looks like all you kossacks and deaniacs are starting to get noticed in the campaign to take back the media.
as you may know, the new york times appointed a "public editor" to act as an ombudsman of sorts after the howell raines/jayson blair affair. the man's name is daniel okrent. in today's week in review section he has a column where he responds to criticism of jodi wilgoren's coverage of howard dean.
Dr. Dean Assumes His Place on the Examining Table
Nearly every time there's a story about Dean in the paper, my in-box fills with complaints from his fans. (Every time there isn't a story providing a précis of a new policy statement from the Dean camp, it's almost the same.) They attack the editors of The Times, Wilgoren, national political correspondent Adam Nagourney and other staff reporters for misrepresenting, ridiculing or attempting to sabotage Howard Dean. They especially object to The Times's microscopic inspection of their candidate while, many say, the depredations of George W. Bush go unexamined.
there's lots more, and i recommend you read it if you've sent your feedback in to the NYT.
the good news is, he's heard you loud and clear, and realizes you're a force to be reckoned with. the bad news is he's basically downplaying it as the griping of hot-headed deaniacs. to be fair, he absolutely should be sticking up for his colleagues - if you worked there you would hope he'd do the same for you.
so what i suggest at this point is that we should try to make our case point by point, and stick to the facts vs simply registering dissatisfaction.
i decided to send him my views on wilgoren's coverage as a non-deaniac, and that letter follows below the fold.
dear mr okrent,
first of all i should state that i am not a supporter of howard dean, although i am a democrat and have been following the campaign very closely.
i'm glad to see you are addressing the issue of jodi wilgoren's coverage of dr dean, and hopefully the larger issue of coverage of the candidates. but let me say i really think the new york times can do better. i'm not talking about "bias" here - i'm talking about accuracy and analysis and depth of coverage.
sticking to the topic at hand, i have to say i'm quite surprised to learn that jodi wilgoren is actually on the campaign trail with howard dean. having followed her byline along with adam nagourney and others, i was convinced she was simply processing wire reports or other sources for the most part. as an example (which you didn't mention in today's column) let's look at the sidebar she did last week for the "dean gets heckled" story ("one church, one microphone, two hopefuls" monday, january 12th). i read this small bit in the print edition of the times that morning, and came away thinking that someone had stood up in a church trying to remind dr dean about "love thy neighbor" and dean had exploded at the guy. that's how it reads in ms wilgoren's story. i figured he must have lost the vote of everyone present. later that day i happened to read the same story on the AP wire, written by none other than nedra pickler. (ms pickler's photo is the one on deaniac dartboards if the internet is any indication.) in nedra pickler's version, i found the following:
::Dean said Bush has harmed communities like Oelwein by failing to fund education programs, by fighting for corporations rather than family farms and sending American troops to Iraq without telling the truth about why they were deployed.
"That is exactly the problem. Under the guise of 'support your neighbor' we're all expected not to criticize the president because it's unpatriotic," Dean said to enthusiastic applause. "I think it's unpatriotic to do some of the things that this president has done to this country."::
this version did not imply that the exchange took place in a church, as the headline for the NYT piece did. the AP story also notes that "enthusiastic applause" was the response to dr dean telling the man to sit down, as his "question" was actually a three minute rant full of GOP talking points. and it shows that dean quickly realized that the man's criticism was really just a variant of the ridiculous idea of the right-wing that "any criticism of the president is unpatriotic (but only if it's a republican president)" i didn't get any of that from wilgoren's piece. instead she uses it to flog the tired old chestnut that howard dean is "too angry". later i saw the entire campaign appearance on CSPAN. it didn't resemble wilgoren's version at all. dr dean was not "angry" at any point in the exchange, in fact he handled it quite well, even incorporating the "good neighbor" theme into his answers to subsequent questions. and the event didn't take place in a church at all. so i have to conclude that this piece is just sloppy reporting.
look, maybe i'm being unfair, but i expect more from the new york times than other news outlets. if you have a reporter who is following a candidate around the campaign trail and all we're getting is regurgitations of the conventional wisdom, such as "the guy's angry! and all he does is trash-talk the president! gets his money on the internet from birkenstock-shod hippies," and superficial, even inaccurate reports of actual events, i really have to ask you if you think your money's being well spent. if she's spending all that time on this, how about some insight? something original, perhaps, instead of repeating the same stuff everyone else is saying. and i really couldn't care less about having more "on the other hands" in your pieces. the "he said, she said" school of journalism is a complete waste of my time. i'd rather people be honest with the reader and themselves about their biases, and let me read between the lines. but for me to do that, all the information needs to be there. accuracy is the only meaningful objectivity.
well, you implied in your column that most of the complaints were coming from hot-headed deaniacs, and i'm sure you get plenty of those. i thought i'd give you some feedback from a non-deaniac. i read the print version of the times every day, and it's been pretty disheartening to watch how it's been struggling over the last several months - it's even evident in little things like the copyediting. here's hoping you guys get back on the horse, because we need you.
sincerely yours,
zeke lawson
ezekiel1649 [at] hotmail.com
ps - while i'm talking about wacky coverage of howard dean, what is up with maureen dowd? not quite sure why you publish a gossip columnist on the op-ed page, but she seems bizarrely obsessed, almost as if she had been jilted by him in some way. i'm talking about the strange attack on the man's wife for not wearing make-up or something, and today's piece drops into the comically absurd. you might want to tell maureen that we're no longer laughing with her, people are now laughing at her.
pps - on the positive side, i was very glad to see you give coverage of the electronic voting story a prominent place on the editorial page today. this story deserves lots of attention, even front page coverage. these are the kind of issues that matter, not which candidates are wearing sweaters.
also, folks like jodi wilgoren and adam nagourney should be excited that people in the general public know their names! don't think that's too common for reporters - i know i only recently started paying attention to the bylines myself.