Well, we finally have the official stance of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution NEWS division on their reporting of the Downing Street Minutes. It's laid out in an article by Angela Tuck, the public editor, and it's sad. To say the least, the NEWS division is at odds with the EDITORIAL division. There's an awful lot of mis-direction. Tuck brings up stuff that has
nothing to do with the issue at hand. Most egregiously, she continues to conflate the intelligence enterprise, which is open to honest error, with the
a priori massaging of the intelligence, which is premeditated deception.
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/tuck/2005/052105.html
More below the fold.
Here are some excerpts. I'm sure Ralph McGill's ghost is weeping over the lack of leadership:
Deputy Managing Editor Susan Stevenson believes, as I do, that our coverage was appropriate. Americans learned about Bush's faulty intelligence during U.S. elections. How you view this depends on your politics.
Angela, show me where the AJC reported that Bush cooked the intelligence. Show me where the AJC reported anything beyond the government line that the intelligence was flawed and that Bush was just a victim of a faulty system. There's politics and then there's simple facts. Reporting the Downing Street Minutes has nothing to do with reporting that Bush's intelligence apparatus was faulty. It's the same old tired "intelligencin' is hard, hard work" line.
"Don Melvin and Shelly Emling, reporters in London for the AJC and Cox newspapers, reported in several stories about pre-British election memos ...
Again, she's conflating, only now in a different, and much more disingenuous, manner. A search of the AJC website shows that Emling's reports on the Minutes were not published in the AJC. I don't know where they were published, but they were not part of the news that AJC subscribers were exposed to. As to the Melvin article, here's the link:
http://www.ajc.com/hp/content/shared/news/world/stories/04/01_BRITAIN_BLAIR.html
You can judge whether the Minutes are adequately reported. And remember, this was the ONLY reporting from the NEWS division on this topic in the AJC prior to the laughably partisan report reprinted from the Chicago Times.
More conflation:
The coverage debate raises a larger question for regional newspapers like the AJC: How much news on international politics, particularly the war in Iraq, do readers want?
This is not about international news, Angela. It's about national news that affects us locally. It's not even about the Iraq war. It's about pre-war deception. The issue is whether the Bush administration lied about what they knew of Iraq's WMD capability. Did they know that there was no serious threat and then go out and tell the American people and the world that there was in fact a threat? All evidence poins in that direction. When will the evidence be REPORTED, not just presented as the subject of an editorial?
And since when does "How much news...do readers want?" constitute some standard on reporting the news?! This is a total abdication of the responsibilities of the newspaper! I am sure that the majority of the AJC readers during the time of the civil rights marches did not want to read any more stories about Martin Luther King. That sure didn't stop Ralph McGill, the editor of the Constitution at the time, from making sure his newpaper reported the NEWS. If memory serves, I think ol' Ralph got some award or other for such editorial leadership:
http://www.reportingcivilrights.org/authors/bio.jsp?authorId=47
Tuck is also pretending that the press have no control over what the public considers important. Man, how stupid does she thinks her readers are? I guess pretty stupid.
You know, I want to be proud of my hometown newspaper. I want to be able to say that "Yeah, I subscribe to the AJC, and man is it a great newspaper." Sadly, the only reason I subscribe these days is for Jay Bookman's editorials and for the food section on Thursdays.
I'll leave you with this nugget from one of the AJC reporters in Baghdad:
A lot of the comments [from readers] were very politically charged," said Martz. "If I wrote something someone on the Republican side didn't like, I was a traitor who should stay in Iraq. If I wrote something the Democrats didn't like, then I was a stooge of the Bush administration. I figured since I was getting an equal amount from both sides, I was doing a fairly decent job of playing it down the middle.
What are they teaching in journalism school these days? It sure isn't critical reasoning. If you'd like an answer to this burning question, you know what to do:
Combined: insideajc@ajc.com, jdwallace@ajc.com, jmellott@ajc.com, bsenftleber@ajc.com, hklibanoff@ajc.com, cwarmbold@ajc.com, pgast@ajc.com
National Editor of the AJC, Barb Senftleber: bsenftleber@ajc.com
Publisher - John Mellott, 404-526-5892, jmellott@ajc.com
Editor - Julia Wallace, 404-526-7679, jdwallace@ajc.com
Managing Editor, News - Hank Klibanoff, 404-526-5416, hklibanoff@ajc.com
Angela Tuck, 404-526-5819, fax 404-526-5611, insideajc@ajc.com
News Editor, day - Carolyn Warmbold, cwarmbold@ajc.com
News Editor, evening - Phil Gast, pgast@ajc.com