This week in Der Spiegel

In this week’s title story of DER SPIEGEL, I am featured on page 127. The article deals with social networks, and I am talking about the news I broke on twitter (N.Y. Times hiring Bono as an op-ed writer) and how J-school students twittered the Obama-McCain forum on national service.

Click here to buy the whole issue as an e-paper or browse through the pages.

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Andrew Rosenthal explains why McCain wasn’t published in NYT

Photo: Andrew Rosenthal (by Katya Wachtel)

Andrew Rosenthal, the New York Times Editorial Page Editor, visited the student center at the Journalism School tonight and talked for 90 minutes about his job.

It would be an understatement to say he surprised people in the school with his pointed comments. He managed to make everyone laugh out loud at least once - and that after a long day in classes or on the reporting beat.

Talking about the controversy around Obamas published op-ed piece, followed by denying McCain the same opportunity - at least when you ask his campaign management - Rosenthal had the following words to say about a process that started with telling Senator Obama of what to write and what not.

(audio temporarily removed…)
“We can’t accept this piece but if you take out all those quotes from last week’s speech and the ones from the commercial and you focus less on attacking John McCain and you focus more on your own policies. And they sent us two more drafts and we accepted the third one.

“And when we accepted it I said to David Shipley, our editor, ‘okay here’s how this is gonna go. We are going to run this thing and the McCain people will ask for equal time. And we are going to give it to them because it’s only fair. And they are going to send us a horrible, unprintable op-ed piece. And we’re going to ask them for the same exact changes we asked Barack Obama for and we are never going to hear from them and they’re going to leak it to Drudge and attack us for dissing McCain and that is exactly what happened.

“Our public editor has criticized us. They sent in the piece. They called on a Thursday and wanted it to go on Sunday. I said ‘fine.’ Our editor said to them ‘you understand the rules, it can’t be a press release, it can’t be a rehash speech and we really don’t want you to just criticize Obama, we need to hear about your opinions.’

“They said ‘yes, yes, yes.’ They sent us a rehash speech that criticized Obama and said nothing about what McCain wanted. We wrote them back - a slightly inartfully worded email but basically said them same thing: ‘We can’t accept this.’ And they just went straight to Fox News, Drudge.”

Click more to read my tweets during his talk (Start at the bottom) and take a look at the slideshow.

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Bubba Trouble

Vanity Fair about Bill Clinton becoming a liability in his wife’s campaign: “Some point to Clinton’s medical traumas; others blame sheer selfishness, and the absence of anyone who can say “no.” Exploring Clintonworld, the author asks if the former president will be consumed by his own worst self.”

View the full article.

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Partisan Pundits are the new attraction

Writing about Karl Rove’s new job as TV analyst on FOX News, and columnist for Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times cites Broder’s concerns: ” ‘One day they are calling journalists to write favorably about their prominent political patrons,’ Mr. Broder said, ‘and the next minute they are sitting at the table with journalists and indistinguishable from the journalists.’”

View the full article. 

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Wright and the Press

Rev. Jeremiah Wright had three public appearances in four days, after he stood silent for many weeks in which clips of his sermons were played up and down the TV-, radio- and internet sphere. With his latest speech, at the National Press Club in Washington D.C., and the following press conference, he once again stirred up a lot of controversy.

Especially the critique of his speech in the print media on Tuesday was extraordinary. Not only took most newspapers time, and a lot of space, to lay out their opinion, but started to attack each other in the meantime.

Here is a list of links about the topic:

Alessandra Stanley: “Not Speaking for Obama, Pastor Speaks for Himself, at Length” (NYT)

Mr. Wright, Senator Barack Obama’s former pastor, was cocky, defiant, declamatory, inflammatory and mischievous, but most of all, he was all over the place, performing a television triathlon of interview, lecture and live news conference that pushed Mr. Obama aside and placed himself front and center in the presidential election campaign.

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WSJ under Murdoch? Less of Wall Street.

When Rupert Murdoch took over Dow Jones and its premier outlet, The Wall Street Journal, many people were wondering how much of an impact his presence would have. The Project for Excellence in Journalism asked the same question and looked at the front page of the paper before, and after Murdoch’s arrival.

The findings are simply explained: More politics and more foreign news for less business. The latter declined from 30% of all front page stories to only 14%. The 2008 election and politics in general now make up 18%, compared to 4% in the four months before the takeover.

It will be interesting to see how this will continue after the election season, when there is less daily news about candidates, controversies and horse race- or donation numbers. Murdoch always wanted to challenge The New York Times, but PEJ analysis shows, that WSJ is still much more a business and financial paper compared to the Paper of Record.

The Journal still has almost twice as much economic news on Page 1, and more than four times the amount of business news than its inner-city counterpart. (More of the study here…)

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The Freedom of Speech

The “U.S. vs. Libby” lawsuit did not only put an administration and its actions in the wake of the Iraq war on trial, but featured many stars of the political media landscape on the witness stand.

I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, former top aide to Vice-President Dick Cheney was on trial for purgery and obstruction to federal investigations, but with Bob Woodward, Tim Russert, Robert Novak, Matt Cooper and Judith Miller, some of Washington’s most influential journalists were questioned about their involvement in the leak of a C.I.A. undercover agent.

In March 2002, Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador, is sent on a trip to Niger on behalf of the C.I.A. He is ordered to look for evidence that Niger sold nuclear technology to Iraq. Shortly after his return, Wilson explains that there was nothing to that story. Still, President Bush will use it as an argument to defend an invasion of Iraq in his State of the Union address on January 28, 2003. He announces that British intelligence has gathered evidence that Iraq bought significant amounts of nuclear explosives in Africa.

In July of 2003, Wilson publishes an op-ed column in The New York Times with the title “What I did not find in Africa” and erodes Washington, especially the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney and his aide Scooter Libby.

A few months prior to that, in Mai of 2003, Libby and Rove react to an article by N.Y. Times writer Nicholas Kristof, who reports that an unknown ambassador has visited Niger and could not find any connection between this country and Iraq.

In an attempt to discredit Wilson, Libby and Rove talk to several reporters and leak the name of Wison’s wife, C.I.A undercover agent Valerie Plame, who reportedly sent him on this trip. After those 15 famous words of President Bush in his State of the Union, the administration blamed the C.I.A. for the mistake.

Libby learned of this connection in May of 2003 by a state department official, but claimed during the first hearings that he lost his memory about those talks because of the flood of information that came in during this period of time.

In June of 2003, Libby talks to N.Y. Times reporter Judith Miller several times about Valerie Plame’s identity, so the charges. Leaking her identity would be present a felony.

A week earlier, Bob Woodward, writer for the Washington Post, talks to Secretary of State Richard Armitage and becomes the first to learn about Plame’s identity. Armitage admits these talks with Woodward and is not charged due to inadvertence.

Armitage will also talk to Robert Novak, who will later become the first journalist to publish the story. Bob Woodward, until this day, remains the only person involved in this issue, not to have written a single article about it. He never saw it as an important enough topic. Later on, Woodward will talk to Scooter Libby about the Wilsons.

In July of 2003, Wilson’s op-ed column is published in The New York Times and Dick Cheney gets involved in the dealings. He writes notes next to the article, questioning if the C.I.A. has done this sort of thing before: Sending an ambassador on a covert mission. He also asks in these notes if his wife might have been the one that sent him.

Scooter Libby, shortly after, talks to Ari Fleischer, then Press Secretary of the White House, about the issue and the connection to Plame and adds, that not many people would know about this. Ari Fleischer confirms this talk, but Libby claims he has never talked with Fleischer about Plame.

Thereafter, Libby meets with Judith Miller for a second time and asks her to refer to him as “former Hill staffer”, if she wanted to publish the story. This identification, and Miller’s decision not to reveal it, will put her into jail for 85 days, until Libby reveals himself to be the anonymous source. A source, that only appeared in Miller’s notebook and was never published in an article.

After his talk to Miller, Libby will also have a conversation with Tim Russert, the host of NBC’s Meet the Press. Libby now claims that he learned about the identity of Valerie Plame in this conversation. Russert denies ever talking to Libby about Plame. Shortly after, Libby also talks to Matt Cooper, writer for Newsweek, about Plame, claiming that he had heard about the rumor himself.

Later on, Libby will tell the grand jury, “I was very clear to say reporters are telling us that because in my mind I still didn’t know it as a fact. I thought I was — all I had was this information was coming in from reporters.”

On July 14, 2003, Robert Novak publishes the story that reveals the identity of Valerie Plame as a C.I.A. agent and wife of Joseph Wilson and causes a federal investigation on weather administration officials leaked her identity.

Judith Miller, who has notes about Valerie Plame, refuses to identify her sources and refers to a shield law which exists in 30 states and Washington D.C. Because the leak of an undercover agent is considered a crime, and Miller may be aiding the perpetrator, she is sentenced to jail until she reveals her source.

Now Judith Miller sees herself as defender of a whole profession. She demands her rights to protect a source, because those are vital to investigative journalism. Such a protection should exist to not scare away potential whistle blowers, no matter if a source is a good, or a bad one.

Branzburg v. Hayes announced in 1957 that a journalist had no right to protect a source if a criminal investigation depended on it. Still, the importance in this 5-4 decision was put on the minority dissent of Judge Powell who explained, that every case needed to be treated individually. He acknowledged that Branzburg v. Hayes did have its limits.

Judith Miller knew who she granted anonymity and knew, that she protected an administration that not only went to war with false information, but tried to discredit the ones who wanted the truth to be heard. One of these people is now on trial on accounts of obstruction and perjury.

Freedom of Press and protection of sources are vital for a free democracy. Without it, there would not have been a “Deep Throat” or Jeffery Wigand. However, those sources ought to be protected to serve one goal: the public’s interest.

It is questionable if the protection of Scooter Libby served in that interest. Especially in the months after the original invasion, it would have been of great importance to uncover the wrongdoings of administration officials.

Journalists need protection to do their work. But they should always remember that they do this work to serve in the public’s interest. With freedom of speech comes great responsibility.

Discussion:

1) Is Judith Miller right in arguing for protection of sources, no matter if they are good or bad ones?

2) Do you think journalists should have a special right, just as doctors or lawyers, to protect information in order to serve the public?

3) Where are the dangers in a town as Washington D.C. where every journalist depends on background informations and off-the-record statements by politicians?

Additional Information:

> Branzburg v. Hayes
> First Amendment Center on Shield Laws
> New York Times timeline about “Plamegate”
> MSNBC article about Libby’s actions

Works Cited:
Seidman, Joel. “Backstory: How the CIA leak case began” MSNBC.com 12 Jan. 2007. 11 Mar. 2007

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Journalists at War

Each Sunday, Tim Russert, host of NBC’s Meet the Press, interviews the most influential politicians and most important press members in his Sunday talk show and it should come to no surprise that there is only one topic since the mid-term elections: Iraq.

In a recent episode, Russert talked to two columnists of The New York Times, David Broooks and Tom Friedman, about the current situation in the Middle East and their latest columns in which they paint a dark picture of the future of this critical part of the world.

Especially Tom Friedman gave some of the most distinct bullet points about the conflict in which he did not mince matters and illustrated the kind of dilemma journalists are facing while covering this national identity crisis.

On the question if we can even assess the situation, he answered: “They [the Iraqis] want justice before democracy. The Shiites want justice for the last 30 years. The Kurds want justice. The Sunnis want justice for a war that overturned their dominance. My fear about Iraq right now and the reason I wrote that column is that I get the sense that our vision of Iraq, a democratic, or democratizing pluralistic Iraq, is everyone’s second choice there.”

While American soldiers risk their lives each day to bring democracy to the Iraqi people, this would be one goal, but not the most important goal for the people there. Certainly an argument which most Bush-critics are pointing out these days. It is not the Americans that decide about the future of this country, but the Iraqis themselves. It is vital that they want democracy more than anything, because no military power can force it onto them.

About the issue weather we can call the conflict a “civil war”, Friedman argues: “We had a civil war in our country. We had a civil war because we thought some people in our country believed really bad things. Really bad things about human dignity and equality, about the right of one people to enslave another. They’re having a civil war in Iraq, only it’s not about ideas, it’s about tribal issues. There is no Abe Lincoln there. It’s the South vs. the South, that’s the problem with the fight right now.”

On the question what the Iraq conflict means to the rest of the region, he goes on, “if you step back, look at what’s been going on there for the last year. In Iran, they just had a conference on why the Holocaust didn’t happen. In Iraq, you have people fighting over who is the proper heir to the prophet Mohammed. And in Syria, basically, the government of Syria killed the prime minister next door, and wants to get off with a parking ticket. This is a freak show, OK? There’s no other part of the world that’s behaving like this.”

Iran is supporting the Shiite militia, Saudis are concerned about the Sunni minority and threaten with an invasion if the Americans should leave them behind, and the Kurds in Northern Iraq have banned the Iraqi flag and consider themselves a self-governed state.

This is where David Brooks jumps in and explains to Tim Russert, “A great historian, Michael Oren, says there are three authentic nation states in the Middle East: Turkey, Iran and Egypt. All the rest are phony nations. Sometimes with family—run by families with armies. And that’s—that is fragile. And that could all come undone and that could all be part of the spreading wave of chaos.”

In the week of the interview, First Lady Laura Bush and former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, criticized the media for focusing only on the bad news about Iraq and sending a wrong impression to the American people.

Friedman in defense of his coverage, “I wanted this to succeed, you know, as much as anybody, because I thought it was really important. But I thought it was really important and really hard. And to me, what history will damn these people for is they thought it was really important and really easy.”

And Brooks, asked about his journalist-colleagues on the ground in Iraq, adds, “They’re not biased about this. They want the best for the Iraqi people, they want democracy. Listen to what they’re reporting, they’re reporting chaos. You have 100–I don’t know what it is, 1.6 million people leaving Iraq. You’ve got 9,000 Iraqis every week who are moving to their Shiite homeland, or to their Sunni homeland. This is a country—it’s not civil war, it’s just disintegration. So the idea that this is some media concoction, you—I said that a year ago, two years ago. But at some point, face reality.”

At the end, we should face reality and take it for what it is. It is not the Americans who can solve this crisis, but the people that want to live in this region peacefully. And when an administration sees no way out but to blame the media for their reporting, then you know the times are bad.

Discussion:

1) What are the difficulties journalists face when reporting about a national crisis overseas and how can they avoid to focus on bad news only, but report accurately?

2) Should Tom Friedman and David Brooks be as open as they are about their reporting style or could that lead towards a credibility problem with their readers?

3) How does the element of embedded journalists add to the dangers of reporting from a war zone?

Additional Information:

> AP Story about Embedded Journalists
> Baghdad Correspondent Richard Engel’s War Zone Diary
> NBC’s Meet the Press

Works Cited:
“MTP Transcript for Dec. 17″ MSNBC.com 17 Dec. 2006. 27 Dec. 2006

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“Web First” in der Springer Zentrale

Der Standard aus Österreich berichtet:

Freitag startet “Die Welt” das “Projekt Newsroom”: Im 15. Stock des Axel-Springer-Hauses wurde die “größte integrierte Zeitungs- und Onlineredaktion Deutschlands” (Eigenwerbung) eingerichtet.

Auf 50 Arbeitsplätzen werken künftig 150 Journalisten von sechs bis 24 Uhr im Schichtbetrieb - Schreiber der Welt, “Welt am Sonntag”, “Welt kompakt”, der “Berliner Morgenpost” und welt.de.

Wo bisher Print- und Online-Redakteure getrennte Wege gingen, sitzen sie jetzt unmittelbar nebeneinander. Was die WAZ Mediengruppe mit West Eins wohl im nächsten Jahr starten wird hat der Axel Springer Verlag in seiner Zentral in Berlin schon jetzt hinbekommen und folgt damit dem Vorbild des Guardian in London und mehreren anderen renommierten internationalen Zeitungen, betritt allerdings Neuland auf deutschem Boden.

Morgens sitzen als erstes die Online-Redakteure von WELT.de an den Tischen, und erst nach Mitternacht beenden die Kollegen von WELT KOMPAKT dort ihre Arbeit.

So schreibt man auf Welt.de und man darf vor allem gespannt sein wie sich das “Web first” Konzept auszahlt wo künftig nicht mehr Artikel für die Print-Ausgabe zurückgehalten werden sondern sofort auf der Website erscheinen sollen.

Das kann nur der richtige Weg sein in einer Welt wo die Einnahmen im Internetbereich um 7% der Gesamtwerbeeinnahmen stiegen. Die New York Times legt ihre Redaktion übrigens erst 2007 zusammen und somit hat es Axel Springer zumindest den Jungs aus Midtown erstmal gezeigt.

> Das meint die DPA: “Springer trägt mit der Umgestaltung den veränderten Gewohnheiten vor allem junger Menschen Rechnung, die mehr im Internet surfen und weniger Zeitung lesen.”

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Klare Trennung zwischen Nachrichten und Meinung

Der New York Observer berichtet, dass die New York Times ein neues Design bei seinen Meinungs Artikeln einführern will. Künftig sollen alle Artikel die die Meinung von Redakteuren enthalten auf Nachrichten Seiten der Zeitung deutlicher kenntlich gemacht werden.

Erreichen will man das durch ein simples Konzept: Während die Nachrichten Berichte weiterhin auf beiden Seiten fixiert sind, werden die Kommentare nur noch am linken Rand gebunden sein.

Die Änderung, so Tom Bodkin, der Design Director der Times, zum Observer, wird wahrscheinlich gar nicht sichtbar sein.

“I think a lot of design is to address subconscious issues. Even though people might not notice, they might recognize it subconsciously.”

Vor einigen Monaten hatte der Executive Editor Bill Keller, Bodkin dazu aufgefordert ein Komitee zu bilden, dass die Behandlung von Nachrichten und Meinungen in der Zeitung untersuchen solle. Nach mehreren Meeting, fand das Komittee, dass die Zeitung zu unklar in ihren Definitionen agierte und formulierte einen Bericht der u.a. besagte:

“We have too many labels …. We do not have clear definitions for all of our labeled forms …. We are inconsistent in our use of language …. We are inconsistent in our presentation … ”

Während es in der Tat unklar ist, ob der Leser diese Änderungen denn bemerken wird, ist es immerhin ein Schritt in die richtige Richtung. Schließlich leben wir in einer Zeit wo auf Fox News Meinungen und Kommentare als harte Fakten präsentiert werden und auch in Medien hierzulande die Grenze zwischen persönlicher Meinung und tatsächlichen Nachrichten nicht immer klar eingehalten wird.

Der Kommentar in der ARD Tagesschau ist sicherlich eine Außnahme, und ich rede hier nicht von den Meinungsseiten in jeder Zeitung in der jeder weiß was er vorfinden wird. Es sind diese unterschwelligen Kommentare die den Leser oder Zuschauer in die Ecke des Autors ziehen sollen, ohne dass er weiß was mit ihm geschieht.

Die Zeitung beweist damit wieder einmal ihre besondere Stellung und ihr meistens hervorragendes Selbstkontrollorgan. Man kann sich ähnlich nur öfter wünschen.

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