dear Mr. Hoyt. . .

Mr. Clark Hoyt
Public Editor
The New York Times
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018

public@nytimes.com

Dear Mr. Hoyt,

It has now been nine days since reporters at ABC News told us of “dozens of top-secret talks and meetings” held in the White House by senior Bush Administration officials to discuss in fine detail the interrogation techniques to be used on so-called “high value al Qaeda suspects,” and it has been one week since ABC told us that President Bush knew about these meetings and approved of the result—namely, the torture of certain detainees by CIA interrogators.

I make note of this timeline because, as of this writing, I am still waiting for the New York Times to report on these revelations.

At first I thought I had just missed the story. Surely the paper of record finds it newsworthy that the Vice President of the United States, The Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, and the National Security Advisor (who is now, herself, Secretary of State) all gathered in the people’s house and there agreed to violate domestic law and international treaties—not to mention some of the principles most Americans consider central to what we are as a nation. Surely the Times thinks it noteworthy that a President that has repeatedly told your reporters and the American people that “we don’t torture” has now cavalierly admitted that we do, and did even while he claimed the contrary. Surely your paper, which only days earlier had reported on how one Justice Department Attorney had drafted a memo theoretically legitimizing torture for his bosses, came to realize with the reporting by ABC that the very highest ranking officials of the executive branch approved of torture and designed methods even before they obtained their legal “cover.”

Surely the New York Times could not have decided that none of this was worthy of some independent reporting or at least some prime space on their news pages.

At least that is what I thought.

But after a week of watchful waiting, it seems, I surely thought wrong.

A Times search of the terms “George Bush,” “George W. Bush,” and/or “President Bush” narrowed by “torture” turns up no entries after your April 2 news piece and April 4 editorial on the Yoo memorandum. Broadening the search to “Bush” and “interrogation” only adds an AP wire story about a DoJ probe of whether the advice in the March 2003 memo was even legal.

Honestly, this makes absolutely no sense to me. I cannot think of any rationale that would explain why the Times has chosen to ignore a story about a sitting President and his top officials discussing, designing, and approving methods by which to torture other human beings—no matter whether they are “high value suspects” or some other type of captive—especially when you have President Bush confirming on the record that these torture meetings took place. That is why I am now writing to you.

I would greatly appreciate an explanation from your point of view, and, of course, from the viewpoint of the editors in charge of delineating what are, to my mind, such skewed priorities.

I appreciate your attention, and look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

[withheld]
New York City

This is the letter I sent this morning to New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt. While others have rightfully advocated for letters to the editor in order to protest what is a shameful silence by the establishment media in light of such grave revelations, I decided that it might also do us well to contact public editors, ombudsmen, and the like, since they are supposed to be our most direct link when we have questions about or problems with the choices made by the news organizations. They are also often tasked with investigating the errors and oversights of the reporters and editors.

I encourage all reading this to send their own questions to Clark Hoyt, and to similarly tasked people at other newspapers and television news divisions. If you have—and if you have had any response—please let me know in the comments section.

Thanks.


(cross-posted on capitoilette, The Seminal, and Daily Kos)

what cold did you come in from, anyway?

Well, I have something of a cold, but that didn’t stop me from going on a bit about ABC’s "exclusive" with John Kiriakou, the spy they say is now “coming in from the cold.”

Check it out on capitoilette.

Terry talks—we listen

Imagine my surprise when I discovered late yesterday that my Tuesday post got a comment—any comment. But, really, imagine my surprise when I saw that said comment was from the named subject of said post:

Terry Moran said...

Thanks for the critique, and thanks for watching. But FYI--in my original lead-in into the piece, I did indeed say "leaned Democrats." It is a term of art in polling, and I was worried about using it precisely because some people might not grasp it. I see i was correct. Thanks again, Terry Moran.

First off, as I replied in the comments, I stand corrected. I have no reason to believe that Mr. Moran would take the time to write in if the broadcast version said differently—even if I don’t have a tape, a tape of the Monday show does exist—so, I’ll concede that I heard Terry wrong.

Second, let me thank Terry Moran for setting the record straight, for taking the time to read my post, and for taking the time to leave a comment. In case you readers have not observed this in the past, I encourage dialogue and appreciate the feedback.

But, allow me now, knowing that there is a small chance that Mr. Moran will be looking in again, to continue.

I might have misheard Terry on Monday, but that I did might be more a testament to my expectations than to my poor hearing. Moran did not say “you Democrats,” but I was primed to hear it. I was primed to misinterpret the fuzzy word, to make the cognitive leap, to, I’m afraid, assume that the message that left this media mouthpiece’s mouth was one that labeled Democrats as “other,” because that is the message I have heard so many times from Terry Moran.

Of course, Terry is not so crass or overtly unprofessional as to blurt out “Democrats suck! Especially you liberal ones!” But, in so many words, in the shape of a question, in the misinterpretation or misrepresentation of a left-leaning argument, in the little impromptu summations Moran often adds at the end of an interview or tape piece, I hear a bias that favors the political right (as opposed to left, not wrong, naturally), and favors the sensational headline over the more subtle or sensitive story. I have borne witness to this bias since Moran breathlessly reported from in front of the Texas Statehouse on an early November night back in the year 2000. I really had no ideas about Terry before that night, I barely knew who he was, but I knew instantly how he felt and where he stood.

And, in some respects, that’s OK. Members of the media, establishment or otherwise, are allowed to have opinions. The problem comes with the assumption that they keep those opinions to themselves—with the assumption that they are “unbiased.”

That is not to say that all journalism is somehow polluted by bias. There is a difference between a journalist and a pundit, a difference between reporting and interpreting, and a difference between asking hard questions and providing easy answers—the problem comes when establishment outlets allow the distinctions to blur.

Further, Terry’s gracious comment frames the problem as one of misunderstanding his word, but fails to address the larger point, namely, that he and his ABC colleagues chose to ignore the content of Al Gore’s book to instead focus on (what has been, and increasingly becomes more so) a non-issue.

Sure, some of us like Al Gore. We like what he has to say about the assault on reason, or about the environment, or about the war in Iraq (some of us also remember and dislike how he botched his 2000 presidential campaign), but because we are interested in his ideas, doesn’t mean that we are waiting with bated breath for our mystical leader to announce that he will lead us back to the White House. When he decides to join the race, if he decides to join the race, then I will evaluate and revisit my allegiances. Until then, well, there is no shortage of interesting candidates for us Democrats (I’m a blogger, I can do that) to observe, asses, and support. (Compared to what Republicans have—and what they are waiting for, too—it’s an embarrassment of riches.)

I feel pretty safe in saying that’s how most of “us Democrats” see things. I feel safe because of Moran’s own cited statistic—those “17% of leaned Democrats” that pine for a Gore candidacy. Fewer than one in five leaners is hardly a groundswell.

And that brings me to Terry’s Parthian shot—his “term of art” that he feels we did not, and cannot, grasp. I may not have heard it, but, as my update to my post makes very clear, once I heard it, I grasped it just fine.

I have been working with “leaned” respondents for over a decade. I am, after all, not just a blogger, I am also a strategic consultant. I know all the polling tricks to tease out the bias behind the assertion, to discern preference, to attempt to limn the consumer or voter. I know how to push a respondent, and how to “push” a poll, and I usually work overtime to gracefully do the former, and avoid doing the latter.

Pushing an “undecided” or a DK/NR (don’t know/no response) to weigh in on a question is a useful tool, but it is only a tool—one of many available to me in the drafting of the polling instrument and the interpretation of the data. I know that because of what I do, and others might know it, too. But if Terry Moran thinks this “term of art” (AKA “lingo” or “insider-speak”) is too obscure for the typical viewer, then why did he use it? Isn’t his job to communicate and educate, rather than impress and/or confuse his audience?

Again, I appreciate the correction. But alas, to the broader point and the parting broadside, I’m afraid I see that Mr. Moran was not correct at all.

Thanks again.

Terry outs himself—"only on Nightline"

I wish I had it on tape. I wish ABC would get with the 21st century and actually make a real webcast of an entire Nightline available instead of pawning off the painfully hipified “Nightline Webcast” as their e-presence.

But, I don’t, and they don’t, so, unless you TiVo Terry, Cynthia, and Martin (you poor, poor soul), you are going to have to take my word on this one.

On Monday night’s edition of Nightline, Terry Moran introduced an interview with Assault on Reason author (and, oh yeah, former Vice President) Al Gore by—well, not by talking about what’s in the new book, but by talking about what ABC had been pushing since Good Morning America, namely (yawn), will Gore run for president.

Of course, this is exactly the sort of thing that Gore complains about in his book. Rather than addressing a real issue at hand, establishment media news divisions focus on speculation, celebrity, and fluff. They search for sizzle devoid of steak, afraid that the vast nation of media eaters has gone strictly vegetarian.

The tabloidization of TV news, that self-fulfilling prophesy, was made infuriatingly clear on ABC’s Good Morning America. There, producers plastered a “Will he run?” banner across the bottom of the live interview while a tedious Diane Sawyer time and again said something like: I will get to the other stuff, but when are you going to tell us whether you are running for president?

It was utterly awful, but that awfulness, at least, you can watch, both on the ABC site, and over at Think Progress.

Nightline’s piece, however, is e-MIA. Not that you need to watch Terry Moran try to give us some “fireworks” (as is promised in the “webcast”). He, too, dwells on the will he or won’t he of the ’08 race, and tries to get Gore to say “Bush = Satan” or some permutation thereof, all the while refusing to address the thesis of Gore’s book.

But the part I wanted to mention—the part I set out to tell you about all those paragraphs ago—was in Terry’s intro to the annoyingly edited tape piece where he talks about Gore’s persistent popularity in presidential preference polls. Moran says that “you Democrats” want him to run.

“You Democrats.”

As opposed to?

What we know, because we have seen it revealed in his reporting at least since the 2000 race, and because I have had it confirmed by folks inside the Mouse, is that Terry’s “we” breaks solidly to the right. The wingnut right, I am told.

But don’t take my word for it—there it is. . . though you kind of have to take my word for it because I don’t have a link. . . to Terry Moran, Democrats are “you,” Democrats are the other.

Liberal media my eye/ass/nut—choose whatever part you like.

Or, to put it a much funnier way—watch this other thing I can’t believe I didn’t tape.


Update: Nightline has now posted a web version of last night’s segment; the Moran intro has clearly been re-taped for this edition (he mentions that it’s a webcast). In the online version, Terry replaces “you Democrats” with the rather awkward “leaned Democrats”—a reference, I suppose, to a poll number that comes from pressing respondents that originally answered a preference question as “undecided.” Which makes the 17% pro-Gore number Moran cites even more dodgy, and makes ABC’s trope even more trite and strained.