The latest Dan Rather case summation from Jim Romenesko’s Media News site appears to be a little skewed. The Web site is the place journalists go to keep up with the news media business. Here’s how Romenesko sums up Friday’s events:

> “Journalism has become corporatized, trivialized and castrated” That’s what Mary Mapes writes in her defense of former colleague Dan Rather, who at 75 “still has more reportorial testosterone than the entire employee roster at Fox News. It is a tremendous injustice to journalism that he has to go to court to be treated with respect.”
> Sklar on Rather’s “all-or-nothing bid to get his reputation back” (HP)
> He’s serving notice he intends to be the real Dan Rather again (Rosen)

All of these snip-its would lead readers to believe that Rather’s on a noble mission, and that Sklar and Rosen are in full support.

But, they aren’t.

Sklar, a media critic for the left-leaning Huffington Post, says:

Is it rational? Opinion seems to be…no. Not so much, to revive the single worst mistake you ever made and try to explain it by saying that it wasn’t really yours. Whoever counseled him on that strategy was an idiot…

And Rosen, who teaches journalism at NYU, is equally dismissive:

I’m with those who think he is crazy. When your document examiners won’t back you up, and your story is about the documents, you have no story. Mary Mapes in the Huffington Post, Rather’s collaborator back then, writes as if none of this had ever happened. Her post is delusional, scary.

I’m sure Romensko wasn’t trying to distort the news, but he certainly could’ve picked a better way to paraphrase those authors’ opinions. After all, we all know that many readers don’t read further than the headline.

UPDATE: Romenesko’s selection of headline’s today seems to paint a more-balanced picture.

Saul Friedman argues that it’s time to abandon the cliche of objectivity:

Perhaps it’s time for the reporter to do the same, now that modern journalism in most places is done with the myth of objectivity. In fact, beleaguered and bewildered newspapers need to give such freedom or latitude to their reporters as a matter of survival in a journalism that has been taken over by bloggers, good and awful, right- and left-wing interest groups, entertainers who pass as reporters, the 24/7 cable news programs and the Fox News type propagandists for whoever is in power…

In his Washington Post media column Sept. 17, Howard Kurtz wondered why news organizations couldn’t take a stand in their reporting. He asked, “Or is there no realistic way to do what critics demand without becoming partisan?” Telling truth, with good, solid reporting, will be called partisan by those who disagree with the conclusions. That has always come with the terriitory. Kurtz quoted blogger Arianna Huffington:”too many in the Washingtonpress corps want to pretend they are leaving the question of ‘what is truth’ to their readers–refusing to admit there is such a thing as truth…The administration has faith that, because of the way too many in the press operate, all it has to do is sow doubt.” Thus we are forced into writing, in effect, “on the other hand,the White House says…”

… Why can’t reporters who cover their beats well and who become as expert as possible in that field–the law, courts, medicine, consumerism, politics, the Congress, even the presidency–write for their newspapers as if they’re writing a book or a magazine piece? If they are truly expert, as many reporters are, they need not depend on someone else for a meaningless quote. They should be freed from the constraints of “he said, she said” and provide narrative journalism, which is much more interesting than “on the other handism.” And it may come closer to the truth.

But, too often “truth” is just another word for “my belief.” If we start encouraging reporters to abandon even the appearances of objectivity (via trite “he said, she said” reporting), then we’ll produce a press even more susceptible to accusations of bias.

Of course, maybe that’s what we need to do anyway. With U.S. media credibility at record lows, perhaps it’s time to adopt the European model of an overtly partisan press. Then, each paper’s writers could freely report its version of “truth.”

The Chronicle of Higher Education, the trade journal for academics, editorialized rather negatively on the AAUP’s “academic freedom” statement:

In any event, on purely intellectual grounds, “Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure” would have been better advised to seek a broader preliminary review. That’s because, regardless of one’s views about the propriety of bringing political opinions to the college classroom, the report is ill-executed. It takes aim at arguments that the critics haven’t made; it caricatures other criticisms; and it insists on strange premises — the most singular of which is the idea that “truth” is whatever the members of a discipline say it is.

Besides enunciating the AAUP’s dismal view of conservative scholars, the report makes one other theme abundantly clear. If we take the corporate authorship of the report at face value, the nation’s largest association of faculty members cares far more about the freedom of professors than it does the education of students. In the AAUP’s view, the freedom of faculty members is as broad and open-ended as a circus tent. The freedom of students to be taught in classes that focus on the subject at hand, unadorned by their instructors’ opinings on President Bush, global warming, or immigration — that freedom — hardly exists.

Exactly.

OK, I really get a kick out of reading Huffington Post. Political differences aside, this is a funny paragraph:

Prior to this embarrassing week of events on the Hill, the Democratic majority has acquiesced on war funding and have fallen over themselves backpedaling as fast as their trembling legs could carry them in the face of everything President Loser and the Republicans have farted in their general direction. It’s clear that the Democrats could learn a lot from Senator Craig’s comparatively mighty balls.

Great column from Roy Peter Clark on Poynter.org. Regarding the MoveOn.org Petraeus ad, he writes:

I think what we have here is more than a failure to communicate. It’s a seduction by creativity, an insincerity mated to hyperbole to meet the demands of a snarky and polarized political culture. The headline writer should have followed the advice, almost a century old now, of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, who lectured his Cambridge students that “style … can never be … extraneous ornament … Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it — whole-heartedly — and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.”

In other words: Stop showing off. Never permit clever language to distort your message.

The MoveOn.org writer should indeed have written the phrase “General Betray Us,” showed it off to friends and colleagues, and then murdered that little darling, burying it and leaving possible exhumation for another day. I make this case as someone who leans left of center, but who thinks the characterization of the general as a traitor is as reckless and dishonest as the accusation that those who oppose the war are hurting the troops and lending aid and comfort to the enemy.

Murder your darlings. Good advice.

Great post on all the gems that can no be retrieved from the archives of the NY Times. Here’s a sample:

- Early report of Lincoln’s assassination…”The President Still Alive at Last Accounts”.

- A report on Custer’s Last Stand a couple of weeks after the occurance (I couldn’t find anything sooner). The coverage of Native Americans is notable for the racism, both thinly veiled and overt, displayed in the writing, e.g. a story from September 1872 titled The Hostile Savages.

- From the first year of publication, a listing of the principle events of 1851.

- An article about the confirmation of Einstein’s theory of gravity by a 1919 expedition led by Arthur Eddington to measure the bending of starlight by the sun during an eclipse.

- A front page report on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, including a seismograph of the quake which the Times labeled “EARTHQUAKE’S AUTOGRAPH AS IT WROTE IT 3,000 MILES AWAY”.

- The first mention of television (as a concept) in the Times, from February 1907. “The new ‘telephotograph’ invention of Dr. Arthur Korn, Professor of Physics in Munich University, is a distinct step nearer the realization of all this, and he assures us that ‘television,’ or seeing by telegraph, is merely a question of a year or two with certain improvements in apparatus.”

- First mention of Harry Potter. Before it became a phenomenon, it was just another children’s book on the fiction best-seller list.

A report during the First World War of the Germans using mustard gas. Lots more reporting about WWI is available in the Times archive.

I plan to add some other events over the weekend.

Great original reporting on the Huffington Post regarding the “questions” posed by senators at the Iraq hearings earlier this month:

About halfway through the September 11 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing with General David Petraeus and Iraq Ambassador Ryan Crocker, Senator Barbara Boxer of California got her allotted seven minutes to ask questions.

She began by informing Petraeus and Crocker “I represent 37 million people” and that she spends much of her time informing her constituents of “my own views.” She then told the witnesses that “this war is the biggest foreign policy mistake ever” and detailed why.

Boxer’s “question” went on for 1275 words, and used up her entire seven minutes. She wrapped up by saying:

“My question is — and I know I’ve run out of time, so I will have to take it in writing, but it’s a very important one. Don Rumsfeld said no more than six months would this war last. How long will it take now that we’ve spent $20 billion and we’ve trained 350,000 Iraqis in counterinsurgency? When, General Petraeus, can they take over their own defense? Call me old-fashioned — you have a country, you defend it.”

No information was elicited. Nevertheless, Boxer issued a press release headlined “SEN. BOXER ASKS GEN. PETRAEUS TO TAKE OFF ROSE-COLORED GLASSES AND FACE REALITIES IN IRAQ” and posted prominently on the front page of her website a link to a video of her “question” under the heading, “Senator Boxer Asks General Petraeus to Face Realities in Iraq.”

In theory, the purpose of a congressional hearing is to find out information to guide policy-making. In reality, as those who have suffered through such sessions know, the purpose all-too-often is for politicians to tell witness and television cameras what they think, with little or no acquisition of information.

Cross examination at congressional hearings requires extensive research and careful planning, especially when dealing with sophisticated witnesses who are skilled at remaining technically truthful while revealing little.

Some members of the Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee did press for answers, using short, tough questions.

The questioning by the four Democratic presidential candidates in the Senate — Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Chris Dodd — produced mixed results.

Perhaps the most discomfiting was Obama who, after talking for 1,181 words and using up all his time, asked a question that had already been raised more than once:

SEN. OBAMA: And if we’re there at the same place a year from now, can you please describe for me any circumstances in which you would make a different recommendation and suggest it is now time for us to start withdrawing our troops? Any scenario? Any set of benchmarks that have not been met?

AMB. CROCKER: Senator, I described for Senator Sununu a little bit ago some of the things that I think are going to be very important as we move ahead.

SEN. OBAMA: Can you repeat those? And I know I’m out of time.

The author is Thomas Edsall, a prof at the Columbia Journalism school and a former Washington Post reporter. Perhaps we’re seeing a shift to a more European model of the press — where the agenda of the newspapers are well known and accepted.

I’ve started reading the Huffington Post, by the way. Decided I needed to widen the media channels I consume.

Great reporting from Iraq from Michael Yon. Certainly wouldn’t ever read prose like this from the traditional news outlets:

Although the Iraqi Soldiers are nearly always embarrassed when an American like Captain Morris bolts around and tells them to cut out the idiocy, the most interesting dynamic is how it also engenders respect from the Iraqi Soldiers for the Americans. Before the war, our people had no street credibility in Iraq. Iraqis thought American Soldiers were soft, and that the body armor was a type of personal air conditioner. But if the Iraqis knew back then what they know now about American willingness to suffer and fight, it’s doubtful that Saddam would have taunted an angry America. Yet today, knowing our Soldiers to be actually aggressive and able killers when the switch gets flipped to ON, they also see how our people are more competent street fighters than the Iraqi Army, even without the high-tech tools. The man-to-man respect is there. And so when someone like Captain Morris points out to Iraqi Soldiers something they already know they are doing wrong (like painting the wall of someone’s house, for instance), their respect for Americans grows. Day after day, Iraqis come to Americans asking for justice, because they see countless thousands of daily actions by people like Captain Sheldon Morris. Our military is a powerful tribe.

Here’s a another bit:

I watched during the Senate hearings on 11 September 07 as some Senators attempted to corner General Petraeus, insinuating that the war in Iraq was a distraction from the fight against al Qaeda. It was clearly that during the initial invasion, but not today. These photos were taken at the center of what al Qaeda claimed to be their worldwide headquarters. Listening to some of the Senators’ questions, the true magnitude of the gulf between what is happening in Iraq and what people in America think is happening in Iraq became apparent. Some Senators clearly had been doing their homework and were asking smart questions—if negative at times—but others seemed completely ignorant of the ground situation here, which adds nothing meaningful to the debate.

I guess it all depends on whose perception of events you choose to believe. Yon should get some credit for his accounts, since he’s in Iraq and all.

According to this press release, the Wall Street Journal may follow the NY Times’ recent move to stop charging for its content:

Murdoch gave his strongest statements to date the WSJ.com will go free following the purchase. He says they haven’t made up their mind completely, but that the company doesn’t feel it would hurt subscription revenues and that any lost revenue would be more than made up from increased readership and search engine traffic.

That’ll be awesome.

Arggh! It’s Sept. 19 — International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Here are some tips on talking like a pirate from real pirates: