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Putting the record straight - even if belatedly

Thursday, August 31, 2006

Stop the presses! New York’s "Old Gray Lady" is to do something about her credibility problems.

Sorry if I sound weary, skeptical or sarcastic, but it’s been long known to New York Times executives, as much as to readers, that the paper’s credibility ratings needed improvement - they even set up a so-called “Credibility Group” of senior editors to work up a plan for tackling the issue.

They made some specific recommendations for reform - well over a year ago.

CHECK FOR MISSING TEXT

A delay of substantially more than a year (which is what critics including the Times’ own readers’ representative, Public Editor Barney Calame suspected) would mean the paper's first opportunity to publish the story had come slam-bang in the run-up to the Bush vs Kerry presidential election, and could - just could - have influenced the outcome significantly.

As tension has risen between the two Times figures, Keller has finally admitted to Calame that “the climactic discussion about whether to publish was right on the eve of the election”. And when asked why the paper had originally said the decision was taken merely “a year” before publication - that is in December 2004, after the election - Keller said that this was “probably inelegant wording” and, further, that “I don’t know what was in my head at the time.” Thus spake the Executive Editor of the journal of record.

Anyway, regarding the paper’s broader - and officially acknowledged - credibility difficulties … one recommendation from the high level Credibility Group way back, you’ll recall, in May 2005 was that the paper should more clearly demonstrate what in its columns is fact and what is commentary. “No bad thing!” - many readers would chorus, I am sure.

So the answer is finally coming – in the shape of some visual re-design. It comes from another committee, of course, this time the "News/Opinion Divide Committee" - and Times staff will be shown on Friday, September 8 some new typographic and lay-out styles.

These will essentially attach bold, capitalized and fully centered labels like NEWS ANALYSIS and WHITE HOUSE MEMO to the top of commentary pieces, and the text of such pieces will be set in unjustified “ragged right” columns, instead of being hard-edged with parallel "tramlines" in the most traditional newspaper fashion. Thus the paper intends to distinguish factual reporting from what Keller calls, no doubt trying this time for more elegant wording, “material that is not straight-ahead news stories”.

Introduction of these changes to the public is planned, with more of that Kellerian precision, for “later in September”.

THE COMBINED LAW ENFORCEMENT and media debacle of John Mark Karr’s extradition and quickly-dropped prosecution for murdering JonBenet Ramsey, brought into the glaring light University of Colorado journalism professor, Michael Tracey.

An academic who turned documentary-maker (about the Ramseys), it was Tracey of course who conducted a lengthy email and phone dialogue with Karr until shortly before his arrest. He was instrumental in the Boulder police choosing to target Karr in the first place, but he has - to his credit - maintained a scrupulous silence since being “outed” and Karr being seized in Thailand.

This helpful police source comes, like me, from Britain, where press discussion of imminent trials, even imminent arrests, is severely limited compared with American media practice. (The distinction was well-illustrated this week by the New York Times’ exhaustive rehearsal of evidence against the British-born Muslims accused of plotting transatlantic airliner explosions. The entire front page story was removed from the Times-owned International Herald Tribune which circulates, though in small numbers, in Britain. Management even tried, using geo-targeting techniques, to block the article from web-users in the United Kingdom.)

While still in England and working with a media think-tank, Tracey was brought in to study the network TV news analysis program where I was a producer and co-host. Our show had a reputation for trying to radically change the agenda of TV news, making it less tabloid, and less reliant on the purely visual dimension of video. After his time there Tracey wrote a book hailing us as valiant information warriors battling “In the Culture of the Eye”, as his title described it. It was flattering, of course. But - in terms of its vision of television’s handling of news being fundamentally overturned - dead wrong.

Some seasoned and maybe unkind members of our editorial team concluded that Tracey was very impressionable.

WHEN HE WAS FORCED TO RESIGN from the Corporation of Public Broadcasting last November, I wrote that Kenneth Tomlinson (above right), the close associate of Karl Rove whom the Bush Adminstration appointed to more than one top media position, was a fool. The report of the Corporation's Inspector General into his actions as a boardmember and chairman, which effectively pushed him out of office, made me acknowledge that he was a law-breaker. (The law being the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967.)

Now he’s been officially branded a cheat. Another Inspector General, this time at the State Department, has compiled a report about his behavior while Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the body supervising that sector of US “public diplomacy” which beams radio programming out to 100 million listeners around the world in 61 languages. Tomlinson has retained his BBG position despite the CPB fracas, and his re-nomination to a fresh term is currently being considered by the Senate.

State’s Inspector General is now reporting that Tomlinson filed for compensation as a Board member citing a number of days worked there that was in excess of what he was legally allowed. He also, says the official report, put a friend onto the Board’s payroll, and conducted personal business from the Board’s offices - buying and selling thoroughbred horses in his role as owner of Sandy Bayou Stables in Middleburg, Virginia.