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Topic: Memos Sent to Romenesko
Date/Time: 3/3/2006 12:05:24 PM
Title: Memo to Knight Ridder editors/2
Posted By: Jim Romenesko
 
So, why do we harp on this? Because the reporters who do the groundbreaking work deserve the credit. Because Knight Ridder, which invests substantially in this kind of original journalism, deserves the credit, even -- or perhaps especially -- in these trying times for all of us. And because the integrity of our profession, already under all-out assault from partisans, requires that we and others be honest with readers about how news originates. That's why, though it breaks our competitive hearts, we acknowledged right at the top of this morning's story about President Bush's briefing on Hurricane Katrina that the Associated Press was the first to obtain the video and transcripts of the briefing, if only by hours.

We're communicating with the Post about a separate and potentially even more troubling issue. On Tuesday, the Post's top headline on 1A said, "Toll in Iraq's Deadly Surge: 1,300." It was a startling statement with serious implications for a nation that seemed -- and may still be -- on the verge of civil war, suggesting that religious-based violence was far wider than anyone had previously reported. Our reporting in Baghdad -- and reporting by other news organizations -- so far has been unable to verify the Post story. The Post quoted officials at the city morgue in Baghdad as saying that they had logged 1,300 bodies of people killed as a result of the sectarian fighting. But when our correspondent examined the books at the morgue, he could find only about 250 bodies logged in as killed in the violence. Our story, quoting the Iraqi Cabinet, said the death toll was 379, which would have included those 250. The next day, the Post pulled back somewhat from its 1,300 number. But, the story quoted Gen. Ali Shamarri of the Interior Ministry's statistics department as saying the toll was 1,077. That's a number lower than 1,300, but not as drastically lower as everyone else has consistently reported. In Baghdad, our correspondents attempted to interview Gen. Shamarri to confirm the Post's account of violence more widespread than previously believed. They were told that no person by the name of Ali Shamarri worked in the statistics department, nor anywhere else in the ministry. We've communicated this finding to the Post. We are also working on a story that we expect to move tomorrow.

Finally, we plan to take our own advice more seriously in the future about accepting information from competing national news organizations. We and others reacted strongly when a CBS poll earlier this week said that President Bush's approval rating had dropped to a record low of 34 percent. White House correspondent Bill Douglas' story Tuesday led with this dismal poll for Bush and said, "That puts him not far above Richard Nixon's Watergate-era nadir and raises questions about how effectively he can govern in his remaining years in office." Steve Thomma and Jim Kuhnhenn wrote today that the President is in fact in deep trouble on Capitol Hill with his own party, but he may be in no deeper trouble with the public than he has been for a while. That was based on two new polls today that had Bush's approval rating in the mid- to low-40s. But two more polls today, including one by the Bush-friendly Fox News, find that the president's approval is sliding into the 30s, though neither is as low as 34%. We are moving tonight a sidebar to the Thomma-Kuhnhenn story to explain the various polls. And we're telling ourselves that we need to be much more cautious about jumping on a single poll from another news organization when we have no control over questions and methodology.

Clark and John

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