The escape of a New York Times reporter from seven months of captivity in Pakistan recalls the shock of Daniel Pearl's beheading there seven years ago and prompts second thoughts about the uses of secrecy in a tell-all media age.
Unlike Pearl's captors, the kidnappers of David Rohde did not release videos of their work, and his family and employers chose to maintain secrecy in trying to arrange his release.
“From the early days of this ordeal," says Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, "the prevailing view among David’s family, experts in kidnapping cases, officials of several government and others we consulted was that going public could increase the danger to David and the other hostages. The kidnappers initially said as much. We decided to respect that advice.”
Other news organizations went along, and after climbing over a wall with an Afghani reporter who had been captured with him, Rohde is on his way back to his family, a rare happy ending in a time when political murder is a public act, and journalists are both the targets and, unwillingly or not, accomplices in the spectacle.
Add that as a postscript to the debate on "the public's right to know" everything in the Age of Transparency.
Showing posts with label journalism.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label journalism.. Show all posts
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Friday, February 20, 2009
McCain's Love Life, Case Closed
Vicki Iseman and the right to privacy win. The New York Times and careless reporting lose. That's the score on the convoluted settlement today of a libel suit over an article suggesting that the Washington lobbyist was having affair with John McCain.
A year ago, a Times examination of the candidate's history with lobbyists, began:
"Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.
"A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself--instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him..."
This assertion raised a howl at the time, even leading the Times' Public Editor to conclude that "if you cannot provide readers with some independent evidence, I think it is wrong to report the suppositions or concerns of anonymous aides about whether the boss is getting into the wrong bed."
In today's settlement of Iseman's suit, the Times publishes a curt editor's note that it "did not intend to conclude that Ms. Iseman had engaged in a romantic affair with Senator McCain or an unethical relationship on behalf of her clients in breach of the public trust."
Far from a retraction, this is supplemented with a piece by Ms. Iseman's lawyers arguing that their client "is not a government or public official, and in our view, not even a public figure. Had this case proceeded to trial, the judicial determination of whether she is entitled to the protections afforded a private citizen would have been the subject of a ferocious, pivotal battle...That judicial contest has now been concluded in this instance, but the issue deserves ongoing scrutiny, certainly in our schools of law and journalism, but also in the arena of public debate.
"Indeed, the essential quality of our public discourse, even the very character of our national culture, will be heavily influenced by why, where, and how we draw this line."
In this case, the Times gets off without a financial penalty or even an outright apology, but the settlement strikes a blow against defining journalistic deviancy down.
A year ago, a Times examination of the candidate's history with lobbyists, began:
"Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.
"A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself--instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him..."
This assertion raised a howl at the time, even leading the Times' Public Editor to conclude that "if you cannot provide readers with some independent evidence, I think it is wrong to report the suppositions or concerns of anonymous aides about whether the boss is getting into the wrong bed."
In today's settlement of Iseman's suit, the Times publishes a curt editor's note that it "did not intend to conclude that Ms. Iseman had engaged in a romantic affair with Senator McCain or an unethical relationship on behalf of her clients in breach of the public trust."
Far from a retraction, this is supplemented with a piece by Ms. Iseman's lawyers arguing that their client "is not a government or public official, and in our view, not even a public figure. Had this case proceeded to trial, the judicial determination of whether she is entitled to the protections afforded a private citizen would have been the subject of a ferocious, pivotal battle...That judicial contest has now been concluded in this instance, but the issue deserves ongoing scrutiny, certainly in our schools of law and journalism, but also in the arena of public debate.
"Indeed, the essential quality of our public discourse, even the very character of our national culture, will be heavily influenced by why, where, and how we draw this line."
In this case, the Times gets off without a financial penalty or even an outright apology, but the settlement strikes a blow against defining journalistic deviancy down.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
A Dip in 50-Year-Old Dung
The major newspaper in a city where government is struggling to save the American economy today treats us to a long takeout on rumors about the sexual preferences of Jack Valenti, a minor political figure half a century ago.
The Washington Post headline reveals "Valenti's Sexuality Was Topic For FBI: Under Pressure, LBJ Let Hoover's Agents Investigate Top Aide" and is based on "Previously confidential FBI files."
Why so much in such fulsome detail? The Post sayeth not, offering no relevance or connection to current events while reporting on dirt amassed by J. Edgar Hoover's minions about Lyndon Johnson's aide who went on to become the chief flack for the movie industry as president of the Motion Picture Association of America.
Hoover, who obsessively documented the sexual doings of political figures, no doubt had dossiers on thousands of them, using the excuse of "national security" to compile material that would blackmail presidents of both parties into keeping him in office.
Today's "news" is a sour reminder of those bad old days and brings back memories of the good-natured but politically unimportant Valenti, who died two years ago.
I knew him in passing as affable man of self-deprecating charm. At a social gathering, while selecting the movie star to play oneself in a biopic, the vertically challenged, far-from-handsome Valenti sighed, "I guess they'd have to get Mickey Rooney to play me."
Media critics may want the Washington Post to explain the news value of rooting around in old FBI files to report rumors about a man like that on a subject nobody considers scandalous in a time when government has serious work to do.
The Washington Post headline reveals "Valenti's Sexuality Was Topic For FBI: Under Pressure, LBJ Let Hoover's Agents Investigate Top Aide" and is based on "Previously confidential FBI files."
Why so much in such fulsome detail? The Post sayeth not, offering no relevance or connection to current events while reporting on dirt amassed by J. Edgar Hoover's minions about Lyndon Johnson's aide who went on to become the chief flack for the movie industry as president of the Motion Picture Association of America.
Hoover, who obsessively documented the sexual doings of political figures, no doubt had dossiers on thousands of them, using the excuse of "national security" to compile material that would blackmail presidents of both parties into keeping him in office.
Today's "news" is a sour reminder of those bad old days and brings back memories of the good-natured but politically unimportant Valenti, who died two years ago.
I knew him in passing as affable man of self-deprecating charm. At a social gathering, while selecting the movie star to play oneself in a biopic, the vertically challenged, far-from-handsome Valenti sighed, "I guess they'd have to get Mickey Rooney to play me."
Media critics may want the Washington Post to explain the news value of rooting around in old FBI files to report rumors about a man like that on a subject nobody considers scandalous in a time when government has serious work to do.
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
An Ugly Portrait of McCain
John McCain is stumping the country, asking "Who is the real Sen. Obama?" But the shoe may be on the other foot.
In a profile that summons up the hidden painting in "The Picture of Dorian Gray," Rolling Stone offers a history of John Sidney McCain that places the familiar heroic figure with a lifetime of service to his country in a light that makes even a reader opposed to his candidacy cringe.
Some of the story has been told before, most notably in the New York Times, but the unrelenting depiction of McCain as a reckless, spoiled Navy brat who was a selfish opportunist at every stage of his life, even during captivity in Vietnam, is so devastating that only its meticulous journalism makes it impossible to dismiss as character assassination in the last weeks of a campaign.
There are few anonymous sources in this narrative of names, dates, details and direct quotes from apparently reputable witnesses to McCain's life and career.
His supporters will predictably howl in protest, but if even half of what this indictment relates is true, John McCain makes George W. Bush look like a Horatio Alger hero who pulled himself up by his bootstraps.
The fair-minded can read and judge for themselves.
In a profile that summons up the hidden painting in "The Picture of Dorian Gray," Rolling Stone offers a history of John Sidney McCain that places the familiar heroic figure with a lifetime of service to his country in a light that makes even a reader opposed to his candidacy cringe.
Some of the story has been told before, most notably in the New York Times, but the unrelenting depiction of McCain as a reckless, spoiled Navy brat who was a selfish opportunist at every stage of his life, even during captivity in Vietnam, is so devastating that only its meticulous journalism makes it impossible to dismiss as character assassination in the last weeks of a campaign.
There are few anonymous sources in this narrative of names, dates, details and direct quotes from apparently reputable witnesses to McCain's life and career.
His supporters will predictably howl in protest, but if even half of what this indictment relates is true, John McCain makes George W. Bush look like a Horatio Alger hero who pulled himself up by his bootstraps.
The fair-minded can read and judge for themselves.
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