Darts & Laurels
Dart
for removing yet more bricks from journalism's shaky wall, to:
The Denver Post. Above the fold in the November
25 sports section the Post presented legitimate reports, accompanied
by an AP photo, on World Cup skiing; below the fold the page slid
smoothly into what appeared to be further coverage of winter sports,
the whole comprising a pleasingly integrated layout of photos,
headlines, typeface, and text. In fact, however, the lower half-page
was (as whispered in a microscopic, mid-page clue for hawk-eyed
readers only) an "advertisement" for a video game version of National
Hockey League playoffs. For contrast, see the rival Rocky Mountain
News's display on that very same day of that very same ad on a
sports-section page — unassisted by matching news copy and
unmistakably marked: PAID ADVERTISEMENT PAID ADVERTISEMENT PAID
ADVERTISEMENT PAID ADVERTISEMENT.
Dart
to The Vancouver Sun
The forty-two-column-inch centerpiece of the paper's front
page on Friday, January 17, was a colorfully illustrated gee-whiz
story on the digital services newly available to customers of
Shaw Cable. Graphically instructing readers on "what you
need" to purchase, say, a movie like Austin Powers in Goldmember,
and larded with quotes from a company spokesman, the piece managed
to mention the Shaw company's name some eighteen times. It
did not, however, mention the four full pages of Shaw Cable ads
that wrapped around the Sun's "Movie Weekend" section
elsewhere in that issue (one of which included a full-page graphic
of Austin Powers in Goldmember). Nor did it mention an inside
ad for a "Business Connection Luncheon" five days hence,
at which the featured speaker would be Dennis Skulsky, "president
and publisher of . . . The Vancouver Sun." Skulsky's
topic: "The Business Community and the Media — The Secrets
of Getting Your Message Out.
Dart
to WTVH-TV
Although Syracuse viewers didn't know it at the time, some
of those three-minute interviews — a car dealer on leasing
options, a shop owner on jewelry, a financial planner on the stock
market, a lawyer on personal-injury claims — that recently
aired on the Granite Broadcasting station's five o'clock
news-and-talk program Central New York Live! were part of advertising
contracts with WTVH — and paid for, it turns out, by the
car dealer, the shop owner, the financial planner, the lawyer.
In a February 12 story exposing the deceptive practice, the Syracuse
Post-Standard noted that, after being contacted by the paper,
the station had made some gestures toward disclosure — gestures
less than enthusiastic toward disclosure less than full.
Laurel
to The News & Observer, in Raleigh, North
Carolina, for bringing a bit more justice to the criminal justice
system. Tipped that a small-time drug dealer was innocent of the
brutal murder that had put him on death row, reporter Joseph Neff
revisited the entire case, from analyzing court filings and tracking
down witnesses to interviewing the attorneys and conferring with
experts on such forensic arcana as the age of the maggots that
had invaded the corpse. His investigation revealed, among other
things, that prosecutors had withheld exculpatory evidence, that
a damning witness had fabricated her testimony, and that the murder
could have taken place only during a time when the convicted man
was either out of the state or in jail on an unrelated, minor
charge. Even as the second installment of "Time of Death" appeared
in print, a Superior Court judge had overturned the conviction
and ordered a new trial. Disturbingly, however, as Neff makes
clear, that just outcome would not have been possible had the
original sentence called for anything short of execution, such
as life without parole: North Carolina law gives the right of
access to all prosecution files on their cases to death-row inmates
only.
Dart
to KTVU-TV in San Francisco and Ross
McGowan, anchor of its early morning newscast, for lowering the
ethical bar. In the course of countless interviews over the past
five years, McGowan has bellied up to one particular city supervisor,
Gavin Newsom, some eighty-four times, drawing out the politician's
views on state and local politics, tending to his worthy pet projects,
giving viewers a taste of his personal high life, and generally
boosting his shot at becoming mayor. At no time in those conversations,
however, was mention ever made of the off-air relationship between
interviewer and interviewee — namely, that McGowan is a partner
(to the tune of $25,000) in a company that operates a San Francisco
bar and whose president is Gavin Newsom. But not to worry. As
the anchor — with the full support of executive producer
Rosemarie Thomas Schwarz — told the San Francisco Chronicle,
which revealed the conflict of interest in a February 23 story:
if something came up about his business partner that "needed the
tough questions," he "like[s] to think" he'd ask them.
Dart
to Reuters for failing to make distinctions.
Applying its special theory of relativity, the international news
agency imposes an official ban on the use in its reports of the
"emotive" word "terrorist," except in quotations (a post-9/11
policy memo by the global news director, Stephen Jukes, justified
the ruling thusly: "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom
fighter"). Now a March 12 dispatch makes one wonder if another
commonly used, demonstrably definable term — "suicide bomber"
— is edging toward relativity as well. In a Gaza-datelined
story by Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters reported that Saddam Hussein
had given $10,000 each to "twenty-two families of militants killed
in fighting or of civilians killed during Israeli army offensives,
incursions, or air strikes," and $25,000 to "a family of a Palestinian
suicide bomber." Helpfully doing the math, Reuters summed it all
up in this indiscriminate lead: "Families of Palestinians killed
by Israel received $245,000 in checks from Saddam Hussein on Wednesday
. . . ."
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).
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