The Kicker

  1. February 2, 2012 03:27 PM

    Dana Milbank Was Right

    Earlier today, I posted this story about the number of political journalists who have recently admitted to having a “rooting interest” in the Republican primary—favoring an extended campaign, and specifically an extended campaign involving Newt Gingrich. I compared this bias to an umpire having an interest in calling the game to keep the underdog close. And I kidded Politico for hitting every angle of the story—producing one piece that presumed a Mitt Romney victory, another that saw the race as still open, and a third that commented on the media’s interest in drama.

    If only I’d waited! Leading the Politico site at the moment is Alexander Burns’s article, “How Newt Gingrich Could Bounce Back.” And in this case, offensive coordinator is perhaps the more apt analogy. Burns hands Gingrich the playbook for staging a dramatic comeback and stopping “Romney’s candidacy from becoming a runaway train.”

    Among his tips? “Demand more debates.” “Keep up the identity politics.” And, of course, “embrace the conservative media circus.”

  2. February 2, 2012 10:59 AM

    Rebecca MacKinnon discusses new book Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom

    Rebecca MacKinnon, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, visited Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism on Wednesday to talk about her new book, Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom. In it, she delves into how our technologies and cyberspace should be governed to support the liberties of Internet users around the world. The talk was moderated by Columbia professor Emily Bell, and MacKinnon opened the discussion by referring to last winter’s Arab Spring, which sparked much “euphoric” media coverage about the role of the internet as a “democracy fostering force.”

    But how should technology be structured to help support human rights around the world? Yes, technology can be a great way to organize, communicate, and protest, but it can also infringe on people’s privacy, and in effect, freedom. “Increasingly, a citizen’s relationship with the government is mediated through our communication technologies,” says MacKinnon. “How do you insure the technology is governed and configured in a way that serves the citizens rather than serving corporate profits and government interests?”

    She refers to the “sovereigns of cyberspace,” like Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin, and the power of their creations. “Increasingly, civic lives depend on these platforms,” says MacKinnon, yet the decision making at these companies doesn’t always take into consideration how these choices could effect their most “vulnerable users.” “It’s not their primary concern,” says MacKinnon.

    She points to the situation that came out of a Facebook page dedicated to Khaled Saeed, a young Egyptian who was murdered at the hands of Egyptian police. His death is considered to be one of the galvanizing forces behind the protests, but the Facebook page, “We are Khaled Saeed,” was taken down because the people who put it up, fearing repercussions, did so under fake names, which violates Facebook’s terms of service. It was eventually reinstated when someone volunteered to put it under their real name in the US. And while it’s these protesters decisions to rely on a social network, still, “Facebook’s management decisions have an impact on activists that’s not always positive,” says MacKinnon.

    Overall, MacKinnon says there’s an online accountability problem. When so much rests on these net behemoths, it’s hard to figure out who’s responsible for making the public interest a priority. While the actions of Internet companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter have had positive effects, “it’s dangerous to say technology is pointing in a freer direction, and ultimately it will all be okay,” says MacKinnon, who is not a fan of “technology determinism.” “There’s a difference between freedom of bits and freedom of human beings,” says MacKinnon, “and it’s not always an equal sign.”

    That’s why MacKinnon feels that Internet users need to try and influence the companies whose platforms they depend on. Just as society came to question the “divine right of kings” and pushed for a “consent of the governed,” similarly, we need a consent of the networked, which she says is at its “Magna Carta stage.”

    What used to be an information “desert” has become a “rainforest,” says MacKinnon, with a very precarious ecosystem. “The old laws and economy of scarcity don’t apply.” When a problem like copyright infringement arises, there’s no easy legislative bandage. Laws and other proposed counter measures don’t take into account “the ecosystem that this problem exists in and what other rights could be infringed by the fix.”

    MacKinnon had a very interesting point about how these topics get covered. “A lot of these internet law and policy stories that have a big impact in the long run on our freedoms and politics and how we relate to the world—they don’t fit neatly into various beats,” says MacKinnon. Stories about technology or the politics of its regulation end up in various sections, “either it’s a business story, or it’s a gadget story, or it’s a tech story, and the editors are like ‘have the geeks cover it.” MacKinnon suggested it might be more appropriate to send the geo-political reporter on these stories, and Emily Bell agreed, responding, “a converging world doesn’t fit into beats.”

  3. January 27, 2012 04:32 PM

    RIP: Jonathan “Jack” Idema, Media Con Man

    In April 2004, a former U.S. Special Forces soldier named Jonathan Keith Idema started shopping a sizzling story to the media. He claimed terrorists in Afghanistan planned to use bomb-laden taxicabs to kill key U.S. and Afghan officials, and that he himself intended to thwart the attack. Shortly thereafter, he headed to Afghanistan, where he spent the next two months conducting a series of raids with his team, which he called Task Force Saber 7.

    So began Mariah Blake’s remarkable investigative piece in in the January/February 2005 issue of the Columbia Journalism Review. As she would go on to report, Idema took many journalistic outlets for a ride: “A self-proclaimed terror-fighter who has served time for fraud, Idema took a willing media by storm, glorifying his own exploits, padding his bank account, and providing dubious information to the American public.”

    He was a treated as an expert on all three networks, was a terrorist hunter on Don Imus’s radio show, a “Northern Alliance adviser” on Fox News, and a key source for Mary Mapes and Dan Rather on 60 Minutes II, among many other media appearances and quotes. He told wide-eyed journalist that there was ample evidence linking Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia to Al Queda and September 11. In 2004, he was sentenced to ten years in Afghanistan for “running a private jail and torturing prisoners,” according to The New York Times, after Afghan judges rejected a claim that Idema and friends were working for the Pentagon.

    As Blake demonstrated, he was a con man. He sued CJR for saying so, but the suit was dismissed.

    Now comes the sad ending to the story. As Graeme Wood reports on his International Herald Tribune blog today, Idema died last weekend from complications of AIDS in Mexico. He was fifty-five. During his final years, Wood writes, Idema was attempting to sell boat tours to vacationers in Mexico. The headline on the column is, “The Death of a Poser.”

  4. January 26, 2012 04:12 PM

    Julian Assange’s New Platform: RT

    So here’s a partnership we might have seen coming: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will host a TV talk show that debuts in March on RT, the Kremlin-funded, English-language twenty-four-hour news channel.

    The Kremlin created Russia Today (later shortened to just RT) in 2005, to counter what it believes is relentlessly negative western media coverage of Russia.

    How does RT try to counteract that coverage? By providing relentlessly negative media coverage of the west—in particular, the United States. And by not biting the hand that finances it: the Kremlin. (For an analysis of RT and its coverage, done by Columbia Graduate School of Journalism students last spring, go here.)

    RT staff were absolutely crowing today about the new Assange show, hyperbolically described on the channel’s website as “arguably the most anticipated news series of 2012.” According to RT, Assange will interview “iconoclasts, visionaries and power insiders,” though none of his interview subjects has been publicly identified.

    RT noted that Assange will have to record his ten interviews while under house arrest; he is fighting extradition from the UK to Sweden, where he faces sexual assault allegations that he has denied.

    From the perspective of the principal parties, this should be a win-win relationship. Assange had suddenly brought big international attention to a channel whose main star to date has been a snarky, twenty-something presenter, Alyona Minkovski, born in Russia but raised in California.

    And RT gives Assange an international platform free from the filter of western mainstream media. RT wants controversy from him, as long as it doesn’t go against Kremlin interests.

    “We are hoping it will be as explosive as WikiLeaks leaks,” gushed one RT announcer.

    From the perspective of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Assange’s new show might seem an affirmation of her lament to Congress last year, that “We are in an information war, and we are losing it.”

    Clinton ticked off the names of some of the best-known government-funded satellite news channels created in the past decade: RT, Al Jazeera English, China’s CCTV. They are, she told Congress, “literally changing people’s minds and attitudes. And like it or hate it, I think it’s really effective.”

    Though it’s not clear how many minds and attitudes are really changed by RT and other services, Clinton’s “information war” description does seem apt. To learn more about the global media wars among satellite stations, and to see how several of them stack up journalistically, go to this report by the Columbia Journalism School’s International Newsroom class last May.

  5. January 25, 2012 02:14 PM

    About that Univision debate boycott …

    Remember that ugly incident back in October when Republican candidates Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum pledged to boycott Univision’s Republican debate? (We reported the back story here).

    Funny, it does not apply to forums moderated by Jorge Ramos.

  6. January 16, 2012 02:38 PM

    The State endorses Huntsman … for the day

    Yesterday, under the headline, "Huntsman could bring us back together," The State, South Carolina’s largest newspaper, endorsed Jon Huntsman:

    We need a president who can work within our poisonous political environment to solve our nation’s problems, not simply score partisan points. Someone who understands that negotiation is essential in a representative democracy, and that there are good ideas across the political spectrum. Someone who has a well-defined set of core values but is not so rigid that he ignores new information and new conditions. Someone who has shown himself to be honest and trustworthy. And competent. Someone whose positions are well-reasoned and based on the world as it is rather than as he pretends it to be. Someone with the temperament and judgment and experience to be taken seriously as the commander in chief and leader of the free world.

    We think Mr. Romney could demonstrate those characteristics. Mr. Huntsman already does. And we are proud to endorse him for the Republican nomination for president of the United States.

    It was hardly the first endorsement for Huntsman—who has long been considered the liberal media’s darling and was the only candidate to get Vogue treatment—but it was certainly the most short-lived and ill-timed. Only hours after The State issued its ringing endorsement, news broke that Huntsman would be suspending his campaign.

    While today's State story ("S.C. backers disappointed Huntsman is out of race") makes no explicit mention of yesterday's endorsement, or any disappointment in backing the candidate the same day it was announced that he was dropping out, The Guardian caught up with Cindi Scoppe, The State’s associate editor who wrote the editorial and who had this to say:

    "It is rather like having gone through a courtship for some period of time and finally making love with a man, for him to suddenly turn around and say, 'you know what, I think I'm gay'."

    The Washington Post may have been on to something here. . .

  7. January 13, 2012 02:23 PM

    An Image Reconsidered

    The story, "The Times and the Jews" in our January/February issue is a fascinating, nuanced, and important read. We’re proud of it. It has come to our attention that some readers are not reading the piece, however, because they’re stopped cold by the art, shown here, which got a full page in the magazine. Those readers see the drawing as a caricature of a Jew.

    This obviously merits discussion. The first thing to say is, we are sorry that anyone was offended. If we had it to do over, we’d have chosen a different drawing. Since you don’t get second chances in the magazine business, I’ll explain our thinking then and now.

    The job of the illustration was to illustrate the point of the subhead: “A vocal segment of American Jewry has long believed that the paper is unfair to Israel. Here’s why—and why they are wrong.” That vocal segment, as Neil Lewis’s article goes on to suggest, is heavily Orthodox. So what we asked for, and got, is a drawing of a man from Orthodox Judaism’s Hasidic branch reading the Times and scowling at it. The image was okayed along the way by multiple editors and art directors, a group that includes Jews and non-Jews, for what it’s worth (though not by the article’s author).

    What might have made some difference is a caption, which would have further explained the subhed and made clear that we were illustrating a particular subset of Jews, not all of them. But with or without a caption we should have had second thoughts about this illustration, based on the knowledge that people bring different lenses to images around ethnicity, particularly images done in a cartoon style, and that vicious anti-Semitic images are burned into people’s brains. And also because a page away from a headline, “The Times and the Jews,” it looks like we are illustrating what “Jews” look like, caption or no caption.

    Thus in publishing the piece online, we are separating it from the art, so as not to do a disservice to Neil’s excellent piece. And, of course, to avoid offending anybody else. Giving offense was the last thing we wanted to do.

  8. January 12, 2012 10:44 AM

    A.G. Sulzberger is getting chewed up

    It’s beginning to look a lot like a Stephen Bloom reprise.

    Not even a month after Bloom, a New Jersey native-cum-University of Iowa journalism professor went into hiding(!) after riling Iowans with a brave?/satiric?/not-so-nice essay on The Atlantic’s website (Bloom emerged from hiding only to land in the scary-eyed grip of NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams’s Willie Geist), another east-coast media transplant has raised the hackles of the meat-eating, gun-toting Midwestern lot he’s reporting on.

    Yesterday, The New York Times’s Kansas City correspondent A.G. Sulzberger had a piece “Meatless in the Midwest: A Tale of Survival” in which he shares his personal travails as a vegetarian living in the country’s bread meat basket. The story is run alongside a photo of big men in line for brisket—fresh off the industrial meat carver—for breakfast.

    Despite having some nice things to say about his current home and talking about his “struggle for sustenance” with a lightish touch, Sulzberger has ticked off, at the very least, the region’s vegetarians and food snobs (we’re a Top Chef nation, now):

    It should be stated right up front that the Midwest, with its rich culture, stark natural beauty and superlative decency, quickly defies stereotypes. Living in the middle of the country is very different from living in the middle of nowhere.

    But make no mistake: meat-loving is one stereotype that the region wears with pride. Lard still plays a starring role in many kitchens, bacon comes standard in salads, and perhaps the most important event on Kansas City social calendars is a barbecue contest.

    It didn’t take long before word had gotten around to Midwestern folk (funny how that happens in the Internet era) and they were fighting back on their blogs. Poynter’s Steve Myers has started a round-up here (plus some bonus east-coast criticism).

    Maybe we should call it a ground round-up?

  9. January 11, 2012 11:05 PM

    North Korean Newspaper Goes English on Web

    Last month, on the occasion of the passing of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, I reviewed the 1983 Pyongyang-published book, The Great Teacher of Journalists, which chronicled the Dear Leader’s tireless contributions to (and benevolent corrections of) the North Korean press.

    Perhaps my favorite of Kim Jong-il’s counsel to his country’s journalists was this:

    Comrade journalist, you must see things on the spot before you write your articles. Otherwise you may talk big.

    There was also this, to photojournalists:

    In fixing the place of the camera, the cameraman’s first consideration should be how to take the leader’s best picture.

    The launch this week of an English language web site by North Korea’s state newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, confirms that the Dear Editor’s legacy lives on.

    The site, as the [South] Korea Times tells it, exists to “amplify the North’s voice outside its borders.”

    Interestingly, South Koreans, the Korea Times reports, “could access [the site] for a short time Tuesday…as the [South Korean] government handled procedures to shut it out” per a

    contentious security law, enforced in 1948, [that] makes illegal both communism and the recognition of North Korea as a political entity. Despite calls that it is a restriction of the freedom of speech, it is frequently used to block North Korean propaganda and investigate those who “praise, disseminate or cooperate with anti-state groups.”

    Among Rodong Sinmun articles that South Koreans will apparently miss? A January 9th report headlined, “Kim Jong Il and the Development of Cinema Art,” about how employees of the Korean Film Studio “feel sorry and guilty” that they have yet to produce “any piece portraying” the Dear Leader (who, it turns out, was also quite the Dear Director/Producer):

    Under [Kim Jong-il’s] loving care many famous cinema artists including movie stars were produced…

    [Korea Film Studio employees] all recalled in deep emotion that leader Kim Jong Il would come to the film studio in the morning or in the evening and sometimes deep at night and at the small hours of the morning, discussing on the scenario and guiding actors and actresses how to do their part perfectly.

  10. January 11, 2012 12:59 PM

    “Firing” your insurance in Romney’s Massachusetts

    Romney’s remark Monday about firing your insurance company apparently harmed him little yesterday in the New Hampshire primary. But as the quote has rocketed around, it might be misleading some into thinking that the Massachusetts health care reforms that Romney signed into law made it so people can willy-nilly get rid of an insurer that doesn’t pay their claims on time.

    The comment deserves a second look. Can you really fire your insurance company? The answer is that it’s darn difficult even in Massachusetts—the land of Romneycare.

    Sarah Kliff, The Washington Post’s health policy blogger, took a crack at explaining Romney’s remark. She argued that under Massachusetts’s individual mandate, which requires residents to carry health insurance, someone can sign up for a new policy only during an open enrollment period. That’s to prevent people from gaming the system by signing up for coverage only when they get sick. Insurance companies don’t like that since they end up insuring a bunch of sick people they might lose money on.

    Kliff gave only half the answer. She was talking about people buying insurance on their own in the so-called individual market. But most people in Massachusetts have coverage from their employers. They, too, can, change insurers only during open enrollment, and their employer decides whether to offer policies from more than one carrier. And increasingly workers—and not only those in the Bay State—have less choice.

    But what if they want to dump their employer’s policy because it’s too expensive or covers too little? Massachusetts law bars them from dropping that coverage and buying a policy through The Connector, the state’s shopping service, where they might find more suitable insurance. As long as their employer’s insurance meets some minimum state standards, they’re stuck.

    When national health reform takes effect, the rules will get more complicated. Workers who have employer coverage cannot shop in the new state insurance exchanges and receive a government subsidy unless their share of the premium for employer coverage exceeds 9.5 percent of their gross income. If someone wants to leave an employer policy and doesn’t want a subsidy, they can shop in the exchange.

    Romney’s statement prompts another look at Jeremy Devor, the man in the middle whose health insurance problems we’ve been reporting on. He would love to “fire” his insurance company, but can’t now or in the future. So you see, firing an insurance company is not exactly like giving a pink slip to bad employee—even if Romney thinks it is.

  11. January 4, 2012 12:46 PM

    Rick’s Relevant Now

    How far has Rick Santorum come to his place in a virtual tie with Mitt Romney at the Iowa Republican caucuses? Back in June, when Santorum formally announced his candidacy, I rounded up the coverage and noted that more-or-less nobody was taking him seriously.

    The general tone was captured by GOP strategist Curt Anderson, in a quote reported by Politico: “I just don’t think his candidacy’s relevant.” Needless to say, it seems relevant today.

    Meanwhile, in that same post I argued that Santorum’s migration from big-government social conservative to economic libertarian who saw Paul Ryan’s budget proposal as too timid was a sign of the “perpetual one-upsmanship” among Republicans, with each leapfrogging the others to get further right on fiscal policy.

    I still think that’s a fair description of the overall field, but over the course of the campaign Santorum has showed he hasn’t abandoned his roots, calling for industrial policy to support the manufacturing sector and pushing for pro-natalist provisions in the tax code. Santorum’s an economic conservative, no doubt—a big part of that industrial policy is a proposal to exempt manufacturers from corporate taxes—but he’s a somewhat different brand of conservative, as David Brooks noted the other day.

    Over the next week, reporters will no doubt be focused on whether Santorum can scale up his campaign for the post-Iowa contest. They should be sure to devote time to his policy ideas, and their implications, as well.

    Update, 5:15 p.m.: At the Tax Policy Center's TaxVox Blog, Howard Gleckman offers a quick look at Santorum's tax agenda that could be helpful to any reporter covering the campaign. He notes that Santorum's platform would benefit corporations and high-income individuals, in keeping with the GOP mainstream—but also that Santorum's proposals for tax expenditures "would likely add significantly to the number of households that pay no income tax," something that "is anathema to current Republican orthodoxy."

    The upshot of all these tax reductions, even when coupled with steep spending cuts? According to Gleckman, the plan "would very likely add trillions of dollars to the federal deficit."

  12. December 22, 2011 01:01 PM

    New Investment Company Buys Chicago Sun Times

    A digitally focused company has purchased an old media standard. Sun-Times Media Holdings, owner of The Chicago Sun-Times and over forty other media ventures, has been sold to a newly formed investment group called Wrapports LLC. The announcement was made late Wednesday evening, and while details of the arrangement have not yet been revealed, it’s been reported that the price was in the region of $20 million.

    Wrapports is led by Timothy P. Knight, a former media executive with Newsday, and Michael W. Ferro, the CEO of Merrick Ventures, which deals with technology companies. (Full disclosure: Michael W. Ferro has been advised by Peter Osnos, the vice chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review.)

    The Associated Press reported that the name Wrapports refers to a combination of “the ‘wrapping’ of a newspaper, with the ‘rapport’ planned by new technology.” Knight told the AP that the plan is to take the organization in a digital direction:

    At a time when the public's appetite for news stories, photographs, videos and blogs has reached an unprecedented level, Sun-Times Media is poised to meet that demand by developing creative ways to deliver a true multi-media experience for our users — how they want it, where they want it, when they want it.

    It may seem odd for a new business to invest in an industry as risky as the newspaper business. But the Chicago Tribune reported some speculative reasons for the purchase from a “longtime industry executive” who went unnamed:

    The Sun-Times’ suburban papers were important to the transaction, a source said, as they have a loyal following and their digital potential hasn’t come close to being realized.

    The transaction is expected to close by the end of the year.

  13. December 12, 2011 03:53 PM

    Hints of Ben Smith’s BuzzFeed Move?

    Early today, Politico's Ben Smith announced that he will be "giving up this blog" (the recently renamed and relaunched "Ben Smith on Politics and Media" blog at Politico) to join BuzzFeed, which the The Atlantic Wire describes as a site that "is better known for flagging shareable content (like this currently trending video of a blind kitten helping to set up a Christmas tree) than cornering lawmakers with tough questions." Smith aims, in his own words, to help BuzzFeed "build the first true social news organization—that is, an outfit built on the understanding that readers increasingly get and share their news on Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms."

    When I talked to Smith last summer for "The Reporter's Voice" series in the current, 50th Anniversary issue of CJR, Smith wrestled with the question of where blogs, including his own, fit in today's media landscape. Said Smith:

    Now blogs feel so ancient and creaky. I think if you have a blog and an audience you can maybe hold that space you’re in and as that audience ages just age with it. But Twitter has displaced blogs as the place where you see something new for the first time. So the blog has lost a bit of its rhythm and centrality. Now you have this new place for one-liners. I do a lot fewer blog items of the form, hey, look at this cool thing, because people are seeing that cool thing on Twitter. The blog is now a vehicle [laughs] for long, analytical stuff. And for news breaks, certainly. It’s not the place where you conduct the central political conversation which I think I did with some success in ’08.

    Could that place, eventually, be BuzzFeed? More from The Atlantic Wire on how BuzzFeed might be at least part of the political conversation:

    [BuzzFeed co-founder Jonah] Peretti went on to explain how BuzzFeed's small team of editors has already started to come up with new ways of reporting that involve not only covering stories but engaging in them as they happen. The best example he offered was the coordinated effort spearheaded by BuzzFeed that brought dozens of people to People's doorstep with RyGos face masks to protest the magazine's not naming Ryan Gosling as the Sexiest Man Alive this year. Imagine a more serious future in which BuzzFeed readers show up on the campaign trail with masks.

    (Disclosures: BuzzFeed co-founder Kenneth Lerer is on CJR's Board of Overseers and, for a couple of years in the late '90s, I worked at Lerer's strategic communications firm.)

  14. December 9, 2011 10:36 AM

    Anti-Romney voters’ top concern

    Perhaps last month's front-page, fact-packed, 1000-word story about Mitt Romney’s hair, from The New York Times’s Michael Barbaro and Ashley Parker, struck you—as it did us (and apparently Slate, which has nominated it as one of the dumbest news stories of the year) as a little too voluminous for its subject.

    But, then again, maybe Romney’s naturally buoyant, mousse, gel, and purportedly dye-free mane (cut for a mere $70 when Romney doesn’t give it a trim himself) really does matter to the electorate.

    Per Shushannah Walshe’s story about a focus group of young voters in Iowa at ABC’s The Note blog:

    He then asked if anyone liked Romney, which received a lukewarm at best, negative at worst reaction. The former marine who was in Iraq during the last cycle and is now a student immediately responded, “I just can’t stop thinking about his hair.”

    The 26-year-old stay-at-home mom from Des Moines agreed. “You can’t trust a guy with immaculate hair,” she said. “I don’t feel like I can trust him, he seems too smooth … I’ve heard something about businesses going bankrupt and all the people lost their jobs. I don’t know anything specific about it, but we are trying to get jobs.”

    The Mormon thing seemed to bother them less. According to Walshe, none of them will even consider voting for Romney.