Step Away from the Agenda

Politico is doing a truly appalling job on coverage of the reaction to President Obama's remarks about the New York Islamic center. (I'm sick to death of hearing it called the Ground Zero mosque, because a. it's a lot more than a mosque b. It's not at Ground Zero. If you know anything about New York at all, you know that two blocks is a great distance in defining neighborhoods and distances. )


But that's not the main point. Josh Marshall flagged this first issue a little while ago and I was struck nearly dumb by the idea that Politico was trying to pass off as a "middle American" someone who reaches back into history to discuss the changeover of the Hagia Sophia church into a mosque after the Islamic conquering of Istanbul. Seriously.


In a country where far too many people don't know what the branches of government are, can't tell the difference between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, don't now what the Bill of Rights is and can't name any member of Congress (not even their own, too often), are we really to believe that this "middle American" knows Ottoman/Crusader era history?


That led me to read this really dubious second story by Politico, claiming Obama had backed off his Friday night speech, endorsing the right of Muslim Americans to build on private property. You know, he relied on that pesky First Amendment.


Here's what Politico wrote, and my challenge starts with the headline:

Obama's comments take mosque story national

Really? I thought it went national and international when people like Sarah Palin and Fox News, with their references to the "9/11 mosque" started hurling accusations and demanding "peaceful" Muslims "refudiate" the plan?

With criticism mounting of his support for the construction of an Islamic center two blocks from Ground Zero in Manhattan, President Barack Obama on Saturday defended his decision to wade into the controversy the night before, but backed off from his previous stance. "In this country we treat everybody equally and in accordance with the law, regardless of race, regardless of religion," Obama said when asked about his remarks at a White House dinner Friday marking the start of Ramadan. He did, however, emphasize that he was not endorsing the project, just the organizers' right to build it.

Again, really? He backed off? On Friday he said, 

"But let me be clear: as a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances."

In an effort to head off criticism, widely interpreted as a gutless CYA move*, Politico added this:

But his comments Friday night were widely interpreted as an endorsement of plans to build a mosque a few blocks away from where nearly 3,000 Americans perished at the hands of Islamic terrorists on 9/11 - an interpretation the White House hadn't disputed, up until Obama's comments in Florida.

*Not really. I made up the "widely interpreted" part.


As long as cable and occasionally the networks put these people on TV as "experts," they will continue to shape the political conversation into a he said/she said battle, with no one taking responsibility for anything they say. 

Update: The New York Times, too, hints, very carefully, that Obama somehow is backing off. But read the Friday night Times story very carefully. 

Obama Strongly Backs Islam Center Near 9/11 Site

President Obama delivered a strong defense on Friday night of a proposed Muslim community center and mosque near ground zero in Manhattan, using a White House dinner celebrating Ramadan to proclaim that “as a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country.” 

It, including the headline, seems to go beyond Obama's words. Today, it's not Obama backing off. It's the reporters scrambling to get it right, and missing. 

 Update: Media Matters concurs.

Update 2: On the matter of calling it the "Ground Zero mosque,"  a Testy Copy Editor weighs in.

Trial or Hearing?

Josh Marshall raises a good semantics question: Are the sessions two veteran members of Congress face legitimately called "trials" or are they hearings? I thought hearings, too. Here's CQ's description, and doesn't mention the word trial. But The New York Times likes it. "Trial" certainly seems to have some extra weight to it.

When 'Slut' Just Won't Do

Let me hasten to add I'm not calling anyone a slut, just enjoying the fact that Josh Marshall seems to have come up with a new term for what he endearingly calls "serially sexually questing women."

For those not paying attention to politics, two South Carolina men set aside their manners and Southern charm to claim they had had sex with Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley.

Marshall, having already identified the Mark Sanford neologism "hiking the Appalachian Trail" to cover for an affair, says he'd be honored to be credited with inventing "manizer."

That takes us to Language Log, who writes, "there's a lexical lacuna here.  A male politician who is prone to out-of-wedlock hookups would be called a womanizer, but there seems to be no appropriate equivalent for a female. The term slut, for example, has connotations that are entirely inappropriate for a case of this kind. So Josh's attempt to coin manizer is an entirely rational move, though I'm not sure it will catch on."

And so we get, once again, to the very different attitudes toward the sexual behavior of men or women. At another time, I might have gone off on a harangue. Tonight, it's an interesting point of language.

But I do get to use the "sex" tag for this posting.

It's Called Skepticism

I mentioned this previously on Twitter or Facebook or some such place, but Josh Marshall offers a roundup on how quick many media operations were to declare the Mark Sanford story over before the South Carolina governor returned home, was found at the airport by an enterprising reporter from The State, and tearfully confessed his affair.

There were far too many "mystery solved" kinds of headlines, all over the place, by publications and web sites that really should know better. When did we stop challenging political officials and start accepting anything they tell us unless some other third party spoonfeeds us another set of facts?

While we're at it, I could do with a lot less mocking of the guy's personal life. To me, the fact that the chief executive of a state vanished and without any connection to his staff, was the story. Plus the idea that yet another moralizing public figure got caught living a life of hypocrisy. Other than that, I really don't want to read the e-mails or listen to cable talking heads getting their jollies doing so. We're better than this, people.

The Politics of Abortion Headlines

It's early yet and not the biggest part of the argument, but some headlines that referred to the murdered Dr. George Tiller as an "aborton doctor" are being challenged. The issue is whether that's an accurate account of the career of the ob-gyn specialist or whether it shows bias. Josh Marshall addresses the issue and finds a suitable alternative, though admittedly, he has the room to do so. A couple of bloggers caught up with the cache of Operation Rescue's Tiller Watch,
which the organization removed from its site after Tiller's murder.

Get Your Own Words

And 'fess up, New York Times and Maureen Dowd.

Poynter's columnists are strangely silent today on the story of Maureen Dowd's plagiarism of Josh Marshall, right down to the punctuation marks. So for those of you who were watching the NBA playoffs last night instead of reading newspaper/blog controversies, here are some links:


Brad DeLong has a theory.


Gawker explains the issue.


Little Green Footballs has its own complaints.

And Huffington Post messes up:

Maureen Dowd Admits Inadvertently Lifting Line From TPM's Josh Marshall
The headline says it was inadvertent, which is what Dowd says. The columnist gets it right by simply reporting the facts.


Newspapers are under serious attack by bloggers convinced that either we're irrelevant or we're busy stealing their reporting, a word I would normally put into quotes when talking about blogs because so much of that material originates with newspapers. But Marshall is a definite exception, a journalist who turned to the web to continue his fine work. This is not the first time he's caught people borrowing his work but it's not usually so blatant.

Voter Fraud

Josh Marshall has a good explanation of the voter fraud issue, noting the unlikelihood of fraudulent voters actually tipping an election anywhere.

A Baker's Dozen

Far be it from me to tell The Washington Post how to run its desks or know what works best in its newsroom.

And certainly, if this Slate article is correct, the Post is right to take some actions here.

The Slate article focuses on a Washington Post memo that describes a plan to alter how it gets stories from reporters to web and print and beyond.

Here, in part, is what Jack Shafer reports:

The plan also mandates "fewer touches" on some stories by editors, which will elicit cheers from many Post reporters. They've long complained about "drive-by editing" in which editors up and down the chain of command drop into their stories and fiddle with them to the point of destruction. According to the memo, a half-dozen editors routinely make changes on A-section stories, and an internal audit discovered one inside story that 12 different editors changed.

Twelve editors touch a story? Are they kidding? I'm all for flattening out that process, definitely.

"The more people who touch a story, the less authority and responsibility each take," (managing editor Phil) Bennett says.

and

The reason many newspapers rely so heavily on editors—a reason rarely spoken—is that some reporters can't write. Their copy isn't edited as much as it's rewritten. Bennett has a message for them: "Reporters who can't write are a dying breed."

Well, where to begin? On taking responsibility: The copy editors I know who often awake in the middle of the night trying to remember if they took care of something certainly feel a personal responsibility for what they've done or not done to a story. Yes, if you allow a baker's dozen of editors to mess with a story, that's going to dilute a sense of responsibility, I suppose. And I absolutely agree that if you've got copy flowing in horizontal directions, then a vertical copy flow no longer works.

And on writing: It's a lot more than writing at stake. Under increasing pressure to file multiple times a day, to produce, to do video standups, to show up on the company TV or radio program, they also make mistakes. Of course, reporters--and editors-- have always made mistakes. But as staffs shrink and demand for their production grows, what is the logical consequence? They get the date of Nixon's resignation wrong; they report accusations without rebuttal; they omit locations or backgrounds that provide context; they leave out first references; they misstate or misreport what the White House said when or how.

I thought Mark Cuban's comments this week about newspapers needing to differentiate their blogs from others by suggesting, for example, that The New York Times write "The NY Times does not have blogs, we have Real Time Reports from the most qualified reporters in the world," was pretty smart, though maybe too late.

Our brand, our accuracy matters until we've completely given it away. I know some people see this as an old argument and for some, it is simply a rote response to anything new. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying we have to stop giving away the franchise, cheapening our reporting and report itself, cutting staff under the guise of New Thinking, and remember why people read us. And why we have the protection of the First Amendment, because what we do matters. That should apply to everything we do, from blogs to rapid online rewrites to print and beyond, to whatever comes next. We are not Yahoo, we are not Gawker snark, we are not, heaven help us, Glenn Beck, spewing instead of reporting, editing and informing.

I happen to like blogs, a lot, and read some really terrific breaking-news blogs by newspaper reporters. Some of the stuff produced in the Eliot Spitzer mess this week was truly outstanding (See Dan Janison and John Riley at Newsday, for example. Sorry, I was mostly too busy with this story this week to spend much time reading others.)

And other bloggers, including Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo, Glenn Greenwald at Salon and Duncan Black, the economist at Eschaton, are doing original reporting and research that is worth reading every day, not just opining like so many silly TV people. Part of the success of bloggers with little or no journalism experience has to do with the failure of newspapers to report thoroughly, aggressively and accurately. So how does getting down into the mud of unedited or poorly written and reported stories to produce less accurate, less comprehensive stuff a smart idea?

This wanders a bit far from what the Post is saying it intends, I realize. And as I said, much of what the Post editors plan to do to flatten the process makes sense. And, to write tritely, they are not alone. But I cringe when people blame the process instead of the content, especially when what drives some of these changes is staff reduction.