The Kicker

  1. August 8, 2011 03:45 PM

    By the Numbers: New Yorker’s Bachmann Profile

    The following is a list of words you will encounter (and number of times) in Ryan Lizza’s fascinating, detail-packed New Yorker profile of Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, headlined, “Leap of Faith. The making of a Republican front-runner.” Yes, you should probably still read all 8,700 words of Lizza’s piece yourself, if you haven’t already, but, until then, here is a taste of what awaits:

    Christian/Christianity: 40

    Bible/Biblical: 22

    Marcus: 20

    Iowa/Iowan: 19

    Minnesota: 12

    Conservative/s: 11

    Liberty: 11

    Evangelical: 9

    Gay/homosexual/homosexuality: 8

    Fox News: 6

    Tea Party: 5

    Slavery: 5

    Romney: 5

    Obama: 5

    Economy: 4

    Silver fox: 4

    Drudge: 4

    Palin: 3

    Cargo pants: 2

    Barbie: 2

    Pasionaria: 1

  2. August 1, 2011 01:13 PM

    Mapping Violence Against Journalists in Afghanistan

    Last week, Ahmed Omed Khpulwak, a 25-year old stringer for the BBC, was killed in a suicide bomb attack in southern Afghanistan. Khpulwak’s death, as the many that came before it, is a tragedy and a reminder of the violence and danger journalists covering Afghanistan routinely face. There have been 266 reported incidents of violence against journalists covering the country—and Khpulwak was the 22nd journalist to have died there—since the war began in 2001, according to Nai, an Afghan media advocacy and education organization.

    This reality is presented in bleak and striking visual form through a new data-mapping project developed by Nai, in cooperation with Internews, an international media development organization, and supported by USAID. Data from the 266 reported incidents has been broken down and built into a set of interactive maps layered with context, including number of media organizations and active journalists in each province.

    The site offers a grim picture of the toll the war in Afghanistan has taken on the media, but more importantly, it is a smart and essential resource, particularly for journalists and news organizations in Afghanistan. The original data can be downloaded and the maps are embeddable.

    Have a look:

  3. July 28, 2011 03:57 PM

    A Leak about those ‘Despicable’ Leaks

    At Politico, Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan have a story this afternoon about the frantic maneuverings by the House GOP leadership to whip votes for John Boehner’s debt ceiling bill. (Yes, with the Aug. 2 deadline days away, there’s an all-out effort underway to pass a House bill that’s apparently dead on arrival in the Senate. Welcome to today’s Washington.)

    Much of the article recounts what was said at a closed meeting of House Republicans earlier today, as relayed to the reporters by “sources in the room.” Amusingly, those sources decided to share this detail:

    House Republican Conference Chairman Jeb Hensarling of Texas started the meeting on an angry note. He held up a copy of POLITICO and told his colleagues that “leaks” from conference meetings “are despicable.”

    Sounds like not everybody got the message.

  4. July 28, 2011 09:26 AM

    Employees at The Bay Citizen Form a Union

    New media workers aligned with old labor standards last night, as The Bay Citizen’s unionization got the official stamp of approval from the National Labor Relations Board.

    Last week, the Pacific Media Workers Guild released a press release announcing the Bay Citizen as the first start-up news website to join its labor organization. At the time, two out of fourteen of the votes were being contested, but the Guild went forward with the announcement because they were certain that the votes, although unopened, would have rendered a result in their favor.

    The Bay Citizen was founded in 2010 as a nonprofit news organization serving the San Francisco Bay Area. It has partnered with other media outlets, including an agreement to cover the Bay Area beat for The New York Times. In 2010 it picked up an award from the Society of Professional Journalists for its investigative reporting.

    Aaron Glantz, a staff writer for The Bay Citizen, was a union member during his time at KPFA in Sacramento. He says with legacy media options dwindling, joining a union is a way of guaranteeing the reporters voice is heard during these times of rapidly changing media structures.

    “There’s so many different ventures out there trying to, quote unquote, save journalism right now,” says Glantz. “What I appreciate is The Bay Citizen’s efforts to save journalism involves reporters doing reporting.”

    For Glantz, this is an important opportunity to draft a contract for new media workers that can be used as an example by other start-ups if they make the same decision. “I’m really excited to get going on the next phase, and rather than will we or won’t we, asking how are we going to do this.”

  5. July 25, 2011 10:31 AM

    Ready, Set… Comment!

    Wonder how the conversation went in the New York Times newsroom that led to this story being placed on the front page (A1 print, home page online):

    “To Reach Simple Life of Summer Camp, Lining Up for Private Jets”

    The gist:

    Now, even as the economy limps along, more of the nation’s wealthier families are cutting out the car ride and chartering planes to fly to summer camps…

    The popularity of private-plane travel is forcing many high-priced camps, where seven-week sessions can easily cost more than $10,000, to balance the habits of their parents against the ethos of simplicity the camps spend the summer promoting. …

    The last straw pull quote:

    A flier's request: a fruit cup with a single strawberry.
  6. July 25, 2011 10:07 AM

    The Idiot Yankee’s Guide to Rick Perry

    With Texas Gov. Rick Perry seemingly all but certain to enter the Republican presidential sweepstakes—the latest talk is of an official launch late next month—Texas Monthly writer Paul Burka has penned a Perry primer designed to prevent keep East Coast media elite types from embarrassing themselves with falsehoods and clichĂ©s. I found this point, rebutting an oft-repeated claim about the governor’s limited power, especially interesting:

    4. Texas is not a “weak governor” state. A common misconception. It used to be true, but during his historic governorship, Perry has reinvented the office as a power center. This may be his greatest accomplishment. Yes, our state constitution, written the year before Reconstruction ended, created a weak governor’s office (as did most constitutions of the states of the former Confederacy). We had two-year terms (the Legislature changed it to four-year terms beginning with the 1974 election) and a fragmented executive department with power divided among the governor, the lieutenant governor, the comptroller, the land and agriculture commissioners, the attorney general, and the railroad commission. But Perry has used his appointment power to install political allies in every state agency, effectively establishing a Cabinet form of government and making him vastly more powerful than any of his predecessors. In this regard, the Texas politician he most resembles is LBJ, who, Robert Caro reports, once told an assistant, “I do understand power, whatever else may be said about me. I know where to look for it and how to use it.” Rick Perry, to a tee.

    You can find the whole thing—including Burka’s pointed closing note that today’s Texas is not just a collection of cattle ranches and oilfields, but “urban state of 25 million people”—here.

  7. July 20, 2011 01:17 PM

    Murdoch, “Humble,” in Global Headlines

    Below, a look at how the most recent turns in the phone hacking scandal—yesterday's testimony to Parliament from Rupert and James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks, and the interruption in that testimony by a man with a foam pie—were treated on front pages of newspapers around the world. Photographically, the pie-throwing disturbance made many appearances, and text-wise, the word "humble" was frequently featured ("humble pie," specifically, from the New York Daily News, the Guardian in London, the Irish Times of Dublin, and Durban, South Africa's The Mercury).

    Some of News Corps.'s papers gave the news front-page treatment...

























    ....while other News Corp.-owned papers did not:









    Here's how the news looked in other papers today stateside...

















    ....and, beyond:

    London, UK





    Sydney, Australia




    Auckland, New Zealand





    Dublin, Ireland





    Hamburg, Germany





    Prague, Czech Republic




    Basel, Switzerland





    Brussels, Belgium





    Ljubljana, Slovenia






    Sofia, Bulgaria




    Kozhikode, India






    Calcutta, India





    Dubai, UAE






    Durban, South Africa






    Johannesburg, South Africa






    Porto Alegre, Brazil






    Santiago, Chile (below the fold: Rupert Murdoch; above the fold: Owen Wilson)





    Cancun, Mexico






    Calgary, Canada






    Montreal, Canada






    Toronto, Canada





    Nova Scotia, Canada






  8. July 19, 2011 10:29 AM

    In Other Angles: Blame Brooks’s “Big Hair”

    With The Guardian owning the “expensive, risky, time-consuming, stressful—and indispensable” investigative reporting related to the phone hacking scandal, as Dean highlighted yesterday over at The Audit, what has that left for other British media outlets? Well, the London Evening Standard (isn’t that the free one?) yesterday had this:

    No one is claiming that Rebekah Brooks's hair cast a spell over Rupert Murdoch for all those years.

    Nor are they suggesting that the mysterious power wielded by a frothy mass of in-your-face russet curls tells the untold story behind one of the greatest scandals of our times. Because that would be silly.

    But what if it's true?

    And then, further along:

    Big hair is always impressive. If you have it you either are important or you want to be. Big hair cannot be ignored. It is big for a reason.

    In testimony before British lawmakers this morning, Rupert Murdoch has been heard blaming “people I trusted” and “people they trusted.” No fingers pointed, yet, at the big hair of people trusted.

  9. July 11, 2011 05:00 PM

    New Jersey Politics: Not So Much Like National Politics

    A word to national political reporters looking to find broader meaning in Chris Christie’s dealings with New Jersey Democrats, or for that matter in events in any state (this means you, Matt Bai): don’t miss Steve Kornacki’s terrific discussion of Christie’s “Democratic helpers” from late last month.

    Kornacki’s point is that the key to understanding how Christie found Democratic support for radical changes to public employees’ pension and healthcare benefits lies in understanding how New Jersey’s Democratic Party works. Specifically, it means understanding the role of George Norcross, the Democratic boss who runs the party in South Jersey and wields substantial power in Essex County in the north.

    Norcross is a business-friendly Democrat who is willing to cut deals with Republicans and had terrible relationships with more labor-oriented Democrats like former governors Jon Corzine and Richard Codey. Not coincidentally, as Kornacki notes, the Democratic legislators who voted for Christie’s reforms came from… South Jersey and Essex County.

    Kornacki’s post is a great example of political analysis informed by a deep understanding of local conditions. At the same time, it’s a warning against extrapolating from the state to the national level without that understanding. For the purposes of this deal, the key feature of the New Jersey Democratic Party is that it still operates in many ways as a political machine. That means bosses wield substantial power through patronage, and ideological or policy commitments may sometimes take a backseat to the exigencies of the moment. As governor, Christie successfully shaped the agenda by forcing lawmakers to take a stance on public employee benefits. But his smartest strategic move was probably less adopting a post-partisan “reform” message than figuring out how to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the Democrats.

    National politics, though, don’t work the same way. The key players in national parties are not individual bosses, but “intense policy demanders” who put pressure on elected officials not to stray too far off script—a distinction that has real implications for the likelihood of bipartisan deals, and in how committed a party’s elected officials will be to a set of policy views. Or, as Kornacki put it: “the fact that Christie was able to score this victory tells us a lot more about the vagaries of New Jersey politics than about the national scene.”

  10. July 11, 2011 11:07 AM

    Kurtz: Let He Who is Without…

    Howard Kurtz returns to the pages of the Washington Post with a guest column reminding readers that the News of the World hacking scandal is

    just an extreme example of a news business that increasingly pushes the ethical envelope — and perhaps of a public that wants the juicy stuff and isn’t too particular about how it gets unearthed.

    Just an extreme example. Just, you know, the upper echelons of a news organization being complicit in widespread criminal activity. But hey, nobody’s perfect, Kurtz reminds us all with his laundry list of journalistic sins committed stateside over the years—or, “episodes of reckless American journalism.” (Janet Cooke? Not on the list. Jayson Blair? Check!). And, speaking of checks, what about checkbook journalism? Sure, News of the World spied on unsuspecting citizens by hacking their voicemail, but, Kurtz will have you recall, “in 2008 ABC paid Casey Anthony $200,000 for an exclusive interview under the guise of buying photos and video of her missing 2-year-old daughter, Caylee.” (Related reading: John Cook’s recent essay for CJR arguing the merits of “an open and transparent purchase of newsworthy information.”)

    So, all you people out there who keep insisting that American journalism is sleaze-free: you stand, thanks to Kurtz, corrected.

    Here’s a theory: Kurtz misses his old WaPo perch (he “turns up his nose at dirt” in his guest Post op-ed while his new “home, The Daily Beast… is an all-night buffet of scandal and dirt.”)

  11. July 7, 2011 09:41 AM

    Water keeps rising in NOTW scandal

    Archie Bland, foreign editor of The Independent, and author of an excellent and prescient piece for CJR on the News of The World phone-hacking scandal, appeared on MSNBC last night to talk about the latest developments in the scandal.

    As Bland wrote for CJR's May/June issue, "one person with knowledge of the discussions inside News International" told him that there was a likely reason that Rebekah Brooks, editor of the News at the time its reporters hacked the voicemail of 11-year-old murder victim Milly Dowd Dowler, refused to make a full apology for any lawless or unethical behavior at the paper:

    “The key problem is that it’s got to come from Rebekah,” the person said... “Anything she does that admits guilt on behalf of the company, it brings the tidal wave closer to her door.” ... Police are said to be questioning her; if that tidal wave hasn’t quite swept into Brooks’s office yet, the surge is at the very least seeping under the door.

    And indeed, The New York Times reports this morning that there is a growing consensus within Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation that Brooks will be forced out of her current job running the company's UK print properties. Man the lifeboats.

    In addition to explaining the key players and providing a handy recap of the story, Bland's piece explored why the often-venomous UK press had treated the scandal with such kid gloves. For more on that (and it ain't pretty), check out this dispiriting essay by Peter Oborne, one of England's most respected conservative columnists. A sample:

    This should have been one of the great stories of all time. It has almost everything—royalty, police corruption, Downing Street complicity, celebrities by the cartload, Fleet Street at its most evil and disgusting....

    By minimising these stories, media groups are coming dangerously close to making a very significant statement: they are essentially part of the same bent system as News International and complicit in its criminality.

    Correction: This piece originally identified Milly Dowler as Milly Dowd. CJR regrets the error.

  12. July 6, 2011 09:17 AM

    A kingmaker for the invisible primary

    Yesterday, we published an interview I conducted with Hans Noel, co-author of the 2008 book The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform. The core argument of the book is that the “invisible primary” should be understood not simply—and perhaps not even principally—as a competition between candidates, but rather as an attempt by party leaders to coalesce behind a standard-bearer. In terms of the implications for horse race coverage, that suggests fewer stories about the candidates out on the hustings, and more attempts to figure out what’s on the mind of those party elites.

    But the “party-oriented” frame doesn’t restrict reporters to wide-angle snapshots, as Politico’s David Catanese showed Tuesday with a profile of Mike Lee, the freshman Republican senator from Utah who’s quickly established himself as a Tea Party power broker. The focus of the article is Lee’s influence in Senate primaries, rather than the presidential race. But there’s a clear portrait of him as an important “decider,” who will vet candidates hoping for the support of the party—or at least, for his faction of the party:

    Lee has already met personally with more than a half-dozen candidates, made endorsements in two Senate primaries and set up a pair of leadership political action committees to aid those who share his constitutionalist brand of conservatism.

    And he plans to ramp up his profile in the coming months, with the clear goal of growing the Senate’s coalition of advocates of limited government.

    “We ought to have more people who believe in constitutionally limited government. We have to have more people come to Congress with that mind-set. I think we can make this a better place, if, when elections happen, we support candidates who share that philosophy,” Lee explained in an interview.

    That passage captures an important point of Noel’s book, which didn’t really come out in our discussion: politicians running for office aren’t just trying to appeal to ordinary voters; they’re trying to please what might be called “intense policy demanders” within their party’s coalition. Lee is a noteworthy political figure because he’s a U.S. Senator. But as important, he’s one of those “policy demanders” who is trying, with considerable success, to force his party to embrace his understanding of “constitutionally limited government.”

    Meanwhile, this section from Catanese’s article dovetails nicely with what Noel told me about how elite endorsements shape party decision-making:

    Former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz, a Senate candidate who earned Lee’s first endorsement back in March, says the freshman senator’s blessing prompted a flurry of conservative groups and activists to take a look at—and swiftly get behind—his candidacy.

    “Mike’s early support was critical to the later endorsements we received from The Madison Project, FreedomWorks, the Club for Growth, each of which cumulatively build momentum. Mike was the very first to jump out there. It had a tremendous impact,” Cruz told POLITICO, pointing to a surge in donations after Lee penned a fundraising letter for him.

    …FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe bolstered Cruz’s account, saying Lee’s blessing serves as a potent alert to activists.

    “It’s a market signal, ‘take a look at this guy.’ We certainly noticed when he endorsed Cruz,” Kibbe said.

    None of this is particularly novel or earth-shattering, but it’s astute stuff—and it’s happening many times over in the presidential campaign. That means that as the GOP’s invisible primary unfolds, there are plenty of stories for reporters to find.

  13. July 5, 2011 04:30 PM

    The Hack that Broke the Camel’s Back

    The scandal surrounding News Corp’s British tabloid News of the World and their practice of hacking into peoples’ voicemail accounts for scoops has escalated. Initial news of the paper’s hacking habits was mostly met with silence by the British press, as detailed in Archie Bland’s story, “Anybody There?,” in the May/June issue of the Columbia Journalism Review. But in the wake of allegations that the tabloid accessed and deleted voicemails of thirteen-year-old murder victim Milly Dowler, the rest of the British media has started to make some noise.

    As of today, the Dowler debacle is the top story for the major British news outlets, including Sky News and The Times, both subsidiaries of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. The most recent headlines concern a public statement from private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who was previously convicted in 2007 for phone hacking for News of the World. He issued a public apology via the Guardian, saying he was under constant pressure by the News of the World for information. His statement mentions nothing specific about the Dowler case, which the story on the Guardian’s site points out. This detail was never explicitly expressed in the online story on Sky News.

    Twitter is awash in public outcry, with some calling for a boycott of the paper and others even asking people not to patronize newsstands that sell the tabloid. Already a number of companies have stated publicly that they are reviewing their advertising contracts with News of the World. Ford UK announced earlier today it would pull all of its advertising.

    Rebekah Brooks, the News of the World editor at the time of the Dowler murder story in 2002, and now a chief executive for News International, has denied any knowledge of reporters hacking into voicemails. Amidst calls for her resignation she has stated she will not leave her job. In an e-mail to the paper’s staff this morning, she wrote, “I hope that you all realise it is inconceivable that I knew or worse, sanctioned these appalling allegations.” But what many are saying is inconceivable is how, as the editor, she did not know.

    There will be an emergency Commons debate on Wednesday about phone hacking by News International journalists and a possible cover up by senior executives.

  14. July 1, 2011 11:36 AM

    An Underwhelming Bachmann “Gaffe”

    Perhaps predictably, many in the media have latched onto presidential candidate Michele Bachmann’s latest gaffe, in which she apparently confused beloved actor John Wayne with hated murderer John Wayne Gacy during the course of a television interview. But some of those accusing Bachmann of this embarrassing misstep have taken certain liberties in linguistics or in logic to make their points.

    “Speaking in her home town of Waterloo, Iowa, on the day she announced her candidacy, Mrs [sic] Bachmann appeared to mix up the actor John Wayne with the notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy,” writes the Telegraph. And yet the candidate never actually used John Wayne Gacy’s name at all; her actual flub was in misnaming John Wayne’s hometown. Central to the Telegraph’s statement is the word “appeared,” which makes room for a certain amount of the figuring that is necessary to bring Gacy into the picture in the first place.

    Here's what Bachmann said: "What I want them to know is, just like John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa, that's the kind of spirit I have too."

    The language is delicate. Some sources have been careful to leave some room for interpretation about the true nature of the flub, like this piece in Slate’s “The Slatest”:

    UPDATE: Michele Bachmann defended her presidential campaign on Tuesday after making a gaffe in which she incorrectly claimed she shared a hometown with the actor John Wayne, a verbal slip up that left many wondering whether she was confused with “clown killer” John Wayne Gacy.

    Others, like the Baltimore Sun, which here directs readers to the more carefully phrased Washington Times article, simplify the scene, even slightly, in a way that changes the story from the mix-up of towns to that of people:

    A flake mistake? Bachmann mixes up John Wayne and John Wayne Gacy.
    There is no reason to assume that Bachmann, apparently unaware of the relatively well-known John Wayne Birthplace Museum in Winterset, Iowa, some 150 miles from Waterloo, was better informed about the birthplace of the serial killer (who certainly demonstrated few of the “what America’s all about” qualities the candidate praises in the cowboy). More likely is that Bachmann’s aides were careless in their research before her Waterloo appearance, giving her bad information.

    Making the leap from John Wayne’s misnamed hometown to a mix-up of him and Gacy seems like a vaguely dishonest means to a spicy headline (not to mention innumerable videos of a Pogo-faced Michele Bachmann on YouTube). Granted, the headline grabs the eye more than might “BACHMANN MIXES UP JOHN WAYNE’S HOMETOWN WITH ANOTHER IOWA HAMLET STARTING WITH W,” and thus draws attention to the kind of careless mistake on the part of the candidate that could have an impact on swing voters.

    But while this kind of flub might be enough to turn a shallow analyst away from the Bachmann ticket, to a careful voter it really says very little about her actual credentials or suitability for the position, and reveals much less about her personality and views than did Obama’s inflammatory “clinging to guns and religion” word vomit of 2008, or most of Bachmann’s statements on policy and ethics.

    If media sources latch on to flubs like these for their viral quality, and aren’t afraid to shift the language around to get a good headline, we end up with a lot of energy spent, both in the media and on the part of Bachmann’s campaign staff, explaining the error instead of dealing with more important issues, like policy, the candidate’s experience in the field, and voting records. At The Washington Post, Jonathan Bernstein says it cleanly and well:

    “In the unlikely event that Michele Bachmann becomes president, it’s really not going to matter too much if she flunks American history or gets a few facts wrong. But the fact that she believes that hitting the debt limit is harmless and is flat-out against raising it regardless of the actual consequences ... well, that’s a truly radical position that raises serious questions about her readiness to be president.

    Even if it doesn’t meet the media’s “gaffe” standard."