The Media Project 1172, 2013 November 17

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this is the Media Project, a weekly discussion about issues confronting the media.
I'll tell you, fright, reliably off the record, about some charming people I have known.
Before I meet politicians and grafters by the score, killers play and fancy,
it's really quite a bar, oh, and these Superman meets up to interesting people.
They wallow in corruption, crime and gore, tingling, linked city desk,
full press, full press, extra extra read all about it, it's a mess meets the test,
only Superman meets up to interesting people. It's wonderful, the reparsent of press.
It's the old guys, you know, what can you do? Alan, Ira and Rex here.
Alan Shartak is back, the CEO of Northeast Public Radio, professor.
Back from Greece. Yeah.
Wonderful saying, absolutely.
Great time and I want to go back right now.
I have a degree, and into the fire.
Is that with John Trabalt, that version?
No, no, this is, you know, one of the great birthplace of democracy and all,
and when you travel with my wife, you learn about it all.
You go to see all those sites.
The great thing, the professors, Shartak.
Ira Fussfeld, a long time publisher of the Daily Freeman in Kingston, New York.
It's a Greece's the word.
It is, it is.
We will do that to some wheels here we hope.
And I'm Rex Smith, editor of the Times Union in Albany.
We welcome all of you, even those of you who are on some of our newer signals.
Where are we?
Are we in Charleston, Illinois?
Yes, we can.
That's a very good thing.
Out in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles, yeah, right?
Amazing.
It's a wonderful thing.
We were grateful for each of you and so on.
So we probably ought to start off talking a little bit since everybody talks about Obamacare
these days.
We should talk a little bit about the coverage of it.
And whether there has been ample opportunity for us to, in fact, debunk some of the coverage
that may or may not have been totally fair.
The first thing I was struck by, Rex, who was your use of the word Obamacare.
Now, you know, at the beginning, it was pretty well decided that Obamacare was a bad word,
invented by the Republicans to embarrass the president.
But then you began to hear everybody using it.
And himself to embrace it during the campaign.
He said, I do care.
And he liked that idea.
He said he said it.
Well, if you can't lick them, join them.
Right.
And now not so much perhaps.
I think he embraced it.
I think it's a strategy to sort of make the word non-corruptible.
But I think he also embraced it because he felt he had this great institution that he wanted
his name connected with.
Now I'm not so sure he feels that way.
Did you see one of the late night shows?
I can't recall which one that...
The answer is no, because I've never been up at your pass.
Well, it's true.
I have three initials for you.
DVR.
And DVR.
That takes a modern convening to your nose.
That's called time shifting in the business.
And actually more than half of television is now viewed by time shifting.
That's amazing.
Watching it on schedule is the old way, Alan.
And that's who I am.
Oh.
And I thank you for your shot of ageism that you have now taken.
And you don't worry, Rex.
You'll be there soon enough.
I hope so.
But there was a program that went to Mount the Street and did a little interview.
Do you think more about the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare, which you prefer?
Well, of course, they are one and the same.
One is the formal name of legislation.
One is what people call it.
And the idea, right.
People kept saying, oh, I believe the Affordable Care Act is the right to go.
You know, I'm always a fourth-y-fourth-y-fourth-y-care act.
Why I thought, well, you know, because it's so affordable.
Affordable, yeah.
I get it.
And I think that is part of the problem in trying to do journalism about such a complex topic as this,
that you just end up either reinforcing the point of view that people already have,
or you do a superficial job of critiquing, because folks just really can't
wade through the complexity of it.
Rex, you have made a profound point.
Now you really have.
You're absolutely right.
I mean, most people don't know nothing about nothing.
And therefore, if you get out in the street and you ask the first time to do people,
who's the vice president of the United States, you're lucky if you get 25%.
So that means that reporters and writers have to somehow figure all of this into the way in which
they cover the news.
And when you have often criticized Rex and I for being part of dumping,
from the dumbing down of America, and you've suggested in the past that it's publications like
ours that are doing it, but is it a chicken and egg thing?
Are the people already dumbed down and we're only catering to them?
Yes, sir.
I fear you put words into my mouth.
You know, I have nothing but respect for either of you Auguste Gentlemen.
But you know, I think you have a very rough job and I think you both have done a wonderful
job with your products.
You're the one.
So the...
Very nice.
So you know, it's not so long ago that mainstream news organizations refrained from criticizing
each other.
Except here.
Except here.
Except here.
That's such a good topic.
So you see folks taking shots in effect at each other pointing out where folks such as
Eric Wempelworth, he in the Washington Post, writing about how the media have failed to
cover the role out of this act appropriately.
But you know, it really is different now that you...
Now that there are websites that are specifically dedicated to media critique, that means that
the mainstream media have to get into the act.
I don't know.
Sometimes I think some of these guys are just plain lazy.
And they begin to eat their own because they have to come up with a column every week.
They don't know what to write on.
Sure.
You don't know anything about that.
You know I do.
I mean, I understand that every week you got to have a column or two columns or three
columns depending on who you are.
And you got to...
And pretty soon they begin to eat their own.
But let's talk about where this emanates from.
In light specifically of Obamacare, there are a number of stories out there about people
who are having horror stories as a result of Obamacare.
Individual consumers.
No, and I reach true.
Well, so the story...
Well, not necessarily.
Now, stories are being written, quoting the people who are claiming to have had horror
stories.
And now other journalists are doing some investigations following up those stories and
finding it's not quite the same.
So the point, as it relates to the media, is in the past, it was probably more likely
than not that you would not see another journalist dig into the story of a third
journalist and find fault with it and write about it.
There was sort of an agreement to hand off.
Now there is not that.
Well, it depends on the quality of the journal.
I mean, for example, the New York POST, a paper whose name I will never pronounce fully
because it's so despicable.
They have been attacking the New York Times for years.
They have whole sets of journalists who do nothing but do that.
And so you can pick it up and choose it.
But I want to ask you a question.
In the end, come on now, I'm a big Obama fan.
I think guy's terrific.
But this has been screwed up.
This has really been screwed up.
So you can start to talk about, you know, somebody did something wrong or somebody took
some horror story that was, but if you take the aggregate, this has been messed up.
And frankly, I can't figure out why.
I mean, we're putting nuclear facilities all around the country.
We got bombs ready to go off.
Missiles ready to fly into the air.
Does this give you a good feeling about our hold on our computers and the way in which
we do business?
Uh-huh.
But the public perception of the level of which this has been screwed up.
And there's no arguing that it's been screwed up.
But I believe that it has been viewed as even more screwed up than perhaps it is based
on stories that are interviewing individual people who have individual issues that may or
may not have been expected and may not have been exaggerated.
And so these other journalists are looking into those stories, not necessarily to defend
Obamacare, but to try to set the record.
That is anecdotal journalism can only go so far.
Eventually you have to get into the numbers and to substance.
But the numbers aren't good.
They also aren't good.
Yeah, true.
And then there's something else to what Alan just spoke about.
You're right.
The New York Post has often gone after the Times and the Daily News as well.
As we've often said on this program, the Times, the Post has been an exception to the
rule.
Alternative weeklies have always gone after the local daily.
That's not new.
I think what is still do.
I think what is happening here is to use the famous philosophers, the Three Stooges line,
all for one, one for all and every man for himself, is that there is so much media out there.
And the media individually are having their own issues.
And we all have credibility problems that I think that there are other media institutions
that want to make sure that they're setting the record straight for their own benefit.
They don't want to be lumped into the big pile.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't care what they want.
They can't have it.
But I do think that journalism on the Obama care or Affordable Care Act has really messed
up.
For example, there is something that I find extraordinary.
And that is that there are 43 or something like that.
Million people who are being put onto the roles.
I know why.
I suspect why the Republicans don't like Obama care because this is in franchising and
getting everybody on to some health care.
These are the Republicans of the Democrats are mentioning those 40 million people.
I mean, this is death.
This is political death.
The middle class doesn't want to be supporting it.
Therefore, the Democrats don't like it.
And I think it's a big story, but we're not hearing it.
We don't hear in other words about the real goal of it, which is to provide health care
to people who don't have it.
I think that was Obama's goal.
I think it's the thing that will either pass or fail.
And in the end, we'll make Obama into historically a great person.
Yeah.
And why is it well the narrative?
Its Obama care is the administration of Obama cares on fault because that story was
shelved initially because of the problem with the website.
And then with the what I've unfortunately have to call a lie, which was Obama's promise
that you wouldn't lose your health care if you wanted to keep your health care, those
stories have taken all the momentum away from other journalists who might want to say,
yeah, just as you say, this is why we need Obama care.
All these people in the country need health care.
Or you don't think Obama's a purposeful lawyer.
I'm afraid on this air, I actually said that last week and I'm very rarely used that.
Well, I was in Greece, so I didn't hear it and I'm glad.
But you mean to say you think that Obama is foolish enough to tell a lie knowing it's
a lie.
As I said, I didn't say it on this program.
I said it on the round table.
I don't know of any other answer or any other way to describe it except to describe it
as a lie because he said what he said without equivocation without an answer.
Well, I want to take great exception to you and tell you that if you keep this stuff
up, I'm going to meet you on the wheel.
There they go.
Off to New Jersey.
Off to New Jersey.
Box, but I have no doubt in my mind that Obama being a brilliant man was told by some
jackass on the staff who said, okay, boss, you can say this with all kinds of comfort.
I don't think he's a part of it.
Well, in that case, and I'm not usually one who will parse somebody's apology and say
he didn't apologize good enough for me.
He did not make that clear in his apology for misleading the public.
Ah, an opportunity to segue to the next topic at hand, folks.
By the way, though, if you're interested in talking on this topic or others, we are media
at wamc.org.
You can always email us media at wamc.org.
Rex Smith, Ira Fussfeld, and Alan Shartak here for you from Northeast Public Radio.
So about apologies, CBS News, of course, apologized as we know for the gaff on 60 minutes
in which they, I guess gaff might be an understatement of what happened.
They took a single source who put forward the proposition of what was going on in Benghazi,
terrible night that the American ambassador was killed and found out subsequently that
he, in fact, was not there.
The eyewitness account that they trusted that presented a view of events was, in fact,
given to them by a guy whom they protected by giving him a fake name and who lied to them
about whether he had been there.
This is a great story.
I'll tell you why for the media project, because I have never read such excoriation as
the New York Times leveled at CBS in their journalism and in their prose.
What was the name of that lady, Judith Miller, with the center name at the New York Times,
who was just taking the handouts from the defense department?
Well, let's say that her sources were the same as the Bush administration's intelligence
sources.
You're going back to the pre-arach war days and that she was perhaps viewed as insufficiently
questioning of those sources and that because the Times is such a standard setter on national
security coverage, the thought is that the Times, therefore, helped us move into the war
zone.
Yeah, so for them to write very critical journals.
So here's a case where CBS apologized for putting a twice and on the end of the broadcast,
they did it fairly quickly by their measurement because it was only, I think, two weeks after
the original report aired and many people politically motivated mostly, although some in journalism
circles believed that the apology wasn't enough.
Well, it's never going to be enough.
You know that.
I mean, if you want to make some political hate, did you think it was enough this one?
Yeah.
Well, the plot on it, I think, is that nobody really explained what went wrong.
Why did CBS accept this one person?
And I think because they're greedy because they're greedy.
They were greedy.
They wanted to stop it.
But there are standards in place for this kind of thing.
It's a national network, let's say, CBS, even at a regional outfit like ourselves, you
need to have a way that you verify whether this source is really true, especially if you're
going with one big source.
Now, we went with the story over the past week having to do with the coming of new technology
in Saratoga County, that is, who is going to be building computer chips at the big chip
fabrication plant up in Luther Forest, what's known as Fab 8, Global Foundry's?
We have had big stories that are attributed to a single source.
I know who that source is and I know that that and we would not publish that story if I
didn't have confidence that that single source is the person we need to have to be true.
And I think I've told the story here before of being nailed by a single source when I
was a reporter here in the state capital and the big issue that I was trying to cover
was whether Governor Mario Cuomo would shut down the Charm Nuclear Plant on Long Island
out there in the reporter for News Day on Long Island.
This was the big issue confronting us.
I had followed him everywhere.
I upgraded my plane ticket to first class to be able to sit next to him to try to grill
him on this issue for months.
I was following it.
And one Sunday morning, suddenly in the front page of the New York Times, here was a story
saying Cuomo is going to switch his position and he was going to back shutting down the
Charm Plant and it was not attributed.
It did not say how the Times knew this to be true.
Well, we know how the Times knew it, right?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
The only way the Times would have allowed that to happen was if the editor was assured
that it was the governor himself saying this.
Sure.
And he was saying, I don't want to waste my time on the Albany Times Union.
I want to know that it was News Day at that time.
I know.
Yes, same difference.
And the point about this CBS thing is that CBS did not explain to us why they went forward
with that single source.
They didn't give us the reason behind their flawed standards here.
So I think it's an inadequate apology, yes.
Oh, but I wanted to ask you something because I want to return and tie it all up into
a nice package, this business of one new source going after another.
Didn't the New York Times, oh, it's my memory faulty here.
Is it true that the New York Times and CBS used to cooperate on things like polling, things
of that kind?
Yeah.
Yep.
New York Times CBS News poll.
That's true.
I'm not sure.
I don't think they still do.
But that affects their journalism.
I don't think that would change the way that a reporter would cover something.
That's a collaboration structured through some sort of a corporate agreement.
And I can't imagine that it would change how they would view coverage of something like
that.
You know what I love about you, Rick, more than anything else.
In the end, you can always be counted on to defend the institution.
To believe in the integrity of the players.
The word comes down.
You know, these are collaborators.
These are people who we work with.
He becomes a matter of tone.
It becomes a matter of placement.
It becomes the rest of it.
That's the difference between you and I, sir.
Here's the thing that's surprising about the CBS error.
First of all, let's acknowledge.
I think we'll all agree that in 45 years, 60 minutes has generally produced exemplary
journalism.
It has made precious few mistakes.
And supposedly was working for about a year on this story.
And what proved to be their fatal flaw was not checking an FBI testimony that the same
guy they interviewed gave that was different from what they had on their error.
And they were able to check that testimony after the fact.
It seems shocking in retrospect that this was not checked beforehand.
It just seems such such a basic error.
I don't know how that could have been.
Gentlemen, does it ever occur to you to have this filter like a scroll at the bottom
of the television screen there, but for the grace of God.
Yes.
Now, now you talk about media criticizing other media.
Here's the latest example.
You'll excuse the phrase of driving over your mother-in-law driving over the cliff
in your brand new Cadillac.
The New York Post did not blast CBS's mistake, as you might have expected to have it
heard it blasted in the New York Post.
I think because the original story, that was flawed, was shall we say a right wing point
of view regarding Benghazi.
In other words, the guy, the source.
Yeah.
It underscored the post and the conservative view of Benghazi.
And now we find that they made a mistake.
So on the one hand, they must be dying to ridicule CBS for making the mistake.
On the other hand, they liked the original story better than the correct story.
Which is amusing that members of Congress, who immediately after the original 60 minutes
thing were calling for a hearing based upon what he had said, continue to want to have
it here.
How sure, like Lindsey Graham, who is going to block all of the appointments as a result
of the story, and then afterwards, he's still going to do it.
And also because he has a primary.
Yeah.
So he has to worry about that.
So do you think that Lara Logan, who is a chief correspondent, should be fired?
Absolutely not.
Especially given the way that network correspondence operate.
The term is she fronted the story.
Yeah.
It's got a producer.
Yeah.
They're producers.
They're probably on a story like that.
There are probably five key people working on it as well as support staff.
But there's the executive producer of the show, the correspondent, the producer of the
thing.
But unfortunately for her, she is literally the face of the story.
I mean, when Dan Rather had his issues on 60 minute two with the incorrect story about
Bush and his grades, I guess that's what it was.
No, it was the faked documents.
The fake documents, yes.
And that may have been the last straw for CB.
I think that's exactly right.
It was the last straw.
Yes.
Well, that's right.
He had one foot out over the cliff.
Yeah.
Exactly.
And they were eager enough to get rid of him and that gave them an excuse.
And I think he, recognizing that, has then had a thing about CBS News.
So to the extent that the public connects Lara Logan solely, incorrectly solely for this
report, it may damage her credibility going forward.
Come on.
You know, that people have a memory of a net, you know, they'll remember it for about
it.
And she's not as much a target as Rather was.
It isn't as though this was identified as her thing.
Rather, remember, there were bumper stickers that used to say CBS News, Rather, by us.
Well, that started way back when he got into a debate with Nixon at a press conference,
you know.
It was great.
And as long as we're talking about Rather, we should probably mention, again, help me
with this, that he sued CBS.
Yes.
I don't know how that ever came out.
No, no, no.
I don't know how it worked out.
Right.
Right.
And so significantly on the 50th anniversary of John Kennedy's death, Dan Rather, whose
coverage on CBS could be identified as part of his experience, will not be on CBS News.
He will actually be appearing in NBC talking about the Kennedy like a fascinating because,
you know, rather, if I remember this correctly, it wasn't very nice about Walter Cronkite.
When Cronkite was out of there, and then it was sort of a decroncudization of CBS at
that moment.
Finally, the New York State Court of Appeals is taking up the case of a Fox News reporter,
Jenna Winter.
You've probably heard something about this or you've read about it in one of our news
organizations' publications, but she had reported about the Aurora Colorado shooter.
She had a source in Colorado who told her that there was a notebook that the shooter James
Holmes had given to his shrink or two of psychiatrists to work for a university.
And that notebook had sketched out the eventual shooting.
She reported this on Fox News, and of course, his defense lawyers now want to find out how
did she know that?
Who leaked that to her?
She's citing the shield law in New York State where she is based to try to prevent her
from having to go out to Colorado to testify about this.
The question for the court is should she go out to Colorado?
Right.
You should the New York State Shield Law protector from having to show up in Colorado.
What do you think, Rex?
Well, I, of course, think it should, but I think what more significantly this underscores
the need for a federal shield law, which has passed through the Senate Judiciary Committee,
sponsored by Chuck Schumer of New York, which should be a part of the panoply that journalists
have to protect themselves from overreaching in an effort to stifle significant journalism.
Well, I hear you, Rex, and again, you're defending the institution, and I appreciate that
very much on behalf of all of us.
I like to say I'm defending the first man.
I want to thank you.
Yeah.
On the other hand, let's assume for a second that you happen to be the defendant in a
case like this, and you want a fair trial.
And that the prosecutors, I suspect, are being thought of as a potential for having
let this information out.
Don't you think that the right to a fair trial has some merit also in addition to the first
amendment?
And I'm very grateful that we have great legal minds on our high courts to determine when
we get these conflicts between the first and sixth amendment, and we can let them figure
out the details, but I stand with the first.
Well, no, but it's predictable.
It's predictable.
And where, by the way, did you get that wonderful sweater?
You know, this is a gray sweater.
He is not obliged to give you the source of that sweater.
He is tall.
He is New York's statesman like he's handsome.
And of course, he looks every bit the part of the major editor.
You know, major papers.
You use whatever assets you have, Alan.
What can you do?
Those assets which have been cruelly denied to me.
You can have a nice sweater too, Alan.
Riches you are.
You could buy a nice sweater like this.
You'd be just fine.
Yeah, right.
In any case, finally today, I note the fact that one of the newspapers in our coverage area
where that is coverage here of WAMC, the Times Herald Record of Middletown, has recently
laid off its staff photographers.
This is being done in other newspapers around the country.
And in fact, visual jobs in newsroom, that is photographers, artists and videographers,
according to the American Society of News Editors' annual census, have dropped by almost
half since 2000.
Which means that either the reporters are going to have to know how to take pictures,
or the photographers are going to have to learn how to write both.
Well, it's actually both and more of the former.
I mean, we had, we were a smaller paper.
We had a photography staff of two and a half at one point.
The half was, you know, he only got to work part-time.
His pictures were only in focus.
Yeah, only in focus.
But we're down to one now.
We have a very good photographer.
And she is doing real journalism beyond photography journalism.
But your primary point is the one.
Reporters are expected to be carrying video cameras, still cameras, audio equipment.
It's the business has changed.
It has.
More on that to come on future issues of the media project.
Which is not the word we use here, programs, right?
I don't know what you're talking about.
Every episode.
All right.
On behalf of Alan Sharkey.
I was literally gone.
Fuss felled.
I'm Rex Smith.
See you next week.
I'll tell you, right, reliably off the record, about some charming people I have known.
Or I meet politicians and grafters by the store.
Killers, plane and fancy.
It's really quite a bar.
And least I can meet such interesting people.
A wallow in corruption, crime and gold.
Tingling, winged city desk.
Pull the press, pull the press.
Extra, extra read all about it.
It's a mess meets the test.
Only's I can meet such interesting people.
It's wonderful to represent the press.
Now you remember Mrs. Sadie Smugaring.
She wanted money to buy a new per post.