War Logs and Asbestos: Outsourcing Investigative Reporting

The recent revelations about the conduct of the war in the Wikileaks' Afghan War Logs is stunning in its scope. The reports (simultaneously published  in three media outlets - the New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel) show how the nine year old conflict has been botched.

In more than 90,000 documents, Wikileaks gives a detailed look at how a lack of knowledge of the region and its people, an over-reliance on high-tech weaponry and a lack of clear policy direction have led us to this point.

The reports have been greeted with much defensiveness: the American government says things are going much better now that the Obama administration has taken control. Some inside the administration and in Congress are dismissing Wikileaks as the dubious efforts of a somewhat mysterious anti-war blogger, Julian Assange. He calls it the most comprehensive history of a war ever to be published, during the course of the war and compares the release of the war logs with the release of the Pentagon Papers in the 1970s.

Wikileaks was clever about how this story broke: instead of just dumping the documents on its website,  where it could easily be ignored, Assange worked with three legacy media organizations. They in turn, used their editorial expertise to make sense of it all.

This is precisely how new media and old media will work in the future.

Some legacy media organizations and their editorial writers are quick to say that they reported all this before, They just haven't done it in one large data dump as Wikileaks has so thoughtfully provided. "Nothing to see here folks. Move along about your business..."

I sense an editorial touchiness here. Whenever a media organization is scooped (and they've been scooped massively in this case) there is an instinct to dismiss the story as "old news." Years of cutbacks and layoffs have reduced legacy media to the point where they no longer have the editorial resources to handle a story like this.

Recently the Center for Public Integrity based in Washington, DC combined with the BBC  to release an excellent investigative series called "Danger in the Dust" on Canada's role in aggressively selling asbestos from Quebec through the developing world. This, despite conclusive scientific evidence that asbestos (now marketed as "chrysotile") is highly carcinogenic and as such, is banned in Canada.

CPI is one of the few places still raising money and doing investigative reporting. To borrow a phrase, "they're doing the reporting so you (the mainstream media) don't have to."

It's the way journalism is heading, so kudos to CPI and the BBC.
   
No mainstream media organization in Canada, as far I know, has picked up on this story, except for the website of CBC News.

The CBC, to its credit, has done a number of stories in the past on how Ottawa, the province of Quebec and Quebec trade unions have lobbied hard to keep the asbestos industry alive. The last major exploration of this issue was on CBC Radio more than two years ago. If ever there was a story for public broadcasting to go after now, this is it. Editors are probably anxious not to be seen as "following" the BBC on this one. They shouldn't be.

I sense the well-known defensive crouch in Canadian and US newsrooms is back.  Pity.  Editors and managers will just have to get used to being scooped, as long as their bosses keep believing that investigative reporting is too expensive and only of marginal interest to their audiences.

Daniel Schorr 1916-2010

Dan Schorr died on Friday at a Washington, DC hospital at the age of 93 after a brief illness. The announcement was made today by NPR where he had worked for the past twenty five years as NPR's senior news analyst. His last report was heard on July 10.

The obituaries and appreciations are pouring out.

There's no point in repeating the many details of Dan's storied career. But the most laudatory and clear-eyed obit I've seen is by NPR's Scott Simon, host of Weekend Edition Saturday. Every Saturday after the 9 am newscast, Dan and Scott would chat about the week's events. Dan always gave the listeners insight and context that couldn't be found anywhere else. Scott's tribute is elegant and inspirational.

Every week, in my role either as NPR's VP of News or as NPR's ombudsman, I would regularly receive emails praising and condemning NPR for having the nerve to put Dan on the air. During the harsh days of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq, Dan would point out the foibles and the dangers of administration policies. When it came to the Bush White House, Dan was never at a loss for words.

Dan Schorr was one of the last of the Murrow Boys - the group of men hired by Edward R. Murrow who as part of CBS News, created the finest commercial broadcast news organization. It was known for the fearlessness of its reporting and for the integrity (most of the time) of its senior management, especially Richard Salant.

Dan was forced out of CBS in 1976, when he was leaked a copy of a secret investigative report by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, called the Pike report, which detailed illegal activities by the FBI and CIA. Dan felt CBS’ lack of enthusiasm for the story, so he re-leaked it to the Village Voice.

He spent a few years at CNN, before tangling with Ted Turner, the volatile and irascible genius who ran the network until he himself was removed in a boardroom revolt.

Dan was then offered a role at NPR by my predecessor, Bill Buzenberg. Dan and NPR turned out to be a perfect match.

Some in commercial broadcasting at the time were appalled and saw Dan's shift to a then much smaller and less influential NPR as a dreadful career move.

As the Mike Wallace character says in the film, The Insider (1999), when faced with the prospect of resigning from CBS: "What should I do? Wander in the wilderness of NPR like Dan Schorr?"

Some wandering. Some wilderness.
 
When I left NPR, I went by Dan's office to say good-bye. He thanked me for my support and told me that I was the only boss he had who didn't try to fire him.

There were moments when some of his (much) younger colleagues would complain about him. "Can't we find someone more youthful?" they would say. My response was that we could, but we wouldn't find any other journalists whose first major assignment was to cover the Anschluss in 1938.

So long Dan. Thanks again for setting a standard we should all emulate. Now more than ever.

Naming Names and Showing Faces

The New York Times reports that the two Salt Lake City, Utah newspapers, the Deseret News and the Salt Lake Tribune  have received anonymous lists of alleged "illegal immigrants." Neither paper chose to publish the list.

According to the Times, "Many news media outlets said they doubted the veracity of the list and realized that the information on it was most likely obtained through surreptitious and possibly illegal means.

News organizations, like Utah authorities, were trying to determine on Wednesday who had sent the letters and how the personal information of so many people had been exposed. In addition to refusing to publish the information, news outlets took other steps to conceal the identities of those on the list." 

This high minded approach to vigilante journalism is in sharp contrast to the role of Toronto media who seem to have have no hesitation about publishing the photos of individuals, alleged to have taken part in the G20 riots and vandalism of a few weeks ago. The photographs have been released to the media with the aim of asking the public to identify these persons, who would presumably be charged with specific offenses.

The photos come from a variety of sources, according to the Globe and Mail. Some from other media, some from citizens' cellphone cameras. Others from closed circuit monitors located on banks, damaged by the vandals. Most come directly from the Toronto police.

Some photos show individuals clearly in the act of trashing a police car. That would appear to be enough evidence to convict. (I can imagine what a good defense lawyer might say: "Your honor, my client was only trying to retrieve her property which had been thrown onto the roof of the police vehicle...").

Others photos are "head and shoulder" shots released by the Toronto police. They don't reveal any evidence of law-breaking, beyond the say-so of the authorities.

While the damage to property in parts of downtown Toronto was considerable and the actions of hooligans, reprehensible, is it the role of the media to act as police agents? Are reporters being sufficiently skeptical and asking the police those four most important words: "How do you know?" Or is this an instance when citizen journalism descends into vigilante journalism?

Civil liberties groups think there are real dangers here, and have warned that individual liberties are being jeopardized by an overly willing media cooperation.

Media organizations, aware of the massive public revulsion against the so-called anarchists, will say they are simply being good citizens. We should not be surprised when social media - so prized by activists and community groups - can also turn against them.

The Firing of Octavia Nasr at CNN

Octavia Nasr is a longtime CNN editor and commentator who is now unemployed.

Her falling out with CNN came because of an admiring tweet she sent praising the Lebanese Shi'ite leader,  Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, who died on Sunday. Fadlallah was named for his involvement in the 1982 bombing of the US Marine Corps unit which killed more than 200 (a claim he always denied). But Fadlallah openly supported suicide bombings against Israel and was a critic of both Israel and the United States. 

Nasr immediately retracted and apologized for her tweet which stated: "Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah … One of Hezbollah's giants I respect a lot."

For CNN which has come under criticism for its supposedly anti-Israel coverage, Nasr's retraction came too late. By yesterday afternoon, she was fired.

Nasr tried to contextualize her tweet after the damage had been done by saying that she admired Fadlallah for his progressive attitudes to women in the Arab and Muslim world. However, that subtlety was lost in the 140 character limit of Twitter.

After just returning from a round of journalism training in West Africa, I was frequently asked about the culture of news management in North America. How do newsroom journalists react when their copy is changed and edited? Isn't management just a form of censorship? Shouldn't journalists be allowed to express their opinions?


Well, yes and no, I answered diplomatically. I said that fact-based reporting should predominate. Opinion has its uses but should play a secondary and supportive role to bearing witness to events. Editing and management are not - or should not be construed as censorship. It is supposed to be about providing a second set of eyes and ears designed to make the product better. That was my line and I was sticking to it.

Easy for you to say, said one West African journalist. Why should the bosses have opinions and we can't?

Yet journalists do have opinions. But professionalism demands that they are able to keep their opinions and their obligation to report fairly and contextually quite separate. At a time when news organizations frequently feel on the defensive about hot button issues such as the Middle East, journalists often seek other outlets for their own opinions.  It used to be around a bar after work (an early form of social medium...).Now tweets have become media pressure valves.

Twitter has its uses (see the streets of Tehran and Toronto during recent protests in both places). But a measured assessment of the complicated life of a controversial cleric can't be served in 140 characters.

Octavia Nasr has discovered that harsh fact of life a bit too late.

"The Internet is to News, What Car Horns are to Music"

So says a crusty and cynical editor in a terrific new novel about the newspaper business.

Written by Tom Rachman, "The Imperfectionists" recounts the tensions that abound in a small American owned daily paper based in Rome. Loosely modeled on a blend of the now defunct Rome Daily American and the still functioning Paris-based International Herald Tribune, the novel uses each chapter to describe the characters who run the claustrophobic newspaper that interestingly enough, Rachman never names.

The characters are archetypes but anyone who has ever worked in the newsroom can recognize them:

There's Kathleen, the tough but talented editor-in-chief, who has an open marriage at home and offended by the constant betrayals that occur both in the bedroom and the newsroom.

Arthur is the work-avoiding obit writer who writes about death then has to deal with it in his personal life as well.

Abbey is the chief financial officer who is expected to make the cuts in the staff, knowing that this can't save the paper, even as she throws journalists' lives - and her own - into turmoil.

An aging stringer in Paris tries desperately to sell a story to the paper by pressuring his son to give him a story, any story that will keep him employed.

Winston is the neophyte Cairo stringer, with no journalism experience, trying to figure out how be a foreign correspondent in a city that utterly confounds him, and with absolutely no guidance from the newsroom, only to be out-hustled by a completely unscrupulous "Roland P. Hedley" character.

And forced into a role he never wanted, is the unwilling publisher who grimly flies in from Atlanta to deliver the coup de grâce with horrifying consequences.

Rachman also delivers some witheringly accurate one-liners about journalists and journalism:

"In academia, I was always going to be a low-status primate. But journalism seemed like an alpha-male profession...


"Journalism is a bunch of dorks pretending to be alpha males."


"Newspapers are like anything else: they're pure and incorruptible and noble - as far they can afford to be. Starve them and they'll kneel in the muck with the rest of the bums. Rich papers can afford to be upstanding and, if you like, self-important. We don't have that luxury right now."


"The paper started as a terrific idea...but somehow it has ended up as blotting paper."


"...he understood this breed backwards and has foreseen how his speech would be received. Journalists were as touchy as cabaret performers and as stubborn as factory machinists. He couldn't help smiling."

Newsrooms today feel a lot tamer as financial pressures make fewer allowances for individuality. The internet plays a powerful role in defining the daily news agenda and chasing that elusive demographic has become the Holy Grail for all media.

Still it's easy to romanticize the news business as it once was. To his credit, Rachman shows that newsrooms filled with dysfunctional characters, then and now still have the same challenges - finding the right stories and making them both interesting and useful for an audience that is driven to distraction by an increasingly bewildering array of options. In "The Imperfectionists" the personal tragedies of the newsroom staff are the foreground to a business that inevitably seems bound to break their hearts.

Optimism for Guinea and for African Democracy

Less than a week after 24 candidates ran for the office of president of Guinea, the results are in.
As expected, three candidates gained most of the votes, but none has a plurality. So a run-off election will be held in a few weeks.

The good news is that the leading candidates are all committed to democracy and a free media.

Cellou Dalein Diallo came in first with 39.72%. He is a member of the Fula ethnic group. He is an economist and a former prime minister who campaigned on an anti-corruption platform.

Next - Alpha Condé  - a member of the Mandinka ethnic group. He came in with 20.67% and has a long history of being in opposition to whoever is in power. He also served some jail time and has a reputation for being a man of integrity.

In third place is Sidya Touré with 15.6%. He also served as prime minister in the 90s and was dismissed and jailed for being overly zealous in his efforts to purge the government of corruption. In the massacre of September 28 last year, he was badly beaten but still managed to call the BBC from his hospital bed to let the rest of the world know what was happening in the streets of the capital, Conakry.

The 21 remaining candidates gained anywhere from 7.75% to .07%.

This is a dramatic and positive outcome. While the supreme court must ratify the vote and the run-off election is now scheduled for July 18, all three leading candidates are committed to an open democracy and a free press. The election was held in an atmosphere of calm and the voter turnout was between 75-80%.

Interestingly, the candidate who had the support of the disgraced ex-president, Moussa Dadis Camara received 1.04% of the vote - a clear repudiation of his legacy and a rebuff to his presidential guard that tried to intimidate voters by roaring around the capital on machine gun mounted jeeps on the days before the vote.

The major media component in this election was the dozens of privately owned FM stations around the country. They collaborated to produce a single election night program which broadcast early returns. The fact that returns were aired at all - throughout the evening after the polls closed - produced a sense of confidence that in Guinea, this time, the vote would be fair.

The public broadcaster, Télévision et Radio-Diffusion Guinéen seemed unable to broadcast an election night show. Perhaps they did at the last moment, but while I was there, they were unwilling to provide any details of what they planned to do. My sense was that they were so anxious about the outcome, they were paralyzed at the prospect that they might offend the next incoming president.

In a country with a very low literacy rate and grim legacy of corruption, commercial radio remains a real - and possibly the only effective agency of democracy.

When Science Journalism Goes "Nudge Nudge Wink Wink"

The PBS program, "Need to Know" asked me to comment on three television news reports on the supposed need for a new drug that claims to enhance female sexuality.

The drug is now awaiting approval by the Food and Drug Administration. The pro-drug experts have all taken funding from the manufacturer, Boeringer-Ingleheim but that wasn't made abundantly clear in any of the reports.

The three outlets were WEWS TV in Cleveland, CBS News and CNN. (Incidentally, CNN fired its entire science unit in 2008).

In my opinion, CBS News did the best job of clear reporting but WEWS and CNN completely failed the accountability test.

Here's a podcast of that report with host Rick Karr.