The Dog That Didn't Bark (Linda Foley)

The Dog That Didn't Bark The Press and Linda Foley: Why has there been so little mention in the mainstream media of the Newspaper Guild president's recent charge that journalists are "being targeted for real" in Iraq by the U.S. military?

(May 26, 2005) -- Newspaper Guild President Linda Foley made a public statement on May 13 that journalists are “being targeted for real in places like Iraq.” She has been trying to slide out of it ever since. Pressed by E&P’s Joe Strupp, Foley offered a clarification on who specifically was doing the targeting: “I was careful of not saying troops, I said U.S. military.”

Everette Dennis, a former dean of a journalism school and founder of the Gannett Center for Media Studies, finds this a distinction without a difference. “A military without troops is inconceivable,” he told me this week. “One presupposes the other.” It is as logically impossible to separate the troops from the military as it is egg whites from an omelet.

But let’s go with her “careful” and very artful clarification. After all thousands of bumper stickers do not say “Support the U.S. Military.” So now, according to Foley, it is the “U.S. military” that is arranging for journalists “being targeted for real.”

Sound familiar? It should. Eason Jordan, president of CNN News, had to resign for making exactly the same accusation at Davos four months ago. He had a major problem--no evidence to back up his charges. And being a prominent person in the news business, once the word got out through the blogosphere, just as it had on CBS’s use of phony Bush records, Jordan was caught in a media firestorm.

Every talking head rushed on air 24/7 to attack or defend what Jordan had supposedly said, and forests of newsprint were devoted to pundantics on the theme. And because no transcript was ever released, the entire affair was conducted in an embarrassing blather of hearsay.

Foley had the advantage of seeing what happened to Jordan and, as the head of a powerful union of 35,000 journalists and media workers, she knew anything she said about targeting journalists would likely be scrutinized. So one would expect that she has a pretty solid case for her revival of the discredited Jordan charges? But one would be wrong. Her spokesperson, Candice Johnson, told me Foley can provide “no evidence” to support her charges either.

A Sinclair Broadcasting commentator, Mark Hyman, watched the streaming video of Foley’s remarks and ran a tough piece that spilled into the blogosphere and onto The O’Reilly Factor. This time there was a record right on the Internet anyone could see for themselves. The Vast Rightwing Conspiracy started to lace up its track shoes for another victory lap.

Foley braced for the worst. The Newspaper Guild stopped answering indignant phone calls, leaving a taped announcement explaining this was “due to the large numbers of what we believe to be coordinated phone calls....” (Vox populi, vox coordinati?) Foley was understandably concerned about her explanation of her original statement. “There are a hundred ways of saying this,” she told Strupp, “but I’m not sure they would have appeased the right.”

Sherlock Holmes’s key clue to who stole the racehorse in “Silver Blaze” was a dog in the stall that didn’t bark. And something equally odd happened on the way to the Foley firestorm: To date, not a single pundit, editorial writer, or newspaper ran anything, with the exception of the Chicago Sun-Times story I wrote, a St. Paul Pioneer Press column by Mark Yost, and a Washington Times column item.

Clearly Foley was correct in assuming the Right was the only danger to her repetition of the statement that got Eason Jordan canned. The Mainstream Media couldn’t be bothered to cover “Easongate: The Sequel.” And positioning Foley as the gallant defender of the lives of journalists targeted by the U.S. military was inspired PR. After all, Sherlock Holmes’s dog didn’t bark because he was good friends with the thief.

Foley decided to improve the odds and issued another statement to me. In a further clarification of her clarification, Foley insists that she “doesn't believe that our service men and women would knowingly fire on journalists and innocent civilians.”

So follow the logic. It is the U.S. military, not the troops, who targeted journalists. But if an occasional service man or woman just might have fired a tank round or two into the Palestine Hotel and killed some journalists, or dropped a bomb on Al Jazeera’s studio in Baghdad using the coordinates from the U.S. military (both cited in her letter to President Bush of April 8 th demanding an investigation), they didn’t do it “knowingly.”

It recalls the gag epitaph on former Nazi space rocketry pioneer Werner von Braun’s tomb: “ I aim at the stars---but sometimes hit London.” Or was that the Nazi military?

The average circulation decline among 684 US daily papers is averaging 1.9% in the past year. In some places it is catastrophic. This is the biggest drop in the last five years. And no one is forecasting a turnaround yet. In case it hasn’t occurred to anyone, that means fewer slots for Newspaper Guild workers. Media credibility is in the toilet, even if the Koran isn’t.

The Manchester Guardian’s Peter Preston explains where the circulation is going—-“the defectors are packing up and moving out of newsprint: to broadcasting in tiny measure (though radio and TV news are losing customers, too) but overwhelmingly to the Net.” And it isn’t the Right or the blogosphere that are doing this to us, although that is what the MSM would prefer to believe. We are doing it ourselves.

If the most basic tenets of Journalism 101 are now no longer important enough for the media itself to honor and defend against their own members who violate them, where is the professionalism and the authority that is our main claim to writing the indispensable “first draft of history” – much less its value for sale? And if we lose sight of that irretrievably, who needs us? There are bloggers out there today with more credibility than Dan Rather, Mary Mapes, Eason Jordan, and Linda Foley combined, and their audiences are growing.

If Foley is allowed to walk unchallenged from what Mencken might have called “a clear, simple, and” unproven statement, it will only accelerate the speed at which her members lose what is left of their credibility--and then their jobs. (Look at The New York Times newsroom downsizing this week.) If the press isn’t going to take its own standards seriously, it is hard to think of why anyone should take the press seriously enough to pay for it. In the meantime, Rupert Murdoch’s and Roger Ailes’s success offers a constant unpleasant reminder: the media market prefers dogs that bark.

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Thomas Lipscomb (letters@editorandpublisher.com) is a frequent contributor to the Chicago Sun-Times and a Senior Fellow at the Annenberg Center for the Digital Future at USC.

Choose Honor
http://choosehonor.blogspot.com/2005/05/open-letter-to-linda-foley.html

An open letter to Linda Foley
I'm a reporter for a major newspaper in the northeastern US. I'm also a member of the Newspaper Guild. As a reporter at the Detroit Free Press in 1995, I participated in a strike against that newspaper, a strike which cost me my job, because I would not cross the picket line.

I take my membership in the Guild very seriously. That's why I was dismayed to learn that you, the president of my union, made a speech on May 13 in which you asserted that the US military has deliberately killed journalists. The relevant portion of the speech was videotaped and is available for viewing here.

Since then, you have failed to provide supporting evidence for your remarks, but neither have you retracted them. I spoke with you at 11:10 AM today by telephone; union secretary-treasurer Bernard Lunzer was also on the call.

When I told you that I would publish your response to me on the Internet, you declined further comment--except for the following: "I am not going to discuss this with you on the eve of Memorial Day weekend."

This remark strikes me as extremely odd. I can't think of a better time to redeem the honor of the US military by beginning a serious investigation of outrageous conduct on its part. If our soldiers are deliberately killing journalists, it's our duty to publicize it, so that such a terrible stain on our nation's integrity may be quickly cleansed.

If, as I believe, your charge is false, I can think of no better time to retract this slander.

There's a third possibility, though it seems to me a very remote one. I don't see how it's possible to misinterpret your remarks, which seem to me quite clear and unambiguous. But I'd be delighted to learn that I have misunderstood them.

I hold out some hope here, as I've just read a piece on the Editor & Publisher website, written by Thomas Lipscomb, who has covered this controversy for the Chicago Sun-Times. Lipscomb wrote that "Foley insists that she 'doesn't believe that our service men and women would knowingly fire on journalists and innocent civilians.' "

This might be the end of it, except that earlier you made statements that sought to distinguish between "the US military" from individual soldiers. This raises the possibility that you still believe that the military high command is somehow seeking the deaths of journaiists.

Up to now, your efforts at clarification have merely muddied the waters. I declare myself confused, and I'm not happy about it. I want to be clear about where my union's president stands on this issue.

I therefore call upon you to state clearly and unambiguously whether you believe that any branch of the US military or government has adopted a deliberate policy of targeting journalists in war zones. This is a simple question, easily answered. I can see no rational reason for you to hesitate about answering it.

At a time when the public's trust in the integrity of journalism is at a new low, our profession can't afford to encourage the perception that we're economical with the truth. I trust you'll put aside your hesitation and immediately explain yourself publicly, in a way that leaves no further doubt about your views on this matter.

Thanks for reading.

Hiawatha Bray

This is from Editor and publisher. The full quote of her proof:

When asked if she believed U.S. troops had targeted journalists in Iraq, she said, "I was careful of not saying troops, I said U.S. military. Could I have said it differently? There are 100 different ways of saying this, but I'm not sure they would have appeased the right."

She did point out that those who bombed the Al Jazeera studios in Baghdad in 2003 had the coordinates of the television station, "because Al Jazeera had given it to them and they bombed the hell out of the station. They bombed it knowing it was the Al Jazeera station. Absent any independent inquiry that tells the world otherwise, that is what I believe."

Her comments at the conference followed the letter she sent last month to President Bush criticizing the U.S. investigation into the deaths of journalists in Iraq, including several during an attack on the Palestine Hotel in 2003.

In that attack, two journalists -- one from Spain and the other from Ukraine -- were killed. She also noted the bombing of the Al Jazeera office the same day, in which a reporter died. "Neither of these attacks has been independently investigated nor have the deaths been properly explained to the satisfaction of the victims' families, their friends and their colleagues," the letter said, in part.

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000928927

Foley told E&P Thursday that her words were taken out of context by critics and said her original intent was to discuss how journalists are often scapegoated for their coverage. "This was almost an aside," she said. "But it is true that hundreds of journalists are killed around the world, and many have been killed in Iraq."

The Dusty Attic
http://thedustyattic.blogspot.com/2005/05/more-of-linda-foleys-talk.html

Thursday, May 19, 2005
More of Linda Foley's Talk
I kind of figured their might be some "taken out of context" defense on the part of Lind Foley, so I took the time to transcribe a little more of what she said in the session. It doesn't include the first ten minutes of what she talked about but it does include a heck of alot more what she said before and after what was on the Mark Hyman vid clip.

It might not be perfect, some missed ah's and um's and contraction mods, but it is darn close. I don't think I missed a word:

[Ending of Linda Foley's original talk] And then finally I think that we all need, ah, as Gene said, um, to make restoration of credibility a top priority, uh or push just as much as we can to make the restoration of credibility and trust from the public in media and journalism a top priority, from the newsroom to the boardroom. It's not enough to just foist a code of ethics on the newsroom. You also have to be responsible all the way up that food chain or the public won't have any trust in what you do.

The other thing, ah, I would just like to mention, the other trend that I think needs to be reversed, ah, that isn't talked about very much, is the targeting of journalists.

Journalists have become, and this is a problem of the Republicans, Frank, (halting laugh) journalists have become a target particularly from the right side of the political spectrum, ah, journalists are blamed, ah, for many ills, that they just report on. Ah, and I think what we have we have to be careful of in the media reform movement, is that we don't fall into that trap.

What is happening in the media is not the fault of individual journalists. Yes, there are some bad individual journalists in the mainstream media. There are also some very good individual journalists in the mainstream media, and it's probably, on balance just like any other profession.

But what's wrong is that there is a systematic corporate, ah, corporate, ahm, dissolution of what we know is credible reporting and journalism. And that what's really wrong and that's what we need to focus on, and that's what we have to fight.

Journalists, by the way, are just being targeted, ah, verbally or, ah, or, ah, politically. They're also being targeted for real. Um…in places like Iraq. Ahn and, ah, what outrages me as a representative of journalists is that there's not more outrage about the number, and the brutality, and the cavalier nature of the U.S. military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq. I think it's just a scandal.

And it's not just US journalists, either, by the way. They target and kill, ah, journalists from other countries, particularly Arab countries like Al -, like Arab news services like Al-Jazeera, for example. They actually target them and blow up their studios, ah, with impunity … and, ah, this is all part of a culture that it's okay to blame the individual journalists and it just takes the heat off these media, ah, conglomerates who are actually at the heart of the problem.

So, um, so, I would, I'm working with you, my members want to work with you, to try and change this. We do have to have other alternatives to corporate media out there, so that people... real people's voices can be heard, but you also have to help us change from within. And so as you go forward on this struggle, keep in mind that the other part of the First Amendment, besides the free speech and the free press part, also talks about the freedom of association. And I'm telling you right now, not just in media, ah, but, um, but media companies are kind of leading the way in this area, but all across America, the ability of workers in media and elsewhere to form free trade unions, is imperiled as it's never been imperiled before.

And I'll just leave you with this, there never has been a democracy, in this world, that has not had both a free press and a free trade union movement. We need to work on both if we are going to change the media in this country, because the people from within have to push while you're pulling from the outside to change things.

Thanks.
Now you have a better chance to decide if is she is being taken out of context, is fairly clear in what she meant, is rambling incoherently, none of the above, or all of the above.

Update: Trey at Jackson's Junction has put up an extended video of almost all of the extended remarks I transcibed here (I never know when to stop once I start copying.)

Update II: I go away for a day and come back to see I've had a stream of visitors and still more coming. Welcome JJ readers and farewell to those that already passed through. My original post on Linda Foley is here, as well as one on her and her like minded journalists, here, in case you hadn't noticed. Feel free to browse around and stop back once in a while.

And thanks again, Trey.

Update III: Myopic Zeal posts a very nice collection of links -- I hadn't heard about O'Reilly's show yet. And thanks to Eric at MZ for the link.

Oh, one point. MZ posts that Ms. Foley's is noteworthy because she is President of both the Newspaper Guild and CWA. I'd like people to be aware that Ms. Foley is also a VP of the International Federation of Journalists and Secretary-Treasurer of the Department of Professional Employees at the AFL-CIO.

Click on link for more.

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