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January 29, 2006
Changing the Face of Power
"Before beginning a conversation, Edward Kennedy (D-MA) places his hand on the shoulder of Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) while waiting for the Women's Outreach meeting, hosted by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-MA), to begin on Capitol Hill."
With the new semester starting, it's a good time for Smith students to ask themselves, "what am I attending Smith to do?" The college has retained its commitment over the years to its ideal that the women that graduate from its houses be a benefit to the world, something that still sets Smith apart. In the spirit of women leaders, the Digital Journalist's feature this month is Women in the Senate, a look at the 14 female senators and how they work among their 86 male colleagues. It's an interesting, honest look at the female senators; there are photos where the women look small or out of place, matched by photos where they are unquestionably in command, or on equal footing with the male senators.
Posted by Elizabeth Tangora at 04:17 PM | Comments (7718)
January 28, 2006
Truth in Pieces?
Since The Smoking Gun released an article exposing the many fabrications and exaggerations to be found in James Frey's A Million Little Pieces, the media has been engaged in one of the liveliest literary discussions in recent memory.
James Frey admitted to Larry King that he had first attempted to get his embellished "memoir" published as a novel. Oprah Winfrey, who had endorsed the book through her book club, came to Frey's defense on the program, claiming that while some of the narrative was not factual, its overwhelming message rang true. Winfrey especially emphasized how the book about overcoming drug addiction had helped many others to conquer their problems.
Winfrey's endorsement of the "memoir" for her book club brought her under immediate scrutiny, as many of the people who bought the book blasted her with e-mails accusing her of misleading viewers. Since the Larry King interview, Winfrey has said her comment was a mistake. Winfrey interview with Frey on her talk show yesterday shredded Frey and his publisher, Doubleday, for embarrassing her and misleading her into believing that A Million Little Pieces is true.
This controversy has led to a debate about how important the truth is and whether an author can be trusted. Many journalists and people in the publishing world are also debating how to define “memoir.” Perhaps most ironic part in this whole debacle was the presence of an editor from The New York Times admonishing the publishing industry for loose standards and the need for thorough fact-checking. Perhaps the Times has forgotten the impeccable honesty to be found in the work Jayson Blair produced for the paper?
At best, Oprah (appropriately or inappropriately) humiliated Frey on her program yesterday. Interestingly enough, book sales are not providing an indicator that readers are outraged by this fiction sold as truth--it is currently the number five seller at both amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.
Posted by Mandy Smithberger at 06:18 PM | Comments (7)
January 13, 2006
South of the border: the biggest news story you never heard
What would happen if a U.S. citizen were shot by foreign police for attempting to enter another country? Would it make the news?
What if the illegal border crosser were Mexican, the police U.S. Border Patrol, and the location were just south of San Diego?
On December 30, an 18-year-old Mexican man named Guillermo Martínez Rodríguez was shot as he tried to cross the U.S. Mexico border between Tijuana and San Diego. He was trying to enter the country illegally, and according to the U.S. Border Patrol officer who allegedly shot him, he had thrown a “large rock.” He died in a Tijuana hospital from the gunshot wound. He was on the Mexico side of the border at the time he was shot, and the doctor who treated him at the hospital reported that he had been shot in the back.
Martínez was not the first Mexican to die trying to cross the border. What is interesting about this story is the extremely different reaction the incident got in the two countries. I’m studying abroad in Mexico for the year and I keep up on my U.S. news by checking CNN.com and several other online news sources avidly. I’m always interested to see what U.S. stories make the news in Mexico and vice-versa. (The dam in little Taunton, MA, that threatened to break but never did made CNN en Español. Hurricane Katrina didn’t, at least not for a few days.) When the story of Martínez’s shooting broke here, it was huge news. Newscasters were quite literally up in arms. Mexican officials talked of a trial in absentia for the U.S. Border Patrol officer who shot him, and angry citizens are planning a march in Washington, D.C. in protest. I thought that it was going to cause an “international incident.” But when I asked my friends in the U.S., none of them had heard about it. A search of CNN.com’s archives turned up only this follow-up story.
In Mexico, Martínez’s death is viewed as the latest in a series of outrages perpetrated by the U.S., including the U.S. plan to build more fences on the U.S.-Mexico border to stymie drug trafficking and make it harder for illegal migrants to cross. Mexican press calls it “El Muro de la Vergüenza” (The Wall of Shame). The thing is, Mexican men and women, as well as undocumented migrants from other Latin American countries, have been crossing the U.S.-Mexico border for a long time. There will always be a problem with migration as long as there is vast unemployment in Mexico and U.S. employers with a need for labor and willingness to hire undocumented workers. There are already walls and fences along stretches of the border, and the news is full of images of people scaling them, digging tunnels under them, or climbing through holes. This latest wall seems more symbolic to me than actually useful.
Yes, Guillermo Martínez was attempting to cross the border illegally. Yes, he threw a rock at the police. Did he deserve to die? I don’t think so. I think there’s a chance, though, that the new wall’s only purpose will be to cause more deaths.
The reason for the very different reaction on either side of the border is clear. People in Mexico watch this story closely because illegal immigration to the U.S. is a fact of life. They are the ones whose sons, brothers, and fathers feel that they have no choice but to become migrants if they want to support their families. The message they are getting is “come, somebody will give you a job here and pay you under the table,” but at the same time “don’t try to cross the border or you’ll get shot.” U.S. citizens who don’t feel that same economic pressure can’t imagine why immigration issues are so significant.
To Mexican citizens, what happens on the border is extremely important. U.S. citizens aren’t even aware of what’s happening.
Posted by Frances Kingsbury at 09:02 PM | Comments (7755)
January 11, 2006
Take that, religious conservatives!
pictured above: ace in the hole for the Alito nomination.
Posted by Elizabeth Tangora at 05:08 PM | Comments (19)
January 09, 2006
Why the Media is to Blame for Reporting the Miners were Alive
Say what you will about Fox News (and don't get me wrong, there's plenty to say) but if CNN and the New York Times want to rise above the criticism of being biased, lazy, and inaccurate they are just going to have to stop making the same mistakes. PressThink, an excellent blog that has commentaries from journalists and people who study journalism, makes the case for why CNN can't get away with claiming they're not responsible for getting caught up in the enthusiasm of reporting the families alive.
The story on PressThink is mainly centered on local journalist Becky Wagoner, who chose not to follow the tide of reporters to the church where families were praying for the miners' safety. Instead, she stayed at the briefing room, trying to get a confirmation that for some reason, no one in the mining company was willing to give. That's where the media's culpability lies, and what exposes the greatest problem with the media today: it's lack of willingness to question. No one from the rescue operation was putting their name out as a source that the miners were alive, and that should have raised suspicions. No one was able to get specifics on what conditions the miners were in, or had seen that they were alive, and all that should have been worthy of an expression of doubt.
Instead of taking responsibility though, CNN is pleading helplessness. The top anchorman, Anderson Cooper, wrote "When you have the governor of the state giving you the thumbs-up, a congresswoman talking about this on air, hundreds of relatives and family members jubilant, some of who received calls from mining officials, it’s tough to ignore what they’re saying.
"There is only so much you can do short of seeing firsthand who is alive and who isn’t. We made requests to have access to the rescue operation, but they were denied." Everyone was deceived, and the mining company certainly played a role, that isn't the question. And to CNN's credit, they stayed on the story while other major news stations changed the subject, statisfied with their happy ending. The question is: what good are reporters who, when reality doesn't agree with what they're being told, instead of asking questions and getting to the truth will spend three hours covering a fake story? Because the way Cooper did his reporting, was mainly standing with a microphone instead of doing any reporting. The way he learned the truth was a woman who was sick of hearing the false story walked up to him on live television and told him the 12 miners were dead.
Posted by Elizabeth Tangora at 04:14 PM | Comments (22)
January 04, 2006
A Year Without Journalism?
Please ignore the influence of broadcast journalism and radio journalism, which does not even ask its consumers to read; the internet is the true assassin of newspapers. Reactionary columns like Michael Lenehan's may undermine the attraction of the newspaper more than any blogger can. According to Lenehan, Craigslist, Ebay, Slate, Salon, Yahoo, Microsoft, and miscelanneous blogs whose "idea of a good time is giving yourself a funny name and distracting normal people who used to read newspapers" are the chief culprits. Blogger Rambling Rhodes proposes that Lenehan is on the verge of losing it, and unable to adapt to changing times to boot. Lenehan proposes that the solution to save the future of journalism is a year without it:
I think it’s time for actual journalists to drive this point home. Today, therefore, I am proposing a yearlong journalism strike. I am urging reporters and editors around the world to put down their notebooks, close their laptops, hang up their phones. Lie down and be counted! Let’s have no reporting, no editing, no application of any human intelligence whatsoever to events public or private till January 1, 2007. I’m calling it the Year Without Journalism. Let’s all relax, let go, and float blissfully in the information- free state (excuse me, I mean free-information state) that our public awaits so eagerly.
Surely the year without journalism will fix the problem, since critical thinking only happens between newspaper columns. Perhaps print journalists could learn something from how news blogs are exciting people in the news by making it interesting, inviting more people to analyze news events, and sending people to read the less famous media sources. Should freedom of the press only extend to the metal of the printing press?
Posted by Mandy Smithberger at 12:00 AM | Comments (8694)