Darts & Laurels
to KTVO-TV, in Kirksville, Missouri, for digging an electrified tunnel right through the ad-edit wall. When the station lost an advertiser angered by a news story in which the reporter had solicited comment not from the advertiser but from a competitor — a competitor who was not even a KTVO advertiser! — Crystal Amini-Rad, its vice president and general manager, was quick to see the error of her ways. “From now on,” she decreed in a memo that included an apology to the sales staff, news reporters will “have access to an active advertiser list . . . of sources which you can tap into” for expert opinion and industry comment. Oh, and one more thing: reporters “should always go” to the station’s advertising sources “first.”
to The Hartford Courant, for throwing out the journalistic baby with the press-release bathwater. Deluged for years with material pointing to corruption on the part of Governor John G. Rowland — who happens to be a Republican — Courant reporters sent it swiftly down the drain, unmoved by its less-than-disinterested source, a lawyer named Edward L. Marcus — who happened at the time to be head of the Democratic Party in Connecticut. So annoyed was the paper by the “diatribes” of the “pugnacious and irascible” tipster that in 1997 it published an editorial addressed directly to him. Citing, among other things, “135 press releases excoriating Mr. Rowland, ranging from the governor’s purchase of a vacation cottage in Litchfield to his acceptance of surplus military equipment,” the editorial concluded with a reprise of its headline: “Put a sock in it, Ed.” Six years later, it was an entirely different story. Following probes by the Courant and other news organizations — probes that validated many of Marcus’s “diatribes” and then some — Rowland, facing impeachment and federal prosecution, resigned in disgrace in July. “If it weren’t for the news media, notably, the Courant,” wrote Paul Janensch, the paper’s “Professor News,” in a column that gave a passing nod to the “sock” editorial, “he still would be governor today. I think the beginning of the end came last November, when the Courant disclosed that more work was performed on the Rowlands’ Bantam Lake vacation cottage than he had paid for.”
to The Sand Mountain Reporter, in Albertville, Alabama, for want of a camera with a wide-angle lens. Number of photos of a certain man — at an award ceremony for teachers, handing out plaques; in a house ad for a contest, handing out checks — published on a single day on a single page: Eight. Name of that singularly photogenic man: Clifton E. “Cliff” Clements, chamber of commerce chairman and the paper’s editor and publisher.
to WICS-TV, in Springfield, Illinois, for leaving a blot on its own memory book. After wrapping up a story about an exhibit of Reagan memorabilia at the state capitol rotunda, Julie Staley, a WICS reporter and longtime Reagan devotee, together with her cameraman, Curt Claycomb, joined the line of those wishing to express their feelings in a public memory book destined for the presidential library. As reported by Michael Miner in the Chicago Reader, when Staley’s turn came, she scanned the entry signed by the man who had preceded her — one Rick Garcia, a gay rights activist who had happened to be in the building on legislative business and who, Staley was incensed to see, had felt compelled to record his own unforgiving memory of the late president. “Not until the very end of his second term was he even able to utter the word ‘AIDS,’” Garcia wrote. “Reagan’s silence and his administration’s policies contributed to the suffering and dying of thousands of men, women and children.” In less time than you can say “unprofessional behavior,” the cameraman had informed a security guard of the “defamatory” inscription; the reporter had fingered Garcia; and the guard had scolded the offender for disrespect. As for the station itself, news director Susan Finzen told Miner (with no apparent irony) that Staley “had a right to express her opinion.”
to The Austin Chronicle, for unearthing a hidden source of editorial energy that is somewhat less than clean. When William M. Adler, a writer driven by what he calls “an obsession with matters nuclear,” came upon an op-ed piece in the Austin American-Statesman written by a University of Texas professor promoting the controversial national nuclear waste repository at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, Adler found the words and the melody so naggingly familiar that he decided to conduct a little experiment. Tracing the elements of that op-ed, and then of others like it, Adler’s article in the weekly Chronicle documented his findings: a secret process that, since 1978, has put myriad op-eds about various nuclear issues on the editorial pages of the nation’s major newspapers. Though signed by university academics with impressive credentials, the pieces originate with a Washington p.r. outfit funded by the nuclear industry lobby. To thwart this “centrally orchestrated plan” to present “the propaganda of one hired atomic gun as the learned musings of disparate academics and other nuclear-industry ‘experts,’” Adler suggested in a later article published in The Washington Post, editors should ask more questions of their outside contributors before they accept their offerings. Surely it doesn’t take a nuclear scientist to do that.
to KMSP-TV, in the Twin Cities area, for a sobering exposé. As the clock in Minnesota’s capitol building ticked steadily through the final hours of the legislative session in mid-May, and as lawmakers scurried to wrap up the people’s business before the gavel came down, the KMSP news team wandered freely through the hallowed halls much like a group of ordinary, civic-minded tourists — except that the cameras they were toting were hidden. And what those cameras recorded was booze — booze on the tables, booze on the desks, booze in the hand, in the air, on the breath. While the voting went on during that three-day lost weekend, KMSP cameras caught legislators, lobbyists, and staff aides drinking, for example, at six different times in the office of the president of the Senate. Confronted with the cameras and all those empty bottles, some of Minnesota’s public servants were clearly in denial; others tendered the excuse of oppressive boredom; one issued an apology. A day after the station aired its embarrassing report, Governor Tim Pawlenty, who happened to be signing into law tougher standards on drunken driving, used the occasion to call for a ban on the use of alcohol in all capitol buildings while the legislature is in session. The unanonymous lawmakers were quick to agree that Governing Under the Influence of alcohol was not a good idea. (Sadly, the matter of Governing Under the Influence of lobbyists never came up.)
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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