When Rosemary Goudreau, the editorial page editor of the
Tampa Tribune, started wondering about an anonymous e-mail
message she had received a dozen times in the past year, she did an
astonishing thing. The message said, “Did you know that 47
countries have re-established their embassies in Iraq? Did you know
that 3,100 schools have been renovated? Of course we didn’t know!
Our media doesn’t tell us!”
The e-mail has been blasted out to most newspaper editors in
America. It seems to have originated on Frontpagemag.com’s
Department of Defense website, where it appears with the note, “Send
this to your Brigade.” I have quoted a few brief excerpts.
The astonishing thing Goudreau did? As described in an August 15
story by Kathryn Seelye in the New York
Times’ business section, “Ms. Goudreau’s newspaper, like most
dailies in America, relies largely on The Associated Press for its
coverage of the Iraq war. So she finally forwarded the e-mail
message to Mike Silverman, managing editor of the AP, asking if
there was a way to check these assertions…”
FROM THIS POINT ON, the Seelye story, which opinionjournal.com’s
James Taranto called “a heartening piece of metajournalism” in the
next day’s “Best of the Web Today,” gets funnier and funnier
(“The Good News Is, the Good News May Get
Reported”). Surely, you think, someone will tumble to the gag. But
no. It just goes on and on:
The AP raises the issue of the e-mail at a regular monthly
meeting of AP-affiliated editors in New York. Goudreau says that
“people” (her readers, I suppose) want to know “if we’re making
progress in Iraq.” She feels “uncomfortable” questioning the
AP.
Silverman tells Seelye that many editors said readers call them
about the disconnect between what returning soldiers tell them and
what they see in the news. He acknowledges that newspapers
generally render a “gloomy portrayal” of Iraq goings-on.
Still the bell doesn’t go off. Not for Silverman, not for
Seelye.
Silverman concludes, “I was glad to have that discussion with
the editors because they have to deal with the perception that the
media is emphasizing the negative.”
Suki Dardarian, deputy managing editor of the Seattle
Times and vice president of the board of the Associated Press
Managing Editors: “One of the things the editors felt was that as
much context as you can bring, the better,” Ms. Dardarian said.
Huh?
“They wanted them to get beyond the breaking news to ‘What does
this mean?’ “
Oh. That’s clear now.
EDITORS PONDER A LOT these days. Just stick “Editors ponder” into
the Times’ own search engine, or into Google, and see how
many entries you get. Newspapering has grown so pondersome, the
editors, it seems, never leave the office or pick up the phone to
find out anything. They’ve turned into the kind of people, in Fred
Reed’s memorable metaphor, who hire other people to put the air in
their tires.
Goudreau herself has to ask her own boss “if there was any way
to check these assertions” (in the e-mail). Pick up the phone, Ms.
Goudreau! Turn to your own back files of “returning soldiers”
profiles and — what? The Tampa Tribune hasn’t done any
profiles of returning soldiers? Well, call the local VFW posts and
churches and start finding some. Then arrange for interviews and
ask questions. Assign your reporters to dig at the topic. If your
reporters find out something, print it.
If you’re out in the world, it falls right in your lap. At our
church a few weeks back, one of our service men, home on leave,
stood up to say that we shouldn’t believe what we saw on TV or in
the newspapers, that it was nothing like what was going on in Iraq.
After church, he told me, “You don’t know anything if you’re not
reading the blogs.”
No one in the Seelye story gets the point, not Goudreau, not
Silverman, not Dardarian, and certainly not Seelye herself. They’ve
turned news into a product, like toothpaste. But it’s worse. A real
toothpaste manufacturer, faced with customer complaints, would find
out what’s wrong with the toothpaste. The AP-ers never even
consider there might be something wrong with their reporting. At
best, they are willing only to work on how their readers “perceive”
their reporting.
Ponder this, editors. There is something wrong with your
product, and your readers have stopped buying it.
