By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 19, 2005
8:09 AM
The fact that most of those left behind in the New Orleans flood were poor and black is being treated by the press as a stunning revelation--"A National Shame," as Newsweek's cover put it.
But not exactly a national secret.
"Apparently none of these ace reporters has ever set foot in Washington's Anacostia district, or South Central Los Angeles, or the trailer parks of rural Arkansas," writes Los Angeles Times columnist Rosa Brooks.
A Sept. 12 Washington Post story was headlined "Katrina Pushes Issues of Race and Poverty at Bush." An equally apt headline would have been, "Katrina Pushes Issues of Race and Poverty at a Media Establishment That Has Largely Ignored Them."
A database search of The Post for the past decade found one story that prominently mentioned the poor of New Orleans: a 2002 piece on a campaign to boost the minimum wage that cited the city's "40 percent poverty level." Far more typical of the Mardi Gras media was a 1995 Post story on how "the city's black neighborhoods come alive" with Sunday parades in the fall.
New York Times ombudsman Byron Calame found a similar record at his newspaper, unearthing only two articles about New Orleans in 10 years that "contained a few paragraphs on poverty and race."
The mounting problems of the urban poor, from unemployment to high infant mortality to family dysfunction, were long ago reduced to a blip on the media radar screen. Politicians rarely talked about them--John Edwards, with his "Two Americas" speech in last year's presidential campaign, was an exception--and reporters rarely prodded them on the subject. Bill Clinton spoke of publishing a book on race while he was president but never finished the project.
Newspapers and magazines, meanwhile, have been chasing suburban readers who appeal to upscale advertisers. The poor, whether in New Orleans or Newark, were, well, very '60s.
There have been exceptions, of course, certain journalists who have specialized in scrutinizing the problems of the underclass and efforts to alleviate them. And certainly the media have covered the policy debates over welfare reform, subsidized housing, school vouchers, affirmative action, out-of-wedlock births and other issues that affect the poor. But poor people themselves were relegated to an occasional walk-on role--until the levees broke. "TV dislikes poor people," says Newsweek, because they're a "downer" and bad for ratings.
"Katrina suddenly made America's invisible poor very visible," writes Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page. Brooks, an associate professor at the University of Virginia's law school, wrote in her Los Angeles Times column: "It took the destruction of a major American city for the media to notice the Third World here at home."
But why is that? This is not a story, like whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that was difficult to get at. But journalists rarely venture into impoverished neighborhoods these days, except for quick-hit features. When a woman from one of these communities goes missing, it doesn't attain the status of a Natalee Holloway drama.
Covering the 37 million people who live below the poverty line--the percentage has increased for four straight years--is not as easy as, say, covering advocates who claim to speak on their behalf. Many of the poor are wary of intrusive journalists, don't carry cell phones and don't speak in snappy sound bites. The same goes for race: It is far easier to write about the politics of race--President Bush appointing the first two black secretaries of state, or refusing to speak to the NAACP--than to probe the impact of federal policies on the lives of minorities. And the problems of generations of low-income broken families who seem unable to escape the cycle of poverty can be depressing fare.
The last time race and poverty became a front-burner media issue was after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, but that quickly faded. As the country begins the long slog of rebuilding New Orleans, with many of its poor scattered in other states, how long before the press moves on to more scintillating subjects?
Footnote: The media have had a fine old time ridiculing Michael Brown, who quit last week as head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as a former Arabian horse expert with no background for the job. And as The Post reported, five of the agency's top eight officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters. But why did journalists never get around to pointing this out in the past? Why are agencies such as FEMA never covered until disaster strikes? A database search found only one story and an editorial about Brown's 2003 nomination as FEMA chief. Both were in the Denver Post -- Brown is from Colorado -- and both described him as experienced because of his tenure as the agency's No. 2 official.
Beginning today, it will cost you to read Maureen Dowd, Tom Friedman, Paul Krugman, David Brooks and 18 other New York Times columnists online--$49.95 a year, to be exact.
But the executive in charge of the move--and perhaps those at other news organizations giving away their material online--hopes the Times can demonstrate, in a traditionally free arena, that money can be made by charging for premium content.
"It should work, but this is the Internet and you're always experimenting and testing," says Martin Nisenholtz, a Times Co. senior vice president. He believes that as many as 200,000 people may sign up--but also expects a drop-off in overall traffic because "we're gating one of the most popular parts of the site."
Times Select will offer video (of columnist debates, for example), expanded pieces from editorial writers and access to archives (eventually back to 1851). Among the opinion, business, local and sports columnists, Frank Rich will field questions in a blog-like forum and John Tierney will host a book club. But what about their diminished audience? "They may have mixed feelings about the fact they won't be read as much around the world, and I don't blame them," Nisenholtz says.
The Wall Street Journal made news Saturday--by publishing a paper.
The Journal's Weekend Edition--which is going to all current subscribers at no extra charge and is available on newsstands for $1.50 -- represents a gamble that the weekday business bible can lighten its image and attract sufficient advertising.
The front page is quite Journal-like, but with a consumer flavor--stories on Wal-Mart trying to become trendy and FAO Schwarz looking for hot new toys--plus an oversize feature on a Colorado chef trying to help tsunami victims in Sri Lanka. The Money & Investing section forgoes the usual fare on hedge funds and derivatives for pieces on futures contracts that protect the value of your home and the advantages of using credit cards for cash rewards, not airline miles.
The biggest departure is the Pursuits section, whose centerpiece is "Chefs Gone Wild" -- a stomach-churning report on such "experimental" foods as rabbit pizza, mustard ice cream and raw-lamb meatballs. Other pursuits include Disney's Hong Kong park, designer outlet stores, pre-college stress, Wynton Marsalis's favorite jazz, Notre Dame football and women's bikes--all "tailored to appeal to influential business decision-makers," as a Journal release puts it. Translation: Folks with plenty of disposable cash.
A decade ago, such pieces would have seemed out of character. But as the weekday paper has added Personal Journal and Weekend Journal, it has discovered there is life--and journalism--away from the corporate office.
What, a glittering career as a rock impresario and $4 billion in the bank aren't enough for David Geffen?
Now, apparently, he wants to buy the Los Angeles Times.
Small problem: Tribune Co., which bought the paper and the rest of Times Mirror five years ago for $8 billion, says it's not for sale.
The Times reports that Geffen expressed his interest over the summer in a meeting with Tribune Co. chief executive Dennis FitzSimons, only to be told no dice. Geffen, who promoted the Eagles and other music acts and helped found the DreamWorks SKG movie studio, wouldn't comment to the paper he seems to covet. Maybe he just wants to stop all those Times stories on the battle for public access to the beach at his Malibu estate.
Note to other rich guys: While circulation has slid from 1,018,000 to 902,000 since the Tribune purchase, the Times estimates that it's worth about $3 billion.
Moving right along . . . The aforementioned Byron Calame , the NYT's public editor, is blowing his whistle on one of the paper's top columnists:
"Two weeks have passed since my previous post spelled out the errors made by columnist Paul Krugman in writing about news media recounts of the 2000 Florida vote for president.
"Mr. Krugman still hasn't been required to comply with the policy by publishing a formal correction. Ms. Collins hasn't offered any explanation. As a result, readers of nytimes.com who simply search for 'Krugman' won't find any indication that there are uncorrected errors in the columns the query turns up. Nor will those who access Mr. Krugman's columns in an electronic database such as Nexis or Factiva. Corrections would have been appended in all those places if Mr. Krugman had complied with [Editorial Page Editor Gail] Collins' policy and corrected the errors in his column in the print version of The Times . . .
"All Mr. Krugman has offered so far is a faux correction. Each Op-Ed columnist has a page in nytimes.com that includes his or her past columns and biographical information. Mr. Krugman has been allowed to post a note on his page that acknowledges his initial error, but doesn't explain that his initial correction of that error was also wrong. Since it hasn't been officially published, that posting doesn't cause the correction to be appended to any of the relevant columns."
The issue: "The problem was this sentence: 'Two different news media consortiums reviewed Florida's ballots; both found that a full manual recount would have given the election to Mr. [Al] Gore.' It was basically a sloppy generalization about a vote count that remains a hot-button issue for many readers. It turns out that both of the news media consortiums did statewide manual recounts with varying standards, and some of those scenarios made George W. Bush the winner."
We anxiously await Mr. Krugman's response to Mr. Calame!
Proof that the liberal media don't all think alike: The Washington Post endorses John Roberts ("overwhelmingly well-qualified, possesses an unusually keen legal mind and practices a collegiality of the type an effective chief justice must have"), while the New York Times urges a no vote ("not because they know he does not have the qualities to be an excellent chief justice, but because he has not met the very heavy burden of proving that he does").
The Huffington Post is well-wired in places like Aspen, which is how it picked up this cocktail chat:
"Karl Rove, President Bush's top political advisor and deputy White House chief of staff, spoke at businessman Teddy Forstmann's annual off the record gathering in Aspen, Colorado this weekend. Here is what Rove had to say that the press wasn't allowed to report on.
"On Katrina: The only mistake we made with Katrina was not overriding the local government . . .
"On The Anti-War Movement: Cindy Sheehan is a clown. There is no real anti-war movement. No serious politician, with anything to do with anything, would show his face at an anti-war rally . . .
"On Bush's Low Poll Numbers: We have not been good at explaining the success in Iraq. Polls go up and down and don't mean anything . . .
"On Iraq: There has been a big difference in the region. Iraq will transform the Middle East . . .
"On Judy Miller And Plamegate: Judy Miller is in jail for reasons I don't really understand . . . " Jeff Jarvis makes the perfectly reasonable point that you shouldn't need a printing plant to deserve a prize:
"The Times-Picayune and Nola.com should win a Pulitzer for their journalism, which happened to be distributed online and could not be distributed in print after Katrina, Mark Glaser did a good act of reporting and asked the Pulitzer committee about whether work online could win their prize.
"Now before you read their reply, don't you think their answer should have been: 'Well, sure, if it's great journalism, why should we care whether it's on paperhellip especially these days. We want to encourage great journalism however it happens.' That's what they should have said. Here's what they said, as Glaser reports:
" As for a possible Pulitzer, the board has considered online presentations as part of an entry for the Public Service Award before. In this case, however, it was print journalism posted online with the absence of a print newspaper due to the hurricane damage. Sig Gissler, administrator of the Pulitzers and a journalism professor at Columbia University, told me the Pulitzer board would have to consider any exceptions.
"'As I understand it, the Times-Picayune, at some point, produced a paper as well as online coverage,' Gissler said via e-mail. 'So, in theory, it could submit an entry reflecting both components. Under our rules, it is up to the Board to modify the rules or to make one-time exceptions to the rules. However, I do not want to speculate on what the Board may or may not do in a specific case. It meets again in November, its regular business meeting.'
"Don't you just want to take them by the shoulders and shake hard and shout in their faces: Wake up! Your audience is online and you're not! You're going to die with your audience! You are not serving the public where the public is! You're fiddling with your rules and nobody but you gives a damn!"
Josh Marshall picks up on a tantalizing memo from the Jackson, Miss., Clarion-Ledger:
"Federal officials appear to be seeking proof to blame the flood of New Orleans on environmental groups, documents show.
" The Clarion-Ledger has obtained a copy of an internal e-mail the U.S. Department of Justice sent out this week to various U.S. attorneys' offices: 'Has your district defended any cases on behalf of the (U.S.) Army Corps of Engineers against claims brought by environmental groups seeking to block or otherwise impede the Corps work on the levees protecting New Orleans? If so, please describe the case and the outcome of the litigation .'
"Who sent out this email? And who was going to use it? Needed for analyzing new environmental law issues? Part of the 'takings' debate? Did we mention that Karl Rove has been put in charge of the reconstruction effort?"
Laura Turner at Liberalism Without Cynicism explores the origins of Bush's New Orleans address:
"According to David Kuznet at the New Republic, it wasn't Michael Gerson who wrote the masterpiece. It was Bush's new head speechwriter, William McGurn. Just how completely phony was the speech? McGurn is a former editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page! All that big-government-conservatism, your-government-is-there-for-you pap Bush was spouting had been penned by one of those WSJ drown-it-in-the-bathtub, government-is-the-enemy hyper-libertarians, whose ex-colleagues have, among other things, been urging Bush to use Katrina as an excuse to push school vouchers on the exiled flood victims moving into other communities!"
Cindy Sheehan , who has moved her media show to Louisiana, seems to getting more personal with the president:
I saw in the paper that George Bush said the recovery in the Gulf States would be 'hard work.' That's what he said about sending troops to Iraq and looking at the casualty reports everyday: 'It's hard work.' That man has never known a day of hard work in his life."
How exactly is that helping her cause?
Even the tiniest aspects of the Bush presidency are not without controversy, such as his bathroom-break note to Condi, according to Photo District News
"The white parts of the picture were overexposed, so a Reuters processor used Photoshop to burn down the note. This is a standard practice for news photos, Gary Hershorn [a Reuters news director] says, and the picture was not manipulated in any other way."
Ah, but this could be the media's Pottygate, says Matthew Sheffield at Newsbusters (dedicated to exposing liberal bias):
"Did Bush write the first part of the note? It's possible but there are several problems with that hypothesis. The first and biggest is the difference in handwriting styles. Why would Bush take the time to write in two different manners in a little note?
"The second problem is that the phrase ends with a question mark. More than likely the president, being the highest-ranking American official in the room, would tell someone to set it up, not ask if it were possible for him to go."
Where are those CBS handwriting experts when you need them?