Hey Rick. Get one of these.
Posted on 05/27/2003 12:31:16 AM PDT by Timesink
washingtonpost.com
Suspended N.Y. Times Reporter Says He'll Quit
Rick Bragg Decries 'Poisonous Atmosphere'
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 27, 2003; Page C01
Month after month, year after year, Rick Bragg said, his mission was to "go get the dateline," even when that meant leaning heavily on the reporting of others.
"My job was to ride the airplane and sleep in the hotel," the New York Times correspondent said yesterday from his New Orleans home. "I have dictated stories from an airport after writing the story out in longhand on the plane that I got from phone interviews and then was applauded by editors for 'working magic.' . . . Those things are common at the paper. Most national correspondents will tell you they rely on stringers and researchers and interns and clerks and news assistants."
But now what he calls a "poisonous atmosphere" has descended on the Times -- one that prompted the paper to suspend Bragg for two weeks for practices he considers utterly routine -- and the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter says he will quit in the next few weeks.
"Obviously, I'm taking a bullet here," he said of the suspension imposed last week. "Anyone with half a brain can see that." But, he said, "I'm too mad to whine about it."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Harsh language for a liberal. Liberals with guns? Militant liberals? Rick suggests
liberals are (gasp) gun-toting militias. Quick, call Chuckie Schumer, and the ACLU.
And the amazing thing is that these top level Pultizer Prize winning reporters don't see that as fraud.
If leaders in any other business operated this way, they would rip their guts out in print daily.
So9
BTW, check out Bob Herbert's Friday column about the NYC smoking ban. Herbert quotes someone and parenthetically notes they were interviewed by one of his assistants. CYA time. Pretty funny.
I don't disagree -- at least not too much. He's a superbly talented writer, but I have less respect for his reporting skills now than i used to.
B. The practices he describes are, indeed, more common than people know. Somebody has to "get the dateline," and EVERYBODY relies on Nexis research for background. That is not plagiarism, so long as credits are properly given.
I'm a reporter, and I rely heavily on Google and Lexis/Nexis, just as every reporter does these days. However, there's a world of difference between researching and using some general background and using "a stack 4 feet tall" of other newspaper copy, rewriting the color those reporters put into their stories, and passing it off as your own work. That is what Bragg admitted to doing to write the Pulitzer Prize-winning lead he can still recite by heart. It's a beautfully written and powerful lead, but it is tainted because he didn't actually see these maimed people -- OTHER REPORTERS DID, and he used their descriptions to fool the readers of the NYTimes that he did all the shoe-leather for that story. Such a technique is not that far removed from what Jayson Blair did. At least Rick got on a plane, though.
C. Want to guess how many stories datelined "Crawford, Texas" were mostly written on the plane trip from Washington and actually filed from a motel in Waco?
If that's the truth, shame on those reporters. I work for a national newspaper, and such chicanery is not our policy, and I would never do that.
That is exactly what he means. It is considered a massive violation of journalistic ethics (yeah yeah, oxymoron, I know) to file a story with a dateline from somewhere other than where you wrote the article. It doesn't matter if the entire story takes place in northern Quebec; if you never leave your desk in Manhattan to write it, the dateline is NEW YORK. (Of course, in such cases most news organizations will just dispense with the dateline altogether. But it makes The New York Times (and all other papers) look cool and powerful and more relevant to have datelines from all over the country and all over the world, especially stories that run on page one, as this one did. It's more than worth it for them to give the writer the couple of hundred bucks for a quick plane ride from New Orleans over to Florida for this purpose.
The Times has always been a favorite target of FReepers, but it has never been the only one. "Common practice" allows a lot of trash to be published.
Some years ago my wife and sister had a front page spread in the food section of the local paper. They were making gingerbread houses -- not exactly an intellectual challenging or controversial activity -- and the reporter simply made up the story, completely ignoring what was said in the interview.
I have seen the same thing happen in numerous "small" stories where I had first hand knowledge of the facts.
I have no faith whatsoever in the ability of the press to get anything right.
I do believe that over time and with competition, something of the truth emerges, but not because the press gets it right.
B. The practices he describes are, indeed, more common than people know. Somebody has to "get the dateline," and EVERYBODY relies on Nexis research for background. That is not plagiarism, so long as credits are properly given.
C. Want to guess how many stories datelined "Crawford, Texas" were mostly written on the plane trip from Washington and actually filed from a motel in Waco?
A: He's no Gene Fowler, nor even a Will Fowler, and he's no Keyes Beech or Ernie Pyle. But there are few of the level of the Fowlers' or Beech to be found in present-day American journalism. And today's military neither wants nor deserves an Ernie Pyle.
B. Concur. And once a public figure gives an attributed quote to another reporter, reuse of that source, with or without attribution of the original report is also fair game, as the event has passed from spot news into the *first draft* of history, e.g. Nixon's *I am not a crook*.
C. Most. Though it's also not uncommon that earlier research from that rural location may not be rewritten and filed until after a little cleanup in more reasonable surroundings or better conditions, and either dateline is usable. And I've filed a dateline of a town hit by a tornado without setting foot in it, though I overflew the scene in a National Guard helocopter.
But all phone lines were down and no vehicles were moving till the next morning's dawn; I don't think it was an inappropriate fudge. And the facilities in some remote corners can be really incompatable with deadline work.
I can recall a conversation I had in the 1980's with one Holiday Inn manager when I asked her if they had a fax machine...*No,* I was told, but we do have a Coke machine....
Whether she was really trying to be helpful or not, affiant sayeth not; but she kept a straight face, anyway. And when I read my copy over the phone to the poor dear lady who handled the rewrite desk for me, theur town got no dateline from me.
-archy-/-
"Month after month, year after year, Rick Bragg said, his mission was to "go get the dateline," even when that meant leaning heavily on the reporting of others."
The wording of that makes it sound like 'getting the dateline' makes it more neccesary to rely on a stringer, not less.
Or maybe it isn't just Kurtz. Bragg doesn't make much sense here (to me anyway): "I have dictated stories from an airport after writing the story out in longhand on the plane that I got from phone interviews..."
Probably he means that he traveled to a town only to get a phone interview. But why call work from the airport when you're already home?? I mean, this is after he's visited the 'dateline' town, right?
What I'm suggesting here is that this is the over-complexity of a prevaricator.
"I went and got the dateline," Bragg said. "The reporting was done -- there was no reason to linger." That says it all. He shows up, submints his story, and goes home. He might just as well, have phoned it in. (In fact, he did.)
Hey Rick. Get one of these.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.