Darts & Laurels
Dart:
How to Hook the Public
In a string of articles published during the fall and winter
and spring, The Daily Oklahoman reported on the progress of a
controversial proposal to build a $17.2 million, taxpayer-financed
store whose space would be leased back over a twenty-year period
to Bass Pro Shops (after which period Bass Pro would be free to
move out if enough customers didn’t bite). But while casting
the proposal in sunny light, the paper’s fifty-odd articles,
features, cartoons, and editorials — including a front-page
story and a supportive editorial urging the city council to approve
it on the day before the vote (which on May 21 it did) —
the paper, with only a single, parenthetical reference buried
in a column last October, kept readers in the dark about one fishy
fact: 19.9 percent of Bass Pro Shops belongs to Gaylord Entertainment,
whose chairman emeritus, Edward Gaylord, is the chairman of the
company that owns the Oklahoman. Misplaced family modesty seems
also to have been at work on Sunday, May 19, in a featured article
on the front page of the Oklahoman’s business section, plugging
the recently opened Gaylord Palms Resort and Conference Center,
four states away in Orlando. Although it had room for five color
photos, the piece nowhere mentioned that the Gaylords who own
the hotel are the Gaylords who own the paper. That piece, not
incidentally, was written by Sue Hale, executive editor of the
Oklahoman. And let’s not overlook the fact — as the
paper itself did in its appreciative review of Divine Secrets
of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood — that the Gaylord of Gaylord Films,
producer of the movie, is the Gaylord of the Oklahoman, publisher
of the review.
The Oklahoman’s nondisclosure policy was evident again in late July, when an editor’s note tersely announced the replacement of Patrick McGuigan, longtime editor of its editorial page, “who resigned to pursue other business and professional opportunities, including writing a book on American politics and culture.” It was left to other local media to tell the inside story of the political brouhaha set in motion when McGuigan sent to selected state representatives a letter — written on Oklahoman stationery, and signed by him as “editor, editorial page” — in which he tried to sway their support away from a challenger in the primary election for labor commissioner.
Dart:
Repeat Performance
In the Omaha World Herald on July 15, there mysteriously appeared
an unattributed report on the appointment of Itzhak Perlman as
music adviser of the St. Louis Symphony — a report that was
in fact a note-for-note reprise of Sarah Bryan Miller’s exclusive,
bylined, copyrighted piece in the July 12 St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Dart:
While Editors Nodded...
. . . the Trenton, New Jersey, Trentonian put into print a report
on a fire at a psychiatric hospital under the headline roasted
nuts. (Abject apologies followed, first in a column two days later
by the hapless headline-writer, then, twelve days after that,
following condemnation — and a hint of possible legal action
— by the National Institute of Mental Health, in a publisher’s
editorial, in which he begged for forgiveness and promised active
reform. Both apologies also noted, without apparent irony, that
the insensitive headline had been “inaccurate” as well,
inasmuch as no patients had been burned in the fire.)
.
. . The Wall Street Journal put into print an excoriating editorial
on Governor George Pataki’s plan to create six Indian casinos
in New York State, drawing its rhetorical ammunition from a barrel
of such stereotypes as “big chief,” “trading beads,”
“great white father,” and “pow-wow.” (In a
follow-up editorial four weeks later, the Journal dismissed, in
passing, the “perceived insults” of Native Americans
thusly: “We thought we were having fun with Mr. Pataki, not
Indians. But in any case the race card has become the first refuge
of scoundrels in American politics.”)
.
.
...The Light and Champion of Center, Texas, put into print an
incoherent letter to the editor asserting that the U.S. economy,
the Federal Reserve, the Republican and Democratic parties, and
the American media are all controlled by Jews. (Candace Velvin,
the paper’s president, editor, and publisher, told cjr that
she had hoped to generate “dialogue.”)
Dart:
Cultivating Credibility
Of course it’s good for a news organization to disclose an
apparent conflict of interest, but better still to avoid that
conflict in the first place. Consider, for example, a series written
by Mikkel Pates for the Grand Forks Herald about a trade mission
to Cuba sponsored jointly by the North Dakota Farm Bureau and
the governor’s office. Conscientiously included at the end
of Pates’s pieces — from contracts are in the works
(July 24) to cubans impressed (July 25) to cuba inks sales deal
(July 26) — was this inevitably doubt-planting note: “The
Herald is sharing costs for Pates’ trip with the North Dakota
Farm Bureau.”
Laurels: The Call of Duty
Journalism heroes aren’t born, they’re made — sometimes, it seems, by ethically challenged bosses. A few recent cases in point:
When
the Northport, Alabama, Gazette hired a local councilman whose
duties included covering his own town’s council meetings,
associate editor Carmen Sisson registered her protest and quit.
When
the Stephens Media Group instructed Tom McDonald, editor of the
Pine Bluff Commercial, one of the group’s numerous Arkansas
newspapers, to get ready to endorse Jay Dickey, a “longtime
friend” of the Stephens family, in his campaign to regain
his former congressional seat — an instruction that came
in apparent response to a memo from Dickey suggesting various
ways that the Commercial might enhance his chances while undermining
those of his opponent — McDonald quit.
When
the Brown Publishing Company, owner of a chain of Ohio newspapers,
sent to some of its editors a stream of must-run press releases
from the primary campaign office of the company’s ceo, Roy
Brown — followed by stacks of Brown-for-Congress fliers —
one editor, at least, spoke out. Describing his company’s
actions as violating every standard in the book, Kevin O’Boyle,
editor of the Vandalia Drummer News, told the Dayton Daily News
(in an April 6 interview prompted by the filing of an FEC complaint
by Brown’s rival for the seat) that “by talking to you
I’m signing my death warrant.” “Absolutely not,”
was the quoted response of Joel Dempsey, Brown’s general
counsel. “He won’t be fired for this.” Dempsey
might more truthfully have added, “not right away.”
The firing came two months later, on June 19.
When
Tami Carroll, interim general manager of The Oak Ridger in Tennessee,
handed back to editor Dale McConnaughay his editorial — a
cautious endorsement of a controversial $23 million bond issue
to redevelop a city mall — and told him to replace it with
the more enthusiastic editorial she had written herself (marked
do not change a word of this), McConnaughay balked. Noting that
Carroll, who also serves as the paper’s advertising director,
was an active member of a pro-development group (she wore “Vote
Yes” lapel buttons and kept petitions in her office), McConnaughay
tried to resolve the conflict by reworking his original editorial
into his regular signed column, and by seeking ethical guidance
from the parent company (which never came). Carroll, however,
found a solution of her own: she fired him. The reason, she told
him (and, later, the Knoxville News-Sentinel) was “insubordination.”
When
D. Mark Singletary, publisher of Dolan Media’s CityBusiness
in New Orleans, decided that the paper henceforth would carry
advertiser-sponsored news pages, editor Kathy Finn objected. (The
“sponsored-by” phrase was dropped, replaced by advertiser
logos and banner ads.) When Singletary suggested reassigning two
reporters whose work had drawn advertisers’ complaints, editor
Finn objected. (The reporters stayed put.) When Singletary decided
to lower the wall between editorial and advertising, Finn objected
again — and was fired. As reported by the weekly Gambit,
the staff “bade Finn an extremely fond farewell” in
a CityBusiness op-ed piece. She “was a reporter’s editor,”
the testimonial said. “She never asked her staff to write
one word that would cheapen them, their readers, their paper,
or their profession.”
Inside Story
A
dirty little secret of the newspaper business, too long relegated
to trade magazines and academic publications, has finally been
brought into bright mainstream light. In a page-one story by Patricia
Callahan (July 19), The Wall Street Journal unblinkingly examined
the industry’s treatment of the paperboys and papergirls
— at last count, some 140,000 — who deliver the news
to the nation’s doors. For all its practical value in experience
and pay, Callahan shows, that legendary job presents extremely
serious dangers — robbery, sexual assault, abduction, car
accidents, even death. Making matters worse is the callous refusal
of their employers to help financially in any way, be it medical
bills, insurance, or death benefits; instead, the newspapers claim
that they are absolved of responsibility because the carriers,
already exempted from federal child-labor laws, are commonly regarded
as independent and self-employed — “little merchants,”
as it were. This bottom-line ethos finds further form in lobbying
mercilessly — and successfully — whenever this or that
state tries to join the handful of those — among them, New
York, Wisconsin, Nevada, Kentucky, and Maryland — that do
extend workmen’s comp coverage to young paper-carriers. Tracing
the history of the shameful story, Callahan does not spare the
Journal’s parent, Dow Jones. Of the kids who deliver the
company’s community papers, she reports, only about half
are covered by workmen’s compensation, and then only because
a state requires it; as to the number of kids who deliver the
Journal itself, Dow Jones says it doesn’t know. More revealing
is the case in which Dow Jones, as owner of News-Times in Danbury,
Connecticut, fought a claim of $35,000 in unpaid medical bills
incurred by a fourteen-year-old paperboy who underwent seven operations
and was left legally blind after being hit by a snowball from
a passing car. Letting the facts tell the tale, Callahan reports
that the company prevailed on appeal, and quotes the News-Times
circulation director as saying that the paper refused to pay in
fear of setting a precedent: “It wasn’t just for News-Times,
it was to stand up for every newspaper,” he said. Readers
may take a different view of what newspapers should stand up for.
Darts & Laurels is written by Gloria Cooper, CJR's deputy executive editor. Nominations may be addressed to her by mail, phone (212-854-1887), or e-mail (gc15@columbia.edu).
