News Cut Category Archive: Journalism

It was an odd day in American journalism today. A story about the war in Iraq made the front page. "Report rips post-surge planning for Iraq," said the Pioneer Press. "Progress in Iraq, but it's tenuous, U.S. audits find," said the Star Tribune. Of course, both stories about Iraq did not come from Iraq.

What's going on in Iraq? Good luck finding out.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism found that "In the first three months of 2008, coverage of the campaign outstripped coverage of the war by a margin of nearly 11-to-one (43% of the newshole compared to 4%). In an environment in which newsroom cutbacks and decreasing resources may make it more difficult for news outlets to stay atop two ongoing mega-stories, the media, for now, have made their priorities clear."

On this morning's Midmorning, MPR's Kerri Miller tried -- mightily -- to find out why this is.

"The campaign has taken up the news hole," one guest said. But how's this for circular reasoning? According to the tens of thousands -- 669,916 as of this morning -- of people who have taken MPR's Select A Candidate, it is ranked as the most important issue of the campaign. So how can the most important issue of the campaign not be covered because journalists are too busy covering the campaign?

David Folkenflik, National Public Radio media correspondent, responded to Kerri asking why she's not hearing Anne Garrels on the air much anymore (side note: Has it really been five years since she did her media tour through the Twin Cities?) by saying it's too dangerous for reporters to go out, something that doesn't seem to be stopping Leila Fadel, the Baghdad bureau chief for McClatchy Newspapers.

The excuses continued to the frustration, I'm guessing, of most listeners. One suggested that because Americans haven't been asked to sacrifice, they're not interested in the war. But don't 99.4% (that's an actual statistic!) of the people who rated it on Select A Candidate as important or very important tell us that's not it, either?

Finally, Sean Aday, a professor of media and public affairs and international affairs at George Washington University, offered this: Once the surge started working (At least in terms of reduced violence, many of the goals of the surge have not been met), Democrats stopped talking about it.

And reporters stopped asking.

How did the New York Times and other news organizations beat NBC in reporting the death of Tim Russert earlier this month? A staffer for a Twin Cities company with whom NBC contracts to maintain its Web site. According to the Times, the unidentified employee of Internet Broadcasting Systems in Mendota Heights heard about Russert's death and updated Russert's Wikipedia entry.

Looking at the detailed records of editing changes recorded by Wikipedia, it quickly emerged that the changes came from Internet Broadcasting Services, a company in St. Paul, Minn., that provides Web services to a variety of companies, including local NBC TV stations.

An I.B.S. spokeswoman said on Friday that "a junior-level employee made updates to the Wikipedia page upon learning of Mr. Russert's passing, thinking it was public record." She added that the company had "taken the necessary measures with the employee and apologized to NBC." NBC News said it was told the employee was fired.

Eleven minutes later, someone else at IBS deleted the entry, but by then it was too late. The news was out before NBC could announce it.

The blog, Silicon Alley Insider says the employee may have been suspended rather than fired, but nonetheless sees a corporate conspiracy at work.

It's one thing for a news organization to decide to delay reporting news of a staffer's death out of deference to his or her family (this makes sense). It's another for the organization to expect other organizations to follow the same policy. And it is yet another thing for someone to deliberately strike accurate facts from a collective record to appease an upset client, which is what someone at IBS apparently did.

A bigger lesson here is the value of the new landscape for breaking news. Wikipedia and Twitter appear to be as capable -- and perhaps more so -- of delivering news to a large number of people as the large media companies who may wish to sit on it. I posted Russert's death at 2:33 that day. And I wasn't even the first since I prepped a News Cut entry first. It had circulated for 40 minutes before Tom Brokaw did a special report on NBC.

Following up on a couple of posts last week. When I was live-blogging the Minnesota News Council hearings (here and here), a commenter asked why KSTP wasn't at the council hearing to defend one of its stories.

The answer came today:

We traditionally do not participate in the news council. Our news department has more than a hundred journalists with hundreds of years of experience. Long before the news council was created, KSTP had a history of credible and ethical reporting. We continue to have the highest ethical standards for all of our stories.

Thank you,
Lindsay Radford

This is a continuation of live-blogging the Minnesota News Council hearing. The first "case" (against KSTP) has been decided. Follow along here.

The next case is bound to be heart-wrenching for everyone(Update: Here's a PDF file of the story documents). A father complains that a TV station unfairly used the death of his soldier son in Duluth as a case of post-traumatic stress syndrome and inappropriately used information on MySpace. Using MySpace information is increasingly common for newsies. Journalists are being encouraged to use it as a source -- as this article from the American Journalism Review attests. It's not without risks, however.

The general parameters of this case are covered in an earlier post here. There are also some very insightful News Cut reader comments attached.

One of the pieces of "evidence" attached with the packet for News Council members is a hand-written letter and a picture of his son's grave.

(Latest blog entry is at the bottom)

1:22 p.m. - The story video is being played. The Sheda family has left the room. The story is mostly about PTSD. There is a reference to Sheda, that he may have suffered from PTSD, citing an entry on MySpace.

1:27 - "They never called us," Tony Sheda tells the News Council. "If they did, we could have told him what a happy-go-lucky guy he was. He made some mistakes that night. The pain they caused our family is terrible.

He had a blood alcohol content of .24. "Adam didn't go in there, waving a gun and saying, 'kill me.' He waved $100 bill and asked to join the party. They took his money, beat him, and then shot him.

"The worst is the slander they did to a fine American soldier. Just imagine what we felt like around the holidays. Just imagine if they'd said that about your son or your daughter. Adam wasn't perfect, but he didn't have a death wish."

"He was in Iraq and when he'd come back from a mission, there was a 10 meter diving board that was off limits. The last week he was there, he climbed up and jumped off. They caught him and he was busted to E-5. That was Adam."

Mrs. Sheda: "She (Reporter Barbara Reyelts) used Adam to make a point. She never talked to any psychologist. How could she make that statement that he was having post-traumatic stress disorder? I'm not saying he was or wasn't, but how could she say that?"

1:38 p.m. David Jensch, news director of KBJR speaking. Says the station did contact the Shedas early on, but they declined to talk. Says veterans assistance group asked the station to do the story because PTSD was not being covered or talked about in Duluth.

"The Sheda story was covered by all media outlets, and was the best example of all veterans experiencing emotional wounds. It wasn't about PTSD. Our story never said that Adam Sheda suffered from PTSD; we could never have known that.

Was it fair to report he had a death wish based on a MySpace post. What was reported, the manager says, is he may have had a death wish. "Barbar Reyelts has never reported that Adam Sheda had a death with."

"Responsible journalists seek both sides of the story, which is what Barbara Reyelts did," he said. "Responsible journalism seeks input from all sources. This was done. This story has merit. It was produced in cooperation with people who work with veterans who think these issues are still being ignored."

Sheda rebuttal: "Here we go again. When Adam was killed, we refused interviews. But that was in July, five months before he was killed. They could've called us then and told us they were running the story."

"They never asked," Mrs. Sheda said.

Disputes KBJR manager's assertion that the issue was mentioned on blogs. "I've seen some scary stuff written on blogs," Mrs. Sheda said.

Mr. Sheda says he was drinking because they couldn't drink in a Muslim country. "I've written stupid stuff and that was a stupid thing. But I've written that 'cookies are to die for,' but that's not a death wish."

"Why did eshe need to use Adam?" Mrs. Sheda said. "It was pretty sensational."

"You speculate on blackjack. You speculate on a horse? You don't speculate on a fine young man like that," Mr. Sheda said.

1:50 p.m. Half of council members are looking down.

1:52 - David Jensch, news director: More involved than just a MySpace posting.

Council member Jane Berg asks if there's any other soldier's family that was willing to have their soldier's story told?

"Not that I'm aware of," says Jensch.

1:55 Council members are asking when a veterans agency official asked them to do the story. Jensch said he didn't know. Mr. Sheda says he knows the official, he presented the flag to the family at the funeral.

1:58 Council member asks if any media asked to interview them in the months after Adam's death. "Last summer was lost to us," Mr. Sheda says.

He's asked if the reporter had contact him, would the family have spoken.

"If she said Adam had a deathwish and we would've known that context, it would've been nice to give our side of the story, but if she'd called and done that, there would've been no story," he says. "

2:03 - Member Lorin Robinson to Shedas: Asks about a $40 an hour job. Did he plan to go back to work?

Mr. Sheda: Yes. Then talks about Adam donating a medal worth $1,000 to the air museum in Duluth. Says Channel 6 covered the ceremony despite being asked not to attend. "And they shoved a microphone in my face." (See story here)

2:09 Council member: Had the whole incident not happened and Adam not have died, would the series have been done?

Jensch: "Yes." But says he doesn't know if the person who works with veterans pitched the story to the station because of the Sheda case.

2:12 "Was Myspace writing used in any other media?"

Jensch: "Extensively"

"In hindsight, would you have called them in October and November and said, 'we're doing this?"

Jensch: "Yes. I don't think the reporter expected this level of sensitivity in the case. Everything that could be said about the Sheda case had been said. This reporter's story was focused on the other couple. If I'd been editor, I'd have caught that but I wasn't."

Sheda to Jensch: "Did you say awhile ago that Adam struggled in Iraq..."

Jensch: "It appeared that...."

Sheda: "What does that mean, 'it appeared?' He loved being in the service."

Justice Gilbert says, "we're not going to get in an argument here."

News Council comments

Elizabeth Costello - I appreciate the story because we don't do enough to show what these young men do in Iraq. Says she's not sure Adam was the best choice to show the kind of problems soldiers are experiencing. The Shedas were not contacted for this piece, "I think it would've been prudent to do that and give them the opportunity to talk about their son. Maybe it would've made the story richer."

"As journalists, it shouldn't be up to us" to make the determination that the MySpace writing was indicative of emotional issues.

Roberta Johnson -- I think there's a liberty that journalists take to interpret data in a way that it shouldn't be interpreted. You really have no right to make a conclusion because youre' not an expert. Ethically, that shouldn't be allowed. "It isn't your choice." Psychologists are trained; journalists are not. (Bob notes: Scroll back to the archives of News Cut and find "elusive local connection.")

Steve Schild - I don't think the story is perfect, but I don't question that there's a connection between PTSD and the troubles in people's lives. "It's an important story and Adam Scheda was a part of that story."

Noelle Hawton: "I don't see the link between PTSD and his murder. You can't make a judgment based on one MySpace entry. They inferred he had it and there was no proof he had it."

Heather Harden: "PTSD is an important story to do. Part 2 of the story was excellent. Part 1 was bothersome to me. Mr. Jensch you said the story never said he had PTSD, but that's disingenuous... In my opinion Adam Sheda was just plain murdered. What the media will not say that we all now is a drunk 26-year-old is a pretty normal event."

"I've seen media drawn to a drunk 26 year old like rabid dogs to raw meat." Calls the use of MySpace to conclude Sheda had a death wish "embarrassing."

Issa Mansaray: "I don't see the link in how he was killed in PTSD. It creates a problem for journalists coming into the profession. How should they cover stories like this?"

Al Zdon: "I think Mr. Jensch is careful to draw the distinction that the story... generally was about re-entry into the community after combat." Says the use of MySpace was "pretty crummy journalism."

Sheda rebuttal - "Done professionally, a story on post-traumatic stress would do a great story. Have it done with doctors. You don't have to use a certain person. The minute Adam Sheda's name was mentioned, it was like flies to dead meat. They could use that same time and have a good story and maybe it would help veterans. But a story like this didn't help veterans."

Mrs. Sheda: "I realize you need a hook when you do the story, but using the same footage as when Adam was murdered doesn't make any sense."

Jensch rebuttal - "It's an important story and it's hard to get the public's attention. The local angle is an important way to drive home a point."

THE VERDICT

1. Was it fair to use Adam Sheda as an example in a story about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)? Yes: 8 No: 9

2. Was it fair to report that Adam Sheda had a death wish based on a posting he made on his MySpace account? Yes: 7 No: 10

Analysis - Very scary (to me) that there are 7 people here who thought saying someone may have had a death wish based on a single MySpace posting by a soldier in Iraq was fair.

Early this afternoon, I'll be live blogging two "cases" at a meeting of the Minnesota News Council, a group in which members of the news media voluntarily participate. Here are two cases. Before the council starts debating it, you decide. Then we can compare notes this afternoon. (Narrative provided by the News Council)

Case #1

Tony Sheda called the News Council in December 2007 to complain about a news story (Bob: I couldn't find the story on the station's Web site.) that was broadcast on Duluth station KBJR-TV. In July 2007, his son Adam had been fatally shot just days after returning from service in Iraq. In November 2007, KBJR-TV reporter Barbara Reyelts referenced Adam's death in the context of the "The War at Home," a story on depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among Iraq war veterans.

Tony Sheda complained that the story tarnished his son's memory and was sensationalized. "Adam may have been lonely, but he didn't have a 'death wish,'" Sheda told the News Council.

In January 2008, Barbara Reyelts, who is also KBJR's news director, offered a response that cited sources for the story. Her sources included police records, statements from the county attorney, and Adam Sheda's MySpace page, which read "my plans when I get back are to drink until my heart stops."

Hearing Questions

1. Was it fair to use Adam Sheda as an example in a story about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)?

2. Was it fair to report that Adam Sheda had a death wish based on a posting he made on his MySpace account?

Case #2

Steven Devich is the city manager for Richfield, MN, and complained to the News Council after a story aired on KSTP-TV featuring a letter he wrote to a Richfield citizen.

A Richfield resident complained to Devich about noise coming from an air exchange generator located in the roof of the Richfield Middle School. Devich wrote back to the citizen, addressing their concerns.

KSTP-TV obtained a copy of Devich's letter of response, and featured quotations from it in "Richfield Residents Frustrated Over Noise," a news story they did about the noise coming from Richfield Middle School.

Devich complains that he was not contacted for comment by KSTP, and was unable to explain the contents of the letter. As a result, Devich believes the story was misleading.

Hearing Question

1. Was KSTP's usage of Steven Devich's letter misleading in a 4/20/08 story about noise levels coming from Richfield Middle School?

If you could reform the "media landscape," what would it look like?

For Josh Silver, it would mean an end to corporate ownership of the media diverse and independent media ownership, newspaper owners who live in the city in which they publish, political coverage that focuses on issues, an open Internet, more public and community radio and TV and hundreds -- thousands? -- of small TV and radio stations springing up from your computer.

It's not a pie-in-the-sky vision, he insists. "In St. Petersburg, Florida, there's a community-organization-owned daily newspaper that does a great job, has laid off relatively few reporters in the last decade and turns out some of the best local coverage in the county," according to Silver, who heads Free Press, an organization that wants to reform the media and is hosting a conference in Minneapolis next month.

(Bob interjects: Last month the St. Petersburg Times eliminated its business section)

Considering "reform" of the media, however, inevitably invites a "what comes first" discussion. Did the media dumb down the people who consume it? Or did the people who consume the media dumb down the media? Nobody will be surprised that two semi-talented singers competing tonight on American Idol will garner more ratings than the coverage of the Kentucky and Oregon primaries, right?

"When you do turn on your cable news and you watch the shows covering the primaries, it's all horse-race coverage," Silver says. "You have very little debate and analysis on what the candidates actually stand for ... There is such a lack of the kind of hard-hitting questions that shows like Hardball or Fox News pretend to throw at the candidates. The coverage is pretty pathetic. It's kind of a rational decision to pick American Idol."

Speakers at the National Conference for Media Reform (June 6-8) include: Bill Moyers, Dan Rather, former anchor of CBS News (question: Does the guy who invented '48 Hours' really have the authority to lecture on media reform?); North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan; FCC Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein; Arianna Huffington of HuffingtonPost.com; Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, co-hosts of Democracy Now!; Naomi Klein, author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine; law professors Lawrence Lessig of Stanford and Tim Wu of Columbia; Van Jones of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights; Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation; and media scholar Robert W. McChesney, co-founder of Free Press.

A small -- and fairly liberal -- list of what is actually a pretty substantial lineup.

"I do believe that conservatives are going to catch up with liberals on this notion of making a workable business model online. The debate in this country has swung so far to the right over the last 10, 20 years that even the notion of just a functioning education system or health care for every American has become some sort of radical, left-wing conspiracy -- or at least certainly a very liberal idea -- when, in fact, it's not," he says. "We're talking about civil society, basic rights of every human being. We're going to see a redefinition of what is left, and what is right. And what we're going to find is those on the right, who are reasonable and what I would call real conservatives, they're going to figure out how to make viable news outlets flourish online, too."

Of particular interest to conference organizers is the increased use of video on the Web. They've come to the right place. Local efforts such as The Uptake, for example, have done some very impressive work (News Cut interview), and are providing stories the "legacy media" are not.

Audio segments of the interview with Josh Silver (mp3 ):

Is this offensive? On the blog Visual Editors, a site for people mostly in the design/photojournalism end of the news business, there are a couple of controversies being debated. One is the doctoring of images to enhance their impact -- a subject I'll leave alone, and the other is the picture shown above.

The site says the Business & Media Institute has carried several objections to the photograph -- mostly from Iwo Jima vets, who call it "a disgrace." Is it the picture? Or the assertion that global warming is likened to World War II?

There are a couple of intersecting stories in the news today; the thread between them is that there's always more to the story.

Item #1

The story: Katherine Kersten's article "Teacher questions Muslim practices at charter school," documented the experiences of a substitute teacher to conclude that Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy in Inver Grove Heights is "an Islamic school, funded by Minnesota taxpayers."

The "more to the story" - MinnPost's David Brauer reports the sub was a conservative Republican activist in college, who had been shown a previous Kersten column on the school by her parents.

Item #2:

The story: During the presidential debate on Wednesday in Philadelphia, a video of a woman was shown, in which she asked Barack Obama if he "believed in the American flag."

The more to the story: McClatchy reports that the woman appeared in a feature in the Washington Post awhile ago, critical of Obama for not wearing a flag pin. ABC tracked her down specifically to ask the question, as opposed to having randomly submitted video questions from which this was plucked.

For the record, the "more to the story" doesn't render "the story" false. But when the full story isn't told, it makes it far too easy to question the motives involved, even though they may be pure. Plus, in the age of blogs, it's really a dumb idea not to disclose these things.

Nobody, for the most part, likes to go into a room and be the person nobody wants to see. Newspeople, as far as I know, learn to accept it and we tell ourselves it's part of the job and a small price to pay for preserving truth and democracy and whatever other blather we come up with.

But the real truth? People in my business need to stop rationalizing traumatizing innocent people over some fictitious justification. And they need to figure out a way to do that while still being able to tell people what the heck is going on.

At the conference in Brooklyn Park on Wednesday (see several entries below), public safety and behavioral health professionals analyzed the I-35W bridge tragedy and planned for the next big disaster, considering challenges such as counseling, food, shelter, medicine, rescue equipment, organizing volunteers and cooperation among the dozens of entities that are involved in these sorts of things.

The I-35W bridge disaster brought out the best in these emergency workers of all stripes, especially given the bureaucratic nightmare of it all. "It was a federally-owned bridge, operated and maintained by the state, which fell into a river controlled by the county, and the riverbanks were owned by the city," said conference organizer Jonathan Bundt .

But a common theme emerged among many speakers on the psychological footprint of disaster -- the trauma inflicted by reporters.

Granted public safety folks and journalists have always had an adversarial relationship, and there's usually a good reason for that. But when a bridge falls down, and families are in unimaginable pain, we -- the media -- shouldn't be making it worse.

"The media has got to fill the time," said Bundt, "but every time they'd report something, we'd get inundated by the families and 75 to 80 percent of the time, the information was inaccurate."

Bundt said the real problem last August with the family assistance center he set up, is that it was set up at the Holiday Inn, near the bridge, a site too accessible to the public and reporters.

"All the families had to walk through the lobby to get to the room," Bundt said, invoking an image of a gauntlet of reporters anxious to know what it feels like to think your loved one may be dead. The public has a right to know, one supposes. But doesn't the public already know the answer to that question?

So in addition to the other challenges the behavioral health specialists faced that August night, among the biggest was the psychological trauma inflicted by reporters.

"The news people are never, ever on your side," Rev. Jeffrey Stewart told the attendees on Wednesday, as he described racing the media to be the first to tell a woman that her husband was dead. (See post)

Leesa Dentinger, whose cousin, Christina Sacorafas died in the collapse, told the group that among the best things the family assistance center did, was "keeping the media away from us."

A Minneapolis police official, the group was told, surreptitiously arranged a secret visit to the bridge site for family members, so that they could look over the side of the 10th Street Bridge and not worry about the media. She said he got in trouble for that.

Another person told me a reporter posed as someone who was related to a bridge victim to try to get into the area where the families were.

To be sure, not every journalist was -- or is -- a jerk. Bundt said many gave him their business cards, and he put them on a wall with a sign for the families that if they wanted to talk, they could take their pick. "Some people need to tell their story," he said. It was a remarkably civilized and effective way to get a story, and perhaps it should be part of planning for the next disaster.

Behind the scenes, Bundt was dealing with the "diversity" of the families. Not just ethnic and racial, but rural people who didn't understand the city; and families of divorce coming together in a not-always-pleasant way. "When trauma hits, you can't hold it in," he said, noting that often family members had to get away from other family members.

It's a long-standing dilemma for journalists: how to cover a story and not make it worse. Before leveling the criticism on Wednesday, each person prefaced it with "the media was just doing its job, but...." And perhaps that's the first step journalists can take to prepare for the next disaster: getting it through our heads -- and yours -- that making things worse isn't part of the job.

"I hope you didn't take my comments personally," Rev. Stewart said to me afterwards. I did... but not for the reason he thinks.

In this business, like so many others, you never exhale and get comfortable. As the Paul Douglas layoff at WCCO showed last week, the end can come at any time. As many have pointed out, Douglas will be fine. But he was only one of several to get the boot. He had the benefit of being the face in front of the camera. A bunch of others at WCCO are similarly going to be chopped through buyouts.

Around the CBS empire last week, lots of people lost their jobs, and a lot of flaks -- spokespersons -- had to reassure the public that nothing will change, which sounds like one final insult to the dearly departed.

For example. In Boston, 30 people were let go last week. Said a spokeswoman:

"There have been staff reductions stationwide as a result of our restructuring for efficiencies and streamlining our operations while maintaining quality programming and service to the community."

In San Francisco, five journalists were among those eliminated. And the San Francisco Chronicle reported...

KPIX spokeswoman Akilah Monifa said the cutbacks won't affect the station's coverage or any of its newscasts. Last month, the station added another 30-minute newscast to its lineup, producing a 10 p.m. program on sister station KBCW, staffed by their prime-time parent news team.

It's a familiar theme: "we're getting rid of people, but it won't affect our coverage." How is that possible unless those let go weren't contributing quality programming in the first place? And nobody seems to be saying that.

The term "quality," of course, is a definition in the eye (or ear) of the beholder. On the first night after announcing the cuts, WCCO provided a story on the history of the hockey puck. Two other stories in the newscast were provided by the same reporter.

The Star Tribune and Pioneer Press have cut back their staffs in recent years. Has it made a difference? The Pulitzers are being announced today and the Star Tribune is in the running for one based on its coverage of the bridge disaster.

If it has, then what we have here is a Catch 22 situation, the depths of which aren't yet clear. Cutbacks change the quality, the change in quality means a loss in readers/viewers/listeners, which results in lost revenue, which inspires more cutbacks.

How can that cycle change?