I just got this breaking news update (as I’m sure many of you did) from the New York Times online about New York Governor David Patterson’s alleged role in a domestic dispute. I’ve pasted the full text of the email I received below. The last paragraph, in particular, disturbed me. What happened to unbiased journalism? It seemed to me as though the Times was trying to use potentially salacious, though as yet unproven, details of the case to garner readers, something I think the MSM has built a reputation for NOT doing to the same extent that new media sources (especially more openly slanted blogs) do. I’m curious to hear how other people view the last paragraph of this update. Do you think the Times overstepped the boundaries of objectivity, or is this sort of speculation just part of the business?
Complaint Against Paterson Aide Raises Questions of Influence
Last fall, a woman went to court in the Bronx to testify that
she had been violently assaulted by David W. Johnson, a top
aide to Gov. David A. Paterson, and to seek a protective
order against him.
In the ensuing months, she returned to court twice to press
her case, and complaining that the State Police had been
harassing her to drop it. The State Police, which had no
jurisdiction in the matter, confirmed that the woman was
visited by a member of the governor’s personal security
detail.
Then early this month, days before she was due to return to
court to seek a final protective order, the woman got a phone
call from the governor, according to her lawyer. She failed
to appear for her next hearing on Feb. 8, and as a result her
case was dismissed.
Many details of the governor’s role in this episode are
unclear or in dispute, but accounts portray a brutal
encounter, a frightened woman and an effort to make a
potential political embarrassment go away.
I don’t find this particularly biased or necessarily unfair – if anything, I think that if the accounts describe this as “brutal” and if it was a really serious assault, then the NY Times would be biased to NOT use those words and to NOT make it sound serious. Rather, I think that neutral language can be just as biased as harsh language, if the neutral language is playing down the severity of the incident. If there really isn’t evidence to back up these claims, then that’s a huge problem, but if this really was a violent assault, the Times has a right/obligation to describe it as such, and spare no mercy, even to a politician.
From my perspective this doesn’t seem to be too bad. Most of the information in the last paragraph can be inferred from information already mentioned in earlier paragraphs. Also, I think the phrase “accounts portray” does a decent job differentiating the information following it from things that are “facts”. One thing that does seem problematic is that there is no comment (or mention of an attempt to solicit comment) from the governor about this phone call he made. Granted, he would probably not offer meaningful commentary about it, but I do find it a bit troubling that that aspect of the story was so one sided. That being said, it could very well be something that is in the actual article that didn’t make the cut for the email version of the story.
I am going to agree with Bradford and Sabrina, since I too did not find the article particularly unbiased or unfair. My thoughts are less on the content of this alert, but more on the alert process (I really would like feedback).
I receive WSJ.com alerts via my e-mail, which is then pushed to my blackberry. When I signed up for these alerts, I was able to check the categories that I thought were pertinent to me (i.e. finance, technology, politics, sports, etc). Are these alerts something you sign up for, or does every subscriber to the NYTimes.com receive these, which is what it seems from Ali’s intial post. If that is the case, what type of content is being pushed to your e-mail box. I could understand an update regarding the Governor’s decision not to run for re-election being an important alert, but an alert about a story that lacks concrete evidence…it seems excessive. Please explain this NYTimes.com alert world to me. What else to you receive as an alert?
Chris, I think the NYTimes and WSJ systems are similar. My guess would be that most of us who get NYTimes updates only get their “Breaking News” e-mail alert. But once you have an account on the website you can sign up for nearly 30 other updates – these include everything from “Wheels” (automotive news updates) to “Politics” to “Health Update.” But the generic “Breaking News” tends to include a story in any of these categories that the Times deems as breaking. For me it is a simple way to get a headline without being at my computer. But I think it also speaks to the speed at which we expect to get our news these days, likely a function of many aspects of the new media on which we have focused. Were I not to receive these NYTimes updates I would read the same story a few minutes or hours later at my desk, but many of us (regardless of whether your updates are from WSJ, NYTimes, or CNN) seem to want these stories more immediately. And because the NYTimes has recognized this trend, they want to make sure that they are getting stories out that people want to read. The Paterson story may be understandable because the Times does still cater to a NY-centric audience, it is, after all, the NEW YORK Times. If I were a New Yorker, this is the kind of story I would want immediately, though I do agree that this particular update could have been tempered a bit.
I agree with what everyone has been saying–that this alert does not seem to be particularly biased, though it certainly does not tell the whole story. Then again, breaking updates are not expected to provide in-depth coverage.
I do think that the demand for speedy updates has compromised good journalism, but in a different way. I also receive the NYT breaking alerts, and I think that the editors hold the instantaneous web updates to the same standard (fact checking, etc.)–so it’s not being compromised in the sense of giving up accuracy for expediency. Rather, it’s being compromised because the same reporter who would previously be assigned to tracking down sources and doing research and scouting the police reports, while getting regular approvals from editors, is now in charge of doing all that on top of twitter updates, writing 3-paragraph updates for the website, etc. The standards of publication aren’t being compromised, but reporters are being stretched too thin to be producing the type of reporting we’re used to.