Category Archives: The Media

Photo Kremlinology

Posted on May 10, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

One thing that’s struck me about the NY Times for well over a decade is the extent to which they manipulate the sorts of photos they run of people. When they like someone, they run flattering pix; when they don’t like someone, they pick photos that make the person look bad. And there are so many ways to do it, too.

A particularly striking example of the genre appears on both the front page and page A18 of today’s paper, in which GOP Senate candidate Katherine Harris is portrayed as even dopier-looking than normal.


NYT Caption: Representatives Katherine Harris and Adam H. Putnam, both Florida Republicans, with Governor Bush at MacDill Air Force Base.

Admittedly, I too think she’s awful, but I’m sure that the paper wouldn’t permit such overt editorializing in a news story. And yes, I do get the argument that since the picture is factual, it actually happened, it’s not editorializing. I just don’t buy it.

Posted in The Media | 8 Comments

More on Rumsfled

Posted on May 5, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

I was quite struck by two features of this AP article, Rumsfeld Is Confronted by Antiwar Protesters, on Rumsfeld’s encounter with Ray McGovern.

Consider the first three paragraphs:

ATLANTA, May 4 — Antiwar protesters repeatedly interrupted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld during a speech Thursday, and one man, a former CIA analyst, accused him in a question-and-answer session of lying about prewar intelligence on Iraq.

“Why did you lie to get us into a war that caused these kind of casualties and was not necessary?” asked Ray McGovern, the former analyst.

“I did not lie,” shot back Rumsfeld, who waved off security guards ready to remove McGovern from the hall at the Southern Center for International Studies.

First, note that neither here nor elsewhere in the article does the reporter note that McGovern read Rumsfeld his own statement. The result is to suggest the trading of accusations, not the allegation of a fact and the failure to respond to it.

Second, and most shocking of all, the reporter seems utterly unfazed by the idea that asking a tough question in a public meeting might suffice as grounds to have security wrestle McGovern away. Only Rumsfeld’s indulgence, he ‘waved off security guards’ saved him.

How have we come to this?

Posted in Civil Liberties, The Media | 20 Comments

I’m Afraid That It’s Called “Modern Reporting”

Posted on May 1, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

There is a rather major disconnect between, on the one hand this this insipid New York Times account of the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner and this almost as pointless account in the Washington Post, and on the other hand, Peter Daou’s take which left in the venom. Truth or truthiness? See the video and you be the judge. (The video is in three parts; the third IMHO is sort of a waste of time.)

Posted in The Media | 4 Comments

Who Got Rolled?

Posted on April 17, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

In the old days, I’d bet on AP to get it right and pretty much ignore some web site I never heard of. Nowadays… well, I don’t know who to believe. But I’m prepared to accept the idea that the AP’s reporter didn’t know what they did last year.

AP reports,

Thousands of children, including some brought by gay and lesbian parents, braved chilly rain at the South Lawn of the White House Monday to roll colored eggs across soggy grass as part of an event dating to the 19th century.

About 16,000 tickets were distributed for the day-long event, and about a hundred gay and lesbian parents lined up for the passes handed out on a first-come-first-served basis.

But PageOneQ (which I’ve never heard of before), says it wasn’t first-come first-serve at all, at least not like in previous years,

After waiting outside overnight to be among the first to enter this year’s White House Easter Egg Roll, families in line were surprised to learn that the White House had changed the ticketing policy for the annual event, PageOneQ has learned.

The unannounced change means that the families who waited in line the longest, in one case for twenty-four hours, will not be among the visitors at the event’s opening ceremonies. The first families in line, who were not part of the LGBT family group, received tickets with an 11:00am entrance time, two hours later than the opening time listed in the White House press release.

If PageOneQ is right, the goal, I imagine, was to keep Laura Bush from being pictured with gay couples. Indeed, AP reports,

The Bushes posed for pictures with families at the event, which was closed off to the public in the early morning hours. Attending at the event’s start were White House staff, youth volunteer groups, kids from the Gulf Coast region and other invited guests.

Posted in The Media | 1 Comment

Dean Baker Wants Numerate Reporting

Posted on April 10, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Economist and one-man economic truth squad Dean Baker has a new blog, Beat the Press, dedicated to “commentary on economic reporting.”

The inaugural posting asks, reasonably enough, why most economic journalism fails to put raw numbers in context, choosing to report the big exciting number of “$285 billion over the next six years” for the new transportation bill, rather then the more informative, contextualized number of “approximately 1.7 percent of projected federal spending over this period.”

In this case, though, it seems to me that this question actually answers itself: $285 billion sounds like a front-page headline; “approximately 1.7% of federal spending over the next six years” sounds like what William Safire used to call a “nine-point MEGO” where the MEGO stood for “my eyes glaze over” and the scale was logarithmic like the Richter scale.

And while I’m carping at my betters, let me point out that telling people that the new transportation bill will be 1.7% of federal spending or even “approximately 4.6 percent of projected discretionary spending” won’t tell most readers all that much either…unless you tell them how it compares to transportation spending last decade, whether it covers deferred maintenance, current expenditures or new capital projects, and what it does to the deficit… And your economic journalist has, what, fourteen column inches on a good day?

Posted in Econ & Money, The Media | Comments Off on Dean Baker Wants Numerate Reporting

Sun-Sentinel Is Against The War

Posted on April 10, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

The Sun-Sentinel is a quality newspaper a bit north of here. It has a justly deserved reputation as being pretty conservative editorially, and even in some of its political coverage. (A long-time state political reporter just got reassigned for being too overtly Republican, showing both that there’s a tilt, and that the place has some standards.)

So it’s interesting that the Sun-Sentinel editorial page, which I gather has been a big cheerleader for the Iraq war, is now not only vehemently against the Iraq war, but trying to suggest it was always against it. That’s right: the war is now so unpopular that former backers are obfuscating their prior support.

Incidentally, the paper’s April 7 editorial is real strong stuff. Here’s how it starts:

Three years, 19 days. And counting.

More than 2,300 Americans killed. More than 16,000 wounded, many of them maimed for life. And then there are the tens of thousands of Iraqi victims.

Almost $400 billion spent so far, followed by another $330 million every day.

These are the tangible costs of the Iraq war. There are other costs that are harder to measure precisely, but they are many and they are mounting. It can be strongly argued that they are largely the fault of a president who is stubborn, intractable, dogmatic, exclusionary and intellectually dishonest, and who appears reluctant to operate outside his inner circle.

Democrats (and Republicans) take note.

Posted in Florida, Iraq, The Media | 2 Comments