In the Fog of War, A Moral Haze

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 16, 2006

Sometimes, in the murky maze in which journalists dwell, seeing the right course of action isn't easy.

Should major newspapers and networks have agreed to suppress the news that Christian Science Monitor stringer Jill Carroll had been kidnapped in Iraq? The impulse is understandable, given the Monitor's plea that publicity might endanger negotiations to win her freedom. But since when are journalists in the business of sitting on news? And would they have imposed a 48-hour blackout for a non-journalist?

"It created the appearance of one group of people taking care of themselves above anyone else," says Sig Christenson of the San Antonio Express-News, who once covered the kidnapping of a Halliburton contractor. Christenson, the president of Military Reporters and Editors, says one contractor told him last week "he was mad because there was one rule for us and one rule for everyone else over there."

But New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller told Slate it "was not exactly groundbreaking news that people get kidnapped in Iraq. I think the request would -- certainly ought to -- get the same consideration whether the person abducted was a journalist, an aid worker, a contractor or a soldier." And there's the rub: Who wants to be the one who writes the story that increases the chance that terrorists will murder an American?

On another Iraq-related issue, The Washington Post last month led off a piece about the Pentagon's "increasingly aggressive battle for control over information about the conflict" with the example of blogger Bill Roggio. The computer technician, who was embedded with a Marine unit following an invitation from the military, cried foul.

The Post has corrected three minor factual errors: Roggio was accredited by the Weekly Standard; he had already returned home by the time of the article; and he didn't serve in the military long enough to be deemed a "retired soldier."

But sometimes corrections are too narrow. Did Roggio, who made the trip with $33,000 in reader donations, belong in an article about the military paying Iraqi journalists to publish favorable stories? On billroggio.com, he called the piece "blatantly misleading" because "there was absolutely no association between my embed and any military information operation."

David Hoffman, The Post's assistant managing editor for foreign news, says Roggio has a "worthy argument," but that "the military is fighting an information war and we're covering it. Inviting certain people to come and cover the war is their prerogative, but it's also spin. . . . I don't believe anything in that article misrepresented what he was doing."

In the publishing world, standards can also be hazy. Author James Frey hit it big after Oprah Winfrey endorsed his memoir of a life of crime, "A Million Little Pieces." Thanks to some digging by TheSmokingGun.com, that work has now been exposed as a tangle of fabrications and embellishments. Frey, according to police records and his own admissions, didn't commit most of the felonies he claimed in the book -- including hitting a cop with his car and serving a three-month jail term.

In a painfully weak appearance on CNN's "Larry King Live," Frey acknowledged that he "changed things," but said he has "a long drug and alcohol history," that "everyone's memory is subjective" and that he still "stand[s] by the essential truths of the book." Winfrey, calling in to the show, seemed unconcerned: "Although some of the facts have been questioned," she said, "the underlying message of redemption in James Frey's memoir still resonates with me." So lying is okay if you've got a good "underlying message"?

What about Frey's publisher, which is refusing to investigate? In a remarkable statement, Doubleday said: "Recent accusations against him notwithstanding, the power of the overall reading experience is such that the book remains a deeply inspiring and redemptive story for millions of readers."

Even if it's fiction masquerading as nonfiction? Is that the standard for publishing a memoir? This one doesn't seem quite so murky.

Monsanto's Man?

Another columnist has lost his writing gig for failing to disclose corporate payments.

Scripps Howard News Service last week dropped Michael Fumento, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, after BusinessWeek Online raised questions about a $60,000 grant that the institute received from the agribusiness company Monsanto. Fumento told the magazine he solicited the 1999 payment from Monsanto for his book on agribusiness, titled "BioEvolution."

Fumento says he sees no disclosure issue: "I went to [Monsanto] and some others and said, 'I'm going to write a book supporting biotech. Are you willing to support it?' And one company said yes. They knew they'd come out looking good, so it made perfect sense." He says he didn't mention the grant in the book because "Monsanto asked me not to. I felt it'd literally be kicking them right smack in the teeth."

Fumento also says he had no obligation to tell Scripps Howard or disclose the funding in columns involving Monsanto, particularly after several years. "Someone would say, 'He mentioned Monsanto products and then it says at the bottom he received money from Monsanto, and therefore he's just a corporate whore.' That would be used against me."

In a Jan. 5 column for Scripps Howard, which has now apologized to readers, Fumento wrote that many bioengineered crops being developed by Monsanto "will primarily aid farmers, but they also help all of us by keeping prices down and allowing more crops to be grown on less land." After touting other Monsanto products, he wrote: "I chose to focus on Monsanto for lack of space and because their annual report was plopped onto my lap while I was hunting for a column idea."

Fumento has been defending the company for years. In a 2000 piece that ran in the Washington Times, he noted: "Monsanto has developed a canola oil that is also packed with beta-carotene."

His situation is different from other recent cases, Fumento insists, because he approached the company, not vice versa. Last month, Copley News Service dropped columnist Doug Bandow -- who also resigned as a Cato Institute scholar -- after he acknowledged taking as much as $2,000 apiece from convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff for up to two dozen columns favorable to the lobbyist's clients. The Washington Times and New Hampshire's Manchester Union Leader dropped another columnist, Peter Ferrara, who acknowledged taking payments from Abramoff.

Never Mind

Tom Blumer, who critiques the press on BizzyBlog, which is also carried by the conservative Media Research Center, ripped this columnist for last week's piece on mine safety reporting -- and particularly for spotlighting the aggressive efforts of Ken Ward of West Virginia's Charleston Gazette.

"Kurtz Passes Off Activist as 'Persistent Reporter,' " the headline said. "The most cursory of searches on Ken Ward," wrote Blumer, an Ohio accountant, reveals that "he is a longtime environmental activist who just happens to have a job as a reporter," having worked for the likes of Greenpeace USA and the National Environmental Law Center.

Pretty cursory indeed. Turns out that is another Ken Ward.

After a complaint from Ward the journalist, Blumer wrote that "I intensely regret, am mortified by" the error and apologized to Ward, this columnist and The Post. He said by e-mail: "In future situations, I will contact the person involved if I think there's even the slightest chance that I might be inadvertently linking to the work of more than one person that happens to have an identical or near-identical name. As a less-than-one-year blogger, I've used up my allocation of rookie mistakes."

Ward says his job covering the coal industry is "hard enough without having someone spread idiotic rumors like that."

Howzat?

"Alexander Strategy Group: Still Signing Up New Clients" -- Roll Call, Jan. 9

"Lobby Firm Is Scandal Casualty; Abramoff, DeLay Publicity Blamed for Shutdown" -- Washington Post, Jan. 10