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No surprise they skew left

8/25/2010 5:05:29 PM

From MARK RICHARD: Thanks for posting this article, although it should be part of the furniture of any analysis of American journalism by now that, yes, the political news media, and academia (as well as other "word" professions like law, entertainment and the arts) skew toward the political Left. I don't think much can be done about it, but journalism reviews should get over the huffy defensiveness (or, alternately, Heavy Irony) when discussing the issue and plainly accept it as reality. I mean, Eisenhower denounced the press' institutional political bias toward urban middle class political attitudes (the shorthand term is that old garbanzo �liberal�) as far back as 1964. It does affect coverage, in the sense of which stories are selected to be "news", and how these stories are framed. To that extent, nobody can be "unbiased." Accepting this premise, the question becomes "what is the bias?" And it's not a radical notion to answer that the bias is toward journalists' own social category � college-educated; middle-class; very interested in politics, more comfortable with pop culture than with, say, math; urban-oriented; secular-minded; and so on. Not all people who check off these boxes are politically oriented toward the Democratic Party, but... [Permalink]

More on WSJ's privacy series

8/19/2010 2:45:02 PM

From BILL BRAZELL: Re: Ms. Huston's defense of the Wall Street Journal on privacy:

On behalf of the WSJ, Ms. Huston ignores all questions of disclosure to assert that "WSJ.com does not sell personally identifiable information of its online users or subscribers." Her defense oddly restricts itself to WSJ.com. My complaint did not. And even the correctness of Ms. Huston's very limited defense depends on what the meaning of "sell" is. To see that, let's look at a small part of the Journals privacy policy. The WSJ hasn't hyperlinked individual sections, but to confirm the existence of the graf below you can just scroll down to "USE: HERE'S HOW WE USE PII," and then to the third graf under "Sharing Your Information" -- the one that begins "Service Providers." Here's what you'll find:

"We may use other companies to perform services including, without limitation, facilitating some aspects of our web sites, sending e-mail, fulfilling purchase requests, delivering subscriptions, serving, customizing or delivering marketing or ads, and auditing. These other companies may be supplied with or have access to your PII and Related Data solely for the purpose of providing these services to us or on our behalf."

Note the phrase "serving, customizing or delivering marketing or ads." Does the Dow Jones senior director of corporate communications ask us to believe that the Journal is supplying our PII to third-party advertisers at no charge? As Michael Wolff, the biographer of Dow Jones owner Rupert Murdoch, reports, Mr. Murdoch doesn't even believe in donating to registered charities, and castigates his 102-year-old mother for doing so. It's safe to assume that the marketers in question are giving the Journal something of value in exchange for our PII. (And if the Journal gave our PII away for free, would knowing that make us feel safer?)

The point Ms. Huston concedes, though, is even funnier: "We do rent access to names and mailing address [sic] of our print subscribers only to other companies for direct marketing purposes, as has been a common practice among many publishers for decades."

'Hey, we don't sell it - we rent it, as others have done for decades' is not exactly a ringing denial. As Ms. Huston admits, companies pay the WSJ for the use of its PII, whereupon those companies use that PII for their purposes. Note to Ms. Huston and the rest of the Journal: That is what �selling PII" means.

And the fact that the sale -- or, if you prefer, rental -- of PII has been a common practice offline for decades is a big part of the point. Compare that "time-honored" practice to the transacting of the demographic data that can be aggregated from anonymous click-stream cookies. As a father, I'm far more comfortable being tracked by anonymous cookies than having our family's address bandied about by strangers.

Just above the "Service Providers" section, under the heading "Affiliates," the Journal�s privacy policy says, �We may share your PII with companies that are affiliated with us, that is, are part of the News America Group of companies.� One need not uncover a secret document: Its own public statements declare that the Journal profits from its readers' PII.

PII remains the third rail of behavioral media. Again, as far as I've been able to tell, none of the other 60+ companies described so far in the "What They Know" series profits from PII. Not one. Only the Journal does so.

Furthermore, Ms. Huston's letter skipped over the fact that the Journal is the sole company among the 60+ companies referenced that employs a pay wall. Her letter therefore failed to address the troubling truth: The Journal�s use of said pay wall means that any legislation or regulation of online behavioral media will benefit the Journal�s bottom line -- by making it much harder for its competitors, most of which do not charge readers, to make money. In the long run, that would hurt readers who happen to have less money, because the access they currently have to important news would fade. That's why this matters so much.

The Journal remains in grave conflict in two important areas: in its failure to disclose its PII profiteering, and in its vested financial interest in frightening its readers, who include legislators, with its �What They Know� series.

It doesn't matter if the Journal's editors promise up and down that these financial interests don't affect its coverage. The Journal has an obligation to disclose these conflicts in writing to its readers, and to do so right at the top of every privacy story it publishes. [Permalink]

WSJ responds to Bill Brazell

8/17/2010 5:16:59 PM

From ASHLEY HUSTON, senior director of corporate communications, Dow Jones & Co.: Subject -- Response from WSJ to Bill Brazell's letter. WSJ.com does not sell personally identifiable information of its online users or subscribers, and to suggest otherwise is false and unsupportable. We do rent access to names and mailing address of our print subscribers only to other companies for direct marketing purposes, as has been a common practice among many publishers for decades. [Permalink]

Fear and WSJ's privacy series

8/16/2010 2:57:24 PM

From BILL BRAZELL: It's been disturbing to read the Wall Street Journal�s ongoing "What They Know" privacy series without finding a disclosure notifying readers of the Journal's grave conflict of interest. As Jeff Jarvis and others have suggested, the Journal's use of a pay wall may even motivate the stories' fear-mongering tone. Actually, the conflict is deeper: The Journal should disclose at the beginning of every privacy story it publishes that it collects and sells Personally Identifiable Information (PII), and that none of the Top 50 publishers listed does so. Indeed, hardly anyone else on the Web does so. (My own disclosure: I pay attention to privacy policy as a strategic consultant to online advertising companies.)

Those who read the series online can find a few details about the Journal's data habit in an interactive feature. Print readers will miss it entirely. But even the interactive feature omits the most important phrase: Personally Identifiable Information. Nor does it describe the rarity of the collection and sale of PII � that is, how unusual the Journal�s practice really is. Diehards who dig through the Journal's privacy policy online can learn about the sale of PII. But those who read only the stories will learn nothing.

Bottom line: The Journal's use of a pay wall, and its sale of PII, give it a vested financial interest in scaring readers about the cookies that keep most of the web free. And fear is exactly the tone that runs through "What They Know."

WSJ Standards Editor Alix Freedman said via email that she "can assure" me that the Journal's subscription policy has no effect on news coverage. If I knew Ms. Freedman personally, I might decide to take her word for it. But I don't. More importantly, neither do her readers. [Permalink]

Time to rethink the value of comments

7/30/2010 6:22:40 PM

From ALICIA SHEPARD, NPR ombudsman: I have apologized to the WSJ for using the word 'thinly.' I do not know who their sources are. But my focus was on NPR's journalism � not the Journal's.

There is a fascinating coda to this story.

Journal reporters Mike Ramsey and Josh Mitchell were reading the comments on my Ombudsman blog since I reference the Journal's July 14 Toyota story. One comment came from a recently retired employee of the National Transportation Highway Safety Administration.

George Person wrote: The only problem with this article which reports that the real cause of sudden acceleration crashes in driver error, is the fundamental fact that the information about the field survey conducted by NHTSA is true. I recently retired from NHTSA and can confirm that 100% (32 out of 32) of the 40 vehicles audited by NHTSA were pedal misapplication. Others were found to be fraudulent claims. DOT has forced NHTSA to sit on the report since it indicates there is no defect in the vehicles. The upshot of erroneously blaming vehicle defects is that the real problem of pedal mis-application, a form of driver error, first identified in the late 1980s in the Audi 5000 case, goes unaddressed.

The Journal tracked him down and got a story out of it. Is this the new symbiosis? I'll have to rethink the value of comments. [Permalink]

Chuck Todd's concerns

7/28/2010 11:59:58 AM

From PETER HART: It's good to see Chuck Todd expand on his Politico quote about the JournoList non-story. But his clarification still leaves one wondering: Aren't there bigger problems with the media than what is said in some private emails? Like the total collapse of the media in the run-up to the Iraq War. Or Breitbart's phony ACORN videos, which were trumpeted throughout the media. Are those worth losing sleep over? [Permalink]

He could have used Baquet's editing skills

7/28/2010 11:48:06 AM

From CRAIG PYES: Subject: Dean Baquet's letter. The "misunderstanding" in this case is Dean's, but since I did not have his fine editing, I may have contributed. I did not intend, nor mean to imply, that meetings or discussions that took place between NY Times editors and White House officials over the Wikileaks documents were to request "permission" to publish.

Having worked on multiple major projects under Dean Baquet at The Los Angeles Times, and on multiple major investigative projects at The New York Times, the thought that any of those involved would seek "permission" from officials to publish, is too outlandish to have even entered my mind. I used the term "suitability" in the broadest sense to refer to the discussions that Times Executive Editor Bill Keller described with White House officials, and the term referred to national security concerns raised by publication of unedited, raw field reporting. The WikiLeaks information is very similar to the quantity and type of source material we used to craft our September 2006 LAT articles on an Alabama-based Special Forces team, the reporting of which Dean oversaw. There was no implication on my part that we were more high-minded because we did not contact the White House. Because our information was morphed into stories, rather than published (almost) as is, we contacted all appropriate Special Forces and other Pentagon officials involved. Except for one Command, these discussions hardly went past two words: "No Comment." [Permalink]

Misunderstanding?

7/27/2010 11:27:16 AM

From DEAN BAQUET: I think my former colleague Craig Pyes has misunderstood something. There was no meeting with the White House to discuss the suitability of publishing the information. There was in this case --- as there was in the case involving the Los Angeles Times --- a visit to the government to get comment for a story. The New York Times was not seeking permission to publish. I just wanted to set the record straight. Having worked with Craig on numerous fine stories, I�m sure he would agree that going to the subject of a story is what we always do. [Permalink]

Tempest in a teapot

7/26/2010 2:01:07 PM

From CRAIG PYES: The revelation of the WikiLeaks, while interesting and certainly worthy of journalistic scrutiny, is little more than a tempest in a teapot. These documents are nothing spectacular, not policy-level Pentagon Papers insights...they don't amount to much more than basic field correspondence, most of which is automatically marked "Secret" by those who file them. NYT Washington Editor Dean Baquet, who was one of the editors handling the project for The Times, should have plenty of experience in these matters, since he was the Editor of The Los Angeles Times when Kevin Sack and I published a series on September 24-25, 2006, about an Alabama Special Forces team in Afghanistan that drew from a similar cache of thousands of secret Army documents. We had access to interrogation strategy, reports of inter-team conflicts, corruption of local officials, "illegal" cross-border operations into Pakistan, and orders from the commander of Special Forces in Afghanistan instructing a team of Green Berets that in confiscating video footage from a CBS crew, "Use of deadly force for the sole purpose of recovering film or videotape is not authorized."

While The LA Times took a lot of caution around the handling of these documents, needless to say, there were no White House conferences with the Bush Administration about the suitability of publication. Indeed, there was little interest then focused on Afghanistan, the paper still labored under the false assumption that promoting what it had would be a little vulgar, and those in the media that I contacted showed little interest in the behind-the-scenes details of that war then. [Permalink]

Subject: Page Six customs

7/14/2010 3:50:09 PM

From JOHN MAGGS: In the blog item linked to the piece about John Malone and Rupert Murdoch, I was disappointed to learn that the short-pants caper was just a prank -- we all want to believe that Rupert is watching the cafeteria line via security cam. But I was not disappointed to hear who the panicked Page Six staffer turned to in his search for pair of pants: I also just called up a publicist friend to have her messenger me over a pair of jeans. Everything you need to know about Page Six in one sentence. This might have been a scene in "The Sweet Smell of Success," when obsequious Tony Curtis will do anything to curry favor with gossip columnist Burt Lancaster. "Publicist friend" is a delicious phrase, containing the pretense that the tickets, gifts and other favors whereby publicists bribe gossip columnists are really just what one friend would do for another. [Permalink]

Drive to bring back Union-Tribune's arts critic

6/30/2010 4:53:10 PM

From ROXANA POPESCU: I want to let you know about a social media/Facebook movement to get Robert Pincus, the laid-off art critic of the San Diego Union-Tribune, rehired.

1. Facebook.com/wewantbob (more than 300 followers in first 24 hours)
2. Bringbobback.blogspot.com (428 fans in first 36 hours)
3. Tweets left and right
4. Some media coverage of the movement picking up:and LA Times arts reporter via Twitter. [Permalink]

What made Chris Welles great

6/30/2010 11:29:09 AM

From DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Chris Welles was a model example of a great reporter: aggressive, fearless, careful, thoughtful about context and meaning. I only met him in person for a few brief encounters, but over the years on the telephone we each helped the other devise strategies to pry loose some golden nugget of fact. Chris always gave quick and wise counsel on how to get facts flowing again.

Chris's story telling skills were exceptional. He showed again and again how you can take the driest of subjects and make them interesting if you wrap the policy into people's actions. That requires deep thinking, something we see far too little of today with shrunken staffs trying to do more with less. And it required persistence, as Jon Friedman noted in his appreciation at MarketWatch.

The Elusive Bonanza, Chris's 1970 book that made some narrow-minded among oil company executives hate him, includes a marvelous tale of a large Colorado Rockies house whose fireplace was built with black rocks from the surrounding area, a story whose imagery remains fresh in my mind four decades after reading it. Chris told how the first night the grand home was occupied a party was held and the fireplace was put to use, burning down the whole structure. What a way to introduce human folly and oil shale!

Over the years several tycoons went after Chris with a vengeance, but I cannot recall a single case when their threats succeeded because Chris had his facts down solid and he kept his head when under attack. In one case, he exposed a seemingly wealthy oil man whose fortune Chris revealed to be more smoke and mirrors than commas on a net worth statement. Many years passed before court papers were filed that showed Chris's account was solid.

The best lesson that Chris's career teaches is this: get your facts rounded and bolted down and when threatened by people who want to shield those facts from the public never cower, never flinch. [Permalink]

The new "standard fee"

6/22/2010 7:09:58 PM

From DAVID MACARAY: Am I the only freelancer to get shorted by a major newspaper? A few years back I had a 700-word op-ed piece accepted by a major newspaper. I won't say which, but it was then and still is one of the biggest papers in the country. When I brought up the subject of compensation during my telephone conversation with the editor, there was a momentary silence. He asked how much I was I looking for. I told him I'd recently received $300 from the LA Times for a similar op-ed piece. He said that was fine, that they'd pay me $300.

When the check arrived , it was in the amount of $150. I said nothing, not wanting to rock the boat and be seen as a whiner or greedy bastard. Some months later I submitted another op-ed piece to the same paper, and it was also accepted. During my conversation with the editor (a different one) she told me, without being prompted, that they'd be paying me $150. I surmised glumly that this was now recognized as my "standard fee." Has any other freelancer had a similar experience? [Permalink]

Subject: Credit where credit is due

6/11/2010 2:19:32 PM

From GENE KRZYZYNSKI: How 'bout giving full journalistic credit where credit is due on the Arlington National Cemetery horror story?

In news coverage yesterday and today, the credit invariably has been given generically to Salon.com. Which is all well and good, but the investigative reporter who has lonesomely worked his tail off for a full year to ensure the public's right to know about this government scandal has a name. And it ought to be used.

It's Mark Benjamin. [Permalink]

Subject: Deep Throat and my former boss

6/2/2010 8:03:03 PM

From MARK PHILLIPS: Your placement of the headlines "Felt outed himself as Deep Throat five years ago" and "San Diego Union-Tribune newsroom cuts expected" in Tuesday's additional items sparked a memory.

Around 2002, I went to dinner with Herb Klein, who at the time was the
editor-in-chief of Copley Press/Copley Newspapers (former owners of
the San Diego Union-Tribune). At the time, Copley also owned the The
Repository in Canton, Ohio. In his position, Herb was ultimately my
boss. He'd also been the communications director during the Nixon
administration.

We went to a hotel bar following dinner and after a drink, I got the
courage to ask, "So, do you know who Deep Throat is?"

He leaned over to me and said softly, "No, do you?"

Then he winked and laughed a little. [Permalink]

Earlier letter corrected

6/2/2010 7:12:20 PM

From MATTHEW SAROFF: I made a number of errors in my earlier letter to you.

First, there was a link in the article in question that Cerf and McLaughlin were discussing. I did not notice the link. So I was wrong on that.

Second, the author in question was not Declan McCullagh.

My apologies to both Mr. Parloff and Mr McCullagh. [Permalink]

Why do reporters cover for each other?

5/21/2010 6:12:52 PM

From MATTHEW SAROFF: Roger Parloff, in his Fortune Magazine article, White House and Google: Cozy, as Charged, reveals the following exchange:

In January, for instance, Google's vice president and "chief Internet evangelist" Vint Cerf anxiously wrote to McLaughlin about the worsening chances for net neutrality -- the notion that Internet Service Providers should be barred from favoring their own content or from offering "fast-lane" services to premium-paying customers. "Has there been so much flack from the Hill that you guys feel a need to back away" from a commitment?, asked Cerf, attaching a CNET article by a well-credentialed business consultant who was advancing that thesis.

"Don't be silly," McLaughlin responds. "No one's backed away from anything... Isn't ... the author of the article, an anti [net neutrality] zealot?"

"Yes, he is," Cerf wrote. "Just wanted to confirm he's full of biased baloney."

"Absolutely," McLaughlin replied.

What is interesting here is the rhetorical extremes to which Mr. Parloff goes to avoid naming the journalist in question.

Since, I read CNET, as well as a number of other technical news websites, and I know who this is, as doess anyone who has followed his work.

It is Declan McCullagh, who was once described by The Register's Andrew Orlowski nailed when he called him a, "draw-by-crayon libertarian".

The decision not to mention him by name, is a disservice to readers.

Fundamentally, when two policy makers have a discussion, and they say something to the effect of, "Don't worry, Declan is a complete hack," this is important for the reader to know who they are referring to so that they can, if they choose, review the archives and evaluate Mr. McCullagh's work.

The writing is circuitous in an attempt to avoid naming another journalist.

If this story involved the discussion of statements from a politician or lawyer given to hyperbole, (Geoff Feiger, for example), the name would have been found in the story, but because the subject of the discussion is a journalist, this is omitted.

This reflexive circling of the wagons whenever there is the mildest accusation of journalistic hackery is a disservice to both the reader and to journalism. [Permalink]

Get on the same page, please

5/20/2010 12:09:55 PM

From GENE KRZYZYNSKI: Why can't the New York Times, the Associated Press, icasualties.org and every other source that says it cares about accuracy (even the Pentagon) all get on the same page regarding the cumulative total of Americans killed in Afghanistan -- not the names, but the raw number -- on any given day?

Wednesday, for instance, the Times was reporting 1,002, compared with 994 for the AP. Now that instant communication is the norm, can't something so basic be uniform?

If it can be done for elections, it can be done for wars. [Permalink]

Off the record interviews don't exist?

5/19/2010 12:39:49 PM

From CRAIG PYES: It is self-evident from this letters column that if experienced journalists disagree about the precise meaning of Off the Record, then no interview subject can be expected to know the definition. The interviewer must explain the ground rules for each term of non-attribution as it comes up, or your basically taking advantage of your source, and possibly even short-changing yourself. Two weeks ago, I had an email exchange with a retired military officer who will no longer talk to the press because, as he put it, "I've learned that there is never an off the record interview." He meant that he was burned too many times by journalists who used his name. But, in fact, it is true. OTR means only that you won't attribute the information to the individual, but you can use the information if you can confirm it elsewhere. That's how I use it. And it's valid, because each term is defined and agreed upon in the course of the conversation. If it's not, then anyone who talks to the press would be like driving without Mexican car insurance in Mexico. [Permalink]

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