5/11/03

A project affiliated with the Graduate Program in Journalism at Stanford University and KTEH, public television in Silicon Valley

Testimony at FCC San Francisco hearing on April 26

Bagdikian Warns Against Further Concentration of Media Ownership

 

My name is Ben Bagdikian. I have been a reporter and editor of newspapers, written books on the media, and am former Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Berkeley.

Commissioner Adelstein, thank you for the opportunity to speak at this hearing.Since the broadcast frequencies are the property of the American public, it is fitting that a member of the Federal Communications Commission, a steward of this public property, gives us, the owner-citizens of the Bay Area, an opportunity to be heard.

I would like to make three points that I believe are significant in the stewardship of our air waves.

$300 billion earned from public property

1. This is a fabulously valuable public property. According to the Statistical Abstract of the United States, the revenues of broadcasters and the associate telecommunications firms represent more than $300 billion a year.  The channels through which this $300 billion industry makes its money are the property of the American public.  It is the opinion of many citizens, myself included, that this fabulous public resource that we own entitles us to have an effective voice on how our property is used. At the very least, the commercial users of our property ought to be required to give the people access to their programming in the communities being served.  But, year by year, this local access has diminished until in too many markets it is now close to zero.

Giving public property worth more than $300 billion dollars to private corporations for their own profitable use is, in my opinion, an expropriation of a magnitude that reminds one of the Tea Pot Dome scandal.

I think it is notable that large media conglomerates like AOL-Time Warner, the largest media firm in the world, and ClearChannel, the largest radio group in the country, are said to “own” a certain number of stations. Legally, of course, they do not own the licenses for these stations.  In a real sense, their licenses are rented to them for a specific  period by us, the public. According to the law, they are rented to them on condition that  operate, to quote the law,  “in the public interest.” 

“local” stations with no local employees

I suspect that few people who follow such things need to be reminded that the largest radio group in the country, ClearChannel,  has more than 1200 stations and has only 200 employees. They have 10 stations in the general San Francisco Bay Area. How can any company operate in the public interest when it operates 1200 local radio stations with only 200 employees?  Even in this period of genetic engineering, there is no way a radio station can be actively and locally run by one sixth of a human being.  But, of course, the reason ClearChannel needs so few employees is that most of its stations have no human beings in them, most of the time. The stations are operated remotely with canned programming.

As you know, recently in Minot, North Dakota, a train wreck released anhydrous ammonia gas that killed one person, sent 300 people to the hospital and blinded others.  The local police could not use the most effective local warning system to tell the public to get indoors at once and close windows and doors against a deadly gas. The best  local system to issue this emergency warning were the six stations that ClearChannel operates in the city of Minot. But the ClearChannel studios, though broadcasting during all this time, were empty and locked. They were operating with canned programming by remote control. Is there nothing the FCC can do to end this mockery of the law?  Do these stations operate in the public interest of their communities?   

Furthermore, this company had six stations in a city with a population of 37,000. Why should a city of 37,000 people have the same owner for six stations?  Six stations with no human beings in them and using programming that had absolutely nothing to do with Minot, North Dakota?  This seems to be greed raised to the 6th power.

disastrous legislation

This kind of concentrated control by broadcasters is permitted by the 1996 Telecommunications Act which, in my opinion, was the most disastrous broadcasting legislation in our history. It effectively robbed people of their own air waves. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 1994 Gingrich Republican caucus called in top broadcast executives, asked them what they wanted, and gave them the 1996 Act. It did so in the name of keeping up with new technology, a technology that permitted ClearChannel to dehumanize six radio stations in Minot, North Dakota.

I cite Minot, North Dakota as a dramatic case because, as in medical epidemics, a dramatic case demonstrates more clearly the systemic failures, in this case the systematic negligence of the public interest throughout the country.  But ClearChannel is not alone.  

news from nowhere

Some time ago, I was interviewed on a major network with studios in San Francisco.  Before we went on the air for the interview, the host asked me not to mention where we were, not to mention the date, not to mention the day of the week, and not to mention the weather.  He explained that this program is used in the network’s other cities all over the country and, as he put it, “We like people in all those cities to think they’re listening to a local program.” ClearChannel is not the only network that misuses the word “local.”

I believe that even under the disastrous 1996 Act, the FCC still has the responsibility to intervene when license holders so egregiously ignore the public interest. That phrase, to operate “in the public interest” is still in the 1996 Act.   Yet, it has turned most of our radio talk shows into a right-wing propaganda machine.

local perspective is vital because power is local

My second point is that we are speaking here about something close to the heart of sustaining our democracy. It is too often overlooked that it is uniquely necessary for the United States public to have routine access to the broadcast stations in their own community. We are unique because the United States is the only developed democracy in the world that leaves so many central functions of government to each locality. Each of our cities operates its own schools, its own police, its own land use, most of its taxes, functions that in other countries are the responsibility of a centralized national agency. No purely national programming can possibly report on these for us. Why else would almost all our broadcast licenses require the licensee to maintain a station in its city of operation?

           Yet we are close to imitating other countries who have all their significant broadcasts originate in their capital or central city and then sent out to the whole country by mechanical translator towers. In those countries, every community gets the same programming.  The United States is almost alone in requiring a broadcast license holder to operate a studio in each city and for a valid, fundamental reason.  But by now that requirement has become close to meaningless for most chain broadcasters. 

Continue? click the

 

Free Speech for Me, but Not for Thee?

Chronicle bans newsroom staff from public political speech about war in Iraq

commentary by John McManus

“Dissent Under Fire

The U.S.-led war on Iraq has been accompanied by assaults on free speech in the homeland. The attempt to label anyone who disagrees with the war as ‘unpatriotic’ is predictable, but no less disturbing.”

--Opening paragraph of the lead editorial of the San Francisco Chronicle, March 22, 2003

The very last place you might expect an assault on free speech would be in a newspaper. Of all enterprises, the press is the most dependent on the protection of the First Amendment.

But just 11 days after this editorial was published, top editors at the Chronicle imposed a blanket prohibition on any newsroom staff member publicly taking a political position on the war with Iraq—the most pressing national political issue of the day.

Deputy Editor Narda Zacchino, Vice President and Managing Editor Robert Rosenthal, and Executive Editor and Vice President Phil Bronstein, wrote:

Our responsibility as journalists can only be met by a strict prohibition against any newsroom staffer participating in any public political activity related to the war.

In practice, this means everyone in the newsroom--from copy clerks to sports writers, editors, even a technology columnist—loses the normal citizen’s right on his or her own time to influence the public mind about the war in Iraq.  No political contributions, no participation in a demonstration for or against, no bumper stickers on the family car, no window or lawn signs.

Is such a sweeping prohibition of free speech consistent with the core values of journalism?

Not so fast

Before accusing Chronicle executives of hypocrisy, however, consider this:  If journalists are—or even appear to be--affiliated with one side of any controversy, the newspaper risks its credibility with readers on the other side. Even discerning readers on the same side.

To be successful in either public service or as a business, a news organization must be seen as impartial—on nobody’s side but the public’s--on its news pages. Editorial pages are another matter; opinion is expected there.

Core values colliding

What’s happening at the Chronicle now is a collision between two of the most cherished and foundational values of journalism: free speech on the one hand and independence—freedom from real or apparent conflict of interest, on the other.

But when two core values are in conflict, is the complete subordination of one to the other the only choice?

Continue? click the

 

 

 

Defending the Ban

Memo to Chronicle Staff from Phil Bronstein, Robert Rosenthal and Narda Zacchino

We have to be scrupulous about protecting the paper's integrity and mission to be a source of reliable, unbiased work.

This is true of any issue. But the war in Iraq is most prominent and immediate, and touches all of us in some way.

The Chronicle conflict-of-interest policy expects early disclosure and discussion with a supervisor, the editor or his designee before engaging in public political activity. Some situations, however, require more decisive action.

Public political activity related to the war is one of those situations.

Our responsibility as journalists can only be met by a strict prohibition against any newsroom staffer participating in any public political activity related to the war.

There is simply no other way to maintain our public trust, avoid conflicts and the appearance of conflicts, and to fulfill our duty to provide fair, thorough and objective reporting.

Any violation of this policy will be viewed as a very serious matter.

There is no question that many with deep personal feelings about this war are also fiercely committed to quality journalism.

We are justly proud of the coverage Chronicle journalists have provided, some literally risking their lives. Their work is intended to give us the credibility we need to keep faith with our readers and to survive as a newspaper. Many of our readers - who also have many strong emotions about the war - question that credibility every day.

We are reviewing the policy as a whole on an ongoing basis with the intention of making it clearer and more precise, always with the goal in mind of scrupulously protecting our credibility.

The Man Caught in the Middle

At the center of the controversy over the ban on public political speech is Henry Norr, until April 21, the Chronicle's personal technology columnist.

Norr was fired for allegedly falsifying his timecard, taking a sick day to attend an anti-war rally in March. But his termination seems clearly linked to the changed newsroom policy on political participation.

To see Norr's take on the issue, click the

NorCal Newspaper Guild calls Policy Change "heavyhanded"

To see the Guild's statement, click the

How Well Are Bay Area Newspapers Covering the War With Iraq?

analysis by John McManus

By what standard can we judge coverage of the war on Iraq?

The first thing to acknowledge is that no journalist or news organization is impartial. Not the Mercury News, not the Chronicle, not the Contra Costa Times. Not Al-jazeera.

There is no neutral standard of comparison.

As Arabs, Al-jazeera’s reporters are just as likely to be influenced by their historical background as American reporters by their upbringing in the United States. The lenses through which they make sense of events differ.

And their interests differ. American audiences hunger for news of American troops¾how they are faring, what they are up against. Arab audiences are naturally more concerned with how their fellow Arabs are coping with the war.

If  that’s not enough, commercial forces color reporting at least to some degree. As businesses, news media around the world risk losing customers should their reporting stray outside the accepted biases of their audiences.

So it’s not surprising that the enormous mosaic of war is not uniformly illuminated by news organizations from the U.S., Arab states, Europe and elsewhere.

Nevertheless, journalists are charged with providing as accurate and complete a picture as humans can—without regard to nationalism or the commercial interest of the companies that employ them.

And then there are logistical difficulties

Covering war inevitably strains the normal conventions of journalistic neutrality. It simply isn’t possible for journalists to cross a shell-scarred battlefield and ask the opposing commander “How was it for you?”

The best one can hope for is:

Only history is competent to judge, but it’s not too soon to test for some obvious signs of bias.

What jingoism looks like

In American news media, bias might look like the failure to report on U.S. military set-backs, or civilian casualties, or oppositional views from around the world. Elsewhere it might be the photo-negative of such reporting.

So how did the Bay Area’s three largest newspapers do?

I analyzed every story in the first week of the war, March 19 to 25. Overall, the report is positive. Some highlights

·        Coverage was very extensive, particularly in the Chronicle and Mercury News. Both papers expanded from the week before by 50 pages over seven days, about 8%. Both papers ran special sections devoted to the war. Providing its own perspective, the Chronicle sent four staff reporters and a photographer to Iraq, as well as commissioning a freelance photographer. The Mercury and Times each sent a staff photographer. While the Times created no special sections, its first section was dominated by war coverage. (The circulation, and therefore revenue, of the Times is substantially smaller than the Mercury or Chronicle.)

At a time when newspaper ad dollars are down, sending journalists half-way around the world, paying for satellite phones, hiring translators and securing transportation under black market conditions represents a genuine commitment to public service.

“The cost has yet to be determined,” said Chronicle Managing Editor Robert Rosenthal, “but when you look at newsprint, high risk insurance for those in the war zone, sat phone transmissions for words and pictures, overtime in the overall newsroom, production costs, etc. you are looking at well over half a million dollars in additional costs.”

·        With few exceptions—and those only at the Times—the Bay Area’s largest newspapers avoided overt jingoism. No U.S. flag logos. No “us” and “them” language. The use of the word “allies” and “coalition” for the Anglo-American forces, however, may imply greater multilateral representation than actually exists. In fact, with reports of as many as 5,000 Syrians fighting for Iraq, as well as volunteers from other Arab states, the Iraqis might too have claimed a coalition. The term, however, was reserved only for the Anglo-American side.

The Times headlines sometimes substituted the Bush Administration’s view of the war as a liberation effort for a more impartial one. On the first day of the land invasion a page one headline read: “Anticipation of freedom joins fear of war in Baghdad.” The next day a headline characterized the attack on one Iraqi city a “liberation” even though that term appeared nowhere in the story.

Undoubtedly some Iraqis look on the Anglo-American forces as liberators. But it’s far from clear that the majority welcome the invasion of their country and its attendant destruction¾the death of many young soldiers, over a thousand civilians, and national humiliation.

On March 25, the main headline was “Next Stop, Baghdad.” To my eye, this seems like cheer-leading. Were a foreign army marching on San Francisco from Santa Cruz, would the Times print “Next Stop, San Francisco” in 72-point type?

·        The reporting pulled few apparent punches. Bay Area newspapers did not shy away from reporting and photographing American setbacks. The captured American Apache helicopter surrounded by Iraqi irregulars was a prominent front-page photo. Attacks disrupting American supply lines and the capture of American POWs may have dropped American morale (and stock prices) temporarily, but they were front page stories.

However, photos of dead American or British soldiers were off limits with one exception—a small, grainy photo taken from Iraqi television of ambushed American servicemen that appeared only in the Chronicle. The bodies of slain Iraqi troops, however, were fair game for photographers. Still, none of these pictures appeared, to my eye, to be sensationalized. The faces of the dead were not shown, nor were the photos especially morbid.

·        The death of Iraqi civilians and the destruction of their homes by American bombs and missiles was reported, but generally relegated to the back pages during the first week of the war. In fairness, however, after the sampling period, when bombs fell on a Baghdad market, civilian deaths were prominently reported.

·        With the occasional exception of the Mercury News, the global story of the war enraging large numbers of people around the world and of the increasing isolation and alienation of the United States was buried by “rat-atat-tat” coverage of combat. The Mercury reported more stories skeptical of the White House take on the conflict than the Chronicle, and did so more prominently. The paper ran a special section “Understanding the Conflict” on the third day of fighting which provided the broader context so lacking in the battle coverage television was providing non-stop. The Times provided the least tough-minded coverage.

In a world in which even superpowers depend on other nations for trade and security as never before, the story of what the war is costing America may be far more consequential than accounts of an unequal and brief set of battles.

·       Coverage of domestic protest against the war outside of the Bay Area was scant in all three papers. All three papers gave significant space to covering the protests that disrupted San Francisco. The dominant frame of that coverage in both the Chronicle and Times was generally indignant—the protesters were an expensive nuisance. As the Chronicle’s Rob Morse put it in his column, “Think globally, ruin people’s day locally.” (Columnists are allowed the freedom to offer opinion, but Morse’s clever phrase also described news reporting.)

The Mercury, while noting the expense and inconvenience caused by record numbers of arrests, managed to publish more of the motivation of those engaging in civil disobedience than the slogans on their signs. In fact, the Mercury ran an entire special section on the protests.

Civil disobedience always creates inconvenience for others. Arrests of African-American protesters at segregated lunch counters in the South during the 1960s disrupted small businesses. The bus boycott inspired by Rosa Parks was cripplingly expensive. At the time, many people saw such actions as hurting the cause of civil rights.

But peaceful protest has a special place in a democracy. It ought to be treated respectfully by an institution whose freedom to print unpopular views is expressly provided in the First Amendment.

 

The Editors Respond

Daniel Sneider
National/Foreign Editor

Mercury News

(email interview)

“[The analysis] seems fair to me.

“A couple of small points -- on the issue of civilian casualties, we have tried hard to ensure balance in our coverage on this point. We have been putting a running casualty count on page 2 that relies in part for the civilian number on the iraqbodycount website. And we have had some strong stories on this including on the front page -- one that stands out was Meg Laughlin's piece on the incident involving an Iraqi family at a checkpoint in Najaf that ran on the front page on April 2.

“We also have been very aware of trying to ensure coverage of the reaction in the rest of the world -- particularly, but not exclusively, in the Arab world. I would agree that it has been dwarfed by the battle coverage but we have tried to keep it in the paper on an almost daily basis, space permitting.

”Lastly re the reporters there: The coverage of the war has been centrally pooled for all the Knight Ridder papers so as to give us collectively a scale and, hopefully, a quality of coverage that matches that of other large news organizations. We have been largely well served by their work and didn't feel the need to have a lot of our own bodies out there (although 7 of our reporters are getting ready to go over now as replacements). Instead I have sent reporters elsewhere -- Karl Schoenberger to Malaysia and Indonesia in the weeks before the war started for example -- where we weren't getting coverage. Some of the KR folks are our folks however as well -- Mark McDonald, for example, who has been in northern Iraq (now in Mosul).”


Mark Abel, Foreign  Editor

Chronicle

(phone interview)

“We have tried to be careful about not pulling punches. There certainly isn’t any attempt to sugar-coat anything.

“The subordination of civilian casualties was true in the beginning because less information was available. At first we couldn’t be sure how the issue of civilian fatalities was going to be handled in a propaganda context.”  Later the Red Cross said Iraqi figures were correct and we began to trust them more.

The story of “U.S. isolation has receded in our paper as well as most other papers. I think we paid sufficient attention to it in the run-up to the war. We have to weigh the relative importance of what can go in the paper. Everyone [already] knows France, Russian and Germany were opposed.

“We’re all very interested in what the long-range implications of the war will be. [No one] knows what it will do to American international relations in the long run.”

Robert Rosenthal, Managing Editor

Chronicle

(email interview)

“I did not see a picture of a dead American except for ones from the ambush which clearly showed the faces of men killed. We decided not to run those because they were identifiable.

“I'd have to look back at Iraqi dead to see if they were identifiable, but my memory is that it is possible if you knew someone you could ID them.

“We ran one picture from the ambush where the US troops were captured and you could ID the dead. We ran another picture of an American wrapped in a body bag after a chopper flight.” 
The Contra Costa Times did not respond to repeated email queries sent to several editors.



--posted 4/15/03

What do you think?

A New Kind of War

How are the Chronicle and CNN Handling the Information War?

by David Weir

This first big war of the 21st century is also the first big war of the Information Age, where all over the globe people have instant access to all the coverage they want, whenever they want it. Within that context, the Pentagon's decision to "embed" reporters with its troops is transforming the media-government relationship, and may end up transforming the war as well.

Most of the public is unaware of the emergence of concepts such as "NetWar," whereby military theoreticians have been studying how to use networks (social, political, and communications networks as well as technology networks) to their best advantage against similarly "networked" enemies.

an information war

The information war plays out over Internet and satellite technologies that allow millions of people to network together in ways never before possible. Instantaneous, decentralized communications between and among people who share goals and perspectives pushes and pulls the "news" through multiple distribution channels -- far beyond the reach of traditional, centralized media networks.

So how well do our local and national news media leaders understand these new realities, and how well are they handling these new challenges? I will discuss two news organizations -- the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN.

Whose Side Are Journalists On?

commentary by John McManus

In wartime is the journalist’s first responsibility to flag and country, or to a profession seeking truth regardless of consequences?

It’s a popular, but false question.

Journalists have always served their country best when they’ve provided as accurate, unflinching reporting as they can. 

Such reporting may not, of course, serve the war effort nor please generals or the White House. Americans became disaffected with the Viet Nam War only after reporters broke away from Army briefings—the “5 O’clock follies”—and went into the jungle. Their first-hand reports of combat showed the nation just how isolated our GIs were in a hostile land.

Had journalists been more “patriotic,” or their access to war as Pentagon-controlled as it has been ever since, the outcome of that struggle would not likely have differed. But the death toll, on both sides, would have risen.

Reporting as truthfully as we humans can is never tougher than in a war.

Reporters’ objectivity is compromised by being embedded, literally in bed, with sources on one side of the event. Sources on the other side may be shooting at them.  Reporters must simply trust the military for information beyond their vantage point. That information is likely to be both self-serving and irresistible with its bomb’s-eye video. Finally, the brass can still read dispatches before they reach you and me.

But the greatest threat to truth-telling is as likely to come from corporate as military headquarters. The corporations that own the news may not wish to risk alienating some customers if their reporting appears unpatriotic--embarrassing the military or exposing civilian slaughter to a critical world. Messengers of bad news aren’t shot anymore, just zapped on the remote.

Honest journalism is the best way to serve America, but it’s risky business.

Chronicle coverage

The Chronicle's daily war section was its attempt to keep up with the natural advantages enjoyed by CNN and the other cable news networks. The section resembles The New York Times’ war section, though it is less ambitious and less original. As the war reaches the end of its first week, the Chronicle’s acute inability to compete with live TV means it will have to find creative ways to differentiate its coverage sufficiently to keep a hold on readers.

That said, the coverage to date has been impressive -- dramatic headlines, photos, charts, color, in-depth -- though I wonder how many people in the Bay Area actually consume all of this material every day. One has to be a “news junkie" (more on them later) to really appreciate the attention to detail that the Chronicle daily section is displaying.

Also, in recent days, the commitment to large-sized headlines is starting to limit the paper's ability to communicate anything original. If I already know, or think I know, about that "Gritty Firefight" that occurred yesterday, why should I read the lead story in today's Chronicle?

strong local coverage

On the other hand, the Chronicle has done reasonably well when it covers the local beat, especially the dramatic street protests against the war. I have been surprised, given the paper’s need to grow its younger audience, that the editors did not pay closer attention to the story of the young American activist, Rachel Corrie, who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer. More in-depth coverage of that matter, including the text of the heart-breaking emails she sent her parents in the days before she was killed, would have been of interest to many younger readers, as well as the large local activist community that sees connections between this war and the Palestinian crisis.

CNN's coverage

CNN's non-stop talking anchors are performing admirably, for the most part, though Aaron Brown lost his composure at one point. And when the network uses its backup anchors, it devolves into what might best be described as an unconscious parody of “Saturday Night Live”.

Continue? click the

 

Art by Linda Lawler

The Most Common, But Least Reported Violence

commentary by John McManus

           

            As many as 4 American women in 10 get beaten up at some time in their lives… by a current or former boyfriend or spouse. Three women a day are killed. Intimate violence goes hand-in-fist with child abuse. It rears children more prone to batter when they become adults. It boosts our insurance and hospital bills. Police costs are staggering. It’s the most frequent violent felony arrest in many cities.

            Yet, except at its murderous extreme, even quality newspapers, such as theSan Jose Mercury News and Los Angeles Times, all but ignore it. At the Berkeley Media Studies Group, we just finished sampling a full year of crime stories published in the Merc and in the Times.

            Why is such a vast and corrosive problem swept under the rug?

            Some feminist scholars charge that reporters consider domestic violence a women’s issue, not as newsworthy as “real” crime.

            A reporter said it’s undercovered because the public doesn’t fear spousal abuse as much as random crime. And people don’t sympathize with victims caught in such relationships. It doesn’t sell papers.

            Most violence between intimates doesn’t trip today’s commercial standards of newsworthiness for crime¾not dramatic enough. And that may be appropriate. If every act of domestic and dating violence were reported, there would be room in the paper or newscast for little else.

            What's needed is not more police blotter reporting. Rather, journalists need to shift from the mind-set of crime reporting to a public health perspective. They need a wider lens.

            If a disease were sending millions to the hospital and killing thousands, the press wouldn’t consider covering every illness. But it would cover the epidemic. We'd read about causes, effects, costs, and solutions.

            Without news about the plague of battering, society goes unwarned. Politicians aren’t pressured to seek solutions. And this plague can be cured¾ with education of young men and women; with shelters and protection for victims; with strict rehabilitation programs for abusers.

            There’s no excuse for intimate violence. Nor for the media’s failure to cover it as the pervasive, but preventable threat to our public health that it is.

For the full study, click the

Avoiding ‘Blaming the Victim’

            Some scholars have complained that the way news media report about violence against women makes battering appear appropriate, “deserved” or a “family matter” rather than a crime with very serious consequences for a society.

            Our study of the San Jose Mercury News and Los Angeles Times looked for the following inaccurate stereotypes in all stories about intimate partner violence:

  • If a woman stays with a violent partner, she bears some blame for further assaults.
  • If a woman dates another man, she “is asking” for trouble.
  • If a woman dresses provocatively or flirts, her husband or boyfriend is justified in “disciplining” her physically.

We also looked for more subtle expressions of attitudes of male dominance, such as news accounts in which batterers’ names are withheld. Such stories may use the passive voice--"her skull was cracked”--rather than “he cracked her skull” to deflect blame from the assailant.

And we searched every story for words that partially excused men from responsibility. These portrayed battering as not about controlling a woman, but “snapping” or acting out of character because their love or passion for her overpowered their self-control.

The good news is that none of these distorted stereotypes appeared in more than a very few stories. And when they did, they were often challenged by other sources in the story.

It’s possible, of course, that our findings would have differed had we analyzed articles published in 1990 rather than 2000. Or had we looked at less prestigious news media, we would have found the sexist stereotypes scholars have described.

Nevertheless, there’s reason for celebration. Papers like the Merc and Times are looked up to and emulated by lesser organs of journalism. The model they set is influential.

And that’s very hopeful!

posted 2/19/03        What do you think?   

 

Which news subject is most important to you and your community? Crime? Jobs? Politics? Government? Education? Environment?

A major study shows for newspapers the subject getting the most space is … sports. 

If you live for the Giants, A’s, Niners, or Raiders, news corporations have got their priorities straight.

  

 

But if the lowest turnout ever in a California general election last November worries you, or if you think schools, jobs or your shrinking retirement account merit as much attention as Barry jackin' one, or “How to TALK the game,” you might wonder:  

Why does sports get the most ink?

 Journalism ethics say the purpose of news is to empower citizens so they can make good decisions, particularly about society’s rules and rulers. Not whom to bet on in the Super Bowl.

Sports unify the community, editors say. Maybe you exchange a nod with another fan you wouldn’t have spoken to otherwise. But … what city has unified behind a professional team to diminish poverty or ensure schools have adequate resources? The Raiders are suing a city that can’t even afford enough police.

Let me suggest a different reason why publishers push sports. It's catnip for those young guys who are drifting away from newspapers. Advertisers pay a premium for their eyeballs. And sports is so cheap to cover. Send a couple of staffers out for an afternoon and fill not just the front page, but two sports sections on Mondays. Reporters get the best seats free, and all the food and booze they can consume, all compliments of the team. After all, they're the team's publicists.

Imagine for a moment if even half that space were filled with something that matters for more than a season--like the 34 billion dollar state deficit before it grew so painfully large, or the dot.com failure, before we lost our investments, or why we have to spend our young people and treasury attacking Iraq?

Sports has become a weapon of mass distraction.

--commentary by John McManus

What do you think?

 

Grade the News is Returning

It took longer than expected, but this month Grade the News returns to active mode. Major grants from the Ford and Knight Foundations will make it possible for the project to expand and move to Stanford University.

Over the next several months expect a redesign, greatly improved photos, some video and sound clips of local news, much more community involvement, opportunities for you to "make the call" on dollars and sense ethical issues in Bay Area newsrooms. We're also completely remodeling "Your Turn" so you can raise all sorts of issues about news quality and others can respond.

Since this website is entirely independent of the media and of any advertising, we enjoy a great deal of freedom in making it as useful as it possibly can be. Sooooo, we would like to encourage your ideas for our redesign and features you'd like to see. Contact us by clicking the


 

The Chronicle's Series on San Francisco Public Schools: Great Journalism?

Or a 'Grave Injustice Against the Children'?

Last December, Grade the News awarded this      “To reporters Chuck Finnie and Julian Guthrie, photographer Deanne Fitzmaurice and the San Francisco Chronicle for a surprising investigation of what happened to millions of dollars of bond and tax funds squandered by officials of the San Francisco Unified School District. The series began Nov. 11 and concluded on the 13th. There have also been follow-up stories since as school officials reacted to the investigation.”

The articles took first place for a series at the 2002 Peninsula Press Club Awards dinner in May. In April, the Hearst Corporation bought a double page ad in Editor & Publisher magazine to crow about the series. “San Francisco schools were neglected by city officials, but not by the newspaper,” the ad proclaimed. 

The series told a “shocking” story, it continued. “Reaction to the Chronicle’s series and editorial was swift. The new school superintendent announced a radical overhaul of the division that was involved. Stricter oversight of how the district spends bond money was proposed to voters. The schools stopped using school repair money to pay for salaries.”

But while the Hearst Chronicle was accepting praise and heaping it upon itself, activist parents and the new administration were seething. The newspaper, they said, was taking credit for investigations and reforms the school district initiated before the series was published. 

The controversy prompted the dialogue below. The first column is a critique of the series researched and written by several members of the schools’ PTA (parent-teacher association). The second is a response by lead Chronicle reporter Julian Guthrie. The third column holds GTN’s response to the most central points raised in columns 1 and 2.

Start with column 1, read down and then columns 2 and 3.

The Critics

The 9 Worst Problems with the Chronicle’s “Expose” on San Francisco School Bond Money

1. The Chronicle and the Hearst Examiner all but ignored the problems while they were going on. The post-merger Chronicle reported on them only after new school district leadership had revealed and taken vigorous steps to address the problems.

Many members of the school community spent years begging the newspapers to cover the problems while they were occurring. Had the newspapers revealed the problems at the time, mismanagement could have been stopped.

Now the series casts blame on the reformers instead of the culprits. And it may well make it impossible to pass further bond issues. If that happens, it’s San Francisco’s schoolchildren who will suffer.

The headline on the first part of this series perfectly describes the Chronicle’s coverage: “ ‘A grave injustice against the children.’ ”

2. The series promotes the view that mismanagement is hopelessly entrenched in the school district.

It uses many quotes indicating that the problems are beyond repair, without countervailing views from the many voices in the school community who express optimism about the district’s new leadership.

The definitive quote – the kicker, or last line, of the last part of the series – reinforces that view: “The problem with moving forward is that the mistakes and abuses of the past are very much alive."

The quote is from Nancy Wuerfel, a neighborhood activist whose cause is rebuilding Parkside. She’s a community-spirited person informed about her cause, but is not a parent, an educator or otherwise involved in other aspects of the district. She is not an authoritative enough voice to appropriately provide a damning assessment of current leadership in such a defining spot.

3. The series, and follow-up stories, repeatedly assert that bond money was “diverted” to “ill-conceived projects.” The series gives almost no detail on “ill-conceived projects,” but cites in passing two new schools, Tenderloin Community and John O’Connor High School. Yet Tenderloin Community is widely viewed as a groundbreaking resource for an extremely disadvantaged community, while John O’Connor High is regarded as a rare resource for students seeking vocational education.

The only detail about what would be “ill-conceived” about the schools is that they are currently underenrolled, which is not uncommon for new schools. It’s  revealing that the series singles out schools that serve very disadvantaged students to assail as “ill-conceived.”

4. The series notes that SFUSD overall has more classroom space than it needs, partly in implying that Tenderloin Community and John O’Connor were “ill-conceived.” Yet it criticizes delays in building a new school at the former Parkside School site in the middle-class Sunset District. Parkside is in an area that already has far more classroom seats than students, yet the series implicitly supports a new school there.

This raises the question of whether the Chronicle supports schools serving middle-class populations but views money spent on schools serving disadvantaged communities as “diverted” to “ill-conceived projects.”

5. The series repeatedly blasts the use of bond money to pay salaries, but never makes clear whether or when that’s appropriate, illegal or improper.

Superintendent Ackerman’s investigation found that it’s appropriate to use bond money for salaries directly connected with bond-funded projects. The series is incomplete without further detail.

6. The series describes how the school board allowed mismanagement to occur – but singles out only veteran board members Jill Wynns and Dan Kelly for criticism. Kelly and especially Wynns were the longtime challengers to discredited former Superintendent Bill Rojas, criticizing his unaccountable spending and calling for fiscal responsibility. Yet the series castigates Wynns and Kelly for insufficient effectiveness, while neglecting even to name the members of the board majority who supported Rojas and rubber-stamped his proposals.

7. Meanwhile, the series treats former school board member Leland Yee (currently city supervisor and Democratic Assembly candidate) as a heroic fiscal watchdog, though he was no more effective than Wynns or Kelly in halting mismanagement.

The long description of Yee’s actions in supposedly trying to force accountability aggrandizes Yee while omitting his obvious motivation, which was to distance himself from his own background as an eight-year school board member in preparation for his Assembly run. Since Yee defeated Dan Kelly in the March 2002 Assembly primary, the December 2001 series appears to have been conveniently timed to promote Yee’s candidacy. (Kelly entered the race late, after the series appeared, but was well known to be preparing to run.)

8. The story mentions prominently that bond money was used to fund a “sprawling bureaucracy,” but gives no further details whatsoever of whether SFUSD’s administration is excessively large or costly.

9. The series declares that bond money was spent on “work never authorized by voters”: The wording clearly implies wrongdoing, but the series never explains whether use of bond money is properly limited to the projects originally listed.

If another need arises or circumstances change, is a school district locked into the originally stated uses? If another need arises, is it legal and appropriate to use bond money? The wording above lumps this with wrongdoing, but is it? The series doesn’t tell us.

**

No one who has followed San Francisco school issues would dispute that bond money was  mismanaged for many years – though not as badly as the Chronicle implies.

The Chronicle series is fatally flawed, especially in its strong implication that current district leadership is to blame for the problems and is impotent to remedy them. It amounts to an attack on the 60,000 schoolchildren who will suffer if voters reject future bond issues because of this shoddy, biased and incomplete piece of reporting.

Julian Guthrie

Chronicle Staff Writer

I've heard these things many, many times before (from the same people), but will try to respond yet again. Be reminded, however, that the critiques come from paid and/or elected defenders of the public school system. They have a political agenda, which is to make the school district look at good as possible.

I too am a believer and supporter of public schools (as is my colleague Chuck Finnie). But, unlike the critics, I believe that it is necessary and beneficial to scrutinize a troubled system.

The Chronicle series that Chuck and I did was thorough, exhaustive and revealing. It also prompted reforms. 

I would make one suggestion, and that is for the school board members, officials, followers and full-time defenders to begin focusing their energies on making sure this never happens again, rather than continuing to cover up for past mistakes.

To respond, briefly, to some points made:

1. The Chronicle and The Examiner spent considerable time and energy covering SFUSD fiscal and management problems. Beginning several years ago, I did a series of stories that uncovered serious fiscal mismanagement.

Those stories included, but were not limited to, incredible amounts of overtime paid to school janitors and a sewing machine repair lady who was paid, year after year, despite the fact that the district had long before discontinued sewing programs.

The Chronicle and the Examiner chipped away at the fiscal problems. Sometimes, though, it is not possible to see abuse or mismanagement until a few years later. The bond spending is one such case.

We would not have been able to do much on where the money was going then. We had to look at what was promised, give them time to deliver, and once they had failed to do so, take a look at what happened. 

That's what Chuck and I attempted to do. We wanted to look at exactly what had been accomplished and what wasn't.

2. The district is mired in problems. A new administration is trying to correct them. We will see if they succeed.

The problem with believing that this administration will reform the district is that other administrations have promised exactly the same thing. The district deserves a chance, and it's getting one, but it also deserves continued scrutiny.

The press plays an important role in making sure this public institution is serving the public. When teachers are paid next to nothing and kids are without basic textbooks and materials, and yet lavish new schools are being built, something is awry.

3. Read the series. We did a great amount of research and reporting. We explain why the projects didn't live up to their billing.

The projects went tens of millions of dollars over budget; were built at a time of severely declining enrollment; and enroll significantly fewer students than promised. Again, all of this happened while teachers were out on the street panhandling for money to buy classroom supplies.

4. There is no point in responding to this. It is an implication without merit.

5. We made it very clear when it's okay to use bond funds to pay salaries. We interviewed dozens of officials at other districts. Nearly all said they do not use bond funds to pay salaries. Period.

We talked to lawyers. We went back to look at the text of the ballot measures. We conveyed when it is legal, when it is questionable and when it goes against public will (i.e. the public's view of where the funds are intended to go).

After the series appeared, the district said it would stop using any bond funds to pay salaries. So, that was one of a series of reforms that came out of the stories.

6. Wynns and Kelly have been the longest serving board members. They were around when the funds were being spent.

They did ask questions but didn't effectively pursue answers. We gave them proper credit for asking the questions.

7. This question doesn't deserve a response, except to say we have no alliance with Yee. We pointed out he was on the board at the time. He has since tried to bring attention to problems. That's how we portrayed him.

8. We researched SFUSD compared to other districts and made a reference to the size of the administration in Fresno Unified, a district of comparable size. It has a significantly smaller central administration. This was supported by documentation, including an audit of the district by FICMAT.

9. The series clearly shows what was promised and what was delivered. Voters believed they were approving the funds for very specific things. Some of those projects were completed, others weren't.

The Chronicle stands by its series. It was an important service to readers. Public agencies must be accountable. SFUSD was a system that lacked accountability. We hope that is changing.

 

 

Grade the News

The critique on the left was not produced by anyone on the payroll of the San Francisco Unified School District, nor are they School Board members. They are parents of children in the public schools.

1a. Which came first: the Chronicle series or the school reforms?

Arlene Ackerman became Superintendent of San Francisco Schools in August, 2000. In November, she and the school board commissioned Arthur Anderson to audit the Facilities Department ¾the part of the school administration in charge of construction projects such as those approved in bond measures.

In May, 2001, Ms. Ackerman publicized parts of  the audit showing improper allocations of bond funds and invited investigations by the FBI and City Attorney to determine whether mismanagement extended to outright fraud. She outlined a series of reforms suggested in the audit.

On September 7, the superintendent announced a plan to reimburse the bond fund for money spent on salaries rather than the construction promised in the 1997 bond measure.

On Nov. 11, the Chronicle series began.

It appears the school district revealed problems with how some bond money was spent and began reforms before, rather than in response, to the Chronicle series.

However, Julian Guthrie broke the story of the Anderson audit results on March 29, 2001. Undoubtedly this report added support for reform.

1.b Did the Chronicle and Examiner ignore the bond problems until after they had been solved?

Ms. Guthrie’s claim that sometimes “it is not possible to see abuse or mismanagement until a few years later” in reference to bond mismanagement is plausible.  But it appears to be contradicted by her own reporting. 

The second part of the three-part “Broken Promises” series leads with the sentence: “The warning signs were there for years.

“San Francisco voters approved hundreds of millions of dollars in bond and tax funds, but repair, modernization and construction projects promised by school officials were not getting done.”

These problems shouldn’t have been difficult to spot. As Ms. Guthrie and Mr. Finnie report in the same story:

“Parents, teachers and neighborhood activists complained. An independent audit found incompetent district staff, weak financial controls and wasteful contracting practices.”

Critics actively attempted to interest the press.  A column by Chronicle columnist Debra J. Saunders in May of 2001 stated:

“Kelly and Wynns [School Board members Dan Kelly and Jill Wynns] got wise to Rojas [former SF School Superintendent Waldemar “Bill” Rojas] and his free-spending ways before he left the district. They tried to stop the types of practices the FBI and city attorney now are investigating. The two even came before the Chronicle editorial board in 1999 to take on Rojas for buying a $7.8 million building the school district didn’t need.”

On the other hand, Ms. Guthrie and Mr. Finnie examined thousands of pages of school district documents going back to 1988.

It’s easy to understand the chagrin of Superintendent  Ackerman and the PTA over the timing of “Broken Promises.” But the public is better off getting such an accounting late than never.

2. The series does take a  pessimistic view of the new school administration. But it doesn’t blame Ms. Ackerman for misspending bond money.  

The role of the Ackerman Administration in uncovering and publicizing past problems is submerged under repeated references to the Chronicle’s “six-month investigation.” In fact, the Chronicle relied on the new administration’s investigation for much of its data.

In her response, Ms. Guthrie is right to be skeptical¾it’s a prime journalistic virtue. But it’s cynical to cast the new administration in the mold of the past when Ms. Ackerman has begun her term by calling for outside investigation and replacing top financial personnel.

If not for the public’s sake, for its own sake, a dominant metro paper like the Chronicle must be careful not to feed public cynicism about government institutions; it chokes the civic impulse that generates a newspaper’s most loyal readership.

3. The series conveys the impression that as much as $100 million of bond revenues were misspent.

In part one, the Chronicle reported: “Records show San Francisco Unified School District used as much as $100 million of the bond and tax money to support a sprawling bureaucracy and to finance ill-conceived construction projects that ran far over budget or were never mentioned to voters” (italics added).

These are very strong words for reporters to use; they aren’t attributed to any source.

“We’ve never been able to account for that $100 million figure,” says Sarah Hart, the chief financial officer Superintendent Ackerman hired to put the district’s books in order.  But, Ms. Hart concedes, the Chronicle analysis went back to 1988, further back than she delved. Still, she’s skeptical.

Virtually everyone GTN spoke with acknowledges that some money was indeed squandered. But those within the Ackerman Administration argue that most of the $100 million went to personnel and projects the schools needed and would have funded out of other parts of its budget had the bond money not been available.

Says Dan Kelly, a school board member since 1991: “You wouldn’t have any idea [from reading the series] that seven brand new schools were built and others renovated.”

Kelly agrees that some bond money was spent on schools not mentioned to voters in the bond proposals. “But there’s nothing illegal in [spending bond dollars on] these schools in response to community requests. There were lots and lots of hearings about that. Schools can change direction to greater need as long as they do so publicly.”

5. Was the use of bond money for salaries overplayed?

Of the questionable $100 million, most went to salaries. The school district says most of those salaries paid for oversight of approved bond construction. If they didn’t come out of bond money they would have to be paid for elsewhere in the budget.

The series implies that such spending was wrong. The fact that Ms. Ackerman has reimbursed the construction funds for some of those personnel expenses¾and did so before the series was published¾ weighs in the Chronicle’s favor.

It also makes intuitive sense that when the public votes for a bond issue, it gets what it pays for, rather than something different. Finally, the Chronicle cites a warning by a financial consultant hired by the schools that administrative charges were too high.

Perhaps the series portrays a complex problem as black and white. But the issue of paying salaries with money voters were told would repair and build schools, certainly deserved ink.

GTN did not have the resources, nor top school administrators the will, to reconstruct the Chronicle’s reporting. So any conclusions must be tentative.

However, it appears that the Chronicle: 1) was late to the party; 2) pushed the negative to¾or perhaps beyond¾the limit of available evidence in its interpretation of bond fund allocations; 3) took considerable credit properly belonging to the Ackerman Administration for uncovering and seeking remedies for problems with bond funds; and 4) failed to give enough credit to the new administration’s investigations and reforms.

On the positive side, “Broken Promises” brought wide public attention to serious structural problems in the Facilities Department and in accountability for the city’s public schools generally.

It’s important to note that the Chronicle didn’t break faith with the public by mishandling bond funds. School officials did that.

It may be true that voters will need time and reassurance from outside auditors that San Francisco Unified has put its house in order before they approve another bond measure. But as a result of the Chronicle’s series it’s now more likely that the district will tighten accountability. It will have to in order to regain the public’s trust. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Posted 7-28-02

 

The Nature of Bias

commentary by John McManus

On a brisk fall afternoon in 1951 an undefeated Princeton football team took on Dartmouth’s “Big Green.” The vicious game--in which a Princeton All-American’s nose was broken along with the Dartmouth quarterback’s leg--became the subject of a famous analysis of the nature of bias.

Princeton and Dartmouth students who saw the game, or a film of it, were asked to judge it. The Princeton observers overwhelmingly believed Dartmouth players had unfairly mauled their classmates. “No,” the Dartmouth observers said. Both sides were to blame.

The researchers concluded that there was no single game. What each side saw was shaped by their own purposes and background. The idea of objectivity was shattered.

I mention this research because groups on either side of the struggle between the Israelis and Palestinians are pressuring journalists to correct what each sees as obvious negative bias.

The critics certainly caught the Chronicle off base in its failure to cover a pro-Israel rally a month ago when the paper had reported pro-Palestinian demonstrations.  But other than such obvious asymmetry in reporting similar events, bias is very difficult to prove.

That’s because news brims with value decisions. Just calling this year 2002 values the birth of a Jewish carpenter named Jesus so highly it counts all time from the traditional date of his birth. Calling the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Israel or Palestine betrays values. So does the term “occupied territories.”

In seeking truth, journalists enter a contested arena.     

What they do there matters greatly. They have astonishing power to define reality. That’s why we need journalists with many different perspectives. And why concentration of media ownership is dangerous.  It’s also why your community should pay attention to the news and communicate--the biases you perceive.

What do you think?

 

 

Silent Revolution

 How U.S. and Bay Area Newspapers Portray Child Care

By John McManus and Lori Dorfman

Imagine a news story so big, it touches the hearts and strains the pocketbooks of 10 million American families. It’s also a business story about a giant emerging industry that is beginning to rival agricultural crops in size and impact.

It’s a story about women’s ability to pursue careers. It’s a science story, about advances in understanding how and when children’s brains develop capacity not just for knowledge, but also for citizenship. And it’s a political story about who and how many will enjoy the American dream.

You’ll have to imagine much of this story. American newspapers great and small are paying scant attention to a sea change in how Americans care for their young children. The omission is important. What's not in the newspaper rarely makes television, the public agenda, or the deliberations of policy-makers.

Few mothers stay home anymore

In 1950, a minority of women worked outside the home — about one in three, according to government statistics. Now it’s a majority — six in 10. In 1950 most children under the age of five were cared for at home, usually by their mothers. Today only 14 percent of U.S. children spend their first three years in the full-time care of a parent. Even the majority of mothers with children less than a year old are working or seeking work.

Not since the establishment of universal public education in the 19th century drew children from farms and factories into schoolhouses has there been such a turnaround in the lives of young people. At the same time, cognitive scientists have discovered that children can and do learn a great deal in their first five years and early relationships can shape what kind of people they will grow up to be. What’s absorbed — if the child’s environment provides them — are not just the shapes and sounds of letters, or how to hold a pencil and throw a ball, but reasoning, empathy for others and moral accountability.

Important, but ignored

Despite its importance to our society — laying the foundation for an educated and responsible citizenry — and to our economy — generating jobs and freeing parents to pursue employment — child care is barely visible in newspapers.

We examined every story about child care for pre-schoolers published in 1999 and 2000 in the nation’s four largest papers, The New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times, as well as seven California regional papers including the San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, Oakland Tribune and Santa Cruz Sentinel. Because of child care's economic impact we separately examined every relevant story on the business pages.

The results were scant. Stories about child care (or nursery school or day care) represented only a tiny fraction of 1 percent of the stories in our sample newspapers. For perspective, consider that in an earlier study of three large California newspapers we found that about 6 percent of the stories on news section fronts (or promoted there) and editorial and op-ed pages focused on education.

Bay Area results<