Yesterday, I asked center-right bloggers to go over the Minnesota Monitor’s published body of work to find quotes seemingly sourced from interviews, and look for suspiciously-similar quotes from other sources.

An emailer who requested anonymity sent me this one, from Friday’s MinMon:

> [Fecke] today:
>
> Second District Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., did not
> respond to repeated requests for information about
> his stand on energy policy, and his House website
> does not list any policy positions on energy, oil,
> or the environment. However, Kline has voted in
> favor of opening more oil refineries and has
> repeatedly voted in favor of tax breaks for oil
> companies. He has been a strong supporter of
> drilling off-shore and in the Arctic National
> Wildlife Refuge, saying in a debate with Coleen
> Rowley, “This is a national security and economic
> issue. Will it solve all of our oil problems?
> Absolutely not. It’s not a long-term solution–we
> do need alternative energy solutions…but we ought
> to be taking advantage of those huge resources.”
> Kline has supported ethanol subsidies, saying, “I
> look forward to gathering bipartisan support to use
> Minnesota agricultural commodities to fuel our
> nation.” He also has supported easing environmental
> regulations on ethanol producing plants.
>
> Google returned one hit for that quote:
>
> (more…)

Someone asked me, in relation to my series  (Parts I, II and III)  on the Minnesota Monitor’s sloppy attribution and possible apparent plagiarism – “why are you pounding so hard on Jeff Fecke?”

I’ll cite Michael Corleone; “It’s not personal.  It’s business”. 

Oh, I’ll cop to having “creative differences” with Fecke; his non-Monitor blogging over the past few years has slid into a morass of Atrios-style snarking.  It irritates me, as a conservative, as a blogger, and as a reader. 

But that hardly makes Fecke unique among leftybloggers; he’s been doing it a long time, and among what passes for the mainstream of leftybloggers, he’s no worse than most, better than quite a few. 

It is business.

Part of it is that, as someone who once did aspire to be a journalist, it sticks in my craw when I see people practicing the craft shoddily – even allowing that I was no master of the craft myself.  As a conservative, it irritates me even more when that slipshod craft is practiced toward partisan ends.

But above all?

We – overtly partisan bloggers of the left and the right – are engaged in a battle for the hearts and minds of Americans; of Minnesotans.  Left-leaning benefactors – from George Soros on down – are pouring a lot of money into trying to win that battle, from projects big (bankrolling attack-PR firm “Media Matters for America”, with whom the Monitor’s parent organization, the Center for Independent Media, used to share offices) to small (trying to establish online publications like the Monitor and its sister publications, Colorado Confidential and the ironically-named Iowa Independant as reputable “news” organizations).  They are – in my opinion – trying to buy credibility. 

It’s working, in many respects; the mainstream media routinely carries Media Matters hit pieces as if they were independent research; some local media give the Monitor, likewise, complete credence.  Hiring Eric Black wasn’t a bad move toward that end, one must admit.

Against that, the center-right independent alternative media has…well, not a lot of money, at least none that I’ve seen filtering down to us lil’ ol’ conservative bloggers in Minnesota. 

Just facts. 

In my three-part series, I presented a bunch of them; either shoddy attribution or plagiarism, depending on your definition of either.  I present them, unvarnished, to help the unaligned news consumer and voter gauge the credence they want to give the various news – and alternative news – options available to them.

And in the online world, facts are available like never before.

So I’d like to present this challenge to center-right bloggers in Minnesota; look over the Monitor.  Find the quotes that are presented as if they were direct quotes made to Monitor reporters – in other words, quotes that are not attributed to press releases, AP copy, or linked to news organization websites or other blogs.  And if you’re a center-right blogger in Iowa or Colorado, you can follow suit with your local Center for Independent Media affiliate as well.

Google ’em. 

See if you get any hits. 

If  you do, see if those hits predate the MinMon/ColCon/IoIndy piece in which the otherwise-unattributed quote appeared.

If so – publish it in your blog.  Let the world know.  Shine a light on the type of “credibility” that the lefty plutocrats’ pieces of silver have bought them.    

And please keep me posted.

The battle for this nation’s hearts and minds needs to be fought at a higher level.

So let’s fight it.

This is Part III of a three part series.  Part I appeared last Wednesday, and Part II was published last Friday.   

———-

Here’s the story, so far. 

In Part I, we noted that Jeff Fecke, when pressed about the attribution of a quote from MNGOP chair Ron Carey, in a story in this article about the various parties’ responses to the idea of changing the date of the Minnesota Primary, begged off.  We noted that he changed his story – changing the attribution of a quote by chairman Carey only when pressed in the comment section by Michael Brodkorb, my Northern Alliance colleague and publisher of Minnesota Demcrats Exposed, and one of Minnesota’s more notorious gadflies. 

I noted that among bloggers who aspire to credibility, it is at the very least poor form to change key mistakes – like attributions of quotes – without informing the readers. 

In Part II, I showed the reader that while Fecke, in his original piece, wrote the quotation from Ron Carey in such a manner as to indicate that he’d gotten the quote directly from the GOP chairman, that Michael Brodkorb noted in the original post’s comment section – and I independently confirmed with the MNGOP’s Mark Drake, who handles all press relations for Carey – that Fecke was never present at the interview from which this story was generated. 

I also showed a similar quote, from a May 17 piece in which Coleman threw Alberto Gonzalez under the bus, in which Fecke presented a quote from Coleman with no other attribution, in a tone that suggested Fecke had had access to the Senator.  I showed, via a source familiar with the story, that the quote took place in a phone interview at which Fecke (and the rest of the Minnesota Monitor’s staff) was not present. 

So what we have so far is a bit of bad blogging etiquette – failing to inform users that one has made corrections germane to the central facts of a story – and a slightly more serious offense, sloppy attribution.  To translate – since Fecke wasn’t present at either interview, then neither Carey nor Senator Coleman “said” anything to Fecke.  The quotes had to have come from another source.

Fecke, of course, has been called on this: as we noted, Brodkorb asked:

You have a direct quote from the Republican Party of Minnesota Chairman Ron Carey in your post:

“…GOP chair Ron Carey saying there is a ’90 percent probability’ of a change…”

Did you interview Chairman Carey?  Did he give you the “90 percent probability” quote?

Fecke responded:

 Maybe I did interview Ron Carey…and maybe I got the information from wire sources…and maybe there’s another option you haven’t thought of. 

Since this is a rather important issue, I asked Fecke myself, in two separate emails last Wednesday and Friday, where those two quotes came from.  Excerpted from Friday’s email (the question differed from Wednesday’s only in the occasional conjunction):

1) To what source to you attribute the Ron Carey “90%
probability” quote?  Was it from an interview, a
statement from the Carey office, or some other source
(and if so, where?)2) To what source to you attribute the Mark Ritchie
quote in the same piece?  Again – direct interview,
statement, or a different source?3) On May 17, 2007, you published a piece
(http://www.minnesotamonitor.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1800)
on Senator Coleman‘s statement on Attorney General
Gonzalez.  The quote read “”’I don’t have confidence
in Gonzales,’ Coleman said, adding, ‘I would hope that
the attorney general understands that the department
is suffering right now, and he does the right thing,
and that is allows the president to provide new
leadership.’” To what source do you attribute this
quote – an interview, a statement, or another source? 

Questioned about this via email, Fecke had no comment.

So the question remains; from where did the quotes come?

———-

Remember; in his original story, Fecke wrote:

While the state has not officially moved the caucus date, both DFL and Minnesota GOP leaders have indicated support for the switch, with GOP chair Ron Carey reportedly saying there is a “90 percent probability” of a change, and the DFL already giving preliminary approval to the plan.

When I talked with Carey’s press handler Mark Drake, I asked him – since Fecke wasn’t present when Carey said the above, how could he have gotten the quote?

Drake replied that the only place he’d seen it in print was an AP story on the subject.

The West Central Tribune covered the story, listing its source as the Associated Press. 

Here’s a paragraph about Chairman Carey, commenting on the primary date:

I like to think Minnesotans have good common sense, so it will be a shame to not have Minnesota’s voice heard as we choose the nominees for both major parties,” said state Republican Party chairman Ron Carey.

Carey said there’s a “90 percent probability” the caucus date will be accelerated. His party’s executive committee intends to decide on the issue next month.

This same report – and quote – is repeated in several other news outlets:

• The Pioneer Press’ Bill Salisbury used the quote in this story.  The story notes that “The Associated Press contributed to this article”. 
• WCCO (Channel 4) has the same quote, in a story entirely credited to the Associated Press.
• The Sioux Falls Argus Leader has, essentially, the same story, credited entirely to Associated Press wire copy. 

So we’ve seen several instances of the “90 percent probability” quote that Fecke used in a manner to indicate that he’d heard the quote – indeed, that he equivocated about in his comment, saying “Maybe I did interview Ron Carey…and maybe I got the information from wire sources” in his comment-section response to Michael Brodkorb’s direct question.

Maybe this, maybe that.  But where did the quote come from?

The only source I can find for this quote – the only source that any news outlet seems to have provided, indeed, for this quote, and the only place other than the Minnesota Monitor where Ron Carey’s press handler Mark Drake has seen the quote other than Jeff Fecke’s story – is in a report from the Associated Press, furnished to its subscribers.

———-

You can find a website for everything, these days.

I took a trip out to Plagiarism.com, your one-stop source for everything related to…well, we need go no further, need we?

Plagiarism:  1. to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of nother) as one’s own
2. to use (another’s production) without crediting the source
3. to commit literary theft
4. to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source.

The only source anyone can find for the Carey quote is the AP story on the subject. 

The AP is fairly stringent about requiring subscribers to attribute or credit the service for the material it supplies.  In none of Fecke’s stories is any wire service credited.

Which is irrelevant, since, when questioned by email, Monitor editor Robin Marty confirmed that the Monitor is not a subscriber to the Associated Press wire service. 

———-

“So what, Berg?  It’s three lousy words!  Anyone can make a mistake!”

Indeed, anyone can.  Bobbling ones’ attribution is, indeed, a rookie flub in journalism, albeit a rookie flub that can get a new reporter unceremoniously fired.  And tacking a “reportedly” on after the fact (as Fecke admitted doing) when credit to the AP (and, on a blog or online news site, a link to the source) is called for, doesn’t really fix the problem; the Associated Press is, indeed, fairly clear about requiring attribution at the very least. 

But if it’s an isolated incident, what’s the problem?

True.  If it’s an isolated incident.

———-

Let’s go back to the May 17 piece in the Monitor, in which Fecke quoted Senator Coleman.  I’ve bolded a brief passage; it will be important later in the piece:

“I don’t have confidence in Gonzales,” Coleman said, adding, “I would hope that the attorney general understands that the department is suffering right now, and he does the right thing, and that is allows the president to provide new leadership.”

Where did the comment come from?

Here was Senator Coleman’s office’s printed statement, taken from the Senator’s website:

May 17th, 2007 – Washington, D.C. – The cloud of suspicion continues to hover over the Attorney General’s office surrounding the dismissal of U.S. Attorneys. This political debate distracts from the important work that must be done at the Justice Department. I believe Attorney General Gonzales is unable to provide the type of leadership needed to effectively run the Department The Department needs new leadership. Sadly, the reputation of Minnesota’s former U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger has been dragged into this situation. Tom is a first-class prosecutor and Minnesota is grateful for his service. I consider him to be a good friend and an outstanding public servant. I have spoken to Tom many times, and he has assured me that he left of his own accord. Nevertheless, it is disturbing that he was ever targeted for possible dismissal.

So Fecke’s quote never occurs in Coleman’s printed public statement.  Where did it come from?

WCCO-TV covered the story; I’ve bolded a passage, again for emphasis:

“’I don’t have confidence in Gonzales,’ Coleman told reporters on a conference call. ‘I would hope that the attorney general understands that the department is suffering right now, and he does the right thing, and that is allows the president to provide new leadership.’”

The story is credited to the Associated Press.  Note that the quote – attributed to a conference call with the Senator – is identical to the quote in Fecke’s piece – except that Fecke’s piece excises (noted the bolded text in the quotes) any reference to the phone conference at which the quote was originally uttered. 

The Strib carried the story:  Brady Averill, attributing the report to a conference call (and crediting wire services in the story’s footnote) wrote:

“I don’t have confidence in Gonzales,” Coleman said in a conference call. “I would hope that the attorney general understands that the department is suffering right now, and he does the right thing, and that is allows the president to provide new leadership.”

The LATimes covered the story, with the same quote and attribution.

The quote took place in a conference call.  Sources familiar with the conference call confirm  that Fecke wasn’t present at the conference call.  The only difference between Fecke’s story and the AP-sourced copy? 

Fecke removed “Coleman told reporters on a conference call”, and replaced it with “Coleman said, adding”. 

How is one to interpret this, other than to make it appear Fecke is trying to make it look like he was present for the statement?

I’m open to explanations.

———-

On May 31, Fecke wrote a piece about Governor Pawlenty’s veto of a tax bill.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty vetoed a tax bill Wednesday night over language that would have required the state to take inflation into account when preparing a budget, as it had before 2002.

“When legislators and the Governor assemble the state budget, we shouldn’t assume that every program should grow on autopilot. We need to examine every taxpayer dollar that will be spent and ensure that we are streamlining and keeping government efficient and effective,” said Pawlenty.

Note the attribution: “…said Pawlenty”.  There is no link to any other source, implying that Pawlenty “said” this to Fecke, or to an audience of which Fecke was a member. 

From the Governor’s website, in a release dated the day before Fecke’s piece:

In his veto letter regarding the tax bill, Governor Pawlenty said there were many positive items in the bill, but that legislative leaders were aware of his opposition to including a measure that would automatically incorporate inflation into the budget forecasting process.“When legislators and the Governor assemble the state budget, we shouldn’t assume that every program should grow on autopilot. We need to examine every taxpayer dollar that will be spent and ensure that we are streamlining and keeping government efficient and effective,” Governor Pawlenty said. “When complaints come about provisions lost as a result of this veto, I would encourage people to contact DFL leaders who chose to keep controversial policy language in rather than passing a clean bill.”  

The quote – presented in bold in both instances – features identical wording and punctuation.  Several organizations released this story, verbatim – noting prominently that it was a news release from the governor’s office.  Larry Schumacher of the St. Cloud Times filed a piece that carried the quote verbatim – in a story that credits the Associated Press. Fecke’s piece included no such attribution

———-

In November, 2006, Eric Black – then with the Strib, now ironically with the Minnesota Monitor – wrote in Strib’s “The Big Question” blog (calling the piece an “Online version of a story that appeared in shorter form in the Nov. 2, 2006 Star Tribune”) quoting then-candidate, now Congresswoman Michele Bachmann:

I’ve written a lot this past week about the Dems’ push to re-instate the “Fairness Doctrine”.  

Let’s be clear about one thing:  the push to re-instate the Doctrine is based on a huge, cynical lie that the left is repeating, true to Goebbels, over and over.  Dick Durbin, for example (I’ve added emphasis):

Dick Durbin — the Senate’s Majority whip — came out four-square in favor of the Fairness Doctrine today, declaring in The Hill — a newspaper for Capitol Hill: “It’s time to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine” It’s the clearest statement yet from a member of the congressional leadership that there will be a real fight over the issue.

Oddly, Durbin explained his position with an appeal to old-time values: “I have this old-fashioned attitude that when Americans hear both sides of the story, they’re in a better position to make a decision.”

And there – in the bold type – is the lie.  Americans hear both sides of the story.  Every story.  All the time.  The metaphorical marketplace of ideas in the broadcast, cable, and (since the early ’90’s) online media over the past 20 years has been a lot like a literal marketplace in, say, Warsaw Poland.  In 1986, it had pretty much what the government said it could have.  Today, both are jammed with a dizzying assortment of stuff, of widely varying quality – and the consumer has almost infinite choice.

Rush Limbaugh is absolutely correct about one thing; before 1987, the “Fairness Doctrine” didn’t explicitly stifle free speech; it merely made it too complicated for the vast majority of radio and TV stations to attempt.  When I started in talk radio in 1985, even the mighty KSTP-AM broadcast only a thin film of “controversial” content, sticking mostly to the usual pre-1987 miasma of sportstalk, recipes, relationship talk, author interviews, counseling, and “stuff going on around the community”.  Talk was a fringe format, the province of the very old, the housebound, and the shift-worker who was bored with music radio.  AM radio was on the brink of extinction. 

Today, the consumer is bombarded with opinion of every stripe, from all corners.  Newspapers, magazines and broadcast TV and radio have been joined by cable and internet TV, satellite and streamed radio, home-made video and pod streaming, blogs in text or audio or video – which have forced the traditional media to adjust to keep up. 

Senator Durbin:  How does the average American not have access to “both sides of the story”?

Congressman Mike Pence is sponsoring an effort to legally bar the FCC – which administers the “Fairness Doctrine” – from regulating poltical content.  Ed Morrissey, my radio colleague, liveblogged the debate on the amendment, about which he reported:

Pence says it represents an “existential threat” to the conservative movement, and believes that the aim isn’t for “fairness” but for the silencing of conservatives. The problem is that the threat is that government retains this ability, either by legislation or executive order. We have to very aggressively explain that the high legal and administrative costs of the FD would simply choose not to carry any political talk radio at all.

Pence points out that the FCC actually has the authority on its own to reinstate the FD, without any action from Congress or the Presidency. They have chosen not to do so, but if the FCC wants to, they could reinstate it tomorrow. The judiciary may have a say in this eventually, but Pence’s bill would strip the FCC of that ability altogether. That doesn’t mean that Congress can’t pass future legislation to do it, but it would have to do so openly.

Do us a favor; call your Congressional representative.  Tell them to support the Pence amendment on the Fairness Doctrine..

Liberals, remember – when they came for conservative alternative media, you need to speak up, or when “they” come for liberal media, there’ll be nobody left to speak for you.

(more…)

This is Part II of a three part series.  Part I appeared this past Wednesday.

———- 

Remember the Society for Professional Journalists’ “Code of Ethics”? 

It says reporters should:

— Make certain that headlines, news teases and promotional material, photos, video, audio, graphics, sound bites and quotations do not misrepresent. They should not oversimplify or highlight incidents out of context.

While the Minnesota Monitor’s self-published code of ethics is largely cribbed nearly verbatim from the SPJ’s code, they curiously edit this commandment:

* Never misrepresent events in an attempt to oversimplify or take events out of context.

Let’s look into this.

———-

On Wednesday, I noted that when pressed by Michael Brodkorb in the Monitor thread comment section, Fecke responded by changing two words – adding the word “reportedly” to quotes by Minnesota GOP chairman Ron Carey and Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie (DFL).   As I noted at the end of Wednesday’s installment, it’s almost a piddling thing – a class E misdemeanor among blogging ethics violations (and yes, I’m highly  and ironically aware the term “blogging ethics” is not unanalogous to “Bolivian jurisprudence” or “JB Doubtless’ subtle shades of metaphor”).  It’s hardly the stuff that scuppers a journalistic endeavor’s credibility. 

By itself.

We’ll come back to that.

———-

In the comment thread on Monday’s post at Minnesota Monitor, Michael Brodkorb asked:

Jeff:You have a direct quote from the Republican Party of Minnesota Chairman Ron Carey in your post:

“…GOP chair Ron Carey saying there is a ’90 percent probability’ of a change…”

Did you interview Chairman Carey?  Did he give you the “90 percent probability” quote?

Fecke responded (with emphasis added by me):

 I’m not going to clarify every word in every story I write for you.  Maybe I did interview Ron Carey…and maybe I got the information from wire sources…and maybe there’s another option you haven’t thought of.  Regardless, I’m not going to get sucked in to what’s clearly a case of you hyperanalyzing every word I write to see if you can find some reason that what I wrote is technically inaccurate, whether or not a reasonable person would find it so.

Now, let’s hold on right there.

“Maybe” one interviews someone, and “maybe” one gets the quote elsewhere?  Would, as Jeff alludes, a “reasonable person” find that to be a mere technicality?

No.  Indeed, the sources a journalist, or “journalist”, uses are critical to establishing the reader/viewer’s sense of the story’s credibility.  Being able to point to a source with reasonable knowledge of the details of a story is a key part of reporting.  Remember – a reporter (as opposed to a columnist) is as a general rule not supposed to be the story, or be part of the story; they are supposed to relate the story to the reader.

Part of the job is relating facts, quotes and information – with which the reader is probably unfamiliar – to the reader in a way that tells the story clearly and credibly.   One does this by telling the reader the source of the assertions in one’s story.  When the reader knows the source of something – a fact, a quote, an assertion – the can gauge the credibility of the reporter’s story-telling accordingly.  “The Senator told me in a one-on-one interview…”, “I read on a bathroom wall that…”, “according to an Associated Press report of the event…”, “…a number of left-leaning blogs report…”, and “highly-placed sources within the company and familiar with its accounting procedures”  are all ways of sourcing a quote in ways that tell a reader how much credence to lend the quotes.

 It’s one of the reasons journalists are supposed to shy away from anonymous sources (the Society of Professional Journalists and the Minnesota Monitor’s codes of ethics enshrine this principle); without knowledge of who the sources are and the baggage, grinding-axes and backstory they bring, the reader can’t get a complete picture of the story. 

Read the original piece Jeff posted before making the corrections – adding the word “reportedly” twice.   I’m going to pull out a few pieces – some quotes from Fecke’s original piece.

Jeff clearly understands the idea of sourcing; he clearly lists the source of one quote:

Leslie Sandberg, communications director for the Mike Ciresi campaign, issued a statement to Minnesota Monitor saying, “We’re going to abide by the endorsement, and our campaign looks forward to having many supporters show up whether the caucuses are held in February or March.”

See how it works?  Sandberg – Mike Hatch’s former flak – sent the Monitor a statement.  Simple, clear, and establishes the credibility of the information Fecke has just presented. 

Two more quotes:

Jess McIntosh, communications director for the Franken campaign, was equally positive. “While we can’t believe that no one has come up with a better name than `Super-Duper Tuesday,’ we’re glad Minnesotans may be able to be a part of it. And we’re excited about increased participation in the caucuses.” …The Bob Olson campaign did not immediately have an official statement, but campaign manager Eric Mitchell said that the move was “good for Minnesotans,” and that it would hopefully increase participation in the caucuses.

So how did Jeff hear from Jess McIntosh and/or Eric Mitchell?  A statement?  An interview?  A drunken confession after hours at the Lexington?

Well, no matter. 

The next quote is from Minnesota GOP chairman Ron Carey:

While the state has not officially moved the caucus date, both DFL and Minnesota GOP leaders have indicated support for the switch, with GOP chair Ron Carey saying there is a “90 percent probability” of a change, and the DFL already giving preliminary approval to the plan.

“Ron Carey saying”. 

What would a reader – that putative “reasonable person” that Fecke alluded to above – assume was the source of that quote?  “Say[ing]” implies a “verbal statement” – arguably insinuating that the reporter got this quote directly from Ron Carey, via an interview, a phone conversation, an email – some direct communication.

I contacted Ron Carey’s office on Wednesday afternoon.  “To the best of my knowledge, Ron has never talked with [Jeff] Fecke about the caucuses”, said Mark Drake, Carey’s press contact.  Furthermore, according to Drake this quotation was not part of any statement issued by anyone in Carey’s office.

Which was, of course, what Michael Brodkorb told Fecke in the original Monitor article’s comment thread:

I called the Republican Party of Minnesota this morning and spoke with the Party’s communications director, Mark Drake.  I asked Mr. Drake if Chairman Carey did an interview with Minnesota Monitor yesterday.  He replied that Chairman Carey did not do an interview with Minnesota Monitor, nor was an interview requested.

If you didn’t interview Chairman Carey, how did you get the quote for your story?  According to numerous attendees at yesterday’s meeting of representatives of the major political parties and Secretary Ritchie, you nor a representative of Minnesota Monitor were present at the meeting.

Fecke responded:

I’ve added one word, twice.

As we noted Wednesday, that word was “reportedly”.  It changed the quote to “…with GOP chair Ron Carey reportedly saying there is a “90 percent probability” of a change…”.  The change was made without telling the readers.

What it meant was that while Fecke’s original story was very vague about the actual source of Carey’s quote, the revision was clearer; Fecke had gotten the quote from some indirect source. 

Are one’s sources direct, or are they indirect?  It can make a difference in the sort of credibility a reader assigns to a reporter’s writing. 

It’s not an academic distinction.  Compare and contrast:

1. “Billy said Annie is a poopyhead”
2. “Billy reportedly said Annie is a poopyhead”

One is direct, authoritative, to-the-chase, and implies that one has gotten the information – the quote – “straight from the horse’s mouth”.  The other adds a level of plausible deniability, as if to say “I don’t know for sure, but this is what I’ve heard…”. 

The Society of Professional Journalists’ code of ethics enjoins a reporter (emphasis added) to “Make certain that headlines, news teases and promotional material, photos, video, audio, graphics, sound bites and quotations do not misrepresent. They should not oversimplify or highlight incidents out of context.”

So if Carey’s quote didn’t come from a face-to-face interview, and it didn’t come from a statement, where did the statement come from?

Or, as Fecke’s un-acknowledged correction put it, what is the quote’s “reported” source?  As this is published, an email to Fecke asking for clarification remains unanswered.

———-

Before we move on to Monday’s installment, let’s look at another quote.  It was in a May 17 piece by Fecke, quoting Senator Norm Coleman’s lambasting of Attorney General Gonzalez.  The quote:

“’I don’t have confidence in Gonzales,’ Coleman said, adding, ‘I would hope that the attorney general understands that the department is suffering right now, and he does the right thing, and that is allows the president to provide new leadership.’”

“Coleman said”.  Not “Coleman reportedly said”.  Not “Coleman said in a statement supplied to the Monitor”, or “Coleman related to an acquaintance during a drunken night of hold-em and Ten Years After videos”.  “Coleman said”.  Said to whom?  If one is a journalist, the implication is “to me”, unless you say otherwise.  (I’ve taken a screen shot, as of Wednesday, June 27 at 5PM, showing the quote in its original form). 

Did Fecke interview Senator Coleman?  A reliable source tells me the  Senator’s quote occurred during a telephone press conference, and that no Monitor staff were present at press conference conference at all.

Just to confirm, I emailed Robin Marty, the Monitor’s managing editor.  She had not been involved in setting up any interviews with the Senator.  As this is published, an email to Fecke asking for clarification remains unanswered.   

“Coleman said”.  To whom?  When?

We’ll discuss that in the next installment, Part III, Monday morning.

This is Part I of a three-part series. 

———-

The other day, I went to the Society for Professional Journalists website. 

No, not just out of idle curiosity.  But we’ll get to that a bit later.

The SPJ has a page devoted to its ethics code.  The whole thing is worth a read; you can learn a lot about the core of the craft, as well as the things that real journalists are taught to strive for as they do their jobs.  I was one of them, once; I did radio and freelance print news, way back when.  I wasn’t very successful – I’m not doing it now! – but a couple of editors said I was good, or at least not bad, at it.   

A couple of the items from the code caught my attention.  I’m going to add emphasis here and there.  You’ll see why, eventually:

— Identify sources whenever feasible. The public is entitled to as much information as possible on sources’ reliability.

Hm. 

— Make certain that headlines, news teases and promotional material, photos, video, audio, graphics, sound bites and quotations do not misrepresent. They should not oversimplify or highlight incidents out of context.

— Avoid misleading re-enactments or staged news events. If re-enactment is necessary to tell a story, label it.

— Never plagiarize.

There’s also an entire section entitled “Be Accountable”, which notes that “Journalists are accountable to their readers, listeners, viewers and each other”, and tells them to:

— Admit mistakes and correct them promptly.

And finally, there’s this last bit here; journalists should…:

— Expose unethical practices of journalists and the news media.

So I guess today I’m going to be a journalist.

———-

Local center-right bloggers have been piling on Minnesota Monitor since before the last election.  The piliing-on stems, mainly, from a couple of things:  the Monitor’s funding (from the “Center for Independent Media”, a DC-based non-profit that started life sharing offices with George Soros’ “Media Matters For America” attack-PR firm), and its staff (a group of leftybloggers with long track records of ideological snarkblogging). 

The Monitor – which calls its’ staff “Citizen Journalist Fellows” rather than “guys in their mom’s basement who blog in their pajamas” and pays them a stipend for blogging on schedule and to purported journalistic standards – has attempted to class up the joint a couple of different ways:

• by publishing a “Code of Ethics” of its very own.  This code reads almost identically to the SPJ’s code – and indeed the code itself notes “The New Journalist Code of Ethics was inspired by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics.”
• Hiring an actual journalist, Eric Black.  Black needs no introduction to readers of this blog; he’s a guy with over three decades of experience in the field, and comes to the Monitor with warehouses full of credibility and gravitas. He is no Cucking Stool.

So it’s established; while the Monitor’s tone is explicitly “progressive”, they are slathering the veneer of journalism over the operation. 

Fair enough.  Let’s run with that. 

We’ll come back to that, too.

———-

Bloggers, of course, have no published code of ethics.  But among reputable bloggers – or bloggers who strive to be reputable – there are at least a few generally-accepted standards.  Plagiarism, of course, is very bad form, and can be punished mercilessly (anyone remember “The Agonist?”).  Another one – prominently label any corrections that are germane to the fundamental facts of a story – ties in closely with one of the articles in the SPJ and the Minnesota Monitor’s codes of conduct: the injunction to “Admit mistakes and correct them promptly”.  It’s why whenever a good blogger changes a fundamental fact in their story, they’ll put something at the bottom of the posting.  For example…:

“UPDATE:  Commenter BillVanNassouwe points out that Councilman Royce was convicted of shoplifting, not high treason.  I’ve changed the story above.  Sorry about the bobble”. 

It’s just good blogging manners, along with that whole “journalistic ethics” thing.

Oh, and one other thing; if you pull a quote from an online source, you link to it.  If you don’t, it is – at the very least – a gaffe.

———-

On Monday, the Monitor ran this story on its front page, under Jeff Fecke’s byline…

…well, no.  That’s not exactly what happened.  Let’s construct a timeline.

1. On Monday, the Monitor ran this story under Fecke’s byline.  It is reproduced verbatim below the fold in this posting; a PDF file made from the screen capture is available for those who want to check the veracity of my copy/paste job for themselves.
2. Michael Brodkorb – my friend, Northern Alliance Radio Network colleague, and Minnesota Democrats Exposed blogger – noticed a couple of things (which will be explained later).  He took the screen shot of the story.
3. Brodkorb then left a comment in the story’s thread at the Monitor questioning the sourcing of a few of the statements in Fecke’s article.  He asked Fecke “Did you interview Chairman Carey?  Did he give you the “90 percent probability” quote?”
4. Fecke responded – twice – and then edited the piece…
5. …which was re-published in this form.  About this time, the story fell off the blog’s front page. 

Note that at no time did the posting explictly say “some facts in this story were changed”.  No update notice was posted.  The casual reader  might never know any part of the story’s content had changed. 

And what happened?

———-

Fecke changed three words. 

• In the second paragraph, he removed a word: “Leslie Sandberg, communications director for the Mike Ciresi campaign, issued a statement to Minnesota Monitor saying, “We’re going to abide by the endorsement, and our campaign looks forward to having many supporters show up whether the caucuses are held in February or March”.  OK – good edit, removing a colloquialism that any editor would have insisted be cut. 
• In paragraph six, he added a word (flagged in blue): “GOP leaders have indicated support for the switch, with GOP chair Ron Carey reportedly saying there is a “90 percent probability” of a change”
• And in paragraph seven, the same basic change: ” Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, a Democrat, has said his office will facilitate a change, reportedly saying, “We’re here to be helpful to the parties if the parties want to move in that direction.”

“Three friggin’ words, Berg?  This is a scandal?  Criminy”.

Of course it’s not a scandal.  Nobody’s that anal-retentive, right?  Adding two lousy words is hardly a journalistic faux-pas; it barely qualifies as a blogging flub. 

Of course, it would have been a better thing had Fecke noted in his post that these corrections, piddling as they seem, had been made.  But it’s no big deal, right?

Right.

Until you dig behind the corrections.

We’ll get to that in our next installment, Part II, on Friday.

(more…)

To:  Senator Inhofe

From: Mitch Berg

Re: Deaths of a thousand cuts.

Senator Inhofe,

Not that it matters, but when you say…:

Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma says he doesn’t need an eye exam or a hearing aid and that he clearly remembers hearing Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer of California and Hillary Clinton of New York talk about the need for a “legislative fix” to curb conservative talk radio.

…I believe you without reservation.  It’s totally in character for both of them – Senator Boxer, who since Mark Dayton left office is the dumbest person in the Senate and needs to have all opposition silence by government fiat, and Senator Clinton, at whose thought the body of Niccolo Macchiavelli cringes in horror. 

But little things like this…:

But Inhofe now says the conversation he overheard took place three years ago, not “the other day,” as he told KFI talk radio host John Ziegler on Thursday night.

…will kill you. Because while any reasonable person can understand that for most people “the other day” is a midwestern synonym for “past tense”, you’re dealing with liberals, lawyers and the media, here. 

And so to them, now, it’s not about whether you heard the Senators plotting to muzzle talk radio.  No…:

Boxer early Friday said the Oklahoma senator “needs new glasses or he needs to have his hearing checked” if he thinks he heard her and Clinton having a conversation about talk radio.

After Inhofe clarified his remarks, Boxer’s spokeswoman, Natalie Ravitz, added:

“Perhaps he should have his memory checked too. I don’t know anyone who thinks three years ago was ‘the other day.'”

…now, the only issue the media will care about, to the extent that they care at all (given that talk radio is the competition) will be your “flub”.  Never mind that both Boxer and Clinton are actively working to tie the First Amendment to a pool table and sodomize it…:

“I’ve been telling this story for three years and told this story 100 times,” the Oklahoma Republican told FOXNews.com. “I have it memorized … I tell it the same way every time because it gets a very good reaction.”

…because to them, and the peabrains who listen to them, the exact timing of the story will be the story. 

Remember; it’s like arguing with a moderately bright but spoiled nine-year-old; “Yesterday you said we’d have ice cream someday soon, and the other day you said “soon means like a day”, so you have to get ice cream now”.

Don’t let this happen again.

That is all.

Gary Miller has the best introduction to Bogus Doug’s evisceration of Brian Lambert’s call for media censorship of the global warming debate:

Doug Williams demonstrates why he is duty-bound to never again take 6 months off from blogging by offering this extraordinary post on Brian Lambert’s global warming pronouncements.

In the span of just a few paragraphs, Doug demonstrates Lambert’s unfamiliarity with the scientific method. 

But don’t take Gary’s word for it.  Read Doug’s post.

A highlight:

Brian Lambert has written a screed a bit wordier, but no sillier about conservatives. But we shouldn’t mock. He’s in his terribly serious mode, you see. He’s trying to explain that he – failed media critic Brian Lambert – has figured out the high holy scientific truths journalists ought to respect.

The ethical challenge for journalists and journalism (as opposed to infotainment personalities in “the media”) is stark. It means accepting what the best available science has now concluded is fact about global warming — that it’s happening and human activity is an aggravating if not principal cause — and pulling the plug on spurious “debate” engendered by conservative ideologues, much like what credible news organizations have done with Holocaust-deniers and creationists.

Of course to anyone with a degree studying science as opposed to journalism it’s a grand load of hooey on it’s face. What exactly is a phrase like “accepting what the best available science has now concluded is fact about global warming” supposed to mean? Real science hasn’t “concluded” that any future predictions – about global warming or anything else – are “fact,” because that’s not how science works. And “pulling the plug on spurious ‘debate'” is about as blatant a rejection of the scientific method as one could propose.

Doug shows in tall block letters the scientific illiteracy which is so comical when coming from a cartoon like Lambert – but so dangerous from actual reporters:

It’s child’s play to find leading experts in climate science dissenting from the IPCC report. Yet that’s not something Lambert even finds relevant. Because “for journalists the debate phase has ended.” Science goes in story phases, don’t you know. It’s not really about the search for truth, it’s about framing the narrative. I don’t think he intended to be nearly so honest, but wow is that ever telling.

The other telling thing here is how Lambert has drifted into the position that journalists should trust the scientific pronouncements of political scientific bodies. I know he thinks this is a special and singular scientific issue unlike any other before or likely to come after. But that just illustrates his naivety. Especially in the modern age, scientific funding is driven to a large extent by crisis-mongering. If Lambert is suggesting – and it seems he is – that in the case of a crisis journalists must abandon their skepticism, he’s calling for journalists to become little more than government propagandists. And what could possibly go wrong there?

Read the whole thing.

And Gary was right, Doug; I hope you’re good and rested.  We’re gonna need you.

You can never keep everyone happy.  And when you do talk radio – even as an amateur weekend warrior – it’s usually best not to try to.

On the NARN, we don’t get a lot of chances to interview people with whom we disagree.  Partly because we just don’t do a lot of guests; partly because a lot of liberals don’t bother returning interview request calls from conservative talkers, much less actually appear on the shows.  There’s good reason for that, of course; the fact is, talk radio can be a rough room to work. 

One of the things people miss – especially people whose primary interest is news or politics – is that talk radio is an entertainment medium first, an informational/news medium second.  And throwing plates – picking fights with guests, generating heat and eschewing light – can be mighty entertaining (when it’s not completely tiresome).  The masters of the talk radio attack interview genre – the late Morton Downey Jr, Bob Grant, Tom Leykis and dozens of others – have mastered pushing guests’ buttons as well as those of the audience in the same way that Michael Savage has conquered pushing them in monologue.  It pays the bills.

It’s not how I’m wired.

Part of it is that I got my start as an actual reporter, at one point.  Another part is that I actually have a lot more fun talking with people than throwing plates at them. 

And finally – most important of all – people give you much better material when they’re not on the defensive.

In the past few months, I’ve taken a certain amount of flak for a couple of interviews with Ed and I on the NARN Volume II show – last October’s go-around with the Strib’s Rochelle Olson, and the June 16 chat with former Strib/current Minnesota Monitor reporter Eric Black.   One commenter on another blog called the Black interview a “love fest”, apparently hoping that I’d carry out a Daniel Pearl-style beheading live on the air. 

And what’d be the point of that?  Everyone knows we disagree on a lot of things – do people need to see how very very much I disagree for it to matter?  And frankly, I think you get a lot more interesting material out of people by talking to them, and letting them respond; the Olson interview in particular, if you were listening, exposed some ghastly breakdowns in the way media handles news.  I’m not sure any of that would have come out if I’d have yelled at Ms. Olson, and she’d have hung up and walked away.

In this country, we face a dual challenge: disagree, sometimes vehemently, while still living together under the same governmental roof.   It’s a challenge at which most of the world fails really, really dismally.  And to me, it’s a lot more interesting when conversations are actually two-way things. 

Wanna hear people throwing plates at each other?  Fair enough.  A lot of talk shows will do that for you.  Or start your own, if you’d like. 

Go for it.

Taylor Marsh addresses the Center for American Progress report in the same way that Hugh Hewitt addresses a new football season; with preconceptions firmly in place, and no perspective to lend any credence whatsoever – a shortcoming that is neither of their fault, per se, but still renders their commentary meaningless:

Boy did American Progress stir up a storm. Never has one report gotten so many wingnuts in a tizzy. It’s positively delicious.

Yeah, some of us get that way when half of our political system wants to sodomize the First Amendment.  Some of us even get upset when they come for Taylor Marsh’s freedom of speech.  Not that I’d expect reciprocation.

If your party is in free fall and your base is demoralized what do you do? That is, what do you do if you’re a Republican? You create an issue. Sew panic.

Sew panic.

With the needle of alarm, perhaps?

Perhaps Ms. Marsh means “sow” panic. 

I digress: 

Rev up that fear mongering machine! Never fear, Fox “News” is here. The trouble is that wingnut talk-radio has as much to fear from their own.

She mentions some Fox droid who lamented the likes of Trent Lott – as I, myself, did. 

Next on our incoherent swing through the stream of Ms. Marsh’s consciousness, we get to a big of history.  She actually comes close:

When Reagan deregulated the airwaves and nixed The Fairness Doctrine, up came the rise of Rush.

Unfortunately, throughout the 1990s, Democrats remained clueless. I was talking to people about wingnut radio in the 1990s only to see their eyes glaze over.

Why do I suspect it had nothing to do with the subject?

No, I’m not snarking.  Well, not just snarking.  Because in her next line, Ms. Marsh shows that she’s been toking from the same bong of cluelessness that’s seemed to have driven all liberal talk radio in recent memory, save perhaps Fast Eddie Schultz and Stephanie “Like Laura Ingraham, but Liberal” Miller.  

 Most just wanted radio shows that drew listeners and raised ad revenue. Fine. All I wanted to do was provide a counterpoint. See eyes glaze over again.

“Oh, Christ.  Marsh is babbling about counterpoint again.  Doesn’t that woman understand that radio’s a business, not a hobby?” 

Profit is critical, absolute reality, but outright ownership of the airwaves is the public’s job and there are a lot of liberals in America, as well as independents who deserve to hear more than one point of view without having to pay satellite prices.

I’m a Veronica Mars fan.  Don’t I “deserve” to have my show un-cancelled?  Even though I was part of a cult following that didn’t make the show close to profitable for its network?

Marsh’s paragraph is so full of raw talking points, it’s hard to know where to start.  So let’s start at the top:

1. Ownership of the airwaves hasn’t been “the public’s job” in the entire history of the medium.  Since the very beginning, the “airwaves” have been a trust, licensed to companies.  The Electromagnetic Spectrum is no more the public’s property than all seawater within 12 miles of the US coast is “government property”. 
2. Are there a lot of liberals who “deserve” talk radio programming?  I’m sure there are.  And they find it – on NPR, and on middle-of-the-road talk stations like Minneapolis’ WCCO which, while it’s not a Guevara-T-Shirt-wearing, alpaca-clad, Volvo-driving Air America affiliate, certainly skews left of center vastly more than right.  And they found that – Air America – in America’s greatest liberal bastions, New York and Chicago and Portland and San Francisco and Minneapolis, on big, powerful, clear signals.  And they didn’t listen, in droves.  Even after their sole initial major-market success (in Portland, Oregon), the format, as well as the network sank like a rock. 

Back to Ms. Marsh:

When Republicans found out what radio could do their greed reached a peak. They used it on Clinton throughout the 1990s and it worked, with that success fueling more campaigns. They cemented Hillary Clinton’s persona as well. They’re doing it again with immigration, which is what has brought Trent Lott and others out.

The Fairness Doctrine is one issue, but the bottom line truly is regulation of the airwaves so one company and one political party doesn’t own them.

I can almost imagine Ms. Marsh saying the word; “companyandpoliticalparty”.  Like Clear Channel – which owns Rush Limbaugh – is an arm of the GOP.  Of course, Clear Channel si also the company that broadcasts the most “progressive” talk among the majors (behind CBS as a percentage of airtime devoted to liberals – but Clear Channel is much bigger, and accounts for more hours of lefty broadcasting nationwide).  

As if Clear Channel were a Republican operation, and they wouldn’t drop Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh in less than a news cycle if liberal talk got better numbers, and hence more profit.

Ms Marsh repeats – without apparently understanding them – the CAP’s statistics on the comparitive number of hours of conservative vs. liberal talk, and accepts without question their conclusion that “it’s not the market – it’s the ownership”. 

And with that presumption of ownership collusion comes…

Karl Rove has used right-wing radio for years to pump up the EMOTION of right-wingers, because that’s what gets voters to the polls and right-wing radio listeners vote. The same tactics are continued on “Christian” broadcasting networks throughout the country. It is quite simply the most formidably dangerous weapon the Republicans have to wield against Democrats come election time. Local conservative hosts gain trust with listeners to great affect. It hurts Democrats at the polls.

But behind all that is the simple fact that conservative talk radio is powerful because people listen to it. 

Something has to give; something has to be done. The de-regulation of the airwaves was the single most destructive act aimed at the public interest to hit media since talk radio began.

Well, no – in her own words, Ms. Marsh showed that it was the single most destructive act aimed at liberal hegemony over the media.   

A media she is woefully ill-equipped to understand:

As a progressive radio host without a home, except on the web, I don’t expect to stay on the air if I can’t pay the bills.

 What a crock of crap.

Ms. Marsh; you’re on Blog TalkRadio.  Blog Talkradio is free.  Any moron can put a show on BTR (and so can some excellent, talented hosts, like my real-radio colleague Ed Morrissey). 

So don’t be yapping about paying the bills, since you clearly have no understanding of how real radio people do exactly that – and like your liberal-radio friends, the only answer you have is to run crying to government. 

Advertisers and ratings are crucial. But most progressives can’t even find a spot on terrestrial radio from which to launch a show and test it for enough cycles to get ratings. That’s just a fact.

 No, it’s just buncombe.

Air America has been “tested” for four years now.  By the time Rush, Sean, Hugh, Michael, Dennis and the rest of talkradio’s household names had been on for four years, they were all unqualified successes.  Air America peaked within a year of its debut, never made money (and arguably was never intended to), and is circling the drain faster every day.

Sort of like Ms. Marsh’s command of the facts on this issue:

So enter fear mongering. Shaking the radio base. Making them feel they’re going to lose Rush, Sean, et al. Are you kidding? They’re huge money makers and no station manager is going to get rid of them no matter what. 

 No, but that’s not what the Fairness Doctrine would do.  If a station broadcast Limbaugh and Hannity for six hours a day, they’d have to “balance” their schedule with six hours of “progressives” that nobody would listen to, replacing shows that have an audience with six hours of shows that never will.

On the corporate-owned stations of the Salem Network (for one of whom I do the Northern Alliance show on the weekends) which are all-conservative, 24/7, that’d mean a mandatory quota of 12 hours a day of “progressive”, ratings-killing, money-sapping, just-plain-lousy talk.

Raising the fear factor is just a tool to help them get the job done.

The word Ms. Marsh is looking for is “awareness”.

And looking.

And looking.

As we on the right have been predicting for quite some time, the left – unable to match conservative talk radio in either the marketplace of ideas or the marketplace, wants to bring in Big Brother to do what their own feeble talent and intellect can’t.

A report by the “Center for American Progress” – of which more later – writes:

As this report will document in detail, conservative talk radio undeniably dominates the format.

Our analysis in the spring of 2007 of the 257 news/talk stations owned by the top five commercial station owners reveals that 91 percent of the total weekday talk radio programming is conservative, and 9 percent is progressive.

Each weekday, 2,570 hours and 15 minutes of conservative talk are broadcast on these stations compared to 254 hours of progressive talk—10 times as much conservative talk as progressive talk

A separate analysis of all of the news/talk stations in the top 10 radio markets reveals that 76 percent of the programming in these markets is conservative and 24 percent is progressive, although programming is more balanced in markets such as New York and Chicago.

This dynamic is repeated over and over again no matter how the data is analyzed, whether one looks at the number of stations, number of hours, power of stations, or the number of programs. While progressive talk is making inroads on commercial stations, conservative talk continues to be pushed out over the airwaves in greater multiples.

These empirical findings may not be surprising given general impressions about the format, but they are stark and raise serious questions about whether the companies licensed to broadcast over the public airwaves are serving the listening needs of all Americans.

Radio isn’t supposed to “serve the needs of all Americans” (barring, say, local, regional or national emergencies). It’s supposed to provide stuff that listeners want to tune in to – something that the progressives liberals Fabian Statists have proven themselves dismal at (even in liberal strongholds like New York and Chicago, where the 3-1 disparity in programming hours is generous; the listening audience is even more lopsidedly conservative.

The CAP claim that almost a quarter of talk radio’s audience is identified as liberal – and that, therefore, the market should be coerced to provide liberal programming to “serve their needs” – ignoring, of course, that MPR (of which more in a moment) and the rest of the entire mainstream media establishment already provide this 24/7.

The CAP’s report (WARNING! PDF FILE!  GIVE UP ALL HOPE OF REASONABLE PERFORMANCE OR USABILITY!) lists several recommendations (which I’ll summarize, since copying and pasting from PDF is such a pain):

1. Restore caps on ownership of commercial radio stations.
2. Expand “local accountability” in radio licensing
3. Extort money from station owners who “fail to abide”, give it to “Public Broadcasting”.

By the way, the CAP’s report (look starting around page 12 in the report) has some interesting data – or, to be more precise, makes you wonder precisely what “data” the CAP was using to figure out its ratios, and exposes the weakness of these kinds of surveys, where “conservative” and “progressive” mean precisely what the surveyors want them to mean – if you dig into it a bit.

For example, they credit KTLK-FM with 16 hours of “conservative” talk a day – but the only overtly political shows are Limbaugh, Hannity and Jason Lewis, which rack up nine hours a day among them (John Hines isn’t especially conservative, and Dan Conry is aggressively down-the-middle).   By the way, for all the CAP’s carping about centralization of radio station ownership, most of the “progressive” radio that is actually broadcast is on Clear Channel stations; CBS has a higher listed percentage of “progressive” talk programming, but they’re a much smaller network.  Smaller networks like Cumulus and Citadel broadcast virtually no “progressive” radio (Salem, I’m proud to say, actively squelches it at a corporate level).

Speaking of CBS – they list WCCO-AM in Minneapolis as having no political talk on either side.  WCCO broadcasts Eleanor Mondale, former (alleged) Clinton paramour, daughter of Jimmy Carter’s vice president and sister of paleoliberal Ted Mondale, as well as Jack Rice, Don Shelby and Dark Star; while none of these shows are explicitly political, their tone and topic selection and, when the chips are down, core beliefs do pretty well come blaring through.  They may not be “Air America” material, but they are, if not “progressive”, at least exceedingly friendly to the traditional Minnesota paleoliberal status quo.  The CAP study doesn’t account for this in the Twin Cities (or presumably any other market)…

…but they do call John Hines and Dan Conry “conservative”.

Food for thought.

Oh, by the way, the “Center for American Progress” – just a bunch of concerned citizens, right?

Not quite.  Michelle Malkin:

What is the Center for American Progress and why are they proposing this Government Talk Radio Grab? It’s a left-wing think tank headed by Clintonite John Podesta. It manages a radio studio used daily by left-winger Bill Press’s syndicated radio show. The syndicator is the nutroots Jones Radio Networks. CAP officials appeared frequently on Al Franken’s show and Air America’s airwaves. Seed money for the think tank came from–where else–George Soros, among others, according to the Washington Post.

Schmelzer in the MinMon, quoting an anonymous source about…something.  Or other:

Requesting anonymity, a source close to the Star Tribune submitted this reflection on the $45 million sale of four blocks of the paper’s Warehouse District property to the Minnesota Vikings:

Last month Publisher/CEO Par Ridder went to a meeting of Strib circulation executives in a conference room named for Charles A. Freeman, one of the best-loved employees the newspaper ever had.  The glass-walled room was named in Freeman’s honor in 1991 after the company’s circulation/distribution manager collapsed in his office and died of a stroke at age 60.

Established:  Mr. Freeman was a good fella. 

So far so good.

So here you have Par Ridder, who demonstrated his sense of integrity by jumping from the Pioneer Press to the Star Tribune under questionable circumstances, and whose next court date is June 25, walking into a room that has a memorial to Chuck Freeman etched into an eye-level glass panel on the door.  The tribute is titled “A MAN OF UNQUESTIONED INTEGRITY.”

OK.  Irony, maybe – assuming that Ridder’s day in court counts for nothing.

Onward:

So what is Par Ridder response to having to confront the ghosts of past Strib executives and a door with “A MAN OF UNQUESTIONED INTEGRITY” etched in the glass?

That’s a good question.  What is his response, if any, to “confronting a ghost” – or, less metaphorically, to doing business in the presence of the institutional memory of someone else who did business?

Not a problem:  Par sells 4 square blocks of Strib land to Zygi Wilf.  The Charles A. Freeman conference room is not in the newspaper’s main building at 425 Portland Av.; it’s across the skyway in the Freeman Building, named for another former executive, Gale Freeman.  Wilf will demolish the building, so the wrecking ball will obliterate the Charles A. Freeman conference room and its etched-glass door, an inconvenient reminder of a time when integrity was a core value at the Star Tribune.

Now, I’m not one to defend the Strib, goodness knows.  And I’m likely as not to lump Par Ridder in with pretty much every other mainstream media figure as “the enemy”.  I could be convinced, but so far, I’ve got no reason to change my mind. 

But what’s Ridder doing, here?

Business.  Running a dinosaur entity in a dying radically restructuring business.

Is tearing down the old office a sad thing for those who observe institutional traditions like memorializing Mr. Freeman?  Of course.

Is it unethical?

The anonymous informer says nothing. 

Last weekend, Ed and I had a long, interesting discussion with Eric Black, formerly of the Strib, now of the Minnesota Monitor.  One of the questions – how does journalism with an established agenda differ from journalism that, at least formally, abjures a point of view?

I don’t know that we’ll get any answers right now, but it’s an interesting question to keep in mind as you read Black’s debut on the MinMon, on what is presented to us as an awkward moment for US Attorney for Minnesota, Rachel Paulose:

Rachel Paulose, the embattled U.S. attorney for Minnesota, suffered through an awkward moment Tuesday when a retirement party for a long-serving prosecutor in her office turned into a thunderous ovation for several of Paulose’s severest critics. Word of the incident has buzzed through the Twin Cities federal legal community and become the latest symbol of a very rough 18 months since Paulose took over the top federal law enforcement job in Minnesota.

Let’s get some context in here.

The Minnesota US Attorney’s office, like the Attorney General’s Office, has been the province of Democrat-leaning lawyers for quite some time.  Paulose replaced Tom Heffelfinger, who in turn replaced David Lillehaug, whose political inclinations have led him to seek the DFL nomination to run for Senate. 

In other words, Paulose is  a very different person than Lillehaug or Heffelfinger, and brings a different agenda to the office than either of her predecessors.

How different?  As a layperson, it’s hard to know exactly what difference things like differing management styles and priorities make to people like US Prosecutors. 

And the story, unfortunately, sheds little light on that, relying on “conventional wisdom” about Paulose. 

Paulose has been under increasingly harsh public scrutiny about how her appointment is connected to the Bush administration’s alleged politicization of the Justice Department, and about how she has run the office.

But as Power Line – especially Scott Johnson – in their extensive coverage of the Paulose tempest-in-teapot has noted, that “public scrutiny” has been generated by a pretty narrow swathe of “public”.  Katherine Kersten also lends the reader some context missing from the mainstream (and now explicitly-biased) media’s coverage. 

But let’s go to the ceremony in question, this past Tuesday:

This account of the Tuesday incident comes from people who were present but requested anonymity.

So we have not only no idea who they were and what there motivations are, but whether their story is accurate? 

Were these “people” acting independently?  Were they detached from the Paulose “controversy”? 

We don’t know.

On Tuesday afternoon, about 70 employees of the U.S. attorney’s office and other guests gathered in a big conference room to recognize the departure of Assistant U.S. Attorney Perry Sekus. Sekus is leaving to join the legal staff of UnitedHealth. Paulose was present…When it was his turn to address the group, Sekus deflected the compliments that had been sent his way and said that those who deserved the praise were the former supervisors who had resigned their posts, because their actions had required courage.

And then, the chase – as apparently described to Eric Black, by anonymous “people” who may or may not have had an axe to grind with Paulose in the first place; being anonymous, we really have no idea, and are forced to trust, or “trust” (or not) a reporter from an organization which has an agenda on this issue.

At that, the room erupted with loud, sustained applause that could not be taken as anything other than solidarity with Paulose’s internal critics and appreciation for the sacrifice they had made to protest against her– clearly a spontaneous release of the tensions within the office. 

According to a witness, the ovation was so loud that it had to represent the applause of 90 percent or more of those in the room.

“Could not be taken as anything but…” – or so say an undetermined number of anonymous witnesses about whose motivations we are utterly in the dark.

Paulose was present throughout and could not have left without calling attention to herself. One of the eyewitnesses said she had a glazed look during the ovation.

Sort of like the look I’m getting, pondering the logical gaps in this story.  Words fail me.

Fortunately, they don’t fail Joel Rosenberg, who left a comment:

Okay; you’ve now established that Paulose is unpopular with (at least) much of her staff.  I thought that was well-established, but maybe you missed the reporting on that.

What you haven’t established is why — is it because she is, as some have accused her being, overbearing?  Is it that under Heffelfinger the priorities of the office were different than hers, and that the staff is chafing under new direction?  Is it similar to what happened when Lillehaug took over the office back in the ancient days — when, I believe, you were working for the Star Tribune — and the Star Tribune (at best) glossed over how half a dozen very experienced attorneys in that partisan Democrat US Attorney’s office left in the ensuing demotions and reshufflings he engaged in when he took over?  Is this better, or worse?  Is it all of those, in some mixture, or none of the above? …Guess I’m going to have to look somewhere other than in your article, which broke the news that a bunch of lawyers cheered when another retired, and you were unable to get a comment from the US Attorney on that pressing matter.

I have an anonymous witness that says that Black’s anonymous witness had a glazed look on her face.

No, I don’t.  But I could.

Seriously, Joel’s right.  No comparison, no context, no contrast, no history.

A bunch of lawyers – people famous for hating everyone – don’t like their boss. 

Mr. Black – perhaps an anonymous tipster can give us some insights on these questions.

UPDATE:  I see Brian “St. Paul” Ward reached about the same conclusion.

Nick Coleman’s latest column is particularly incoherent.  It’s really beneath fisking. 

But I thought this bit (emphasis added) was a welcome improvement:

“Get Motivated!” includes talks from Zig Ziglar (couldn’t his parents have given him a decent first name?), Colin Powell (hey, he helped lie his country into war!) and John Stossel, the officious prig and unsung hero who drove Barbara Walters off “20/20.”

No, not that he’s become a great columnist or anything.  But it seems he’s learned to parody himself FOR us – or at least deliver the material, gift-wrapped…

I meant to write about this sometime between Saturday and yesterday; Ed and I interviewed Eric Black, formerly of the Strib and soon to be with (or around, or loosely related to) the Minnesota Monitor.  Busy as I’ve been, I sorta booted that assignment.

Jeff Kouba – currently among the best uninjured writers at Truth Vs. The Machine – caught the interview, and wrote a gratifyingly favorable recap:

In this NARN interview then, Black said he would like to build a model where left and right can talk to each other. He said he does indeed have a lefty slant, but that he invited Doug Tice to join the Big Question to have a more conservative voice. Black argued for outlets where both points of view are heard, not just one-sided places where leftys read only lefty sources, and rightys only read righty sources.

That was, indeed, an interesting branch in the discussion.  Black seems to combine a definite point of view with what seems to be a sincere jones to engage in dialog rather than merely throwing plates.  The idea interests me, as well; an actual, ongoing conversation that’s allowed to both go deep and take infinite tangents, between some people who actually are interested in conversation rather than banging rhetorical heads (or who can at least mutually bang heads without turning the entire affair into an endless, predictable pissing match) would be an interesting project. I’d be interested in such a project myself…

…after the ’08 election, at any rate. 

I’m being mostly facetious; I do relish these sorts of exercises, since they usually help me polish up my own rhetorical, logical and even ideological chops.  The unexamined prejudice, to paraphrase Augustine, isn’t worth having.

I did restrain myself from asking “how do you, a fairly distinguished and credible reporter, plan on sharing a masthead with that bunch of clowns” – but then, he did answer the question, too:

Mitch then asked about the seeming incongruity of wanting to promote conversation across the ideological divide, while joining MiniMon, which is unabashedly “progressive,” a place that doesn’t exactly do a lot to promote conservative voices.

Black said he would have his own blog and URL, and his material would be cross-posted at MiniMon. That I found interesting. This way Black can maintain some distance from MiniMon’s one-sided stance, while at the same time exercising his own voice, which may very well fit in nicely on MiniMon’s page from time to time.

It seemed to be a sensible approach.  Nice work if you can get it. 

Listen to the interview (it spans the last half of the first hour and the first half of the second hour) and decide for yourself!

I rag endlessly on the Minnesota Monitor.  But I’ll say this: media correspondent Paul Schmelzer is very, very good at what he does. 

Vastly better, as a media-beat reporter, than the “source” of this bit from Friday, Brian Lambert, one of the Twin Cities’ media scene’s great ongoing embarassments. 

Lambert, who’s been ekeing out a living of sorts at “Rake” or “Pulse” or “Spume” or “Froth” or “Cake” or some other boutique handout ‘zine, visibly slavers for any gig that’ll get him back in the journalistic middle class.  And so it’s gotta hurt when his old rival from twenty years ago, James Lileks, came out of the turmoil at the Strib with the reins of “Buzz.com”, and a license to make it work (Lileks is an alum of the City Pages from back in the eighties; Lambert wrote for late, unlamented rival Twin Cities Reader). 

Schmelzer reports that Lambert is oh so onto something, yesirreebob:

The Rake’s Brian Lambert says what’s been on the minds of many I’ve talked with recently: How come the Star Tribune community blog Buzz.mn has become the sole domain of James Lileks, who was hired to manage it?

Not sure if Lambert and “many” that Schmelzer has “talked with recently” have heard, but Lileks is a fairly prominent blogger.

Y’know. 

“I and others never had the impression it was supposed to be a one-person rumpus room, yet another variation on ‘The Bleating Quirk,'” Lambert writes.

Brian Lambert, who loses the title of “Twin Cities’ Media’s most egregious DFL flak” only because Lori Sturdevant draws breath, dinging Lileks, the center-right blogosphere’s least political prominent blogger, for being a political one-trick pony?

I’ll let that little dollop of cheap irony fester right there for a moment. 

“Is there, as one dime-dropper told me, ‘a de facto boycott’ going on? And how did Lileks end up with an editing job officially described as requiring, ‘the consummate team player’?”

“How?”

“How” indeed! 

Because he was able to convince management that he’s, if not an “ultimate” team player, at least good enough to do the job (as, indeed, Brian Lambert has never been)?

Or is it that blasted right-wing conspiracy again?  Because we all know how very very much influence  the vast right-wing conspiracy has at the Strib.

Lambert ponders whether “Nancy Barnes and Scott Gillespie, the Strib’s top editors, parked Lileks there just to goose up traffic with his ‘Bleat’ readers.” If so, are they — or potential contributors at the Strib — concerned that readers of this “community journalism website” aren’t necessarily from the local community?

If so, they’d be blissfully unaware that the web is, in fact, international, and that when it comes to advertising, hits is hits; one never looks a gift audience (especially one like Lileks’ which, unlike Lambert’s, is big) in the mouth. 

 Or that many are arriving via Lileks’ personal conservative contacts? In today’s post on The Bleat, Lileks’ non-Strib blog, he praised  Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds (dubbed “the godfather of conservative blogging” by Right Wing News), “whose natural generousity has thrown boatloads of traffic to buzz.mn this week, bless his soul” and mentioned a radio segment he did with Dean Barker, conservative pundit Hugh Hewitt’s co-blogger at Town Hall.

And so we get down to the next-to-center layer of the onion; to the likes of Lambert, the only “unbiased” media is the one where everyone explicitly shares the same biases.

The center layer, of course, is that Lambert would seem to be a jealous little fellow who deeply covets Lileks’ success which, at every step in both of their careers, has constantly outpaced his own.  Back in the eighties when they both wrote for boutique ‘zines, Lileks was the better and more successful writer.  Lileks went to DC to write for Newhouse; Lambert went to Saint Paul to write an expendable media column (which was, eventually, expended).  Lileks’ radio show was a success and remains a cult favorite; Not even Sarah Janecek could save Lambert’s latest foray into broadcast, while his earlier attempts were definitely cable-access-worthy.  And today, Lileks is working the only part of the Strib franchise that’s growing; Lambert will be selling articles to the Skyway News and the Highland Villager before too long.

Yeah.  It must be the politics.