Can’t Rupert Murdoch afford a competent photographer who can get a photo of the subject with his eyes open?
The above photo of Akio Toyoda was in Wednesday’s WSJ (Feb 24). The online version no longer has that photo to go with Holman Jenkins’ article, but it did until a few hours ago.
Here’s a wild guess: New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg wasn’t actually in the White House Cabinet Room to see this:
WASHINGTON — Tempers were fraying in the White House Cabinet Room as night turned into morning on Jan. 15. President Obama had been cloistered nearly all day with House and Senate Democrats, playing “marriage counselor,” an aide said, as he coaxed, cajoled and prodded them on a health care overhaul.
As the clock neared 1 a.m., the two sides were at an impasse. Mr. Obama stood up.
So how did she get this information? Direct revelation from God? From an impartial eyewitness? Unauthorized surveillance cameras?
I tend to doubt all three of those possibilities.
URL here.
Even though I complain almost daily about the partisan hackery and unprofessionalism of newspaper journalism, even though Leonid Brezhnev would have drooled at the possibility of having a press as subservient to party ideology as the U.S. mainstream media now is, I didn’t realize it had become quite this corrupt. It’s an AP article by Sharon Theimer that appeared in the Battle Creek Enquirer a few days ago: “The influence game : Toyota’s Powerful DC Friends”
The article happens to make a lot of good points. There are legislators who worked hard to get Toyota to locate in their districts, and who have reason to want Toyota to stay. Those legislators are now the ones who are investigating Toyota’s safety issues. It’s a corrupt arrangement, to say the least.
So what’s wrong with the news media telling us about it?
Nothing. The news media absolutely should tell us about it. They should tell us about it starting when legislators get involved in plant-siting decisions in the first place. That kind of business-government partnership is corrupt from the word go. But it has been going on for years, with encouragement from newspaper editors across the land. It is only when the administration which has made a heavy investment of tax dollars in the former General Motors needs help in attacking one of General Motors’ competitors that the news media have seen fit to point out the problems with this kind of government involvment.
And naturally, this article had not a word to say about the conflict of interest when the corporate owners of General Motors, aka the Obama administration, are the ones that are providing regulatory oversight of General Motors’ competitors.
The next time a Governor John Engler or Jennifer Granholm gets involved in trying to entice a business to locate a plant in our state, will these same news people who pushed this story into print have a word of criticism about this kind of inappropriate role for elected officials? Of course not. It’s only when Public Motors and its influential friends on the left need help in harrassing the competition that they will point out the conflict of interest involving the influential friends of competitors.
The people who can put something like this in print, but only for this purpose, are not ordinary human beings with a conscience and a sense of right and wrong. They are not people who are driven by idealism. These are people who are more Machiavellian than Niccolò Machiavelli, but without the moral scruples.
Cute rhetorical technique from the Boston Globe:
And in a veiled criticism of Brown, Coakley said she understood that “people are frustrated and angry,” but said there were no “easy answer to the tough questions.”
And how is that a veiled criticism of Brown?
Sounds to me like it’s an attack more than a criticism. Since she is a politician in the middle of a political campaign, we can be pretty sure Coakley is attacking Brown and not herself. No big deal there. It wouldn’t be the first time that one candidate has projected his/her own faults on another.
But what is veiled about it? Maybe the news writer meant muddled. Or clumsy. Or desperate.
But then, the use of any of those terms would be editorializing rather than reporting.
Perhaps the news writer doesn’t want to make Coakley look silly by just quoting her words, so is trying to give the impression that there is some subtlety to them.
Yes! Michael Kinsley in The Atlantic explains how newspaper writers could do better by making their articles shorter, leaving out extraneous fluff that doesn’t inform. Among the fluff is the quoting of experts or other anonymous persons so the reporter can pretend to be reporting instead of opinionating.
But there is another type of fluff that Kinsley didn’t mention. It’s the ways some newspapers now report as fact things that they have no possible way of knowing.
To find an example or two, I went to the WSJ and searched for the word “fear.” One item that came up was a January 4 article titled “Celebrating a Year of Highs and Lows.” Here are some of the examples from the article of what I’m talking about, interspersed with my comments.
Wall Street lived, thanks in large part to Main Street. Hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money helped nurse the financial system back to relative health, with the country’s biggest banks paying back the government rescue aid by year’s end. But executives’ outsize compensation stood in contrast to an unemployment rate that topped 10%.
We don’t know that. We know there were billions of dollars in taxpayer money, and we know the financial system still lives. But we don’t know that the system is healthy. Nor do we know that any health it might have is due to taxpayer money. It’s far too early to know such a things.
And speaking of contrasts, why point out the contrast between executive compensation and unemployment without mentioning the contrast between unemployment and the so-called health of the financial system?
Barack Obama was inaugurated president and set off on an ambitious agenda to remake health care, reform the financial system and reclaim the U.S.’s standing on the world stage. The bear turned into a bull and the Dow industrials reclaimed 10000 in October. Recession probably ended late in the year as global stimulus efforts bore fruit. US Airways Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger was a hero with “the Miracle on the Hudson” in a year of sex scandals, reality-TV stunts and financial schemes (alleged and proved) stealing headlines.
Global stimulus efforts bore fruit? Some people would like to think so, but we don’t know that.
On the world stage, Iran and Afghanistan reelected leaders under clouds of suspicion and violence. Pyongyang tested nuclear weapons, while many countries suspect Tehran wants them. China flexed its muscles on climate change, currency and a host of other issues as it assumed a more prominent role in global affairs.
China flexed its muscles? Without inside information we don’t know that’s what China was doing, metaphorically or otherwise.
Fiscal and debt burdens came to bear in Dubai and Greece. Terror still raged in Iraq, Afghanistan and, in the year’s waning days, in the air, as an alleged bomber tried to take down a Christmas Day flight.
Even though news reporters tell us about lots of things they have no way of knowing, there are others they are not quite so sure about. Hence the word “alleged.” BTW, if they’re going to say “alleged”, wouldn’t it be better to say, “a passenger allegedly tried to take down a Christmas Day flight”? And wouldn’t it be better to say that China allegedly flexed its muscles, or that a global stimulus allegedly nursed the financial system back to relative health?
Bank of America completed its $19.36 billion purchase of Wall Street firm Merrill Lynch, becoming the largest U.S. bank by assets, as the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression continued to reshape the U.S. banking industry. The deal would haunt BofA throughout the year.
Haunt? Newspapers are now reporting on hauntings?
The U.S. transferred control of the Green Zone to Iraqi authorities and handed back Saddam Hussein’s former palace.
Oops. Here’s a counter example showing that news reporters are capable of reporting on things that can be reasonably known.
The Dow industrials posted the worst Inauguration Day performance ever, falling 332.13 points, or 4%, to 7949.09, amid fears the government would need to nationalize the most deeply wounded banks. But the next day, stocks jumped 279.01, or 3.5%, to 8228.10.
Amid fears? What does that word “amid” mean? Is the WSJ trying to make a cause-and-effect conclusion on the sly?
General Motors surrendered its crown as the world’s biggest auto maker to Toyota Motor after 77 years. The Detroit company was struggling to stay afloat with loans from the U.S. government.
The auto companies are competing for a crown? I had thought they were competing for customers. No wonder they are in trouble.
John Thain agreed to step down from a top job at Bank of America after CEO Kenneth Lewis, angry about the way the former Merrill chief handled losses and bonuses at Merrill, asked him to resign.
We don’t know whether or not Kenneth Lewis was angry. People in the public eye fake anger all the time. They also fake contentment and delight. Since we don’t know, why not say, “allegedly angry”?
Microsoft said it planned to cut 5,000 jobs, stunning employees and investors.
Did the WSJ conduct a poll of employees and investors to see if they were “stunned”? Did any of them act stunned?
Iceland’s government collapsed amid popular anger over a financial crisis that gutted the economy.
There’s that sneaky word “amid” again.
President Obama blasted Wall Street for bonuses he called irresponsible and shameful.
See, here’s an example of the honest way to report these things. President Obama may or may not have been angry. He may have felt the bonuses were irresponsible, and maybe he didn’t. We don’t know those things. But we do know that he blasted Wall Street, and he do know how he described the bonuses. Good job by the WSJ reporters on this one.
Big-bank CEOs endured a seven-hour barrage of questions from House lawmakers, angry over executive pay and lending.
Endured?
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Merrill Lynch secretly moved up its date to award bonuses, giving $1 million or more apiece to nearly 700 employees. In March, it was reported that as Merrill staggered in 2008, 11 executives were paid more than $10 million each in cash and stock, and 149 others got $3 million or more.
Staggered?
The government’s plan to overhaul its $150 billion bailout of American International Group relaxed loan terms and wiped out interest. It was a nearly complete reversal from the plan first laid out in September. Later in the month, some AIG employees returned bonuses or said they would do so amid public outrage. And the insurer said roughly two-thirds of the $173.3 billion in aid it received went to trading partners in the U.S. and abroad.
Amid?
The Dow industrials fell 79.89 points, or 1.2%, to 6547.05 as tech stocks dragged major indexes to fresh bear-market lows on economic concerns. But four days later, the stock market had managed to post its best week since November, up 597.04 points, or 9%, to 7223.98, as scattered bits of good news gave some reason to believe that the economy might be closer to a bottom.
“Some” had reason to believe? The reporter who wrote this needs to read Michael Kinsley’s article.
Bernard Madoff was sent to jail after confessing to an epic fraud, his decades-long Ponzi scheme that cost investors billions, saying he was “sorry and ashamed” for bilking so many out of their life savings.
Madoff used the word epic? Or did he just confess to fraud? By the way, I like the way the words “sorry and ashamed” were put in quotes. Maybe the reporters should use those things more often when our nation’s leaders say things, especially given that they, too, have bilked us out of billions of dollars.
I continue to be amazed by the Tom Lauricella article in the WSJ: “For Rebuilt Markets, A Test in 2010 : Government Saved the Financial System from Collapse. Now Investors Have to Stand on Their Own.”
How dare this Government thing have such delusions of grandeur when it was I, Julius Caesar, who saved the financial system from collapse, just as surely as I saved the Roman Republic back in 49 B.C.
The lead headline from page R1 in today’s WSJ:
The article that makes this wild assertion is written by one Tom Lauricella, who must not care a great deal about his journalistic credibility. Maybe he’s thinking of quitting his day job for something else, and this is his way of burning his credibility behind him. I just made that up, but then so did Lauricella make up his stuff.
The following is the comment I posted on the Battle Creek Enquirer site in response to the article, “Nigerian charged in airline attack.” In the print edition, it is the lead story on the front page.
Subheadline: “Near-terror at Detroit airport shakes area.”
I question how your reporters and headline writers could possibly know that. Did they do a psychological survey of the population to determine how shaken people were? Did they do an opinion poll?
Of course not. I bet they just made it up, maybe after talking to their drinking buddies in the bar after work. I just made that up, too, of course, but it’s as good a guess as what the Enquirer put on the front page.
It’s a little thing, but it forms bad habits among newspaper people to make up even little stuff like that sub-headline.
Headline in the Battle Creek Enquirer: “MI lawmakers continue squabble over schools money“
My response (posted as a comment on the BCE site):
Squabble? Why do you use that word? It disrespects the democratic processes of disagreement, debate, and deliberation.
And if Andy Dillon says the Republican plan has provisions that would cost us federal matching funds, couldn’t some intrepid reporter have asked him just what provisions those are? They may or may not be something that speaks well of the federal funding. We need to know.
Good! Very good! I see a bright future for Google in the world of advertising. It could sell bottled sewage, for example, by making the disclaimer: “Drinking bottled sewage is unlikely to decrease cholera incidence. It will probably cut cholera cases worldwide by less than ten percent.”
That’s for another time, though. For now it tried to sell something different:
Google news headline for a Washington Post article: “In health-care reform, no deficit cure.” Google news summary: “Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid’s health-care legislation is projected to cut less than 10 percent from federal deficits over a decade.”
In defense of the Washington Post, it should be pointed out that its article is not nearly as misleading as Google’s summary.