Rev. Wright to The NYT, and some thoughts on journalism (and truth?)

Daily Kos posts a copy of an unpublished letter from Rev. Jeremiah Wright to the NYT from about a year ago, with much accompanying commentary. It is worth a look.

There are aspects of Wright's letter that I find distinctly uncomfortable, and I fear these are reflective of some larger issues in his character and outlook. That does not necessarily distinguish him in kind from many other religious leaders who have had inordinate (and in my view deleterious) influence through the media and directly on public officials. American public opinion is considerably more tolerant of some of these figures than of others, and it is hard to avoid the conclusion that race (along with the distinctive/minority position of certain faiths in the American context) has a not inconsiderable impact on how objectionable statements are received by the media and the public.

Wright's letter to The Times raises an additional issue worthy of discussion here. I have been a devout Times reader for more than 35 years, since my college days. It is, I think, the best we have in daily print journalism, although I have long tried to seek supplementation via numerous other sources of news--a task made much easier in this age of the "internets" (tubes, lots of tubes).

I often have occasion to reflect on the disparity in my trust in The Times (or any other news source, mainstream or otherwise--I'm picking on The Times here as exemplary of better news sources) in areas in which I am professionally or otherwise expert, and in areas I know less immediately or in depth.

Today is the 29th anniversary of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. Digging into my deeply repressed past, I then worked for a law firm representing the owner of TMI, and had been involved in some relatively minor regulatory matters regarding the facility. On the morning of the accident, we were packing up for a trip to the facility, for a hearing on issues relating to--are you ready for this--the likelihood and potential consequences of a direct impact by a large airliner on a functioning nuclear facility.

I am mindful of the continuing obligations of confidentiality, but I think it is permissible to say that for the next year and a half, I attended and privately reported on virtually every Washington-based public meeting of regulatory agencies, Congressional committees, and the Presidential (Kemeny) Commission investigating the accident. I was a pretty highly informed listener, with a substantial sense of the overall context of the developing story. Needless to say to those who were alive then, the story got a lot of media attention (which I also followed closely). Suffice it to say, much of the media coverage got events, both large and small, badly wrong, and almost always in a sensationalistic context (even in the most "responsible" press and media). And I don't think this reflect any enormous skew or bias in my own perceptions--my job (and my personal temperament) was to get things right, in as unfiltered a fashion as possible. This included conveying bad news (of which there was a great deal) as accurately as I could, often directly to senior figures.

The experience had a lasting impact on my thinking, reinforcing perceptions dating to press coverage of student protests (including a building occupation) at Harvard in the late 1960s. I was less confident in my own perceptions as a college student, and recognized that I only had one view of the elephant on that occasion. By 1979, that had changed--I had as clear and complete a first-hand view as most anyone in one of the most covered events of its time.

The media got so much of it wrong, sometimes seriously so, with important public consequences.

This has also been an all-too-typical experience on issues in bioethics and law that I have followed closely over the past three decades. At various points, I have had significant interactions with the press, and often do not recognize myself in the published accounts of the conversations. In recent years, I have taken to imposing conditions on the circumstances in which I speak for publication--with the result that I am called for interviews considerably less frequently, which has been okay. My vanity is satisfied in other contexts, or I do without. (Or I blog.)

And here is the crucial piece. Knowing all this from personal experience, sometimes hard earned, when I read The Times (or other sources) on subjects I know less about, and from a less first-hand perspective, I still indulge a presumption that The Times gets it basically right. I do read things more critically than I once did, and am less inclined to take press accounts as any species of holy writ (a subject adverted to at the top of this posting). But there still is a degree of trust, indeed of credulousness, that I cannot fully bring myself to overcome. The problem, at least in part: what is the alternative?

I don't have any overarching theory of press bias. Over past decades, since my TMI experience, I have talked about this general phenomenon with many folks expert in a variety of fields, often with persons whose expertise is of interest to the media and results in many direct contacts. All report more or less the same story, with local variations. None of us fully trust media reporting in the areas of our own expertise. All of us let down our guard, to a greater or lesser degree, when reading the media on subjects we know less about. None of us have found a fully satisfactory alternative, and virtually all of us have other demands on our time, and cannot devote infinite hours to searching the web (or magazines, or other potential sources) on matters less central to our daily concerns.

If this is true of The Times, The Washington Post, The LA Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Boston Globe--how much the more so for cable news outlets (see my recent postings on that subject).

Is there a reality out there? Can we know it? On what can we base consequential decisions on important public matters beyond our first hand experience? Is meaningful democracy possible in such a complex world?

I'd be interested in your experiences, and in your opinions.

On The NYT McCain Fiasco

Here is a copy of my response to the now notorious NYT piece on John McCain's lobbyist associations. I sent this on the afternoon of Feb.22, before the appearance of NYT Public Editor Clark Hoyt's column on the same subject. Hoyt came to rather similar conclusions.

To the Editor:

I continue to struggle to make my mind up on this article. I am inclined to wait to see what new facts emerge before reaching any final judgment. My guess--and my hope--is that The Times knows more than it is yet prepared to publish, and that further facts are yet to emerge to fill in the story. If that is incorrect, my judgment will be more harsh.

I appreciate the detailed examination of Senator McCain's contacts with and responsiveness to lobbyists for the rich and powerful of corporate America, particularly given his powerful role as (former) Chair of the Senate Commerce Committee. The new wrinkle, given Senator McCain's self-promoted image as a crusading reformer, is that he is apparently so convinced of his personal rectitude that he is largely oblivious to situations that would raise legitimate concerns if they involved others. That is a recipe for disaster, particularly in a potential President. An article effectively raising and shedding light on this issue is clearly justified.

My concern is with the series of decisions made on how to play the "romantic"/sexual innuendo piece of the story. I think this aspect was peripheral, rather than central, to the main focus of the story. While it did, to some degree, advance the central thesis of the story, it was predictable that attention paid to the sexual angle would overwhelm everything else, as has in fact been the case. This was made significantly more likely by the decision to play this issue at the top of the story, despite the lack of harder documentation and identified sources. In an effort to play it cute--or perhaps to avoid legal attack--The Times highlighted the salacious sexual innuendo, with its predictable impact on the privacy of the individuals concerned, while seeking to avoid responsibility for stating and proving its case. The added news value of the suspected romantic relationship seems to me insufficient to justify playing this aspect at the top of the piece, as opposed to leaving it out altogether or running it much deeper in the story, as an illustration of concerns raised by McCain's closeness to lobbyists.

I can imagine a response saying that would amount to burying the lede. But that is precisely my point. If the lede is to be the romantic/sexual allegation, than state your allegation and prove it, using more than anonymous sourcing. If you are unable to do so, and are not able to name your sources or provide more in the way of proof, than this does not belong anywhere near the lede, and perhaps not in the story at all.
Can you explain the news judgment that you feel justifies organizing the story as you did?

Poll: Too Much Celeb Scandal Coverage

New York Times: NEW YORK (AP)

Celebrities behaving badly? If you don't care, you have company.

The vast majority of Americans believe there is too much news coverage of celebrity scandals, and most blame the media for the attention paid to the stars' trials and tribulations, a new survey has found.

Nearly nine out of 10 adults said celebrity scandals receive ''too much'' news coverage, according to a national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Only 2 percent said the subject receives ''too little'' coverage, and 8 percent said scandals get the ''right amount'' of press.

The survey also found that 54 percent of those who say celebrity news coverage is excessive blame news organizations. Around one-third of those surveyed found the public at fault for paying attention and 12 percent said the public and the media both are to blame.

Truth About Tillman ... Murder's Not 'Friendly Fire'

Huffington Post: By RJ Eskow

Once again, the Administration is pulling the old magician's trick of misdirection, this time in the Pat Tillman case. And once again, the press is falling for it. Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Myers focused on 'what they knew and when' -- to borrow the Watergate phrase -- rather than the core issue at the heart of the Pat Tillman matter, which is this:

Pat Tillman was almost certainly murdered, and fratricide is not 'friendly fire.'

Yet a Google News search on the terms 'Tillman' and 'friendly fire' yielded 1,044 hits today, all from the last 24 hours. That's after the facts behind the fratricide are widely known - and after a number of clues that suggest the entire command structure, from the White House on down, concealed a murder from the public and took no steps to investigate it.

There's your story....

I have not been following this story with great care. Eskow puts many of the (post-fratricide) pieces together in compelling, and chilling, form. Read it.

Shafer blows piece about Times and Post headcounts and the future of newspapers

Slate Magazine: By Jack Shafer

[NYT Executive Editor Bill] Keller maintains that headcount growth [that is, an increase in numbers of reporters and editors] has benefited not just the lifestyle sections but the hard-news pages, something I don't dispute in my piece. I write that both newspapers relied more on wire services in 1972—especially the Post—and both papers ran shorter news stories.

But Keller has a larger point to make, writing:

[M]y main purpose in writing is not to belabor metrics, it is to wave a crucifix at the vampires who might be animated by your logic.

Your conclusion seemed to be roughly this: It's possible to cut many pounds of flesh from the country's best newspapers—heck, cut 'em in half!—and still end up with really good papers of the kind that covered Vietnam and Watergate. To do that you just have to confine your knife to all the sections that don't do wars and politics.

And that, in the real world, is bollocks.

If you cut the staff back to a replica of the 1972 New York Times newsroom, the result would be:

—A drastically diminished news report, in print and on line; and, I believe,

—A company that would almost surely be unprofitable, because those features that have grown up since 1972 attract the advertising that currently makes the difference between a paper that makes money and one that loses money.

In other words, the baby is the bath water. Sacrifice the lifestyle and softer news sections that have expanded in the last 30 years and the Times itself becomes unviable. ...

I'd still write that if at the end of all the staff downsizing we ended up with the 1972 Times and Post, we'd be lucky. Not even Keller would argue with that, although he'd surely predict that we'll never be that lucky. I'd still assert that not all reductions in headcount are tragedies. The Post has trimmed staff in recent years, and while I notice the departure of some features, I don't think the overall paper is diminished. Not even Keller would deny that the Post does a good job of covering the news with a staff that's dramatically smaller than that of the Times. A similar point could be made about staff contractions at the Los Angeles Times. ...

Indeed, newspapers may be ailing, but the appetite for news has never been larger, as the successes of the Times and Post Web sites prove. There's got to be a business model in there somewhere.

TimesSelect, R.I.P.?

Slate Magazine: By Mickey Kaus

Will TimesSelect Go Jane? Is the infamous NYT TimesSelect paywall about to disappear? kf hears rumblings that the paper is about to abandon the whole misconceived project in which it has blocked unpaid Web access to its op-ed columnists. ... P.S.: The Times claims fewer than 225,000 customers pay the $49.95 TimesSelect fee, up less than 100,000 from what the paper was claiming in November, 2005. More get the service through their regular subscriptions. Meanwhile, the Times could use the ad revenue that would come from increasing the readership of the columnists (by making them free). And the columnists would like to have the readers. ... All this was quite evident two years ago when Pinch Sulzberger embarked on this folly, of course.

My favorite from the early critiques, also from Kausfiles:

A few days ago I jokingly called for replacing TimesSelect with "TimesDelete," a service that would allow readers to pay to silence their least favorite columnists. D.A.'s email has made me realize how misdirected this proposal was. TimesSelect doesn't need to be replaced by TimesDelete. TimesSelect is TimesDelete! The Times has taken the columnists people are most willing to pay for and removed them from the public discourse on the Web.

I've subscribed to The Times (when available for delivery where I was living) for more than 30 years, so I've had easy, included access to TimesSelect myself. That does not necessarily go for my blog readers, whom I frequently refer to articles available only through TimesSelect.
I kind of like the slogan that news wants to be free, but there is a collective interest in keeping news gathering organizations (the dreaded MSM) vital and economically viable as readers shift to the net. I don't know whether charging for access to columnists is the best answer (the TimesSelect model seems rather counterproductive to the larger public aims of the Times), once the material is already up, and some have argued that its net economic benefits to the Times are minimal. I don't know what the best answer is. I'm not sure anyone does. But please: no pledge weeks.

Murdoch’s Arrival Worries Journal Employees

New York Times:

“There’s a real culture of passion for the truth, for shining lights in dark places and making the mysterious understood,” said a reporter, one of dozens of people interviewed at The [Wall Street] Journal and Dow Jones, nearly all of whom asked for anonymity, fearing a backlash from the current regime or the next one. “The overwhelming view here is that under Murdoch, that gets compromised from Day One, and that idea is devastating, heartbreaking, to people.”

At times, that heartbreak has been expressed in gallows humor...“Rupert has confirmed to me that we will have Page 3 girls,” he said, according to another person on the call. “But in a concession, they will be dot drawings...”[The Sun, one of Mr. Murdoch’s British tabloids, prints pictures of topless women on its third page. The Journal favors traditional hand-drawn portraits.]...

As the chances of an alternative have appeared to wane, more reporters and editors have polished their résumés and approached rival publications about jobs. Some have even talked of starting their own business news Web site.

Many voiced disappointment in the Bancrofts, the family that has owned the company for more than a century and taken great pride in it, for not playing a leading role in running it for more than 70 years.

“We understand that for the Bancrofts this is a choice between getting much richer, and holding onto something because they believe in it,” a reporter said. “What they may not realize is that many of us in the newsroom have made the same choice. There are a lot of people here who could be traders or lawyers, people with M.B.A.’s, who could be making a lot more money. To us, this is not an abstract choice.”

The World’s Best Candy Bars? English, of Course

New York Times: By KIM SEVERSON

A TELEVISION news producer from Atlanta recently made a deal with her boss, who was traveling in London. The producer promised she would submit her script for an investigative story ahead of deadline in exchange for two British Kit Kats and a Curly Wurly bar.

The woman, who did not want her name revealed for fear of being teased endlessly by her colleagues, so loves her British chocolate that she takes a Chocolaten extra suitcase when she travels to London just to bring back a haul.

Since (roughly) the Jayson Blair fiasco and the advent of the Public Editor, The Times has been following a policy of disclosing the basis for its decisions to protect confidential sources in its reporting. Often these "disclosures" are meaningless, adding little to the reader's understanding and providing little apparent incentive to reporters to get their sources to go on the record. This little morsel--"who did not want her name revealed for fear of being teased endlessly by her colleagues"--was, however, delicious.

Sweet Cakes With a Terrorist

New York Times: By ROGER COHEN (IHT)

Roger Cohen seems rather full of himself after chatting up a terrorist leader. I'm not sure I, or anyone who seriously follows Middle East affairs, has much to learn from his report of his encounter over sweet cakes.
Persons who command terror networks can be personally charming, and can learn to say things to credulous journalists they want to hear? Wonderful.
Cohen's piece in the Sunday Times Magazine contained any number of gratuitous, sometimes snide digs at Israel, without shedding much light on the subject of his interview, or the current challenges of Israeli politics. He has become an increasing presence in the Times' web coverage, to no discernible advantage to anyone. (This is not meant as a criticism that he is "anti-Israel"--I prefer tough and informed and meaty reportage--just that his contribution to my understanding is negligible.)

The Murdoch Factor

New York Times: By Paul Krugman

There doesn’t seem to be any legal obstacle to the News Corporation’s bid for The Journal: F.C.C. rules on media ownership are mainly designed to prevent monopoly in local markets, not to safeguard precious national informational assets. Still, public pressure could help avert a Murdoch takeover. Maybe Congress should hold hearings.

I detest Rupert Murdoch and all he stands for.
Paul Krugman is one of my favorite columnists (probably second to my classmate Frank Rich), and I rarely disagree with him in a major way.

This (Congressional hearings on a Murdoch takeover of the WSJ) may be his worst idea ever.

Journalism Today

Democracy, Politics and the Press

New York Times: By A. A. Gill

Mr. Blair has flung a final whingeing, Parthian speech over his shoulder, blaming the press for everything, calling it “a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits.” The famously beastly Brit press has predictably bitten back, pointing out that, in retrospect, they should have been a deal more beastly about the run-up to the Iraq war.

Blaming journalists for the mood of nations is a futile venture. Enoch Powell, an especially reviled statesman, dryly pointed out that for a politician to complain about the press was like sailors complaining about the sea. Newspapers may like to imagine they have power, but none of them can afford to travel far from the prejudices of their readers. Politicians blame the messenger because the alternative is to blame the public. And the annoying corollary of democracy is that the public is always right.

Is that a necessary corollary?
For bloggers, or just for politicians?

Angler: Better (VERY) Late Than Never?

What did the Washington Post know, and when did it know it?

Building network news credibility

Los Angeles Times :

The report of the hefty fee — coming at a time when NBC Universal is undergoing companywide cost-cutting — spotlights how the television networks regularly skirt their own ban on checkbook journalism. The practice, a badly kept secret in the industry, takes many forms: free hotel rooms and entertainment while interview subjects are in New York, payment for the 'licensing' of home videos and photos to illustrate the story, and other incentives, according to industry veterans. If the costs are too egregious, often the project is shifted to a network's entertainment division, which can pay subjects through production contracts.

CBS News offered Jessica Lynch possible movie and book deals through its sister corporate divisions in an effort to land an exclusive with the former U.S. Army private in 2003. ABC News paid Steve Irwin's widow hundreds of thousands of dollars to use footage of the late naturalist in a prime-time interview with Barbara Walters last fall. (ABC executives said the license fee was necessary because Irwin's widow, Terri, owned all the footage of the 'Crocodile Hunter,' who died in September.)

This spring, NBC agreed to pay a reported $2.5 million for the rights to air a tribute concert in July marking the 10th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana. Subsequently, Matt Lauer landed an exclusive with Princes Harry and William, which aired in prime time Monday.

"It seems like there are end-runs all over the place, and they are being done in the name of competition," said Al Tompkins, who teaches broadcast ethics at the Poynter Institute, a media resource and school in Florida. "I don't know what transpired here, but what I do know is that any compensation that comes through a network — whether it's a book deal or movie deal or offering special access — none of that has any place in news.

"In the end, that is not what builds network credibility. People are not going to tune into any network based on who gets Paris Hilton. It just adds an even more unseemly element to a story that seemed like it couldn't get more unseemly."

Oh, sure it can. This is America. No limits!

Selling It: ABC Says It Was Outbid for P*ris Hilt*n Interview

New York Times: By BILL CARTER

How much is an interview with P*ris Hilt*n worth? Representatives of ABC News said yesterday that they had lost to NBC for the first interview with P*ris Hilt*n after her release from jail next week because ABC was unwilling to make a “high six-figure deal” with Ms. Hilton’s family." ...The spokeswoman for NBC News, Allison Gollust, insisted, however, that “NBC News does not pay for interviews — never have, never will.” ...

Ms. Walters told ABC executives that Ms. Hilton’s father, Rick Hilton, after getting the ABC offer last Sunday, called back Wednesday to say that the interview would go to a competitor, because at $100,000 ABC was “not even in the same galaxy” in terms of what was being offered. ...Ms. Walters told ABC executives that Ms. Hilton’s father, Rick Hilton, after getting the ABC offer last Sunday, called back Wednesday to say that the interview would go to a competitor, because at $100,000 ABC was “not even in the same galaxy” in terms of what was being offered....

Ms. Walters questioned the decision, the ABC representatives said, noting that the Hilton side previously emphasized that Ms. Hilton’s credibility was the paramount issue in the decision to be interviewed. But ABC said Mr. Hilton replied, “Nobody turns down money like this.”

An actual amount was not discussed, but Ms. Walters told ABC that based on her previous conversations with the Hilton representatives, she believed that the offer from NBC surpassed $750,000.

Selling one's (cough) "news integrity" for an interview with Paris Hilton?
Makes one proud of American capitalism.

Apparently the network news divisions pay the family for collateral production assistance (e.g., P*ris' baby pictures?), to maintain their pristine aversion to paying for the interview itself? And they crucified Bill Clinton for his excessive legalisms on what the definition of is, is? A plague on all their houses--and on the public culture they seek to satisfy.

(I guess I better not bold face or index "P*ris Hilt*n.")

The worst celebrity profile ever written?--and some reflections on research ethics

By Ron Rosenbaum - Slate Magazine:

...The contract demanded that "the interview may only be used to promote the Picture. ... The interview will not be used in a manner that is disparaging, demeaning or derogatory to Ms. Jolie."...

But the joke of it all—the Angelina Jolie contract and the revolt against the contract—was that anyone was foolish enough to think a written contract was really necessary. When was the last time you read a celebrity profile that was 'disparaging, demeaning or derogatory'?

The rules of the game, as established by the glossy magazines and the stars' PR reps, ensure that 'access' (well, a half-hour chat in a restaurant that enables the magazine to proclaim it has an 'exclusive' interview) and the all-important exclusive cover shot are granted only to those magazines and journalists who will refrain from anything but fawning prose. It works out well for everybody. Celebrity journalists who play along get a good payday, magazines get newsstand sales bumps, and the rest of us are inculcated into the received myths of Celebland, the legends that sustain the illusion that it is somehow truly important."

One might have thought this was about contracts between research scientists and Big Pharma regarding publication of research results unfavorable to the research sponsor. University ethics committees (I served on several such) insist that contracts cannot give sponsors the right to veto publication of deleterious results, but (insert qualifier of choice here) researchers are all too aware of how their bread (and likelihood of receiving future contracts) is buttered. Efforts to establish research registers are a recent effort to address this reality.

Pigs With Cellphones, but No Condoms

New York Times: By ANDREW ADAM NEWMAN

IN a commercial for Trojan condoms that has its premiere tonight, women in a bar are surrounded by anthropomorphized, cellphone-toting pigs. One shuffles to the men’s room, where, after procuring a condom from a vending machine, he is transformed into a head-turner in his 20s. When he returns to the bar, a fetching blond who had been indifferent now smiles at him invitingly.

[“The ‘Evolve’ ad does a nice job of being humorous, but it’s also a serious call to action,” Mr. Daniels said. “The pigs are a symbol of irresponsible sexual behavior, and are juxtaposed with the condom as a responsible symbol of respect for oneself and one’s partner.”]
... the commercial is entertaining. But it also has a message, spelled out at the end: “Evolve. Use a condom every time.”

“We have to change the perception that carrying a condom for women or men is a sign they’re on the prowl and just want to have sex” ... “It’s a sign of somebody being prepared — if the opportunity arises — to think about their own health and the health and safety of their partner.”

But the pigs did not fly at two of the four networks where Trojan tried to place the ad.

Fox and CBS both rejected the commercial. Both had accepted Trojan’s previous campaign, which urged condom use because of the possibility that a partner might be H.I.V.-positive, perhaps unknowingly. A 2001 report about condom advertising by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation found that, “Some networks draw a strong line between messages about disease prevention — which may be allowed — and those about pregnancy prevention, which may be considered controversial for religious and moral reasons.” ...

“It’s so hypocritical for any network in this culture to go all puritanical on the subject of condom use when their programming is so salacious,” said Mark Crispin Miller, a media critic who teaches at New York University. “I mean, let’s get real here. Fox and CBS and all of them are in the business of nonstop soft porn, but God forbid we should use a condom in the pursuit of sexual pleasure.”

Kudos to The Times for reporting and running this story. Quixotic (if that is the right term--others may believe it is more conspiratorial) refusals by major media outlets (including The Times) to run publicly important but arguably controversial stories is an under-reported and under-discussed issue, and it's good to see it getting some attention. The photo helps, no doubt.

Editor’s Charge: His Lawyer Fell Short

New York Times: By Adam Liptak

People like to gripe about their lawyers after their cases go south. Listen, for instance, to Norman Pearlstine, who presided over the debacle that ended with Time Inc.’s disclosure of the identity of a source to a special prosecutor two summers ago.

“One of America’s most ferocious defenders of the First Amendment, Floyd Abrams, gave us less good advice than we deserved,” Mr. Pearlstine, the former editor in chief of Time Inc., writes in a book to be published next week. “The more I reviewed Abrams’s work,” he adds, “the more I was disappointed with his performance.”

The book, “Off the Record,” is a vivid and engaging account of Time’s legal adventures in trying to protect a reporter, two of his sources, press freedom, the rule of law and a media conglomerate during the investigation by a special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, into the disclosure of the identity of Valerie Wilson, an undercover C.I.A. operative."...

But veins of anger run through Mr. Pearlstine’s reflections. He is critical of some of Time Inc.’s journalists and staff lawyers, and he has special disdain for Mr. Abrams.

“In his early years as a First Amendment lawyer,” Mr. Pearlstine writes, “Abrams had a reputation for putting his clients’ interests — winning cases — ahead of making law. But now I thought he had become too much the constitutional lawyer, more focused on overturning Branzburg” v. Hayes, the 1972 Supreme Court decision that rejected First Amendment protection for confidential sources, “than on pragmatic ways in which we might fashion a compromise.”...

In an interview, Mr. Abrams expressed measured sympathy for Mr. Pearlstine, who found himself boxed in by terrible legal and financial pressures after the Supreme Court turned down the magazine’s last appeal... The book, Mr. Abrams said, “combines a bevy of misleading statements mixed with gratuitous attacks that are obviously designed to take the journalistic searchlight off of him.”...

“I knew that firing the nation’s most famous First Amendment lawyer just as we were beginning to prepare our Supreme Court petition,” Mr. Pearlstine writes, “might not go unnoticed among journalists and attorneys, many of whom worshipped Abrams.”

But it did mostly go unnoticed. Until now.

Best-Informed Also View Fake News, Study Says

From The New York Times: By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

Americans may have more news outlets today than two decades ago, but they still don’t know much more about current events than they did then, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

But here’s one big difference: the survey respondents who seemed to know the most about what’s going on — who were able to identify major public figures, for example — were likely to be viewers of fake news programs like Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”; those who knew the least watched network morning news programs, Fox News or local television news. "

The six news sources cited most often by people who knew the most about current events were: “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” (counted as one), tied with Web sites of major newspapers; next came “News Hour With Jim Lehrer”; then “The O’Reilly Factor,” which was tied with National Public Radio; and Rush Limbaugh’s radio program.

This story is not from The Onion, although it sounds like it might be!

Off the Air: The Light Goes Out for Don Imus

From The New York Times:

In a memo sent to CBS employees announcing Mr. Imus’s dismissal, [CBS Chief Executive Lester] Moonves said: “This is about a lot more than Imus. As has been widely pointed out, Imus has been visited by presidents, senators, important authors and journalists from across the political spectrum. He has flourished in a culture that permits a certain level of objectionable expression that hurts and demeans a wide range of people. In taking him off the air, I believe we take an important and necessary step not just in solving a unique problem, but in changing that culture, which extends far beyond the walls of our company.”

A fascinating proposition. A hypocrisy meter may be in order. Let's watch and listen, and perhaps learn something.