Bureau Chief Runs Column by Democrat, Gets Fired by AP
Thu Mar 23, 2006 at 05:34:07 AM PST
The most respected person in Vermont journalism, Chris Graff, was just fired by the Associated Press, axed after almost 27 years as the Vermont Bureau chief. The proximate cause? Running a column by a Democrat.
There's more to the story, and it's a perfect illustration of the degradation of the American media, and what progressives (and anyone interested in a functioning democracy) are up against ...
Details below.
First a quick background on the key player involved, Chris Graff. Chris graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont in the 70s, went to work for the AP here in the state, and became bureau chief two years later in 1980. To call him "respected" would be a fairly large understatement. He is easily the most respected voice in Vermont journalism, running the AP bureau here and hosting the weekly journalist roundtable discussion on Vermont Public Television. And he's about as fair as you can get. I've worked with him often--we did a documentary together--and, while he's so fair it's hard to tell, I'd definitely put him in the Aiken/Stafford/Jeffords tradition of middle-of-the-road Vermont Republicanism. So this is no crusading liberal we're talking about here.
And now, he's out of a job. I'll let local journalist Peter Freyne take up the story (website having troubles; if it doesn't work, check back later):
"Inside Track" has learned that Mr. Graff's firing is directly linked to a certain news item he moved out to client newspapers on the Associated Press wire two weeks ago.
According to sources in the Vermont media, the item was a column written by Vermont Democratic U.S. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy. The subject was the growing threat to our democracy by infringements imposed by the Bush administration on America's hallowed Freedom of Information Act. It was submitted for possible publication by the "Sunshine in Government Inititative" of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. {...}
But shortly after the AP Sunshine package moved on the Vermont wire, an unidentified AP editor up the food chain abruptly yanked it. Vermont AP clients were notifited it was being withdrawn. {...}
Sources say the objection was over moving an item written by a "partisan politician" without including a rebuttal from a partisan politician of a different stripe.
The article goes on to mention that Graff had run a different Leahy column on the FOIA a year ago during the first "Sunshine Week" by the ASNE. And quotes Sen. Leahy's chief of staff wondering "how open government could be partisan?"
Indeed.
Look, this is Vermont. We don't have any Republicans in federal office anymore, since the GOP drove Jim Jeffords out. Was Graff supposed to go next door to NH and have Bush lickspittle Judd Gregg pen an opposing piece just for "balance"?
But this story is more complicated than just a straight case of "media being terrified of looking liberal" or "media suppresses Democratic voice," whichever your preference may be. But the deeper story shows even more clearly the danger to our civic culture from the print media.
I've dug around, asking some other members of the Vermont media to find out more to the story. They mostly confirm the story above, saying that from what they know that was the immediate cause of the firing. But they also point to a previous paragraph in the Freyne story as equally important.
First, since former USA Today president and publisher Tom Curley took over the reins at AP in 2003, things have taken a turn for the worse. Graff isn't the first veteran AP bureau chief to get axed recently. Curley's new Gannett-style policies and guidelines are being imposed with an iron fist by his new team of managers. There are complaints the news is being dumbed down by corporate, and the AP gold standard is being turned into cow flop.
Basically, according to my sources in the VT media, the AP has been making a real effort to fluff out their news, doing more stories on entertainment and celebrity journalism. The hard news that the AP provided local papers for years was being replaced by, for lack of a better term, more easily-digested news. Chris Graff wasn't on board, wasn't a "team player" in this new reality. He continued to focus on hard news, legislative stories, issue packages, that sort of thing, and the corporate heirarchy didn't like it. So there was tension, and then, when the Leahy column was spiked, it was either the straw that broke the camel's back, or the excuse they needed, depending on whom you ask.
And there, in the intersection of those two realities, you see why our news has gotten so bad. All real content has gotten worn away from the news, ground out by the twin forces of faux "balance" and content-free corporate news. Any real story must be balanced by an opposing viewpoint, denying the reality of anything. And the majority of stories can be about things that just don't matter, fake news of stars and American Idol. Personality journalism, where you get far more stories about the autistic team manager who scored 20 points in his only basketball game than you do about the crushing burden of the No Child Left Behind Act. And any story about the NCLB must be "balanced" by the opposing viewpoint.
And add in the fact that the media continues to act like a battered spouse in the face of the conservative onslaught ("oh, no, I deserved that beating. I'll try to make it better ... here I just gave a blog to Ben Domenech! See, I'm good!"). You can see how long a road we have to travel to make this any better.
Because news like this works against democracy. It allows the content-free manipulation of the Bush Administration to run free, unfettered for too long by any reality. It gives power to the words of the "Clean Sky Initiative" or the "No Child Left Behind Act" because it doesn't show the real story behind those laws. It allows an election to turn on personality, while our democracy atrophies.
As Media Matters always makes clear, unlike conservatives, we don't want to silence the real voice of the press, we want to help them reclaim it. We don't want the media to portray our viewpoint, we want the media to just report the news that's really fit to print. That's all. Just report the news that matters.
We don't want to destroy respect in the news; we just want them to respect their own profession a little more.
update: I've done a little more digging, basically confirming Freyne's story. I didn't get it straight from Chris, but I've heard from people who I can confirm are in a position to know. If anything, I was too nice to the AP. The Leahy story really was the main reason given (couched in "lack of judgement" BS), although the backstory of tension about news direction is definitely true. Some speculate that Leahy's unique relationship with certain members of the administration contributed to this. This was dirty, and it was from high up the food chain, from what I hear.
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