September 23, 2012 · 1:17 pm

This and That

By Christopher B. Daly 

Some worthies from today’s news:

—The Times has a piece that toys with what might be called the “journalistic Heisenberg principle.” That is, based on the popular view of Werner’s Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, it would appear that a reporter cannot be present at a political event without changing the event. In any case, it’s always fascinating to hear what politicians say when they think they are off the record.

—The Times has a piece about the final round of releases of the secret tapes that JFK made in the Oval Office. Disclaimer: Kennedy had an “on” button (unlike Nixon), so the conversations that were recorded were those that he chose. Furthermore, these tapes have passed through the hands of the family and the staff at the Kennedy Presidential Library, so there is no way of knowing what is not in there. Still, they are the best we are going to have.

—The Globe has a piece that addresses the question: who is on the receiving end of all the money spent on political advertising? It’s the owners of the thousands of TV stations around the country, of course. Not all of the prosper equally, of course. Much depends on whether they are in a “battleground” state. Also, they may not prosper as much as you might think: Since Congress started regulating broadcasting in 1927, lawmakers have rigged the rules in their favor. As in this excerpt from the Globe:

By federal mandate, candidates for president and Congress receive preferential treatment when booking advertising time, and stations must give equal airtime to each side of a race. Candidates can also buy television advertising time at a discount from the going commercial rate. The result all too often: back-to-back political spots which can bump more lucrative commercial advertising.

 

Leave it to politicians to write the rules.

 

 

 

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September 23, 2012 · 12:49 pm

Rhetoric 101: the Brown-Warren race

By Christopher B. Daly

When did the term “professor” become an epithet?

U.S. Senator Scott Brown, R-Mass., seems to use it that way in his campaign against challenger Elizabeth Warren. As can be seen in the wordmap below, created by the Boston Globe, Brown never misses a chance to use that title. What is hard to tell from the graphic, though, is Brown’s tone and demeanor. He usually delivers the “professor” line with a smirk, as if he knows he’s blowing a dog whistle intended to reach every anti-intellectual voter in Massachusetts. This from a guy who has benefitted from the teaching he received from many professors. After all, he has a b.a. from Tufts (cum laude) and a Juris Doctor degree from Boston College Law School. It takes a lot of nerve for him to run a campaign in which he mocks higher education (which is also a major industry in the state he wants to represent).

As someone who worked very hard to become a professor myself, I guess I take this one a little bit personally. Where I come from, in Medford, we’d call someone like Brown cute. The way we used it there, it was not a compliment.

Boston Globe

Boston Globe

 

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September 22, 2012 · 10:38 pm

Romney’s taxes

By Christopher B. Daly

In the coverage of the political debate over who pays taxes in this country, most journalists seem to be overlooking some critical distinctions. Mitt Romney (and most conservatives) focus on the federal income tax. But that is only one tax among many. In the case of many wealthy people, it’s the primary tax they pay, and it is really a tax on the performance of the capital they control.

Most normal typical Americans earn wages or salaries, on which they pay the payroll tax. Most of them pay it willingly. They do not mope around complaining that that damn payroll tax is sapping them of their will to work harder. Most people accept and just wish their pay was higher (even though that would mean paying more tax; most people “get” this).

When Mitt Romney released his 2011 tax return, it showed — no real surprise here — that his income from wages was zero. Therefore, he did not owe or pay any payroll tax in 2011. That does not make him a deadbeat, just someone who is lucky to live off his investments.

[Another difference between the payroll tax and the income tax: the payroll tax is usually withheld by the employer and never seen by the worker. The income tax often falls on unearned income (from investments, for example), which is not withheld. As a result, rich people often have to write a check to the government for large amounts of money that they once had in their hands. This contributes mightily to the feeling they seem to have that it’s “their” money and the government should keep its hands off.]

One more thing: The payroll tax is not the only tax Romney does not pay. He is not pulling his weight with the alcohol tax or the tobacco tax either!

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September 21, 2012 · 1:40 pm

Murdoch dodges a bullet

By Christopher B. Daly

So, British regulators have blinked in their showdown with Rupert Murdoch and decided that the media mogul can go ahead and stay in the business of broadcasting in the U.K., notwithstanding the fact that Murdoch’s employees have been charged with dozens of crimes and thousands of violations of privacy. The regulators declared that he met the British legal standard of being a “fit and proper” person.

Hmmm. . .

The British Office of Communications found, after a lengthy investigation, that the officials in charge of Murdoch’s broadcast operations (BskyB) did not know about the shenanigans and crimes being carried out by reporters and editors at Murdoch’s newspaper properties, according to the Guardian.

Hmmm. . . .

And now that that’s out of the way, Rupert Murdoch seems poised to elevate his son James to head up his flagship (and lucrative) Fox TV channel in the United States. Question: does our FCC consider James Murdoch “fit” or “proper”? That’s not the standard for broadcasting executives in this country, of course. Maybe more germane is the question of how long James Murdoch can avoid being a convicted felon?

Hmmm. . .

 

 

 

 

 

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September 20, 2012 · 9:57 pm

Quote Approval: NYTimes bans it

By Christopher B. Daly 

It was the only decision they could have made, but credit New York Times executives with deciding to ban the pernicious practice of “quote approval.”

In an announcement made Thursday, the paper said it would no longer allow its reporters to grant their sources the power to approve their own quotes before they appear in news stories. The Times was slow in figuring this out, but a right decision is always welcome.

Here’s the takeaway:

. . .starting now, we want to draw a clear line on this. Citing Times policy, reporters should say no if a source demands, as a condition of an interview, that quotes be submitted afterward to the source or a press aide to review, approve or edit.

That should have been self-evident.

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September 17, 2012 · 5:47 pm

“Silent Spring” at 50

Here is a wonderful tribute to Rachel Carson’s ground-breaking environmental reporting, Silent Spring. The book was published on Sept. 27, 1962, just a few months after it first appeared in (where else?) The New Yorker.

Rachel Carson, thank you.

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September 17, 2012 · 5:23 pm

Quote approval: David Carr disapproves

By Christopher B. Daly

Today’s Times brings the news that David Carr has joined the chorus of journalists denouncing the journalistic practice known as “quote approval” (which consists, essentially, of allowing your interview subjects to clean up their comments before publication or — in extreme cases — to recast what they said altogether).

All I can say is, welcome aboard this bandwagon.

Carr also blogged about the issue today on the paper’s hard-to-find Media Decoder  site, inviting comments and quoting the outspoken Buzz Bissinger.

Here’s my comment: In nearly 20 years at the AP and the Washington Post, I must have quoted hundreds of people, maybe thousands. Based on that experience, I can say that almost no one ever asked for quote approval (and no one got it) and nobody ever said I mis-quoted them. I used a tape recorder, but only rarely. I took notes like mad, and I only ran with those quotes I was sure of. This is not rocket science. And it’s not that I was any kind of paragon. Those were just the rules of the game.

The standard at the AP, but the way, was very clear: Every word that appeared inside quote marks must have been said by that person, in that order, with nothing added or left out.

Call me old-school, but that’s exactly what I expect when I read another journalist’s work. If I’m not getting that, I might as well be reading fiction, or P.R.

” . . . “

 

 

 

 

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September 12, 2012 · 5:07 pm

Collecting journalism history

By Christopher B. Daly 

For those who want to understand America’s history through the legacy of printed materials, there is a terrific new exhibit at the Grolier Club, a leading institution for bibliophiles (who knew?), located at 47 E60th St. in Manhattan. According to the NYTimes, the exhibit shows the importance of collecting historical materials while history is being made, rather than waiting and hoping to find them later.

The exhibit, titled “In Pursuit of a Vision,” features some of the gems from the estimable American Antiquarian Society.

The AAS (which is not as stuffy as its name might imply) is located in Worcester, Mass., and it serves as the greatest repository of original newspapers, magazines and ephemera from early America through the 19th century. It was founded by Isaiah Thomas, a Revolutionary War-era printer/editor who put out a paper called The Massachusetts Spy. When he thought the Redcoats might be about to shut him down, he fled from Boston to Worcester, and he brought with him his own collection of newspapers, which formed the core of the AAS collection.

 

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September 11, 2012 · 2:21 pm

Quote approval: Threat or menace?

By Christopher B. Daly

Now comes word that no less a journalist than the estimable Michael Lewis (of Moneyball and The Big Short) bowed to demands that he grant the White House approval over any quotes in exchange for some pretty unusual access to President Obama.

Although this is not a simple question, I believe it has a simple answer: don’t do it.

Journalists should help each other to stand firm against this pernicious practice.

Think about it this way: Everything always comes out eventually.

Accepting grounds rules like quote approval just corrupts journalism and gives readers another reason not to trust us.

In the latest case, Michael Lewis should have kept in mind that Obama needs him every bit as much as he needs Obama — maybe more. Sheesh.

Photo by Pete Souza (Official White House photographer -- and B.U. alum)

Photo by Pete Souza (Official White House photographer — and B.U. alum)

 

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September 11, 2012 · 1:32 pm

Clay Shirky on the journalism business model

By Christopher B. Daly

The new issue of the Columbia Journalism Review has a terrific piece by Clay Shirky about the current efforts to rescue journalism by finding a new business model for the news business. (Don’t get discouraged by the misleading — confusing? — headline.)

Shirky, who teaches about these issues at NYU’s Carter Institute of Journalism, compresses a lot of the points I made in my recent book, Covering America, in chapter 3 (about the rise of the Penny Press) and in chapter 13 (about the collapse of the “dual revenue stream” that financed journalism from the 1830s to the 1990s). In my book, the final chapter adds some recent success stories, showing how some digital natives are making a go of it in the new environment — doing great, serious journalism and, importantly, making money at the same time.

In my view, too many of us suffer from the historical fallacy of thinking that the present is “normal” and reflects the way things have always been. A lot of people, especially those over 35 or so, operate on the assumption that it is normal for journalism to be practiced by full-time employees of large, profitable corporations. In fact, by taking the long view, as I do in my book, it can be seen that the way journalism was practiced in the late 20th Century was not inevitable, not necessary, and certainly not permanent. It is already fading into the past as a distinct historical period, giving way to a present in which people are still figuring out the future.

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