By Christopher B. Daly
My book Covering America drew an insanely enthusiastic review in the Providence Journal on Sunday. The timing reminds me: IMHO, this book would make a great holiday gift for anyone who cares about American journalism, American history, American politics, the tech revolution in news, Jefferson/Lincoln/FDR, WWI/WWI/Vietnam, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
Have I left anyone out?
Filed under Covering America, history, Journalism, journalism history
. . .until it isn’t.
As this story suggests, Tweeting is a form of “publishing” and brings with it the responsibility not to make factual assertions about identifiable individuals that are libelous. Statements are libelous (at least in the United States) if they are
—false,
—damaging to the person’s reputation,
–and costly to the victim in some tangible way.
So, to everyone online, I say: welcome to the ranks of “the media.” Check your facts.
This is why the news media, for all their faults, have fact-checkers, editors, lawyers, standards, and schools of journalism. You should know your song well before you start singing.
AN UPDATE: Here is a different view, from Jonathan Zittrain. It ran in the Financial Times, but I can’t find a free way to read it. (Good for them, not so good for me.)
Filed under Journalism
By Christopher B. Daly
Mark Thompson is wrapping up his first week as the new president and chief executive of the New York Times Company. That role puts him in a critical position in U.S. journalism, and he has little margin for error in leading the
Carl Court / AFP-Getty
country’s most important news-gathering organization through dangerous and economically challenging times. We all need him to succeed.
And yet.
It is beginning to appear that the Times Company’s principal owner and publisher of the flagship newspaper, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., may have picked the wrong person for the job. The reason for that has to do with Thompson’s last job, as an executive with the BBC. The British broadcasting empire, a tower of journalistic probity, is going through its own scandal.
To its credit, the Times is pursuing the question of what Thompson knew and when he knew it — apparently without much fear or favor. This is as it should be. My concern is that, fairly or unfairly, Thompson may be so damaged by his BBC baggage that he has to go.
Tentatively, I would say Thompson either knew of serious wrongdoing at the BBC and did nothing, or else he did not know and should have. Either way, he is compromised.
Filed under broadcasting, Journalism, New York Times
By Christopher B. Daly
In the wake of last week’s election, many Republicans seems to be facing not only a political problem but also an epistemological one. Epistemology is the term philosophers use for the study of knowledge itself. It is an inquiry that asks: How do we know what we know? (or, How do we know what we think we know?)
Two recent pieces raise the issue.
David Carr,in his column in the New York Times, emphasizes the crisis that overtook Fox News on election night, when some professionals at the conservative news network were forced to choose — live, on television — between Republican orthodoxy and journalistic empiricism. Carr rightly applauds Megyn Kelly for insisting on a fact-based approach while she was on-air with Republican Party strategist, fund-raiser, consultant (have I left any roles out?) Karl Rove, who doubles as a paid news “analyst” for Fox. As the Ohio vote was being counted last Tuesday night, it was becoming clear that Obama would win the state and, thus, the country. Rove insisted that Fox set aside the facts and hold off on placing Ohio in the president’s camp.
Inexplicably, though, Carr did not cite the definitive quote in the exchange. Kelly turned to Rove and asked:
“Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better, or is this real?”
(Jon Stewart rightly pounced on it as a moment of political/journalistic/epistemological crisis, and you can see the video.)
How about math we do as Americans to determine reality?
Many of the same issues are raised in a searching piece in Politico today about the “cocooning” of many Republicans. On election night, some Republicans found it difficult to believe that Obama was actually winning, largely because they only watch Fox News and only hear the views of analysts like Karl Rove. The piece, by Jonathan Martin, points in the direction of the book I am working on about the rise of conservative media after WWII, with the working title: Inside the Meme Factory: The Rise of Conservative Media and Think Tanks. Stay tuned for that. (If you think that an idea/slogan like “the rich are job-creators” arises spontaneously, you got another think coming!)
Filed under broadcasting, Fox News, Journalism, Politics
By Christopher B. Daly
Last-minute pre-election edition. Here’s a tip for filling the long hours on Election Day when not much is happening. Read this article from the Nieman Journalism Lab about the use of statistics in politics by the New York Times’s Nate Silver. Then, read Nate Silver’s blog, whose name is actually a number, 538 — so named for the number of votes in the Electoral College.
That should keep you busy until some actual results start coming in after 7 p.m. (eastern time).
Filed under Journalism, Politics
By Christopher B. Daly
Another legacy news institution dies. The latest print publication to fail to make the transition to a digital ecology is Newsweek — a fixture on the American scene since its founding in 1933. After decades as a profitable division of the Washington Post Co., the weekly news magazine peaked at a paid circulation of just over 3.1 million a week, in 2001. Less than a decade later, with circulation plummeting and debts mounting, the Post company sold Newsweek for one dollar, just to try to stop the bleeding, and the magazine merged with the Daily Beast.
Newsweek was important as an alternative to the Luce empire’s older and bigger TIME magazine in the weekly news-magazine market, and it did some fine reporting and photography over the years.
Technically, Newsweek is ceasing to publish in print. It will go online-only and be folded into the Daily Beast website, founded and run by Tina Brown.
Here’s a collection of Newsweek covers from today’s Daily Beast site.
p.s. I hate writing these obits for legacy media, and I hope this is the last. — CBD
Filed under Journalism, journalism history
By Christopher B. Daly
As a public service, I am following up on a recent post about Jack Welch, the original “jobber,” who tried to launch the rumor that the professionals at the Bureau of Labor Statistics was cooking the 
books on the monthly unemployment figures as a political favor to their boss. Turns out, the journalists at Fortune (where Welch had a column) could not let that stand; they did what journalists are supposed to do — they did some checking and found nothing to it.
In umbrage at their verification efforts, Welch announced that he was quitting his ties to Fortune. Hmmm…
Here’s Fortune’s version.
Here’s the take-away:
Monday morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Fortune managing editor Andy Serwer said there were a number of things wrong with Welch’s tweet, the biggest of which was that the economy doesn’t back up the former executive’s claim that the numbers were faked.
“I think it’s exactly the opposite of what Jack Welch is saying,” Serwer said. “Things are actually improving.”
Also, I had a chance to look further into GE’s stock performance. The 5-year chart below shows quite clearly that GE’s stock was cratering (along with the rest of the economy) late in the Bush administration. Under Obama, the stock has steadily risen and has about doubled under the current administration’s policies.
Filed under Journalism
By Christopher B. Daly
I had the opportunity to watch the presidential debate last night with a unique group of non-voters: a dozen grad students enrolled in the Journalism Dept at Boston University. I teach all of these great young people in a special class for the new students from overseas.
As you can see, they were really dialed in and asked great questions.
I think quite a few of them were perplexed by Obama’s disappointing performance (but were too polite to dump on him!).
Note to academic advisers: tell your students not to take classes with professors whose eyes are shut.
Filed under Journalism, Politics
By Christopher B. Daly
The Times has a piece today in the Science section about the downside of not drinking alcohol in certain professions. Speaking for the news business, I would say that would be a definite drawback — or at least it was, back in the 1970s, when I was breaking in. Without taking a position on the merits of drinking, I will say I was taken back by the photo that illustrates today’s Times piece: it shows the Pig ‘N’ Whistle, a bar on W. 48th St. in Manhattan, just south of Rockefeller Center. That’s the place where I and my colleagues at The Associated Press (50 Rock) went to drink (ahem, after work), joined by our colleagues from NBC News (30 Rock) and the various media over on 6th Ave.
It’s good to know that “the Pig” is still in business, quenching journalists’ thirsts.
Filed under Journalism, journalism history
By Christopher B. Daly
Three cheers for Arianna Huffington. Whatever you might think of the quality of her journalism (which is uneven, but increasingly original), you have to give her credit for making money, expanding, and hiring people.
Her latest move is to create an Italian-language version of HuffPo. This is her fifth, following rollouts in Canada, Britain, France and Spain. (What’s wrong with her native Greece?) Up next: Germany, Japan, South Korea, India, and Brazil.
From today’s Times story:
L’Huffington Post lined up four prominent introductory advertisers: the leather goods company Tod’s, the carmaker Citroën, the energy company Eni and the telecommunications provider Wind. Each of the partners has invested 1 million euros, or about $1.3 million.
The Italian site alone expects to generate 5 million euros, about $6.4 million, in annual advertising revenue by the third year, said Massimo Ghedini, chief executive of the Espresso Group’s advertising sales arm, A.Manzoni.
Is Rupert Murdoch hearing footsteps yet?
Filed under Arianna Huffington, blogging, Journalism
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