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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Media Complicit in Allowing 60-Vote Threshold To Become Routine

April 22nd, 2013 · journalism, Uncategorized

By Denise Tessier

Senate Defeats Gun Proposals

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Senate on Wednesday rejected broader background checks for gun buyers and limits on the capacity of firearm magazines – proposals that had the support of both of New Mexico’s senators.

Let’s set aside one’s individual preferences on gun control measures (although polls show that 90 percent of Americans appear to favor such controls). Then, let’s look – through the lens of gun control stories – at how the minority party has taken control of voting in the Senate and how the media has become complicit in furthering vote outcomes resulting from that control.

The above headline and first paragraph appeared Thursday, April 18 as the Albuquerque Journal’s front-page coverage of the Senate gun bill votes.

Note how the headline says the Senate defeated gun proposals. Then, when reading the story and seeing the votes, we get these numbers:

  • On a reciprocity amendment (which would have expanded gun rights by requiring states with conceal-carry gun laws to recognize permits from other states): 57 for reciprocity, 43 against.
  • Background check bill: 54 for, 46 against.
  • A bill to limit gun magazine capacity to 10 rounds: 54 against, 46 for.

Then we read that an assault weapons ban was rejected 60 to 40. Even Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich, New Mexico’s Democratic senators, voted against the ban, thinking the gun magazine capacity limit a more practical solution, according to the Journal. (The two senators gambled and lost on that.)

Are all of these votes “defeats”? The assault weapons ban proposal was clearly defeated with the 60-40 vote. But I’m among those old enough to remember when votes of 57-43 or 54-46 were clear majorities, when only two of these four bills would have been “defeats”. There was a time, in fact, when, even a 50-50 vote was enough for one side or another to claim a victory, once the vice president had stepped in as a tie breaker. In this case, Vice President Joe Biden’s position on gun control has been made clear, and therefore it’s clear how he would have voted.

But with this Senate, it takes 60 votes to get anything of substance accomplished. In writing his story, Journal Washington reporter Michael Coleman explained that the reciprocity amendment “was backed 57-43 but needed 60 votes to advance.”

He explained that the “background check measure was supported by a majority of senators, 54-46, but that was well short of the 60 votes needed to avert a filibuster and advance the proposal.”

Reporters come up with these tortuous explanations, which are hard for readers to understand, because of the tortuous road map the Senate has set for itself in voting on bills.

The problem here is that coverage – and not just in the Journal, but in media across the nation – relies on old-fashioned terms like “win” and “defeat” to describe what’s going on with the votes, when the actual story is quite different.

I’d like to rely on The Atlantic’s James Fallows to explain how the story should have been covered, because his frustration and rage in railing against this voting absurdity is so spot-on in his piece, “For the Love of God, Just Call It a Filibuster”. In that piece, he wrote, my emphasis added:

Since the Democrats regained majority control of the Senate six years ago, the Republicans under Mitch McConnell have applied filibuster threats (under a variety of names) at a frequency not seen before in American history. Filibusters used to be exceptional. Now they are used as blocking tactics for nearly any significant legislation or nomination. The goal of this strategy, which maximizes minority blocking power in a way not foreseen in the Constitution, has been to make the 60-vote requirement seem routine.

As part of the “making it routine” strategy, the minority keeps repeating that it takes 60 votes to “pass” a bill — and this Orwellian language-redefinition comes one step closer to fulfillment each time the press presents 60 votes as the norm for passing a law.

Fallows posted examples of the press furthering the 60-votes-as-routine language. He quoted the Business Insider as saying, his emphasis added:

Sixty votes were needed to pass the legislation through the Senate.

Fallows then added:

No, 60 votes were needed to break the filibuster threat. Note that in the “mostly partisan vote of 54-46″ the 54 senators were voting for the measure.

From Politico, again with his emphasis added, Fallows posted:

The Senate has rejected a bipartisan proposal to expand background checks on firearms and close the so-called gun show loophole, handing President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders a major defeat on one of the key pieces of the president’s second-term agenda.

The vote was 54-46, with only four Republicans crossing the aisle and voting with the Democrats in favor of the bipartisan proposal by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). Sixty votes were needed.

Also posted on his story was the “home-page splash from Politico” (which carried the headline, “Senate Rejects Gun Control”), and he added:

. . . imagine if it said what actually happened: “GOP filibusters gun control.”

Since that post, Politico has actually changed its headline to the more accurate “Gun control bill hits brick wall in Senate”.

The New York Times is another that changed its headline, this one in time to be included in Fallows’ post. The Times initially had used the defeat meme (“Senate Rejects Bipartisan Background Check Measure”) on its story. But “to its credit,” as Fallows put it, the Times changed it to: “Drive for Gun Control Blocked in Senate.”

Both of these new headlines better reflect what happened with the Senate’s votes.

However, that still leaves the problem of the 60-votes-needed becoming routine, and the press helping it become so.

Again, thanks to Fallows, we get an example of how the story could have been reported:

Washington, DC – Because of the threat of a filibuster, the U.S. Senate today failed to pass the Manchin-Toomey amendment to expand background checks for certain types of gun sales, blocking the amendment by a 54-46 margin. Although the amendment received a majority of the Senate’s support, the amendment was subject to the same 60-vote threshold ordinarily reserved for ending filibusters.

That paragraph – so much clearer for we readers to understand – comes not from a news outlet, but from a group called Fix the Senate Now.  (On its About Us page, the group says it was formed to support Senate Rules reform efforts championed by New Mexico’s Udall, among others).

The group outlined its reaction to the gun vote with its story, under the headline “Failure of Background Check Amendment Shows Need for Senate Reform”, stating:

. . .requiring 60 votes to pass an amendment on an issue upon which 9-in-10 Americans agree underscores the need for Senate reform. Today’s proceedings also run counter to the supposed goal of the Senate leaders’ compromise agreement:  to restore accountability and transparency to Senate debate. . . .

Today’s vote is another unfortunate reminder that the U.S. Senate’s rules remain unworkable and in serious need of reform. That policies supported by 86% of Americans cannot even receive an up-or-down vote speaks to an inherent disconnect between the public’s appetite for action and the capacity of our legislative institutions ability to deliver it.

Especially pertinent is this paragraph from the story, my emphasis added:

Senators intent on blocking popular policies such as expanded background checks should be forced to hold the floor and keep at least 40 of their colleagues on the floor with them. Instead, Senate rules and procedures made opposing Manchin-Toomey essentially costless and accountability-free.

The story then, isn’t that gun controls were defeated, but that the Senate majority has allowed itself to be hobbled, the minority is in control and, as a result, the Senate is failing to do its job.

From former House Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ eloquent piece in The New York Times:

Our democracy’s history is littered with names we neither remember nor celebrate — people who stood in the way of progress while protecting the powerful. On Wednesday, a number of senators voted to join that list.

 

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More on Word Power, This Time Related to Perceived Sexism and Voter Fraud

April 16th, 2013 · journalism, Uncategorized, voting rights

By Denise Tessier

As a follow-up to the post on the importance of the Associated Press admonition against use of “illegals” in covering immigration, two further examples of powerful word choice by news organizations, both national and local, merit discussion.

The first involves a national obituary and its poor choice in word-phrase placement, which has left The New York Times looking dated and sexist. The second involves the altogether wrong use of words – in this case the term “voter fraud” – in a story and tweet put out by one New Mexico media outlet when no voter fraud existed.

At the same time, both cases illustrate a recent development in journalism: that stories or headlines can be constantly updated or corrected online, sometimes with much fanfare and sometimes with no mention of the change at all, leaving readers none the wiser.

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Journal’s Free Market Fantasies Out of Sync with Real World Reporting

April 13th, 2013 · economy, journalism, role of government

By Arthur Alpert

I’m sure you have noticed the excellent work of Journal business reporter Kevin Robinson-Avila.

The guy has been writing intelligently and lucidly since his arrival last June, mostly about technology, energy and venture capital. He’s solidified my grasp on how the system works. And I should have written an appreciation earlier.

That said, Journal editors have been impressive, too, in their refusal to recognize or state the implications of his stories.

Instead they continue to retail fanciful tales of free markets and free enterprise, disregarding what he spells out so definitively.

What brought this to mind was a brief Robinson-Avila item on the business page Friday, April 12, about Technology Ventures Corp. laying off five people and shutting offices in California and Idaho.

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The Associated Press Gets the Point

April 3rd, 2013 · immigration, journalism, Uncategorized

By Denise Tessier

Just yesterday (April 2), I saw this  message (in three different languages) on the T-shirt of a young woman in Albuquerque:

There’s no such thing as an illegal human.

What she wore was making an excellent point.

Today’s Santa Fe New Mexican reports that the Associated Press has issued a directive to its reporters indicating it has arrived at understanding that very point:

The Associated Press announced Tuesday it is dropping the term illegal immigrant from its style guide to describe people who have entered the U.S. illegally or are overstaying a visa.

A blog post by AP Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll said, “The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term ‘illegal immigrant’ or the use of ‘illegal’ to describe a person. Instead, it tells users that ‘illegal’ should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.”

The AP describes itself as “the definitive source for reliable news across the globe” and because the Albuquerque Journal is among its newspaper subscribers, it’s safe to assume AP stories will no longer carry the term “illegal immigrant.”

And because the Journal itself adheres to the AP Stylebook (as do most newspapers), AP’s decision means that the Albuquerque Journal likely will no longer carry the term in its local stories, either.

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Fossil Fuels Industry Coverage: No news if it’s bad news

April 2nd, 2013 · economy, energy policy, environment, journalism, regulation, role of government

By Arthur Alpert

Look for the Albuquerque Journal to run an Op Ed soon that extols the oil and gas industry for its outstanding safety record, in particular.

How do I know this? I don’t. But the newspaper’s pattern makes it a sure thing. Where oil and gas are concerned, the editors consistently run opinion pieces by industry apologists. Sometimes, they even identify the authors accurately.

And while the newspaper’s Op Ed affection for the oil patch never flags, the editors find news accounts of the industry’s negative effects on air and water and living creatures of no news value – except when the insults are too humongous to ignore.

Thus, when last Friday an Exxon Mobil pipeline leaked, “a few thousand barrels of Canadian heavy crude oil near Mayflower, Ark., prompting the evacuation of 22 homes and reinforcing concerns many critics have raised about the Keystone XL pipeline that is awaiting State Department approval,” the Journal passed.

No news there. Keep moving.

Nor were editors impressed that this “major” spill (per the EPA) was of low-quality Wabasca Heavy crude oil – a blend produced in the Athabasca region of Alberta, where the oil sands are located.

Or, that the company and other responders were battling to keep the crude oil from leaking into Lake Conway, a popular recreation and game-fishing spot.

That information was in a March 31Washington Post story by Steven Mufson, available to the Journal.

But hey, it’s just one spill, right?

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Signs of Spring?

March 31st, 2013 · budget policy, economy, journalism

By Arthur Alpert

It’s warm again this morning, but as a wise New Mexican I won’t call the swamp cooler guy. It’s another false spring.

A perpetual optimist, I keep scrutinizing the morning paper, too, for signs of an Albuquerque Journal spring. And recently a few greens sprouted.

Did you notice the story headlined, “Parties change tune on deficit when in power” Sunday, March 17, on A7. What really caught my eye was the sub-head.

“Clash over shortfall: Does it matter or not?”

Wow! After years of screaming and yelling that the deficit was now (not then, but now) threatening to turn us into Greece, the Journal had published an article asking if it matters at all?

Yes, it is true the Right (nationally) is pushing deficit hysteria less, but still you can understand the shock I felt on reading that McClatchy Tribune piece in our daily.

The very next day, the Albuquerque Journal ran a long AP account of efforts by the livestock and poultry industries to make it harder for animal welfare advocates to show their cruelty. The first surprise was the story itself, but it got better.

Eleven paragraphs down, we learn that the livestock and poultry industries are leaning on state legislatures to protect them from animal advocates with help from – brace yourself – the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Wow! An ALEC sighting!

Now it’s true the story describes ALEC as a  “conservative think tank backed by business interests.” And we know ALEC is not a think tank, it’s a lobby. And no, it’s not conservative; it’s plutocratic, which is different.

But hey, the Journal mentioned ALEC.

Two bits of greenery in two days. Could this be… ?

Well, no, winter isn’t over.

The first cold breeze came when the editors published report # Umpteen by David Espo of the Associated Press Washington Bureau. Espo, remember, is high on my list of AP Washington editorialists in reporters’ clothing. He regularly weaves his convictions and some observable facts into a tapestry perfect for the walls of the US Chamber of Commerce.

So I wasn’t surprised when his March 21 account of Senate approval of spending cuts tilted that way, but I have to praise his technique:

“Without changes, the $85 billion in cuts for the current year will swell to nearly $1 trillion over a decade, enough to make at least a small dent in economy-threatening federal deficits but requiring program cuts that lawmakers in both parties say are unsustainable politically.”

A delicious kernel, that phrase, “economy-threatening deficits.” Perhaps Mr. Espo believes that.  Or maybe he knows the best propagandists treat controversial propositions as givens, assume them, glide quietly and swiftly past them in order to suggest, tacitly, that they’re common knowledge.

“Economy-threatening deficits” aren’t common knowledge.

They’re not even “knowledge”.

The phrase is a political argument. One of its purposes is to blind citizens to what happens when governments cut spending in a poor economy – the economy depresses further.

Of course, Espo’s article contained not a hint of that.

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More Shocking Than Sex: Censorship of Student Journalism

March 29th, 2013 · journalism

By Denise Tessier

It’s a timely coincidence that the Spring issue of UNM’s alumni magazine Mirage featured four former editors and the current editor of the UNM Daily Lobo addressing the value of “an independent student newspaper.” It’s timely because it came just days before Central New Mexico Community College administrators shut down CNM’s student newspaper, The Chronicle, and confiscated rack copies of the spring issue – one devoted mostly to sex.

Significantly, immediately after The Chronicle’s shutdown, the University of New Mexico’s Daily Lobo suspended its own print edition in a show of solidarity against censorship of CNM’s student publication. The Lobo printed an editorial by Editor-in-chief Elizabeth Cleary on its front page Tuesday, announcing the suspension until The Chronicle was restored; instead of content, black Xs appeared on the Lobo’s inside pages.

Then on Wednesday, former Lobo editor Marisa DeMarco lashed out at CNM’s action in an editorial on New Mexico Compass, saying:

Any journalist not outraged over CNM’s censorship of its student newspaper is in the wrong business.

By Thursday, the immediate matter was resolved: CNM reinstated publication of The Chronicle (administrators on Tuesday had said it would be out of commission at least until summer), confiscated issues were returned and CNM president Kathie Winograd wrote the Chronicle’s 13 staffers that:

I believe as a college we have failed to provide the CNM Chronicle with the level of editorial resources and education that it needs and deserves. I hope that in today’s publication board meeting, the board will discuss ways the college can provide you a better educational experience through your participation with the CNM Chronicle.

On Thursday, the Lobo said it would resume printing, too.

Meanwhile, the publication CNM apparently found offensive reached a greater audience than it normally would, had it not been censored. Beneath a story carried by the national web site Gawker, one CNM student left this comment:

I’m actually taking two classes at CNM right now, and I didn’t realize it had a newspaper until I saw this story on local news last night after class. I’d like to know why the admins would want to kill it the first time it publishes an issue people want to read.

As Albuquerque Journal reporter Astrid Galvan noted on her (first) higher education blog for the paper:

Word got out quickly, first on Twitter and soon on national news, including on Gawker. As a general rule, you don’t want to be on Gawker.

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New Mexico Mercury: Journalism as a ‘Regional Meeting of the Minds’

March 23rd, 2013 · journalism, Uncategorized

By Denise Tessier

Since the demise of the Albuquerque Tribune more than four years ago, V.B. (Barrett) Price has been trying to save Albuquerque from being a one-newspaper (Albuquerque Journal) town.

For two of those years, he did so by contributing columns at the all-volunteer, free distribution paper ABQ TRIal Balloon, which, as its name suggests, was an homage to the Trib and a trial balloon intended to gauge Albuquerque’s interest in a publishing alternative. But after nine slim issues, in print and online, publication ceased in 2010.

Meanwhile, Price met Benito Aragon, who had studied communications and documentary filmmaking at the University of Florida, and had returned to his native Albuquerque to work in journalism. (Aragon briefly worked with me at the online New Mexico Independent  in 2008).

Four years ago, the two North Valley residents got together for breakfast, became friends and came up with an ambitious publication that is scheduled to be unveiled Monday.

“Elegant and readable” is how Price describes New Mexico Mercury, his venture with Aragon. Based on the preview Price and Aragon offered at a launch announcement last month, the publication does appear “elegant” in terms of readability and design. And it appears up-to-date in all aspects of online and applications technology, an advantage Aragon has brought that the rudimentary ABQ TRIal Balloon lacked.

With Aragon as publisher and Price as editor, Mercury holds promise to offer thought-provoking editorial content as well, based on what its principals shared at the launch preview.

“This is truly my last shot at doing something like this,” Price said at the launch preview, with Aragon quickly adding, “I would never have dreamt about doing this without (Price). He’s mentored me. We have very complementary skill sets.”

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It’s “See No Evil” When Covering Big Business

March 21st, 2013 · economy, labor, role of government, tax policy

By Arthur Alpert

(March 19) I made one big mistake and one small one, but I am glad. In correcting them, I’ll enlarge on the argument of my last post – that the Albuquerque Journal exempts corporate America from serious scrutiny – and refine the corollary, that the Journal is  dedicated to denigrating government.

Last time, you see, when I said the Journal omitted any report on JP Morgan’s dysfunction, I predicted the editors would “catch up tomorrow (with minimal and/or bankster-friendly coverage.”)

Shouldn’t have ignored the wisdom of Yogi Berra, who said (maybe), “Prediction is hard, especially about the future.”

Anyway, I was wrong. The Journal never touched it. Our statewide daily totally rejected a story that editors at the N.Y. Times and Wall Street Journal put on top of the front page and Washington Post editors also gave prominent play. They all covered it the next day, too.

So now you know Journal editors found that news not worth one word. But, second error, I failed to underline how important those JP Morgan stories are.

To correct that, I’ll lean on Gretchen Morgenson, the veteran N.Y. Times business reporter and columnist whose Sunday, March 17 essay on “JPMorgan’s Follies” opens:

“Be afraid.”

She says that should be the “takeaway” for investors and taxpayers from the Senate report on JP Morgan’s massive trading losses last year. “The financial system, thanks to the dissembling traders and bumbling regulators, is at greater risk than you know.”

“Dissembling traders?” “Bumbling regulators?”

I can almost hear Albuquerque Journal political commissars…er, editors… musing, “This JP Morgan story rips Wall Street and never mentions White House spending or Obamacare’s cost. Let’s pass.”

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