By: E&P Staff In today's letters, a suggestion that Joe Strupp went too easy on the New York Times in his column, a note of praise for a trumpet player from Neil Young's band, and a call for Dana Priest to be stripped of her Pulitzer.
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From E&P's Former EditorThe following sentence ran in the
obituary of A.M. Rosenthal in The New York Times on May 11, 2006: "He often spoke of keeping the paper "straight," and was tigerish in defense of high standards of reporting and editing, which called for fairness, objectivity and good taste in news columns free of editorial comment, causes, political agendas, innuendo and unattributed pejorative quotations."
Reporters, editors and news media executives everywhere would do well to read and reread that sentence every working day. Rosenthal may have been controversial, but he can be credited with a most singular achievement: He created the best newspaper that ever was. RIP.
Bill GloedeCamden, Maine
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Re: Anonymous Postings at Pa. Newspaper Web Site Get Reporter FiredToo bad the same kind of
ethics didn't apply to Bush's misguided administration staff who are employed by the Federal government ... wonder how many tax-funded Bush shills are out there spreading lies?
Harold S. Kramer***
A Correction on Our 4th Amendment Column?By now, I'm sure that you have received a lot of e-mails pointing out
how wrong [Steve Yahn was] about Hayden and the 4th Amendment.
Although I am a civil litigator, I know from law school that the standard for the legality of searches under the 4th Amendment is "reasonable suspicion" whereas the standard for the issuance of warrants is "probable cause." These are distinct concepts. Hayden was entirely correct to make this distinction.
The right thing for you to do would be to publish a correction.
Dave Montgomery***
Neil Young's Trumpet Player Praises Mitchell's ColumnThis is a great article about what's going on in the news and in everyday life. I had the pleasure of playing trumpet on "Living With War."
Tom Bray***
Should Priest Surrender Her Pulitzer for Embarassing Herself on Goss?There should be a standing rule that within a year of winning a Pulitzer, a writer embarrassing his or herself journalistically must surrender the prize.
A writer such as 2006 Pulitzer Prize winner Dana Priest, whose May 6 Washington Post "analysis" of CIA Director Porter Goss' departure, "The Fix-It Man Leaves, but the Agency's Cracks Remain," deserves the Pulitzer penalty because her Post column reads as if it were a White House press release.
Specifically, I refer to Ms. Priest's lead paragraph which states that "CIA Director Porter J. Goss was brought into the CIA to quell what the White House viewed as a partisan insurgency against the administration and to re-energize a spy service that failed to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks or accurately assess Iraq's weapons capability."
To appropriate the words of Gary Bernsten, identified in Ms. Priest's story as a former operations officer, "The CIA was a convenient scapegoat." That is a viewpoint which, unfortunately, Ms. Priest failed to explore in her article. If she had, Ms. Priest would have discovered that the Culprits-in-Chief for the 9/11 terrorist attacks were not the intelligence services but the inner circle of the Bush Administration.
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Dave FutornickWest Orange, NJ
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On Journos Perceiving, Being Accused of BiasI read
this story with great interest. I can not tell for certain if this article indicates there is a serious look at the failures (in my opinion anyway) of U.S. journalism or just a serious look at the failure to grow or retain readers and the threat to profits.
If the news media want to regain credibility they should in my opinion restore the Fairness Doctrine and eliminate the bogus unbalanced 'news/talk" shows and eliminate the corporate-provided advertisements that masquerade and are presented as news, and eliminate the sensationalist fear-mongering, rumor-mongering news format they have adopted on TV and in the news print.
I would like to have a journalist corps I could trust but now I have come to the end of a sort of 3 (or however many stages of dying there are supposed to be) stages of dying to death of US news credibility. I passed through lack of trust to anger and outrage to total contempt and now I am at the stage where I accept the "news media" as the public spin arm of corporate America ...i.e. the enemy of ordinary Americans like me.
The corporate news provides the smoke and mirrors and distractions to hide all the things corporate America is stealing from us. When bits and pieces of truth are revealed they are done so only in bits and pieces, squeezed into sensationalist nonsense of the stars or tabloid-like treatment of the latest 'terrorist threat', so that Americans never get any depth or substantive or even follow-up treatment of the real and serious news so we never get "the big picture". ...
Pat HeidenMichigan
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Strupp Went Easy on the Times?I beg to differ with [Joe Strupp] about the NYT. [His analysis is]
too charitable. Withholding the NSA story for a year (until Risen was ready to explode his employer) is a case in point. One can only wonder what other stories the editors and publisher are sitting on at the White House's request. The Miller/WMD imbroglio was totally fatal: The Times is dead. No cred left. Period.
I only read the NYT to find out what the other ridiculous dailies are going to print each day, which chamber of commerce-type slant will prevail, what international news will be put throught the ultra-capitalist wringer of editor-thought and framed in patronizing terms (see Hugo Chavez, Bolivia, etc.)
I only read it online as I promised myself never to give Sulzberger a nickel ever again.
Peter Byrne***
Milwaukee Press Club Isn't OldestA recent Friday
letter takes issue with various claims as to which press club in the U.S. is the oldest. The Milwaukee Press Club does not claim to be the oldest, nor does the recent SPJ honor state that.
The Milwaukee club claims to be the oldest "continuously operating" press club in the Americas -- and that is what the SPJ "Historic Sites in Journalism" honor recognizes. And yes, we did our research, including research of the Denver club, which clearly states in its "club history" account on its website that., while it was founded in 1884, it was resuscitated in 1905 after going out of operation. The Milwaukee club has not ceased operating since 1885.
David G. NilesMilwaukee Press Club past president
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Reporters May Be Lazy, Fearful ... But Republican? ... I've been thinking that our media -- a wholly owned subsidiary of Corporate America -- is malfunctioning because of reporters who are lazy, fearful for their livelihoods, or just plain Republican. It's tempting to choose the first explanation, and I do believe laziness can be accurately applied to the White House press corps (except for Helen Thomas, who technically isn't a corpse member anyway). But the print scribes, they are another quandary altogether. I'm leaning toward the sensibility as expressed in song by one of my favorite cultural observers, Garrison Keillor: "We're all Republicans, all Republicans, we're all Republicans n-ow-w-w-w-w-w." His self-conscious parody reminds me of what happens when a person (and I say this as politely as I can) becomes a fully-formed, selfish capitalist. Thus we have no real reporters in the mainstream media, because they must covertly or overtly serve the business side of the operation first. I'd like to believe there's another Katharine Graham out there behind another set of hardworking SOB muckrakers, but I just don't see the process supporting that anymore.
Mary TruchelutWilton Manors, Fla.
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Bravo Bill IsraelRegardless of [Bill Israel's]
collegial affection for Karl Rove, he is distinctly an enemy of the democratic process. His indictment wil be of no value since our President will pardon him. History will credit his deceit and his destructive role in the diminishment of our open society.
Robert D. WaldAnchorage, Alaska
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