Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2004 13:15:43 EDT
Reply-To: Pisdmxer@AOL.COM
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Joe Adams <Pisdmxer@AOL.COM>
Subject: Syncro Steve Schwenk in the NYTimes?
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Thumbing thru the NYT on Sunday, I came upon a passage where the paper's
public editor lambasted someone named Steve Schwenk in San Francisco for wishing
that a reporter's kid would get his head blown off. Isn't this the dude who
puts on the Syncro de Mayo event? How civil you Californians are.
Joe
From Sunday's NYTimes Public Editor Article:
...But before I turn over the podium, I do want you to know just how debased
the level of discourse has become. When a reporter receives an e-mail message
that says, "I hope your kid gets his head blown off in a Republican war," a
limit has been passed.
That's what a coward named Steve Schwenk, from San Francisco, wrote to
national political correspondent Adam Nagourney several days ago because Nagourney
wrote something Schwenk considered (if such a person is capable of
consideration) pro-Bush. Some women reporters regularly receive sexual insults and
threats. As nasty as critics on the right can get (plenty nasty), the left seems to
be winning the vileness derby this year. Maybe the bloggers who encourage
their readers to send this sort of thing to The Times might want to ask them
instead to say it in public. I don't think they'd dare.
Here's the whole article....
October 10, 2004
THE PUBLIC EDITOR
How Would Jackson Pollock Cover This Campaign?
By DANIEL OKRENT
SEPTEMBER 26, re "Kerry as the Boss: Always More Questions": Faith C.
McCready thinks "the Kerry campaign ought to be paying The Times a
consultant/advertising fee" for the article. Scott Libbey of Chevy Chase, Md., calls it "another
negative article on Kerry," and concludes: "I don't know how you guys can
look at yourselves in the mirror anymore. I really don't."
October 5, regarding a few stories: From Michael Malone of Darien, Conn., "I
know that many of the Times reporters and editors are breathlessly trying to
get Kerry elected." And from John Owens of San Francisco, "I often won't read
your paper because of the relentless pounding on Kerry."
Al Markel of San Francisco asks why The Times hasn't reviewed the anti-Kerry
"Unfit for Command" while Samuel Leff of Manhattan wonders why Justin Frank's
critical psychoanalytic study, "Bush on the Couch," has been ignored by the
Book Review editors. Francis Moynihan of Avon, Conn., congratulates The Times's
Web site for "finally, a headline critical of Kerry" that uses the word
"pander"; John Owens objects, saying that "a comparable headline about Bush would
read ' ... according to the poll Americans find Bush to be a liar and an idiot.'
" I'm tempted to refer all these correspondents, and the many hundreds of
others they represent, to my colleague Mike Needs, ombudsman of The Akron Beacon
Journal. "On Monday and Tuesday," Mike wrote in an e-mail last week, "my calls
were all from conservatives saying the paper leaned left."
"On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday," he continued, "my calls were all from
liberals saying the paper leaned right. But I did have one caller who said we
were getting the balance just right. I discounted that one."
A definition of irony: what an ombudsman or public editor must appreciate to
survive this campaign.
I've been reading The Times's campaign coverage like any other interested
(and, by now, exhausted) citizen for months, but with special care, a pair of
scissors, two marking pens and three other papers to use for comparison since
Labor Day. Along the way, my own research has been richly amplified by reader
mail, the buzzing of the blogs and the occasional complaint registered by party
officials. Two readers generously provided me exhaustive analyses of the
photographs of each candidate published in The Times (and came to opposite
conclusions).
I will stipulate here that I'll be voting for John Kerry next month and will
further admit that I have bent over backward to listen to pro-Bush
complaints, in a conscious effort to counterbalance my own prejudices. I don't buy the
argument a couple of Times editors have made, that because charges of bias come
from both liberals and conservatives, the paper must therefore be doing
things right. This makes as much sense as saying that a man with one foot on a
block of ice and the other on a bed of hot coals must feel just fine.
In fact, I can find many things to criticize in The Times's election
coverage. I'm as interested in the inside baseball of campaigns as the next politics
nerd, but the paper's obsessive attention to backroom maneuvers and spin-room
speculation obscures, rather than enhances, my understanding of the
candidates. Much seems directed not at readers but at the campaign staffs and other
journalists. The chronic overreliance on anonymous comments from self-serving
partisans in news stories is equally maddening. (I prefer the pieces tagged "News
Analysis" or "Political Memo," where at least we can hear the sound of the
writer's own voice, and take into account the writer's apparent views.) And why
the paper would ask a reporter to provide "real-time analysis" online during
the debates is beyond me. The very phrase is an oxymoron; analysis requires
reflection.
But there are plenty of press critics in print and on the Web, so I'll cede
the general criticism to them. Here's the question for a public editor: Is The
Times systematically biased toward either candidate?
No.
So farewell, legions of the left and armies of the right - all of you who
have been faithful supporters when I've endorsed your various positions in past
columns, but who will believe I have either lost my mind or sacrificed my
credibility. I'm grateful for your close attention and your stimulating company,
and I admire your passionate commitment.
But passion is a distorting lens that makes it hard to perceive the shape of
things. Partisans will see the depredations committed against their man, but
won't notice similar articles or headlines or photographs that may damage the
other guy. Readers outraged by the Sept. 26 piece on Kerry's decision-making
style ask when The Times will do a similar piece on Bush apparently because they
didn't notice the one that ran Aug. 29 ("Bush Takes On Direct Role in Shaping
Election Tactics").
A Bush-hater will see a front-page picture of the confident president
greeting enthusiastic crowds and shout "Bias!" much more quickly than he will
remember the nearly identical photo of Kerry that ran the day before. Republicans
who object to the play given a recent story about scientists campaigning against
the president are unaware of the Democrats' cries of bias after The Times
failed in June to report on an anti-Bush statement signed by 27 retired
diplomats.
If there's a commissariat at The Times ordering up coverage to help or hurt
a specific candidate, it's doing a lousy job; close reading shows bruises
administered to each (and free passes handed out) in a pattern adapted from
Jackson Pollock. Many people want to know why the other guy's position is in the
first paragraph of a story, and their side doesn't weigh in until the sixth; they
don't notice when it's the other way around. Sherrie Sutton of Manhattan, who
describes herself as "the only possible Bush vote on the Upper West Side,"
asked why Times headlines consistently use "attack" when Republicans criticize
Democrats, but not when Democrats criticize Republicans. Intrigued, my
associate, Arthur Bovino, determined that in the past year, headlined Republicans
attacked Democrats 12 times and Democrats attacked Republicans 22 times. Ms.
Sutton replied: "Statistics don't lie, and you've got 'em. Interesting, that in the
face of facts, I could still feel unsatisfied that campaign coverage by the
NYTimes is balanced."
Interesting, and honest, and for most of us, inevitable as well.
Conservatives thought Cheney won the vice-presidential debate; liberals thought Edwards
did. I can look at pictures of my children and see that they are flawless; you
will see them differently (even though they are, of course, flawless). Write a
book, get a lousy review - it's happened to me several times - and you
challenge the reviewer's judgment, not your own. We see, and we are more vulnerable
to, those things that matter most to us.
Unquestionably, individual articles, headlines or photographs do cast one or
another candidate in a colored light, either rosy or dark. Headlines are
especially toxic because of their reductive nature. Eric Kessin of Scarsdale, N.Y.,
wrote to say that the Friday, Sept. 2, headline "Jobless Figures Could
Emphasize Bush's Big Weakness" might as easily have read "Jobless Figures Could
Emphasize Bush's Claim of Economic Growth." He was right and, in fact, the
Saturday story was headlined "Job Figures Help President Promote Economic Record"
That was accurate, but it, too, was not without its own coloration. Nothing
is, especially when removed from the context of the long slog of the campaign
and The Times's extended coverage. If The Times fails to give prominent space
to a candidate's speech because it's a repeat of yesterday's, the paper is
helping the opposition; if it does cover it, it's promoting the interests of the
repetitive candidate. Show me an interesting photograph, and I'll show you an
opinion. (I can't wait to hear what readers think of the Kerry portrait today
on the cover The New York Times Magazine, much less the article itself.) (Check
that: Yes, I can.)
Those readers who long for the days of absolutely untinted,
nothing-but-the-facts newspapering ought to have an Associated Press ticker installed on the
breakfast table. Newspapers today and especially this newspaper are asking
their reporters and editors to go deep into a story, and when and where you go
deep is itself a matter of judgment. And every judgment, it appears, offends
someone.
It is axiomatic that the facts or characterizations a journalist chooses to
include can tilt a reader's impression. So can the choice of articles, the
prominence they're given, the immense weight of the entire, cumulative chronicle
of a too-long campaign.
But it is equally axiomatic that the reader who has already tilted toward a
particular candidate or position will instinctively view the world and The
Times - from his or her own personal angle.
This piece turned out to be more of a rant than I intended, but given the
vicious nature of some of the attacks levied against certain reporters, I wasn't
inclined to be temperate. There are many critics of The Times's election
coverage who are measured and reasonable, and their views - very different from my
own - will be represented in this space next week. I also don't wish to
discourage readers who in good faith find errors, misrepresentations or unfair
characterizations. They may occur randomly, but their frequency is disappointing,
and I'll continue to forward meritorious complaints to the appropriate editors
and reporters. Many will find expression in the corrections column, or in this
one.
But before I turn over the podium, I do want you to know just how debased the
level of discourse has become. When a reporter receives an e-mail message
that says, "I hope your kid gets his head blown off in a Republican war," a limit
has been passed.
That's what a coward named Steve Schwenk, from San Francisco, wrote to
national political correspondent Adam Nagourney several days ago because Nagourney
wrote something Schwenk considered (if such a person is capable of
consideration) pro-Bush. Some women reporters regularly receive sexual insults and
threats. As nasty as critics on the right can get (plenty nasty), the left seems to
be winning the vileness derby this year. Maybe the bloggers who encourage
their readers to send this sort of thing to The Times might want to ask them
instead to say it in public. I don't think they'd dare.
The public editor serves as the readers' representative. His opinions and
conclusions are his own. His column appears at least twice monthly in this
section.
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