Benghazi! Benghazi!

May 19th, 2013 · Uncategorized

By Denise Tessier

Like a perfect storm, three stories piled upon one another day after day this past week, wrenching national media attention from bombings, sensational crime and gun laws — taking space that should be used to cover pressing issues, like student loan debt and the continuing paucity of jobs.  I’m sticking with my original headline of Benghazi! Benghazi! But it could just as easily have read Investigate! Investigate!

I’m talking, of course, about:

  • The continuing investigation into security at a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya (and apparently, even more important to Republican Darrell Issa’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the administration’s talking points after its attack Sept. 11). A different Republican has called for a bipartisan Select Committee to further investigate.
  • The Internal Revenue Service’s alleged targeting of conservative non-profits for extra scrutiny (my use of the word “alleged” will be explained later in this post). The Justice Department has ordered an investigation and heads have rolled.
  • And last, but most significant, the revelation that the Justice Department seized telephone records at several offices of the Associated Press. “Calls grow for congressional investigation” (Albuquerque Journal subhead Wednesday, May 15).

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The Martinez Administration’s Multi-Million Dollar Mistake and the Journal’s Curious Absence of Outrage

May 17th, 2013 · NM Legislature, tax policy, Uncategorized

By Arthur Alpert

The Albuquerque Journal’s capacity for outrage is huge, almost as great as its passion for transparency.

So where’s the outrage? Where’s the transparency?

Where are they, I mean, now that we know the 2013 Legislature passed a budget based on oral testimony at the 11th hour from the Governor’s Finance Secretary that – he now says – was mistaken.

Here’s the essence:

The top budget official in Gov. Susana Martinez’s administration apologized to legislators Tuesday for claiming in March that a massive tax package would have a positive fiscal impact to the state during each of the next five years.

Finance and Administration Secretary Tom Clifford told members of an interim legislative committee Tuesday the information he provided on the House floor during the final hours of this year’s 60-day session was based on a different version of the bill.

“I apologize for that,” said Clifford, who testified on the tax package during the frantic final minutes of this year’s session.

In contrast to Clifford’s original claim, an estimate released after lawmakers approved the tax package calculates that the legislation will cost the state more than $70 million in forgone revenue in the 2017 fiscal year.”

At least one Democratic lawmaker said Tuesday that he did not think the tax package would have been approved by the Legislature if Clifford had originally portrayed the budget hit as negative.

That’s from Dan Boyd’s account in the Wednesday, May 15, Journal.

Passing a multi-million dollar tax package in that way is outrageous, right? The good government folks at the Journal will launch righteous salvos at the miscreants any hour now, correct?

Well, we’ll see about that but first a brief detour to transparency.

The Journal ran Boyd’s outstanding piece on C1, the front page of the Metro section, below the fold.  I kid you not. It landed on the lower right-hand corner of the third section.

It rated the front page, of course. (The Santa Fe New Mexican put Steve Terrell’s coverage of the story on Page One.)

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The Tactics of Offense and Defense: How the Journal Reshapes Healthcare News

May 15th, 2013 · health care reform, journalism, Uncategorized

By Arthur Alpert

What’s a saving grace? Well, an online dictionary says it’s “a quality that makes up for other generally negative characteristics; redeeming feature.”

I was grappling with the question, you see, of whether – where healthcare reporting is concerned – Winthrop Quigley is the Albuquerque Journal’s saving grace.

The answer is no, but don’t blame Mr. Quigley; no individual could redeem the newspaper’s comprehensively awful performance.

Two recent Quigley stories brought the question to mind. First, his front-page account headlined “Hospital costs vary wildly for same procedure” Thursday, May 9. It was based on a federal release; more on that below.

His UpFront column (where opinion and reporting meet) Tuesday, May 14, about lack of progress in establishing the New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange, came second.

Appearances to the contrary, he writes, “the governor’s people” say, “there has been no deliberate effort to sabotage the exchange.”

“One is left to infer, therefore,” Quigley concludes, “that with five months to go and no exchange in sight, we are witnessing either incompetence or a miracle in the making.”

(Powerful conclusion! A tip of the old chapeau, then, to the editors for the headline – “Health exchange faces challenges”. Masterful understatement, no?)

On the way to his summing up, Quigley slams the “nonsense” retailed by Dr. Deane Waldman (an exchange board member) about Obamacare’s “death panels.”

Quigley also ridicules Human Services Secretary Sidonie Squier’s characterization of Obamacare as “socialism.” She’s a board member, too.

As the Journal’s specialist on the health business, Quigley finds Obamacare imperfect, but he just hates political rhetoric. Having vented, he must feel better now.

Wish I did, too, but while Quigley’s superior reporting and plain talk are welcome, Journal management’s decision to trash Obamacare, relentlessly, in the “news” columns as well as most opinion pieces and in editorials leaves me in a funk.

The newspaper’s war involves offense and defense both.

One offensive skirmish deserving attention was the Journal’s umpteenth collaboration (March 13) with Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of AP’s Washington Bureau.

He reported on a draft application that Health and Human Services posted online to get feedback. It was long, complicated and hard to complete, he said.

No doubt that’s true, but Page One? Talk about treating a molehill like Everest! Credit the Journal’s editors with chutzpah.

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News in Itself: Backlash Against Heritage Foundation Report Makes Journal’s Front Page

May 9th, 2013 · Fact Check, immigration, Uncategorized

By Denise Tessier

What, to a longtime reader, could have been more astonishing than finding in the Albuquerque Journal a news story containing criticism about the Heritage Foundation? Answer: Seeing that wire service story on the Journal’s front page – and then seeing the Journal follow it up with its own staff-generated report the next day, again on the front page.

To the longtime reader, the sightings were incongruous because for decades the Journal has run Heritage Foundation columns (without questioning them) and availed itself of the conservative think tank’s agenda-based “expertise” when preparing news stories.

But in this highly unusual case, national criticism of the Heritage Foundation’s financial analysis of a bipartisan Senate immigration bill was too big to downplay – its newsworthiness buttressed by the fact that much of the criticism of the report comes from members of the political party that once was in step with Heritage Foundation views, and even from fellow think tanks.

As the Associated Press story carried by the Journal Tuesday (May 7) put it, the report “laid bare splits within the Republican Party. “

Part of what captured critics’ attention was the report’s huge cost estimates (the American Prospect cutely reported Heritage’s dollar estimates as “eleventy bazillion” in one blog post and as a “gajillion feptillion bazillion” in another).

Heritage actually claimed the pending immigration bill would cost taxpayers a “lifetime fiscal deficit” of more than $9 trillion (over the next 50 years), resulting in a net expense of $6.3 trillion after deducting $3 trillion the new immigrants reportedly would generate paying taxes.

“This study is designed to try to scare conservative Republicans into thinking the cost here is going to be so gigantic that you can’t possibly be for it,” former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour was quoted in the AP as saying. Barbour, a Republican who’s part of a task force with the nonprofit Bipartisan Policy Center that supports the bill, added:

The Heritage Foundation document is a political document; it’s not a very serious analysis.

The AP story offered some insight into the Heritage Foundation’s seemingly sudden vulnerability to criticism.

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“Coverage of locally-produced arts is rapidly shrinking in a newspaper that purports to excel in its coverage of local activities”

May 8th, 2013 · economy, journalism

 By Arthur Alpert

The Albuquerque Theatre Guild is upset about a new Albuquerque Journal policy that promises less attention to local plays and would move some of that attention from Fridays to Sundays.

An ATG delegation met with Managing Editor Karen Moses and Venue editor Rene Kimball a few weeks ago.

It learned that the Journal will run no more than two reviews of new plays a month. It has been publishing about one a week. (Barry Gaines, a UNM professor of English, is the newspaper’s lead reviewer.)

Further, ATG reports the newspaper plans to confine reviews of non-musical plays to the Sunday Arts section; they had appeared in Venue, in the body of the newspaper or in Sunday Arts.

Venue, the Friday guide to entertainment, will continue to promote local musicals and carry theater listings in its calendar. ATG said it worries, nonetheless, that those listings are at risk.

Space is at a premium in Sunday Arts, where editors fit coverage of theater, dance, music, visual arts, films and books into five pages; a sixth carries TV schedules and weather.

ATG said relegating coverage to Sundays is problematic because readers make their going out decisions early in the weekend.

“Coverage of locally-produced arts is rapidly shrinking in a newspaper that purports to excel in its coverage of local activities,” the ATG informed members and friends in an email. The Guild urged that they protest via letters (snail or email) and a petition at gopetition.com.

Let me state my interest before continuing. A sometime actor at several community theaters, I am a card-carrying Guild member.

I should confess discomfort, too, because I have not asked for the Journal’s explanation; however, regular readers will understand my reluctance to ask management for its views.

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Credibility of Austerity Economics in Freefall Everywhere Except at the Journal

May 1st, 2013 · budget policy, economy, financial coverage, journalism

By Arthur Alpert

Pity the poor politicians who edit the Albuquerque Journal.

It won’t be easy adjusting the narrative to fit the oligarchy’s new strategy, but soon they’ll do just that.

The newspaper’s narrative (or line or editorial agenda) matters because at the Journal, it dictates what gets published – syndicated opinion, Op Ed opinion and “news.” Or not.

Their problem lies with the “deficit crisis” and “austerity.” The latter is a fancy word for cutting government spending, mostly on services. It’s been the oligarchy’s answer to the heavy debt levels bestowed by the financial sector collapse of 2008.

Of course, austerity punishes the victims, not the perpetrators, but that’s not why there’s change afoot.

It doesn’t work.

Austerity has slowed the economies that sipped the hemlock, like the U.S. and it’s killing the chug-a-luggers.

Now, belatedly, the financial Establishment is noticing; the manager of PIMCO, the world’s top bond firm; President Jose Manuel Barroso of the European Commission; Blackrock, the influential investment bank and Martin Wolf, finance commentator for the Financial Times, have all decried austerity recently.

And the Wall Street Journal, whose reporters write stories the editorial page hates, has noticed.
Friday, April 26, the WSJ had three “austerity” stories.

The Page One account ran under this rubric:

“Still sputtering, Spain Turns Away from Cuts”.

On page 16, next to the cover story jump, WSJ editors ran “Europe’s Unemployment Problems Worsen”.

And on page 13, the WSJ reported Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel’s (surprising) suggestion some European countries need lower interest rates, liquidity, akin to the cheap money the Fed has injected here, over protests from the American Right.

Yes, austerity’s failure is big news and if you are a Journal politician-cum-editor, it gets worse – core elements of that very American Right are defecting.

Even the American Enterprise Institute!

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In Absence of Senate Action, Hannah Skandera Confirms Herself; Media Chooses Not to Go Along

April 30th, 2013 · Education, journalism, Uncategorized

By Denise Tessier

Because the Senate has failed to get around to confirming her as secretary, New Mexico Public Education Secretary-designate Hannah Skandera has decided to just make it so, with the blessing of the governor.

The Las Cruces Sun-News was apparently first to notice that Skandera had made herself secretary by stating as such on the PED’s website. It’s obvious from the first paragraph that she’s not waiting around for confirmation any more. After the child-like title “Kids First, New Mexico Wins!”, she welcomes web visitors with this (my emphasis added):

As the Secretary of Education, I call on every educator, student, parent, community member and public servant to share in the responsibility for the success of our children and, ultimately, the future of the great state of New Mexico. . . .

After three more paragraphs, she signs off with:

Warm regards,

Hanna Skandera
Secretary of Education

The Sun-News said, “. . .it is clear that the Public Education Department website was edited to make Skandera secretary of education, erasing her temporary title of “designate.”…

And the Santa Fe New Mexican editorialized against the change, calling it a “premature promotion” on the part of Skandera, saying:

The Rules Committee should have voted on the nomination. That the committee didn’t was a failure of leadership — two years is too long to let a nominee twist in the wind, even one whose policies you dispute. . . .

However, the New Mexico Senate Rules Committee has not voted. The governor said in a statement that “legislators and the media can keep calling her Secretary designate if they wish, but Gov. Martinez considers Hanna her Secretary of Public Education.”

In conclusion, the New Mexican chided:

. . .Even a schoolchild knows, just because you call yourself something doesn’t make it so.

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If Only It Was That Simple

April 29th, 2013 · Fact Check, journalism

By Arthur Alpert

Back in the 1990s, when I co-owned and edited Prime Time, a monthly for New Mexican seniors, I regularly spoke to civic and senior organizations on “How the News Get Shaped.”

Having worked in print and broadcast news (network, local and cable) I saw how the journalism differed depending on technology, how we earned a profit and our legal status.

At one lunch, though, an elderly fellow rose with repressed anger to ask, “Why can’t they just stick to the facts?”
I was nonplussed.

No doubt I was thinking “Sir, if only it was that simple.”

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The West, Texas Explosion: A Horrific Lesson on Lax Regulatory Oversight

April 29th, 2013 · role of government, Uncategorized

By Denise Tessier

At the risk of sounding insensitive about the bombings in Boston (which would not be true), I could not help but compare, from the outset, how that event was covered by both national media and the Albuquerque Journal to the way the West, Texas fertilizer explosion was played.

Because the former was an act of political terrorism that killed and maimed, because it affected both Bostonians and those who had traveled to attend the marathon or other Patriot Day events, and because it involved a dramatic manhunt with (essentially) closure of a major American city and nearby suburbs, the Boston story unquestionably belonged on Page One, as the lead story, for any major news outlet (whether in the United States or abroad) over the course of several days. That is where and how the Journal ran it, and rightly so.

The fertilizer explosion two days after Boston turned parts of a small Texas town to rubble. First news stories from the blast reported that as many as 15 had died (later corrected to 14), more than 160 were injured (later updated to 200), and that “the blast shook the ground with the strength of a small earthquake and crumpled dozens of homes, an apartment complex, a school and a nursing home.” The sheer numbers in terms of death and damage were greater in West than in Boston, but the Associated Press story from which these quotes came was carried on an inside page in the Journal. (“Texas rubble combed for survivors” ran on A5.)

City University of New York physics professor Michio Kaku put the explosion in perspective on “CBS This Morning” the day after the blast (my emphasis added):

The Boston bombing, as tragic as it was, released the energy of one stick of dynamite. Ammonium nitrate, released in an accident of this sort, can release the energy of several truckloads of dynamite, enough to set off a 2.1-magnitude earthquake in terms of intensity. The Oklahoma City bombing, for example, was based on one ton of fertilizer. Here, they were licensed to have over 25 tons. So you can imagine the scale, the enormity of what happened.

The simple explanation for the Texas story running inside is this: The bomb that went off in West was characterized as “an accident.” [Read more →]

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The Right Fit: “News” Narrative Meets the Agenda

April 23rd, 2013 · journalism, NM Legislature

By Arthur Alpert

The pendulum never stops where it should.

When I got into the news business, for example, the name of the game was “objectivity.” Of course that’s humanly impossible and you neuter yourself pursuing it.

But the 1950s passion for “objectivity” was a swing of the pendulum back from the Front Page era when publishers sold sensationalism and their personal politics.

The pendulum quickly moved in the opposite direction when Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, Jimmy Breslin, Clay Felker and others invented the “New Journalism,” giving reporters mental elbow-room to nail truths and convey them.

Has the pendulum has moved too far again? I don’t think so. It’s inspired a lot of superior journalism, though it’s to blame for empowering narcissists and advocates, too.

A piece on Ted Kennedy Jr. in the N.Y. Times Magazine March 17 brought this to mind. Journalist Mark Leibovich wrote as much about the circumstances surrounding his interview as about Mr. Kennedy. Brave but maybe not fair.

There’s no such problem with the work of rank-and-file reporters at the Albuquerque Journal. They hew to observable facts, verifiable quotes and make minimal efforts to explain. Whether self-imposed or required by editors, this discipline means they don’t take much advantage of that expanded elbowroom.

Their stories are generally professional, informative and fair. Yet, as the recent legislative session demonstrated, the coverage can be lacking.

No, that’s not a contradiction. Editors, not reporters, determine the coverage by way of decisions on what to cover and what not, as well as how to play stories.

For example, the Journal’s coverage of this session included only two or three mentions of lobbyists. They come in many flavors, of course, but like ‘em or not, lobbyists matter.

Yet a reader unfamiliar with Santa Fe’s annual political theater might come away from the Journal’s reporting thinking it’s a Platonic process, in which disinterested parties question and debate the greater good.

It isn’t. It wasn’t.

Putting this in stark relief was a wry Op Ed piece (April 7) by Ned Cantwell, a former newspaper editor, on lobbying in the early 70s and now.

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