Darts & Laurels
Dart for redefining the concept of political journalism, to:
KFRU-AM,
in Columbia, Missouri. Filling in lately as substitute host of
its weekday afternoon news and talk show has been Scott Baker,
who was concurrently serving as communication director of the
Missouri Republican Party. During the time he appeared on KFRU,
interviewing newsmakers and introducing news reports, Baker also
appeared in interviews elsewhere delivering his party's attack
on the Democratic governor. KFRU defends the conflict of interest
thusly: the show Baker worked on was "a non-news program."
The
News Sentinel. Early this year, the Knoxville, Tennessee,
daily carried a letter to the editor offering unqualified support
of the mayoral candidate Bill Haslam and defending Haslam's father
against charges of unethical intervention in a real-estate deal.
Headlined haslam has integrity, the letter was attributed to "Alan
Carmichael, Knoxville." Unmentioned went the fact that Carmichael
is the co-owner of Moxley Carmichael, the public relations firm
for 1) the Bill Haslam for Mayor Campaign; 2) the Pilot Corporation,
the Haslam family's oil company; and 3) the News Sentinel itself.
As the Moxley Carmichael Web site boasts with obvious justification,
"Our clients benefit from the strong relationships we've
established with the media." In July - after rumors circulated
that an assistant metro editor had been transferred to the late
shift in the sports department because his wife was a supporter
of the rival campaign - the p.r. firm suspended its relationship
with the paper for the duration of the campaign. But, as pointedly
noted by one of the alternative weeklies hammering away at the
News Sentinel's conflict of interest, What happens now that Haslam's
won?
Courier
Publications. After the reporter Carrie Ciciotte was elected
in November 2001 to a three-year term on the Ellsworth City Council,
her bosses at the chain of Maine weeklies continued to publish
not only her coverage of sports and craft fairs and holiday shopping
but also her reports on matters involving health reform, sexual
harassment complaints against the county district attorney, and
a referendum on economic development in Maine. On July 25, the
Ellsworth Weekly announced that Courier, citing Ciciotte's "close
ties to Ellsworth," had appointed her associate editor of
the Weekly. Two weeks later, the Weekly reported that Ciciotte
had resigned from the city council, citing, without apparent irony,
possible conflicts of interest with "a new job."
The
Hour Newspapers. As if it weren't bad enough to run a page-one
story about a local bank merger accompanied by a photo of one
of the bankers carrying a copy of The Hour (August 7), the chain
of Connecticut papers is also embarked on a compromising ad campaign
of mutual self-promotion with local newsmakers. The "Hour
People" ad on June 15, for instance, offered a litany of
the many accomplishments of Mayor Alex Knopp of Norwalk, together
with a thoughtful, four-by-six-inch portrait of His Honor, two
copies of The Hour on his desk, another in his back-scratching
hands.
The
Washington Post. The paper's media critic, Howard Kurtz, who
already wears a somewhat precariously balanced second hat as host
of CNN's Reliable Sources, recently added to his millinery wardrobe.
In a September 15 online column on the bedazzling blend of political
fact and fantasy in K Street, the HBO reality show starring the
husband-and-wife lobbying team of James Carville and Mary Matalin,
Kurtz disarmingly observed, "K Street is getting a huge amount
of publicity from the Beltway buzz types. And I just fell into
that trap, didn't I?" Six days later, he made a cameo appearance
on the show, playing himself as a journalist who rejects the importuning
of an actor playing a lobbyist. ("I try to look at all sides
of an issue," the journalist tells the man he calls a shill.
"I am not going to carry your water on this.") On the
day that episode aired, viewers of Kurtz's Reliable Sources were
given a "sneak peek at my very own acting debut thanks to
a much-hyped new HBO series about the way Washington works."
Indeed.
Laurel
to The Boston Globe, for putting the journalistic rubber to
an underpaved road. While racial profiling by traffic cops has
been a bumpy issue for years, other, subtler forms of bias in
dealing with drivers have sped right past public attention. Now
a three-part series brings those biases clearly into view. Drawing
on a complex analysis of 166,000 traffic tickets and written warnings
issued in Massachusetts during the spring of 2001 (the only period
in which such warnings were collected), reporters Bill Dedman
and Francie Latour document significant patterns of unfairness.
Whether you're handed a speeding ticket or let off with a warning,
for example, may well depend not only on the color of your skin
(when pulled over for the same common offense, 31 percent of whites,
but 49 percent of minorities, got tickets); it may also depend
on your gender or your age. In such situations, the numbers show,
it is better to be white, female, and young. Your fate may also
depend on the color of the officer's skin: surprisingly, if the
officer is black, he may go easier on you if you're white than
if you're not; but should you happen to be a Latino, lots of luck.
If it's justice you're truly after, wish for a tough state trooper
who, though more disposed to giving tickets than warnings, apparently
couldn't care less about your race, gender, age, or make of car;
indeed it is the well-trained Massachusetts State Police that
the Globe, in a related editorial, holds up as a model for other
departments to follow. For, as the series emphasizes, these small
injustices have very large consequences that go well beyond indignities
suffered for, say, "driving while black": minorities
may be paying as much as $6.4 million extra a year in fines and
insurance premiums. Talk about adding injury to insult!
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).
Enjoy this piece? Consider a CJR trial subscription.
