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From Northeast Public Radio, this is the Media Project, a weekly discussion about issues
confronting the media.
If we're not careful, the Media Project is going to devolve into discussions of old-time
TV and the Hunky TV Star.
Here we are.
The Media Project is underway. Rosemary Armeo, investigative reporter and professor
at the University of Albany. How do?
Hello.
Dr. Alan Shartak, CEO of Northeast Public Radio.
My father used to say that, how do you do?
You don't hear much how-do's anymore.
And you don't hear that much anymore.
And I'm Rex Smith from the Times Union, grew up in South Dakota.
We heard we said things like that.
We were people of few words out there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What can you do?
Long live.
That's it.
Anyway, we have media issues of the week.
We hope meaty media issues, perhaps.
You know, by the way, before we get onto some of the topics that we had planned to talk about,
there were congressional hearings last week on Benghazi, which has been an issue heavily covered,
mostly by Fox News, with great criticism for other media that we, the rest of us, have ignored it.
Do the hearings suggest that the criticism has been justified and that Fox was right all along?
I would say yes.
I mean, the hearings are interesting because it raises questions about when the administration knew
what they did. It now appears they absolutely knew when Susan Rice was out there in public saying,
oh, this was all the result of a protest gone bad, that that was not true.
They had on the ground reports, including Hillary Clinton talking to people on the ground,
that that was not true.
The person who said it, he's the deputy administrator, I guess, of the embassy.
Was it promoted for saying that?
And I think there's even questions beyond that, like the hearing has all centered on reactions
when the attack had begun, whether you could have gotten help there faster.
But why was there not increased protection before that?
September 11th is a time that the intelligence community already knows that there are increased
taxes as northern Africa.
Yeah, I think there's a lot of questions about it.
And apparently they had asked for increased protection.
So then the thing is, to what level of public awareness does this rise other than Fox?
In other words, how many people really, if you were trying to figure out who cared about this?
I want to say this in the most sensitive way I can, but how important is a news story
based on an editor's perception as to whether or not this story will excite a lot of people?
So for example, you find these three persevering women who get taken out of a basement,
and the press can't get enough of it because we can all sort of attach ourselves to the story.
Whereas the Benghazi thing is a little bit more complicated,
and it is my sense that while you raise a good point, Rex, and Rosemary's with your commentary,
I don't think that many people really can associate themselves with it.
It's long gone.
And long gone.
It was September.
It was September.
And you know, you learn in journalism that you don't look at the motives of your sources,
you just look at the news, and you look at the motives, but you don't discount what they say
based on the budget.
That's right.
You need to be really aware of them.
That's right.
Said much better.
And here we've had two stories recently where the right has hammered on them,
and the left, because it's politically expedient, has not even looked at them.
One is Benghazi, and the other was Rand Paul's tirade, his filibuster, that brought up the whole
idea of what we're doing with drones.
Why aren't we looking at that?
Well, I would say on Benghazi, one thing is, I mean, to just borrow from children's tales,
the guy who cried wolf.
You remember the little boy who cried wolf, and nobody believed him, of course,
after the third time when there really was a wolf.
Fox News is so given to hyperbole, so undependable as a reputable news source that when Fox News
trumpets something, if you begin to believe that there's a political agenda, we know,
and the Fox News has a political agenda, it is well known.
It is the intent of Roger Ailes to specifically target a newscast that comes from the right.
And so if that is your intent from the get-go, then that's what the bias is going to be.
I agree that there are stories that should have run that probably didn't,
but I'm not so sure, by the way, that at this point, we should be so quick to buy
everything that we have heard, because from the initial rounds of hearings here,
initial rounds, I should say, they've already been what, 50 hearings.
But from what we've most recently heard, because again, this is one person's take on it.
Yes, someone who was pretty closely involved, but you better explain to everybody what's
happening.
No single source on anything is a valid source.
This is, as Rosemary said, the deputy head of mission, I think, and was it in Benghazi or was it
in Tripoli?
No, he wasn't Benghazi.
Anyway, his perspective is also limited by where he was from.
He is what we call in the business a disappointed office-seeker.
So in other words, he was demoted over this.
He says.
He says, that's right.
Well, this is the kind of thing that should have been handled by reporters.
Right.
Now, left to pick and choose what's right and wrong among Fox broadcasts and Hicks's
testimony to Congress.
Why is that?
Why are we doing this?
Because the media, the unbiased, objective media has not gone in and looked at all the
facts and waited.
Well, I have to say, I know you guys, meanwhile, but I have to say there's very little about
what's coming out now that hasn't been leaked to the press before.
So it's not as if we're all surprised by this.
These accusations have been floating around.
The press has covered them.
I know because I read them and I hear them.
So I know that's true.
But there's one other issue here, which neither of you have mentioned, which I'm surprised
by because you're generally much better prepared than I am for these discussions.
And that is the word Hillary.
Hillary.
Now, Hillary is, of course, without beating the horse a potential probable candidate for
president of the United States.
And there she was sitting at the top of the hill.
So if you wanted to make an accusation that the news was loaded, it might be that here
was somebody who could have been damaged by old.
Well, that we were ignoring it.
It's just that that was so much implicit in our remarks.
We didn't think we had to be that specific.
I see.
Well, my goodness.
Good try, Rex.
The Washington Post has done actually a nice analysis of what's actually new from these
hearings versus what, as you say, has already been leaked to the press Alan.
And the idea, the fact that Hillary called and spoke to Hicks at two o'clock in the morning
of the attack has not previously been reported.
And that indeed does suggest that there was some sort of a cover-up perhaps because she
was thinking of her candidacy.
We don't really know.
But why then did she allow Susan Rice to go on a TV that Sunday after the attack and
say, oh, it was a protest?
There was no protest.
According to information, she got from her own people on the ground and then later
it demoted the guy who was saying that.
I would say 910.
I would say 910 to the people who are listening to this program now have no idea what
either of you were talking about.
And whose fault is that?
Well, whose fault is that?
Is that not the fault of the people listening to the program?
Yes.
There's no idea what they're talking about who have not been paying attention to the
stories that have been published to do with this and not been paying attention to the
stories.
I mean, how much do we have to shovel to people?
We talk about broccoli and ice cream, about news that's important versus news that people
like to get.
You're just citing the case in Cleveland.
Well, you know, I make decisions every day about what goes on the front page.
And I have to say that sometimes I feel really nervous about the fact that we are saying,
you know, we're local newspaper.
We focus on local news.
And you know, that is our niche.
Okay, that's fine.
And I do this all the time.
I put local news out on the front page, but I do it with the full knowledge of the fact
that I'm not giving people a true full picture of the stuff that I think they really ought
to know.
You know, if we were really being in my heart of hearts, I really believe that we need
to be giving Americans a bigger doctor, sharp talk, turn off your phone.
And we need to be giving Americans a bigger dose of news from the rest of the world.
We should have been giving them more of Benghazi, but you know, we don't do it because people
don't care.
I also have heard you, Alan, talk about how we have dist, if you will, the story out
of Bangladesh, where something like 700 people died in the collapse of a really substandard
industrial building.
But mostly, you can't connect people to that.
Yes, but it's Bangladesh.
It's true, because I know I anticipate what you guys are going to say.
It's, it's, it's Bangladesh, but it's making our clothing for over a year.
I wrote my column about it last week.
Yes, excuse me.
Yes, yes, yes.
I have one column a week and I devoted it to that.
I know, Rex, who is an excellent column.
And I think you probably got it right from here.
But no, actually, I did.
I was inspired to do it by listening to a fresh air program at Terry Gross.
Where she was interviewing an author who has written about our disposable society, where
what we do with fast fashion is the term that the author used.
His name I will come up with momentarily maybe.
But it is really true that we borrow from each other and in the whole, it's stimulated
by, we are stimulated by, which brings us full circle because we don't borrow from
Fox.
We consider them tainted and we ignore it.
And we should not have in this case, I think.
Well, it's also a good idea to say a point.
It's also a great reason why everybody decries, you know, you get Rachel Maddow on one
side, you get Fox on the other side.
There's something to be said, even though a good deal of it is Rex has just pointed out,
is no good.
It's also a good way of keeping everybody honest by having different perspectives offered.
Now speaking of the impact of journalism, what people borrowing from other people, a few
weeks ago in this program, Rosemary made a mention of a fabulous story written by Steve
Brill, a long time journalist and publisher, an entrepreneur of media.
Steve Brill wrote a story that a 36 page story in Time magazine, one of the longest stories
of time has ever published.
Of course, time is a different publication now than we remember from our youth.
But in that story, just to clarify what old man Rex is saying, what we remember in our
youth was that time was biased.
Well, you're saying it's less biased.
Well, we remember it as being no weekly news magazine with a smattering of news from all
around the place.
Now it's much more analytical and has a broader reach.
And so it's not so far out of the ordinary that time would pick up a major piece written
by ineffective freelancer, but it was a story that really looked at what was behind healthcare
costs.
Not who is paying the cost, but why are those costs so high in the first place?
It was a totally different view.
And as a result, wow, this is the highest honor for investigative reporting.
There was a good result in the government now, the health department, your department
health has come out with a list that actually tells people how much they will be paying
for fees at various hospitals.
You can now can compare them.
And it turns out that those fees are widely disparate.
Yes, different places.
As Brill reported, as Brill reported, now what they've done is made the whole thing more
transparent.
It's an absolutely wonderful result from a great piece of reporting.
And so Brill says what he hopes is, he says, quote, this should become a tip sheet for
reporters in every American city in town who can now ask hospitals to explain their
pricing.
How about that?
There's pressure now for the cost to come down.
It's great.
So that's the value of good reporting.
And that took a lot of work in his part.
That was deep issue focused reporting that was not necessarily about a popular topic or
something that gets people's attention, like the kidnappings in Cleveland, which are
not unimportant.
It means to denigrate that that story is significant.
But let's just say that when people whine about health care costs, here's a journalist who
decided to do something about it by doing some research into why.
And he has, if you've watched his career, an entrepreneur.
Yes, he has an entrepreneurial spirit.
Not only in terms of this story, but in terms of the American lawyer, magazines, the rest
of it.
And it really does, as I've said so many times, on these microphones come down to one's
character.
And his character in this is the kind of thing that leads to this kind of exploration.
So anyway, if you're just joining us as the media project from Northeast Public Radio,
Alan Shartock, the CEO of Northeast Public Radio, Rosemary, Marmeo, investigative journalist
and professor at UAlbany and I'm Rex Smith, editor of the Times Union.
If you want to be a part of this, send us email media at wamc.org media at wamc.org is us.
And you know, there's another program heard on many of these public radio stations.
That's that guy that we were talking about last week.
Harry Shira, right?
Yes, Harry Shira.
Yes, he does a show called Lusho.
His left lever is done.
But he has a thing called Apologies of the Week.
Oh yeah.
We have a couple of apologies here that we should make note of.
One of them is the Toronto Star, which it was so embarrassed about something that happened
that they're now holding training sessions for reporters.
And as I understand it, this was a social media mixup, right?
They misunderstood the timeline on Facebook.
They saw a member of parliament who seemed to be while on medical leave, vacationing with
her daughter in the Caribbean.
Correct.
And it turns out that it popped up on her Facebook timeline months after she actually
had been.
Oh, not months.
It was years.
It was back in 2008.
You know, if you're on Facebook, you know that every once in a while, you'll suddenly
start getting comments on a photo that you posted months or years ago.
And that's exactly what happened here.
That's understandable.
You know that?
That's confusing.
And the question is that the Toronto Star ran the story without the woman's comment,
without the member of parliament's comment.
You're just asking for trouble if you don't, you know, subject your entire thesis to the
person you're targeting.
It's so basic that the Toronto Star should be holding changes.
Should everybody who's affected always be contacted?
Always.
Let me give you an example.
The Berkshire Eagle, which I write for every Saturday, right at the Saturday column,
is a, you know, has a, has a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a front page story or a prominent
story about how there's another radio station, a public radio station, other than WMC coming
into one of our many markets.
And they mentioned, WAMC is already being there.
But they don't call the president of WAMC me to get a reaction to their being there.
Now I would have said what I always say, which is, as chairman Mao says, let a thousand
flowers bloom because it's the only thing you can say.
You maybe ticked off about it, but you're going to do the principle and, and, and thing.
But you would think that they would call up a station that's most affected by it.
I agree.
Particularly though with a piece like Toronto, where they're actually making an accusation.
And, and you can say, well, and, and we've all as editors encountered this where reporters
as well, I called in a, and she didn't call me back.
Well, not a second call.
How hard did you try to go knock on the door?
Yeah, we all suspect that when I said, we say around here a lot, and we call a lot.
And they say, we don't get anything back.
We say, we're very careful about we say, not in time for this broadcast.
Yeah.
They didn't reply in time for this.
You know, this is a story that impunes a woman's reputation.
I think there's, it's probably something criminal.
It's fraud if she's taking money for a medical leave and didn't really need it.
These are really serious charges.
And you go much beyond making a lot of phone calls.
You send a telegram.
You knock on her door.
You send a notice, a letter saying, you know, we're running this story on this date.
We need to hear from you to get inside.
You go above and beyond.
You have to.
We have gone so far.
We've sent telegrams to people.
You can't really send telegrams to people.
Yeah.
We've gone nomin' the doors.
We've sent, we've gone back to lawyers who years earlier represented someone.
Registered letters.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, you really have to do it.
But they did not do that at the Toronto Star.
And the result is they're doing a series of workshops for reporters.
They're reminding them about fairness.
Second apology of the week comes from Howard Kurtz whom we have often quoted in this show.
Perhaps the most prominent media, one of the two or three most prominent media critics in
the US who has a show now on CNN called Reliable Sources who apparently-
Well, we're on Reliable sources.
So would say.
He apparently bungled a story about Jason Collins.
He's coming out story in Sports Illustrated.
I don't quite recall exactly what it was that Howard Kurtz said.
Howard Kurtz said that he had forgotten to mention that he had once been engaged to
a woman in this whole opera that he's coming out now as a gay man that he had underplayed
this.
And in fact, that's not true.
It was in the very article that Howard Kurtz supposedly read.
It read far enough.
I guess not.
He didn't mean carefully enough.
Now, Howard Kurtz has coincidentally perhaps left.
You say Howard, you know him well?
No, it's just what he goes about.
Oh, that is the name that he uses.
I have been on that show years ago and he worked for years with my sister.
I went to school with her.
So I do know him and I really have liked-
Totally.
Yeah, I can't call him.
Yeah, when I got fired, he wrote the first story about it.
But he actually is really has been an excellent commentator on media.
I'm sorry to see this happen.
And I do believe it's the reason that most people have given for the laps.
Is that he's just stretched so far.
He's writing books.
He's working on a website.
He's now working on-
You see it in TV shows.
Exactly.
He's left Newsweek.
For all of us.
Who's Czech, Czech and Re-checked?
Czech, you know, it's easy enough to write.
But here's the thing.
His apology was humongous.
I thought it was the way.
I thought he did it in a good way.
He's subjected himself to being interviewed by two other media commentators
on what he did wrong.
I thought the format was great.
The answer's not someone.
You know, he just said, I'm really sorry.
Yeah.
I'll do better.
But I do have to, once again, the media is so varied in its response to these kinds of things.
Do you remember when Friedza Karia was a chuse of plagiarism?
Which is, I think, worse than even repeated mistakes?
And they gave him some time off without paying.
And then he's back doing everything again.
How he hurts gets fired.
You know, I don't see a continuum there.
Oh, do you think he was fired?
Is that right?
He was fired from the Newsweek Daily Beast.
Yeah.
I think he might have been ready to leave there anyway.
That's an interesting question.
But it's interesting.
I still believe that he's a terrific commentator.
I'm still going to be paying attention to what he writes.
But it is of some interest.
Hey, before we leave this show this week, we need to talk just a little bit about the business
of media.
I know people sometimes get annoyed that we talk about that.
But here's an interesting thing.
If you watch television news, there's an analysis here from one of the regular sources who
follows the TV News business, who says that local television news is just five years behind
where newspapers have been, and that the downturn that has gripped newspapers that we,
some of this are all too familiar with, is just about to hit television news.
How so?
You mean the history of the numbers of people who revenue?
No, revenue.
Yeah, and the revenue, but therefore in classified ad revenue accounted for 35% of newspapers,
total ad revenue in 2005.
Last year that 35% had dropped to 18%.
Right.
But the television stations take classified ads.
No, but they have their comparable, would be political advertising and car advertising,
both of which can be delivered more precisely by digital means or even by direct mail.
And for car advertising, one of the great advantages, actually that newspapers still have,
one of the reasons we have a lot of car advertising is that you can show a lot of prices.
You can list 50 cars in a single page of newspaper.
A double truck.
A double truck.
It's great stuff.
We love those cars.
But it is a real peril to local news operations, which are already pressed.
I mean, it's not as though television news hasn't been in trouble already.
But this could be.
And here's the fact that newspapers have a head start now on television in their digital
presentation, while they're all working on it and doing better.
Our local TV stations in the capital region, for example, a couple of them are really deeply
into social media, which is very good for them.
But really, the websites of newspapers have tended to be really out there in front and
win community after another cross.
And can you show the boss and the boss's daughter and granddaughter getting up there and
saying, come to my place, go to buy a book to buy.
And so, in the same way on digital, as you see them on television, I'm often thought that
the way that I'm often thought that the way they sell those ads is say, hey, and also,
I'll get your granddaughter on.
That's pretty amazing.
Well, actually, you can.
The story in the advertising world these days is the rise of video in digital advertising.
This is going to be 2013 is the year that video advertising really takes off online.
And we, some of us are still waiting.
When does video take off on our websites in terms of news because it has not yet happened?
We don't think that it's fine that it draws traffic.
Interesting, Rex.
I already interrupted.
The Hurst, I just read the Hurst Corporation, your corporation, has just gotten a big shot
digital guy to run all the magazine digital stuff, which is an interesting development.
They're taking a guy from the pure play world.
That's the term that means just the digital stuff without legacy media attached.
And they're giving him, they're making him the president of all the digital sites for
all the magazines, Cosmopolitan and Esquire and popular mechanics and good housekeeping.
Oh, the Oprah magazine.
And that's a really interesting development that they are going to separate those sites
from the legacy magazines.
And of course, I read it because I know and love your work, Rex.
I was looking to see whether they were doing that with the newspapers that they owned,
but they weren't.
Not quite so extensively, but there is a school of thought that says that the only way that
the new industries can develop appropriately is if you separate them off from the legacy,
not in just the media, but in all industries.
This is teaching from Harvard Business School.
Well, what do they know?
Interesting.
Well, there's some research.
There's always research.
There's always research.
That's how people get PhDs, isn't it Alan?
Watch it.
Anyway, any last points before we leave this week's program?
Not from me.
No, no, you have nothing else.
We'll be back next week with more thoughts on the media.
Remember, you can join us by writing to media at wamc.org or you can write to us at 318 Central
Avenue, Albany, New York.
What's your zip code?
0122206.
1222206.
Glad to help.
Yeah.
That's who works around here.
Who uses marijuana?
But I want a new paper's in trouble so it's the post-order.
New papers have got to watch themselves because the last thing I'm going to say is it wasn't
three brothers who apparently did this dirty stuff in Cleveland.
But one brother after the newspapers had reported all along, it was all three.
Watch yourselves.
Somebody has to eat a little mud.
Now, such interesting people, it's a long hold.
He ruptures and puffs the more.
Now, publishers of such interesting people, their policies and accros...
