An "Orgy of Pro-Police Coverage"

That's how some journalists are describing it.

The death of a Toronto policeman on January 12th in the line of duty has unleashed a tsunami of pro-police reporting by the Toronto media.

Sgt. Russell Ryan and Family

Sgt. Russell Ryan was run over and killed while trying to stop a man driving a stolen snowplow that allegedly hit several vehicles, at least one building and narrowly avoided striking pedestrians during a two-hour-long rampage in downtown Toronto. He was young, handsome hockey playing family man who fit the image of the fallen, heroic cop perfectly.

The last Toronto Police officer to be killed in the line of duty was Constable Laura Ellis in 2002. Her police car was hit by another vehicle as she and her partner responded to a break-and-enter call.

Richard Kachkar, 44, has been charged with first-degree murder. He faces two other charges of attempted murder in relation to the erratic manner in which the truck was driven. He will be arraigned in court this Friday. He has had some mental health issues and he also fits the image of the villain rather well.

Those are the basic facts in the case.

The response from law enforcement officials was astonishing as 11,000 uniformed officers marched silently through the streets of Toronto to honor their fallen comrade in a public funeral held at the Toronto convention center yesterday.

More astonishing was the wall-to-wall coverage of the Toronto media which acted more as police press agents than as journalists. Television in particular seemed unable to provide anything more than a constant stream of pro-police clichés.

CBC TV's Saturday night hockey broadcast once again allowed commentator Don Cherry to assume the role of "mourner-in-chief" while unleashing his usual "man-of-the-people" torrent of pro-police sentiments.

The coverage was more pandering to a police force that has been under attack for their violation of civil rights during last summer's G20 summit in Toronto. The police must have known that their friends in the media would come to a resuscitation of their tattered reputation. And the media did not disappoint.

At a time when the media relies more than ever on the government as a source of information (weather, traffic and crime), it was payback time.

The police must be delighted with the coverage.

Did Journalism Contribute to the Tucson Rampage?

There have been a number of discussions as to whether free speech in America has become so deformed that a free exchange of views is now considered an incitement to violence.

Specifically, Fox News has been named by liberal media sources as being largely to blame for creating an environment where disturbed people like Jared Lee Loughner can get an automatic weapon and murder six people.

Yet many of the many of the more notorious assassins have not been particularly motivated by politics.

Lynette "Squeaky" Fromm and Sara Jane Moore's attempt on President Gerald Ford, Arthur Bremer's shooting of Governor George Wallace and John Hinckley's attack on President Ronald Reagan were all products of diseased minds and not politically motivated.

Other American assassins were more politically driven: John Wilkes Booth (President Lincoln), James Earl Ray (M.L. King) and Sirhan Sirhan (Robert Kennedy), but there is little evidence that they were driven to commit their crimes because of newspapers they read or newscasts they watched.

Foreign assassins, on the other hand, seem more eager than Americans to take their extreme politics to violent ends: Thenmuli Rajaratnam (Rajiv Gandhi), Thomas McMahon (Lord Mountbatten), Khalid Islambuli (Anwar Sadat) and Yigal Amir (Yitzhak Rabin) come to mind.

The recent events in Tucson have unleashed a flurry of finger pointing by the chattering classes, eager to find a simple(r) explanation for this horrible event.

If journalism is to blame because of the harsh tone of political debate, the implication is that Americans are too naive and easily manipulated by the ideas on talk radio and Fox News. This seems too pat an explanation and it's one that unfortunately, Canadians particularly, love to profess.

In my experience, Americans are not a people susceptible to brainwashing from either extreme. They are passionate about ideas - even those that may in fact be ultimately damaging to American society. An obsession and conflation of weapons, money and free speech can result in expressions of mass murder not found in other countries. And US media can contribute to that confusion. Moreover, if there is a weakness in journalism (and not just in American journalism), it is that it tends to be a form of emotional and informational comfort food.

But that is different from blaming the media for the acts of one or more insane persons. The issue is far more complicated. I believe it has to do with the issues of education and health care - two beleaguered aspects of American life that require further exploration and investigation.

Loughner appears to have been delusional for some time. Despite the warnings, his odd behavior in his junior college was never dealt with, even though he frightened many of his fellow students and even some of his teachers. Similar concerns were voiced at Virginia Tech before Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people. Both Cho and Loughner slipped through whatever mental health services might have been available at their respective colleges.

There are exceptions, I'm sure, but in my experience at large news and educational organizations there is a very strong managerial disinclination to deal with individuals who exhibit signs of mental illness. Some of this has to do with the propensity of Americans to sue each other because government too often fails to create institutions that the private sector can't or won't support.

Journalism may have many faults these days. And Fox News should be ashamed of putting the ideas and the faces of fools on television. Now journalism has an obligation step forward to explain why this happened. But as an enabler of mental illness, the media can't be blamed this time around. That blame lies elsewhere.

WikiLeaks Tensions In US Gov't Funded Media

 

Stars and Stripes is owned and published by the US Defense Department under authority of Congress, but the newspaper, aimed primarily at a military audience overseas, is by law editorially independent.

The First Amendment protections for Stars and Stripes include an independent ombudsman whose primary responsibility is to ward off any efforts at government “news management or censorship” in the news organization’s daily print editions and Web site.

Stars and Stripes has been around for awhile: it was founded by Union soldiers stationed in Missouri during the American Civil War, so its journalistic traditions and independence go back a considerable way.

Mark Prendergast, a member of ONO, is the current Stars and Stripes ombudsman, a part-time position with a three-year, non-renewable term. He recently found himself in an unexpected conflict with the editors over a column he wrote about the government response to the WikiLeaks disclosures.

WikiLeaks is an independent group of freelancers whose purpose is to disseminate hitherto secret information about US policy by sharing it with a few prominent news outlets and by putting the information on its website.

The effect of these leaks has been highly controversial, and even damaging to US interests, and the Obama administration has been vigorous in trying to minimize the damaging effects of the leaks.

Prendergast wrote about one aspect – new rules that barred Stars and Stripes journalists from even looking at classified material that WikiLeaks had put into the public domain. He posted his column on his stripes.com blog page, but when he also submitted it for publication, was told that senior management was holding it back “subject to editing,” contrary to all past practice.

After protests and negotiations, Prendergast reached an agreement with the publisher affirming that the ombudsman operates without managerial or editorial oversight, and the column was published.

Meanwhile, thanks in part to the publicity generated by the online version of the column, the Pentagon withdrew the reporting restraints, though a reissuance of some form is expected.

Kudos to Mark for keeping Stars and Stripes true to its mission and to its readers.

But Stars and Stripes isn't the only quasi-governmental media organization to feel pressure in the wake of the WikiLeaks disclosures.

The Voice of America (VOA) is a Congressionally funded broadcaster that has had its share of controversy about whether it succumbs to government pressure, or whether it is an independent source of information that gives a government perspective as part of its objective approach to the news.

VOA does not have an ombudsman, but recent events show that it might benefit from having one.

Recently a memo to all staff was sent out from  VOA's Deputy General Counsel, Paul Kollmer-Dorsey,  warning that any WikiLeaks material found on any VOA computer might subject the user to prosecution. The memo further stated that all reporting on WikiLeaks had to be approved in advance by senior VOA management.

The memo states in part that "(VOA) employees or contractors shall not access classified material unless a favorable determination of the person's eligibility for access has been made by the... Office of Security, the person has signed an approved non-disclosure agreement, the person has a need to know the information, and the person has received contemporaneous training on the proper safeguarding of classified information and on the criminal, civil, and administrative sanctions that may be imposed on an individual who fails to protect classified information from unauthorized disclosure."

While the VOA has a right to determine who should have access to classified information and how it might be disseminated, VOA seems concerned with the impact of the WikiLeaks disclosures on the administration, rather than on informing its listeners and viewers. 

VOA might look to Stars and Stripes as a more effective and credible way to proceed in handling this story.

What the Firing of NPR's News VP Means for Public Broadcasting

Ellen Weiss

Take it from me: being a news manager is not a popularity contest - at least not that can be easily won.

Ellen Weiss was forced out of NPR today. The apparent reason was that she, more than anyone else at NPR, mishandled the firing of the outspoken commentator, Juan Williams.

While employed by NPR, Williams also did double-duty as a commentator on Fox News. That was a problem for NPR: he would opine on Fox, in Fox-like terms which were increasingly unacceptable to NPR management. Media watchdogs would criticize him and NPR for allowing this, and NPR listeners (who probably didn't watch Fox) would complain to NPR and to their local public radio station.

The latest gaffe occurred when Williams opined on how he gets nervous whenever he sees people "in Muslim garb" getting on a plane.

That was the last straw for NPR and he was fired.

When the deed was done, it was done badly (apparently, he was not fired in a face-to-face meeting but over the phone). Worse yet from NPR's perspective, it was not done quietly (if these media messes can ever be done well). Williams' firing got a lot of ink and airtime, and not just in conservative media.

NPR quickly became a focused lightning rod for conservatives' political discontent with the media in general and with public broadcasting in particular. Public radio stations around the country objected to the firing because of the timing -  it happened just as the stations were in the midst of their fall fundraising campaigns and just before the recent midterm elections.

NPR President Vivian Schiller seemed to compound the offense by stating publicly that Williams' feelings about people in Muslim garb should be between him and his psychiatrist.

The financial impact on the NPR stations was minimal (hardly any money was lost as a result), but the reputational pounding was intense (public broadcasters, unlike their commercial cousins, bruise easily). The NPR Board (made up mostly of station managers)

called for an independent inquiry into how and why Williams was fired.

The report put most of the blame on Weiss and she was forced out today. Schiller was also found to have mishandled the Williams Affair and she was denied her annual bonus.

Those are the painful personal consequences - more so for Weiss who is out after almost 25 years at NPR. Weiss (who I consider to be a friend) leaves with a lot of great journalistic instincts, a deep knowledge of the radio news culture and an institutional memory that appears simply irreplaceable. She made enemies inside NPR. It's painful but true - no one in management is ever irreplaceable.

There are also important long term implications for NPR. NPR must now make choices that will determine whether NPR stays as a unique American institution, or whether it becomes something less visible on the ever-widening digital horizon.

Even as it announced Weiss' firing, the NPR Board released a statement which calls in part, for the following measures to be implemented:

 ·        ... review and update NPR’s current Ethics Code (the “Code”).

·        Develop policies and procedures to ensure consistent application of and training on the Code to all employees and contractors.

·        Review and update policies/training with respect to the role of NPR journalists appearing on other media outlets to ensure that they understand the applicability of the Ethics Code to their work and to facilitate equitable and consistent application of the Code.

·        Review and define the roles of NPR journalists (including news analysts) to address a changing news environment in which such individuals have a myriad of outlets and new platforms for their talent, balancing the opportunities presented by such outlets and platforms with the potential for conflicts of interest that may compromise NPR’s mission.

·        Ensure that its practices encourage a broad range of viewpoints to assist its decision-making, support its mission, and reflect the diversity of its national audiences.  The Human Resources Committee of the Board is working in conjunction with key members of NPR management on this issue.
 

This may be a good way to begin to emerge from this mess. Many media organizations have ethics codes which are often ignored until its too late. Having a code that is an integral part of any news organization may not guarantee that management and staff always do the right thing, but it's a good start. How to make the ethics code a living document is the challenge facing NPR.

There is a further dilemma: 

Juan Williams represented an aspect of NPR that was frequently ignored: can opinion be part of NPR? How much opinion can a public broadcaster tolerate? Other NPR personalities have been known to say similarly outrageous things, but they seem able to get away with it. NPR needs to address this inconsistency and the perception of unfairness that when an African-American journalist says these things, he is punished, but white NPR journalists are not.

Second, in a media environment where opinion counts for more than it once did, how does NPR stay true to its values while not abandoning the digital battlefield?

Third, can NPR balance the unique and historic qualities of public radio journalism with the constant pressures of new media forms where traditional journalistic practices seem less valued?

NPR needs to figure out how to answer these questions and to do it in a way that makes sense to its own sense of itself as a Washington based national institution, and for the remarkable local station culture that is the basis for NPR's existence.

If answers can't be found, then the best values that both Williams and Weiss brought to public radio will be lost, and the issue that caused both of them to be fired will not go away anytime soon. 

The Myth of the Depressed Newsroom Journalists

It's a commonly held assumption by people who work for media organizations that life in the newsroom is lousy and likely only to get worse. That's because journalists are essentially guarded optimists and like to be perceived as crusty and curmudgeonly while inside they are really hopeful that things will get better.

Of course, nostalgia being what it is (or was), we look back on our times in newsrooms with a certain rosy hue attached. A few of us see only the bad times, but most journalists look back and admit (at least to themselves) that it wasn't so bad.

I point this obvious quality out because I was recently reminded of it by a facebook page entitled "Former Nippers." 

A "Nipper" is someone who works or who once was employed by NPR (Get it? NPR? "Nipper?").

Some wit even managed to "borrow" a large plaster statue of the RCA mascot known as Nipper and placed it at the entrance to the NPR elevators. Employees to and from work would festoon Nipper with vacation souvenirs, political signs, mardi gras beads, hats and other tshotschkes that abound in any newsroom.

The "Former Nippers" facebook site is remarkable. Set up by Art Silverman, a still gainfully employed Nipper, it's for the benefit of the many who once worked at NPR over the years as NPR marks its 40th anniversary in 2011.

Hundreds of little reminiscences have been sent in. They aren't exactly generated by NPR corporate communications, but it makes for a brilliant presentation of what NPR was and still is.

They included photos of long ago assignments in faraway places, off-campus social gatherings, tours of a then-new building, young and fresh faced reporters, producers and hosts who have created indelible personal and audio memories and not a few shared jokes, experiences and a couple of regrets about friends and colleagues no longer alive. As they might say on SNL: "Good times."

I was even more struck by the still vital bonding going on. It would be hard to imagine a facebook group of "Former CBS-ers." Or "Former CBC-ers." Not these days.

Of course, no collection of memories is complete without the foibles of management. According to one "Former Nipper", there was one manager actually tried to introduce a dress code at NPR. Someone still has a copy of the memo. Hilarity ensued.

Other managers tried to overcome the deep tribal feelings of the newsroom culture by bringing in the latest consultants who tried to impose (inflict?) a new and different set of values. It never worked because it, in my opinion, was never made clear why it was necessary. At what was so wrong with the tribal newsroom culture anyway?

All that remains of one futile attempt to change the culture is the mocking memory of a consultant's "Bill Cosby" sweater of many colors and his efforts to channel the spirit of Leonardo Da Vinci (these were pre-Dan Brown days...).

It might have been helpful to tell management that the newsroom culture embraces skepticism as its primary value. That might have saved a lot of money and aggravation. But it makes for some great stories years later.

Still NPR management must have done something right, if the still-living spirit of the "Former Nippers" is any indication.

Happy new year.