Bikini Journalism

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 16, 2007 5:54 AM

Chicago television reporter Amy Jacobson lost her job last week for what appeared to be a stunning lack of judgment involving a man whose wife has disappeared.

Jacobson had been covering the case of Craig Stebic, whose wife, Lisa, embroiled in a bitter divorce and attempting to evict him, has not been seen since April 30. The WMAQ correspondent, wearing a bikini, was seen at a small poolside gathering at Stebic's home in footage somehow obtained by rival station WBBM.

Why did WMAQ executives find her conduct unacceptable? We don't know, because station executives won't comment beyond a statement praising Jacobson for "her hustle and passion for news," even as they were hustling her out the door.

Jacobson wouldn't comment either, until she was dumped. She then told WGN radio that she had made "a horrible mistake" and "I can't apologize enough." Jacobson said she was on the way to a pool with her two children when she got the invitation to join the group at Stebic's house, was trying to get a competitive edge on the story and that he "never made any advances, ever." The Chicago Tribune reported Friday that Jacobson, without telling her bosses, had been briefing police on her dealings with Stebic, who has since been named a "person of interest" by investigators.

WMAQ executives are described by insiders as chagrined that the swimsuit appearance made Jacobson appear to have a friendship with Stebic and tarnished the NBC station's credibility. But they have decided to remain silent until lawyers work out the details of Jacobson's departure.

Would the station accept that explanation from a Windy City corporation that had just dismissed a top official, or an alderman who'd ousted his top aide? When one of its top reporters became the story, WMAQ went into the bunker.

The episode was reminiscent of the huge embarrassment involving Mirthala Salinas, the Telemundo anchor and reporter in Los Angeles who is having an affair with the city's mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa. Salinas, who had covered the mayor, somehow thought it was a good idea last month to read a story announcing his breakup with his wife, leaving out a certain pertinent fact.

When California blogger Luke Ford broke the story, which was confirmed by the Los Angeles Daily News, Salinas put out statements confirming the relationship, pleading for privacy and insisting she did nothing inappropriate -- but not addressing the obvious conflict. She has granted no interviews.

Neither have Telemundo executives who put out a statement praising Salinas as "one of our most respected reporters and a great professional," only to suspend her -- with pay -- the following day. Despite conflicting accounts over whether Salinas told her bosses of the affair with Villaraigosa or misled them by saying it was just a friendship, the L.A. station still hasn't addressed what happened.

The same stonewalling extends to the executive suites. After Par Ridder resigned in March as publisher of the St. Paul Pioneer Press and jumped to the rival Minneapolis Star Tribune, he was accused in a lawsuit of stealing confidential material from his former employer. Ridder, whose family once owned the Pioneer Press, insisted in statements that he had done nothing wrong but would not discuss the specifics in the few press calls he returned.

When Ridder testified at a hearing late last month, he acknowledged that he had, in fact, taken marketing and advertising documents from the Pioneer Press and had signed a noncompete agreement that appeared to bar him from joining the larger paper. In other words, the allegations were true.

Ridder still isn't commenting.

Each of these news organizations is in the business of calling people for interviews every day. The implicit, and sometimes explicit, appeal: If you talk to us, we will treat you fairly. Your side will be represented. It is better to cooperate with a story than to slam the door and hide behind nonresponsive statements.

Except, apparently, when the journalists themselves are involved.

Double Duty

Dina Temple-Raston, who covers the FBI for National Public Radio, did a story last week on objections by civil libertarians to the bureau's tactics in conducting surveillance without court orders. The first person she quoted was an official at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Temple-Raston is also the co-author of a new book titled "In Defense of Our America." The other author is Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU. The book "illustrates the dangerous erosion of the Bill of Rights in the age of terror," as the organization's Web site puts it.

Does being partners with such a prominent civil libertarian raise questions about an FBI beat reporter?

"When you see my name on the book, it's absolutely fair to wonder what the depth of participation was," Temple-Raston says. When she was hired by NPR six months ago while finishing the book, "we talked about whether there could be a conflict of interest."

Temple-Raston says that she signed on to the project after Romero got the contract and that they had mainly an "e-mail relationship." She says NPR editors came up with "common sense" guidelines that do not allow her to quote Romero or profile the ACLU, but that still allow her to use the organization as a source.

"I'm attuned to the problem that there could be a perception issue," she says. "The ACLU and other civil liberties groups are going to be part of my beat. It's something I think about, it's something I'm aware of, just like I worry about being too sympathetic to the FBI. I'm trying to be really, really balanced."

Losing Face

Amy Polumbo's Facebook photos were embarrassing enough. Miss New Jersey unveiled them on the "Today" show Thursday after someone sent them to pageant officials in an effort to discredit her. While fully clothed, Polumbo was seen with male friends nuzzling and groping her breasts, and in other less-than-ladylike poses.

But editors at the New York Daily News should be equally red-faced. The tabloid touted what it said were the secret Facebook shots -- only to have Polumbo say on "Today" that morning that those pictures weren't of her, just some of her partying friends. The News expressed regret in a correction Friday, saying the paper had been assured about the photos by "a source close to Miss Polumbo." Not that close, apparently.

Aftermath

The recent MSNBC.com report on political contributions by 143 journalists has had repercussions at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

According to a local publication, Style Weekly, the Virginia paper has suspended statehouse reporter Michael Hardy and copy editor Pam Mastropaolo for 30 days for donating to Democrats. The paper acknowledged only that disciplinary action has been taken.

Presidential Paranoia

In the summer of 1972, Washington Post reporter Lou Cannon wrote a largely favorable story -- "Nixon Running Scared Despite Lead"-- that drew the attention of none other than Richard Nixon.

In a detailed memo to his top aide, H.R. Haldeman -- part of a batch of material just released by the National Archives -- the president said the piece was not that bad, but warned: "Even when our most intelligent people are meeting with people like Cannon, they must constantly keep in mind that they are meeting with a political enemy and that everything they say will, therefore, be used against us . . .

"While we know the Washington Post is totally against us it is just as well to have a piece that has some favorable points in it as well as completely negative ones. Therefore, I have no objections to the fact that Cannon was given interviews by the Campaign Committee. On the other hand, it was a stupid mistake -- which must never be repeated -- to allow Cannon to have the run of the White House staff, the campaign staff and the National Committee staff in getting his story together."

As an addendum to my lead story about Amy Jacobson--who did not return my phone call and who blew off a promised appearance with Larry King at the last minute--here's a Chicago Trib column by Eric Zorn:

"In her first radio interview on the Story that Ate Chicago this week, Jacobson told WGN-AM 720's Spike O'Dell that she had become 'very good friends with Lisa Stebic's family.'

"Many of my readers pounced. They pointed out that reporters should never cover stories when they are 'very good friends' with any of the main players. And this, they said, was evidence that Jacobson was oblivious to ethical boundaries.

"I thought I knew what she meant: The constant contact and easy familiarity that arises when you're covering a person or a story for any length of time mimics in some ways the attributes and behaviors associated with friendship, which to me is a long-standing, intimate and reciprocal bond.

"All of us, not just reporters, throw around the word 'friend' without thinking much about it -- applying it at times to bare acquaintances."

In looking at this Peggy Noonan column in the Wall Street Journal, keep in mind that she took a leave to help reelect Bush in 2004--and now seems to have totally soured on him:

"I received an email before the news conference from as rock-ribbed a Republican as you can find, a Georgia woman (middle-aged, entrepreneurial) who'd previously supported him. She said she'd had it. 'I don't believe a word that comes out of his mouth.' I was startled by her vehemence only because she is, as I said, rock-ribbed. Her email reminded me of another, one a friend received some months ago: 'I took the W off my car today,' it said on the subject line. It sounded like a country western song, like a great lament.

"As I watched the news conference, it occurred to me that one of the things that might leave people feeling somewhat disoriented is the president's seemingly effortless high spirits. He's in a good mood. There was the usual teasing, the partly aggressive, partly joshing humor, the certitude. He doesn't seem to be suffering, which is jarring. Presidents in great enterprises that are going badly suffer: Lincoln, LBJ with his head in his hands. Why doesn't Mr. Bush? Every major domestic initiative of his second term has been ill thought through and ended in failure. His Iraq leadership has failed. His standing is lower than any previous president's since polling began. He's in a good mood. Discuss.

"Is it defiance? Denial? Is it that he's right and you're wrong, which is your problem? Is he faking a certain steely good cheer to show his foes from Washington to Baghdad that the American president is neither beaten nor bowed? Fair enough: Presidents can't sit around and moan. But it doesn't look like an act. People would feel better to know his lack of success sometimes gets to him. It gets to them."

Under the circumstances, says Noonan, Bush looks "weird."

Talk about a media death watch: Red State is conducting a pool on when John McCain will drop out.

Clark Hoyt, the NYT ombudsman, ends his column on whether the Times was unfair to Rupert Murdoch in its aggressive coverage of his Dow Jones bid--he concluded it was not--with these ominous words:

"Next week, I'll look at articles The Times should be writing but hasn't so far. They're about itself."

Another barrier falls at the L.A. Times:

"Amid a steep decline in revenue, the Los Angeles Times is planning to break with long-standing tradition by selling ads on its front page, Publisher David Hiller said Friday.

"When it happens, the newspaper will be the largest metropolitan paper in the country to place ads there . . .

"Times Editor James O'Shea said he vigorously opposed putting ads on Page One and advised the publisher against doing so. 'Front-page ads diminish the newspaper, cheapen the front page and reduce the space devoted to news,' he said Friday. 'This would be a huge mistake that will penalize the reader.' "

You can see who won that argument.

The BBC has admitted altering the sequence of events in a program about Gordon Brown, the new prime minister. The two scenes actually happened weeks apart, and in reverse order. It looks pretty bad.

David Vitter, the Louisiana Republican outed by Larry Flynt as a repeat caller to the D.C. Madam, is getting little love from fellow conservatives. Consider Rick Moran at Right Wing Nuthouse:

"I will say to my Republican friends that it does no good to whine about double standards. You're going to have to concede the hypocrisy point to our Democratic friends on this one. If your going to lecture people about the sanctity of marriage as it relates to banning gay unions or campaign on a platform stressing 'family values,' it would be best if you didn't go whoring around on your wife, wetting your wick at $300 a pop.

"Mindboggling stupidity . . .

"It is not the fact that Flynt is a pornographer that makes him such lowlife pond scum. It is his own sanctimony, his own shtick as Champion of the First Amendment. He deliberately abuses that freedom not in order to express himself but to bully and browbeat his ideological foes while lowering the bar of acceptable political combat to unheard of and unimagined levels."

At CBS's Public Eye, Matthew Felling questions whether spouting moral values is a sufficient justification for being outed over your sexual conduct:

"Is it the sex, or is it the hypocrisy? And this time I have an answer: Yes. First of all, the sex. Politicians have to speak to their bases. And in the case of most Republicans, that means that we are dealing with a more pious constituency. (Yes, there are millions of religious Democrats, but they tend not to speak of illicit sex as critically or judgmentally as those on the right.) So, for Republicans, the sex means more to the people they represent.

"It's as if a Democrat from a well-known liberal district was found to be racially insensitive. Different political environments have their own requirements and checklists for their politicians. (I mean, look at the very definition of liberal.) It's exactly this dynamic that drove the Al Gore 'carbon footprint' story as well as that overblown (pun intended) story about a certain champion of the poor and his expensive haircut. Second is what I call the 'Identity Check' -- a concept related to the angle above. There are signature traits that a politician puts on the menu for potential voters to judge him on. His or her family, straight-arrow lifestyle, tolerance, etc. I think that when a candidate makes a values issue or a personal virtue a selling point, then his or her transgressions become more newsworthy.

"That's what takes the sex stories from damaging to scandalous. Regardless of anybody's political bent, if you see a political leader saying one thing and doing the near opposite, it's going to make you livid."

Weird item of the week comes from a Times of London interview with Qattab al-Maqdesy, one of those who abducted BBC's Alan Johnston in Gaza and held him for nearly four months:

"The kidnappers expressed bizarre resentment that Johnston, 45, had done nothing to thank them for their hospitality while they held him at gunpoint in a tiny cell.

" 'We used to give him everything he wanted,' Abu Zobayer, an aide to Dagmoush, said. 'We spent £70 on his food every week. The Matouk restaurant [one of the best eateries in Gaza] got rich because we had to feed him.'

"Johnston has said that he fell ill from the food he was served. Zobayer commented: 'It's not our problem that we gave him everything and he only ate a little.'

"Although they did not torture him physically, the kidnappers seemed to have no concept of the psychological torture they were inflicting on the BBC correspondent. 'We had people with him all the time to try to help him to relax,' said Zobayer.

" 'We gave him a radio so that he could listen to his own channel. I myself sat with him to try to make him feel comfortable and feel that he will be released.' "

Waaahh! Who ever heard of a whining kidnapper?