I’m sorry for stealing Gerard Vanderleun’s oft-used title for this, but I really can’t think of any other name for the opportunity the Ceiling Cat has placed in my lap today.
See, I was reading Jeff Jarvis’ feed, as I usually, do, and he was commenting favorably on the New Jersey Star Ledger’s video newsroom; he mentioned that there had been some dialog with a blogger, which I thought might be amusing, and so I clicked over and watched it.
The video is embedded below. Go to 5:55 to see the part I’m discussing…
| Ledger Live – 08-06-08 |
All good?
See, today, I’ve been following another story about journalism, but couldn’t think of an angle to make it an interesting blog post until I watched the video.
Townhall apparently busted the Washington Post for a Page 1 story on McCain donations, which turned out to name suspicious donors – who never donated to John McCain. Here’s the Townhall followup:
That means these people Mosk alleged had been somehow forced to make campaign contributions to McCain through a third-party bundler NEVER DONATED MONEY TO MCCAIN. The very lede of Mosk’s front-page story, included in my previous post linked above, was wrong. What’s going on with the Washington Post? How could they have blown this one so badly? And where did the March 12 contribution date come from?
Update: I just remembered Mosk was the same reporter who tried to rustle up a McCain land-swap scandal on shaky facts earlier this year. I wrote about it HERE.
That’s one of the two national newspapers of record. Let’s go back to the video, OK?
“We have been under the mistaken idea that journalism is about getting out into the world, covering school boards, murder trials, digging through government documents. But we hear from a prominent New Jersey blogger that the future of the American newsroom will be people at home, in their pajamas, blogging. Perhaps, say, we can tell you what we had for breakfast, I don’t really know. But we thought that trying to be at the cutting edge in these difficult times that for a little levity we would perhaps remind people that there are real journalists who get out in the world and get you your news.”
Now Carol Ann Campbell may be a better reporter than she is hairstylist – although as someone who’s made legislation happen in my spare time, I’ll suggest they’ve set a low bar for her by using that as the measure of quality for her journalism.
And props – as Jarvis has offered – to the Star-Ledger for doing this exercise at all. Now Jeff has issues with their reactions as journalists to the new business reality:
But what struck me listening to them is that they are not prepared for that independent life. I was looking at this from the perspective of being both a former newspaperman who did find a new life in the academe and elsewhere and from the perspective of now being a journalism educator. It is vital that we prepare journalists for this new and independent life or we will lose their journalism. Preparation, to me, means both training – it’s a great thing that Ledger print people are making video in the Rosenblum Method – and setting up an infrastructure to help them create sustainable journalistic enterprises if at all possible. The first factor is why I’m trying to establish a continuing education program for professionals at CUNY. The second is why I’m holding a summit for new business models for news there. That’s my perspective.
But it’s more than that. The issue isn’t just that Americans don’t want to pay for traditional journalism – it’s that they don’t want to pay for crap traditional journalism, and there is enough crap in the line that the whole pipe is tainted. Rathergate, Gropegate, now Donorgate – look, I’m happy to pay for quality information. Mike Bloomberg made a few billion dollars selling it. But I’ll be damned – and most Americans will be damned too – if we’ll pay for junk when better junk is available for free.
This isn’t (just) about transparent agendas. You can be a good journalist and have an agenda, I’m sure. It’s just that the present generation of journalists seems incapable of following the basic dicta of their craft in favor of transparent posturing. And to be blunt, we bloggers are just as good at posturing and twice as entertaining.
So how about it journalists? Why not – just for grins – try doing real journalism (the stuff you’re claiming to sell us). And why not, editors, have some public consequences – OK stocks might be excessive, but firing and some front-page apologies might not be a bad idea. Eventually you might learn to self-correct.
Until then we’ll be sitting here in our pajamas correcting you.
No one had to “get out into the world” to blow up Mosk’s front page story on McCain. All they had to do is check fec.gov to show that it was glaringly false.
It’s hard to tell whether WaPo will suspend him or make him chief editor.
Interesting question:
Somebody obviously pointed these people out to Mosk as McCain donors, and the chances that the source was making an innocent mistake are beyond remote. Surely Kevin Drum would agree that the mendacity smells pretty egregious. Shouldn’t Mosk be required to name that source, especially since the plant was so blatant and easily-checked that Mosk must be suspected of collusion?
The WaPo story has many of the features of lousy journalism (more below). But there is still something noteworthy and strange going on, if reporter Mosk got anything right (he did). For example, Newsmeat.com’s records confirm what Mosk claims about Nader and Saher Alhawash of Colton, CA: “they did contribute lots of money”:http://www.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_detail.php?st=CA&last=alhawash in late 2007/early 2008 to Guiliani and Clinton and McCain. Huh? Presumably many other Sargent-connected or bundled contributors did the same. Again, huh? Not illegal, but curious. Far from the civics-textbook model of citizens contributing to candidates, one might suspect. Worth a newspaper report.
On to Mosk’s story. Here are his claims.
* On 6/19/06, 50 people each donated $500 to Charlie Crist’s campaign for Florida governor.
Comment: The rest of Mosk’s story is about individuals in this group-of-50, many of whom live in central California (passionate concern for the FL governor’s race: huh?). So who are these 42 people, beyond the 8 (9?) Mosk identifies? I couldn’t ID them, though it should be easy through “this Florida Division of Elections search page.”:http://election.dos.state.fl.us/campaign-finance/contrib.asp (But I don’t have much time this morning.)
* 13 of these 50 donors sent a combined $29,200 [that’s $2,246 on average] on 12/13/07 to Rudy Giuliani’s campaign.
* 17 of these 50 donors sent the maximum allowed $2,300 to Hillary Clinton’s campaign on 12/24/07.
* 12 of these 50 donors sent a total of $50,600 [average $4,220] to John McCain’s campaign in March 2008.
* Ibrahim Marabeh and his wife (two of the 50) donated $4,600 to Clinton and $4,600 to Giuliani [I’m working from the corrected version of the WaPo story.]
* Nadia and Shawn Abdalla (two of the 50) wrote a check [for campaign contributions] to an organization in Florida [again, pulled-back claims of corrected story].
* Nader and Saher Alhawash (two of the 50) donated a total of $18,400 to Giuliani, Clinton and McCain between December ’07 and March ’08.
* Abdullah Abdullah and his wife (two of the 50) donated $9,200 to McCain.
* Faisal Adbullah (might or might not be one of the 50) arranged contributions from family members.
It’s mildly odd, but not striking. My friends who are in the Jewish Federation often call to ask about non-California candidates they are being asked to donate to – and who they often do, based on the “say so” of leading members of their community.
It’s not radically different than the web-based efforts of MyDD and other progblogs to donate out of district to candidates the rpogbrog leadership identifies as good.
The concern is whether these people were donating their own money or were illegally passing on money they had been given to donate – something that happens shamefully often.
A.L.
So how hard cold it be to hyper-link or failing that to cut and paste the material. I know you probably can’t do that on the “Dead tree” edition, but you could do it on the web site. Of course, if you wanted the accusation to stand without proof; you do what the Washington Post did.
The list of those who contributed $500 to Charlie Crist’s campaign on 6/19/2006 can be found by searching “here.”:http://election.dos.state.fl.us/campaign-finance/contrib.asp#cand
It’s comprised of 91 named individuals, 37 corporate entities, and 2 PACs.
Presumably the 50 that Mosk claims that Sargeant bundled are among those 128 non-PACs.
Of the individuals,
5 are from Florida
36 are from California
24 are from Texas
12 are from Maryland
14 are from other states
Of the non-PAC companies,
6 are from Florida
13 are from California
8 are from Texas
5 are from Maryland
5 are from other states
Searching six California names at “Open Secrets”:http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/index.php yields
* 3 names with no 2008-cycle Presidential contributions
* 1 name with $6,900 to McCain on 3/17/08
* Nader Alhawash with $2,300 to Giuliani on 12/18/07, $2,300 to Clinton on 12/24/07, $9,200 to McCain on 3/12/08, $6,900 from McCain on 3/17/08
* Sahar Alhawash with $2,300 to Giuliani on 12/18/07, $2,300 to Clinton on 12/24/07, $6,900 to McCain on 3/17/08
It is a strange pattern of donations. At least to somebody who is not a political player, and for whom a $50 contribution is a big deal, from an out-of-my-wallet point of view.
So can I steer the conversation back from datamining donation records to the original topic?
If journalism was better – less careless errors, more facts – would you support it more?
A.L.
> If journalism was better – less careless errors, more facts – would you support it more?
Yes.
Sorry, A.L., I think this is related to data-mining. One of the Old-School arguments for the “Trust Us” position was that there is only a finite amount of information that can fit into the daily paper. So of course it makes the most sense to present the fascinating conclusions, rather than the dreary lists of dozens of names, addresses, donation amounts and dates…
Except that space limitations are no longer a reason to reject the skeptics’ demand that reporters “Show their work.”
WaPo editors and reporters may have other reasons to prefer “Trust Me” to transparency, but they aren’t necessarily reasons that citizen-readers should accept. For instance, nobody like to get caught making mistakes, as has already happened here, forcing a correction. Also, the next “exclusive” will be less so, if journalists and bloggers can immediately build on the data that went into this story.
As has been noted before, professional peer-reviewed science journals have faced a very similar change. Used to be that there was only room for top-level information in an article. Within the past few years, it has become routine for authors to deposit additional material as PDFs and Excel files at the journal’s website as Supplemental information.
Why didn’t Mosk put the results of the data-analysis he did for the story on the WaPo website? Well, obviously, because he didn’t have to, and because there’s no advantage for him or the WaPo to make that rule. As long as transparency isn’t a default, accepted value for the profession, that is.
AMac:
Why didn’t they carry a spare grand piano on the Titanic?
The article’s lede is false. It takes a careful reading of the correction to realize this.
Do you think Mosk would write a story singling out the suspicious political activity of some Muslims in California, especially on suspicions as weak as this? I can think of a few reasons why he wouldn’t, without having to posit the existence of a single shred of journalistic integrity.
Fish. Barrel. Bang. That’s right.
Just check out “Daily Howler”:http://dailyhowler.com/
There’s 10 years of idiocy, misstatements, false facts, etc, as exemplified by the press. Started when he saw the press make sh*t up about Al Gore. And it’s only gotten worse from there.
_Why has McCain been running this “stupid†campaign? Could it be for an obvious reason—because stupidifcation has worked in the past? In fact, in the spring of 1999, the Republican Party announced its plan to create such a clowning discussion. And with the help of the mainstream press corps, it has worked out quite well—until now_
_What has happened since this plan was disclosed? We’ve had cheese-steak debates—and wind-surfing wars. We’ve had inane reductions of major issues. (Al Gore wants to eliminate the automobile as we know it!) We’ve been told that one Dem nominee looked French—and that another was raised at the Ritz. Through it all, the mainstream press corps has clowned along with almost every one of these inanities. Dowd can’t seem to remember that now. We’ll take a guess: John McCain can!_
_Why is a man of such honor running a “stupid†and “childish†campaign? Why is he handing out tire gauges? Presumably, because stupidification has worked in the past. Let’s return to 1999.”_
That’s the thing – the press doesn’t call things straight, but instead remain “puzzled” why McCain resorts to negative campaigning – and the press isn’t willing to simply say – hey, negative campaigning has worked in the past, so McCain’s trying it now.
Pretty simple.
At any rate – the current news environment is an ENTERTAINMENT environment – trasmitting the truth about a subject, in all it’s ‘nuances’, is 2nd to that bottom line.
There are other examples as well.
“Check out the Washington Times”:http://mediamatters.org/items/200808070011
“80 to 90 percent approval THROUGHOUT his first term”.
“reduced unemployment to near record levels”.
Both are patently false statements – the 2nd obviously so, the 1st true only if you define “throughout” as “at some point in the Bush 1st term.”.
HR,
Honest, lucid, honorable leftists offering sensible, excellent policies, versus lying, confused, sleazy conservative serving up the same old snake oil. An the electorate gets suckered by these shopworn antics, again.
Gee, politics is pretty darn clear-cut. I guess voters sure are stupid where you live.
_If journalism was better – less careless errors, more facts – would you support it more?_
Not especially, at least not on a daily basis. I don’t need daily journalism, as much as I like to sit down with the newspaper when I have the time. About the only 2 things that are needed daily are financial information, and sports. NYT+Economist+WSJ Weekend edition+occasional local paper, and I’m still reading during the week.
Take this for example and put their information in a big chart – date, names of people, would have been great. I can’t think of any newspaper in the country that has “facts and data underlying this article”. Would be great to have, but what would be the return? You would sink development time, storage resources, editor time, fact checker time into publishing information on the web – I don’t think that’s enough to see anywhere around 2% growth. Would it even stop loss? Leaving alone that pushing more data gives other people an even greater ability to use your research, and do their own story.
Their “Florida Money Man” chart is great for a newspaper, but easily expanded for the Web. Expanding it is good – but what is the return on anything like this?
Take a look at the comments after it. Or the townhall article. The mistake is more important than the story, since it gives a “see! we’re not that bad, they’re lying!”. If there was no mistake, it would be avoided entirely instead of saying “wow! that’s some good journalism there even though it attacks someone I’m aligned with by party, I’ll be sure to support the WP in the future!”.
But more than that – take into account the fact that a good solid 30%(15 on each side) of people are going to slide more towards preferring biased news that feeds and builds up what they believe, more than good journalism. And that as revenues disappear, the inevitable slide towards tabloids will start up. Again.
But, to the “actual story”:http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/07/mccain-campaign-is-reviewing-donations/ . Foreign nationals (Jordan) being directly involved in arranging tens of thousands in donations to at least 1 Presidential campaign?
Oh, and by the way, there is a lawsuit:”http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24846474/” involving the principal, and again Jordan. Yay.
And massive contributions towards 2 of the frontrunners?
I know you want to keep it on journalism – but this was a good story with a few flubs that were outside the main focus. I’m guessing they rushed it to get out first, and paid a bit of a price.
By all means, let us have stories about questionable campaign contributions. But let’s not allow journalists to pass blatant falsehoods and then give them credit for trying to do the right thing.
Back in November, “Ed Morrissey suggested”:http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/015839.php that Mosk was looking for a Republican Norman Hsu. Not that anyone would know who Norman Hsu was from reading the WaPo.
Hsu there.
I would buy more traditional news, if it were facts. But I think even the traditional view of facts in journalism is flawed. The physicist Richard Feynman explained it like this
,
Reporters know that, now, bloggers will find them out. That’s really why reporters scoff at bloggers.
On the other hand, I can’t see bloggers doing the legwork that reporters do. And I’ve always seen bloggers as in the long American tradition of pamphleteers. So maybe we’ll reach a kind of balance of power: reporters dig up the facts, bloggers evaluate them, the people benefit.
I’d buy traditional news in that environment, for sure.
*Regarding Post #7*
Yes, if the MSM were more organized and less prone to rush to print, it would get more support for me. However, it seems these days like a lot of “misprints” or sloppy organization is the product of the editorial staff or a journalist’s “second draft”. AMac an hypocrisyrules have defined the problem of bias. Journalistic bias has been the chief corrupter of journalistic integrity and journalistic investigation. Until the MSM acknowledges their one-sided partisanship and actually does EOE hiring based on ideological background, not skin color, they are going to be shills for the Democrats or other Leftist party _du jour_. They frown on the Blogosphere because all the blog-sites across the length of the political divide routinely show them up, uncover “lost” or “missing” research, expose censorship, and deride the political stance of many MSM organs. I will watch Fox News, because despite the right-wing “USA TOday” format, the channel actually puts out some good information, and even tries for objectivity, unlike, say, CNN or MSNBC. SHoot they have even been known to go to blog sites to find important news to put in front of the rest of America. 🙂