By Roldo Bartimole
Pee Dee columnist Dick Feagler spewed out loathing and mockery wholesale at a new and growing outlet of information – blogging.
Columnist Feagler contemptuously poked fun at bloggers – a growing army of self-styled commentators – as pretenders and illegitimate vendors of what should be the product exclusively of mainstream journalists, i. e., those with jobs at mainstream media outlets.
Feagler ridiculed, “President Abner Lincoln, despondent over a bad marriage and at loose ends after the Spanish-American War, shot himself in the Chevy Theater in New Jersey. Shirley Wilkes Booth was a patsy. The Warren Commission set her up.”
That’s how bloggers would report Lincoln’s assassination in Feagler’s limited mind.
The purposely error-ridden paragraph apparently represents to Feagler the model of the blogging.
He leans as proof on a false posting made, not by a blogger, but someone taking advantage of the ability to post something that goes on an internet site. Not worth the trouble explaining.
However, Feagler makes clear he does not trust any of them and tars them all with a wide brush.
Why should he? Feagler tells us, “It’s because I’m worried. And I worry about how little some of you value that morning newspaper out on the driveway in the snow.”
His column, noted in George Nemeth’s popular Brewed Fresh Daily (BFD) blog, brought out energetic blog comments. The last time I checked the reaction comments on BFD, hit 80 comments, most critical of Feagler. (Feagler gets hit for attachment to the past, however, of late Feagler has moved from his reactionary Reagan period to a more progressive approach regarding the Iraq war and some other issues.)
Feagler is right that the mainstream media (MSM) serve a purpose and produce needed information that informs. Without it, we would lack knowledge that we get daily (although, it seems, in a diminishing output). There remains some solid reporting in the Plain Dealer.
However, let’s not laugh at people who are trying to do what the MSM does but in a new, different fashion.
Indeed, the MSM have not always been so chaste and correct that they can afford to be self-righteous about others.
Let me quote the late Mayor Carl Stokes at a press conference:
“There is hardly a place in this community where two or more persons join that their disgust in the newspapers is not expressed. Rich people, poor people, black and white people. There is a serious erosion of confidence in the truthfulness, the integrity and the sincerity of the newspapers. Yet, what recourse do the people have as a source of news? None really.”
He was speaking, of course, of the Cleveland Press and Plain Dealer.
Let’s not be coy. On important community matters the MSM are not all that pure. MSMs are businesses and are dedicated to those in power, not to the rest of us. The MSM constantly shape the news to fit the preconceptions of what is “correct,” as determined by those who have power.
Anyone who has done serious reporting anywhere can recognize this offering - James Aronson’s description of working at the New York Times. It fits all MSM, I believe, as a model of how to control without outright censoring.
“A censorship so subtle it was invisible and affected everyone on the staff. The ‘approach’ was made clear in casual conversation, in the editing of copy for ‘clarity’ and in deletion of any forthright interpretations as ‘emotionalism.’ Work became a conflict with conscience, although there never was an open challenge to conscience,” he wrote.
Too often reporters are taught to pull or miss their punches, to look less critically, especially where power is involved. The oratory about the hard-bitten, uncompromising journalist is just that – romantic rhetoric.
Sander Vanocur, who was an NBC national correspondent, said similarly, “If you push too hard too often, you will find yourself odd man out… I do not recall many incidents of rape, but seduction is rampant in the industry.”
Early on, I noticed how newspapers not only shaped the news but also distorted it to fit the needs of those with power.
There were always examples of excesses, kowtowing to those of privilege, and simple misinformation at the Pee Dee where I worked twice for about a year each time.
The newspaper once had a dramatic front-page headline and story claiming a cure for cancer had been found. Quite an achievement. There was a little problem, however. It was not true and the Pee Dee reporter had a business interest in the company claiming the cure. There was talk of an indictment for the false claim that did not materialize.
In 1966 when racial tensions were high in Cleveland, the U. S. Civil Rights Commission heard from community leaders. Jack Reavis, at the time the city’s leading lawyer (Jones-Day) and head of a business group trying to cope with civil rights, was a bit too forthcoming. Reavis actually told the commission that he had secured “a pledge from the editors of the newspapers that they would give us no publicity except as we asked for it.” In other words, the newspapers bowed to these civic leaders and distorted by agreement the news to fit the civic leaders’ needs. (We had riots thereafter.)
In 1967, if you want to think of the MSM as simply a propaganda outlet, there’s no better example than the Pee Dee’s instructions to all beat reporters to prepare pieces about the good things happening in Cleveland. Cheerleading again. It was later published laughably in a special edition labeled “What’s Right in Cleveland.” As the welfare beat reporter I refused to contribute. What good could one make up about poverty in Cleveland?
Front-page articles by Joe Eszterhaus were acceptable at the Pee Dee when the future screenwriter was there. Until he wrote a nasty about the PD’s pratfallen editors in a national magazine, and was asked to leave and take his creative writing, heretofore a front-page staple, with him.
When Tom Andrzejewski in 1987 wrote critically about Dick Jacobs’ $125,000 opening bash at the Galleria opening, the Pee Dee censored the column and refused to print it. (Where’s a similar column now about Cuyahoga County Commissioners paying $22-million for his Euclid Avenue-9th Street white elephant and then offering a plaque to Jacobs, who has taken more out of Cleveland than he ever gave?)
More censorship? Try this one. Fred Crawford, of TRW, Inc. fame, addressed police at a Bluecoats meeting. “Bluecoats” is a charity funded by corporate interests to help families of police officers killed during duty.
Here’s what the Pee Dee reporter – Ned Whelan, now in public relations - wrote:
“Crawford told two racial jokes to the all-white audience."
“In prefacing one joke, he commented upon someone being ‘blackballed.’
“Crawford then added: ‘I guess it takes two black balls to get elected in this city.’ (He was referring Cleveland’s first black mayor, Carl Stokes, the mayor the police loved to hate.)”
An editor penciled out the above and it never appeared in the Pee Dee. It appeared in my newsletter, Point of View, because someone at the Pee Dee sent it to me.
There’s no need for MSM people to be smug. Believe me, they do not live in the purity that allows them to skewer wholesale others trying to inform people in any manner.
For a long time the Pee Dee had a managing editor everyone at the paper knew was a personal political advisor and conduit to Ralph Perk when he was Cleveland’s mayor.
“The joke around here during the campaign,” said one reporter was, “if you want to know what Perk will do today go to Wilson’s desk.’” “Wilson” was Wilson Hirschfeld, then managing Pee Dee editor. Hirschfeld was on the phone to Perk daily with advice.
When I left the PD, the top editor wrote me that it was too bad because I had a “bright future” there. Hirschfeld, when I called him on his service to Perk, chastised me for forgetting “all the rudimentaries of journalism” I had learned at the Pee Dee. He didn’t want to comment further.
One could go on forever talking about the inadequacies of our local MSM. We still do not know of the second important story that Editor Doug Clifton has kept from public view. You will remember he ran the first story he held back only after the Cleveland Scene beat him to it.
Another example of recent misdeeds was editorial editor Brent Larkin’s ride with Dick Jacobs on the developer and baseball team owner’s jet to New York for a World Series game. An anonymous note to the PD exposed Larkin. He should have been fired but nothing happened, other than exposure in the Pee Dee, which was something.
Feagler must remember one of the most famous sellouts of MSM reporters during the 1974 newspaper strike. George Steinbrenner was still attuned to Cleveland business at the time. He had committed a felony with his illegal political donations to President Dick Nixon.
He was still funneling money. This time he gave $10,000 to the Cleveland schools to hire 10 Press and Plain Dealer reporters and editors, at $1,000 each. They were to lecture about journalism to Cleveland schoolchildren. Apparently, conflict-of-interest was not on the class lesson plan. The reporters all could do Steinbrenner businesses some possible future good. (Two – the late Norm Mlachak, labor reporter, and Bob August, sports editor, both of the Press, turned down the $1,000.) Ten accepted the offer.
That strike was very instructive. Many reporters and editors went to work during the strike for the very businesses that they covered before and after they returned. Not one was punished for these conflicts upon return to their newspapers after the strike.
The PD business editor did not miss a day, going to work for a major corporation at the same pay scale he had been earning. Press and PD reporters covering utilities went to work for CEI and Ohio Bell. The same was true for “investigative reporters” at the Press, hired by the Ohio Lottery and the Regional Sewer System. Even the Press reporter who covered the County Sheriff went to work – you guessed it – for the Sheriff. Cuyahoga County hired a few. Why not keep in good with the newspaper staff people who might report on you later.
We could cite many more misdeeds. There are flaws in all media.
Feagler defended his newspaper: “We are, for all our flaws, still your best bet went it comes to trying to tell the truth in print.” I’d add with some very critical exceptions.
I find some of the local blogs self-centered, sometimes arrogant and overly sensitive. Maybe what bothers people like Feagler is that blogs believe they have invented discussion and debate. They are merely an extension of what has gone before for centuries. Nothing wrong with that though.
The good part is that they have pricked the exclusivity of MSM. Why not some good competition? You do not have to be certified by anyone to have and express an opinion. You can just write. Some good, some bad, some worth reading, some not. However, consumers can choose and there are many, many more choices.
To save themselves, newspapers may have to go back to what some once were – voices of the underdog instead of being cheerleaders and mouthpieces for conventional status quo forces.
Here is to more voices and a vocal newspaper that kicks ass.
From Cool Cleveland contributor Roldo Bartimole roldoATadelphia.net (:divend:)