbitrary point in the news cycle to call everything to a halt, and going through the expensive, cumbersome process of delivering a physical "snapshot" of the day's news will soon seem unreasonable and, more important, unprofitable.
Posted by: Greg at January 6, 2006 1:22 PM | Permalink
apropos of nothing...
Kos is trying to "retire" the term MSM, and replace it with "traditional media"...
key points:
Kos thinks that the term MSM marginalizes bloggers like himself, who are more widely read than all but four news dailies (I'm assuming he is referring to the "dead tree" circulation numbers)
He sees MSM as having "negative connotations and "traditional media" as being "politically neutral.
PS... just bringing this to people's attention, especially those in Jay's audience among the mainstr...uh, traditional media who might not otherwise find out right away. Lets not discuss this hear, because its off topic -- If Jay thinks its worth discussing, he can always make it a thread topic, and its his blog!
The US Department of Justice filed an injunction against the New York Times to prevent it from continuing to publish the Pentagon Papers series. The Times ultimately prevailed after several rounds of judicial proceedings. It was established that the purposes of truth and democracy served by their exposure of government betrayal of the American people outweighed the significance of violating anti-democratic security state laws in a way that did not endanger the country. This is how the attempted injunction against the New York Times to cease publication of the Pentagon Papers went down legally:
Anthony Lewis,
The courts were another institution changed by the Pentagon Papers. Judges tend to defer to executive officials on issues of national security, explaining that they themselves lack necessary expertise. But here, in a case involving thousands of pages of top secret documents, they said no to hyperbolic government claims of damage that would be done if the newspapers were allowed to go on publishing soldiers' lives lost, alliances damaged. The government's request for an injunction against publication was turned down by a federal trial judge in New York, by a trial judge and the Court of Appeals in Washington in the Washington Post case, and finally by the Supreme Court. Floyd Abrams, one of the assisting lawyers who went on from the Times case to become a leading First Amendment lawyer, has said that "the enduring lesson of the Pentagon Papers case...is the need for the greatest caution and dubiety by the judiciary in accepting representations by the government as to the likelihood of harm."...The Supreme Court decided the cases on June 30: just fifteen days after the litigation began in Judge Gurfein's courtroom. It was not, as often assumed, a clear victory for the First Amendment. Justices Hugo L. Black and William O. Douglas took a seemingly absolute view that the First Amendment bars injunctions against the press. Justice William J. Brennan Jr. said only proof that publication "must inevitably, directly and immediately" have disastrous consequences could justify even an interim restraining order. Justice Thurgood Marshall agreed with Bickel that there was no statute authorizing this kind of injunction and said it was up to Congress, not the courts, to decide whether there should be one. That was four votes for the newspapers. Justices Stewart and Byron White said they were convinced that some items in the Pentagon Papers raised the possibility of danger to the national security. But the First Amendment had been interpreted to disfavor prior restraintsinjunctions and there was no showing here, as Justice Stewart put it, of likely "direct, immediate, and irreparable damage to our nation or its people." Justice White added that a criminal prosecution would face a less demanding constitutional testvirtually inviting one, to the distress of the newspapers. The importance of the 6-to-3 vote for the newspapers, for all its diverse bases, is clear if one considers what a Supreme Court judgment enjoining further publication would have done to judicial and press attitudes in the following years.
Whistle-blowing statutes were Congress' attempt to insure that defending democracy from state bureaucratic privilege wouldn't necessarily cost good citizens their jobs or millions of dollars in legal fees. The Bush administration has argued against whistle-blowers' rights before the US Supreme Court. (http://www.whistleblowers.org/) The Bush administration wants defense of democracy against state and corporate bureaucratic privilege to invariably cost good citizens their jobs and millions of dollars in legal fees.
If defending the directives of our anti-democratic security state (and the privilege of information known only to state bureaucrats for decades) is our only and ultimate standard of justice, the US is in trouble and the constitution is reduced to a crumbly, old piece of toilet paper. A Roberts/Alito/Scalia Supreme Court would make such a scenario a near certainty.
Can any defenders of the Bush/Yoo security monarchy answer Atrios' question regarding how exposing that Bush has been wire-tapping illegally rather than legally endangers US security? Or my question about what extra level of security dictatorial power brings with it aside from security against democratic oversight of the executive branch? It's not exactly a news flash that the US government would be trying to keep terror suspects under surveillance.
Just as active fear-mongering is not a sign of strength and courage, defense of dictatorial power is not a defense of democracy or constitutional rights. PressThink that doesn't understand that distinction fails democracy and its readers.
Posted by: Mark Anderson at January 6, 2006 2:04 PM | Permalink
To carry the analogy you misread even further, the room in which Fido is locked is too often a hall of mirrors - an echo chamber - and poor ringworm-ridden Fido, despite the physical evidence of big worm-infested turd (Sago) after turd (Katrina) after turd (Jayson Blair) after turd (Rathergate) after turd (The noncoverage of Air America's scandals) after turd (Misrepresenting Corporal Starr) after turd (Murtha's a hawk?) after turd (Every reference to terrorists as "rebels") after turd (There were no WMDs in Iraq) after turd (The Sixteen Words) after turd (There are 300,000 homeless veterans living on the streets!) after turd (every "top safe stocks/funds you can buy this year" magazine story ever published) after worm-infested Dewey Defeats Truman turd, poor Fido still has no idea he's even sick.
He thinks worms in turds are "part of the process."
Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 6, 2006 2:05 PM | Permalink
Wow Jay, the Washingtonpost.com people didn't even allow you to "sign off" personally and say "thanks this was wonderful, good questions, etc."
Posted by: catrina at January 6, 2006 2:23 PM | Permalink
the problem with Jason's "dog locked in a room" analogy is that people like me could site even more "turds" showing "bad reporting" that was biased toward the Bush administration....
....and all we would really wind up with is a room full of crap in which the dog has suffocated.
By pointing out every mistake the press has made since the beginning of time you are making the same mistake you are accusing the press of making.
The constant harping of one side of the issue is having an effect of others perception of your intent. I am not saying that you are not trying to make the press better, I am saying that you seem to be a "press hater" in your selection of examples. I could accuse the "press" of the same thing in their selection of issues and examples.
In both cases I want to point out your effect on others, not your actions.
Dan had it right when he worried that the explanations that the press has about the miners situation sounded like excuses. Jason your diatribe sounds like "press hating" whether you mean it or not.
hey, ami, I beat Kos to that punch by nearly a year.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 6, 2006 2:28 PM | Permalink
Actually, Tim, it's not since the beginning of time. It's in the last couple of years. That boils down the stew considerably.
As I say, total up the turds Jason mentioned and then wonder what the public thinks.
On account of I don't see much on this subject, let me try again.
You--journo, whomever you are--overhear a knuckle-dragging subhuman, otherwise known as a human being who does not have a j degree, who says, apropos of the mine disaster,"The effers got it wrong!!!"
Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 6, 2006 2:56 PM | Permalink
With reluctance, I wade into this ....
The diehards on this forum don't appear to be open to your subtle suggestions of press arrogance and irresponsibility; Shame on them. Freedom is not free and they don't deserve to be free. I would counsel a more direct and hands-on approach: Wouldn't it be far easier, since you so eloquently argue that the press is culpable and enjoys no special constitutional protections, to just go ahead and sue the Times, if only to make an example of it? You seem to be able to effortlessly muster so many instances of press wrongdoing that it should be pretty easy to prevail in a court of law in some of them, atleast. You would be doing yeoman's service in support of Mr. Bush's GWOT (Hell, the Justice department may even file an amicus brief in your support). If money is an issue, I am sure there will be many that will happily contribute if you start a donation drive for the purpose (may I suggest a 'Donate - Together we can get the Times' button on Powerline?). You would have struck an unprecedented blow for all like-minded folk and changed forever the face of the fourth estate. Doesn't that idea appeal to you? think about it:)
Posted by: village idiot at January 6, 2006 3:03 PM | Permalink
Village: You a journalist, by any chance?
How does your post further anything?
Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 6, 2006 3:10 PM | Permalink
Village Idiot,
Your example should be more informative than sarcasm. If we are seeing some of the media saying that "I am not seeing any obvious missteps" after printing this kind if misleading headline, then something is seriously wrong in that media organization.
Apparently, their processes and procedures do not prevent or allow for correction this type of misstep. I am allowing for this to happen given the timing, but not to correct it is inexcusable.
The question remains, how do they "pay" for their problems or even evaluate whether they are any good at what they do?
I am trying to keep this informative conversation civil and constructive.
Sorry to post something so irrelevant, Richard. Lacking axes to grind, I sometimes ramble. I may even have become too big for my britches, but being a vain creature, I always attributed it to the beer.
Posted by: village idiot at January 6, 2006 3:18 PM | Permalink
Go on, Tim; nary a peep from me. The conversation has become too original and deep for me. I will hold my horses till the discourse gets back down to a humbler level. Sorry for the rude intrusion.
Posted by: village idiot at January 6, 2006 3:24 PM | Permalink
Well, you can prove anything with anecdotal evidence.
But you're missing two things:
1.) The media can't get its facts right, even if you leave aside bias arguments.
2.) Sudy after study after study confirms the hypothesis: The national media are distinctly and significantly and demographically biased to the left.
The Pew study found it. The Annenberg school found it. The S. Robert Lichter survey in 1980 found it, and was subsequently independently confirmed by the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1988 and again in 1997.
The most recent ASNE survey found that in 1996, Democrats/liberals outnumbered Republicans/conservatives in the newsroom by more than four to one.
There is no way that that's not going to affect news coverage, consciously or unconsciously.
Other large-scale surveys by the Freedom Forum (1992), came up with similar findings.
The Kaiser Family Foundation found in 2001 that only six percent of the press was conservative - and duplicates the ASNE numbers cited above as to the liberal/conservative ratio (4 to 1) in the newsroom.
Journalist and Financial Reporting, an NYC newsletter, surveyed 151 business reporters and 30 publications in 1988 and found that Democrats outnumbered Republicans by more than 5 to 1!
More than half rated Reagan's term in office as "poor" while only 17 percent rated him positively - this as Bush was humiliating Dukakis in the elections that year!
In 1985, the Los Angeles Times found that while 55 percent of newspaper reporters self-described as liberal, only 23 percent of the public did. Simultaneously, the LA Times found that only 17 percent of journos self-described as conservative. 44 percent of the public at large self-identified as conservative.
According to the LA Times, reporters voted 2 to 1 for Mondale in 1984. Mondale!
And that's just the demographic surveys. The analytical surveys of the articles themselves - such as UCLA's latest - are bearing the findings out. (I know, I know. Santa Monica California is really a hotbead of radical right-wing conservatism.) There's also Hamilton (2004), Lott and Hasset (2004), and Sutter (2004), the Cato institute,
So not only is it abundantly easy to find anecdotal evidence, but the institutional bias of the national media has been quantified many different ways, over and over again. Now, some, like Joe Conason and Eric Alterman, make a game attempt to muster anecdotal evidence to support claims of a conservative bias. But actual quantification of their claims based on peer-reviewed surveys or extensive polling is sorely lacking - and generally overrelies on carping about Rush Limbaugh (an opinion talk show host, not a journalist) and Fox News.
Really, that debate is so over it makes you guys look like charter members of the flat earth society.
Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 6, 2006 3:41 PM | Permalink
in the interest of preserving bandwidth, may I suggest that you go back and read pressthink's comments section for the last year or so....
.... and after doing so, if you feel you have anything original to contribute, please do so.
I am not saying I have any answers as a news consumer, but I do have good questions. There are many organizations that rank many products and services as far as quality, performance and ease of use. I have yet to see such an evaluation of media outlets that don't have an axe to grind, usually political.
But my last post I was not being sarcastic. There have been many industries that have been unable to self-regulate their operations so that the government or some other authoritative figure has have to put their "seal of approval" on them. That is what food inspections, environmental controls, "Good Housekeeping", J.D. Powers and Consumer Reports are all about.
If the media cannot self-regulate someone or something will do it for them. That is not I would like to see the government do (First Admendment), but other than market alternatives what is the answer?
village idiot
Wouldn't it be far easier, since you so eloquently argue that the press is culpable and enjoys no special constitutional protections, to just go ahead and sue the Times.
I can't. Not successfully, anyway. You have to be able to show damages of some sort, and proximate cause. But an individual who is not a public figure who has been harmed by libel could sue, and do so successfully. (A public figure would have to prove "actual malice."
An individual who has been harmed because the Times violated the law and recklessly published classified information MAY be able to build a convincing case, depending on the fact pattern and the makeup of the jury.
But it's far better and more cost efficient to gain a more lasting victory in the marketplace of ideas.
Really, though - suing the media in the absence of a specific damage claim is a silly idea, and you're just unloading a bunch of hysterical carping onto me.
At any rate, what's this "special constitutional protection" the press enjoys when it comes to violating a federal law? I don't get it. You assert that a "special constitutional protection" exists for the press that doesn't exist, presumeably, for the rest of us who have a coequal first amendment right to freedom of expression.
Well, the rest of us also have to abide by federal law, including laws that prohibit the release or publishing of classified information.
Ok, where is this "special constitutional protection" codified? Or are you inventing things?
Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 6, 2006 4:08 PM | Permalink
may I suggest that you go back and read pressthink's comments section for the last year or so....
Well, those of us in the "reality-based community" are more interested in stating the facts than in being original.
Might be a novel concept for journos to explore, too.
Meanwhile, you might respond to the factual assertions in my post. Dismissing them as non-original is not in any sense of the word a substantive or serious response to the argument on its merits.
If you cannot or will not respond on the merits, then there can be no original synthesis of ideas - all that need be done is the restatement of what is a truly overwhelming collection of data that, unfortunately, makes you look pretty obtuse.
Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 6, 2006 4:15 PM | Permalink
That will be a loss for democracy and a win for the anti-democratic security state. (See Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire)
Long live the triumph of the state over the people and the media's duty to the state above all else!
Posted by: Mark Anderson at January 6, 2006 4:41 PM | Permalink
Yep; that is my invention. Actually it is a mirage, but I erected it with prior experience gained from designing the Potemkin villages. It has been a very effective and durable program, and prevented many a conspiracy theory from turning into a lawsuit against the press. Witness how rarely the government sued the press in over two centuries of existence of this republic? It is all a fruit of my effort. But, alas, all good things must come to an end, and this one looks like it is destined to be brought down by your messianic crusade for an accountable press.
Yet all is not lost. Every cloud has silver lining. I remain hopeful of a just and reasonable verdict for Mr. Wen Ho Lee soon. Perhaps a friend-of-the-court brief will help hasten this outcome?
Posted by: village idiot at January 6, 2006 4:42 PM | Permalink
Jason I know I'm going to regret putting my toe in this water...
2.) Sudy after study after study confirms the hypothesis: The national media are distinctly and significantly and demographically biased to the left.
I think you are confusing a couple of terms here (even I thought the studies you are citing say what you think they say). But you are making the connection to reporter voting democratic/self-described liberal views="bias to left."
Those are separate assertions. To be a Democratic voter or holder of liberal belives is not, in itself, bias to the left.
Posted by: catrina at January 6, 2006 4:58 PM | Permalink
re: trust v. popularity. being trustworthy is a good goal. being popular isn't. a meaningful solution to the media credibility problem needs to hold both thoughts simultaneously -- and lightly in cupped hands.
re: LMB. bias has been argued here over and over and over. and over. what never changes is that those who see liberal bias as obvious and endemic will accept no response other than "yes, you're exactly right." anything short of enthusiastic agreement is dismissible as "just what you'd expect from a liberal."
i entered this thread suggesting that we work to define the problem properly so that we can have some chance of actually fixing it, rather than the usual dance where we make a gesture toward fixing the problem but don't really change anything -- other than make the existing screwed-up system more crazy-making for the people who work in it (not to mention the people it's supposed to serve). I thought this might be a good topic for that discussion.
But the people who hate the media don't really want to talk about that, or even to acknowledge that the journalists on PressThink threads aren't generally the plush apologists they so desperately want to punish.
I don't know about y'all, but I'd love to be part of a discussion in which we test ideas for new approaches to covering breaking news, a discussion in which we acknowledge that The Media is beyond the strict control of anyone in The Media. I want a better way of dealing with that reality than the current approach: Make-Believe.
I'm just not very interested in playing a phony role in somebody else's psychodrama. Sorry.
Posted by: Daniel Conover at January 6, 2006 5:08 PM | Permalink
Could we get back to the worms, the dog turds and the hate ?
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 6, 2006 5:21 PM | Permalink
I think you are confusing a couple of terms here (even I thought the studies you are citing say what you think they say). But you are making the connection to reporter voting democratic/self-described liberal views="bias to left."
You are precisely correct. The demographic bias is only significant if they also write stories and engage in story selection that way.
Unfortunately, the UCLA study - and every other study I'm aware of that focuses on syntax rather than the reporters themselves - strongly supports the assertion that they do.
Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 6, 2006 5:31 PM | Permalink
It's a ritual by now for those on the red state side of the red blue divide to come to PressThink and recite the long, and lengthening list of studies proving liberal this and Democrat that in the nation's newsrooms.
The ritual calls for the expression of mock astonishment that the proposition can even be doubted at this late, late stage in its establishment as concrete and self-evident fact.
Usually the word "overwhelming" makes it in (thus Jason's "truly overwhelming collection of data"); very often the charge will be "willful" blindess to the evidence, a phrase like "study after study" is common (Jason: "Sudy after study after study confirms the hypothesis") but always it ends with the certainty that there can no longer be any debate.
The truth has been established. Science hath spoken, and so politics can shut up. No fairminded person can doubt... no serious person can deny... There can no longer be any argument that... on and on. Who knows, really, why the parade of certainty has to run through these parts so often--if it's really so certain--but run it does. Jason would have no way of knowing how many dozens have come before him-- listing the studies, expressing the mock astonishment, sorting the "serious" ones who accept the data from the flat earthers who don't.
On the other hand that's what a ritual is-- it repeats and re-affirms membership. There must be something satisfying in it for the reds, though; and here is where I have more trouble because I am not certain what the satisfying part is.
Maybe it's: Q. Can they really be so blind? (type, type, type) A. Yes, they can! One has the illusion of running a little test, and getting back the expected answer. One is almost a scientist one's self, then. Not a citizen making a political argument in a contentious field, but a data-accepter among child-like and cultish data-deniers. Maybe that's it.
Anyway, welcome to the bias study drill. You're in it.
For what it's worth, about a month ago I wrote a blog post ("21st century trust ... the techno-geek way!") in which I tried to imagine some modern century solutions to the media credibility problem. I think I proposed six different approaches. Xark isn't really a media blog per se, so it didn't get much traffic and the discussion died out after a few comments. It's longish, but if you're interested in the topic you might get something useful out of it. Or not.
Posted by: Daniel Conover at January 6, 2006 5:49 PM | Permalink
It does get old. The same mistakes. The same complaints. The same excuses/name-calling.
Of course, there are also the same recommended fixes that get ignored, over and over and over ...
Fixes offered by you, Tim Porter, Jay Rosen, Andy Cline, Kent Bye, ....
Hell, I even tried: Fix the Product, Fix the Culture. Two of a five part series.
Howling into the cyber-wind, it was. It felt good to think about it and write it down but in the end ... it only made me a smarter news consumer.
Maybe that's enough?
Tim S.:
Thanks for reposting those links. I'd never read the entire series before now. Worth a read by anyone with an interest in the topic (here's the link to Part One).
I want to go farther, but then again, of the two of us, I'm much more likely to go wandering off on bizarre tangents.
Posted by: Daniel Conover at January 6, 2006 6:22 PM | Permalink
i entered this thread suggesting that we work to define the problem properly so that we can have some chance of actually fixing it, rather than the usual dance where we make a gesture toward fixing the problem but don't really change anything -- other than make the existing screwed-up system more crazy-making for the people who work in it (not to mention the people it's supposed to serve). I thought this might be a good topic for that discussion.
Dan, this is one of those "problems" for which I don't see a solution -- at least in practical terms.
Especially with the East Coast papers, the explanation really is "shit happens." There was a "small hole" in the story -- no confirmation from the mining company -- but the families and government officials and clergy were all acting in expected ways (the word would be passed to the families before the general public), and with the presses about to roll, there was no reason not to go with the story.
When you say "how we can fix it", the "we" you are referring to is appears to be daily print journalists. But the real problem isn't with that "we", its what passes for "journalism" on CNN, MSNBC, and FoxNews --- and I think Jay explained that problem when he made the distinction between "the story" and "the information." Nothing that real journalists like yourself can do can change the way the cable news networks conduct business.
And in cases like this, the cable networks don't merely set the news agenda, they actually reinforced the bad story. The cable networks never expressed any skepticism in their interviews over those three hours -- and everyone who was interviewed went back to their friends with their own beliefs in the truth of the story confirmed (after all, if there was any question if the story was true, the interviews would not have been conducted with the presumption that the miners were alive.)
Anyone who might have had concerns about the lack of information coming from the company would happily ignore those concerns, secure in the knowledge that if there was anything to worry about, Anderson Cooper would be the first to know....and Anderson Cooper wasn't concerned...
Print journalism's biggest problem has always been covering "breaking news" that shows up "at deadline." "Shit happens", and there is no way to fix that problem without creating even more problems.
You (the print journalists) are at an important juncture -- you now have the capacity to cover "breaking stories" and report on them as they happen "in print" -- even if its only "electronic" print. This is going to require some adjustments in how reporters do their jobs -- "adjustments" that are happening right now.
Hopefully, this also means that the serious journalists who make up the print journalism community will be able to regain some control over the "news agenda" as your capacity to cover "breaking stories" evolves, and you decide which "breaking stories" deserve "breaking story" coverage.
Ultimately, the question comes down to "when is a fact a fact, and not just something that you have been told by an informed source?" The answer isn't "when an official announcement is made", because "officials" are constantly trying to hide, distort, or disguise the "facts".
I guess what I'm saying is "you've got your work cut out for you -- but I wouldn't use this particular story as a basis on which to make any decisions on the way you do your work in the future."
Well, what about this as an online feature: What if we got more explicit about what we do now in vague code? What if we publicly evaluated our confidence level in the information we were presenting?
The first report on a breaking news story might rate a 1: Interesting and worth monitoring, but by no means solid info. Yet. As more info came in, editors could raise the credibility grade. Over time, the grades should rise.
At the other end of your spectrum should be your serious investigative reporting, which should rate a 9 or a 10. If you're publishing investigative work and you can't rate its credibility above an 8, I really don't know what to tell you other than "good luck."
The tricky part is that being explicit about confidence means editors would have to accept greater accountability. If I've overrated my 12-miners-alive story a 7 and it reverses, I look pretty damned stupid. Then again, if I'm systematically underbidding my confidence to prevent being revealed as wrong later, I'm not doing much to build my credibility. You want an incentive for people to be candid and thorough, and I think this might provide it.
To be truly useful, such a system would need to be keyed to something, whether it's a number system or a color code or a bar graph or a slider. Whatever. A 5 rating should mean the same thing to the reader as to the editor. The beauty of the web is that editors don't have to redundantly explain this stuff in print -- rather, they can post the rating and know that anybody who isn't sure what it means can click and find out exactly what it means. And the more specific the better.
The web also lets you get feedback on your stories. And if we're smart, we'll make metrics out of that feedback and use it to improve all sorts of things. "Grade this story" doesn't tell me crap. We need to offer more telling questions, and then make use of the results.
Could you use this on TV? Maybe. Maybe if you make it a background element or something visual. Lord knows there's enough clutter on most of the cable news screens already -- why not have a dynamic editoral confidence rating, too? Could you use it in print? Yes, although maybe not as elegantly.
This wouldn't as valuable as a true source credibility rating -- but it's got the benefit of being much less complex.
Posted by: Daniel Conover at January 6, 2006 6:59 PM | Permalink
I kept looking for a sign that you were joking in that grading system post... then I remembered this....
I want to go farther, but then again, of the two of us, I'm much more likely to go wandering off on bizarre tangents.
....and suddenly, everything became much clearer! :)
bias is in the eyes of the beholder.
i'm a former journo, and my experience was that people bring their bias into what they read in the media.
click through my link and read the comments on the bush's jaw. bush supporters blamed Roberts' kids. bush haters saw drugs and illness. Shearer had another post on the jaw after Katrina, and all of the Roberts' kids were gone.
media consumers sometimes are Frists diagnosing Schiavo by video. you see what you want to see.
i'm sucking up to Steve again, but why is the mining story a press story? who was harmed by the headlines? not the victim's families. certainly not readers when they found the wrong headlines the next day. Dewey Wins!
people in the media are humans. they try their best, but mistakes will happen. for consumers, news is caveat emptor, like everything else in life.
Jason, your list of turd is a pile of turd. there are millions of stories the press report correctly every day.
Posted by: bush's jaw at January 6, 2006 7:23 PM | Permalink
"if it ain't broke, don't fix it"
The one-off, random, mishap is not an indication that the system is broken. Chalk it up to the law of large numbers and guassian distributions. News is a repititive process with perhaps millions of iterations every year. Something or the other is bound to break every once in a while; precisely why we have a whole field of study called Staistical Quality Control. And then there is the bias of self-selection: the two headed snake gets the headline whereas millions of its more normal brethren go about their day undisturbed by camera crews.
Nothing in the human endeavor is perfect (even the earth's orbit falls behind by a second every once in a while, apparently) and there are always things that can be fixed. That said, I agree with Dan that nothing is more important than understanding the problem correctly before one sets out to correct it. Some error patterns need attention, but in many other instances, it is just 'waterboarding'; somebody trying to make you think you are drowning whereas in relity it is not all that dangerous.
Mr. Raines confused a perception problem, caused largely by the talking heads night after night repeating Scaife talking points, for a product problem. He thought he was fixing the problem by reengineering the product, but the real result is there for all to see today. The Times lost its way and was replaced by the Washington Post as the gold standard of print journalism:-).
So, to paraphrase Bertrand Russel, chill; idle away; do your sunday cross-words.
Posted by: villageidiot at January 6, 2006 7:35 PM | Permalink
Seems like 'bush's jaw' beat me to it with his last paragraph!
Posted by: villageidiot at January 6, 2006 7:41 PM | Permalink
yikes, so many typos for a former journo. haha that's why i'm a former.
village, sometimes while we edit or get distracted or look for links, someone else publish a similar idea minutes earlier.
Posted by: bush's jaw at January 6, 2006 8:03 PM | Permalink
Now we're getting somewhere.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 6, 2006 8:18 PM | Permalink
Jay --
I take it back.
Keep on keepin' on.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 6, 2006 8:27 PM | Permalink
Rebecca MacKinnon, Pretend Tourist No More
TL: Are you ever concerned about the accuracy of the blogs you are linking? Or do you just let the reader determine accuracy?See, no difference between blogs and newspapers. Caveat emptor. Are bloggers trying to impose caveat venitor on newspeople/organizations?
Is the failing business model of journalism caveat emptor?
Caveat venditor is Latin for 'let the seller beware.' It ... forces the seller to take responsibility for the product, and discourages sellers from selling products of unreasonable quality.
Good question, Tim.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 6, 2006 9:21 PM | Permalink
Does anyone know the latin for "sellers, beware of the buyers?"
Are some of us -- those with an eye to the future -- trying our damndest to impose caveat venditor on bloggers?
It's not herding cats, Steve. It's herding lawyers, journalists, engineers, professors, teachers, soldiers, .... IOW all of the news media's consumers.
If the news media want to impose caveat venditor on bloggers, they must first become customers of blogs.
Otherwise, it smells like FUD.
For those of you interested in the nuances of the Pentagon Papers case, a ready link:
Posted by: village idiot at January 6, 2006 10:53 PM | Permalink
Thank you, Daniel Conover! I seriously would love to see your rating system expanded on... Isn't quantifying results the key to success? That's what all the MBA and PHD schools are teaching, anyway. You can quantify all sorts of events, reactions, things that at first seem un-quantifiable (if that's a word).
BTW, also thanks to Steve Lovelady for answering my question much earlier in the thread.
Posted by: kristen at January 6, 2006 11:54 PM | Permalink
And now for the imagination-impaired take on the situation.
First, though, a confession: I missed it. Didn't know there was a mining accident, didn't know there was a press circus, didn't know the outcome was misreported and don't really care now that I do know.
Someone earlier asked why the situation was a national story in the first place, and someone else answered correctly that -- paraphrasing -- the cable networks had a decent shot at a happy ending and the accompanying narrative. Even without the happy ending, mining disasters offer opportunities for extended coverage that simply don't exist with more immediate carnage.
When the Jessica Lynch story was extant, a friend of mine suggested we start a rumor that she was the "Baby Jessica" of having-fallen-down-a-well fame. We figured the narrative was so perfect that someone would bite on it regardless the intractability of the timeline and other facts. We never got around to trying it, although I suppose it isn't too late.
Jay, I understand the distinction you're drawing and it's one worth drawing. I'm wondering, though, whether you can think of any examples where editorial mensch-ness actually had a noticeable impact on the quality of the news operation.
Daniel, I like your ratings idea. I'd suggest that in order for it to be effective — in this dream world where editors don't feel compelled to project unlimited confidence — stories would have to have editorial bylines along with reportorial ones. I'd be interested in hearing what PressThink readers with editorial backgrounds (that's you, Steve) think about that possibility.
I'd also like to note for the record that I've been referring to the "MSM" as "the institutional press" for a long while, primarily because even before it was cool, I thought of blogs as the substitute for an institutional memory in the institutional press.
Posted by: weldon berger at January 7, 2006 3:28 AM | Permalink
stories would have to have editorial bylines along with reportorial ones.
Although I think Dan's "ratings" idea is unworkable, the "editorial bylines" idea has a lot of merit. It would be good to know, for instance, whether the Post's John Harris assigned or signed off on a particular story....
the only down-side is that this could devolve into the auteur theory of journalism.... :)
I've never used the term MSM. I think it's lazy, ugly, non-descript, a bit of un-language.
I don't call people "wingers" or "wingnuts" either.
Caveat emptor is something people say when they don't know what to say about the trust situation.
Weldon: Not sure what you mean by mensch-ness, but I think John Robinson in Greensboro is having an impact on the entire news operation. He's at least destroyed the closed mind of the "old" newsroom.
The more I learn about washingtonpost.com (by dealings with it like with my recent Q and A) the more persuaded I am that Jim Brady's affecting the entire Post.
Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 7, 2006 11:21 AM | Permalink
The more I learn about washingtonpost.com (by dealings with it like with my recent Q and A) the more persuaded I am that Jim Brady's affecting the entire Post.
c'mon Jay, you know that kind of statement demands more of an explanation! :)
It's nothing terribly "inside," ami. Brady is the executive editor who throroughly gets the Web. His definition of the online world isn't "less reliable than us." But he knows he needs the newsroom's cooperation, and enthusiasm, and for the most part he is getting it.
I told PressThink readers during the Froomkin flap how I suggested to Brady and his aides that comments at Post blogs should have permalinks because I would have linked to some of the more eloquent howls of protest. The next day it is done.
Meanwhile, Maureen Dowd's column today is all about a photograph--Bush in the Oval Office with former secretaries of state and defense--and there's not even a link to the photo. And this is the "select" portion of the Times site.
P.S. Here's a fascinating times-they-are-a-changing story involving the Post: Redskins Try to Become the Messenger, and go around the Post sports pages. What does this sound like?
Michael said both the news media and the Redskins deserved blame for a dysfunctional relationship There is just a distrust Ive never experienced in his nearly 35 years in the business but he did add that he thought some of the coverage of the team was unwarranted, even malicious. And he said he thought much of it stemmed from a hostility to the teams young, brash owner.
Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 7, 2006 11:53 AM | Permalink
Daniel Conover: What if we publicly evaluated our confidence level in the information we were presenting?
ironic event yesterday: i was in the head honcho's office friday morning around 10 a.m. when the managing honcho came in to talk out strategy about space for the saturday paper ... in light of The Drudge Report's announcement that Sharon was dead.
After figuring out the basic strategy, the head honcho called up the Drudge Report... and the headline had already changed. Crisis averted.
The Drudge Report, by the way, has far more readers than my newspaper. Scripting News, for that matter, has more readers than my newspaper.
Which is why I think, ultimately, we'll wind up selling transparent standards that mean the same thing to the info providers as to the info users. Once they understand that even a best-practices process is imperfect, they'll get a much better picture of the information environment in which they live. And that could be a somewhat radical shift of perspective for some people. Without trying to get too metaphysical about it, so much of what we think of as "reality" functions more like a normative, agreed-upon illusion.
Which is why we aren't so upset when a blogger gets something wrong, and the less substantial that blogger's reputation, the less upset we are. It isn't the error that offends us, or the number of people who will see it -- it's the bestowing of normative legitimacy. Drudge, right or wrong, just doesn't yet confer the kind of normative legitimacy that even a paper with smaller readership is perceived to. And that's just a weird, largely unexamined social construct.
Jay's PressThink posts have included discussions of attitudes toward journalism as a religious calling not subject to debate or rational modification. Lately, the notion of the press deadline has emerged as a seemingly modest and yet practically ominipotent rationalization for journalistic failure. Advocates of the role of the internet as a complement to traditional print and broadcast media have pointed to the weblog as an emerging site of institutional memory. Bias warriors insistently lament their inability to locate the God term of their choice in mainstream journalism.
I think readers of PressThink will enjoy reflecting on a passage I encountered in a book on Christian asceticism that discusses a text from the 4th Century. Athanasius' Life of Anthony brings together anxiety toward the known consequences of meeting any deadline, memory as the redemption of secular, fallen writing, and finally, an understanding of writing as a task in which perfect imitation of reality or virtue is known to be impossible, but virtue is thought to reside in the effort to aspire to the impossible, thus written imitations of life are thought to succeed in part due to the writer's persistence in spite of his or her recognition of inevitabile failure. Failure is success and all the more virtuous in it persistence as a discipline of noble failure.
The passage is now available at my blog through the following link: Journalism, Theology, and the Success of Failure as Virtuous Task
Athanasius apologizes for the imperfections in his text: "since the season for sailing was coming to a close, and the letter-bearer was eager," he had abandoned his researches and had committed his work to the world...Athanasius appears to recognize that perfection in this sense is impossible to attain, the differences between accounts and lives being substantial, but he still maintains that virtue resides in the effort...Speech, which is magically capable of "redeeming" the profit from dead graphemes, delivering the living meaning from the letters to the heart. The heart, the silent intutition, is thus the origin of signs through intention, and the terminus of signification in understanding. In between lies the entire drama of the creation, the fall, and redemption. This drama is even projected onto the relation between Scripture and Christ. Anthony's fame as an ascetic hero grew so great that the emperor Constantine Augustus wrote letters to him, concerning which Anthony told a dazzled group of fellow hermits, "Do not consider it marvelous if a ruler writes us, for he is a man. Marvel, instead, that God wrote the law for mankind, and has spoken to us through his own Son" (81:89). Even God's writing requires phonemic redemption; even Scripture requires the mediation of Christ.
Posted by: Mark Anderson at January 7, 2006 12:52 PM | Permalink
Daniel Conover: Without trying to get too metaphysical about it, so much of what we think of as "reality" functions more like a normative, agreed-upon illusion.
It isn't the error that offends us, or the number of people who will see it -- it's the bestowing of normative legitimacy.
That's part of journalism's expository epistemological system. The energy created by an error ("offends us") is a result of the changing noetic field. Something Gillmor gets at when he says, "My readers know more than I do ..."
*Caveat emptor is something people say when they don't know what to say about the trust situation*
Jay, what i mean about caveat emptor is that readers should get information from a variety of sources, WaPo, NYT, LAT, WSJ, blogs that they trust -- with a critical eye.
So when there is a wrong story because of deadline cruch or reporting/editing error that's ok. the papers getting the mining story incorrect for one day is not the end of the world, that doesn't erode my trust.
in the Froomkin flap, Froomkin and Harris can co-exist. trust isn't a zero sum game between Froomkin and Harris. Wapo readers can choose Froomkin and Harris (WaPo political news), just one or neither.
Posted by: bush's jaw at January 7, 2006 1:20 PM | Permalink
Okay, conover, your managing editor gets his primary news from Drudge. Isn't that interesting? Are you the same conover as Daniel Conover? What's the name of your newspaper again?
Has yur managing editor ever been burned by one of Drudge's false rumors?
Posted by: Phredd at January 7, 2006 1:22 PM | Permalink
So, by way of rebuttal to my own post listing the various studies documenting institutional leftward bias in the media, the sum total of your argument is that I'm not the first to make that observation?
That even fails as an ad hominem!
No counteroffers of other studies which came to opposing conclusions?
No offering of argument as to why the studies I listed are unsound?
Well, I guess when you got nothing, all you can do is concede that "well, gee...if that many people are seeing that we have a problem, and that problem is further documented by this and this and this and that and that and that and this and that and oh, this here, too, and that that documentation has been consistent over the last 25 years from a variety of sources - maybe, just maybe, we have a problem.
You're mired further in it than I thought.
As you so often do, you are confusing snark with reason. Your response was well-written, engaging, and bankrupt.
Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 7, 2006 1:56 PM | Permalink
Jay, I've been out for a while and have just now read your Q & A at WaPo. Your idea of an "abolitionist press" intrigued me. I hope you'll expand on it in another post.
Posted by: Abigail Beecher at January 7, 2006 2:00 PM | Permalink
Jason, when you say things "that debate is so over it makes you guys look like charter members of the flat earth society," and it doesn't inspire any debate, you should not be surprised, and the outrage sounds fake. After all we're agreeing with you: there's no debate. So take the W., dude, and celebrate another comment board victory over your bankrupt foes.
By the way, I am happy to agree that most of the people who populate newsrooms vote Democratic when they vote. I'm quite sure that's true.
Jay, Would it be possible to get you to respond to this Q again?
The acid test for any story could be the MIS-take (MIS 'man in street') He or she does not know, accesses the media to get information ... but do we close the loop by soliciting MIS-takes to ascertain the interpretation/effectiveness of the information. Is what the public understands what you intended to convey? What about a couple of MIS-takes quoted after a story ... perspective for the public, 'feedback' for the writer.A feedback system to ascertain the interpretation/effectiveness of the information. "Is what the public understands what you intended to convey?"
Sounds very rhetoric-oriented. Something like measuring the perlocutionary effect.
Is that what comments on a blog thread do (some above might say not)? Trackbacks, which are dead? Technorati (as used at washingtonpost.com)?
Jay, I just meant what you described as the "moral" approach to the mining disaster flap: acknowledging responsibility for error (although I think it's a lot easier to do that with relatively minor and comprehensible editorial missteps than with Miller-esqe ones). So the question is, what impact on news operations has/will that willingness to acknowledge error had/have.
Your point about the Post is well taken: the decision to add links to blogs linking to Post stories was another example of the online operation responding to and taking advantage of bloggers. Maybe you can suggest they add trackbacks to those stories.
What do you think about adding editorial bylines to stories?
On a different track, the issue of how much readers trust their newspapers: the online readership for the major papers dwarfs their print circulation. In November, the Times had nearly 12 million online readers, the Post had more than 8 million, and Yahoo News, which includes wire services and some individual newspapers, had more than 24 million. There have been spikes upward and downward during the year, but in general the trend is upward, and in numbers far exceeding the decline in print circulation. There's one major recent exception, but I'll save that for a blog post.
Posted by: weldon berger at January 7, 2006 3:46 PM | Permalink
The link above mistakenly goes to the trackback feature rather than the blog. Here is the link to the blog:
Journalism, Theology, and the Success of Failure as Virtuous Task
Posted by: Mark Anderson at January 7, 2006 3:52 PM | Permalink
weldon berger: What do you think about adding editorial bylines to stories?
Put me down in favor:
UPDATE: Glenn mentions the corporate scandals. If I remember correctly, one of the "corrections" to come out of that was every CEO/CFO had to sign that the information in their financial statements was correct. Perhaps senior editors and publishers should put their signatures on their stories that the information provided is accurate? Let's call it an accuracy byline.
Well, there's not much of a way around the notion that democrats/liberals vastly outnumber conservatives in newsrooms. Which, as I've said, is only a problem if that spills over into the copy (and the copy not run).
But what's your substantial, snark-free response to the Groseclose UCLA study?
And, as a separate question, if the J-industry will agree that a diversity of outlook is important to improving coverage and the credibility of news - and to judge by the concerted efforts of recruiters to increase the representation of women, minorities, and more recently gays and lesbians into the newsroom, I don't think there's much doubt that it they would - then how can anyone simultaneously argue that the gross underrepresentation of, say, half the country, is not a problem?
Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 7, 2006 3:52 PM | Permalink
Spokesman in Miner Tragedy Says He Never Confirmed Miracle Rescue
So Thornton, at the command center, was clearly the point man for reporters seeking information about whether these miners had been found alive. If this is true, and his account of what he said that night is correct, why did so many news outlets get the story wrong?
Jason: As I've said other times here, I do not take the media bias discourse seriously. Intellectually, it's a joke. I don't think it has much to do with journalism, or news at all. It's value to me as press criticism is approximatey zero. In my opinion--and I don't expect you to share this--bias talk is not "truth-seeking" at all, but point-scoring. That's what it's about.
"Point-scoring" holds on the left and the right, but the right is more invested in it because Big Media is one of the last institutions left that the right does not control. For conservatives and Bush supporters, bias complaints are one of the few semi-plausible victimologies they have. The Right used to have a healthy suspicion of politics-as-victimhood. Media bias is where today's conservatives go to indulge in that heady feeling.
The way I look at it: Some people do politics by talking about issues and policy. Other people do politics by reference to politicians and what they stand for. Other people do politics by going on about media bias. That's their right. I prefer to leave them alone. It's not always possible.
Nor is it possible to express how cynical I am about studies like the ULCLA one and the uses made of it. But just to give you one teensie-weensie example of why... The UCLA study suggests that we can draw sound conclusions about the "tilt" of a news organization by looking at how many times various think tanks are cited in news articles.
You are interested in "the evidence," in what "study after study" shows; and you went through the trouble to find a long list of them. You plainly believe the UCLA research is impressive work. But somehow in casting your net widely for evidence you missed this little count by the NPR ombudsman:
Here's the tally sheet for the number of times think tank experts were interviewed to date on NPR in 2005:
Am I surprised that this simple count didn't make it into your list of "study after study?" No, Jason, I am not surprised. I told you I'm cynical. But I would be shocked if, on the basis on this tally, you began to discuss NPR as a "right-leaning" news organization, which it clearly was in 2005, if we're measuring by think tank voices, as the UCLA study does. Although it's easy to find, that evidence somehow didn't make it into your review of "the evidence."
I will save you the trouble of debunking the NPR ombudsman's study. He does it himself when he writes, "There may be other experts who are interviewed on NPR who present a liberal perspective. But they tend to be based in universities and colleges and are not part of the think tank culture."
He's right, of course. I don't think the ombudsman's count proved anything, and I don't think the UCLA study proves anything, and I don't think bias talk--including yours--is about proof or evidence at all. It's high horsemanship, victimology, culture war-- another way of doing politics.
Besides, the question that interests me is not, what bias does the press have? but: what kind of bias should the press have? Rare to the point of extinction is the bias warrior who wants to talk about that. It spoils all the fun because the high horse is taken away.
For more on my take, see this.
Has yur managing editor ever been burned by one of Drudge's false rumors?
Say WHAT???!!!
I mean, talk about missing the entire freaking point. No, Drudge isn't where the M.E., or anybody else I work with, gets his "primary news." And no, we've never been burned by Drudge, because we'd never put ourselves in that situation.
What we do, by the way, is read. We read wires, we click live bookmarks, we read blogs, we read other news sites. We try to see what's coming and adjust, plan, anticipate. What the M.E. was doing was commendable -- seeing a potential big story and gameplanning at 10 a.m. so that if it got confirmed by sources we actually trust, we'd be able to have the proper space in the paper to run the stories that would be moving on the Associated Press wire.
You wanna argue against that?
And are you the same Phredd as Phred Phlintstone?
Jason is making the bias deniers look as inept as the USC defense looked trying to stop Vince Young.
Posted by: Walter Duranty in the House at January 7, 2006 5:42 PM | Permalink
Bias denier? That is not me, "Walter." Quoting myself: "To me, any work of journalism is saturated with bias from the moment the reporter leaves the officeand probably before thatto the edited and finished product."
I'm mulling this ratings idea over, and trying to imagine how it would work with specific stories I've been involved with.
-- Look, Tommy Gibbons has been our police reporter for 25 years, and he has seldom done us wrong ... on the other hand, there are some cops who are pissed off at him because he has caught some of their colleagues with their hands in the cookie jar, and those guys are off to jail, so there's always the possibility that some bitter bigwig in the police department is trying to sandbag him. (It wouldn't be the first time.) Gibbons himself gives the story a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10, but, hey, it's his story. The rest of us -- his editors -- are worried about the sandbag possibility, so we give the story a 7.6, which is why we're putting it on page b12, and not on page one.
-- This series was reported and written by Donald Barlett and James Steele, who give it a perfect 10. You have to take them seriously, since they've been working here forever, they've won enough awards to wallpaper a high school gymnasium, and they have yet to write anything that required a correction.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 7, 2006 5:55 PM | Permalink
Let's take the citation game to its reductio ad absurdum...
If some researcher decided that, because of their adamant support for the institutions of finance capital, Dow Jones and Standard & Poors were both right-leaning institutions vis-a-vis left-leaning labor unions, then automatically all metropolitan daily newspapers and all cable news channels would score, by a citation count, as overwhelmingly right-wing biased because of the frequency and volume of their stock market quotes from those organizations.
Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at January 7, 2006 5:56 PM | Permalink
My guess is that Thornton is scrambling to cover his ass.
If you had ever been a reporter -- even a reporter for the East Cowplop Daily Trumpet, attending township council meetings --you would know that it happens multiple times every day.
It's the oldest game in town.
The unfortunate part for him is that in this case a local example rose to national prominence.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 7, 2006 6:05 PM | Permalink
My guess is that Thornton is scrambling to cover his ass.
Posted by: Walter Duranty in the House at January 7, 2006 6:16 PM | Permalink
Steve Lovelady: My guess is that Thornton is scrambling to cover his ass.
Should be easy for the editor of CJR Daily to find out. Ask other news organizations that contacted Thornton and what they were told.
Ask news organizations that published Dao's story off the wire (what time was that?) if they called Thornton to check it out.
Ask Thornton if anyone called him to verify the quote in Dao's story.
You know, reporter stuff instead of your entirely predictable guess.
Could you give us any hints ? Assertion is not enough. Some of us want evidence.
Links would help too. Or, as ten thousand editors have told ten thousand reporters, "Don't tell me; show me."
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at December 19, 2005 09:06 PM | Permalink
Posted by: Walter Duranty in the House at January 7, 2006 6:21 PM | Permalink
Tim and Steve,
If that account is correct, and So Thornton of FMSHA wasn't holding press conferences while his corporate counterpart was, Thornton's name would predictably be conspicuously absent due to his conspicuous avoidance of organized communication with journalists and the public during the period in question.
Posted by: Mark Anderson at January 7, 2006 6:27 PM | Permalink
I've thought that ever since the first editor screwed with the lede or edited in errors.
As for the ratings idea, not bad. Though the explanations are starting to get a bit lengthy. In this era of ever-decreasing news space, we'll soon have more explanations than stories.
Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 7, 2006 6:30 PM | Permalink
Walter asked:
lets see now. what would be the source for Steve Lovelady's FREAKING GUESS about what was happening....
excuse me, I think I need some air... and some meds.....
Thornton of FMSHA
Huh? Mark, check your facts.
Jason is making the bias deniers look as inept as the USC defense looked trying to stop Vince Young.
Ahhh, the point-scoring mentality raises its scummy head.
But if it were, Vince Young is not what comes to mind when pondering Jason's contributions -- or yours.
I will give Jason this, however -- he's honest about where he's coming from, he's passionate about his point of view, he uses citations to make his case and he signs it "Jason Van Steenwyk."
You have much to learn from him.
I suggest you start now.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 7, 2006 6:34 PM | Permalink
My guess is that Thornton is scrambling to cover his ass.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 7, 2006 06:05 PM | Permalink
Links would help too. Or, as ten thousand editors have told ten thousand reporters, "Don't tell me; show me."
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at December 19, 2005 09:06 PM | Permalink
Posted by: Walter Duranty in the House at January 7, 2006 6:43 PM | Permalink
Earth to "Walter" :
ami has already said it, but I'll say it again.
You want "a source" for "a guess" ?
Hel-lo ?
That's why it a guess.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 7, 2006 6:49 PM | Permalink
I would suggest ignoring this particular troll. Kapeesh?
I would suggest ignoring this particular troll. Kapeesh?
Gotcha. My apologies. It's a temptation I'm trying to overcome.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 7, 2006 7:26 PM | Permalink
Abigail: "Your idea of an 'abolitionist press' intrigued me. I hope you'll expand on it in another post."
I got the idea from John Robinson, who, during the Newsweek koran fiasco explained how his newspaper has cut way down.
The 2006 Bloggies Awards are now accepting nominations for those so inclined. The only category for which PressThink might be a long shot contender is "best topical weblog." You have to nominate at least three blogs across the various categories to nominate any.
I do not take the media bias discourse seriously. Intellectually, it's a joke. I don't think it has much to do with journalism, or news at all. It's value to me as press criticism is approximatey zero. In my opinion--and I don't expect you to share this--bias talk is not "truth-seeking" at all, but point-scoring.
But here's what you write about your own background and set of cultural assumptions:
My views on issues would be standard Upper West Side Liberal Jewish babyboomer even though I dont live in that neighborhood. I am a registered Democrat. I supported Rudy Giuliani, a Republican, over David Dinkins (D) and will probably vote Bloomberg for mayor when he runs again. Ive written for Harpers, the Nation, Columbia Journalism Review, Chronicle of Higher Education, New York Times, Washington Post, Salon and Tompaine.com, to list a few, but not the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard or the Washington Times. I was media editor at Tikkun magazine for a while. That should be enough to place me on your spectrum.
No wonder you don't take the media liberal bias debate seriously - you're a walking, talking example of the proverbial metaphor of a fish who doesn't understand water.
Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 7, 2006 9:47 PM | Permalink
Now that you have me figured out, Jason, I'm sure it will only add to your pleasure in reading PressThink.
There was remarkably little commentary here and elsewhere about Steve Outing's idea of how to handle the mining disaster:
Heres what I think newspaper front-page editors should have done last night: Published an info box accompanying the story pointing people to the papers website for updates on the story, and acknowledging that as of the time the paper-edition story was printed, the situation was fluid.
I think that's basically right. That would have been the thing to do.
Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 7, 2006 10:23 PM | Permalink
If I were a point-maker, I would suggest "Soldier, heal thyself," and request that Jason compile a comparable list of worm-filled turds dropped by the military over the past 50 years.
Well, I don't do it here, because this is specifically a media board rather than a military board.
But if you want to come over to a military board, I've done quite a bit of that. My focus is on the Iraq war, rather than generally over the past 50 years, though.
See, for example,
"From the "Own Worst Enemy" Department"
The Army is Broken II: Pay Problems
There are lots of others, but I'm tired of looking.
Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 7, 2006 10:28 PM | Permalink
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 7, 2006 11:04 PM | Permalink
Tim: About your question. The man for the Post chat who said:
The acid test for any story could be the MIS-take (MIS 'man in street') He or she does not know, accesses the media to get information ... but do we close the loop by soliciting MIS-takes to ascertain the interpretation/effectiveness of the information. Is what the public understands what you intended to convey? What about a couple of MIS-takes quoted after a story ... perspective for the public, 'feedback' for the writer.
Frankly, I didn't grok this during the Q and A. I didn't see where he was going with it. So my answer was not very good. Thanks for asking.
I think a major area of innovation in journalism in the years ahead will be when we get public feedback systems that fine tune the news systems we're at that time running. Make sense?
The day of innovation hasn't come on that, mostly because it was rational for journalism to close itself off and professionalize for so long, the machine just doesn't know how to go in reverse.
It's going to come from outside. Maybe... a lurker here. (There are more of them than you might think.)
Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 7, 2006 11:13 PM | Permalink
The day of innovation hasn't come on that, mostly because it was rational for journalism to close itself off and professionalize for so long, the machine just doesn't know how to go in reverse.
I think the problems isn't one of knowing how to go in reverse as much as when to go in reverse. The "closed-off" journalism doesn't recognize developing problems, and "goes into reverse" only when a publication finds that it is has fallen off the cliff, and gravity takes control of the speed and direction of the vehicle.
So what we wind up with is an autopsy and post-mortem investigation, rather than timely diagnosis and treatment. The inevitable result is a press that concentrates on avoiding the big crash, and forgets that it actually had a reason for driving the car in the first place, and its not making any progress in reaching its destination.
Jay I think you should expand on the idea of the abolitionist press to a full posting.
What I like about the idea is that, aside from removing annoymous quotes, is that its using market-differentiation as a selling point. How often does THAT happen in the media world? To be sure...there's a lot of marketing hype about being "first and best" but that's a lot like saying "We get your clothes cleaner!" Its not verifiable.
A paper or any media source that had a marketing source "always on the record" is a verifiable market difference. I would totally check out that kind of media source if only see how places like the Wash Post/NY Times squirm, once-again reassure their readers they only use annoymous sourcing when absolutely necessary and then drop anoymice quotes like this one from Saturday's post story
Other administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the CRS reached some erroneous legal conclusions, erring on the side of a narrow interpretation of what constitutes military force and when the president can exercise his war powers.
Posted by: catrina at January 8, 2006 10:42 AM | Permalink
Jay, thanks for the response. It would not surprise me if change comes from the high quality lurkers PressThink attracts.
Franklin Foer on the Blogosphere's War on the Media
PM: I think what gets lost in many bloggers' critiques of the media is that without newspapers, magazines and television news programs to complain about, they wouldn't have any news to digest.Media landscapes. From the politically owned/affiliated to Yellow to the Dewey/Lippman profession to ... what's next?
Now I am really proud of PressThink reader, writer and participant Ron Brynaert for putting into Raw Story--lefty investigative journal--the tale of the Washington Post mangling a news account involving Bill Roggio, a military blogger who supports the war and leans right.
Roggio's complaints about the Post article have been featured by Michelle Malkin and Hugh Hewitt, and now they're in Raw Story because the Post screwed up. (It recently corrected parts of it, and the ombudsman is investigating.)
Brynaert (who would never claim to be objective) is always correcting people who have their facts wrong, including me. That's because he cares more about getting it right than who's side gets hurt. You can't teach that, it is rare to find it, it's worth everything. Way to go, Ron.
Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 8, 2006 11:40 AM | Permalink
Just to jump in, I'd say one of CNN's biggest problems is that they continue to hire very young, semi-skilled producers. Anderson Cooper maybe their show pony but he's undercut by his producers nearly every day.
In this case, I'll bet that the producers believed the "official statement" because that's what they do, and no one took the time to really question the source, much less the cheering families. The history of mine safety and irresponsibilities of mining companies would most likely have been an SAT question for CNN's producers, if they'd heard of this at all.
CNN isn't the only network to be cheap with field producers, but they're well-known for "catch 'em young, treat 'em rough, and tell 'em nothing". And the culture of being first adds nothing to the reliability of electronic news.
Posted by: KateCoe at January 8, 2006 1:10 PM | Permalink
Now I am really proud of PressThink reader, writer and participant Ron Brynaert for putting into Raw Story--lefty investigative journal--the tale of the Washington Post mangling a news account involving Bill Roggio, a military blogger who supports the war and leans right.
I don't understand what you (or Ron) meant by "mangling".
The Post story was about the "information war" that is going on with regard to Iraq, and the military's role in it. It included references to Roggio, and separate and distinct references to the stories about how the military is paying for favorable press coverage in Iraq. At no point does the story state, or even imply, that Roggio is on the Pentagon payroll; the story makes it clear that Roggio's trip was funded by his blog readers.
What the story does do is tell the reader that Roggio was invited by the Marine Corps to come to Iraq, and that the invitation was made after a thorough review of Roggio's work (i.e. the implication being that the invitation was granted only after the Marine Corps was sure that Roggio would provide the kind of coverage they wanted.)
Roggio cites a few minor factual errors that are irrelevant to the story (he's a "former" member of the military, not a retired one, he wasn't stil in Iraq when the story was published). But he also cites as an error that the Post said he was credentialed by the American Enterprise Institute, when he was actually credentialled by the Weekly Standard. One small problem, however.... On October 31, Roggio had written I have received media credentials, thanks to Dr. Michael Ledeen and the American Enterprise Institute. And according to Rawstory, Roggio subsequently denied any involvement by Ledeen.
Roggio also makes a huge deal out of this quote from the article... "A thorough review of his work was taken into account before authorizing the embed," said [Capt. Jeffrey S. Pool, public affairs officer for the 2nd Marine Division]. "Overall, it has worked out really well." Roggio claims that the Marine Corps has no authority over embeds, that anyone can get credentialled and be embedded -- then admits that he needed special clearances to be embedded with Marine Special forces.
Roggio's real problem is apparently the fact that he doesn't want to think of himself and his trip to Iraq as just one part of the military's information campaign. Of course, the issue isn't what Roggio wants to think of himself, but what the military is doing and how Roggio fit into their strategy -- and that is what the article was about.
I think that Ron did a really good job of reporting on this piece --- he provided all the facts (and links) necessary to understand what happened, and is happening, on this artificial controversy.
Indeed, Ron's "story" isn't really about Roggio.... the "news" in the story is that our good friend, Post Ombudsman Deborah Howell, has taken an interest in this -- thanks to the the fact that far-right wingers like Michele Malkin and Hugh Hewitt have taken up Roggio's crusade. Howell is practically batting a thousand with her choices of issues to explore (today's column decried the relative dearth of coverage of religion in the Post) -- she responds to conservatives who criticize the Post, and so far has ignored anything that "liberals" have to say about the Post's coverage.
What ami said.
Posted by: Mark Anderson at January 8, 2006 3:45 PM | Permalink
I basically agree, KC, except that I am not myself well informed on CNN's current staffing patterns for a story like this. They had... how many reporters (producers) there?
If I'm Copper and Klein, the two people with asses on the line, I say: we did this all wrong, although we come out looking okay because the governor was wrong, and this deputy something or other guy too. That was just luck: his sources were as bad as our sources.
That's no "victory," we're CNN; we're supposed to be more reliable than anyone.
Klein's speech to staff:
"It is absolutely unacceptable to me that for three hours of live television starring our top talent, Anderson Cooper, we're reporting twelve alive, and we never saw those miners, no ambulances for them ever moved, and we had no real confirmation from the rescue operation itself. None.
"Meanwhile, any reporter who stayed where the information was coming from would know there was no one with the rescue operation putting his name and ass on the line with those facts.
"How is it that I realize all this days later by reading about the reporter from the Inter-Mountain newspaper of Elkins, W.Va., the local daily profiled in Editor and Publisher, when we had our own people on the ground, who should at least know what the reporter from the Inter-Mountain newspaper knows?
"Totally unccceptable..." And if I'm Cooper I'm standing next to him nodding my head.
What do we hear from the head of CNN? (via E & P)
Most bullish of all was CNN president Jonathan Klein, who offered no apologies and hailed his cable network's performance, which resulted in three hours of faulty coverage. He said the sourcing of the report that the men were alive was "pretty solid," adding: "This situation points to the strength of TV news coverage because we were able to correct as better information developed."
I don't think anyone knows what Anderson Cooper is yet as Franchise Player for the CNN Squad. As a live TV journalist his number one job is to keep track of what we know, and the state of that knowledge, especially how well verified it is.
On the gauge of reliable story tracking during a live event--journalistically, this is why we most need anchors--the loss of the miners was a disaster for Cooper, but on the other hand it was gripping TV too. He was human; and he at least broke the news created by a citizen informing him, live, of his own mistakes.
Oh and CNN won the ratings that night, so how bad could it be?
And the culture of being first adds nothing to the reliability of electronic news.
It adds nothing to the reliability of print news either, Kate.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 8, 2006 5:49 PM | Permalink
The reporter from the Intermoutain Newspaper of Elkins got it right.
Now, supposing nobody had gotten it right: All the foregoing navel-gazing, chin-pulling, and excuse making would be bullet-proof, more or less.
But she got it right, which makes all the foregoing nothing but BS.
Question: Does she get an award, or does she have to get a nose job and leave town?
She made the rest of the journos, and those who excuse them, LOOK BAD by doing what all the journos were supposed to be doing in the first place--but didn't.
Whose sin is worse?
Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 8, 2006 6:25 PM | Permalink
Whose sin is worse?
I'm not sure, but neither can hold a candle in the "worst sin" department to the media critic who ignores the fact that the Intermountain News is an afternoon paper.
I think the afternoon newspaper explanation is a crock, and Steve is off when he says, "she got lucky." If anything, it's more reason for the Inter-Mountain reporter to go the Church with the rest of the media pack. Since she didn't have to file until the next morning, why not soak up the human angle? There's plenty of time to attend the official briefing and report on the tears of joy at the Church too. I say: She didn't go because she didn't believe that the people who knew were at the church.
The Inter-Mountain never put "twelve miners found alive" on their Website. Why not? Because they're yahoos and too stupid to update it? Were the editors unaware of high local interest in the story?
The Inter-Mountain never put "twelve miners found alive" on their Website. Why not? Because they're yahoos and too stupid to update it?
Jay, do you know for a fact that the Inter-mountain News has someone capable of actually changing the contents of their website in the wee hours of the morning on a regular basis?
We are talking about a paper whose average weekday circulation is 11,039.
ami has it cold.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 8, 2006 7:46 PM | Permalink
You're right--enjoy.
However, the point is not that the lady who got it right did so because she had more time.
And she might need a nose job so as to not be recognized by her colleagues as the one who, by doing her job right, showed them up.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 8, 2006 9:35 PM | Permalink
The Inter-Mountain never put "twelve miners found alive" on their Website. Why not? Because they're yahoos and too stupid to update it? Were the editors unaware of high local interest in the story?
The only thing I have to add to this debate is the observation that a lot of small circulation newspapers don't update their websites as fast as big circulation ones. I've worked at two 15,000 circulation or less papers and they only added their "new" stories once a day wheneven the tech person/crew was there. In some papers the web is like the last thing changed.
Posted by: catrina at January 8, 2006 9:41 PM | Permalink
Another factor is staffing. There seems to be an assumption that both print and Tv flooded the zone in W. Va. with reporters.
That's been my experience the majority of medium-sized disasters/breaking news, particularly one like the mining disaster that went on beyond 40 hours.
Of course, when you have a Katrina-sized disaster, all bets are all. You throw a lot of bodies into the fray.
Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 8, 2006 9:53 PM | Permalink
> The point is that in the meantime, she didn't get it wrong.
OK, I'm stumped. Can someone tell me what the hell this means.
The local paper didn't get it wrong because they had more time to get it right. By the time they published, the correct story had already been reported.
As for the church vs. the mine scenario, does anyone have a timeline on how the story broke? It was my understanding that the story changed to a 'miracle' when family members approached reporters with the news that company officials had informed them there were 12 miners alive.
If that's the case, it made perfect sense to go to the church since, at that point,company officials weren't giving information to reporters. Going to families - and tracking down the governor and state officials - made sense.
Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 8, 2006 10:06 PM | Permalink
However, the point is not that the lady who got it right did so because she had more time.
No, Richard, that actually is the point. By the time she published -- 12 hours after the true story came out -- everyone had gotten it right.
To get it wrong at 3 pm the next day would require having willfully shut yourself off from the world -- TV, radio, the Internet -- all night, all morning and for most of the afternoon.
I'm old and I'm fat -- but give me a free 15 hours that the competition doesn't get and I'll beat Lance Armstrong up the mountain. Hell, I wouldn't even need a bicycle.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 8, 2006 10:19 PM | Permalink
No, you're the one not getting it, Steve. And you, Dave, when you write: "The local paper didn't get it wrong because they had more time to get it right. By the time they published, the correct story had already been reported."
Pay attention, please...
If the Editor & Publisher account is correct, and if the editor and reporter are telling the truth about what they did and why, then not only did they not print the wrong story, they never had the wrong story, and never believed what CNN and the Times believed. They didn't fall for the signs of rescue that seemed so certain to bigger news organizations.
You can't tell me that's impossible, can you?
If they never had the wrong story, then we can ask why, and it's an interesting question. But it's obvious why they didn't print the wrong story: as you say, afternoon deadline.
This matters because some of you seem to believe that it's impossible for the yahoos in West Virgina to have been smarter than the national press corps, whereas to some of us that does not seem implausible at all. The editor knows you think this about her: that's why she pointed out that she didn't update her site with "twelve miners found alive, families say."
Next post, I will put what Editor and Publisher reported. If you think E & P is full of it, fine, say so. Think the locals are puffing themselves up and BS-ing us? (They don't really know how to update their website, and anyway they wouldn't think of it!) Fine, just say so.
I don't think that, myself.
Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 8, 2006 10:48 PM | Permalink
Skidmore adds that her staff never believed the miners had been found alive because no official word was ever given. She said no update about miners being found alive ever appeared on the paper's Web site, either.
Steve, ami, Dave, anyone. Is Skidmore lying? Or just deluded? Is Editor & Publisher wrong? Or just unsophisticated?
Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 8, 2006 10:50 PM | Permalink
Jay. At this point, Skidmore is lying, and deluded. E&P is both wrong and unsophisticated.
Becauses if they aren't, then.... the big journos were wrong and THERE ARE NO EXCUSES.
Which would you prefer? Now, I can understand sneering at a redneck publication, that being the sort of thing many journalists for the bigs can do in their sleep.
The cozy smoothie of excuses, rationalizations, and detours to the we're-not-biased venue, which had everybody just about dozing off turns out to have a belt of cayenne pepper in it.
Thus my suggestion the reporter who got it right get a nose job and catch the next train out of town. Maybe should could prevail on the FBI for a witness protection slot.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 8, 2006 11:05 PM | Permalink
jay, who said anything about the yahoos? Nor am I impugning the Inter-Mountain's editor. E&P has taken the position this event is an unmitigated media disaster, which i don't agree with. But I'm sure the Inter-Mountain folks knew what they were doing.
My point is simply that the editors and staff of the Inter-Mountain paper didn't have to worry about following the miracle story. They didn't need the story that CNN, et al, had. Whichever way the story went, they were going to the more correct story, by virtue of the later deadlines AND the insider knowledge.
I don't think anyone is looking down on the W. Va. paper as a bunch of hicks. Reporters in small towns have saved my ass too many times for me to denigrate the small paper. They know the social and cultural terrain, they know the characters and they no the folks who can speak truth.
But they also don't have have the resources of their bigger cousins. And I've seen too many small-town websites that go without updates simply because they don't have the people to do it 24-7.
There's no question the major, larger news media, TV and print, got the story wrong. There's a reason for that. And they corrected it as quickly as possible.
Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 8, 2006 11:09 PM | Permalink
Dave, you and Steve said a number of times: they got it right because it's an afternoon paper. Here's what the editor said back to you:
Even if she had run a morning paper, Skidmore said she believes she would have held off running the story, pointing out that she did not put any of the bogus reports on the paper's Web site.
First you didn't hear what she said, and kept repeating: afternoon paper, afternoon paper! Then you said...
I've seen too many small-town websites that go without updates simply because they don't have the people to do it 24-7.
If I buy what you're saying now then Skidmore is being devious: "I might point out to the national press that we didn't put any bogus reports on our website. Of course we never update our website overnight anyway, we haven't got the staff..."
It seems to me that you are charging her with at least that. Is that impugning? You decide. No one said "yahoos." That was my hyperbolic term for an attitude I'm picking up. It's an interpretation, not a quotation.
Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 8, 2006 11:41 PM | Permalink
Jay --
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 9, 2006 12:28 AM | Permalink
Just saw Anderson Cooper finding the news out for the first time. I thought he did a nice, classy job. He shut up and just let an articulate witness talk.
I'm really surprised that CNN didn't do a zone defense, and send one producer to the mine with a walkie talkie. I doubt CNN showed up to this one with just Cooper and a cameraman. I've seen Amanpour and 60 Minutes both show up and spread three producers around, but that might just be because she was in Iraq.
Had CNN kept someone at the mine - you know, where the ACTION was, and like the local yokels did, they wouldn't have been caught flat-footed. At least Cooper could have been saying "Well, here at the church, the word is they've been found alive. But so far, Bill, we've only seen one ambulance leave the site. The others are still sitting idle, and don't even have the engines warmed up. The atmosphere here at the church is indeed jubilant, but we're still waiting for confirmation from the site itself. Back to you Bill."
Maybe the governor should have done the same thing - at least via a representative from the Mining authority for the state. The governor also has to be careful not to look like he's micromanaging local officials.
For the life of me, I don't know why they'd involve the governor as an intermediary, rather than the mayor's office or the sherriff's department.
That might be another case of CNN not knowing these rural communities too well, either - which is a pretty obvious advantage the local paper would have had.
Same deal in hurricanes - the action happens at the county level - not state or federal. The lowest level that has a true multi-disciplined EOC is the county level. That was one of the reasons CNN's reporting on Katrina was so bad - these idiots hadn't figured out that the story plays out at the county level, not at FEMA.
Come to think of it - local papers consistently outreport the nationals, too, when it comes to their own local units.
Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 9, 2006 12:36 AM | Permalink
Okay, okay, so Skidmore hasn't been dismissed as a yahoo, and you are a yahoo, which means you wouldn't be dissing others that way.
Steve wrote: "I don't think she knows, even though she apparently thinks she knows."
She's just deluded, then.
We actually cross-posted in my alleged impugning post, Jay. The Inter-Mountain made an editorial decision to not run the miracle story for a multitude of reasons. An abundance of caution, knowledge of the people and events - this wasn't, i'm sure their first mine disaster - AND they didn't have to run the story until later the next day.
The out-of-towners, the print side anyway, didn't have the luxury of the later deadline. They clearly didn't know the cultural terrain. And opted for risk-taking rather than caution for reasons that at the time, made sense.
I'm sure the editor believes she'd made the same choices if it were an AM paper. I don't think Steve - or I - were saying she's delusional. Only that we never know what we'd do until we have to make the decision.
And, Steve, my birthplace in Gregg County in East Texas and the four oil towns I grew up in trump your yahoo roots.
Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 9, 2006 1:30 AM | Permalink
Why not ask Editor Skidmore to join the conversation, Jay? I'd love to hear her impressions of the out-of-towner press and how this media drama has played out.
Posted by: Dave McLemore at January 9, 2006 1:32 AM | Permalink
I'll try to get in touch with her tomorrow. And, though I think the world of you, and Steve, as journalists, and I'm impressed with your yahoo roots, I think you guys are dismissing her and her newspaper, and you don't realize it or you don't care to admit it.
If they have that base covered, then yes, we can say they had a different story (or no story at all yet) the whole time. It would not be all that surprising that locals read a local story more efficiently and effectively.
It would be interesting know if the national operations did completely ditch International Coal Group headquarters as Wagoner's account seems to suggest.
If Democracy Now was remotely informed in their coverage, another part of the back story is that in most mine disasters before this, including under this administration, the feds HAVE taken the lead in the rescue operations and the press conferences. Suddenly they didn't on this one. That means the government was operating differently this time which will obviously impact how the news operations work. Suddenly, their standard protocols would not apply. That doesn't mean it's rocket science, but it does mean this appears to have been the debut of something different.
What's going on with the shift in federal government approach? Is it greater efficiency by design? Collapse of the plan altogether? Lack of effective presence? Complete surrender? What? If its a new design, wouldn't they typically mention that to someone, somewhere, sometime? That angle is not simply a local media story. It may be, also, a local or local media story.
Posted by: Mark Anderson at January 9, 2006 5:08 AM | Permalink
Jay, I guess you could ask Skidmore when this was posted: Twelve of Thirteen Trapped Miners Did Not Survive
I disagree with Mr. Van Steenwyk and Mr. Aubrey on almost everything they have ever posted, but on this issue I thnk they are correct.
It is NOT OKAY for the print journalists, especially, to have run with unsubstantiated rumor to the point of screaming miracle morning headlines.
We know that Fox and CNN, followed by ABC and NBC, serve as an echo chamber of "breaking news," amplifying false stories to the point of having really no credibility at all. TV News has ended up with egg on their faces too many times. It had JUST happened during Katrina. The only thing that one should believe in a television story is that, yes, it looks like the wind is really blowing hard, if Anderson Cooper's pant legs are flapping in the breeze.
But the print journalists, who piously and pompously declare that what sets them apart from the riffraff are layers of editors that verify and fact check,(sniff), shouldn't be making excuses for themselves. Their readers were misinformed because of their negligence.
Now if you want to make the argument that accurately informing newspapers' readers is secondary to the task of putting out something, anything, in headlines, then fine. But then, don't make the argument that print journalists are somehow better, more accurate, more thorough, and therefore more valuable, than CNN or any blog.
(And I am talking about the bigfoot papers here.)
Posted by: Phredd at January 9, 2006 7:07 AM | Permalink
Mark: I wrote...
If the Editor & Publisher account is correct, and if the editor and reporter are telling the truth about what they did and why, then not only did they not print the wrong story, they never had the wrong story, and never believed what CNN and the Times believed. They didn't fall for the signs of rescue that seemed so certain to bigger news organizations.
That isn't jumping to conclusions; that's the opposite of jumping to conclusions. That's saying if...
Also, folks: I wrote to Linda Skidmore and Besty Wagoner asking them to either show up here or do an interview with me.
Jay: Brynaert (who would never claim to be objective) is always correcting people who have their facts wrong, including me. That's because he cares more about getting it right than who's side gets hurt. You can't teach that, it is rare to find it, it's worth everything. Way to go, Ron.
Now, how, in all honesty, can you concede that newsrooms are overwhelmingly liberal/Democratic, that conservatives/Republicans are conversely underrepresented in newsrooms, as you do above ... and then state that it is "rare to find" someone who cares more about getting it right than about whose side is getting hurt, and still claim that the leftward demographic skew doesn't make its way into print?
If it's so rare to find, how is that even logically or statistically possible?
Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at January 9, 2006 9:23 AM | Permalink
Just a thought....
for three hours the national media was reporting that the miners were alive. Readers of the Inter-mountain News who checked the paper's website would not have seen the story confirmed, its true.....but (apparently) they would not have seen any reference to what was appearing on TV for three hours.
Now, what was the average Inter-mountain News reader to make of that? That the paper was skeptical of the reports? Or that the website wasn't being updated?
There was, in fact, something to report --- that the town and families were celebrating, and that the national media was reporting that the miners were alive, but that Inter-mountain News had not been able to confirm the story with mining company officials. In other words, if there was cause for skepticism, that paper's readers should have been alerted to that fact. The paper did not actively confirm the story --- instead they acquiesced to it.
I think that Steve is closest to the truth --- they got "lucky". They had only one reporter on the scene, and no immediate deadline to meet, so the editor decided to have the reporter wait at the mine where the story was expected to return at any minute as the company made a statement, and miners started being brought to the surface and put into ambulances.
That was a sound journalistic decision, but I find it difficult to believe that if the Inter-mountain News had more resource on the scene, that some reporters would not have been interviewing family members at the church without expressing any skepticism.
I don't think that Skidmore is BSing. What I do think is happening is that Skidmore made the right decisions for sound journalistic reasons in which "skepticism" played something of a role -- but the driving force behind those decisions was simply that the reporter needed to be where the narrative the paper needed to have for Thursday's edition would be coming from -- and that narrative was the details of the rescue.
(In other words, even if there was no skepticism, that reporter would have stayed at the mine to cover the story, and people are now lauding Skidmore for her skepticism, rather than for the fact that she displayed good journalistic judgement in deploying her resources that night.)
Jay I have to go with Steve and Rich on this one. There's clearly a case that can be made that the local paper would have covered the story more accurately. But I think the facts laid out in this particular case make a strong argument for it.
I think saying Skidmore is "deluded" is WAY too strong a word for what's going on. What's a good word for painting someone's actions in the best light possible? Fact is Skidmore wasn't faced with same deadline situation as the national papers or non-local ones. But she feels that if she was, she/her paper would have been more accurate than the national news. It's not "delusional" to feel that way, its simply natural to believe you will perform well in a hypothetical situation.
I just don't think there's ever going to be strong evidence to prove or disprove Skidmore's faith that had she had the same deadlines as say..the L.A. Times, she would have produced a more accurate article and headline.
This is a bad test case for local vs. national truthiness. (Word of the year)
Posted by: catrina at January 9, 2006 9:35 AM | Permalink
I just don't think there's ever going to be strong evidence to prove or disprove Skidmore's faith that had she had the same deadlines as say..the L.A. Times, she would have produced a more accurate article and headline.
Did the LA Times (or any non-East Coast morning paper) have its own reporter on the scene? Or was the rest of the country getting their stuff from AP and other news services?
With a 3AM Eastern deadline, I have to assume that by 2:30 Skidmore would have been 'screaming on the cell phone' demanding that her reporter get an explanation for why there had been no confirmation. In my (admittedly limited) experience, reporters and editors "approaching deadline" get much more agressive when it comes to nailing down facts on "breaking stories" -- and if the Inter-mountain Times had a 3AM deadline, they might have gotten the truth out earlier.
I may have more to say about the great Inter-Mountain dispute, but suffice to say, it was one of only half a dozen news stories and a couple of columns we have carried so far on our Web site about all this. Our Inter-Mountain story emphasized that it was an afternoon paper.
Looking at some of the commentary above, I wonder how many have read our exclusive, detailed chronology of the "sourcing" in this story? It has been updated a couple of times. I'd appreciate it if a few people who think we are unfairly rapping the media read it and post here again after they do.
Posted by: Greg Mitchell at January 9, 2006 10:25 AM | Permalink
I got it, now.
Skidmore & Co. would have screwed up if they'd had the resources. Unproven, untestable, but granitic in its acceptance by the rest of the crowd.
That makes it all okay. That's why it has to be true.
So everything will be okay.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey at January 9, 2006 10:39 AM | Permalink
This one is like a funhouse mirror.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at January 9, 2006 10:53 AM | Permalink
New thread for this discussion is up: Wrong When the Governor is Wrong. Please go there to comment.
"CNN is so empty-handed in documenting how it knew the men were alive that the producers resort to playing audio tapes of a dispatcher's voice at some unidentified ambulance service, and someone named 'caller' is saying... that's what we heard, yeah, 12 alive."
Originally published at the Huffington Post.
Posted by: Jay Rosen at January 9, 2006 11:18 AM | Permalink