Bias On Spring Street
Cathy Seipp dissects LA Times editor John Carroll's apparent grudge against political columnist Jill Stewart, who criticized his paper's California recall election coverage as biased:
Carroll slams Fox News and (unnamed) websites as "pseudo-journalists" that have "taken on the trappings of journalism" but are really fakers, because they don't seek to "earnestly serve the public." Evidently, Carroll considers opinion journalists who publicly argue their opinions to be, ipso facto, not serving the public. (At least, not earnestly.)He does grudgingly acknowledge that in this country journalism is open to all: "It is the constitutional right of every citizen, no matter how ignorant or how depraved, to be a journalist." And we're depraved, Carroll apparently thinks, on account of the fact that we're deprived...of the five Pulitzers the Times just won, for one thing, but also of the awareness that the reader (or listener, or viewer) is "a master to be served."
Gee, Officer Krupke, tell us more. Like how, for instance, the Times reader is served by mysterious, information-withholding descriptions such as this: "The worst of the fictions originated with a freelance columnist in Los Angeles who claimed to have the inside story on unethical behavior at the Times." Or this: "Instead of being ignored, the author of the column was booked for repeated appearances on O'Reilly, on MSNBC, and even on the generally trustworthy CNN."
Well, who is she ó this damned, infernal freelance columnist who managed to hoodwink even the generally trustworthy CNN? For the record, Jill Stewart is a friend of mine (we pseudo-journalists believe in owning up to biases, even if real ones don't always), and although it's convenient for the Times to dismiss her merely as a freelancer, her weekly column does appear in (real? pseudo?) papers like the San Francisco Chronicle, the Orange County Register, and the L.A. Daily News, among others.
Apparently, Stewart so gets Carroll's goat that he refuses to even mention her by name!
Ah....the Times....
One of the things I've always wondered is why the Times has had such a strangle hold on LA as opposed to say New York, where they have many viable newspapers?
In any event, the times is the quintessential emperor with no clothes.
In my opinion, not only is the writing biased, but extremely bland, vapid and pedestrian.
I loved their unbiased last minute blitzkrieg of Governor Arnie. It's indicative of their fairness.
Over the years I have observed the following. When something happens that they philosophically agree with, it's a headline that lasts for days on end.When something happens that they don't agree with it's not only not a headline, but it may be on the 3rd or 4th page. The way the headline is written will reflect their viewpoint as well. As to the writing itself, it reflects the overall company store policy, period. No deviation at all.
The staff, is obvious hand-picked to reflect the PROPER viewpoint and that's it. Absolutely biased,
company store mentality. No thinking takes place here, just regurgitation of the agreed upon views, the PROPER views, and that's it. These aren't writers, they are IBM copying machines, just retyping the same company store viewpoint.
As to the 5 pulitzers, these committees are birds of a feather and vote for their own kind, the ones that display the PROPER viewpoints and sensibilities. The pulitzer committee rewards the right type of thinking, not the writing itself. Just like the academy awards and other endless shows where these idiot celebrities go about honoring and worshipping themselves. These aren't objective views of the actor's performances, just subjective votes, along studio and friendship lines for their cronies and bj mates. Same with the pulitzers and all committees.
The LA times with it's lack of really intelligent, vibrant reporting is really a 3rd rate newspaper in a first rate town. But in the absence of any other really going concerns, it just seems like a great paper to some, by default.
Finally, I think I read somewhere, maybe Siepp, talking about how Amy got dumped from the times, not because of any problem with the writing but because she didn't, essentially fit the profile. What profile? A subservient, company-store bland writer, who regurgitates the same vapid nonsense over and over again.
There are some talented writers in this town, Siepp, Matt Welch is really good, of course Amy Al-Keida, and a gut by the name of Volkay, to name only four. In reality, they are actually to good to be writing for the times, not the other way around.
chris at May 20, 2004 9:50 AM
As a matter of fact, why don't some of you crack journalists, start an alternative to the times? This town could use another paper. Maybe start out online. Seriously, over the years I've talked with many, many people that think the times is absolutley lousy. There are lots of people, I believe, that would be receptive to something like this. SAVE Los Angeles from the LA Times, the pompous, the arrogant, the insipid, the silly. A rare combination of traits that thye've perfected brilliantly
chris at May 20, 2004 10:13 AM
The problem is funding, Chris. Richard Riordan was about to do just that until the Scwharz gave him a cabinet position. Welch woulda been co-editor.
LYT at May 20, 2004 10:49 PM
AA Please forgive me for quoting Ann Coulter here but she is especially pithy on the times in here current piece.
If liberals won't move on from the prison abuse photos calculated to incite hatred toward the very troops liberals loudly claim to "support," I'm not moving on from the fact that the editor of the Los Angeles Times, John Carroll, is instructing journalists on ethics. The editor of the Los Angeles Times telling reporters how to behave ethically is a complete contradiction, like ... oh, I don't know ... giving Yasser Arafat a Nobel Peace Prize or something. You know, just patently silly.
This is the same L.A. Times that engaged in desperate, 11th-hour attempts to sabotage Arnold Schwarzenegger during the California recall election with lurid sex stories from anonymous assistant crudite girls who worked the craft services tables on Arnold's movies from the 1980s and were still trying to break into show biz 20 years later.
This is the same L.A. Times where reporters had to be told in an internal memo (from Carroll himself) to stop injecting opinion in news stories, specifically the practice of prefacing the term "pro-life" with the term "so-called."
This is the same L.A. Times that in recent years instituted racial and gender quotas for sources on "so-called" news ñ oops, I mean, news stories ñ which puts reporters in the position of having to round up a black expert on nuclear fusion, a Native American expert on cubism, and a female expert on great moments in football.
This is the same L.A. Times that responded to the largest number of canceled subscriptions in the paper's history from readers enraged by the paper's liberal bias by putting Michael Kinsley, one of America's leading leftists, in charge of the editorial page.
And this is the same L.A. Times that pays unrepentant Castro fan and former North Korea defender Robert Scheer for his hysterical anti-American rants every Tuesday, after hiring him mostly because his wife was on the editorial board.
The title of Carroll's speech was "The Wolf in Reporter's Clothing: The Rise of Pseudo-Journalism in America." One has to admit: If you wanted an expert on the practice of partisan pseudo-journalism, you could do a lot worse than the editor of the Los Angeles Times.
Alas, Carroll's speech wasn't the "how-to" lecture dozens of would-be yellow journalists were expecting when they showed up for his presentation. Like the "ombudsman" at the New York Times, Carroll chastised his own newspaper for some small, irrelevant infraction no one would ever complain about while ignoring the paper's consistent Soviet-style reporting that has led thousands of readers to cancel their subscriptions.
Instead, Carroll's speech was an attack on Fox News Channel. If conservatives complained about CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Reader's Digest, NPR, etc. etc. half as much as liberals scream about Fox News, even I would say conservatives were getting to be a bore on the subject.
Carroll's case-in-chief of Fox News' "pseudo-journalism" is "The O'Reilly Factor." (Only liberals could force conservatives into defending Bill O'Reilly.) Carroll lyingly says of O'Reilly: "Where, he asked, was the L.A. Times on the so-called Troopergate story?"
In fact, O'Reilly never mentioned "Troopergate." He didn't mention the Arkansas State Troopers. And he certainly didn't mention "so-called Troopergate." He compared the L.A. Times coverage of Schwarzenegger's alleged inappropriate behavior decades earlier with that paper's coverage of the scandals of various Democrats ñ among them the stunning, contemporaneous sexual assaults by Bill Clinton on identifiable women.
I suppose it's easy to confuse sex scandals involving Bill Clinton ñ I keep a "Women Bill Clinton Has Raped or Groped at a Glance" file on my Blackberry, just as a time-saver ñ but O'Reilly was referring not to the 1993 allegations from Arkansas State Troopers, but to the 1998 Clinton sex scandals involving allegations from specific women, such as Kathleen Willey. We know this because while the word "trooper" never passed O'Reilly's lips, he did expressly refer to "Kathleen Willey."
When it came to these Clinton sex assaults, how did the L.A. Times do? Reporter Richard A. Serrano described Willey as "embittered" and said her accusations were "fraught with contradiction" ñ unlike the truth-tellers who waited 20 years to make anonymous accusations against Schwarzenegger. The Times angrily editorialized that Clinton's impeachment was "grounded not in what is right for the country but what best helps House managers save face." (How anyone can use the expression "save face" in defense of Bill Clinton is beyond my understanding.)
You don't have to enter the "No Spin Zone" to see the "disconnect," as liberals love to say, between the L.A. Times' frantic, wild-eyed search for a woman ñ any woman, even anonymously ñ to accuse Schwarzenegger of groping her at some point during the previous quarter century, and the Times' equally determined efforts to discount the many credible accounts of women, all named, who plausibly accused Bill Clinton of raping, groping or otherwise sexually assaulting them.
But Carroll dearly wishes O'Reilly had said "Troopergate" because apparently that's the last time Carroll can remember the L.A. Times going after a Democrat the way the Times goes after Republicans as a matter of policy. The Times' Troopergate story came out in December 1993. But Carroll is still citing that one time over a decade ago when the L.A. Times engaged in nonpartisan reporting, bragging: "At one point, it had nine reporters in Little Rock." OK, but there were 24 reporters on the Schwarzenegger story.
Jeep Crew at May 21, 2004 10:59 AM
Jeep Crew, I believe you're mistaking me for a Times fan. I'm actually blacklisted from appearing in the paper, as I would assume, are Miss Seipp and Miss Stewart. At least I'm in very good company! Word has it they actually have a "do not hire list." (A reporter told me this.) If the paper were any good, they would have snapped up Jill Stewart, Susan Goldsmith, Rick Barrs, and a number of others when New Times LA closed. They're too busy nursing their seventh grade grudges -- much like the major one Carroll has against Jill Stewart: Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah...he's not going to even say her name! So there!
Amy Alkon at May 21, 2004 12:05 PM
"If conservatives complained about CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Reader's Digest, NPR, etc. etc. half as much as liberals scream about Fox News, even I would say conservatives were getting to be a bore on the subject."
They do. I listen to talk radio, and hear complaints about either the liberal media in general, or the LA and NY Times in particular, among others, far more frequently than I read complaints about Fox News in Counterpunch and similar lefty publications.
Vanity Fair, Vogue, and Reader's Digest do get a pass, I must admit. But that's probably because few if any consider them a primary source for news.
LYT at May 21, 2004 3:14 PM
What I find unfathomable is that anyone would waste their time comparing Fox News with CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Reader's Digest, or NPR.
Life is short, Ann. Go home and read Middlemarch!
Lena at May 21, 2004 3:47 PM