 |
Media Shenanigans/ Schadenfreude  |
| Based on an amused spectator's list Send FReepmail if you want on/off MSP list |
|
Posted on 07/12/2004 5:37:13 AM PDT by presidio9
When the New York Times decided to hire a "public editor," it wanted to heal a damaged institution. The Jayson Blair scandal -- which began with a reporter's fabrications and ended with the firing of two top editors -- had badly bruised the paper's credibility. The public editor would scrutinize the Times's future performance and act as an advocate for readers.
Daniel Okrent, a veteran magazine editor, has been the Times's public editor for seven months. But instead of bringing calm, the experiment has created fresh tensions within the Times about such subjects as the paper's coverage of weapons of mass destruction.
Some editors complain Mr. Okrent's questions are a nuisance, and also complain when he doesn't seek them out for comment. One reporter encouraged colleagues to ask confrontational questions in a meeting between Mr. Okrent and business-section reporters. "Sometimes you have to treat others like the Russians -- you have to demonstrate strength," says the reporter, David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize winner. "I'm just waiting for him to screw up," Mr. Okrent retorts in an interview. He hastens to say the comment was a joke and that he will avoid tackling any issue concerning Mr. Johnston.
More recently, in an e-mail exchange, Times Executive Editor Bill Keller complained to Mr. Okrent about inquiries he was making for his column yesterday about a case of alleged child abuse. "i've got to say: man, you need a vacation," Mr. Keller wrote. "It's called reporting, right?" Mr. Okrent replied.
Businesses from Boeing Co. to Arthur Andersen LLP have turned to distinguished outsiders to fix problems wrought by scandals. None of these critics had a regular column with a large and influential readership. Moreover, unlike some newspaper ombudsmen who weigh in on routine questions of style, Mr. Okrent is using his post to question basic tenets of journalism and longstanding Times practices.
This tough stance comes at a time when the press is being regularly assailed by readers, especially online. Journalistic scandals at papers including Gannett Co.'s USA Today, the nation's largest, have damaged the industry's credibility among readers, and the media's reputation among the public is at a low ebb.
When asked to name the public editor's biggest accomplishment, Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., the chairman of New York Times Co., answers succinctly: "Surviving," he says. "I did try to warn him."
'Very, Very Difficult'
Mr. Okrent, 56 years old, says his first months at the Times were "very, very difficult." The paper, he says, "has a very strong immune system, and I was a different kind of antigen.... If there had been three public editors before me, the body might have absorbed it a little bit better."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
'Bout time someone did........
nyt employees find it difficult to explain what they do. Maybe the employees can quote anonymous sources explaining to Mr. Okrent what it is that they do.
Um...I'm a little confused here.
What exactly does this guy do?
|
Media Shenanigans/ Schadenfreude |
| Based on an amused spectator's list Send FReepmail if you want on/off MSP list |
|
The Times, er Slimes, long felt that a little correction on Page 2, after the damage was done, was enough to cover their rears.
Public editor or not, there has been no change in the deliberate misrepresentation of the news.
Maybe, as sometimes happens, the "cure" will worsen the "disease."
Congressman Billybob
In other words, he's window dressing on the naked mannequin.......
He is nothing but window dressing on the diseased old Gray Lady.
The Slimes will continue to print outrageous lies to defeat GW, republicans and destroy weaken our religious institutions. They have been doing this for over a century, and they will not change.
Can't get to article.
A watchdog at the Times?? How did 478 Abu Garbage stories slip by him?
He only responds to complaints by readers. He can be reached at:
retrace@nytimes.com
Nice article, but it misses the point.
As a journalism school graduate (Masters from Columbia), I once regarded the NY Times as the secular bible. Sure, I saw little biases, but they were more playful than toxic (I was aware, though, of the common question, "Why are they always unbiased except when they are writing about something I am familiar with?").
Two biases always stood out, though: The New York Times always acted as the mouthpiece of the US State Department, and it always blamed Israel for any violence in the Middle East (earlier, of course, it whitewashed Stalin's mass murders and the holocaust, but both occurred years before my time).
Certainly since 9/11 -- although the biases were there during the Clinton administration they were not as pronounced -- this newspaper has set itself up as the adversary of the current government. News articles are extremely unfair, editorials are single-mindedly opposed to the government and written in increasingly intemperate language, and "News Analysis" articles have evolved from background pieces into unlabelled editorials invariably espousing a particular point of view -- always anti-administration.
The New York Times has gotten so extreme that I no longer regard it as the newspaper of recoord. I can no longer read between the lines and figure out the whole story. For example, on Wilson and the yellowcake uranium, the Times still has not written anything about the British report exonerating this piece of intelligence. The official report is not due out until Wednesday, so it is possible that the Times will write a piece after it is released, but other media have been able to write earlier. The Times never wrote about the blatant conflicts of interest on the 9/11 panel. It wrote an editorial about destruction of world monuments at a time when the Palestinian Authority was at its busiest in expanding the mosques on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, but never mentioned that archaeological atrocity.
I simply can't get the full news out of the Times any more. Articles condemning news coverage of the Tony Awards strike me as sleight of hand, as an attempt by Okrent to distract the readers from the truly burning issues of the day.
In fact, his self-righteousness about the WMD -- when the jury is still out but Polish forces are finding toxic warheads and the current government of Iraq is expressing concerns that the terrorists are trying to get control of them -- indicates that Dan Okrent now is part of the problem on the larger issues, and not part of the solution.
I'm afraid that it's too little too late. I get my news off of the internet and rarely revert to the NY Times website any more, and I think that there are more and more people like me -- who once made up the Times' core audience but now never touch it.
thanks..for the post. It the "same old, same old" routine...neuter and de-fanged. :))
Does anyone know how many front page stories were written attacking President Bush about this. I remember reading and hearing about "the 16 words" again and again. The Senate report clearly shows that Wilson lied about who was instrumental in appointing him as well as about his findings.
Okrent is pretty terrible, but he was picked to be a terrible public editor. He'll answer questions about the paper's liberal bias on the website, but rarely in the paper. Instead, the paper's column exists only to attack the paper for its alleged conservative bias! Heck, he had the audacity to complain about the paper putting a negative review of Clinton's book on the front page, and actually said that he didn't think a positive review would have made Page 1.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.