Rupert Murdoch has a way with news

Carl Bernstein, investigative reporter of Watergate fame, and Roger Cohen of the New York Times debate the media legacy of Rupert Murdoch in the wake of the News of the World implosion. Bernstein begins ...
 Has Rupert Murdoch changed the news of the world? by KCRW

Four Thursday

1. Todd Ruiz, still lounging in Bangkok, has a post up about election-time agitprop in Thailand. Reporter in Exile

2. Jennifer 8 Lee talks about the potential for Google+ (Circle me, bro!). Jennifer 8 Lee

3. LA Times reporters on tweeting. LAT Readers' Rep (via Romenesko)

4. Fox News founder Roger Ailes once mused that TV was the way the GOP could get around the pesky news media: "People are lazy. With television you just sit—watch—listen. The thinking is done for you." Romenesko

NYT: Fox News chief allegedly told employee to lie

Bashing Fox News is cheap and easy sport for some on the left. But a report in today's New York Times looks like something different. After reviewing affidavits, the paper reports that Fox News chairman Roger Ailes allegedly encouraged Judith Regan to lie to investigators about an affair she had to protect the presidential aspirations of New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Republican. Ailes is allegedly caught on tape telling Regan to obfuscate. From the Times:

After the publishing powerhouse Judith Regan was fired by HarperCollins in 2006, she claimed that a senior executive at its parent company, News Corporation, had encouraged her to lie to federal investigators two years before.
The investigators had been vetting Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner who had been nominated to become secretary of Homeland Security and who had had an affair with Ms. Regan.

-snip-

That complaint said that News Corporation executives “were well aware that Regan had a personal relationship with Kerik.” 
“In fact,” the complaint said, “a senior executive* in the News Corporation organization told Regan that he believed she had information about Kerik that, if disclosed, would harm Giuliani’s presidential campaign. This executive advised Regan to lie to, and to withhold information from, investigators concerning Kerik.”

-snip-

Mr. Kerik, was sent to prison last year after pleading guilty to federal charges including tax fraud and lying to White House officials.

 *The "senior executive" referred to here is Ailes.

Republican chop shop

House Republicans have introduced a list outlining $2.5 trillion in cuts over ten years. Rail projects and health care make up the bulk of the cuts, but there are savings from cultural programs, too. From David Weigel's piece in Slate:

And cuts that get revenge for Juan Williams: $445 million from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, $167.5 million from the NEA, and $167.5 million from the NEH.

Murdoch's News of the World still dogged by phone-hacking scandal

The Guardian reports that an assistant editor of news at Rupert Murdoch's News of the World paid a private detective to hack into a sports agent's voicemail. News Corp has long held a single reporter had at the paper paid for illegal taps, but there have been allegations that the practice was systemic at the gossip rag.

NPR news exec resigns in wake of Williams firing

NPR released two memos today. The first says NPR must update its ethics guidelines based on an independent review of news analyst Juan Williams's firing. The second says Ellen Weiss, senior vice president of news at NPR and the person who called Williams to give him the boot, has resigned. The two memos are connected, obviously, though its not yet clear whether Weiss was forced out or bolted because of the NPR board's blatant meddling in news business.

Copies of both memos are here.

According to the first memo, the NPR board has demanded the news division establish a committee to review and update its code of ethics, both to ensure NPR journalists doing work for outside media outlets have more free rein and so the news division's "practices encourage a broad range of viewpoints to assist its decision-making, support its mission, and reflect the diversity of its national audiences"

The NPR board also gave CEO Vivian Schiller a renewed vote of confidence, but has withheld her bonus for 2010.

The second memo, written by Schiller, offers some background on Weiss's tenure at NPR and says who will step in for her until a new senior vice president of news is named, but it offers no detail on why she left. Was she forced out to give House Republicans their pound of flesh? Or is her exit a protest over how NPR has handled the Williams affair?

Here's more from NPR's news blog, which steps lightly around the connection between Weiss and Williams:

For background on the Juan Williams dismissal, you might start here. Alicia Shepard, NPR's ombudsman, previously said that the firing "was poorly handled." Williams previously said he thinks he was fired because "I appear on Fox." Weiss was the NPR executive who informed Williams of his dismissal, which came after he said on Fox News Channel that he gets nervous when he sees people in "Muslim garb" on airplanes. NPR said the remark was the latest in a pattern of problem comments made by Williams over recent years.

As NPR's David Folkenflik reports for our newscast, after Williams' dismissal "conservatives blasted NPR, and Fox News' most prominent opinion hosts made a cause of it. Republican lawmakers threatened to cut federal funding for public broadcasters."

As for the review done by Weil, Gotshal & Manges, David summarizes the findings this way: "It found that the termination of Williams' contract was entirely legal. But the board said the report called for a full review of the company's policies on ethics and outside appearances and for them to be applied consistently to all personnel."

He adds that Weiss "joined NPR in 1982 and rose through the ranks, holding a variety of key positions, such as executive producer of All Things Considered and national editor. She helped lead coverage of some of the biggest stories and highest-impact investigations in recent years. And she is credited with leading the network through an era of wrenching changes in journalism. But her dismissal of Williams — by phone — became a flashpoint in the debate."

Fox News and the impartial partisans

Want to see what happens when a news operation drops impartiality as the framework for gathering and disseminating information? Look at how Fox News decided to frame the health care debate. Howard Kurtz has the report at the Daily Beast - the piece starts with Republican pollster Frank Luntz coaching Fox host Sean Hannity on the right words to use:

“If you call it a public option, the American people are split,” [Luntz] explained. “If you call it the government option, the public is overwhelmingly against it."

“A great point,” Hannity declared. “And from now on, I'm going to call it the government option, because that's what it is.”

On Oct. 27, the day after Senate Democrats introduced a bill with a public insurance option from which states could opt out, Bill Sammon, a Fox News vice president and Washington managing editor, sent the staff a memo. Sammon is a former Washington Times reporter.

“Please use the term ‘government-run health insurance,’ or, when brevity is a concern, ‘government option,’ whenever possible,” the memo said.

Sammon acknowledged that the phrase "public option" was “firmly ensconced in the nation’s lexicon,” so when it was necessary to use it, he wrote, add the qualifier “so-called,” as in “the so-called public option.” And “here’s another way to phrase it: ‘The public option, which is the government-run plan.’”

Advocacy organizations like Fox News deny their partisan framing all the while claiming to be impartial, and blaming all the media that isn't conservative-leaning of having a liberal bias. In this case, "public option" is also a partisan framing preferred by supporters of the plan. Had Fox health care reporters come up with a way to describe the plan based on their own reporting, they might have called it "government-run." Instead, they borrowed the phrase most favorable to the Republican position. That's what happens when journalists claim the mantle of impartiality without actually practicing impartiality.

(found via LA Observed)

Olbermann suspended*

MSNBC has suspended Keith Olbermann indefinitely for donating to three Democratic candidates (two Arizona liberals and Democrat Jack Conway, who was running for Senate in Kentucky). The donations violated NBC ethics guidelines for the station's journalists and came, in at least one case, right after one of the candidates appeared on Olbermann's show.

MSNBC, led by Olbermann, is striving (in a leaning-forward fashion) to be the anti-Fox of op-ed TV. Fox's parent company, News Corp, gave money directly to Republicans. Which leads me to wonder: Can you hold hosts or entire companies to the standards of good journalism when they're not practicing good journalism?

*More: Jamies Poniewozik at Time magazine says the donation merely reminds people that the liberal talk show host is liberal. True - to a point. The donations were given to guests, meaning Olbermann used the soap box provided by MSNBC to boost hand-picked candidates. That's clearly a problem for MSNBC.

I also disagree with Poniewozik's opinion that journalists should let their partisan bias fly. Impartial journalism isn't about some belief in "objectivity," or a deluded belief that near-objectivity can be attained; it's applying a rigorous method to how you gather and dispense information. Boosting political candidates conflicts with this method. Following the method, however, is voluntary. Unless you work for a company that says it will suspend you if you don't. (And, yes, I think it is somewhat hypocritical for MSNBC to apply such standards given what it's become.)

Juan Williams, the most important man in America today

I find it hard to get too worked up about NPR firing Juan Williams for saying he gets "nervous" when he sees Muslims on an airplane. One could certainly argue that NPR handled the situation poorly from a PR perspective; and any inconsistency in how NPR applies its policy prohibiting analysts and reporters from offering opinion is certainly newsworthy. My main takeaway: If Williams wasn't supposed to offer opinions on cable news shows, NPR should have fired him long before he stumbled into an issue that's so politically charged.

What have we learned from all of this? First, conservatives who didn't like NPR before don't like NPR even more now. Second, despite repeated claims that NPR is a taxpayer-funded operation, it really isn't. Third, getting fired by the "lamestream" media is lucrative. Last, pundits yelling the loudest about censorship aren't necessarily the most consistent on the issue. From Bloggasm:

The conservative media watchdog Newsbusters claimed today that “Juan Williams has done nothing wrong” and that “what he said echoes what the vast majority of Americans believe.” This is the complete opposite of the view it took on Nasr’s rather anodyne tweet. “CNN has finally taken a step in the right direction in removing a terrorist sympathizer from their ranks,” the blogger wrote several months ago. “It’s a shame it took this amount of publicity and attention from organizations like the MRC to get the job done, as Octavia Nasr should never have been granted the position of authority to begin with.”

Four in the morning

1. Guests on public television news and interview shows are mostly white and male. FAIR

2. NPR fired Juan Williams for statements he made about Muslims on "The O'Reilly Factor" (WaPo). There's some push back from other media (Slate). NPR's president explains further (LA Observed). Williams does more talking on Fox (NYT).

3. Jim Rainey does not think public radio will replace newspapers as a main source of local news. LA Times

4. Have you applied to become the next editor of Newsweek? Hispters should probably apply twice. The Awl

Christine O'Donnell and what she didn't learn while not attending Claremont Graduate University*

For a constitutional scholar, Christine O'Donnell, the Republican Senate candidate in Delaware, made some strange statements today in her debate with Democratic rival Chris Coons about the contents of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

From the Associated Press:

The exchange came in a debate before an audience of legal scholars and law students at Widener University Law School, as O'Donnell criticized Democratic nominee Chris Coons' position that teaching creationism in public school would violate the First Amendment by promoting religious doctrine.

Coons said private and parochial schools are free to teach creationism but that "religious doctrine doesn't belong in our public schools."

"Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?" O'Donnell asked him.

When Coons responded that the First Amendment bars Congress from making laws respecting the establishment of religion, O'Donnell asked: "You're telling me that's in the First Amendment?"

It is in the First Amendment. In fact, it's the first line: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof".

A campaign spokesman later said O'Donnell was saying the phrase "separation of church and state" didn't appear in the Constitution. But she seemed extremely skeptical about the "shall make no law" bit, too.

O'Donnell also stumbled when asked about the 14th and 16th Amendments, which enumerate citizenship rights and federal powers to collect income tax, respectively.

Why the added scrutiny for O'Donnell? First, because she says her legislative priorities are based on her understanding of the Constitution. Second, because she claimed to have taken a graduate course in constitutional government from the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank (that is not an accredited college and offers no graduate courses). Then there was the LinkedIn profile that claimed she'd studied constitutional government at Claremont Graduate University, a real college that she did not attend and that has nothing to do with the Claremont Institute.

*Update: Let's go to the video:

Ailes to Fox staff: Don't talk about Fox

After the Washington Post reported on a rift within the Fox News staff over the rise of host Glenn Beck, Fox News chairman Roger Ailes told his employees to shut up about family matters. Or, as Mediabistro quoted him saying:

"I was brought up to defend the family. If I couldn't defend the family I'd leave. I'd go to another family."

In other words, family values means sharing opinions about your political rivals, even in newscasts. Sharing opinions about the way in which these opinions shape Fox News and its overall coverage is anti-family.

Turning to cable news for political, corporate recruitment

The number of guest panelists on Fox News, as well as MSNBC, who plan to run for office is a bit alarming, the New York Times finds. This follows a story in the Nation about the number of panelists with outside contracts - lobbyists, corporate ties, PR consultants - who appear as pundits on cable news shows.

In the news

Sarah Palin enjoys bashing the media. She railed against liberal bias, swatted at the attack-dog mentality, accused journalists for making things up and faulted them for reporting on things they didn't witness firsthand.

Her fixation on the media was such that when she formally stepped down as governor of Alaska she started her speech with a put down of the media.

All of which should have told us that there was nothing she coveted more than the chance to become a media pundit. And today we learn that she's done just that, signing a contract to become a regular commentator on Fox News. Here's her statement:

I am thrilled to be joining the great talent and management team at Fox News. It’s wonderful to be part of a place that so values fair and balanced news.

Fair and balanced is one goal, but as the Associated Press found when it checked her book, "Going Rogue," there's something to be said for getting your facts straight, too.

Four today

1. The kids are fine, but how are the children?: Style tips for NYT's bloggers that we could all use. NYT

2. Facts for factions: Has the ratio of partisan opinion to impartial news on Fox News reached a point where the station should be treated as a partisan entity? The White House thinks so and Media Matters agrees, even arguing that other journalists should treat the station as an arm of the Republican Party. Media Matters

3. The great American lineup: The FBI is using facial-recognition software to compare pictures of known fugitives with driver's license photos. AP

4. Beat the press: The Daily Show's Jon Stewart clubs CNN over the head for failing to check the accuracy of claims made by guests. fishbowlLA

Facts for factions, second take

The people most opposed to the idea of objective journalism often are people who believe in objective truths. They consider editorial efforts to moderate language and viewpoints on tough issues - illegal immigration, torture, war, abortion - a cop out.

Subjective journalism rose up to cater to this crowd and has at times focused laser light on controversies that got swept aside when presented in moderated tones. But there's a viral strain of subjective journalism that claims to be objective and it is has helped erode the belief that any journalists can their facts straight.

To be sure, not all journalists can, and there are some newsrooms that get so careful with words that they serve up water and pretend it's soup. For these reasons, public skepticism of the media is healthy. But the selling of subjectivity as objectivity has done far worse damage to the idea of impartial journalism and accelerated cultural factionalism as consumers are emboldened to regurgitate belief to friends and neighbors and to call it fact.

Ezra Klein noticed a Fox News executive inadvertently copping to this slippery game in an interview given to Time magazine. Here's what Fox VP Michael Clemente had to say:

The fact that our numbers are up 30 plus in the news arena on basic cable I'd like to think is a sign that we are just putting what we believe to be the facts out on the table.

Here's what Klein had to say about that:

Most news organizations, in my experience, do not have to qualify the word "facts" with the words "what we believe to be." On the other hand, as Fox says, that model is good for ratings.

Four in the evening

1. Fear the shield: An attorney and former judge says a federal shield law for reporters is more trouble than it's worth. Boston Globe

2. Legislation by ballot: Californians pass legislation and even amend the state Constitution through the ballot box. So why aren't more of the campaign documents related to those ballot measures made public? Joe Mathews says they should be. Fox & Hounds

3. Good for what Ailes you: Fox News CEO Roger Ailes met with White House political boss David Axelrod to look for common ground. Politico

4. Executive-suite privilege: Freedom Communications, owner of the Orange County Register, isn't interested in sharing its business records publicly. Ironic, no? Editor and Publisher

Advo-torial

A new kind of advocacy journalism has taken hold, most prominently on cable television: self-advocacy journalism. Instead of standing up for populist principles or society's downtrodden, shows stand up for whatever turns a profit. Speaking of which, a leader in self-advocacy journalism, Fox News, got caught with its ethics down at the recent "tea party" rally in DC.

The deal that wasn't was the worst

Keith Olbermann last night named New York Times reporter Brian Stelter the third worst person in the world for reporting that the heads of GE and News Corp. had brokered a deal to end the bickering between Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly. Stelter earned the ignominy, Olbermann said, because no deal was ever made. Olbermann then went on to name News Corp. boss Rupert Murdoch as the very worst person in the world for meddling in O'Reilly's show. James Poniewozik at Time sums up the logic here.

The pawn shops

The New York Times on Friday reported on a bizarre and troubling "cease fire" arranged by corporate executives at G.E. (owner of MSNBC) and News Corp. (owner of Fox News) to end an on-air feud between two of their companies' biggest stars, Keith Obermann and Bill O'Reilly. For some reason Charlie Rose of PBS was involved, too, as a mediator.

Astonishingly, the reason for negotiating a cease fire had nothing to do with journalistic integrity or bettering the civic dialogue. The discussions were triggered by a fear among top executives that the feud, which was good for ratings in the respective news divisions, would harm the carefully crafted images of the corporate parents. As the NYT writes:

The reconciliation — not acknowledged by the parties until now — showcased how a personal and commercial battle between two men could create real consequences for their parent corporations. A G.E. shareholders’ meeting, for instance, was overrun by critics of MSNBC (and one of Mr. O’Reilly’s producers) last April.

“We all recognize that a certain level of civility needed to be introduced into the public discussion,” Gary Sheffer, a spokesman for G.E., said this week. “We’re happy that has happened.”

Neither Fox's O'Reilly nor MSNBC's Olbermann are traditional journalists, so their bloviations are not bound by the ethics most newsrooms labor under. One could even argue that by letting their feud boil over, the two hosts had poisoned the atmosphere for their newsrooms by attracting more cynical and partisan audiences and crowding out good storytelling.

But the cease fire wasn't about content or responsible journalism. These discussions were because rich and powerful businessmen wanted to protect their profits. They obliterated the wall that separates news from business and meddled with news content. And their meddling didn't stop with Olbermann and O'Reilly, as the NYT found:

Shortly after, Phil Griffin, the MSNBC president, told producers that he wanted the channel’s other programs to follow Mr. Olbermann’s lead and restrain from criticizing Fox directly, according to two employees. At Fox News, some staff members were told to “be fair” to G.E.

If you need more convincing to be shocked, Glenn Greenwald at Salon offers an interesting analysis here. He gets breathless at times, but his outrage is aimed in the right direction.