by Christopher B. Daly
Narratives in the news:
–Here is a smart piece about why some of us are drawn to TV narratives like Downton and other shows with strong narratives.
–Here is a smart piece about the power of narrators (although I think there is a bit of confusion here between narrators and protagonists, which are not the same).
Filed under history, Journalism
Here’s the New York magazine version, complete with the memo from Jill Abramson.
No matter how you slice it, this is not good news.
NYT executive editor Jill Abramson
Filed under New York Times
By Christopher B. Daly
I have ready access to a device that can kill people. Sure, it was built for other purposes, but it can kill people — potentially lots of people.
This device is dangerous. Because it is so dangerous, people (acting through their governments) have taken steps to minimize the danger:
–As a user, I have to take lessons and prove to a police officer that I can handle this device.
–I have to submit to a government-run eye exam.
–I have to pay for a license and carry it any time I use this thing.
–I have to pay (a lot) for insurance in case I accidentally hurt someone.
–The device itself must be registered with the government.
–Every year, I have to let a stranger handle it and prove that it is in good working order.
–I have to take steps to make sure this thing is never stolen, by locking it and by installing special equipment to deter thieves.
–I have to pay taxes to help make these things safer.
–If I want to sell an old one, I can go to the private re-sale market, but the new owner has to have a license, pass inspection, etc.
–If I get too old to handle it or lose my eyesight, there goes my license.
–I cannot just hand one to a child.
–Every time I use this thing, I am subject to being watched by a police officer; if I do anything wrong or if any of my safety equipment is not working, I am subject to immediate detention.
What is it? It’s an automobile.
So, if we can live with these kinds of restrictions on our cars, why can’t gun owners accept some reasonable limits on their guns? (Not a ban, just some common-sense rules for safety.)
From the CDC’s latest national annual figures:
Deaths from motor vehicles: 34,485
Deaths from firearms: 31,347
Filed under Uncategorized
By Christopher B. Daly
Even from the grave, media mogul William Randolph Hearst continues to make headlines, reshape the landscape, and build edifices. Turns out, one of the rockpiles he bought in Europe was never re-assembled but just lay in a shed in San Francisco’s Golden Gate
The house’s stones were bought in Spain by William Randolph Hearst in the 1930s, then abandoned in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park for decades.
(Max Whittaker for the NYT)
Park. Until, that is, a band of monks and a California artisan brewer (is there any other kind inthe Bay Area) teamed up to put all the pieces back together again.
A rare feel-good story involving Hearst. (Actually, there is a missing feel-bad angle: these stones belong in Spain and should have been repatriated. Hearst, the cultural imperialist, should not be allowed to get credit for this.)
Filed under journalism history
It’s hard to see how this is over.
And this one is definitely not over. (Here’s the Guardian’s version, which is a bit clearer.)
And this one won’t be over until you-know-when.
Filed under Journalism, Murdoch scandal
By Christopher B. Daly
The struggle over censorship continues in China. While it plays out, American journalists are struggling over political nomenclature.
This has been a problem since early in the 20th Century, when first the Russians and later the Chinese and others had communist revolutions. After that point, those former insurgent leftists became the establishment (with a vengeance, to be sure). They often faced right-wing opposition, which wanted to reverse those revolutions and restore the old (dictatorial) regimes.
But at a certain point, those old communist regimes faced a new insurgency — call it “progressive” perhaps? — that was not counter-revolutionary but was not happy either.
In Russia, in eastern Europe and elsewhere and now in China, people began to challenge the regime on the grounds that they wanted real liberation. They demanded such things as:
–rule of law
–accountability of government officials
–free and fair elections
–transparency
–free speech & press
–economic opportunity
Many of these demands overlap with the cluster of values often associated with classical “liberalism” in the West. But the term “liberal” was re-purposed in the 20th Century to refer to people like FDR who support the use of government power to intervene in the industrial economy in the interest of full employment and economic security for all.
So, by either definition, it makes little sense to refer to those brave Chinese demanding press freedom as “liberals.” They are not exactly “leftists” either, at least not by most definitions. (Granted, they are, in some ways, to the left of the putatively leftist regime they are challenging, but in terms of political labels, it’s pretty hard to put these people to the left of Mao.)
They are certainly not Communists or communists, either.
It often makes sense to call them “critics,” but then China has right-wing critics too. Journalists often fall back on the all-purpose “dissident,” which has its uses and may not be the worst label, in a pinch.
But this is not a simple question, and it appears to need an answer, judging from the comments accompanying today’s Times story. But it will have to wait. Far more urgent, of course, is the issue of ending censorship.
Filed under Uncategorized
Whether you agreed with her or not, it must be acknowledged that Ada Louise Huxtable elevated the practice of American journalism just by being in it. I recall how many of her pieces were events in themselves.
Thank you, Ada.
Ada Louise Huxtable, with Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, in 1970, when she won the first Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.
Filed under Journalism, journalism history, New York Times
By Christopher B. Daly
David Carr has a worthwhile column today in the New York Times, making the point that many of the brand-name “legacy media” that were so recently written off are quietly staging a comeback. According to Carr, the dinosaurs are learning to dance. (In the final chapter of my book, COVERING AMERICA, I used a slightly different metaphor: I said the dinosaurs had to learn to ice skate!)
Here’s an excerpt:
In the last year, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was up 13.4 percent, which was a significant advance, but legacy media giants like Comcast, News Corporation and Time Warner absolutely surpassed it in terms of share price.
Viacom, which has had serious ratings trouble with MTV and Nickelodeon, still managed to be up 16.1 percent on the year. We keep hearing how traditional networks are getting clobbered, but Viacom’s sibling, CBS, was up a whopping 40.2 percent.
News Corporation, despite being racked by scandal, was up 43 percent, and fellow global media conglomerates like Disney and Time Warner were up more than 32 percent. And Comcast, which has both the pipes and programming — cable and NBCUniversal — soared 57.6 percent.
One piece of data that Carr did not cite is the recent history of the market fortunes of his own employer, the New York Times Co. So, here it is:
Turns out, the value of Times Co. stock has been on a roller-coaster track over the past 12 months. The company had a terrific six months, from May to October, during which the value of a share of NYTCo stock almost doubled. Somewhere around Halloween, the stock cratered, and it has been basically crawling sideways since then. So, the Times Co. experience does not fit Carr’s trend story. I would say that would be a good subject for him to take up next: why doesn’t the Times‘ journalistic excellence translate into financial success?
It’s an important question to answer, because without making money, the Times will not long be able to dance or ice skate. Like other dinosaurs, it will die out.
Filed under Journalism, New York Times
No surprise: the New York Times, whose reporters filed a FOIA request in this case, agrees with me that the Obama administration has engaged in excessive secrecy around the legal rationale for its drone program.
Here’s the Times editorial:
Misplaced Secrecy on Targeted Killings
For years, President Obama has been stretching executive power to claim that the authorization to use military force against Al Qaeda gives him the unilateral authority to order people killed away from any battlefield without judicial oversight or public accountability — even when the target is an American citizen.
On Wednesday, a federal judge in Manhattan came down on the side of preserving secrecy regarding how this dangerous view of executive power gets exercised. Judge Colleen McMahon refused to require the Justice Department to disclose a memorandum providing the legal justification for the targeted killing of a United States citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, in a 2011 drone strike in Yemen.
The decision came in response to a lawsuit for the memorandum and related materials filed under the Freedom of Information Act by The New York Times and two of its reporters, Charlie Savage and Scott Shane, and also a broader request under the act from the American Civil Liberties Union. We strongly disagree with Judge McMahon’s conclusion that she was compelled by a “thicket of laws and precedents” to deny access to the legal memo — prepared by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel — and other documents that provided the legal and factual basis for the killings.
For starters, various government officials have spoken publicly about the American role in killing Mr. Awlaki and the circumstances under which the government considers targeted killings, including of American citizens. At President Obama’s nominating convention last summer, a video prepared by his campaign listed the killing of Mr. Awlaki prominently among Mr. Obama’s national security achievements.
Such a selective and self-serving “public relations campaign,” as the judge termed it, should have been deemed a waiver of the government’s right to withhold its legal rationale from public scrutiny. Moreover, disclosing the document would not have jeopardized national security or revealed any properly classified operational details. The ruling, which is inconsistent with the purpose and history of the information disclosure law, richly deserves overturning on appeal.
However, we appreciate Judge McMahon’s honest recognition of the “Alice-in-Wonderland nature” of her decision, which allows the executive branch to publicly proclaim the legality of the targeted killing program while insisting that the public may not know the reasons for that conclusion. The administration has opposed all legal efforts by Mr. Awlaki’s father and others to compel a court review of the decision to have him killed.
Judge McMahon took pains to acknowledge the serious questions the targeted killing program raises about the appropriate limits on government authority in our constitutional system and expressed the view that, as a matter of policy, the administration’s legal analysis should be made public.
“More fulsome disclosure of the legal reasoning on which the administration relies to justify the targeted killing of individuals, including united States citizens, far from any recognizable ‘hot’ field of battle, would allow for intelligent discussion and assessment of a tactic that (like torture before it) remains hotly debated,” the judge wrote.
President Obama, who pledged more government transparency in his first campaign and early days in office, should heed those sentiments and order the legal memo released along with other information that would shed light on the government’s legal reasoning and the evidence leading to Mr. Awlaki’s killing.
It is past time he did so.
Filed under Uncategorized
By Christopher B. Daly
I am disappointed in President Obama over his insistence on shrouding his drone program in secrecy. It is one thing to keep quiet about the operations of a quasi-military, semi-secret technology such as the drones that have emerged as the leading weapon in the “war on terror” that Obama inherited from George W. Bush. But 
there is no reason that justifies keeping quiet about the legal rationale for such a program. When drones are used in countries against which we have not declared war, and particularly when they are used to kill American citizens overseas, I believe the people of the United States are not only entitled to an explanation, we have a duty to know what is being done in our name. If Obama has a good reason for his drone program that squares with the Constitution, fine. If he does not, then he should admit it and seek another way.
But as things stand, we cannot even have a debate over the wisdom of the program, because the White House won’t allow it. As the Times reports today, a federal judge in Manhattan threw up her hands in frustration over the secrecy but had to conclude that, under law, she could not force the administration to divulge anything. Judge Colleen McMahon issued a ruling (see page 3) in a FOIA request filed by two of the Times‘ own reporters, Charlie Savage and Scott Shane. Good for them for trying to get the Obama folks on the record. And shame on the administration (DOJ, DOD, and CIA) for keeping the reason for their secret program secret. What do we have a Freedom of Information Act for, if not for situations like this?
As matters stand, the president won’t deny that the program exists, and he won’t stop it. But he won’t explain it either. Meanwhile, the drone strikes continue. There are reports of successes in places like Waziristan and Yemen. But, as the president, who watches “Homeland,” must realize, the drone program continues to make new enemies every day who must blame Americans for keeping a government in power that would do such things.
Don’t get me wrong: I have an open mind about the drone strikes, but I find this secrecy intolerable.
Filed under Journalism
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