Editorial: The Watchdog as Lapdog

A number of you have congratulated us in e-mails as being a great watchdog. While we thank you for the praise there are many who came before. We would note The Common Ills and The Daily Howler as two online resources that have influenced us. (We would especially highlight The Common Ills which covers The New York Times better than anyone. And we're waiting on permission to spotlight their first entry that really caught our eye -- on NPR. Hopefully, we'll get permission and that will be something you can view here.)

In terms of television, NPR has a weekend program entitled On the Media that is often educational and insightful. But there are many, many organizations such as Media Matters for America online.

And you can't mention watchdogs without noting Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) which has yet to disappoint or go soft and flabby.

But for us, the supreme one, the Bible in fact, is Columbia Journalism Review. You may be nodding. You may be saying, "I go to CJR all the time."

Do you? Do you really?

CJR is online and in print. But we're not talking about CJR Daily/Campaign Desk, a feature of CJR online. A whole generation could end up thinking that CJR Daily (formerly Campaign Desk) represents CJR and that would be a huge, huge problem because while CJR is a watchdog, CJR Daily is a lapdog.

Here's pretty good summary of what CJR is and stands for:

The Columbia Journalism Review is recognized throughout the world as America's premiere media monitor—a watchdog of the press in all its forms, from newspapers and magazines to radio, television, and cable to the wire services and the Web. Founded in 1961 under the auspices of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, CJR examines not only day-to-day press performance but also the many forces—political, economic, technological, social, legal, and more—that affect that performance for better or worse. The magazine, which is edited by a dedicated staff of professional journalists and published six times a year, offers a mix of reporting, analysis, criticism, and commentary, always aimed at its basic goal: the continuing improvement of journalism in the service of a free society.

Did you see sports listed there? We didn't either.

But readers of the online CJR Daily saw a "story" on sports. On January 21st. Bryan Keefer elected to write about "bias" in The New York Times. All right, we were excited. We were pleased. January 21st wasn't a good day for the paper. Long before Keefer got around to filing his fluff, The Common Ills had already come out strongly objecting to the Times' coverage of what was going on in D.C. Protestors were mocked and ignored. The "paper of record" did a lousy job. Later in the day, we'd learn more about the Times recent history of ignoring protests. And later yet, we'd learn that the Times was supposed to have run an ad from Not In Our Name that day but postponed the ad until Sunday.

There was a lot of bias showing in Friday's paper. And a watchdog like CJR could have a field day noting how the paper turned itself into an organ for covering the power elite while ignoring the common citizens.

So Keefer elects to write about bias in the Times that same day ("at 2:58 p.m."). "CJR Daily Uncovers Massive Bias at New York Times!." Excited, we rush to read through and what do we find? He's writing a sports piece. He's writing fluff. He could have dealt with reality and, Lord knows, this was a day to deal with it. Later that day, The Common Ills would do a long second entry detailing the silencing of protest by the Times in recent years and provide an excellent examples of independent media and mainstream media that covered the protests going on across the country on January 20th, protests the "paper of record" ignored.

But Keefer, blogging on the CJR Daily web site, goes for the trivial on a day when bias should have been addressed. Instead of focusing on the many made invisible by The New York Times (a topic at the heart and soul of CJR proper), Keefer trivializes the issue of bias by whining about sports teams. Not just that, he whines that sports coverage is on the front page some days: "the Times has relegated them to the inside pages." Yeah, that's the real issue here, Keefer, that's the pressing issue, whether or not your sports team made the front page. You're quite the crusader, real defender of the people there, Keefer.

It's complete nonsense and, let's be really honest here, a recap of a sports game falls under entertainment, not hard news. That's really hard for a lot of never-been-jocks to understand. They went through high school with a chip on their shoulder that they didn't play sports and apparently that made them question their masculinity. So when we they get to a paper (or possibly CJR Daily), they're eager to prove what men they are by talking up a sports game as front page news. Even though it isn't.

If you read the explanation on what CJR stands for quoted above, you'll note (as we noted earlier) it doesn't say one word about sports. It's pretty clear that it's focused on news and news coverage. But it's not so clear to all readers of CJR Daily. A reader posted (rightly) this on Keefer's nosensical post:

I can think of nothing more useless than this silly piece of nonsense. CJR's supposed to be a watch dog. If grown men want to be little boys, let them do it somewhere else. I don't care about your sports and Lord knows the Times is getting enough things wrong in REAL NEWS without your wasting time on this nonsense.

Pretty clear cut to us. We couldn't agree more. However, for two posters posting replies, it might as well have been in written in a foreign language because they, like Keefer, just didn't get it.

It's "general news" whined one. Another felt that "CJR" (that's how he identified CJR Daily) was a "liberal site" and that "fun" was necessary so that people wouldn't think of liberals in some "caricature of the humorless, anti-fun liberal."

CJR proper should be very concerned about those remarks because sports doesn't fall into the arena of "general news" on a day when the Times is actually discriminating against protestors across the nation (either by being "snarky" in their one report on D.C. or by ignoring the protests across the country). CJR should also be concerned about those remarks because they are not a "liberal" site. They are a watchdog and they've built their well deserved reputation on being just that. But a lot of the people going to CJR Daily have no knowledge of CJR's repuation and are basing their concept of CJR on this CJR Daily web site.

Apparently the person who feels it's a "liberal" site, missed the then-Campaign Desk's opening statements:

A few assurances are in order: The Desk will be politically nonpartisan. While it will call attention to journalistic sins, both of omission and commission, it will by no means be exclusively a finger-wagging operation. It will have a lively, engaged tone, not a grim, censorious one. One of the Desk's important functions will be to praise work of high quality, and one of its most useful aspects will be its ability to bring distinguished work in the local press to national attention, instantly and (through links) in full.

Local press? Well that was a goal when they started. (They used the term "function.") You don't see local press at CJR Daily. You can't even get diversity in the "Blog Report" or "Magazine Report."

We'll start with the latter. The Magazine Report (a weekly feature) generally tells you about US News & World Report, Time, Newsweek and, of all things, The Weekly Standard. There are so many problems with that focus.

For starters, the first three get plenty of attention already. They're widely circulated general interest magazines that get covered on TV, radio and the web anytime they actually break or semi-break a story. (There's no Sy Hersh working at Newsweek or Time, for instance -- no strong investigative journalism regularly featured.) We're not Vanity Fair readers, but after The Common Ills noted the continued lack of attention to the coverage Vanity Fair has provided (usually one hard hitting story an issue), we checked out their highlighted story "The Man in the Hood" which interviewed an Iraqi who was abused at Abu Ghraib. If the former Campaign Desk were interested in drawing "national attention" to important stories, that's one they should have highlighted.

But let's focus on The Weekly Standard a moment because the Magazine Report usually manages to work it in. Exactly why is that? It's a partisan publication. And the alternative to The Weekly Standard isn't The New Republic (which CJR Daily highlights from time to time), the alternative (to both) is The Nation.

When you read through the Magazine Report there's no logic to it. They put in three massively circulated magazines (Newsweek, Time and U.S. News & World Reports) and add to that an underperforming mag like The Weekly Standard or The New Republic -- ideological sisters under the skin -- both supported the war in Iraq.

Oh, but that's just your opinion, we hear some of you saying. No, it's also quite similar to Martin Peretz's:

“We were for the last Gulf War and for aid to the Contras,” Peretz said. Comparing The New Republic to its close competitor The Nation, Peretz said, “Whatever The Nation was for we were against. Whatever The Nation was against we were for. The only thing we share was we were rather soft on Stalin in the late 1930s.”

Peretz is editor-in-chief and chairman of The New Republic, so he should know his own magazine. (He also endorsed George W. Bush in the 2004 election and may be the only "reporter" who's turned defending Robert Novak and the officials who outed Valerie Plame into a personal battle.) This is the "alternative" to The Weekly Standard?

CJR Daily insists upon portraying The New Republic and The Weekly Standard as polar opposites. Possibly they're unaware that Peretz:

along with several other journalists and right-wing lawmakers, lobbied President Bush nine days after the September 11 terrorist attacks to start a war with Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power, claiming that Iraq may be linked to the attacks, an allegation that the Bush Administration has made many times without a shred of evidence to back it up.

Regardless, if the criteria for the first three regularly included is circulation, then why the silence on The Nation? Unlike The Weekly Standard or The New Republic, The Nation isn't struggling for subscribers. It has the highest circulation of any weekly partisan magazine in this country. (And it's the oldest.)

Including The Weekly Standard, as they so often do, with other magazines like Newsweek and Time suggests that that the mainstream is "left" that needs to be balanced with The Weekly Standard. Now maybe uninformed visitors coming to CJR Daily who see it as a "liberal" site think that way and surely certain elements on the right push that distortion but that's no excuse for CJR Daily to fall for the hype. In fact, due to it's proximity to CJR proper, it's incumbent upon them to refute those type of fallacies.

The Magazine Report may be a weekly feature but, it should be noted, that doesn't mean they have to rely on weekly magazines each entry. Monthly and bimonthly magazines are doing strong work. The Magazine Report should be highlighting that and focusing on in depth reporting that, honestly, you're not going to find in Time or Newsweek. (We'd also strongly suggest that they cover The Progressive, In These Times and Ms. among other magazines.)

Now let's deal with Blog Report. They've opened up a little in that regard recently. But the fact that it's existed as a "most read blog" round up is disturbing since CJR proper highlights important things regardless of "popularity" and since the former Campaign Desk spoke of their eagerness to highlight "local newspapers."

It got to the point, with Blog Report, that we began to wonder if Kos had a pedicure would it make the Blog Report? If Atrios had a bikini wax, would that make it? Again, that's improved slightly.

We told The Common Ills we were going to write this and C.I. excused itself from reading over this draft due to the fact that we'd be discussing C.I. But as Common Ills community members we would read the Blog Report with interest every time hoping this would be the entry that Campaign Desk (as it was known before we started up The Third Estate Sunday Review) elected to finally note the fine work of The Common Ills.

Entry after entry, they never did. (Democracy Now! also appears to not be on CJR Daily's radar.) The Common Ills dealt with how Daniel Okrent in two entries on a Sunday -- one calling for him to step down due to the "outing" of a reader over the reader's objection, the other pointing out that the "readers' advocate" Okrent was consistently more interested in turning in op-eds than addressing the concerns readers brought up. Wow! Certainly these would get highlighted. Media criticism like this has to be recognized! Or the NPR entry we're hoping to highlight in this edition. One that FAIR linked to, that BuzzFlash linked to, certainly that would be addressed, right?

No each time.

When The Common Ills explained the faulty thinking behind William Safire's impending departure meaning that his replacement must be him ideologically but in younger form, that got linked to by Ms. Musing among others. Certainly this piece analyzing the various op-ed regulars at the paper and discussing the lack of diversity in gender, race and view point might be of interest to CJR Daily. It wasn't.

CJR Daily weighs in on Katie Couric as evening news anchor but never mentions The Common Ills, not even when The Common Ills posts the remarks from a man who works at CBS. CJR Daily didn't note that Common Ills post. A huge mark against CJR Daily because what The Common Ills was told about then (January 19th) is largely reflected in a recent MarketWatch column published January 28th.

We were expected to read The New York Times daily for a course the five of us were taking last semester. When The Common Ills came along, it was a hallelujah moment for us to discover it having groaned through so many print editions of the paper. We make no apologies for being huge fans of the Common Ills site and members of that community. Or for praising it. (And we appreciate the recent post defending us which prompted Lola to write in "Common Ills is defending you like an angry mother protecting a bear cub!") But it's not just The Common Ills that's sidelined. Why Are We Back In Iraq? has never been mentioned, Interesting Times might as well blog from another planet. Corrente, Offshoring Digest, Scamoogah!!, Cannonfire, Bartcop, Ms. Musing, Random Thoughts, Feministing, Iraq Dispatches, Iddybud, and other websites we check out regularly never get a mention. (We will note that BuzzFlash finally got a well deserved mention.)

The web is a wide range of voices but CJR Daily's Blog Report has spent a lot of time reducing it to a few, select voices (one might even argue they reduced it to "an echo chamber"). [Again, we note that that the Blog Report appears to be attempting to improve their scope. And that's not kissing CJR Daily's ass, we have no desire to be mentioned there.]

But it comes down to the same point, is CJR Daily supposed to represent the values and mission of CJR or not? Gossipy, frivalous entries (Keefer writes some sort of a gossip column elsewhere -- we've never read it and wouldn't want to but it's something of a joke to our journalism professors, as is Keefer himself whom they dub "Gatekeeper: The Next Generation") don't really reflect the mission of CJR and CJR Daily needs oversight that it's not receiving.

People are confusing CJR Daily with the program and magazine that's held in high regard. That's not a good thing. Where CJR is an informed watchdog, CJR Daily comes off like a chipper lapdog (with a short attention span). The little pooch needs some house training or CJR needs to find a nice farm to send to it too. But to continue allowing it to associate itself with CJR but not making it live up to the goals and guidelines of CJR is going to continue to erode the reputation of CJR.

Look, we love The Nation but only one of us subscribes to it (the other four sponge off; we do that with all magazines). To think that CJR proper's reputation is not at stake is "pre-web thinking." Many people are likely to visit CJR Daily but never read the CJR magazine (or visit the official CJR website). (One of us also subscribes to CJR and, as with other mags, we pass it around.) The CJR reputation as a watchdog (and nonpartisan) should not be diluted by CJR Daily but that's starting to happen and the watchdog needs to train and oversee the lapdog because many people aren't drawing a line between the two.


1-31-05 Why Are We Back In Iraq? link corrected by Ava.